by Ken Douglas
“ Yes,” Izzy said.
“ Then do it.” She was very weak. It was a miracle she was conscious.
“ Blood pressure is 84 over 42, down from 95 over 55,” Kathy Wells said. “We have to do something!”
“ She’s passed out,” Shaw said.
“ Save my mom,” the child said.
“ We will,” Izzy said.
“ You can’t operate in this hospital,” Belinda Quinn said.
“ Heart rate is up from 110 to 120.”
“ Shit, we’re going now,” Izzy said. “We’ll worry about the legal after.”
“ Okay.” Quinn nodded to the orderly. “Take her up.”
“ Are you gonna make my mommy better?” the child said.
“ I am,” Izzy said.
“ Promise?”
“ Yeah, I promise.”
The orderly and Wells started moving toward the elevator with the patient.
“ I’ve paged Dr. Stanley, he’s the best perfusionist in Reno,” Quinn said. She had a Blackberry in her hand. “He’s in the hospital and on his way to the OR. I’m paging Dr. Seger now.”
“ Ralph Seger,” Izzy said. “He’s good.” He was the best anesthesiologist she’d ever worked with. He had to be in his seventies. She didn’t know he was still working. He’d recognize her. Damn. Still, she’d said she was her daughter and she’d kept her family life to herself. Ralph wouldn’t know she didn’t have a daughter. Maybe she could pull it off. She had to pull it off.
By the time she’d prepped and got to the OR, the patient had been prepped and the perfusionist was there and ready.
“ I’m Dr. Eisenhower.” She introduced herself.
“ I’m Dr. Stanley, call me Stan.”
“ Your parents didn’t?”
“ They did.”
“ A Performer, good, gotta love Medtronic,” Izzy said, referring to the heart lung machine. It was a third the size of what she’d been used to, so it could be used closer to the patient and at table height. She’d heard a lot about it, had been waiting for it when she’d retired years ago. She’d never used one. Still, she was a heart surgeon. If Dr. Stanley could do his job, so could she. She’d be alright. She had to be alright, she’d promised a little girl.
“ She’s tachypneaic and her breathing is decreasing,” Kathy Wells said.
“ Then we’d better get going,” Dr. Stanley said.
“ I’m set here.” It was the anesthesiologist, Ralph Seger.
“ I believe you knew my mother,” Izzy said, continuing the lie.
“ You look like her, though a younger version.”
“ Thanks, I think,” she said. “She’s ready, the patient?”
“ She is,” Seger said.
“ Then let’s do it.” To Kathy Wells. “We’re going to do a median sternotomy and we don’t have the luxury of time.”
Izzy made a six inch incision down the middle of the chest and all of a sudden she was home. She’d done this more times than she could count. This is what she’d been born to do and she did it well.
It was as if she were on automatic pilot when she cut along the breast bone and set the retractor. Once the heart was exposed she sighed.
“ Are you ready, Stan?”
“ Yes.”
“ Good.” Izzy cannulated the ascending aorta and venae cava, then cross clamped the aorta as Seger administered the cardioplegia, which would stop the heart.
“ Okay, Kathy Wells. The patient is on bypass and is doing fine. We can slow down now.”
“ That was fast,” Seger said. “You’re good.”
Once the heart was drained of blood, Izzy stepped aside.
“ You have good hands.” Izzy said to Wells.
“ You noticed, with all you were doing?”
“ It’s my job.” She smiled beneath the surgical mask. “I’d like you to palpate the heart.”
“ Me?”
“ This is a teaching hospital. You’re here to learn and I’m a teacher.”
“ Okay.” Kathy Wells slid her hands under the heart.
Aaron Shaffer burst into the OR.
“ What’s going on here?”
“ Not now, Aaron,” Izzy said. “I’ve a student with a heart in her hands.”
“ You what?”
“ Aaron, calm down or leave the OR.”
“ Nobody talks to me like that in my hospital.”
“ It’s my OR. Built with money I brought into this hospital.”
“ Who are you?”
“ I’m the first girl you ever loved. The one you couldn’t have, because the stars weren’t aligned. Because the time and place were wrong. God has given us a second chance. Don’t blow it. Stand back and let us save this young woman’s life.”
“ Iz?”
“ Don’t say a word. If you ever loved me, don’t say a word.”
“ Right.” Aaron stepped back, stunned.
“ I feel something,” Wells said. “In the distal septum.”
“ That’ll be the bullet,” Izzy said. “You’ll need to make a transverse incision-”
“ In the apex of the left atrium,” Wells said, finishing Izzy’s sentence
“ Right,” Izzy said.
“ Okay, I got it.”
“ Can you close, or do you want me to do it?”
“ I’ll do it with a running 3–0 Prolene suture.”
“ Good, then reinforce the entry wound with a 3–0 pleggeted Prolene suture. Can you do that?”
“ Piece of cake,” Wells said.
“ Aaron,” Izzy said. “I’m feeling a little faint. Can you close up after she’s finished with the heart.” She turned to face him, met his eyes and though they were both wearing surgical masks, she could see the astonishment painted all over his face.
“ Ha, ha, how?”
“ Don’t stutter. I’ve told you about that.” She smiled.
“ You were-”
“ Not now. You have a patient.”
“ But-”
“ It’s a miracle.” She started for the door. “We’ll talk when you finish.”
Outside the OR, she pulled off her gloves, then made for the stairs. It would take them an hour or so to finish and she had to be long gone by then.
Chapter Four
Detective Bob Mouledoux, called Mississippi by friend and foe alike, drove the unmarked Crown Vic into the parking lot at St. Catherine’s. This was his first case in Robbery/Homicide and he wanted to impress his new partner, Joe Friday, who everyone who’d earned the right called Peeps, because early in his career he’d busted prostitutes by peeping in the windows of a motel they were known to use. These days prostitution was legal and they mostly looked the other way when girls plied the trade illegally.
Although only a day in Robbery/Homicide and only a cop for a couple years, Mouledoux had earned the right. Three months ago Mouledoux and his partner, an out of shape windbag named Reymundo Galvez, rolled into a gunfight. Three bad asses hopped up on meth had robbed a convenience store on Virginia, shooting and killing the girl behind the counter. They’d also shot a cop attempting their getaway, a young woman with a couple kids. And they’d had her partner pinned down.
Mouledoux floored the cruiser, smashed into the pickup they were hiding behind, jumped out of the ride, screaming like a banshee. One of the three was on the ground, knocked down by the collision. The other two were stunned. Mouledoux shot and killed them all.
Galvez demanded a new partner, believing the suits were going to crucify Mississippi Bob Mouledoux, but the gangbangers had killed a nineteen-year-old girl and shot down one of their own, which didn’t sit well with those in charge because they were cops too. Galvez got his new partner. Bob Mouledoux got Robbery/Homicide and the right to call Joe Friday by his nickname.
Mouledoux glanced over at Friday, who had his head back against the headrest. If his eyes had been open, he’d be staring at the headliner, but they weren’t. He was asleep.
“ Hey, Peeps, we’re here.”
“ Yeah, alright.” Peeps was a good cop, who’d taken endless ribbing because of his names, his real one and his nickname. “Park over there.” He pointed to the handicapped parking by the emergency entrance.
“ Yeah, sure.” On his own, Mouledoux would’ve found an empty spot in patient’s parking and walked, but Peeps was known for using any perk he could get.
They entered through the emergency room, walked straight through, Peeps showing the way. He’d been here before, probably several times. This was Mouledoux’s first. At the reception, Peeps told everybody’s great aunt, a woman named Elizabeth Chandler, according to her badge, that he wanted to see Dr. Romero about the Eisenhower homicide.
A few minutes later they were ushered into the office of the President and CEO of St. Catherine’s, an athletic looking man with a full head of ash grey hair and skin so white it looked like he hadn’t seen the sun in forever, named Aaron Shaffer. He was a doctor and his office was large and afforded him a prime view of Reno’s downtown casinos. Must be gorgeous at night, Mouledoux thought, as Dr. Romero introduced them to the hospital’s CEO, then to Simon Drake, the hospital’s attorney, and lastly to Dr. Elizabeth Jordan, the attending who’d treated Isadora Eisenhower in the emergency room.
“ As you know, we had a busy day here yesterday,” Shaffer said after they were seated.
“ Yeah, the accident,” Peeps said. “I can imagine.” There’d been a random, gang related shooting, which caused a multi-car accident at the Spaghetti Bowl, where Interstate 80 and Highway 395 crossed. Several injured; fortunately no fatalities.
“ Yes, so you can imagine the confusion here.” He looked first toward Peeps, then toward Mouledoux. Both cops met his eyes straight on.
“ Yeah, we get the idea,” Peeps said.
“ I had Dr. Romero ask for you for a reason, Detective Friday.”
“ He told me it’s sensitive and I’m known for keeping my yap shut. We get it.”
“ And Detective Mouledoux?”
“ I can keep my yap shut, too. We’re cops, we don’t go broadcasting our investigations.”
“ Yet I read about so many of them in the press.”
“ You called me because you trust me,” Peeps said. “You can trust Detective Mouledoux as well.”
“ Okay, but if any of this gets out the press will go crazy. The public too. There will be a feeding frenzy like none before.” He sighed, the way only a troubled man can. “At the present only the four of us know what I’m about to tell you. Well, the four of us and Isadora Eisenhower, of course.”
“ Wait a minute,” Peeps said. “She’s dead.”
“ Is she?” Shaffer said.
“ Well, isn’t she?” Peeps said.
“ We don’t know for sure and that’s the problem.”
“ Where’s the body?” Peeps said.
“ It’s gone.”
“ Someone stole it?” Peeps said.
“ Not exactly,” Shaffer said.
“ Well, it didn’t get up and walk away.”
“ As I said, that’s the problem. We think it did.”
“ We’re outta here!” Peeps said.
“ Wait a minute, Joe,” Mouledoux said. “He’s serious.”
“ You’re kidding?” Then to Shaffer. “So what’s the deal, you pronounced her and she wasn’t dead? You thought she’d been shot through the heart, but you made a mistake? It was only a flesh wound, so the patient got up and went home?”
“ Not exactly,” Shaffer said. “I’d like to show you part of a video we took of one of our surgeries this morning.” He put a disk into his computer, then rotated the screen so the detectives could see it.
On the screen, a woman was on the table and a team of surgeons and nurses were around her. A young female doctor was about to cut into the woman’s chest. She paused, turned away from the patient, lowered her mask, took in a deep breath, then wiped sweat from her brow with her scrub sleeve and, for an instant, the camera caught a frontal view of her face. Shaffer stopped the tape.
“ I know that woman.” Mouledoux hadn’t known Amy was a doctor. He’d thought she was a full time student. She must be taking classes as a hobby of some sort. Must be nice to have that kind of spare time. “She used to live in my complex.”
“ I know her, too,” Peeps said. “She just broke up with someone I know. Her name’s Amy Eisenhower.” He paused for a second. “Wait a minute, she related to the missing body?”
“ This might be easier than I’d hoped.” Shaffer tapped his keyboard and the screen went dark. “Detective Mouledoux, what color are Amy Eisenhower’s eyes?”
“ Blue.”
“ You sure?”
“ I’m a detective with a great memory for faces. Besides, she’s a pretty girl. I’m sure.” Mouledoux paused for a second. “Hey, wait a minute-”
“ Hold up, Detective,” Shaffer said, cutting him off. He turned to Peeps. “Is he right, Detective Friday?”
“ Oh, yeah, they’re definitely blue, the bluest eyes you’d ever wanna see.”
“ And you wanted to say, Detective?” Shaffer turned to Mouledoux.
“ The doctor on the screen, her eyes are brown.”
“ Yes, they are.” Shaffer tapped his keyboard again and the young doctor’s face was back on the screen.
“ Contacts,” Peeps said.
“ No,” Mouledoux said. “I don’t think that’s what Dr. Shaffer wants us to take away from this meeting.”
“ It’s not?” Peeps said.
“ No, it’s not,” Shaffer said. “Isadora Eisenhower was the finest heart surgeon I’d ever laid eyes on. She had the greatest hands, steady and true. She never doubted she could save a patient and her record is unmatched. But like us all, sometimes she’d lose one, but unlike the rest of us, it would hit her hard. She treated every patient like family.
“ When I came here, she took me under her wing. She saw something in me no one else did. She used to tell me I’d go far, that I’d be a great surgeon one day. If not for her, I’d probably be an old country doctor. Not that that would’ve been such a bad life.”
“ And you’re telling us this, why?” Peeps said.
“ I must have assisted Dr. Eisenhower hundreds of times, I know her work better than I know the layout of this office. Yesterday, when I learned there was a doctor performing open heart surgery in my hospital, who wasn’t on staff, I couldn’t get to that OR fast enough. I went in there to bust heads and I found Isadora Eisenhower, the only woman I ever loved, instructing one of my interns, who had a heart in her hands and Izzy Eisenhower was younger than she was on the day I met her, forty-five years ago.”
“ Holy fuck!” Peeps said.
“ This is a Catholic hospital,” Shaffer said. “But we’ll make an exception.”
“ It’s gotta be some kind of trick,” Mouledoux said.
“ Last night,” Dr. Jordan said, “Isadora Eisenhower presented with a chest wound. It looked like the bullet had smashed right on through. Smack through her chest, smack through her heart. She should’ve died when she was shot, but somehow her heart was still working. She was alive when she came here, but she didn’t last long. I called it and they took her body away.”
“ And now,” Drake the attorney said, speaking for the first time, “it looks like she woke up in the morgue, minus about fifty or sixty years, donned a pair of scrubs, performed open heart surgery, then vanished.”
“ That’s spooky.”
“ Yes, Detective Mouledoux,” Shaffer said, “that’s spooky. So, you can see why we don’t want this getting out, can’t you?”
“ Yeah,” Mouledoux said, “you’d be jammed with people looking for the Fountain of Youth.” He looked around the room. “Every doctor and every hospital in the world would be. It’d be chaos.”
Leaving Aaron to close had been a stroke of genius. It had given Izzy time to get out of the hospital and with her new found youth, she was able to run like the wind. She’d made it home, sweating like a mar
athoner, in under fifteen minutes.
In her house, she stripped off the scrubs and stuffed them in a paper bag. She didn’t think Aaron would be able to keep what had happened to her quiet for long. He’d try to honor his promise, but there were cameras in the OR. And those cameras, combined with her missing body, painted one heck of a picture. Then there was the anesthesiologist, the intern and the nurses who’d assisted her during the surgery, too many people to keep quiet. She had to get out of town.
She’d jumped into a pair of Levi’s. Pulled on a Wolf Pack sweatshirt, put on her own Nikes, glad to be shed of the too tight shoes. Dressed now, she stuffed some clothes in an overnight bag, went to the kitchen and wolfed down some enchilada leftovers. She’d been famished.
Then she grabbed her iPhone and called Amy.
“ Nana,” Amy answered on the first ring. “I think I’m in trouble.”
“ Not as much as I am.”
“ No, I’m in worse,” Amy said.
“ Listen, Amy, this is important. Don’t talk, just listen. Can you do that?”
“ Yeah.”
“ Remember that special place I used to take you when you were little, your favorite place in all the world?”
“ Yeah.”
“ I need you to go there now. Don’t ask why, just trust me. I’ll pick you up in half an hour. That’ll be 5:00 dead on the money.” Izzy figured she couldn’t run back to the Silver Legacy, get her car, then get to the meeting place any sooner than that. “Can you be there in thirty minutes?”
“ Yeah, sure.”
“ And Amy, one more thing and this is very important. Destroy your phone right now. Don’t just leave it, destroy it, make sure the GPS chip inside is toast. Use a hammer if you can get one.”
“ Nana?”
“ Can you trust me on this?”
“ You’re scaring me.”
“ I’ll explain when I see you. Just trust me.”
“ Okay, smash the phone, meet you at our special place. Got it.”
“ Good girl.” Izzy ended the call, took her iPhone out to the garage, got a hammer from her tool kit and gave it five whacks. Back in the living room, she opened the front blinds and turned on the TV as she always did, to fool a would be thief. That done, she locked the door, then took off toward the Silver Legacy at a dead run.