Double Jeopardy

by Bobby Hutchinson

  “Yes, we do,” she said in a quiet, resonant voice. “Gemma and I are identical twins.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Identical twins?

  Having a living model for the extensive reconstructive procedure he’d be performing on Gemma Cardano was a stroke of amazing luck, Ben reflected. It would make the computer imaging much simpler.

  This was a fascinating situation, one he’d never encountered before, one that intrigued him. He grinned at Sera, delighted. “That’s fantastic, Ms. Cardano.”

  “Sera, please.”

  “Sera, then. An uninjured model to work from will simplify the process immensely. I’ll need you to come to my office, if that’s possible?”

  She nodded.

  “The office is right across the street from the hospital. Call my nurse and set up a convenient time. We’ll take some photographs. They’ll be helpful in the OR.” His professional eye was gauging the curve of her cheekbone, the angle of her nose, the line of her jaw, and several moments passed before he realized his scrutiny was making her uncomfortable.

  She met his gaze, but her color had heightened, and it dawned on Ben that Sera Cardano was a trifle shy.

  “Sorry.” He smiled at her and shifted his attention to the other people in the room. They were all silent, resolutely watching him and Sera, waiting for whatever else he had to tell them, and now it was his turn to be a bit uncomfortable. For a few moments he’d literally forgotten everyone except Sera Cardano.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Cardano, the nurse will let you know when you can see your daughter. Swelling and discoloration are common in her type of injury. Also, there’s always a fair amount of bleeding. So be prepared.”

  “How—how will she eat with her jaw wired shut?” Maria Cardano looked devastated. Ben surmised that food was important to her.

  “We’ve inserted an enteric feed into Gemma’s stomach—a tube that allows for continuous feeding. It’s the easiest on the body for a while. It’ll be there until we take out the trach tube.”

  “How long will she have to have her jaw wired?” Aldo’s face was creased with worry, al- though he managed to keep his voice level.

  “About six weeks. Once the trach tube comes out she’ll be able to drink her meals.”

  Ben was trying his best to give them positive news along with the negative, but of course they were in shock as they faced the full extent of their daughter’s injuries and the side effects.

  “If you have any concerns at all, please phone me,” he said when it seemed they had no other questions. “I’ll give you my pager number.” He reached for a pen, forgetting that he was still in scrubs.

  Sera handed him a pen and a small pad of paper from the voluminous pockets of her denim overalls, and he scribbled down his number. He noticed that her fingernails were short and unpolished, her hands stained with something blue, and he wondered for an instant if she worked in construction like her sister. Then, amid a chorus of thanks, he left the room.

  In the hallway, a tall, wiry man was leaning against the wall, head down, arms folded across his chest, broad shoulders slumped in dejection. He glanced up and straightened as Ben came by.

  “Dr. Halsey? Doctor, how’s Gemma?” His deep voice echoed with concern and apprehension. His rugged face was ashen beneath its tan, and his huge workman’s hands were trembling. “My name’s Jack Kilgallin. I—I was driving the forklift that hit her. The nurse over there said that maybe you would tell me how she is. I don’t want to intrude on the family, but I really need to know how she’s doing.”

  Ben recognized him as the man Leslie had pointed out earlier by the phones. The poor bastard was obviously suffering the horrors of hell. Ben knew all too well how it felt to watch a friend come close to death because of an accident.

  Several years ago Greg Brulotte, Ben’s best buddy, careered off a cliff while the two of them were skiing. Greg had recovered fully, but Ben still had nightmares where he stared helplessly into a deep ravine, knowing he had no way to get to Greg, feeling it would be his fault if Greg died. The memory haunted him, and made him want to reassure this man.

  “She’s in Recovery, Mr. Kilgallin. All we can do now is wait. The next twenty-four hours are crucial, but I believe she’ll come through fine. She’s a very strong young woman. The prognosis is good.” Ben reached out a hand and squeezed the other man’s shoulder. “Don’t blame yourself, Mr. Kilgallin.” His voice was gruff with compassion. “Accidents can happen to anybody.”

  Kilgallin’s face contorted and he gulped. He was on the verge of tears. “I can’t believe what took place. It was so fast. I looked away for one single minute, I glanced over at the crane operator. Gemma just appeared out of nowhere. I should’ve seen her sooner. Damn, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “Hindsight’s always a hundred percent”

  “Will—will you be able to fix her face? She’s— she’s a real good-looking girl.”

  “I’ll do my best. I promise you that. Similar procedures have had very positive results. I don’t see any reason that shouldn’t be the case with Gemma.”

  Ben’s beeper went off. It was his office number and he remembered that he’d forgotten to call Dana about rescheduling his afternoon appointments. She’d give him the sharp side of her tongue, and he deserved it.

  He’d better get a move on; Dana wasn’t the only one who hated keeping patients waiting. "I’ve gotta go. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mr. Kilgallin.”

  Kilgallin shrugged.

  Ben hurried off down the corridor, forgetting about Kilgallin and thinking of Gemma and Sera Cardano, instead. He wondered how many times a surgeon had had a living replica of a patient to use as a model in reconstructive surgery. He couldn’t remember reading about a single documented case history. Perhaps he’d write this one up for JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. He changed quickly and then rode the elevator down to street level and raced out the main exit doors. The rain had stopped, and Ben totally forgot the raincoat he’d abandoned hours before in the ER.

  The nurse told the Cardanos that each visit should last just ten minutes, with a maximum of two people at a time. Sera’s mother and father went in first. When they came out they both started weeping, their faces ashen.

  “She...it’s awful, Sera.” Maria struggled for words. “She doesn’t look like—like herself,” she finally gasped, and Sera steeled herself as she headed into Intensive Care.

  During the first few seconds the disturbing sights and sounds from other patients registered, but as she neared the bed where her unconscious sister lay, Sera was aware only of Gemma, and of her own heart pounding. She felt icy-cold and dizzy. Gemma was propped up on pillows, and she was truly unrecognizable.

  “Oh, God!” The exclamation was part prayer, part dismay. Her sister’s face, always a mirror image of her own, was now grotesquely swollen and horribly misshapen. Blood oozed from her nostrils and the comers of her mouth. Her lips were almost invisible because of the swelling.

  Gemma’s eye sockets were purple and blue, swollen shut. Her hair had been clipped close to her scalp on the right side of her head, where several strips of adhesive held the edges of a wound together. It, too, seeped blood. A tracheotomy tube protruded from her throat; various intravenous lines extended from her arms and her stomach; electrodes on wires were attached to other parts of her body, carrying indecipherable beeps to a host of machines.

  Sera gulped back a sob. What appeared to be ordinary wire cutters were taped to the end of the bed and an ominous looking machine sat on the floor, shocking indications that things could go very wrong.

  Most shocking of all, for Sera, was the utter stillness of her sister’s slender body beneath the crumpled white sheet.

  “Em?” Sera cleared her throat, unaware of using the contraction she’d formulated when the two of them were babies and she was too little to pronounce her sister’s name correctly.

  “Em, it’s me,” she whispered, wondering if sound could penetrate the stillne
ss. Even if it did, where was Gemma?

  Her sister was never this quiet, not even deep in sleep. Unlike Sera, Gemma was a restless sleeper, tossing, turning, muttering, thrashing her legs. At home they’d always shared a room, and Gemma had regularly fallen out of her twin bed, tumbling heavily to the floor and often not even waking up. Sera had never fallen out of bed, not even once. Now, far more terrifying than the damage to her sister’s face was this utter stillness.

  “Em, are you in there?” Sera murmured the inane words and waited for some sign, but there was nothing. Gingerly she took her sister’s fingers in hers, absently noting the roughness of Gemma’s skin, the short, blunt-cut fingernails. They shared a total disregard for manicures; hands were tools, to be utilized to their fullest capacity. Sera’s own fingers were still stained with the blue paint she’d used earlier that day on the set. Two of her fingernails were broken off painfully close to the cuticle, and she saw that Gemma, too, had several jagged nails.

  A nurse appeared on the opposite side of the bed and briskly checked the IV and the monitors.

  “What—” Sera had to clear her throat before she could force the rest of the words out. “What are the wire cutters for?”

  “In case she vomits and starts to choke. So that we can cut the wires holding her jaw shut.”

  Lord. Sera shuddered. “And—and that thing?” She pointed to the device at the side of the bed.

  “That’s a suction machine. Again, in case she vomits or aspirates.”

  “Does—is that likely to happen?” Gemma could choke to death.

  “It can, but we’re watching her really closely.”

  “How come she’s still bleeding like that?”

  “With this type of injury, there’s always a lot of bleeding. It’s not excessive. Don’t be too alarmed by it.”

  Easy for a nurse to say, hard to accept when the person bleeding was your sister.

  “What’s—what’s the white stuff in that bag?” Sera gestured at the IV bag with the tube leading into Gemma’s stomach.

  “That’s Isocal, a high-nutrient liquid formulated especially for patients who can’t take nourishment by mouth.”

  “I see. She’s sedated, right? That’s why she’s so quiet?”

  “Yes, but there’s a good possibility she can hear you, so talk to her.”

  For the next few moments Sera mouthed platitudes, assuring Gemma she was going to be fine, that she had the best plastic surgeon in the city, probably the entire country.

  Sera didn’t know that for sure, but Dr. Halsey had seemed reliable and trustworthy. All Gemma needed to do, Sera went on, was rest and concentrate on getting well. By the time ten minutes were over, Sera felt like an undertrained competitor in a triathlon. Shaky and light-headed, she hurried out of Intensive Care, emotionally and physically drained.

  One glimpse into the waiting room confirmed that even more of her relatives had arrived while she was away, and in typical Cardano style, they sounded as if they were talking at top volume, all at the same time.

  Sera hurried past the door, around the corner and down the corridor toward the elevators. She felt as though she couldn’t breathe. She needed fresh air, fast.

  She punched the Down button on the elevator once and then again before becoming aware of the tall man she’d brushed past a moment earlier. He was staring at her, his face ashen. He was wearing soiled work clothes and heavy boots. Sweat stained each armpit.

  “You’ve got to be Gemma’s sister.” His voice was deep and soft and rather gruff. “God, for a minute I almost... You look exactly like her. I knew she had a twin sister, but I didn’t realize you looked so much alike.”

  “Who are you?” Sera was too exhausted even to be polite.

  “Jack Kilgallin. I—I work for your dad.” There was utter misery in his voice. “I’m the one who hit her, see. With the two-by-four. I was driving the forklift.”

  Sera remembered her dad explaining how the accident had happened and stating emphatically that it was no one’s fault. This man obviously didn’t share that view.

  The elevator arrived and Sera stepped in, and then, on impulse, she touched the Hold button. Jack Kilgallin was already walking away, and the dejection in his slumped shoulders touched her.

  “Mr. Kilgallin?”

  He turned, and Sera said, “I’m going outside for some fresh air. You want to join me?”

  He hesitated and then nodded. “Yeah, I do.” He stepped into the elevator. “Thanks.”

  They didn’t speak again until they were outside. Sera took a deep breath. Her chest ached, as if all the emotions she’d been controlling were trapped inside her heart.

  ‘‘The rain’s stopped.” The brilliant sunshine hurt her eyes, but her sunglasses were in the handbag she’d abandoned upstairs in the waiting room. She drew in another deep lungful of air, tinged with fumes from the heavy traffic on Burrard but welcome all the same.

  “There’s a little garden this way, where it’s quiet. Some of us eat our lunch there.” Jack led her around a comer, along a narrow path between old stone walls. The path opened suddenly on an enclosed courtyard. Here the air smelled of freshly cut grass, and a stand of purple irises bordered a fountain and an old wooden bench.

  “It is quiet.” Sera sank onto the bench and tipped her head back, closing her eyes and letting the sun warm her skin. She realized she was cold, bone-deep cold, and she shivered and rubbed her arms.

  She felt him sit down beside her, and she opened her eyes and looked at him. His elbows were propped on his knees, chin in his hands. He sighed deeply, and for a long while they sat in silence.

  “The doctor thinks she’s going to be okay, you know,” Sera said after a time. “He seems pretty confident that he can repair her face so that she’ll look the same as she always did.”

  “Yeah, I talked to him a while ago. He seems like a nice guy.” He drew in a breath. “You—you seen her yet?”

  Sera nodded, and she couldn’t restrain the shudder that ran through her. “A few minutes ago.”

  “How—how does she look?”

  Sera swallowed hard. The mute appeal in his expression made her want to tell him it was better than it really was, but she opted for the truth. “Pretty awful. Hooked up to machines. Really still and out of it, but I guess they want her that way for a while.”

  “She’d hate that.” His voice was thick, as if tears were close. “Gemma’s like mercury, always moving.”

  It was an apt description, and Sera shot him a curious glance. “You know my sister? I mean, apart from work?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I took her out a couple of times.”

  Sera looked at him again, assessing, taking in the gray liberally sprinkled through his thick, unruly black hair, his tall but muscular build, his huge, work scarred hands. He appeared forty, forty-five even, an attractive man, solid, reliable. He definitely wasn’t Gemma’s type, Sera thought. Her sister went for lean, hungry young men with fast cars and plenty of attitude.

  He guessed exactly what Sera was thinking. “She dumped me fast. Too old, not adventurous enough.” The faintest trace of a wry smile came and went, revealing even white teeth. He was truly handsome when he smiled. “I wasn’t going to take no for an answer, though. I intended to go on asking until she wore down.”

  “You care for her.” Sera felt even sorrier for him than she had before. He seemed a nice man, similar to dozens of other nice men who’d had their hearts broken by Gemma. She was good at it.

  “Yeah, I care.” His jaw clenched, and he fought back the tears that glistened in his gray eyes. “I fell for her the first day she came to work with us. I’d do nearly anything for her.” Raw emotion made the words ragged. “Anything but hurt her. Or watch while she hurts herself.” He swallowed back tears. "I sure as hell never dreamed I’d do something like this to her.”

  Sera tried to think of words to comfort him, but she came up empty. The events of the day had left her with little to offer anyone else. “She never told
me much about you,” he was saying.

  Sera nodded. It wasn’t surprising that Gemma hadn’t talked about her. Their relationship was complex and disturbing, and for a long time they hadn’t been that close.

  The truth was that for the past few years, Sera had done her best to distance herself from Gemma. Physically, they were identical. Temperamentally, they weren’t. Her sister created turmoil, chaos, problems that Sera, more often than not, was expected to solve. Sera wanted peace in her life, and apparently the only way to have that was to sever the invisible cord that linked her to her sister.

  “She said you didn’t live here in Vancouver anymore.”

  “I don’t, usually. Until two months ago, I was living in Los Angeles. I just moved back here temporarily because of a job.”

  And even here she’d been successful in distancing herself from her sister, Sera thought miserably. So very successful she hadn’t even known when Gemma was in pain today, terribly injured, close to death.

  It seemed to Sera that she’d managed, once and for all, to separate from the other half of herself. But instead of triumph, all she felt was despair.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Guilt washed over Sera like stagnant, muddy water.

  From the time they were babies, she’d always known when Gemma was hurt or scared, and Gemma had been the same. It was an unexplainable sixth sense that many twins had, even twins who’d been separated at birth.

  When one of them had a major life crisis, the other knew on some level or even shared a similar situation. But today, there’d been nothing, no subtle change in emotion, no physical indication that might have warned her Gemma was hurting. To think of her sister alone in such agony was unbearable. Unreasonable as it was, Sera felt she should have been able to somehow share it, make it half as painful.

  “I should get back, find out if there’s any change.” She felt utterly weary, and she could see that same exhaustion in Kilgallin’s eyes, in the way he moved as he, too, got to his feet.