To Save His Baby

by Judi Lind

  Her mind started spinning frantically, conceiving and discarding “explanations” for their presence in a clearly out-of-bounds space. Maybe she could say that she’d come into the Human Resources Department to leave a note about her car accident and requesting her shift be redistributed among the other physicians for the next few days. That would work, wouldn’t it?

  Except it only took a few moments, at most, to leave such a missive for the personnel director. If those camera sequences were timed, and she believed they were, how could she explain their rifling through the filing cabinets for nearly an hour?

  Her face reddened as another, even more embarrassing memory came to the fore. Gil coming up behind her, touching her, her wanton reaction...

  Suddenly the astringent scent of a powerful cleaning solution wafted through the air. A swishing sound, like liquid being stirred in a metal container, followed by off-key whistling.

  Valerie tapped Gil’s shoulder. When he twisted his head in the confined space to face her, she gave him a thumbs-up sign. The newcomer was Henry Ortiz, a custodian who had worked at Parker Memorial for more than twenty years.

  Good old Henry. He might be surprised to discover the head of obstetrics huddled under a battered desk, but he was discretion itself. During his tenure, Henry had happened upon dozens of overworked medical students and interns finding...solace in each other’s arms. And in the damnedest locations, too. Valerie had heard of one young couple caught in a huge hamper in the laundry room.

  So, although hospital liaisons were legendary, no one had ever heard of them from Henry Ortiz.

  She was just about to rise and make her presence known when a deep male voice spoke from the open doorway. “Henry, could I interrupt you for a moment?”

  “Sí, Mr. Abel, sir. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m afraid I just spilled coffee all over my desk and onto the carpet. I tried to mop up as best I could but—”

  “No problemo, Mr. Abel. I am coming right now.”

  More clanks and rattles as Henry retrieved his cleaning supplies.

  “Here, let me help you carry that stuff.”

  “Oh, no sir, is not necessary.”

  “I insist. So how’s Yolanda doing, Henry? Still busy with that new grandbaby?”

  Their voices trailed off as they left the office.

  Like marionettes being controlled by the same string, Valerie and Gil popped up from behind the desk. She wiped her forehead, surprised at the sheen of perspiration. “That was a close one. Let’s get out of here.”

  “I’m right behind you, Doc.”

  Renouncing the elevators in favor of the fire stairs, lest the ping of their arrival alert Martin Abel to their presence, they hurried down to the next floor. Pausing at the landing, she asked, “What now? That was certainly a waste of time.”

  Gil’s finger skimmed her upper lip. “I wouldn’t say a total waste.”

  She brushed his finger aside. How had he snuck back under her defenses so easily? After all her promises to herself to keep him at arm’s length, the first time he touched her she’d melted like hot butter in his very hot hands.

  “As far as the case is concerned, that got us exactly nowhere.”

  He shrugged. “That’s the way investigative work is sometimes. A dozen dead ends before you find a trail that leads somewhere.”

  “I’ve been thinking. We’ve been going about this records check from the wrong angle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We need to find a common denominator in each disappearance.”

  “I thought that’s what we were trying to do.” Exasperation tinged his voice.

  She knew how he felt. This entire ugly business was as tangled as a ball of yarn after a litter of kittens had finished with it. If they could just find a loose end, surely they could unravel the mess.

  “Look, I’m still not conceding that one of the WomanCare staff is involved. I know and like all of them and can’t believe any of them would take part in something like this. However—” she raised her hand when he started to interrupt “—just for the moment, let’s accept your scenario and someone at the WomanCare clinic is involved. Maybe he or she targets the prospective mothers who fit the profile they’re looking for.”

  “Exactly my premise, my dear Watson.”

  “Well, Sherlock, we need to be looking at the medical records of those mothers. That’s where we’ll find the common denominator—if there is one.”

  “Oh, there is,” he assured her. “So let’s boogie over to the clinic and see what we find.”

  She shook her head. “Not so easy, Sherlock. After the mothers give birth, their records are moved out of the clinic and into Central Files. I have to fill out a written request to have someone pull them for me.”

  “How long does that take?”

  “I usually have them brought to my office the day before a patient’s appointment. But since it’s the weekend, no one will think anything if I go down to Central Files and have them pulled while I wait.”

  “Might look a little strange if I’m tagging along.”

  “Good point. Why don’t you grab us some coffee from the cafeteria before it closes and meet me back at the clinic in, say, twenty minutes?”

  “You got it, Doc.” He touched her cheek as if unwilling to let her go even for that short a time.

  Again Valerie’s secret knowledge tore at her like a hungry shark, tearing and biting at her conscience. She had to tell Gil about the baby. Had to. But how? And when? The timing never seemed quite right.

  Besides, if he knew about her pregnancy, he’d never allow her to be involved in this investigation. What he wouldn’t understand was that she was already involved. Her patients’ lives were being destroyed; her professional reputation was on the line. No way was she going to sit idly by and let these thugs get away with their heinous crimes.

  Okay, she thought. After this was over, she’d tell him.

  GIL HELD TWO STEAMING cups, one disgustingly tainted with double cream and double sugar, and waited for Valerie’s return. Working with her had rekindled his interest in his work, got his juices flowing for the first time in years.

  As suddenly as he had the thought, a coherent crystalline memory came to him. He was sitting behind a gray metal desk in a cramped cubicle. A heavy black government-issue telephone receiver was propped on his shoulder, as if he’d been on the phone a very long time.

  On the desk was a calendar with the date September first circled in red. The image was vivid. He recalled being on hold, and while he was waiting, he kept circling that date with a broad-tipped felt pen. As if watching that recollection like a scene from a movie, Gil could see a tiny smile encroaching on his weary expression as he circled.

  Why, he wondered now, had that date held such importance to him? More importantly, was the memory a distant recollection, or was the September first this year?

  Valerie came around the corner, distracting him from his thoughts, a thick stack of multicolored patient folders in her arms. Juggling the unwieldy stack against her chest, held in place with her left hand, she inserted her key card and tapped in the now familiar code.

  He’d never paid particular attention to the numbers she punched in for clearance, but he suddenly realized the first two digits were 9 and 1. September first? Surely just a coincidence.

  Pointing to the key pad, he asked nonchalantly, “How often are you supposed to change your code?”

  She shrugged. “They recommend every month. The reality is that most of us resist change and are doing well if we come up with a new code number once a year. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know.” He tried to balance the coffee containers in one hand so he could help her with the files, but almost dropped the whole works.

  “I’ve got it,” she said. “I’m used to opening doors with my arms full.” She balanced the edge of the door with her hip and motioned for Gil to precede her into the clinic.

  When they were inside, he str
olled directly to her office as if he’d walked that route a thousand times before. Again, stopping for her to unlock the door, they went inside and he flicked on the overhead light while she dropped the bundle of folders onto her desk.

  “That code number,” he continued, striving for a diffident tone, “seems familiar.”

  She arched an eyebrow. Those eyes, the color of the Arizona sky, looked intently at him as if seeking a hidden meaning in his words. “It ought to. It’s your birthday.”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  He couldn’t think of a thing to say to break the awkward silence that followed her pronouncement. The whole puzzle of his past shifted suddenly, and pieces he thought were firmly in place skewed crazily off center. Funny how some bits of his life were readily accessible, but he’d forget other things. Like his own birthday.

  The urge to pound his empty head with his fists washed over him. Why the hell couldn’t he just remember? He thought through the order their relationship must have taken. First she was a suspect, then, apparently, a trusted ally, then lover. But Gil knew his history as well as he knew the confusion flooding him at this very moment. He had never been a hang-around kind of guy. His job wouldn’t allow it.

  Yet he sensed his alliance with Valerie had been far more meaningful than a casual affair. Her choosing his birthday as a code she would use hundreds of times a week seemed to confirm it.

  He remembered that image of the calendar with that same date circled in red. What significance, other than another birthday, did September first hold?

  Instinct warned this wasn’t the time to pose the question to Valerie.

  Later, after the case was over, there would be plenty of time to wrestle with the complexities of their past relationship. As well as their present one.

  Handing her the cup of sweetened coffee, he took the chair across from her. “Okay, Doc, let’s get a system going. One of us needs to pore through the data while the other makes notes.”

  Automatically he held out his hand for the files.

  “You play secretary,” she said archly. “I’m not breaking my patients’ confidentiality by allowing anyone to go through their medical files. That’s not negotiable.”

  He reached for a steno pad and pen, and crossed his legs in a coquettish manner. “Ready, boss.”

  Ignoring his attempt at humor, she opened the first file. “Okay. What, exactly, are we looking for?”

  “I don’t know without seeing the information myself. I know, I know,” he said when she started to protest. “Doctor-patient privilege. What’s in that envelope inside the front cover?”

  “This?” She extracted a stiff white card. “It’s a history of who checked a file out.”

  “That seems kind of odd.”

  “Not at all. If a patient comes in to see me and I notice Dr. Gehren, for example, in internal medicine last pulled her file, I’d want to know what the trouble was.”

  “Aren’t his notes inside?”

  “Eventually everything makes its way to the file. But, still using Dr. Gehren as an example, if he saw her a few days ago, he would release her file right away, but he might not get around to dictating his notes until the next day. Then they have to go to the steno pool to be transcribed, then back to Central Files to be replaced in the patient jacket. Sometimes a week or more can elapse between the actual visit and all the accompanying lab reports and notes ending up in the file.”

  “Seems like a lot of trouble for such a slim possibility.”

  “Oh, there are more reasons than delayed filing. Although these records are relatively thin, except for Natalie Brewer’s, because of her infertility treatment, sometimes a patient’s file can be several inches thick. Doctors don’t always have the time to flip through page after page of notes, but they still want to know who’s treated her in the recent past. This little card makes it simple.”

  Gil grinned and tapped his pen on the steno pad. “I think we just found the perfect starting point, Doc. Let’s see if one person checked out every one of those files.”

  “Makes as much sense as anything, I guess. Okay, these are in no particular order. Let’s start with Karen Lundquist’s file. It’s been checked out by me, Carl Bender, Sidney Weingold—”

  “Why so many doctors? I thought women generally saw the same doctor while she was pregnant.”

  “Patients with their own OB usually do. The WomanCare clinic is different. Remember, the vast percentage of our patients are indigent or uninsured, so they kind of have to take potluck. In addition to the few people actually on full-time staff, we have part-timers and volunteers, which makes scheduling a nightmare. Unless it’s a special-needs pregnancy, in which case we try to keep the patient/physician relationship intact throughout the term.”

  “Okay, makes sense. Go on.”

  She picked the card back up. “In addition to the three physicians, this jacket was pulled by Monica, Mark Withers and—”

  “Withers. Who’s he?”

  “One of the clerical staff.”

  “Why would he check out a file?”

  “Any number of reasons. Maybe one of the doctors asked him to, or maybe the patient phoned in for a prescription and he knew the doctor wouldn’t fill it over the phone without first checking the file. Perhaps he’d pull it in anticipation of an appointment.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “Ed Grant—”

  “That’s another name I don’t know.”

  Valerie tapped the folder with her fingernail, remembering suddenly the odd encounter she’d interrupted between Ed Grant and Martin Abel. “Ed’s an orderly. He normally works in the ER, but volunteers here once in a while. Nothing formal, just whenever he has some free time he gives us a hand.”

  “Kind of peculiar, an orderly having access to a medical file, isn’t it?”

  “Yes and no. Theoretically patient files are accessed only on a need-to-know basis. But in reality, orderlies are often asked to pick up files, prescriptions, any number of odd jobs, if you will. And Ed’s kind of special, anyway.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He has more...initiative than most of the other orderlies and technicians. A very caring man. As a matter of fact, I’ve been trying for some time to convince him to enroll in nursing school. I’d be happy to sponsor him—he’d be a wonderful asset to any nursing staff.”

  “Sounds like you’re kind of sold on the guy.”

  “Why, Special Agent Branton, do I detect a note of jealousy?”

  “Me? Jealous? Not a chance. Go on with the list.”

  She laughed at his unwillingness to even entertain the idea that he was discomfited by her interest in Ed Grant. “Next was Emily Pierce, Martin Abel—”

  “Abel? The hospital administrator?”

  “That’s right.”

  Gil scratched his head. “Now I am at a loss. Why on earth would a big shot like Abel be looking at the records of a little welfare case like Karen Lundquist?”

  “Precisely because she is a subsidized patient. Only part of our funds are from the federal government. A large portion is donated by Parker Memorial, including the actual facilities and most of our supplies. Because we were coming up for refunding a couple of months ago, Abel went over dozens of our files to make sure he was prepared for the board’s questions.”

  “Oh. Nothing out of line in that, I guess.”

  “Nope.” Going back to the beginning of Karen’s pregnancy, they listed all the people who had accessed her medical file, then went on to the second folder.

  It was well after midnight by the time they’d completely dissected the five patient portfolios. In addition to listing the people who had actually checked the file out of Central Files, they cross-referenced with lab technicians and other nursing and medical staff who’d had contact, no matter how slight, with the five pregnant women.

  Gil tossed the steno pad onto the desk. “There, Doc. Our perp’s name is right there.”

  She picked up the notebook and studied the
list of ten names. Was he right? Was one of these trusted colleagues guilty of such corruption?

  Although, in her tenure as a medic, especially during her emergency-trauma rotation, she’d come to understand that human beings were capable of committing almost any atrocity.

  A shudder of pure horror nibbled up her backbone.

  The frightening thing wasn’t that a person was capable of committing such an evil crime, but that she’d been working side by side with that person for months. Without the slightest suspicion that she was trusting a monster.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Feeling tired and dissatisfied with their night’s efforts, they climbed into the Blazer and headed back to the Tepee Motel.

  Valerie leaned against Gil’s shoulder as he opened the door. The solid heft of his shoulder felt safe, comforting. Even with his injuries, which had been dreadful, he’d been a rock these past few days. He’d changed somehow. Whether the difference was the result of his auto accident and the subsequent amnesia wasn’t clear, but he was different. Oh, he had the same devil-may-care grin and irreverent attitude, but he was...softer. Gentler. More mature.

  A nice change, she reflected. Although she hadn’t thought he was too imperfect before. The added complexity and depth of character were more like a natural evolution of his growth, rather than a different Gil altogether.

  Now would be the right time to tell him about the baby. She’d done all she could to help in the investigation, so if he booted her out now, it really wouldn’t matter. Except she wanted to be in on the arrest. Wanted to see with her own eyes who of her confederates had violated their sacred trust. Who had abused her trust and her friendship.

  Maybe she should keep her secret a while longer, after all.

  Then, a gentle movement fluttered through her stomach. A smile of delight lit her from within. This was the first time she’d felt their baby kick. Her every instinct cried for her to take Gil’s hand, to place it against the child he’d planted deep within her body.

  The gentle movement rippled through her again, and she almost laughed aloud with joy. But still she kept quiet.