Warning Signs

by C. J. Lyons

Ken didn’t let her off so easy. He stopped and placed one palm on her arm, halting her as well. He stood still, ignoring the traffic beside them; the handful of street kids behind them, tossing quarters against a wall; the shop-keeper sudsing his windows. He kept his gaze locked onto her face, pinning her down.

  “I’m scared.” Gina felt the words pass her lips but didn’t believe she’d actually said them until they reached her ears.

  A long silence passed after her admission. Everything around them faded into the background; there was just her and Ken.

  Finally, he nodded as if accepting her fear, respecting it. And her. “I know. I am too.”

  She stared at him. He was scared too? Why would he admit something like that to her, a virtual stranger?

  “I just want—I need—to learn how to get on with my life.” Gina swallowed hard as they resumed walking. She’d already revealed more to Ken Rosen in a few minutes than she had to anyone in months. Even Jerry.

  Fear sparked through her nerve endings in a fight-or-flight rush. She’d said too much, left herself vulnerable, exposed. She faltered, wanting to run back to her car, drive home, and dive into a gallon of Peachy Paterno ice cream. Instead she hastened her pace to catch up with him. “This was a mistake.”

  He ignored her and they kept on walking. Gina faltered, searching for a neutral topic. “Sorry about the whole Hero of Angels thing in the news.”

  Even though Ken was the real hero and had saved several kids during the riots, it was a chance picture of Gina helping him by carrying a single baby out of harm’s way that had ended up on TV and in the papers.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah, it does. They’re going to give me a Carnegie Medal for it. I didn’t ask for it or anything, but that’s kind of why I needed to come talk to you …” She trailed off, not sure at all about what she wanted from him.

  “Congratulations. Your father must be very proud of you.” His tone held no rancor or sarcasm. Instead, he seemed genuinely pleased for her.

  “You know my father?” she asked, bracing herself for the inevitable. Snide remarks, vitriolic attacks on her becoming a doctor, asking if her father gave her a bonus for every physician she ratted out …

  “Moses Freeman? Yeah, we’ve met.” A shadow crossed his face, almost too fast for her to see.

  Most people—especially fellow physicians—had much more dramatic reactions to her father’s name. She hated that she couldn’t read Ken; he was like a koi pond on a windless day. You knew there was a lot going on beneath the placid, unruffled surface but you just couldn’t see it.

  “So your dad’s the lawyer who single-handedly started Pennsylvania’s malpractice crisis.” His lips quirked in an almost smile. “I’ll bet that leads to some interesting discussions at family dinners.”

  “My father doesn’t believe in discussing anything. He believes in verbal warfare.”

  It was the truth. You didn’t try to discuss religion, politics, philosophy, the arts, literature, medicine, or the law with Moses Freeman unless you were prepared to battle to the death. Gina had learned at a very young age that she could never win with her father; too many times she’d abandoned the bloody carcass of her ego on the battlefield of the dining room table.

  “How did you and my father meet?” she dared to ask.

  “In a courtroom, of course.” His tone was light, but again that shadow darkened his eyes. Suddenly he looked older, crow’s-feet worried into the corners of his eyes, a crease lining his forehead.

  She’d long ago vowed never to apologize for her father—after all, she hadn’t chosen her parents. But Ken’s expression looked mournful, as if he’d lost something important to him. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged, and the mask of geniality returned. It was a relief to know it was a mask, and that he was as human as the rest of the world.

  She glanced around and realized they’d walked a long way from Angels. They were in the heart of Homewood, a neighborhood so riddled with violence that school buses refused to enter for fear of getting children caught in the crossfire that the bright yellow government-sponsored targets attracted. The same neighborhood where she and Ken had almost died last July. Gina should have fit in, been comfortable in this black neighborhood, yet the hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she imagined the eyes of a hundred faces focused on her. “Do you know where we are?”

  “Of course,” he laughed. “I live here—we passed my building a block back.”

  They stood in front of a brick rowhouse with a sagging porch at the top of a steep set of crumbling concrete steps. The cement-block wall below the porch was pockmarked, the missing chunks leaving white scars behind. A flutter of deflated Mylar balloons cascaded along the gutter, tied with faded ribbons to a telephone pole.

  Panic surged through her, sweat cascading down her back. She shivered uncontrollably. Gina wanted to run, to hide, but she was frozen, locked in place by fear. A car turned the corner down the block, cruising toward them. Her heart pounded so hard in her throat, she couldn’t swallow.

  In her mind gunfire raged around her, ricocheting from the cement wall, the sidewalk, pinging against the car that had crashed against the phone pole, thwacking into the grass … and one bullet found its mark, right between her shoulder blades.

  Her hand rose to rub the spot at the base of her neck. The spot where the bullet hit her hadn’t hurt at the time—the pain blitzed by adrenaline and terror—but ever since, it had ached and throbbed. Sometimes she swore she could feel the bullet wedged between her vertebrae, as if her own flesh had caught it rather than the bulletproof vest Jerry had insisted she wear.

  She closed her eyes, trying her best to force the memories away. Ken took her hand in his, squeezed hard, and tugged her forward. “You’re all right, Gina.”

  When she said or thought those same words, they came as a plaintive wail. When he said them, they came out like a statement of fact, carved into stone.

  “Gina.” Ken’s voice pulled her back and she opened her eyes. A woman, maybe in her forties—it was hard to tell with her gray hair and worn expression—was slowly making her way down the porch steps. “This is Angela Hardesty. It was her son driving the car.”

  Oh, him. The guy with his brains blown out, splattered all over the windshield. The one Ken had risked his life to save—and the reason Gina and the ambulance had been out there in that firestorm of bullets.

  “Is this her?” Angela asked, taking one of Gina’s hands in both of hers. “This the doctor who tried to save my Ronald and who helped all those beautiful babies?”

  Gina winced at her words. She hadn’t tried to save the driver—if anything, she’d urged Ken to abandon him as the SUV with the shooters came after them. Her body shook as if bullets were flying again. The urge to flee became even more overwhelming. Gina knew her palm was drenched in sweat, but Angela didn’t seem to notice.

  “This is the one.” Ken’s voice had a trace of—what? pride?—in it. “Meet Dr. Gina Freeman.”

  “Oh, honey, it is so good to meet you.”

  To Gina’s chagrin, Angela pulled her into a fervent hug. She smelled of lilac talcum powder and Windex.

  “Come inside, please. I want to hear everything.”

  Ken nodded his encouragement, but the thought of staying here, where she’d almost died, one more moment sent Gina’s stomach spinning into a tailspin.

  “Sorry, I can’t stay.” Gina yanked her hand free from Angela and spun on her heel, almost tripping over a twisted root poking through the sidewalk. It took everything she had not to run. Inside her skin it felt as if her muscles and nerves, her stomach, her lungs, her heart were already in the flight of their life.

  Ken caught up a few moments later, his long strides effortlessly keeping up with her. She beat back the tears blurring her vision, waiting for his reprimands. Coward, liar, gutless wonder—there was nothing he could say that she hadn’t already told herself.

  But Ken was silent, simply keeping pace with
Gina. That was almost worse; it meant there was nothing to drown out the sounds of her guilt.

  “SO, HAVE YOU SEEN GINA TODAY?” BOYLE asked as Lydia placed a row of vertical mattress sutures. His color was better after a liter of saline and his heart rate was back to normal. “She doing okay?”

  Lydia kept her head low so that the detective wouldn’t be able to read her expression. “I was going to ask you the same thing. I’m in charge of the EMS ride-alongs, so I heard about Gina switching shifts last week. I thought you said she was better.”

  Boyle’s large, dark brown eyes always reminded her of a puppy dog’s, all sweetness and compassion. But now they narrowed in concern. “She was. She is. Except …”

  “What’s wrong?” Lydia asked.

  “She just seems so … empty. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Is she sleeping?”

  “I think so. The nightmares seem to have stopped. And she’s been eating, even laughs, smiles at my jokes.” He made the goofy face of a man in love, his voice wistful. “It’s just—”

  “Be patient. Gina’s never had to face anything like that, being shot at, never had anything go wrong in her life.”

  “Nothing her folks couldn’t buy their way out of, at least.” His tone was bitter.

  “Did you talk to them?”

  “I tried.” An uncharacteristic scowl darkened his features. “They didn’t want to hear anything. All they care about is what they read in the news. And of course that idiot reporter, Pete Sandusky, made her front-page news, talking about how she saved those kids.”

  Everyone knew that Gina hadn’t saved the children alone. The main credit went to another physician, Ken Rosen. But Gina, tall and as photogenic as a fashion model, was the one the public had dubbed the Hero of Angels. More pressure the resident didn’t need.

  Lydia sighed. She liked Gina, she really did, but the resident was one of those people who were like lightning rods, attracting chaos around them. “I’ll talk with her.”

  Boyle nodded his thanks. “I appreciate it.”

  Lydia tied off the last subcutaneous suture and switched to 4-0 nylon for the skin. She wanted to ask Boyle more about Gina, but before she could, the door banged open and Janet Kwon returned, talking into her phone as she swept into the room. Behind her came Nora, pushing Boyle’s witness, Tanesha, in the wheelchair, an envelope of X-rays in her lap.

  “Get the ADA working on a warrant, and Boyle and I will meet you there,” Janet was saying. “Yeah, and have those guys at CMU bring that ground-searching radargizmo of theirs.” She hung up and beamed down at Boyle. “You’re not going to believe this one.”

  AFTER FINISHING HER CONSULT, AMANDA found a quiet hidey-hole in the procedure room of the peds floor. There was a desk for charting along with a computer and, as long as no kids needed spinal taps or other invasive procedures, she’d have some time to examine Becky’s chart without interruption.

  One of Amanda’s extra-cash jobs had been as a medical records data-entry clerk two summers ago when the hospital began its conversion to paperless charts. So it was easy work for her to quickly distill the ream of pages to the essentials: Becky Sanborn, age nineteen, student at Carnegie Mellon University, presented with several weeks of intermittent numbness and tingling of her hands and feet, followed by sudden onset of fasciculations and paralysis. Died thirty-six hours later, cause of death: cardio-respiratory arrest, cause unknown.

  Those were the facts. Frighteningly stark when Amanda printed them onto a sheet of chart paper. Not to mention familiar—she’d had the same symptoms off and on for months.

  Just an electrolyte imbalance. She heard Dr. Nelson’s reassuring voice in her head. She was getting too personally involved; she needed to stand back, be objective. Okay. So what else did they know about Becky?

  No meds, no allergies, no previous health concerns other than asthma as a child. Not so helpful. She remembered they’d never been able to get a family history—Becky had died before her parents made it to Angels. And the roommate who brought her in hadn’t been very helpful; they’d only been together since the start of the summer session, didn’t know each other well at all.

  Would it be wrong to call the parents, now, months after Becky’s death? It might upset them, bring back bad memories. She grabbed the phone but hesitated before dialing. But if she’d lost someone, she’d want to know people still cared, were still looking for answers.

  Amanda licked her lips; she couldn’t believe how nervous she was about calling Becky’s parents. Once she was a pediatrician, a real doctor, she’d be responsible for actually telling parents their child had died. If she couldn’t handle a simple follow-up phone call, how was she ever going to handle that?

  She took a deep breath and dialed their number. A woman answered after two rings. “Hello, Mrs. Sanborn?”

  “Yes?” She was wary and sounded like she was ready to hang up.

  “I’m Amanda Mason from Angels of Mercy Medical Center.” Amanda forced herself to slow down. “Um—I’m calling about Becky.”

  “Becky?” The woman’s voice caught. “Have you found something? I know there were more tests they were waiting for. I never thought it would take so long, but it will be a blessing to finally know for sure—”

  There was a sudden pause as the woman ran out of words. Amanda could feel the weight of her grief even long-distance.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t have answers, but I did want to let you know we’re still looking into her case and as soon as we do have answers, we will let you know.”

  “Then why did you call?”

  “I thought it might help if we knew more about Becky as a person. What she liked to do, any hobbies she had, things like that. And I wanted to ask about any family history of illnesses or problems.”

  The ragged edge of a sob shuddered through the phone line. “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Sanborn said after another pause. “This is very difficult. But if you think it will help, please go ahead, ask your questions.”

  FIFTEEN

  Thursday, 7:14 P.M.

  LYDIA SIGNED OUT HER PATIENTS TO MARK Cohen, who was the attending coming on shift, and began to make her patient rounds.

  Most emergency medicine physicians loved the shift-work aspect of their jobs—as soon as their replacement arrived and they had their patients ready to sign out, they were free to go home. Lydia enjoyed not being on call overnight in the hospital, but she liked to follow up on her patients. Some of the ward attendings complained about her “spying” on them, but she thought of it as the opposite; it was her chance to learn from them what worked and what didn’t.

  Deon and Emma Grey were at the top of her list of patients to visit. Mark Cohen was also her boss, the director of emergency services, and he’d reluctantly agreed to her plan to keep them together tonight—much to Nora’s chagrin and disapproval.

  “You two set for the night?” she asked Emma after entering the telemetry room. Here Emma was constantly monitored, but still had some privacy.

  “Yes, thank you, Dr. Fiore.” Emma looked much more comfortable; her color was better and the rhythm on the monitor was nice and regular. She’d even been able to take the oxygen off.

  “And the cardiologists explained everything?”

  “Yes. It’s worrisome, having surgery, but they explained how it’s all done through a vein. They don’t need to cut into my heart at all. Still …” Her gaze settled on Deon, who was immersed in the world of Harry Potter. “You remember what you promised?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Lydia restrained herself from sighing. What the heck was she going to do with Deon while his grandmother was in the hospital, much less if something happened to Emma?

  Instead of dwelling on it, she patted Deon’s arm. Startled, he looked up from his book, holding his place by sandwiching the pages around his finger.

  “And you, you’re not going to leave this room until I come for you tomorrow morning, right?” He nodded. “All right then, I’ll see you both in the morning.
”

  She only hoped she came up with a plan by then. One that didn’t involve Children and Youth Services or foster care placement.

  Under the radar—if there was anyone who should be able to do that, it was Lydia. She took the stairs up to the ICU floor to check on her other patients: Tracey Parker and Alice Kazmierko. As she jogged up the steps, she remembered that Nora was meeting her tonight to discuss Tracey’s case and the other patients Elise had found with similar symptoms. It would be nice if Lucas had found an answer already. Then maybe she and Trey could still get together tonight.

  She paused on the fourth-floor landing. Gina hadn’t come by—damn, one more thing to deal with tonight. She considered asking Amanda to take her roommate a message. No, it wasn’t fair putting Amanda in the middle again. Lydia had to stop thinking like Gina’s friend and start acting like her boss.

  Pushing the door open, she headed to the PICU first—all those sick kids freaked her out, so best to get it over with first, before she found some excuse to avoid it.

  She wasn’t surprised to find Amanda at Alice’s bedside. Looked like it had been a long day for the medical student—her eyes drooped with fatigue, and her once-crisp linen dress was now baggy with wrinkles.

  “How’s she doing?” Lydia asked. The baby was swathed in equipment, making her look like some kind of infant cyborg mutant.

  Amanda stood, stroking Alice’s foot—about the only naked skin not attached to a monitor or medical device. “We have her paralyzed and sedated, so hard to say. Lucas is going to risk waking her up tomorrow. If her EEG looks promising, we’ll warm her up. If not …”

  If not, Lucas would follow standard brain death protocol: an MRI with angiogram. Lydia pursed her lips, glancing beyond the infant’s bed to the nurses’ station, where the PICU fellow was glaring at her, challenging her now that she was here on his turf.

  “If things look bad, I’d like a chance to talk with the parents, explain why I did what I did.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. The cops let the dad out this afternoon. The mom blames him for the accident and is leaving him, taking the kids. He kinda blames you—”