by C. J. Lyons
The same had been said of Gina, often, but she brushed that thought aside.
Pete leaned forward. “So, what can you tell me? My sources tell me Lydia tried some experimental procedure on a baby and killed it. Is that true?”
“What sources?”
He smiled, revealing brilliant white teeth. Too bad they were a bit crooked, marring the image. “Kid’s own father. But I need confirmation from someone objective. Someone who knows medicine. Like you.”
Gina paused in her eating to take another drink. She already felt bloated, acid burning her esophagus, her face smeared with grease. There was a piece of chicken gristle caught in her teeth and she picked at it with her fingernail, its painted surface reminding her once more of Lydia, the dictator. “What kind of confirmation?”
“Just background information. I wouldn’t use your name or anything. I just want to be sure of my facts—have to be responsible about these things, you know?”
That seemed reasonable. “Well …” She took another sip of the cheap bourbon. It didn’t taste so bad now. “I wasn’t there, but this is what I heard.” And she told him what little Nora and Amanda had told her last night. Which wasn’t that much, really—certainly nothing confidential if he’d already spoken with the father.
“So she actually froze the girl? Right there in the ER?” He seemed excited as he scribbled notes on a cocktail napkin. A small digital recorder had also appeared on the table. “Freaky.”
Gina found herself basking in his attention. Maybe it was the bourbon. Or the afterglow of bingeing. Either way, she began to fill in as many details as she could—wishing that she had gotten Nora or Amanda to tell her more.
“So would you say Lydia was incompetent? A menace to her patients?”
Gina frowned, her vision swimming in front of her. She could barely breathe, she was so stuffed. She swallowed hard, but acid and bile kept backing up in her throat like a toilet overflowing. That’s what she was, a human toilet, letting herself get so out of control like this. What the hell was wrong with her?
“I wouldn’t say that,” she hedged.
Despite her anger at Lydia, she drew the line at declaring another doctor incompetent. No amount of bourbon could force her to go there—doctors had lost their licenses for less. It was one of the tactics her father used all the time. Another wave of nausea hit her, and she wondered whether maybe Lydia had been right. Maybe Gina should have listened to her. “I wasn’t there.”
“Here’s Michael now,” Pete said, waving to a man behind Gina, indicating the empty seat beside him. “He can tell you more than I can.”
“Why?”
“He’s the kid’s father.”
FORTY-TWO
Friday, 8:42 P.M.
NORA WAITED WITH AMANDA UNTIL LUCAS returned. Apparently he’d consulted with Ken Rosen, who’d agreed that hyperbaric was a feasible treatment. He’d also found out that the chamber would be empty that night.
“We’ll have to wait until after nine, when they’re done with the last patient,” he told them.
“Nora, can you help?” Amanda asked. She didn’t seem to notice that her left hand was writhing with fasciculations, but Nora couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Amanda, you can’t ask her—she could lose her job and her license,” Lucas protested.
“Just like you.”
It went against every instinct in Nora’s body, breaking all the rules, flouting the safety regulations. The hyperbaric chamber was to be used only by trained technicians and doctors granted special permission by the hospital’s Institutional Review Board. But it was even more risky for Amanda if Lucas tried to treat her alone.
“I’ll be there,” she promised. She turned to Lucas. “But how are you going to get into the chamber? That area is locked down tight when it’s not in use.” Hyperbaric chambers with their concentrations of pure oxygen under high pressure were considered potential targets for terrorists.
“I have the security codes from a few months ago. I was one of the investigators on a study using hyperbaric oxygen on patients with Parkinson’s. That’s when I took the training course, so don’t worry”—he patted Amanda’s shoulder—“you’re in good hands.”
Nora stood. She had time to try another option first. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’ll see you two at nine, down in the basement.”
“Thanks, Nora.” Amanda actually smiled—how could anyone facing a death sentence smile like that, just because a friend was willing to break a few rules to save her? Nora tried her best to smile back, faltered when she glanced at Amanda’s hand twitching. Instead, she nodded at Lucas, and left.
She stopped at the nurses’ station to leave a note, sealed it in an envelope, and then slid it inside an interdepartmental envelope addressed to Lydia. She wouldn’t get it until tomorrow, but if Nora’s plan worked, she wouldn’t need it. The note was just a precaution. After all, she couldn’t go to the police; there was no tangible proof, other than what seemed to point at Lucas.
There was one more thing—it wasn’t quite proof, but it would tie up some loose ends. She grabbed the phone and dialed the operator.
“Hi, it’s Nora from the ER. I have a fax here and it’s unreadable. All except the fax number it was sent from. Can you tell me who sent it so I can call and ask them to resend?”
“If it came from here in the medical center, I can track it for you.”
The number on the bicarb orders faxed in the middle of the night to the pharmacy looked like an Angels extension. Nora read it to the operator and waited.
“That fax machine is Dr. Nelson’s. Do you need his number?”
“No thanks, I have it.” Nora hung up and stared at the phone for one long moment. She hadn’t wanted to believe Dr. Nelson could be behind this, but now she was certain. It might not hold up in court, but it was proof enough for her.
She added the faxed orders to her packet, dropped the envelope off in the clerk’s outbox, and headed to the elevator. A few minutes later she was in the foyer of Dr. Nelson’s private clinic. It was pretty spooky, with only one light on above the receptionist’s desk, the hallways dark. Empty.
Except for a stream of light coming from under a door down the left-hand hallway. She approached it warily and saw that it was Dr. Nelson’s office. Her heart was pounding, her palms sweating, but she wasn’t panicked. No, she refused to panic. She needed to do this right, for Amanda’s sake.
Without knocking, she opened the door.
“SO WHAT’S THE KID’S STORY?” TREY ASKED AS they sat on Lydia’s couch, sharing a beer.
Lydia curled up against him. “He’s the great-grandson of a patient.”
“A patient? Lydia, you can’t go bringing patients or their families home with you. He’s not a stray cat. He’s an unaccompanied minor. What if something happens, if they make up some horrendous story and it’s your word against his? I can’t believe you did this.”
“I made a promise.” Trey’s agitation was making him less of a cuddly pillow, so Lydia sat up, tucking her legs under her. “They aren’t going to sue or make up stories or file a complaint.”
“How can you know that? What made you risk your career for this kid and his grandmother?”
“Great-grandmother.” She slid the beer from his hand, took a small sip, and returned it. She wasn’t much of a drinker, never anything more than beer, seldom finishing an entire bottle herself, but tonight it really hit the spot. “Trey, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
“That’s okay, there’s tons you don’t know about me.”
She doubted that—Trey was frightfully easy to read. Her mother would have taken him for everything he had and he would have walked away smiling about it. No way she could tell him all the details of her past, but … “When I was a kid, my mom and I lived on the street for a while.”
“You were homeless.” He set the beer on the floor and turned to her, pulling her close, his hands massaging her arms. “This was before your m
om died and you went to foster care?”
She’d let him know the barest of details. He had no idea that she and Maria had been on the streets for the first twelve years of her life, or that her mother had been a con artist, or how she’d died. There was so much he didn’t know, it was overwhelming.
“Yes,” was all she said. “Emma, my patient, is an older woman, seventy-one, and she’s the only person her great-grandson, Deon, has.”
“What happened to his folks?”
“Dad’s nowhere to be found, mom’s in prison, grandmother dead.” She gave him the details she’d pried from Deon while plying him with French fries, pierogies, and cheeseburgers at Diggers. “Emma worked as a librarian at Garfield High until they forced her to retire. They lived on her savings and Social Security for a while, but then she lost her subsidized housing this summer and—”
“And you can’t collect SSI without a permanent address.” He nodded. It was a vicious cycle. “So she and Deon have been on the street since the summer?”
“Despite that, Deon is top of his class and hasn’t missed a day of school until yesterday, when he tricked his gram into coming into the ER. Good thing he did, too. Emma has Brugada’s, previously undiagnosed—she got her pacemaker today.”
“Which means she’ll be in the hospital another day or two.”
Lydia shrugged. Honestly, she was just taking things one day at a time. “I’m not working again until Tuesday. She was going to refuse the surgery unless I promised her that I’d take care of Deon.”
“Did you at least get anything in writing? Something to keep Children and Youth off your back?”
“No. But I trust her.”
He stared at her in surprise. “Isn’t your first rule of ER medicine ‘Trust no one, assume nothing’? It took you a long time to trust me. But just like that, you’re placing your career in the hands of a woman you never met before?”
Lydia pondered that. It was gut instinct, not rational thought. And in a way, she owed it to Maria, for keeping her safe all those years on the street.
After spending just one day with Deon she now realized just how difficult that must have been. Maria could have easily left her with Family Services, moved on with her life without the burden of a child, but she hadn’t. They might not have had the perfect life, but Maria had always made sure she was there for her daughter, right up to the day she died.
Trey chuckled. “Knew you were a soft touch, Lydia. The way you always get involved, get so passionate about things no one else gives a damn about.”
“I am not a soft touch,” she protested, bristling at the insult. No one who had seen what she had seen, done the things she had done, could ever be labeled soft.
“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.” He leaned back, his thumb tracing circles over her neck and hairline. Just where Maria used to rub to erase her tension and worries. “So Emma needs a place to live. A job wouldn’t hurt either, I’m guessing.”
“I think I have an idea for that. They need someone to get the family library at Angels back up and running. The girls at Child Life said they have grant money but can’t use it without a trained librarian.”
“One problem solved.” He kissed the back of her neck, sending a tingle through her. “How about if you let me work on the other one?”
She smiled and curled further into his embrace. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
He stroked her hair, then slowly untangled his body from hers. “I’d better head over to my folks’ and apologize for being so late if I’m going to help your lost cause.”
DR. NORMAN NELSON WAS SEATED BEHIND A large Brazilian heartwood desk. The desk was empty—no papers, nothing except a phone, a lamp, and a framed photo. Nora stepped inside the room but left the door open behind her.
“Dr. Nelson, I don’t know if you remember me?”
“Of course I remember you. Nora Halloran, from the ER.” His voice was crisp and clear, in contrast to his appearance. He looked haggard, shoulders slumped, lips turned down in a frown. Hard to believe this was the same man she’d seen in the ER a few hours ago.
He swept his hand, lovingly caressing the desktop. “Do you like it? My wife, Faith, gave it to me. After we lost our only child. This place”—he looked up, nodded to the far corners of the room—“this work, it has sustained us since then. Until now.”
Nora stood a few feet away, uncertain how to proceed. Dr. Nelson made the decision for her. He brought out his other hand, the one hidden below the desktop, and revealed a large, chrome-plated gun. At least it looked large when he pointed it at her.
“The pharmacy called, told me you were asking questions about the mix-up with Amanda’s prescription. Then I checked with medical records and found that you’ve been checking up on some of my clinic patients. You’ve been quite busy, Ms. Halloran.”
FORTY-THREE
Friday, 8:54 P.M.
GINA FORCED HERSELF TO LOOK UP FROM HER cheese sticks to greet the man Pete had invited to join them. She’d reached the state in her binge when every swallow threatened to come back up, when every breath hurt because there was simply no more room left inside her.
Michael turned out to be a man in his late twenties or early thirties, with red-rimmed eyes and hollowed cheeks. “Gina,” Pete made the introductions, “this is Michael Kazmierko, Alice’s father.”
Michael shook her hand desultorily, slid into the booth beside Pete, then downed a shot of what looked like tequila. He nodded to the waitress, who soon returned with a new round of drinks for all of them.
“I’m sorry about your daughter,” Gina said, sipping at her bourbon.
Michael gulped down his new shot, rapping the empty glass on the table as if commanding their attention. “Yeah, right. Everyone’s sorry, but no one does a damn thing about it.”
“They just decided to harvest Alice’s organs for donation,” Pete put in. “But Michael got thrown out of the hospital.”
“Thanks to your doctor friend, the one who killed Alice. My little girl is going to die tonight and I can’t even be with her.”
Gina’s mind was buzzing with endorphins from the food and alcohol. She wasn’t quite following the conversation—Lydia was off today; how the hell had she gotten someone thrown out of Angels? But somehow it made sense.
“She should be home by now,” she said, hating the tears that flowed down Michael’s face and searching for a way to get rid of him. The man was pathetic. “I’ll bet if you asked her, she’d talk to security.”
“I doubt it,” Michael said with a pout. As if she’d taken the edge off his rant and he wasn’t too happy about it.
“Suit yourself, but she lives just a few blocks away.”
The waitress distracted her with another round of drinks and food. She ignored her drink as she shoveled more food in, to the point where she no longer tasted it and every bite was a chore to force down. Michael kept the waitress hopping, throwing back shot after shot of tequila.
“The important thing,” Pete was saying when she came up for air, “is that we find a way to make Alice’s story public. To prevent any other family from needlessly suffering this tragedy.” He raised his untouched glass and intoned, “To Alice.”
Gina and Michael clinked glasses at that. “To Alice.”
“My poor dead baby girl,” Michael moaned, tears flowing freely.
She lurched out of the booth. Finally, it was time to purge. “Excuse me.”
Gina plowed through the crowd at the bar to reach the ladies’ room behind it. She locked the door, turned the water on full blast, then fell to her knees in front of the toilet.
She held on for a second, just to prove to herself that she could, to imprint the memory of this awful-bloated-corpse-about-to-explode-in-a-thousand-pieces feeling.
Then she stretched out her middle two fingers and let herself do the thing she’d been dreaming about all day.
“OTHER PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS, SO YOU CAN put the gun away,” Nora snapped, using her best
trauma-command tone. The one that made even surgeons jump.
Dr. Nelson looked at the gun as if he hadn’t realized it was in his hand. He laid it down on the desk, his hand still holding it tight, but at least it wasn’t pointed at her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Right, like pointing a gun at someone wouldn’t scare them.
“It was another gift from Faith,” he continued, examining the gun as if it were a prized possession. He jerked his chin up. “You need to know she wasn’t a part of this.”
“I don’t care. I came to find out how to reverse it. Amanda Mason and Tracey Parker are dying, and you can save them.”
He frowned, looked close to tears. “No. I’m afraid I can’t. It’s too late.”
“No. It’s not. Just tell me what you know about the protein deposits. How can they be removed, the process reversed?”
“My dear, if there were a way to reverse the process, do you really think I would have let any of those girls die?”
Silence as she struggled to think of a way to persuade him to help. “Then you’ve done research on it—share it with me; maybe Lucas Stone or Ken Rosen can find a cure.”
He almost responded to that and straightened for a moment, looking hopeful. Then he slumped in his chair again, cradling the gun thoughtfully. “There is no cure. It’s impossible. I’m sorry I ever started this clinic. I truly wanted to make the world a better place. Tell me you understand that.”
He jerked the gun so it was pointed in her direction.
“I understand. Just as I understand that Amanda looks up to you like you were her father. She once told me that it was because of you and your wife that she chose pediatrics. Because of how you lost your son.”
“That’s when we first met Amanda. She was visiting the neonatal ICU, shadowing a doctor who worked there. Joey was only three days old, so tiny, still hanging on. Amanda began talking to us; she was so hopeful, so earnest. She offered us comfort when all we had was despair. She was there the day Joey died—two weeks later. She’ll make a wonderful physician some day.” His voice drifted off into a wistful silence.