by Linda Reid
“—and when I asked the guy to pull down his pants so I could see his rash, he hands me his cell phone with a picture of his penis!”
“And the rash?” another resident asked, laughing.
“Picture perfect chancre.”
“Full moons and Santa Anas.” Lou, the desk clerk, invoked it as if it were a curse. “Betcha the loons are out tonight.” He turned up the volume of the radio boombox he’d balanced precariously on a pile of charts.
“Go ahead Brenda from Venice. You’re on,” the announcer encouraged.
Reed froze. That seductive voice couldn’t totally mask the Brooklyn accent. Sammy!
“The homeless are dangerous. They’re aliens.”
“Now wait. Some may be undocumented immigrants, but—”
“No, they’re aliens. Real aliens. From space. This happens when Mercury’s in retrograde. They’re here watching us, trying to—”
Lowering the volume, Lou caught Reed’s astonished expression and chuckled, “See? Told you.”
“No, no.” He shook his head. “I know her.”
“The loon?”
“No, the DJ. She’s uh,” he hesitated, “an old friend. From back East.”
“Yeah, she’s new. Only been on a couple of months. Better than the deadhead they used to have on after midnight. Jim something. She’s pretty good. Knows how to stir things up.”
Reed didn’t think he said the words out loud. “That’s for sure.”
“I work for a living. If you ask me, the police should pick ’em all up and lock ’em in the hoosegow. That’s where they belong.” The caller clearly wasn’t the compassionate type.
“Even the children?” Sammy rolled her eyes and made a face at Jim. This was the third meshugganah nutcase in a row.
“Shouldn’t have children unless they can afford them’s what I think,” the caller continued. “Don’t want my taxes supporting somebody else’s kids.”
“You’re dating yourself,” Sammy said. “ ‘Greed is good’ went out with the eighties. We’re approaching a new millennium. And we’ve got a chance to make it the best ever.” She hung up the line and added, “Right after these capitalist messages.”
As the series of commercials began playing in her headphones, Sammy clicked off her air mic and turned on the intercom. “Hey, Jim, I thought you were supposed to be my screener.”
“It’s the winds, baby. Brings out all the crazies.”
“Swell.”
“Speaking of winds, Merry Christmas,” the producer pointed to the TV monitor beside Sammy, its orange glow casting an eerie light in the dark studio. “Looks like the hills are alive—”
The screen displayed a fiery inferno shot from a news helicopter hovering overhead. Horrified, Sammy watched the CNN reporter gesturing at the hillside behind her, the wind whipping long tendrils of hair around her beautiful face. Without sound, Sammy squinted to read the moving crawl under the pictures of the blaze. Where?
The caption on the crawl read Beverly Glen. How far that was from Canyon City, she had no idea. She’d only been in L.A. a few months. The myriad names of the hundreds of neighborhoods here that passed for a city still confused her. Hancock Park, Baldwin Park, Baldwin Hills, Beverly Hills. It would take years to become familiar with the hundreds of small towns that together made up this very sizeable metropolis.
Sammy suppressed a shudder as the camera panned the scene. Fanned by the winter winds, the blaze seemed to be spreading uncontrolled down a forested hill. Like dry kindling in a fireplace, a house nestled among the trees burst into a firestorm of sparks and was soon immolated under the intrusive lens of the helicopter cameras.
I hope they had time to get out.
Unlike Brian. She swallowed a sob at the memory of losing her old friend more than four years ago. The pain was no longer there every day, but when it returned, it was as potent as ever. The fire inside her college’s rickety radio station had trapped her talk-show engineer, burning him alive. His warm smile and loving soul would be scorched into her heart forever.
“Ten seconds,” Jim’s voice interrupted. “You okay?”
Nodding, she switched on her mic and began on cue, “We’re back, let’s talk to Bill from Bel Air. You’re not anywhere near the fires, are you?”
“Hi. Actually, yeah. The smoke’s pretty bad, so we’re getting out. But, that’s not why I called. We can’t get through to 911, and I need to tell somebody about the burned body we almost ran over on Roscomare Road.”
Ana tried deep breathing to quell the adrenaline surge that had fueled her maniacal drive to the hospital. Pulling up to the emergency room entrance, she jumped out of the Mercedes and ran into the lobby screaming, “He’s having a heart attack.” Then she watched, terrified, as a tall blonde doctor whose nametag read “Michelle Hunt, M.D.” and two nurses raced to the car and pulled the barely conscious congressman onto a gurney.
“He clutched his chest and just blacked out,” she explained, her voice trembling. Prescott’s color was no longer his ruddy hue, but a cadaverous ashen. “Is he dead?”
Intent on their tasks, no one bothered to answer. The gurney rolled into the triage area with Ana in tow. “BP one sixty over one ten, pulse one thirty,” a nurse called out. The doctor nodded, tossing her stethoscope back around her neck. “Heart sounds are faint,” she reported to a large-breasted nurse behind the triage desk, “rule out MI.”
When the doctor pushed Prescott through another set of doors, one of the nurses thrust a hand in Ana’s face. “Sorry, you can’t go back. Have a seat in the waiting area. We’ll call you as soon as your husband’s stable.”
Ana stood motionless for a long minute, dazed, and deaf to the world.
“Your car, miss?” the desk clerk repeated. “If it’s out here, you’ll have to park around the side.” He handed her a four by eight card. “Put this on the dashboard.”
Ana accepted the parking permit and walked out without a word.
The radiology tech bounded into the nurses’ station and headed for the boombox. “Turn on the news. Fire!”
Lou rolled his eyes. “Hope it’s not nearby, or we’ll be bombed tonight.”
Paused in his charting, the ortho resident reluctantly aimed the remote at the TV mounted on the far wall, switching it from the sports update to cable news. The screen showed video of a blazing hillside while the crawl scrolled locations of mandatory evacuations that encompassed some of L.A.’s richest neighborhoods. Very close to the hospital.
“Bombs away,” Lou announced just as the buxom triage nurse strode in barking orders.
“Nobody leave the area, We’ve got three on the way. One GSW, one burn victim, and one spaced-out starlet. ETA for all three is ten minutes.” She pointed to the desk clerk, “Keep the paparazzi out of here, all right?”
Lou saluted with four fingers. “Aye-aye, cap’n.”
Frowning, the nurse spun to face Reed. “Dr. Wyndham, would you please come with me?”
Reed put down his coffee. “Sure. What you got?”
“Rule out MI.”
Reed followed her, registering surprise. As a cardiac fellow, he was usually called to see a patient after the ER resident had finished an examination, ordered appropriate tests, and made the diagnosis of myocardial infarction.
“Who’s the resident on the case?” Reed asked as he caught up to the triage nurse.
“Dr. Bishop wants you to take over this one. He’s on his way in, but he lives in the Palisades, and the fires are backing up traffic.”
Reed understood. If his chief was getting out of bed in the middle of the night, it must be for someone important. With the hospital surrounded by mansions of Hollywood players, he’d seen his share of celebrities and was used to the occasional change in protocol. “VIP?” Reed ventured and picked up his pace.
The triage nurse whispered, “Heard his wife drove him here in a fancy Mercedes.”
Reed rushed past the nurse and sped to the cardiac unit at the end of the hall. If
this was a full-blown heart attack, every second was critical. The moment he pushed through the electronic doors he sensed trouble. It was written all over Michelle Hunt, the ER resident’s face. The distinguished-looking gentleman had already been wired to a bevy of beeping monitors, nasal oxygen, and an IV.
“Fifty-eight-year-old white male had a sudden onset of severe chest pain while driving. Apparent brief LOC,” Michelle reported, using the medical acronym for loss of consciousness. “Just gave him his second nitro and his ASA,” she added, stepping aside. “Heart rate’s down to one twenty. BP’s holding at one ten over seventy-five. Pulse ox is up to ninety-two.”
A quick glance at the S-T elevations on the EKG confirmed a heart attack. Reed didn’t need to wait for the serum troponin or CPK-MB levels or any other labs to know that this patient probably had complete blockage of at least one of his coronary arteries.
“Thrombolytics on standby,” Reed ordered. “Is Eisenberg in house?” he whispered to a nurse at his side. “I’d like to do an angio and I want some backup if he crashes.”
“Wrapping up in the OR,” she responded. “Shall I page him?”
Reed nodded. The cardiothoracic surgeon would never turn down a chance to crack a chest if a problem cropped up during the cardiologist’s procedure.
Giving Michelle’s shoulder a reassuring pat, Reed stepped up to the bed and glanced at the patient’s name on his wristband. “Mr. Prescott, I’m Dr. Wyndham, the cardiology fellow here. Dr. Bishop asked me to take good care of you.”
Prescott, groggy from the morphine he’d received in his IV, barely nodded.
Another nurse handed Reed a hospital chart. “Congressman Prescott was here for knee replacement last June,” she summarized. “Dr. Bishop did a full pre-op cardiac evaluation. Normal EKG. No meds. No allergies. Recovery from surgery was unremarkable. His wife didn’t know about any health problems.”
The nurse leaned into Reed’s ear again. “They were just a couple of blocks away. She took over the wheel and drove him right in. Probably saved his life.”
Lucky his wife was with him, Reed thought. So Prescott was a congressman. No wonder he rated special treatment. Reed hadn’t been in town long enough to recognize the man, but if he was Dr. Bishop’s patient, that was all that mattered. After spending years climbing up the medical career ladder, Reed had grown along with his professional experience. He knew a good word from the chief was the key to the next rung after his fellowship—an academic appointment at a university hospital, perhaps even out here, in the land of eternal sunshine. He hated to think where a misstep might lead.
“Sir, it looks as though you’ve got some blockage in your heart. If we can do a procedure to open it up right now, we can make you feel much better. Okay?”
Prescott produced a weak nod.
“Good.” Reed turned to the nurses, “Take him next door and prep him for emergency cath. I’m going to speak to his wife and give Dr. Bishop a heads-up.”
Reed already had his back to Prescott, so he didn’t see the congressman’s attempt to shake his head or hear his whispered “no.”
Ana found the Mercedes still idling at the ER entrance. She opened the door and sat down in the driver’s seat. Still shaking, she turned off the engine and leaned back, easing her head against the soft headrest. How had she gotten in this mess?
Kaye. She’d know what to do. Ana zipped open the purse she’d left on the passenger seat and withdrew Sylvie’s phone. Maybe her guardian angel was on duty tonight. Sylvie was one of the few girls who had Kaye’s private line. After years on the payroll, she’d earned the madam’s trust. Ana scrolled down the phone’s contact list and pushed CALL.
“How’d you get this number?” Kaye demanded.
Ana began to describe the mix-up in purses, but, hearing sirens approaching, quickly relayed the news about Prescott and their journey to LAU Med.
Kaye responded with a volley of Slavic curses. “Grab a cab and get out of there. And keep your mouth shut! The man’s running for reelection. I can’t afford a scandal!”
“Ambulance pulling in!” a nurse announced from the ER doorway just as one approached, its siren blaring, missing the Mercedes’s front fender by mere inches.
Ana hung up and ducked down inside the car to avoid being seen by the crowd of doctors, paramedics, and nurses gathering in the ambulance bay. This would be a good time to make her escape. Opening the passenger door, she slipped out just as an EMT jumped from the arriving ambulance and began unloading his patient. Behind the medical vehicle, a phalanx of black SUVs appeared, disgorging a stream of photographers and flashing lights.
Ana heard a piercing scream. And then another. Turning, she could see a disheveled-looking brunette struggle against the leather restraints on her wrists and ankles. A third scream was followed by raucous laughter. Courtney Phillips? Ana barely recognized her. She and the singer/actress had spent several weeks at Promise House together last year. Obviously, rehab had failed. Ana knew her old friend would be in for a rough night—like so many she’d had before quitting drugs.
“God damn fuckers,” the brunette ranted.
The ER’s lone security guard held out his arms, a human fence against the horde of paparazzi.
“Courtney Phillips, Hollywood’s very own teen idol. The girl my little girl looks up to,” the EMT said with disgust as a young doctor strode up to take charge.
“Hey you fuckers, get this shit off of me!” Jerky neck movements and wild laughter accompanied Courtney’s epithets.
The doctor shook his head. “I heard she’d found God and sworn off the hard stuff.”
A TV cameraman pushing past the guard began filming the raving actress. Laughing, he raced back to his truck with the ER’s security guard on foot pursuit. Unnerved by the camera’s lights, Ana instinctively stepped farther back into the shadows as a few more rapacious photographers saw their chance to move in.
“Let’s get her inside so she doesn’t wake up the rest of the city,” the young doctor said. “I want a CBC, chem seven, cath UA, and stat drug screen.” He leaned over the gurney to check Courtney’s pupils, took a whiff of her breath, and added, “ETOH too,” a blood alcohol. He swung around and almost bumped into the Mercedes. “And whose damn car is this?”
Another pair of sirens was followed by screeching tires. Two black-and-whites drove up behind the SUVs, with uniformed officers jumping out to join the fray. Ana swallowed another gasp. Police. How would she ever be able to sneak away?
She sidled over to a sheltered spot in the bushes near the front of the second ambulance. The driver had just opened the doors to unload the patient as another young doctor joined them. Ana caught a glimpse of a woman’s blonde hair and a face obscured by the tape holding an endotracheal tube in place. The smell of burning flesh made her gag.
“This one’s bad,” the EMT reported, shaking his head. “Found her in Benedict Canyon. Second- and third-degree burns over most of her body. Dried blood on her scalp. Looks like her jaw’s fractured too.”
“We’ll need the police here.” The doctor nodded at the officers who’d managed to herd the paparazzi behind a line of yellow tape. “Any ID?”
The gloved tech reached into the ambulance and grabbed a charred silk purse. Gingerly, he pulled out a singed driver’s license from the inside.
Ana stood immobilized in horror. The unburned parts of the woman’s purse were unnervingly familiar.
“Name’s Anastasia Pappajohn. Address in Santa Monica. Born nineteen seventy-three.”
In the chaos of the scene, no one heard Ana’s cry, no one saw her stumble backward, dazed. Her heart beat wildly as she tried to make sense of what was happening. Sylvie, injured and burned! Dear God, what the hell happened tonight? Sylvie always lived on the edge, taking risks. Didn’t Ana warn her it was dangerous to play both sides?
Sick with grief, Ana didn’t know what to do next. All she knew was she had to get out of there. And fast.
Reed stepped into the hallway and ne
arly collided with Michelle, whose right ear was now wrapped in gauze.
“What happened to you?”
“Courtney Phillips took a bite when I tried to draw a drug screen. The girl’s gone over the edge.”
“Lou thinks it’s the crazy winds.”
“Nothing against Lou, but I’m betting this one’s due to meth.” Michelle spoke with the cynicism typical of an overworked resident in a busy ER. “The politico going to cath?”
“Yup. We’re on our way now. He’ll probably need a stent.” Reed held up a clipboard with a consent form.
“You interventional cardiologists get all the fun stuff,” Michelle said, heading off toward the treatment area.
“Just call me the ‘balloon man,’ ” Reed laughed and waved. “That’s why they pay us the big bucks.” Or will someday. But for now, his fellow’s salary barely covered rent and food in this very expensive city. Pride had made him reject family money to pay for medical school—Wyndham endowments never came without unwanted strings. Instead, long nights working in labs and ERs along with student loans had seen him through the years of training. Now that he could see the light at the end of the tunnel, it felt good to know he’d done it all on his own.
Reed walked over to Lou who was on his way back into the treatment area, “Did you happen to see where Prescott’s wife went?” he asked. “I’d like her to sign off on the procedure too. He’s fairly sedated.”
“Pretty young blonde?” Lou raised his eyebrows salaciously. “She should be in there.” He pointed toward the waiting room around the corner before turning back to the raft of ringing phones.
“Thanks,” Reed hurried off in the direction the clerk had indicated. A quick scan of the crowded room revealed no one with the description “pretty young blonde.” Every seat was filled with old and young patients-to-be, coughing, sneezing, moaning, sleeping—none of them pretty in their pain. Reed hurried back to the lobby and peered out at the ambulance bay, leaping back as the doors opened to admit a team of doctors and nurses wheeling in a dirt-caked blonde. The smell of singed flesh identified her as a burn victim. The paperwork that flew off her gurney identified her as Anastasia Pappajohn.