Critical Condition

by Peter Clement

  "A lot of the fools around here, such as Hamlin, could stand to learn from a stint at the opposite end of the stethoscope," he continued. "You were one of the few who were not only competent but never stopped dealing with me man to man. I even heard your voice trying to reassure me I'd be fine when I was clinically dead. I'll never forget it."

  "How are you doing now, by the way?" To Richard's expert eye and ear, he seemed to be puffing a bit more than usual as he spoke.

  "Me? Can't complain. Just this muggy weather makes my breathing hard sometimes. Bit of asthma is all. But I sure miss the action."

  Ingram, like most doctors, had always been secretive and dismissive about his own medical problems, so Richard had no idea of his current state of health, heart or otherwise. Respecting the man's privacy, he didn't press the point. "You still do a lot of good, Gordon. I see it in ER. You being around pulls everybody's socks up. Nobody rides herd on the place better than you." As prickly a personality as Ingram was, there wasn't another chief in the hospital who championed the practice of quality care the way he did. The man could literally raise the dead, and more than once he'd pulled off a save when everyone else, Richard included, had called the resuscitation off. "You know all the residents nicknamed you The Lazarus Man."

  He grinned again. "Yeah. I kind of like that."

  "It's well deserved," said Richard.

  "Thanks. "

  "Here's my car, but it's me who thanks you."

  He gave a dismissive wave. "If you have anymore trouble with Hamlin, let me know."As Richard crawled in behind the wheel and started the motor, he watched Ingram's slow progress between the vehicles until the slightly hunched figure reached his silver Mercedes parked at the opposite side of the lot, well out of the way from where the two men had run into each other. Well, I'll be damned, thought Richard, realizing the man must have engineered their meeting just so he could check if Hamlin had rescinded the no-visitor ban. Shifting into drive, he plowed through a large puddle of water, cutting it in two as he headed for the exit. Take that, Hamlin, he thought, feeling a tiny surge of triumph at the "good guys" having won something for a change.

  She dreamed Richard was making love to her.

  The feel of him stroking her breasts and thighs seemed so real, she thought for a moment that they were back in her bed at the apartment, and that everything else had been a nightmare.

  But her head had felt so much clearer since they'd stopped giving her the injections every few hours. She shouldn't be mixing up fantasy and reality anymore.

  A familiar whiff of tangy aftershave infiltrated the haze. Her eyes flew open.

  The cubicle was dim, the curtains closed.

  Hamlin stood over her, running a gloved hand between her thighs, inserting his fingers into her. He also reached up, took one of her nipples between his fingertips and gave it a squeeze. The whole time he stared straight ahead, not even looking at her, his profile carved still as a mask in the dim light.

  Disbelief, revulsion, and rage swept through Kathleen, warring with each other until, unable to do anything, she thought she'd explode. His casual manner of violating her made the deed seem even more monstrous. Feeling her heart pound its way into what had to be triple digits, she looked up at the monitors to see why the alarms weren't sounding.

  He'd turned them off.

  He continued to touch her, coldly, almost clinically, his gaze remaining fixed in front of him and away from where he prodded.

  She started to cry, her mind racked with sobs, but only silent tears escaped her body-prison and rolled down her cheeks. Beyond the curtains she could see the lights in the rest of the department.

  Nurses and patients were talking together as casually as ever.

  ". . . do you need your pain medication now . . ."

  ". . . yes, please . . ."

  ". . . and how about glycerine for your lips . . ."

  ". . . that would be nice . . ."

  Hamlin still continued to touch her.

  People answered the phone.

  Overhead the PA announced that visiting hours were over for the evening.

  She thought she'd go insane.

  Please, someone help me, she screamed into the impenetrable vault her skull had become. The woman in the cubicle next to her asked for an extra pillow.

  I'll survive this, Kathleen repeated over and over. And I'll nail your sorry ass. Nail it.

  Finally Hamlin glanced at her.

  Even with the low light she could see his face. His eyes looked dead, and his face was the color of paste beneath his crown of white.

  The instant he saw her looking at him, he snapped off his gloves, dropped them in the wastebasket, and strode from the cubicle. "Give her a few minutes before you turn the monitors back on," she heard him say to the nurses. "Halfway through my neurological exam, she woke up, and she went crazy again at the sight of me."

  Chapter 6

  Tuesday, June 19, 7:10 a.m.

  When Richard saw her the next morning, she looked completely vulnerable, lying on her side and curled tightly into a ball again, her limbs once more severely flexed and her hands again twisted into claws. He knew he should expect such spastic contractions, but still he felt a sense of foreboding as he knelt by her head so she could see him.

  "Hi, Kathleen," he said, fighting to give a smile and conceal his fear for her. He knew it was a pathetic effort.

  Her cheeks and mouth sagged deathlike onto her pillow, lips pulled into a leer by the endotracheal airway, nostrils misshapened by a feeding tube. But in brilliant contrast to the chalky pallor of her loosely hanging skin, a spark of fiery green from the depths of gaunt eye sockets told him that she was in there and very much alive. Instantly she started to blink at him.

  He glanced up at her monitors in alarm. "Stop, Kathleen! No more trying to spell out words." To his relief and surprise, both readings, pulse and pressure, stayed rock steady. But when he met her gaze again, she persisted to blink at him. He tried to take her hand, having difficulty inserting his fingers into the rigid grasp. "No, Kathleen. Just relax. There's no need to tell me anything right now."

  She stopped, just for a second, then blinked. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  Oh, boy, he thought, starting to stroke her brow. "Listen, Kathleen, if you set off those alarms again, I'll be kept from seeing you until God knows when, so cut it out!"

  No.

  "Damn it, Kathleen. I'm not kidding. You're four days post-op. All those severed vessels haven't healed yet and won't take your jacking up—"

  She cut him off by starting to blink out a long sequence again. A quick glance at her monitors showed everything remained perfectly normal. "Oh, man," he muttered. "You're not going to quit until I decode this, are you?"

  No.

  He reluctantly dug out a paper and pen. "I'm only going to do this on one condition. That you promise to stop if I see your vitals changing. Is that a deal?"

  Yes.He began to count. She'd spelled out Ham when he guessed, "Hamlin?"

  Yes.

  When she added a Mo moles he became uneasy. This might be more of her paranoia again. By the time she'd blinked Hamlin molested me, he was already figuring the gentlest way to convince her it couldn't be true. Seeing her readings on the monitor remain steady, he stroked her forehead, intending to explain about ICU psychosis, and reassure her that it was a common reaction that would pass. Poor Kathleen, this was already such a nightmare for her. The last thing she needed were hallucinations to make it worse.

  But before he could start, she resumed her blinking. Maybe it's best I hear her out, he figured, and once more picked up his pen and paper.

  You don't believe me, do you?

  Oh, Jesus. "It's not that, Kathleen. I just don't think you understand how this place and the medication you've been on can affect your mind." As he proceeded to tell her about the side effects of intensive care, the pupils of her eyes smoldered hot as pitch, and he knew she was furious at him. She made no more attempts to tell him anything, even when
he asked. Sitting by the bedside, holding her stiffened hand and stroking her head, he felt increasingly helpless to do anything for her. He kept up a constant chatter, describing how Chet and Lisa were coping, that they'd be in shortly to see her, stressing how much they all loved her, how well the operation went— anything positive he could think of. When a physiotherapist arrived and began to work on her, extending her legs and uncoiling her fingers, to his shame he almost felt relieved for an excuse to return to ER and escape into work.

  Whenever the smell of Hamlin came into the cubicle, she would open her eyes and stare straight ahead.

  If he asked her to blink yes or no to his questions, she held her lids immobile.

  Most of all, she kept her emotions cold as ice, determined to control her pulse and pressure, denying him an excuse to over sedate her again.

  Sooner or later, Richard would believe her, she kept telling herself.

  Sooner or later.

  She took particular pleasure in the fearful glances Hamlin started to give her as another day passed and she continued to ignore him during his rounds.

  Sooner or later, she would think, I'll blow the whistle on you.

  But Richard didn't believe her.

  / didn't imagine any of it, Richard, she told him each time he arrived.

  Concern would flood through his haggard face, and he'd continue to reassure her that nothing was amiss.

  If she weren't paralyzed, she'd brain him, she sometimes thought. But she kept her frustration in check and the alarms on the monitors silent, still resolved never to give anyone the slightest excuse to load her up with those hideous drugs.

  Sooner or later, he would have to believe her.

  The next day she saw doubt in his eyes and knew her persistence was getting to him.

  The following morning Hamlin arrived to find him at her bedside. Until then, he'd avoided doing rounds while Richard was about. The alarmed look in the neurosurgeon's eyes spoke volumes. At one point he took Richard aside, obviously intending to keep her from overhearing. "Is she continuing to show signs of paranoia?" she heard him whisper, her hearing still hypersensitive.

  Richard hesitated, swallowing a few times the way he always did when he wasn't sure about something. "A little, but it doesn't seem to upset her anymore," he replied. "Certainly her vitals are stable. I guess she's starting to realize that her mind was playing tricks on her."

  She watched relief creep ever so slightly into Hamlin's face. "Why, that's wonderful!" he said.

  Yeah, right! she thought, more set on getting the bastard than ever.

  By the time he finished his neurological exam, her fixed stare had him looking nervously at her again. More importantly Richard seemed to be studying Hamlin, his forehead gathering into the faintest hint of a frown. He's asking himself "could it be true?" she thought. He was starting to suspect.

  That night she moved the fingers of her right hand.

  The following morning when she did it in Hamlin's face, he looked as if he were about to run screaming from the room. Later That Same Day, Friday, June 22, 1:10 p.m.

  "She's going to get me. And the more she recovers, the more convincing her accusations will seem. Why the hell did I let you and the others blackmail me into touching her?" Hamlin paced the length of the phone cord as he yelled into the receiver.

  "Now, Tony," Edwards said, "you don't know how many complaints I get a week from women who claim they've been diddled by one of my staff. Half are crocks, and even the ones who aren't rarely prove anything, so they shut up."

  "I tell you she won't back off!" he said to the gynecologist, this being the third time in as many days he'd violated their policy of not contacting each other in the hospital.

  "So what! The important thing is Steele doesn't believe her, just as I predicted, and more to the point, neither is he liable to believe her if she again starts harping that you put something into her brain."

  "But if she keeps it up—"

  "If she dares keep it up while benefiting from a miraculous recovery the whole hospital attributes to your surgical skill, everyone will slot her as a crazy ungrateful bitch. All you have to do is maintain a steady demeanor and a closed mouth. Now settle down, and don't call me anymore."

  "You don't know her. She's got to be tough as nails to keep her nerves under control around me the way she does. Once she's able to write, or speak, I'm dead."

  "Shut up and get hold of yourself!"

  "You bastard. That's easy for you to say. I was a fool—"

  Edwards hung up on him.

  Enraged, he tried to call him back.

  A busy signal buzzed in his ear like an infuriating fly.

  He slammed down the receiver, then raced into his adjacent examining room, and threw up in the sink.

  A man wearing a white smock over a patient's examining gown sat outside Hamlin's office door. A portable stand suspended an intravenous bag and tubing that ran into his arm. No one paid him much attention as there were half a dozen doctor's offices along that stretch of corridor, and at least fifteen other people waiting to be seen, some in hospital gowns, too. He was clean shaven with a very short buzz cut, a stark contrast to the beard and full head of hair he'd worn when he used to work in pathology, or years later, as an orderly on the obstetrical ward, until the bastards had fired him. Even his name was different now, thanks to his phony ID and fraudulent Medicaid card, so he was sure that anyone who'd known him back then wouldn't recognize him.

  His wristband indicated he'd registered in ER earlier that day as Robert Lowe. He had complained of symptoms to make them think he had renal colic. When they asked for a urine sample, he surreptitiously pricked his finger with the safety pin he'd brought for the purpose, and added a few drops of blood to the cup. As soon as the nurse saw the test strip, she sent him to the ultrasound department, where he knew he'd be left waiting, completely unattended, possibly for hours. From there, pushing his IV bottle, he could wander unhindered through most parts of the hospital.

  It had been easy for him to find Hamlin's office and park himself in front of it. He wanted to get a good look at the man he'd received the anonymous tip about. It wasn't that he didn't know him— everybody who'd ever worked in New York City Hospital over the last decade had probably seen the guy with his flamboyant white hair— but he hadn't laid eyes on him for two years and needed a close-up look. Not that he thought the man would have changed much. His worry was that the information he'd been given about the neurosurgeon could be part of a trap— one intended to lure him and other members of his cause into the arms of the police. So he thought it wise to scout out this situation, starting with the target.

  Hamlin had looked like hell when he finally appeared, rushing into his office and slamming the door behind him. A doc that frightened hardly seemed like someone he should fear. Curious, he moved from opposite the entrance to a place close enough to hear what was going on inside. Minutes later he was rewarded with the shouts of a one-way conversation. Obviously Hamlin had phoned someone. Then he heard the bang of a receiver being slammed down.

  Hamlin was terrified all right, the phony Robert, Rob, Lowe thought. But was he meat for the crusade— or bait?

  Three floors above, Paul Edwards picked up a toasted bagel, lathered it with cream cheese, and lopped on a slice of smoked salmon. But when he bit into it, he felt his stomach churn as the fishy taste spread through the grooves on his tongue to the back of his throat. "Shit," he said, throwing it back on the lunch tray his secretary had brought him. Even then the smell of it lingered, playing with his gag reflex. He pushed his black leather chair away from his mahogany desktop, carried his tray across an expanse of pastel green carpet, and shoved the offending food out the door.

  "Not hungry again today?" his secretary called. The middle-aged woman, dressed in a canary-yellow suit, looked startled as she studied him from her desk.

  In reply he shook his head, locked himself in, and returned to his desk.

  Edwards had been hoping against
hope there was a chance Hamlin might have just enough nerve to hang tough against the Sullivan woman and at least get them past their present catastrophe. Now he was sure Hamlin would crack.

  He looked around his office, the bookcases full of articles he'd published, the plaques on the walls paying him tribute for his research in high-risk obstetrics, and the many, many photos of him receiving checks for endowments to the department. The business of birthing babies brought in more bucks to the hospital than all the diseases combined. While people were grateful for the treatment of an illness, they'd give the sky and moon to assure themselves progeny, the only certain way to outlast one's death and leave a living legacy. In fact this luxurious suite, provided at the institution's own expense, was a trophy, awarded to him for the skill with which he mined this most fundamental of human drives to procreate.

  He would lose it all. Worse, he had nothing else that mattered. There were no offspring of his own with their pictures on the walls, and the space he'd kept for a portrait of whoever happened to be his wife— he'd been through three divorces— had remained empty for the last five years. Without his prestigious position at this hospital he'd be lost.

  Time to cash in his chips and bring the game to a close, he decided, reluctantly going to the drawer where he kept his private phone. It was a safe line, one with no extensions that he used mostly when dealing with lawyers. If delivering babies to barren couples was the most lucrative of professions, obstetrics in general was the most litigious. It was on this phone he wheeled and dealed, trying to achieve out-of-court settlements to avoid bad PR. Even to his hardened ear these conversations could be crass beyond belief, and he'd never want anyone to overhear them.

  ". . . a dead baby's worth a few-hundred grand, tops. It's the brain-damaged ones that will cost you millions, so for God's sake, whatever you do from now on, don't resuscitate a vegetable . . ."

  It was also the line he used to talk with his new business partner.