by Jan Coffey
In the hallway Hank saw one of the nurses talking to Dr. Bradley and pointing toward Juan’s room. Well, that took care of the other part of Geary’s plans. None of the hospital staff had been told what was and wasn’t confidential. He wasn’t about to interfere, either.
Lexi turned to him just as he was passing the two women. “Anything new, Agent Gardner?”
He made the decision in a space of a second. “In fact, there might be. I just had a call from Dr. Barlow. He says that there’s something at the MRI Lab concerning Juan’s test results that he wants me to see.”
“Can I come down there with you?”
Having heard Bryan’s argument about her qualifications as a doctor and her rights as Juan’s mother, Hank nodded. She could be a valuable resource regarding her son’s medical background. “Absolutely.”
She visibly brightened and fell in beside him. They waited by the elevator. “Linda was just telling me that Juan’s condition is stable.”
Hank nodded. “Did she tell you anything else?”
“She told me what I had already suspected.” Lexi looked around behind her toward the direction of the nurse’s station and Juan’s room. “She isn’t going to be in trouble for it, is she?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned.” He shook his head. “You said it yourself. You already knew.”
The elevator was taking forever to arrive, and Hank didn’t want to miss the opportunity of taking Dr. Bradley down to the MRI Lab with him. Geary had mentioned on the phone that Nick Luna, the long-haired agent they’d met in New York, was already on his way to the hospital to secure Juan’s transfer. They were assuming that Bryan and Hank were all packed up and ready to leave for Florida.
“Are you strong enough to take the stairs down?” he asked her.
“Of course,” she said enthusiastically, leading the way to the staircase door. “But I have to warn you, I’m not too familiar with the lab areas of the hospital.”
The hospital was a catacomb of hallways and stairwells that didn’t necessary connect or followed a logical pattern. The stairs they took didn’t lead to the basement, but to an area that was under construction. Hank and Lexi had to stop and get directions. As they walked, Hank asked her a few questions about her practice. Just as he expected, she was extremely competent and professional. Their conversation, though, wasn’t totally devoid of Juan. She was very proud of her son’s accomplishments, and she made sure to add that to any answers she gave.
Perhaps it took them a few minutes longer than if they’d taken the elevator, but they managed to find the way to the basement, where there were adequate signs directing them to the MRI lab.
At this late hour, the reception area was empty and the lights in the waiting room were dimmed. The muffled sound of a vacuum cleaner somewhere in the distance was the only familiar noise. Hank glanced at the half dozen doors that led out of the room and off the hallway leading through the imaging center. They waited in silence in the darkened area for a few moments.
“Where is Dr. Barlow meeting us?” she asked.
“He said in the waiting room,” Hank answered. “I assume that’s right here.”
She poked her head over the divider to the receptionist’s area. “There’s usually a direct line to the labs from here, but I don’t want to touch the wrong thing and activate their alarm system.”
Hank agreed. “He called me on my cell phone. I can call him back.”
Just as Hank was reaching for his phone, a double door at the end of hallway opened and Barlow came through it.
“I thought you would have found your way down here by now,” the young doctor told him. He stopped, obviously surprised at seeing Lexi.
Hank knew the two had met when Barlow had made the first mention of Juan’s records missing.
“You remember Dr. Bradley,” Hank said, preferring to keep it on the professional side. “I believe her insights regarding the patient’s medical history would be invaluable.”
The young man nodded noncommittally and led the way back through the double doors. Hank let Lexi go in ahead of him.
“As I mentioned to you before, all the imaging records that we’ve taken of Juan since his hospitalization seem to have disappeared. That is, with the exception of what was immediately faxed to your New York office,” he added.
“Yes, we know that,” Hank answered.
“In this specific patient’s situation, there were no head injuries that we know of, so it’s very difficult to treat him without the results of the diagnostic tests,” Barlow explained. “The hospital has been in contact with the FBI, trying to get copies of those records back. But we’ve had no success, as yet.”
Hank didn’t miss the curious look Lexi sent over her shoulder at him.
“I perfectly understand your concerns,” he said. “When you called, you said that you were able to find something.”
“Yes, I asked one of our consulting radiologists if she could just poke her head back in here tonight. She’s the absolute expert. She’s the one who took us into 21st century methods, diagnosis, and equipment,” he said, opening the door to one of the labs. An older woman with silvery hair and a pinched face was doing something on one of the computers.
“Agent Gardner, Dr. Bradley, this is Dr. Wolf,” Barlow said, making the introductions.
The semi-retired radiologist was all business. She showed no indication of being surprised at seeing the patient’s mother there.
A glass wall separated the room from the testing area, where an MRI machine sat in partial darkness. Other than the four of them, no one else appeared to be in these labs.
“I don’t know if Dr. Barlow mentioned it or not, but they were unable to retrieve the imaging files from the system earlier today,” the radiologist explained.
Hank didn’t say anything, but he didn’t recall that specific information.
“You mean the original images?” Lexi asked.
“That’s correct.”
“How could that happen?” Hank asked.
“My suspicion is that someone used remote access to delete the files,” the older woman responded.
“Are the files that accessible?” Hank asked. “Isn’t there a security system to stop hackers from getting in?”
“The hospital has an excellent security system. But the health records and tests are available for physicians to view online…not to mention government agencies operating under the original Patriot Act.” she said curtly. “Be that as it may, as far as hacking into the hospital system, no network is completely invulnerable. How many times have the CIA, or the FBI, or the Secret Service or Homeland Security’s systems been breached?”
Hank remembered what Barlow had said. These systems were hers, and despite retirement, she still defended them. “You’re absolutely right. None of us are safe these days.”
“Are Juan’s records the only ones that are missing?” Lexi asked, forcing everyone to get back to the specifics of why they were there.
“Good question. This list contains everyone who was tested today,” the radiologist said, picking up a printout from the desk. It took her a minute to crosscheck the names. “It appears that Juan Bradley was the only error…or whatever. I can go back and check the names for the day he was checked in, and see if he’s the only patient with missing records. But there’s something else that I like to show you first. Perhaps you’ll find it more helpful to you.”
A fake nurse, a suspicious phone call, and now tampered records. The threat on Juan was becoming more real with every passing moment. Striking back at an assailant in a case of school violence was a possibility, but engineering such detailed actions seemed unlikely. Hank had never seen anything like this before.
Moving the teenager to a safe environment with tighter security was one part of Geary’s plan that Hank was now in full agreement with.
“This is what I’d like you to see,” Dr. Wolf said, leaning back in her chair.
An image loaded on the computer screen. It was d
ated today.
“This is Juan’s MRI. I thought you said it was deleted,” Lexi said.
“The test had to be performed twice this morning because the technician wasn’t happy with the clarity of the image,” Dr. Wolf told them. ”Possibly because of the patient moving.”
“I was here,” Lexi explained. “Juan woke up during the test and complained of a headache.”
“That would do it,” the radiologist nodded, satisfied. “What we’re seeing here is the original image. We all know…or don’t know…what happened to the second one. Lucky for us, the hacker had no way of knowing that the test was performed twice.”
Hank tried to look closer at the screen. “How bad is this image?”
“It’s not perfect, but it definitely gives us something to look at.”
“Dr. Wolf did a preliminary review of it before you two came down,” Barlow explained.
“You found something?” Lexi asked.
“Perhaps,” the radiologist said enlarging sectors of the screen. “I only had time for a quick sweep. I looked for anything that stood out, something that was obviously not in place.”
“What is that?” Lexi asked leaning in closer.
“Those dark lines look like…wires,” Hank said.
Wolf nodded. “There is definitely something there.”
“Juan had no brain injury or surgery,” Lexi offered.
“I assume he’s had no implants, either?” Hank asked.
“No,” Lexi shook her head adamantly. “I adopted Juan when he was almost two and half, but there was nothing in his medical records about any of this. Are you sure this is Juan’s file?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Hank asked her.
“It’s difficult to tell. Do you see these? They look like coils, possibly chips. This is not exact, but they slightly resemble a NeuroCybernetic Prosthesis System.”
Hank knew the term. It was a device that was commonly referred to as a ‘pacemaker for the brain’. “That’s a treatment used for epilepsy, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Barlow answered. “The tiny device consists of a series of coils placed around the vagus nerve. It connects to a generator the size of a stopwatch that is surgically implanted under the skin of the chest.”
Lexi shook her head.
Barlow continued. “But that’s not the vagus nerve.”
“This is impossible,” Lexi said passionately. “He has no scar anywhere from any implant. Furthermore, in the last twelve years, Juan has never suffered from epileptic seizures. This has never come up, and there is no reason anything like this would have been implanted in his brain. But even if he had a problem, why would any hospital eliminate that from his medical record? This makes no sense.”
“I agree. It doesn’t make sense,” Dr. Wolf said. “What I said was that what we see in these images slightly resembles a NeuroCybernetic Prosthesis System. It’s something else. These things—and they certainly are artificial—are smaller than the width of a hair.”
“It does look like some kind of implant,” Barlow agreed. “But what is this?” he motioned to a dark area to the left of where they could make out the string-like device.
“Perhaps bleeding. It might be some kind of injury. It could be a blood clot,” the radiologist explained. “Is he on TPA?”
“Mild dose. There was a lot of guesswork prescribing that one.”
Tissue plasminogen activator was a common drug used for stroke victims to dissolve blood clots. Hank knew that TPA could also damage nerve cells. There was certainly a lot of controversy regarding the drug.
“It could also be tissue damage,” Barlow told them.
“Whatever it is, could it be caused by the device?”
“Anything is possible here,” the radiologist commented. “What I don’t understand is why the technician taking the images Monday or the one from this morning didn’t point this out to one of the doctors right away.”
Barlow made some excuses about the workload.
Hank’s attention turned to Lexi. “What do you think, Dr. Bradley?”
“Headaches,” she whispered. “These must have been the cause of them.”
“I didn’t see anything in the pediatrician’s files about it. Did Juan have frequent headaches?” Barlow asked.
“Only recently. During the past week or so prior to the shooting. I had him take Tylenol and asked him to stay home on Monday. I thought it could be from a virus going around the school.” She pointed to the dark shaded area on the screen. “This could be new. Maybe this is when everything started.”
Her fingers traced the rest of the image on the screen. “Whatever this is, it had to be implanted before I got him. I have the birth record from the hospital where he was born. I also have all his immunizations and the list of some routine illnesses common to many children. There is nothing that indicates anything like this.”
“What else do you know about his infancy?” Hank asked.
“He lived on an Indian reservation. His mother worked in a maquiladora, a sewing sweatshop in Mexico. I was told she died when Juan was less than six months old. The father was a Hualapai Navajo. He supposedly died in a car accident right before Juan turned two. The toddler was temporarily living with an aunt in Coconino, Arizona, before I adopted him.”
It was curious how someone like Lexi Bradley would have even crossed paths with Juan. But the question was totally unrelated to what they were focusing on now.
“How detailed a medical record was kept on each child in that reservation?” Hank asked.
“Obviously not too good,” she whispered under her breath.
This was certainly a new window of opportunity in investigating this case, Hank thought.
He stood up, all of a sudden feeling antsy. Too many questions were rocketing through his head. There was so much that he needed to find out about the other teenagers.
Lexi stood up, too, looking at him.
“We need better images if we’re going to figure out what’s going on in this area of the patient’s brain,” the radiologist said, gesturing toward the computer screen.
Barlow turned to Hank. “We either have to get the files back from the FBI or I have to bring Juan down here for another MRI.”
“Can’t you get the files from the FBI?” Lexi asked.
“I can’t see why not. I’ll make a couple of phone calls after I talk to my partner, Agent Atwood, upstairs,” Hank explained. “We should have an answer either way very soon.”
Barlow’s beeper went off. He looked at it. “I have to get back to the floor,” he told them. He turned to Hank. “Will you let me know what you find out?”
“I will.”
“Mind if I walk upstairs with you?” Lexi asked the physician. “I was hoping to pick your brain on a couple of things regarding Juan’s condition.”
Hank stayed behind to ask a few more questions. There was a lot of information that he needed to sort through. The four of them had been able to see a questionable area in Juan’s brain. This meant that Geary’s medical analysts in New York had already seen the same thing. Over the past two decades, there’d been a great deal of experimentation done in the neuroscience field. A lot of therapeutic research had focused on inserting electronic devices into a subject in an attempt to manipulate the brain reception and transmission of signals to neurons.
The frontline in that research involved efforts to use a microchip to send signals from one healthy cell to another, bypassing any damaged tissue that might otherwise block the message. Another artificial device helped Alzheimer's patients regain the ability to form memories. Similar techniques were also being considered to treat Parkinson’s disease, and methods were being developed to tap into the motor-control regions of the brains of victims of paralysis.
A lot of these projects were being funded by the government. Others were supported by private organizations and universities. None of them involved healthy teenagers, t
hough…or infants or toddlers. And if Juan Bradley had been implanted with something, it clearly would have been before Lexi adopted him.
Hank already had an answer for Drs. Wolf and Barlow about the missing records. The FBI wouldn’t send the records back. He was beginning to think they wouldn’t allow another test, either. Juan Bradley would be airlifted out of this hospital ASAP.
The questions remaining had to do with how successful Bryan had been in convincing the top dogs to allow Dr. Bradley and the two of them to stay with the teenager until they had some answers.
~~~~
Chapter 15
“My superiors in this investigation believe that they can’t sufficiently protect and treat your son at this location. Juan is being airlifted to a military hospital in Maryland tonight.”
Lexi hadn’t seen this agent before. She would have remembered him. She’d gone downstairs with Hank Gardner, only to come back up and find this guy here waiting for her and acting like he was in charge.
The agent had introduced himself as FBI Special Agent Nick Luna. The young man was dressed in tight, faded blue jeans and a black leather coat. Luna conveyed an ‘I’m your best friend’ attitude that made her suspicious from the moment she saw him. She tried to keep a positive attitude. After all, they were moving Juan to keep him safe. Someone was actually showing some concern.
“Where in Maryland is he being taken?” she asked.
“A hospital near Baltimore where he can get the best care in a secure environment.”
That was not too specific.
“Where exactly? What hospital? I need to let the people in my practice know where I’ll be and how I can be reached.”
“I can understand that.” The FBI agent glanced quickly at his watch and then checked the display on his cell phone. “We’ll give you the specifics once the transfer is complete.”