by Barbara Ebel
When he went in the room, the man looked up from reading a paperback. His face soured. “I heard you left a sponge in my brain last week,” he said.
Danny froze. No way, not that he was aware of. His pulse quickened. But maybe Matthew had discovered it over the weekend by CT. If so, he better get the man to surgery if there was any truth to it.
“Does that mean you’ve given me a memory like a sponge?” the patient asked, breaking his seriousness. “And do I owe you extra for the craniotomy?” The man chuckled.
Relieved, Danny replied, “I think you’re off the hook but I don’t think I’ve improved your mental status. However, the sponge idea may be a good one for dementia research.”
Finally, Danny smiled and unwrapped the man’s head bandages while discussing his release from the hospital. When he returned to the nurses’ station and finished discharge orders, his beeper went off. They needed him in the ER … stat.
Danny ran down the stairwell at topnotch speed to the hectic emergency room and made his way to where Mark was giving a report to the ER doc, Casey behind him. The female patient with Spanish features and an endotracheal tube already in place also wore a neck brace. Danny nudged Casey’s arm, and they both went to the head of the table.
The first thing he did while listening to Casey’s account of the accident scene was to evaluate the woman’s head and her reaction to light. He kept working while Casey added the story about the texting driver. Danny shot him a mournful glance, and then continued.
Casey stepped back as an orderly tugged at his sleeve. “I think those guys are looking for Dr. Tilson,” he said. At the doorway, a police officer stared at the scene.
“Are you sure?” Casey asked.
“That’s what I heard.”
Casey weaseled his way through. “Who are you looking for, officer?” In the hallway, he spotted another uniformed cop by the back door.
“Dr. Danny Tilson. That’s him in there, right?”
Casey nodded. “Can it wait a minute?”
The narrowed-eyed man didn’t respond, but stepped against the back wall. Casey returned to the trauma patient as Danny conversed with the ER doc, discussing the need for a head CT as soon as possible.
“Danny,” Casey said, “there are two cops here asking to talk to you.”
“I just had a joke pulled on me upstairs. I’ve had my quota for the day.”
“Danny, I wish it was a joke.”
A path cleared and Danny spotted the man in blue. “What the …” He didn’t say the expletive as he joined the deputy. They went into the hallway with Casey trailing.
“Let’s go somewhere quieter.” Danny pointed to the kitchen. The three of them stepped in to the empty room.
“You’re Danny Tilson?”
“I am.”
“Your baby girl has been reported missing,” the officer said as he eyed the coffeepot. “The mother filed a report in Knoxville. She thinks you have her and you’re not supposed to.”
Danny’s anger welled up and his pulse banged against his temples. Casey handed a Styrofoam cup to the officer, eyeing his friend. “This is backwards,” Danny said. “It is I who should be reporting her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get this mess cleared up because it was the weekend and my attorney didn’t call me back.”
“And….,” the officer asked as he poured some coffee, “where’s the baby? You’re not a cradle-snatcher or crazed lunatic, are you? We don’t often get too involved with vindictive domestic troubles and you seem like you have more important things to do. However, kids or babies often have to be found quickly if they’re missing as the odds are unfavorable once they’re gone for more than a day or two. We’re just doing our job.” He finally took a sip of the coffee.
“Rightfully so,” Danny said. “I have Julia. This is my friend, Casey, and he lives with me and can attest to her safety.”
The officer eyed the both of them. “Oh no, it’s nothing like that,” Danny said. “He’s engaged to my sister and we all live in my deceased parents’ house.” The cop relaxed and shifted his weight.
“Anyway,” Danny continued, “I got Julia from her mother on Friday night and we found evidence of child abuse. We even had her seen by a pediatrician on Saturday. I couldn’t give her back until this gets resolved. Imagine if I had handed her back to suffer the same treatment. She’s peppered with broken bones and cigarette burns.”
“Ouch,” the deputy said. “Is this true?” he asked Casey.
“Regrettably so,” Casey said. “She’s at the house with my fiancée right now getting appropriate care.”
“I’ll get my attorney to do something today,” Danny said. “But you can go by the house if you’d like.”
“I think you two are credible. As a matter of fact, aren’t you one of the guys all over the news these days with this brain epidemic?”
“That’s me,” Danny said.
“You’re saturated with problems, but you all better get a cure.” He took his half cup of coffee with him out the door. “You have a good day, gentlemen,” he said as he waved. “We’ll call the Knoxville police station. And stay out of trouble.”
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Noon came all too quickly. Danny’s first surgery patient had enough anxiolytics and IV meds on board for anxiety to let him sleep the rest of the day. The OR personnel still had a few more instruments to ready for the case, so he made use of every minute in the doctor’s lounge. He’d had a break as, after reviewing the trauma patient’s CT scan of her head, he ruled out any intracranial injury. The patient’s hemodynamics from multiple organ injuries had caused her morbid mental status.
He readied a sandwich - the first thing to eat all day - slapping three types of cheese on a robust rye bread and added coleslaw to the plate. Taking a coke over to where he sat at the corner table, Danny moved a nearby telephone beside him mumbling under his breath at his attorney. Since all the major dealings of his divorce and child support to Rachel had been finalized, it was like Mark Cunningham couldn’t be bothered with the small stuff.
Danny dialed, expecting the worst scenario of having to leave a voicemail. But Mark answered on the second ring.
“Danny, you’re in my pile of phone calls to make.”
“Mark, I depended on you calling back,” Danny said in an irate tone. “I can understand over the weekend not hearing from you but you could have called first thing this morning. My message was clear.”
“I have motion hour over in the courthouse on Monday mornings, Danny. You should know that. I’m catching up in the office right now and have clients waiting in the waiting room. But I was going to call you shortly.”
“Well, I was paid a visit this morning by two policemen while a big trauma came in. Rachel went to the cops because I kept Julia. They wondered if I was a baby kidnapper or something.”
“So, did you keep her?”
“What do you mean, did I keep her? Would you send your own kid back to be tortured by someone?” Danny tried to keep his passionate voice low.
“Okay. Sorry, Danny. We’ll have to straighten this out temporarily until the bigger picture gets resolved.”
“What do you mean temporarily? Rachel obviously shouldn’t have her daughter full-time.”
“Danny, you haven’t been in the system long enough. There’s nothing permanent in family court.”
Danny fought to gather his composure. He waited a good ten seconds, but Mark spoke first.
“Give me the name of the pediatrician and tell him I will contact him today. I will get something in front of the judge by tomorrow. We’ll try and get Julia to stay with you for the present time and Rachel to only get supervised visitation. You are probably quite aware, it’s difficult to prove child abuse so I don’t know if you’re considering filing charges. Plus, you don’t know if it was the mother. Single mothers get involved with some strange bedfellows.”
Finally, Mark was making more sense. At the heart of it, the attorney usually knew what he was talking about
.
“Okay, do the utmost you can. Besides looking after a baby’s welfare, I can’t be visited again by the police. I thought I was going to be handcuffed and transferred to jail.”
“I’ll come down hard about that issue. That was your former lover’s, I mean girlfriend’s, attempt to be malicious. You have been sending her the allotted child support, correct?”
“I have. But I did have to switch my weekend’s visitation with Julia from last weekend to this weekend. That probably upset her.”
“Rest assured I’ll be on the phone with Rachel’s lawyer when I get off the phone with you. So what’s the pediatrician’s name?”
“Dr. Saul Thomas.” Danny gave Mark his number.
“Why don’t I meet you at your office at five o’clock? I’ll talk to that pediatrician first, prepare paperwork, and have something ready for you to sign.”
“Okay, see you later.” Danny took a bite of the cheese sandwich which he’d almost forgotten about.
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After an uncomplicated intracranial surgery, Danny’s last case for the day was a back injury. Unfortunately for the young adult patient, he had a nerve root compression which resulted from the extrusion of some nucleus pulposus caused by a tear in his annulus fibrosus. In other words, Danny told him, a little too much sport’s practice. The young man had initial pain, was treated conservatively and had resumed routine activities, but relapsed.
Danny kept his thoughts on his case, his patient doing extremely well with little bleeding. Dean did the anesthesia, the first case with Danny for the day. He chatted with staff more so than with Danny and finally stretched his legs, walking to the bottom of the table to evaluate the blood loss.
“Danny, I just heard someone say in the doctor’s lounge that you may be under arrest.” Dean had stopped on the other side of the patient’s open back; blue drapes clean and few red lap sponges on the field.
“What?” Danny exclaimed.
Dean shrugged his shoulders as the scrub tech peered at Danny.
“I dismissed it but they said they saw two cops haul you out of the trauma room this morning.”
“Not to worry. I don’t have someone’s brain parts in a jar in my closet.”
“You know how the rumor mill is, Danny. I’d rather let you know what’s being said. Actually, you’re a bit of a holy man around here, being that health care workers can’t figure out how you escaped your patients’ meningoencephalitis.”
“Actually, Dean, the police thing is a personal family matter. But, suffice to say, they talked to me because I’m involved with preventing more harm occurring to someone else.”
“So, in a way, you are a holy man,” the scrub tech said, handing him an instrument.
“No,” Danny said. “Far from it.”
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Joelle itched to get done with the last hour’s worth of routine research. She couldn’t abandon it because it was the basis of the backbone of a paper she was writing. But the vet, Rhonda Jackson, was on her way and they were going to evaluate the meningoencephalitis amoeba research together.
A med-school lab assistant left for the day after logging Joelle’s last hour’s data into the computer. She went into the rest room for the mirror and tied her hair tighter off her face; she stayed extra careful around the epidemic research with her hands and face, clothes and equipment.
When Rhonda still hadn’t arrived, Joelle lined up two more microscopes. That would save time. Besides other antibiotic research, they had three simultaneous experiments going on with the dogs’ saliva because they had used three different animals. She went to the other side of the lab which housed shelves of equipment and pulled three clean microscope slides from a small box. While there, she turned up the volume of soft rock on the radio, then went back to her main bench.
Joelle began preparing the three slides as Rhonda showed up.
“Hi, Joelle,” she said, pulling gloves over her pink nail-polished fingers. “I left a group of students with rat dissections. That’ll keep them busy.”
“I hope so. Now let’s see what we’ve got here.” Joelle placed the three slides under the scopes as Armageddon’s “I don’t wanna miss a thing” began on the radio. “Well, that’s appropriate,” she said. “Let’s see if we can live up to the song.”
Joelle and Rhonda looked into the microscopes from left to right, in order of the dogs they had selected. Silence and disappointment enveloped the two women until the third slide. Joelle shot her head up. “Rhonda, look at this,” she said excitedly. “We’re onto something. Let’s go get some more dog samples.”
Chapter 22
When he left the hospital, the humidity in the air hit Danny like a warm washcloth so he turned the air conditioning in his car on high for the short ride to the office. As he slipped out of his Lexus and went in the back door of the building, his cell phone rang. Danny peeled up the back staircase two steps at a time as he answered.
“Danny, it’s Joelle. I’m with Rhonda and we’re at the lab. Come on over if you get a chance. We’ve got good news and bad news.”
“I’ve got some personal matters to take care of first but I’ll be there after that.”
Danny hung up as he arrived at the office. A cluster of patients still sat in the waiting room. “Hi everybody,” he said, passing the girls at the front counter. Cheryl saw him and stepped up close. She motioned him into the kitchen where Bruce looked in the refrigerator for a patient’s medication.
“Danny, are you okay?” Cheryl asked.
“Better yet, what did you do?” Bruce asked. “There were gun-carrying cops here this morning looking for you. Did someone pay your bail?” Bruce smiled at his last remark.
“It’s a long story, but they were barking up the wrong tree. Actually, my attorney is taking care of it now. He’ll be here soon for me to sign paperwork to go before a judge.” Cheryl still had a question mark on her face.
“My baby daughter has signs of child abuse so I didn’t give her back to her mother this weekend. I’ll get it straightened out.”
Bruce finally let the refrigerator door close. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Me, too, Danny. That’s terrible,” Cheryl said. “That woman has given you nothing but trouble yet she doesn’t have to hurt an innocent child.”
He nodded and, when he left the kitchen with both of them, Mark Cunningham stood in the waiting room.
“Mark, come on back,” Danny said. The lawyer looked dapper in a light brown suit and quickly followed Danny to his office.
“Have a seat,” Danny pointed to the couch and sat opposite him, wondering if his sixty-year old attorney had ever lost a strand of hair in his life.
“I weaseled my way into getting a medical statement from that pediatrician upstairs,” Mark said. “And he’ll testify if it comes to that.” He opened his briefcase and laid out several documents on the table. Danny read the one pertaining to Julia. On paper, the description of breaks and bruises and burns were enough to make a normal person livid.
When Danny finished, Mark pointed to the other papers. “These are what you need to sign. I’m not asking for a restraining order for the mother, but supervised visitation. The current arrangement I want flip-flopped. You have Julia and Rachel gets the visitation. I think it’s what the judge will agree to until a more formal hearing and requests are made.”
“So, does this change the definition of the actual joint custody?”
“No, custody is still joint. Changing that would be another big deal and I don’t think we’d get that approved anyway. For now, let’s focus on your baby girl’s safety.”
“Perfect,” Danny said. “I hope this works.” He skimmed over Mark’s motion and then signed.
“I’ll call you tomorrow if I get any action on this.” Mark got up. “Another thing. I hope you’re not seeing more women like her now that you’re single. I’ve got enough business.”
Danny grinned at the straightforward remark.
“And I hope you’re not getting contaminated with that deadly disease,” Mark added, “or you may need to find another attorney.”
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Danny got back into his car. He’d cracked the windows open while he was gone only to find the heavy air’s moisture on the dashboard. The weather better turn nice in the next month, he thought as he started the engine or Casey and Mary’s wedding plans would be foiled. He drove back to the medical campus and entered the glass-bottomed building. A mixture of students and residents passed him with books and backpacks. They carried high hopes of someday being in his ‘physician shoes.’
Upstairs near the lab, he heard Bob Dylan singing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” He donned the precautionary clothing and came up behind Joelle and Rhonda. “Sounds gritty in here,” he said. “Like the OR sounds sometimes.”
“Hey, Danny,” Joelle said. “Yes, soft rock helps me think.”
“Makes me dance,” Rhonda said. She bowed and strummed an imaginary guitar.
Joelle turned sideways, beaming at Danny. “Wait until you see this.”
“Let’s show him the others for comparison,” Rhonda said, her elation showing with her bobbing head.
With Joelle’s feverish enthusiasm, she pushed Danny to the left. “So look in here.” She motioned for him to lean forward and get his forehead on the scope.
Danny shot her a glance and laughed. “Don’t you both know I do microscopic work on people’s brains?”
“That’s right, sorry.” Joelle nevertheless waved her hand for him to get looking.
Danny positioned his eyes at the eyepiece and rotated the coarse adjustment knob.
“See our culprit? It’s the trophozoite form. You can see it’s intact, even it’s pseudopodia responsible for its movement.”
“Got it,” Danny said.
“Sample Number 1, the Golden Retriever’s saliva, hasn’t done a thing to it.” Joelle pulled him back to the middle microscope. “Now look under here. It’s the same thing with sample Number 2.”