by Barbara Ebel
Simultaneously they kissed, their gentleness slow and bittersweet. Danny longed for the pleasure of her mouth to never end as he realized their now erotic kiss had been on hold for a long time. Neither of them could stop and Sara’s fragrance heightened Danny’s passion.
Once Danny’s hands went to the small of Sara’s back and she slid her hand into his trousers, he hoisted her onto the low butcher block table behind them and slid up her skirt. The kissing barely stopped … and the table height was perfect.
Chapter 4
In the morning, Danny was the first one up and out to work for an early surgery. The house came alive as faucets were turned on, doors opened and closed, and Julia screeched her favorite word, “Da-Ka,” for Dakota. One of her hands held onto his head while the other one patted up and down at his ear.
Casey put on a fresh pot of coffee, Mary put cereal boxes on the counter and Nancy and Dakota kept Julia amused in the great room.
“You only have one more week for your paid babysitting,” Sara said to her daughter while she placed things into her purse. “School starts in less than a week for you, but I have to go in today for meetings.”
“What year are you teaching this time?” Casey asked.
“Still freshman biology,” Sara answered. She walked over and poured coffee and creamer into a mug.
Mary sat on a stool with a look of amusement. “I noticed coming downstairs that the clothes you brought from your damaged house yesterday morning weren’t in the computer room and the futon sheets in there were still folded on top. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of other options for where you slept last night after you and Danny got home.”
Nancy heard her aunt’s remark and stopped dangling a stuffed animal in front of Julia. She stared at her mother, waiting to hear a response.
Casey left the bagel he was toasting and turned around. He smiled and then laughed when he saw Sara blush.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “What took you two so long?”
Sara shrugged her shoulders. “They say never to make the same mistake twice, so I hope I’m not doing that.”
Casey stepped forward. His eyes softened while he lowered his voice. “Danny’s told me there’s not a day he doesn’t regret his infidelity. He’ll honor and cherish you for the rest of his life no matter what. I know he will.”
-----
With his second surgical patient transported to recovery and orders written, Danny broke away from the OR and walked up the stairs to the fourth floor for rounds. He contemplated his list and shuffled patient’s names around, putting Varg Dagmar at the top. It wasn’t every day he had a sharp-talking body builder and real estate broker as a patient let alone have one with a Norwegian accent and an unusual Circle of Willis.
Varg came out of the bathroom as Danny entered his room. “Good morning, Dr. Tilson. I know you are going to make the wise, professional decision to release me from this prison today.”
“Not so soon. Did they do your angiogram yesterday?”
“Late in the afternoon. And the interventional radiologist threaded that catheter you mentioned like he could do it in his sleep.” Varg sat on the mattress knowing what Danny would do next.
“I’ll check the results as soon as I get back to the office. Your postop labs look good and so does your surgical site,” Danny said while peeking at the area under his bandage. “With no unforeseen problems, how does tomorrow sound?”
“Great.”
“But you won’t work too hard, will you?”
“My gym time is more physically demanding than my real estate work and my ownership in a business enterprise. I promise to start slowly with my weight lifting. But I can start pitching a splendid lakefront property right now. I bet you could use a second home.”
“I don’t even have my own first home,” Danny said, “but I’m not complaining.” He lowered himself into the recliner adjacent to the bed and clasped his hands. “I’m grateful and blessed for all that I have. It would be a disgrace if I demanded or expected more.”
“Your humbleness is a rare gift but you deserve some serenity when you are off-duty, such as a second home on one of Tennessee’s crown jewel lakefronts. I can find you a get-away in a natural vista of forested hilltops on miles of natural shoreline. You could be surrounded by beauty in a splendidly protected location.”
Danny listened curiously to the sales pitch but he was even more enamored with how Varg’s words flowed like a stream down a mountain. He finally frowned at the possibility of a second home.
“But doc, we can work out price ranges. Last month, I closed on a summer bungalow for $279,500 and the couple’s mortgage was only going to be $550 a month. On the other hand, I had a distinguished politician recently who paid $235,000 as a down payment, closed for a total amount of 1.73 million with a tiny mortgage payment of $4,800 a month. It was a 5,330 square foot home with 30-foot windows on 1.2 acres of prime waterfront.”
Danny’s jaw dropped. “You must have a good memory and you must be handy with numbers.”
“Math never used to be a strong feature of mine. But since I seem to work with and remember numbers better than before, I believe I’ve become more successful in my business. Since I’m the broker and own the company, I have agents working for me; I sell more than all of them. Besides real estate, I have another business interest which I keep on top of, too.”
Varg waved his hand as if pushing the topic aside. “By the way, the state has a vast number of lakes to choose from and we can work together as far as your pricing, size and amenities. I can provide you with exhilarating perfection!” He patted the wrap around his head, making sure Danny had made it snug.
“Perhaps you enjoy fishing or haven’t tried it,” Varg continued. “All you have to do is get a Tennessee fishing license. Besides bass, you can catch brown and rainbow trout, walleye, bluegill, catfish and so on in most of the deep water coves, the natural stone caves and off our lakes’ pristine shorelines.” Varg stopped and smiled. “There is a lakefront home out there with your name on it.”
“I appreciate your concern for my recreational pursuits,” Danny said. “As a matter of fact, I do fish, but not as much as I’d like to. It started with my father and I continued it with my family, even with my dog.”
“Then it’s a match made in heaven with me only being the middleman.”
“Perhaps, especially since you mention heaven. God and the afterlife seem to be more on my mind these last few days. However, it’s not the time to be talking about me. I need to examine your angiogram results.”
-----
The new side entrance to The Neurosurgery Group of Middle Tennessee’s office allowed Danny to sneak in that door without going through the waiting room and the front desk. He sat down at his computer immediately, logged into hospital records, and pulled up Mr. Dagmar’s radiology results. Even more surprising than I expected.
His patient’s temporal lobe’s blood supply made him think of a lit up Christmas tree. If he were to compare it to a group of other ‘normal’ arteriograms, this one would certainly stand out. And since the meningioma had been surgically removed, there was no disease process he could see in all the pictures. Neither was there any bulging like an aneurysm or narrowing like a stenosis in the vessels. So he could think of no immediate negative effect from the proliferation of arteries that he was looking at. As a matter of fact, he thought, it stands to reason there may only be positive side effects to the increased blood supply.
Danny leaned back in his leather chair and stared again at the computer to make sure. The uniqueness of the brain’s images did not include both the right and left temporal lobes; it was only the left side which demonstrated the development. The left temporal lobe. Interesting.
He picked up a pen and, like an artistic med-school student, sketched an outline of the four lobes of the brain from front to back and then the side: frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal. He tapped his pen on the last one. Besides the anatomic picture, he k
new he could write in the known functions of each of the lobes. Much of the functional anatomy of the brain had been researched and made known, in particular when patients experienced deficits. Danny thought of a recent patient who had damaged their parietal lobe which caused them to have difficulty with feeling and their sensation of touch was altered.
Upon thinking about it further, he believed he had a patient with the opposite scenario. He knew the left temporal lobe was the major area for language recognition; its key role being comprehension and speech. He certainly didn’t know his patient well but, based on talking with him and his sister, it seemed as if Mr. Dagmar’s verbal and comprehension skills had been sharpened and not all that long ago.
He stared out the window. Not only that but, apparently, Varg had gained more acute memory and mathematical skills; both also heightened roles of the left temporal lobe.
Danny grinned. Could it be that the outstanding collateral circulation in this man’s brain was giving him enhanced brain power?
-----
“You’re in here keeping your arrival a secret after scaring the life out of us!”
Danny’s nurse, Cheryl, had come in and stood flush against his desk. “We bought you a cake to celebrate your victory over Mother Nature. Can we cut it and hear about your close call before you start seeing patients?”
“That’s very thoughtful,” Danny said, giving her a wide smile. “But let’s do it at the end of the day before us docs have our shareholders meeting and staff goes home. Okay?”
“All right. I’ll keep the cake in the refrigerator. And your first patient is in Room 2.” Cheryl hurried to get lab results into a chart and thought about her boss who already seemed different. The oldest partner and founder of the group, Bruce Garner, was going part-time next week … and Danny would become the head of the practice.
-----
After the last patient left for the day, Danny waited a few minutes and then entered the office kitchen in the middle of his colleagues, Cheryl, and the remaining staff members. When they stood around the table, Danny tapped Bruce on the arm. “I can’t thank you enough for taking care of me and for giving me the day off yesterday.”
Bruce grunted at the small sign of affection and peered through the top portion of his bifocals at the cake.
“We survived without you,” Bruce said. “But you know this practice is going to shrink with me stepping down.”
“We’ve kept a rein on new patients,” Danny said. “I want to monitor the books and workloads for the four of us for six months and then I’ll make a decision whether or not to hire another doc. At least, we replaced Harold right away.”
Danny looked over at Jeffrey Foord, the Doogie-Howser-looking young physician who had replaced their last colleague; their partner had passed away due to a malady which had become a pandemic and Danny had become famous for his role in its diagnosis and cure.
Surprisingly, Bruce patted Danny’s shoulder in support of his decision.
“Cheryl, why don’t you do the honors and cut this thing so you and the rest of the staff can get home to loved ones?” Danny suggested.
After tugging at her long pony tail, Cheryl pushed it behind her back and picked up a knife. “Dr. Tilson, what exactly happened the other day? Did that tornado really pick you up and give you a ride? The newspaper today said you were found down the road from the hospital.”
As his nurse slipped yellow cake onto plates, Danny handed them across the table to staff. “I don’t remember how it ended but I vividly recall being inside of it.” He said it slowly and with such feeling that everyone’s movements slowed and they waited for him to continue.
Danny stopped passing plates and laced his fingers together, placing them by his chin. “It was sublime; an unearthly experience to stand in a vertical-like tunnel, a wall of clouds racing around me at an incredible speed while lightning could have struck me dead … yet it didn’t.”
“But everything about it could have killed you,” his colleague, Matthew, said.
“For sure,” Danny responded. “I wish I was a runner like you and had your speed. Maybe I could have gotten out of its way in time.”
-----
Before the doctors headed to their conference room and the rest of the staff left, Danny asked their front desk secretary for a minute of her time.
“Mrs. Charlene, do you think you could have a small sign made for me, approximately eleven by fourteen inches?”
“Certainly, Dr. Tilson.” She looked quizzically at him but was ready to write down his request.
“It’s for my patients and we’ll hang it on this side of the hallway as they come back to a room.”
“What should it say?”
“If you want Dr. Tilson to pray with you, feel free to ask. God bless you!”
Chapter 5
Rachel Hendersen had been Danny’s ‘other woman’ and, although forty-years-old and eight years younger than Danny, she continued to look like a pampered spa-treated movie star. Her gold-digging efforts had partially worked with Danny and had been successful with her last boyfriend, Leo Ramsey.
Her new love interest was Evan Parks, a good-looking, blond-mustached Tennessee police officer who worked in the Knoxville area. Rachel had stumbled on meeting him when she complained at the police station that Danny had not brought their infant, Julia, back from an arranged visitation. But Danny had good reason - the family discovered the baby had been physically abused; subsequently, he was given primary custody.
Rachel and Evan sat outside for lunch at a downtown Knoxville restaurant. Despite a hazy sunshine, she wore a large brimmed pink straw hat and sipped on a fresh-squeezed lemonade. Evan had decided to bring up the subject of Rachel’s visitation with her daughter again; a subject she seemed to shy away from.
He focused intently on her aqua eyes and creamy skin. “I practically insist,” he said. “We’ve been seeing each other for months and I know you want to see Julia. Things with the father can’t be that bad. Arrange something for this weekend and I am coming with you.”
Rachel hadn’t told him she was only allowed supervised visitation so she made her explanation vague. “But I told you. I can’t bring her home myself; he has primary custody. It’s just the way it worked out because we don’t live nearby and we had trouble with exchanges before.”
“You need to see your own child. And how can you have a better situation than to have a police officer come along with you?” He smiled, his boyish right dimple making her like him for the time being more than she should.
“I can try, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to materialize.”
“Let’s make it Sunday. About halfway between Nashville and Knoxville. I know the perfect place for a mother-daughter reunion … one of the most hidden gems in Tennessee.”
Rachel picked up her sandwich, her brimmed hat covering her eyes. “And what might that be?”
“A state park with waterfalls.”
-----
When Evan finished his lunch break, he drove straight back to the office.
“Evan, this is just in,” said Sheriff Alexander, meeting him in the front room and clearly in a hurry. “Come with me. We’ve got a search warrant.”
He signaled for Evan to turn around and they both got into the sheriff’s car.
“So there’s a 911 call this morning and nobody says a thing on the other end of a land-line phone,” Evan’s boss said. “The nearest cruiser investigates the traced call and the officer finds a woman unconscious inside. When EMS takes her to the hospital, she’s dead on arrival.”
“How old?” Evan asked.
“Twenty. But wait’ll you hear this. It’s the mayor’s daughter,” he added, making a sharp right turn.
Evan shook his head and said, “That just earned us a thick, high-profile case. So where are we headed?”
“To the house where she was found, owned by a thirty-eight year-old pharmacist named Leo Ramsey.
-----
Evan wasn’t a hunter b
ut he never criticized the men and women in Tennessee who enjoyed the sport. Many froze and ate the venison all year long. But he acquired a bitter taste in his mouth for Mr. Ramsey when he entered the bachelor’s front door and saw a large buck’s head mounted in the foyer; that and the big room seemed overly ostentatious.
Within minutes, it became clear to the two officers there had been drinking going on the previous night for two people. A discarded wine bottle was in the trash, two wine glasses were in the bedroom, and two small glasses that smelled of liqueur were empty on the cocktail table.
Evan looked behind the bar in the great room. “Well, look what we have here,” he said as he set pill bottles on top for his boss to see. “Predator drugs: benzodiazepines, GHB, and who knows what else he has in these unlabeled bottles.”
“High end roofies,” Sheriff Alexander said, picking up one of the first bottles. “This slimy pharmacist does his work professionally and recreationally. He’s got a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”
“Looks like a clear cut DFSA which turned deadly,” Evan added.
Alexander nodded, knowing the acronym stood for drug-facilitated sexual assault.
They finished combing the large living area and the sheriff headed to the master bedroom. After finding prolific pornography in a cabinet, he ransacked the closet.
Evan searched the sparsely-furnished second bedroom; it held nothing incriminating. But, as he left, he noticed an object peeking out from under the nightstand. One of those things a baby uses, he thought, and picked it up. A pacifier.
-----
Before the pharmacy closed at 5 p.m., Evan and the sheriff made their way past the hospital entrance fountain, the information desk, and into the small drug store. They walked up to the ‘drop off’ window and asked to see the pharmacist. Leo saw them coming. He had left the sweet, young thing he had taken home the night before at his place that morning to sleep off the drugs he’d slipped her, so he assumed the cops were there to fill a prescription. Yet maybe they were there to buy condoms and Viagra for a happy night, he thought.