by Barbara Ebel
Chapter 22
The enormity of what Rachel had just heard in Varg’s office left her contemplating more thoroughly this man she had recently met. She’d been quick to pick up that he was extremely bright, maybe even smarter than Danny. Varg seemed to be multifaceted in intelligence; however, the father of her child hadn’t been smart enough to keep out of her web although he was a brilliant neurosurgeon. In any case, she would consider keeping Varg around until she can figure out what to do with him.
Rachel stepped further up the hallway when Varg showed Danny and Sara to the door.
“I wish you’d heard some of that … about that drink,” Varg said to her.
“The place is small. I couldn’t help but overhear. How interesting. But your IQ results sound even more fascinating.”
He swatted his hand in the air as if it were nothing. “Shall I take you to dinner now or would you like to go to the apartment first?”
“We could use a bite.”
“We can do better than that. How about a popular and delicious Nashville spot? The best burger and peanut-oil French fries you’ll ever taste. We’ll have a wait but we can sit outside on a bench and fill in those Swiss cheese holes you mentioned about your past.”
She nodded and they went outside. “You can follow me since we’ll be closer to your new apartment from the restaurant. It’ll give me a few minutes alone in my BMW, too, where I do my best thinking. I may have to juggle around the time I now spend in my business interests.”
“Oh?” she said questioningly while Varg locked the door behind them and they continued talking across the convertible two-seat roadster which was Rachel’s newest purchase.
He smiled and patted the front window of her red Mazda Miata. “I think I’ll deviate some time away from real estate. After all, I do have two agents working for me.”
“To do what exactly?”
“To increase sales of Blue Bridge, of course!”
Rachel thought she’d swallowed a bug, such was her surprise. So he had something to do with the product Danny was talking about?
“How would you do that and what business is it of yours?” she asked softly, her eyes locking onto him.
“The drink is made in China. It is shipped here where I have a contract with a bottling company in Atlanta to can it and then I sell it to a gym franchise called Serious Gyms.”
“I see,” she said and tried to keep her excitement from showing. She opened the door and provocatively slid onto the seat.
“Okay,” he said eyeing her legs. “Follow me.”
Follow that BMW indeed, she thought.
-----
To look at the menu, Danny and Sara would have thought the family still owned Downtown Italy; they ordered a familiar appetizer of fried calamari and zucchini and two salmon with almond/parmiggiano crust entrees. The new owners had continued to keep the place looking upscale but they did miss familiar faces.
They ordered a bottle of Zinfandel and slowly sipped. Danny leaned over the table cloth. “I did mean it back there. You are amazing to put up with me and my baggage.”
“Danny, Julia is hardly baggage and we all make mistakes. You have apologized before so there is nothing more you need to say about the past. I’m glad I was with you tonight. Rachel is indeed something else. But, as usual, it’s amazing sometimes to hear what you deal with at work.”
Danny grinned. “That’s true, I suppose. You’ve been listening to medical stories since I’ve been in residency. I hope I don’t bring too much neurosurgery home.”
“On the contrary, I hear very little. You mostly talk to Casey about things. But that makes sense. Heck, you were practically a celebrity last year before I knew what was going on.”
“We weren’t exactly as close last year as we are now.”
He extended his hand, she took it, and they entwined their fingers as the waiter approached.
-----
After Rachel and Varg put their names on the waiting list, the line for a table at Burger It overflowed onto the street. But there were places to sit and plenty of couples to watch. Even though people were together, individuals texted on their iPhones and took and received phone calls.
They sat against the front of the trendy restaurant and, although young women with short dresses and stiletto shoes were in abundance, none of them stole Varg’s gaze like the woman he was with.
She crossed her legs and let her shoe dangle, occasionally tapping his leg. The cream-colored dress she wore had a versatile V-neck so she flipped the sides open and let them rest on her chest … her breasts were more evident as she leaned forward to stroke her foot, feigning an itch.
“Please, Varg,” she said. “I’m practically dizzy with what I just heard in your office. Can you start at the top about your connection with this drink Danny was talking about?”
“Blue Bridge,” he smiled. “I own a company. I’m a health fanatic and …”
“I can see that,” she purred, interrupting.
His heart thumped an extra beat and he continued, “I stumbled on this drink a few years ago after receiving a sample. It is a high-energy concoction and I decided to acquire the U.S. rights. Like I mentioned, it’s imported from China and I hired a company here in Atlanta to can it. I have a lucrative real estate business so I have not been overly proactive in marketing the drink but it has enough sales to satisfy me.”
“Anyway, I am a regular member of Serious Gyms - a franchise fitness center - so it was easy to talk to their headquarters about selling the drink. I signed a contract with them, too, and it is delivered to all their facilities.”
She pursed her lips and thought about it. “And that’s it? Nowhere else?”
He sat a little closer. “That’s correct. But obviously that is about to change.”
A tight-skirted woman stepped out the door and called Varg’s name.
“We’re coming,” he said, looking over. He got up and extended his hand to Rachel; she clasped it and held him there for a second.
“Varg, you could use my help. Let’s partner in Blue Bridge together.”
-----
The food was as good as the conversation. Varg ordered a bison burger and Rachel a lamb burger and they shared sweet potato fries. She asked for a to-go box for half her sandwich. “The first food to make it to my new place,” she said.
They left and, within ten minutes, pulled into Mountain Terrain. The pool area was quiet but two people played with their animals in the fenced dog park. Varg popped out of his car and stepped ahead as she followed.
“Welcome to your new home … and Nashville,” Varg said as he unlocked the door. “Let’s make sure the inside is in order.” He waved her by, hiding a bag behind his back.
“Thank you.”
He went to the kitchen counter and pulled a bottle of champagne from the bag.
“How thoughtful of you.” She put the mail from her car on the counter and slipped the to-go container in the refrigerator. After spinning back around, she looked carefully at the rented furnishings. “This place looks spotless.”
“Would you like me to leave or can I help you make sure nothing is broken and the lights all work?”
“If you can keep up with me,” she said, already poking her head into the nearby bathroom. They went upstairs where Varg checked the thermostat. When they came back down, Rachel stood behind the counter, fumbling through a top drawer.
“Usually, furnished apartments carry something like a wine or champagne opener.”
Varg smiled and pulled one from the bag he’d brought.
Rachel stepped around the counter with glasses she found in a cabinet and stood alongside him. “You think of everything.” Her eyes latched onto his strong hands; when he’d popped the bottle and poured, her gaze traveled to his face.
Staring into her blue-green eyes, he practically trembled as he gave her the glass. “Congratulations on your new home,” he said. They ceremoniously sipped and then put their drinks down.
Varg’s hand wrapped around her waist and he eased her straight forward, pulling her into him while her fingers slithered onto the base of his neck. Quickly, his lips were on hers. Although full sensation was absent, it wasn’t that way inside her mouth and as their tongues explored, their desire heightened.
She felt his arm come forward to her chest but, with her best effort, she eased slowly from his grasp. “Let’s finish our toast,” she whispered.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” he mumbled, hoping the bulge in his pants would diminish.
She scrutinized him again as he raised his glass: his dark-blond hair; his rugged, masculine, and enduring look. This Norwegian-American man held her fascination … but even more fascinating was his energy drink.
-----
Rachel was glad when Varg left. She decided to spend her first night at her new place alone and drive to Knoxville in the morning since she’d have to be there to instruct the men she’d hired to move her personal belongings.
But, right now, she grabbed a pen and notepad from her bag and sat on a stool leaning over the counter; she needed to remember and write down every single thing Danny had said about the drink. She clicked her pen and began:
Varg aced testing given by a psychologist – math and memory.
Varg’s IQ is well above normal.
Varg has a ‘magnificent’ brain lobe (temporal).
Other patients showing up with similarities in other areas of the brain.
These patients have increased circulation in their brains correlating with remarkable skills; increased oxygen flow.
Danny’s ‘highly suspicious’ the link between everyone is Blue Bridge.
He did not dispute Varg saying this could be a discovery which improves the human brain.
Rachel reread her scribbled points and reread them again as the champagne rushed around her head giving her a buzz. But it wasn’t that, she realized - it was the information she had in front of her and what Varg and her could do with it.
She glanced over, noticing the pile of mail she had brought with her and slid it closer. The top envelope had a return address from a Knoxville attorney. However, it wasn’t Beckett and Livingston, the law firm involved with her child support issues.
She opened it and saw it had to do with Leo. At first, just the sight of his name brought back the day at Burgess Falls when Evan Parks mentioned Leo Ramsey’s involvement with the death of the mayor’s daughter, the day Rachel had fallen on her face.
Along with other women, the prosecuting attorney - Kirk Thompson - and the defense attorney requested her presence for a deposition. They were gathering information from those who may have dated Leo in the past. Because the case was proceeding in a hurried timeframe, there were two possible dates to pick from within the next ten days.
Rachel had gathered from Evan Parks that Leo’s guilt was as solid as the court house steps so she didn’t have much to add. And there was always the little fact that she had extorted ten-thousand dollars from Leo … more or less for her to keep quiet because she suspected him of abusing Julia.
Staring at the letter after she’d finished reading, she thought: No, thank you; better to not get involved with this.
Instead, she drafted a letter that she would type up the next day and addressed it to Kirk Thompson; it basically said she had moved out of Knoxville, didn’t have time to come there due to work, and she had no definitive knowledge of Leo ever ‘date raping’ her like he had supposedly done to the mayor’s daughter. In the last line, she wrote, “I would be a disappointing addition to your deposition group who has more knowledge than I about Leo Ramsey.”
Chapter 23
Although Danny was on call, he didn’t have any other pending issues at the hospital after Saturday’s rounds and so he went home. Slipping an apple into his pocket, he went downstairs with Sara, Julia and Dakota.
“Daddy, can Da-Ka have some?” Julia asked after Danny started slicing it.
“It’s for you but, yes, you can give him some pieces. He loves it.”
Danny and Sara smiled at each other as the youngster and the dog ate apple wedges on the other side of the room.
Sara opened a folder, the contents of one class’s tests from the day before. With a thin marker to correct, she was soon immersed in the right and wrong answers on cell mitosis.
Danny grabbed his laptop and all the information he had about Blue Bridge, patients, and the radiological and other reports from specialists. He had brought them all home from the office and had the FDA forms for reporting suspected problems with drugs or food. With the Blue Bridge can in front of him, he opened up a new word document and typed in practically everything about the drink, including a bullet list of its ingredients or ‘nutrition facts’:
Sucrose and glucose
Caffeine
Taurine
Glucuronolactone
Pantothenic acid
Phosphorus
Niacin
Sodium citrate
Sodium hexametaphosphate
Sodium benzoate
Inositol
Meat sugar
Panax ginseng root extract
Gum Arabic
Calcium pantothenate
Di-alpha tocopherol
Guarana seed extract
He also made a note that the can said ‘not recommended for children or pregnant women or people sensitive to caffeine.’ The list of ingredients made him cringe. What happened to old-fashioned milk for nutrition, one of the main dairy products in the primary food groups for a healthy diet? However, the drink certainly seemed to be causing wonderful results; perhaps he wasn’t being open-minded enough.
Danny searched medical literature for taurine which he knew was not an amino acid or protein, but an organic acid. Although it could be found in human bile, it’s percentage in humans was minute. He learned that taurine came from the tissue in bulls but could be synthetically produced.
By the time he finished detailing all requirements and also typing a cover letter, three hours had elapsed. He looked up to see that Sara had finished her grading and had taken Julia and Dakota upstairs. He got up to stretch and headed that way when his beeper startled him with a call from the hospital.
-----
As Danny called the number from his pager, he looked out the back door. Casey and Julia were on the lawn tossing a ball for Dakota to retrieve. He stepped outside with his cell phone as Julia squealed with delight, yelling at the dog. “Fetch, Da-Ka!”
“Danny, it’s Steve Reaper.”
“What’s up?”
“I just came into the hospital for an ophthalmology consult. I heard you’re the neuro-doc on call. I think you will want to see this.”
“I have evening rounds to do but I could come in a tad early. I can meet you soon.”
“I’ll see you in the doctor’s lounge.”
Danny sat on the top step of the patio and watched the fun. “I’m going in early for rounds,” he said.
Casey lobbed the ball to Julia. “Mary and Sara ran to the store. They’re bringing home Thai food from the strip mall. We’ll save you some.”
Dakota retrieved the ball and brought it to Danny as Julia waved her hands excitedly after him. With a dog under one arm and Julia in the other, he gave them each a huge squeeze. “You two are the best. Do you know how much I love the two of you?”
“This much,” Julia said, freeing herself and throwing her hands up high.
“That’s right. And forever and ever.”
-----
Danny dropped the FDA letter in the hospital’s mailbox and doubled his steps up to the doctor’s lounge. Inside, he headed straight over to Steve who raised his cup in a greeting.
“Found something interesting?” Danny asked.
The preppy doctor blinked while nodding his head. “Thought you’d want to know about this since we are both involved with Paula Branson’s case and have her in the ophthalmology study. I was asked by the small neurology group outside of town to do a patient
consult here. I just finished seeing their patient and I have her angiogram right here.” He pointed to the manila jacket on the table.
“Danny, while I talked with her, this woman interrupted me to tell me about a minuscule bug on the ceiling. It was barely perceptible with the human eye and she saw it from her bed. And then she became preoccupied with a disturbance down on the street which she could see out her window. I couldn’t make it out but she told me vivid details. Even before doing a full exam in my office, I can tell you her eyesight is as good as Ms. Branson’s.”
Danny swallowed as Steve reached for the study and then both men headed towards the view box on the wall.
There, Danny viewed the woman’s posterior brain lobe - the occipital lobe - as glorious a blood supply as he’d ever seen. As he stared at the dense circulation of the posterior cerebral artery, he wondered immediately if this patient shared other similarities with those he had just reported to the FDA.
“I thought you’d be interested,” Steve said, noticing Danny’s amazement.
“Just when I thought I’d seen it all,” Danny said. He leaned against the wall while taking a pen and paper out of his lab coat. “I don’t have access to this patient but I’d like to add her to my record. I would appreciate her name.”
“Sure,” Steve replied.
“Also, please ask her if she drinks something called ‘Blue Bridge.’ If she does, perhaps you can get a feel for how much.”
Steve jotted the drink’s name down as well.
“Thanks. I better go do rounds. Let me know if any more patients show up like this one.”
“Okay,” Steve said, the two six-foot-two men looking eye-to-eye. “I’ll suggest that this patient also gets involved with the department’s research study.”
-----
It was almost 10 a.m. - time for the church service - as Danny held Julia’s hand and walked over to the rack of votive candles. She stepped onto the kneeler, reached for a lighting stick, and handed it to her father. “For Grandma and Grandpa,” she said.
Danny’s heart filled with warmth as he took it and lit a candle. “You’re a fast learner, sweetheart. Yes, for Grandma and Grandpa.” He knelt beside her. “Would you like to say the prayer today?”