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Authors: Jonathan Kellerman
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body assaulting,
battering, raping, murdering itself in a feeding frenzy of rogue cells gone
berserk.
I slipped a Lenny Breau cassette into the tape deck
and hoped that the guitarist’s fluid genius would take my mind far away from
plastic rooms and bald children and one little boy with henna-colored curls and
a Why Me? look in his eyes. But I could see his face and the faces of so many
other sick children I’d known, weaving in and out of the arpeggios, ephemeral,
persistent, begging for rescue…
Given that state of mind, even the sleaze that
heralded the entry into Hollywood seemed benign, the half-naked whores nothing
more than big-hearted welcome wagoners.
I drove through the last mile of boulevard in a blue
funk, parked the Seville in the doctors’ lot, and walked through the front door
of the hospital with my head down, warding off social overtures.
I climbed the four flights to the oncology ward and
was halfway down the hall before hearing the ruckus. Opening the door to the
Laminar Airflow Unit turned up the volume.
Raoul stood, bug-eyed, his back to the modules,
alternately cursing in rapid Spanish and screaming in English at a group of
three people:
Beverly Lucas held her purse across her chest like a
shield, but it wouldn’t stay in one place because the hands that clutched it
were shaking. She stared at a distant point beyond Melendez-Lynch’s
white-coated shoulder and bit her lip, straining not to choke on anger and
humiliation.
The broad face of Ellen Beckwith bore the startled,
terrified look of someone caught in the midst of a smarmy, private ritual. She
was primed for confession, but unsure of her crime.
The third member of the audience was a tall,
shaggy-haired man with a hound dog face and squinty, heavy-lidded eyes. His
white coat was unbuttoned and worn carelessly over faded jeans and a
cheap-looking shirt of the sort that used to be called psychedelic but now
looked merely garish. A belt with an oversized buckle in the shape of an Indian
chief bit into a soft-looking middle. His feet were large and the toes were
long, almost prehensible. I could tell because he’d encased them, sockless, in
Mexican huaraches. His face was clean-shaven and his skin was pale. The shaggy
hair was medium brown, streaked with gray, and it hung to his shoulders. A puka
shell necklace ringed a neck that had begun to turn to wattle.
He stood impassively, as if in a trance, a serene look
in the hooded eyes.
Raoul saw me and stopped his harangue.
“He’s gone, Alex.” He pointed to the plastic room
where I’d played checkers less than twenty-four hours ago. The bed was empty.
“Removed from under the noses of these so-called professionals.” He dismissed the trio with a contemptuous wave of his hand.
“Why don’t we talk about it somewhere else,” I
suggested. The black teenager in the unit next door was peering out through the
transparent wall with a puzzled look on his face.
Raoul ignored me.
“They did
it. Those quacks. Came in as radiation techs and kidnapped him. Of course, if
anyone had possessed the good sense to read the chart to find out if
radiologic studies had been ordered, they might have prevented this—felony!”
He was boring in on the fat nurse now, and she was on
the verge of tears. The tall man came out of his trance and tried to rescue
her.
“You can’t expect a nurse to think like a cop.” His
speech was just barely tinged with a Gallic lilt.
Raoul wheeled on him.
“You! Keep your damned comments to yourself! If you
had an iota of understanding of what medicine is all about we might not be in
this mess. Like a cop! If that means exercising vigilance and care to
insure a patient’s safety and security, then she damn well does have to think
like a cop! This isn’t an Indian reservation, Valcroix! It’s life-threatening
disease and invasive procedures and using the brain that God gave us to make
inferences and deductions and decisions , for God’s sake! It’s not
battering, raping, murdering itself in a feeding frenzy of rogue cells gone
berserk.
I slipped a Lenny Breau cassette into the tape deck
and hoped that the guitarist’s fluid genius would take my mind far away from
plastic rooms and bald children and one little boy with henna-colored curls and
a Why Me? look in his eyes. But I could see his face and the faces of so many
other sick children I’d known, weaving in and out of the arpeggios, ephemeral,
persistent, begging for rescue…
Given that state of mind, even the sleaze that
heralded the entry into Hollywood seemed benign, the half-naked whores nothing
more than big-hearted welcome wagoners.
I drove through the last mile of boulevard in a blue
funk, parked the Seville in the doctors’ lot, and walked through the front door
of the hospital with my head down, warding off social overtures.
I climbed the four flights to the oncology ward and
was halfway down the hall before hearing the ruckus. Opening the door to the
Laminar Airflow Unit turned up the volume.
Raoul stood, bug-eyed, his back to the modules,
alternately cursing in rapid Spanish and screaming in English at a group of
three people:
Beverly Lucas held her purse across her chest like a
shield, but it wouldn’t stay in one place because the hands that clutched it
were shaking. She stared at a distant point beyond Melendez-Lynch’s
white-coated shoulder and bit her lip, straining not to choke on anger and
humiliation.
The broad face of Ellen Beckwith bore the startled,
terrified look of someone caught in the midst of a smarmy, private ritual. She
was primed for confession, but unsure of her crime.
The third member of the audience was a tall,
shaggy-haired man with a hound dog face and squinty, heavy-lidded eyes. His
white coat was unbuttoned and worn carelessly over faded jeans and a
cheap-looking shirt of the sort that used to be called psychedelic but now
looked merely garish. A belt with an oversized buckle in the shape of an Indian
chief bit into a soft-looking middle. His feet were large and the toes were
long, almost prehensible. I could tell because he’d encased them, sockless, in
Mexican huaraches. His face was clean-shaven and his skin was pale. The shaggy
hair was medium brown, streaked with gray, and it hung to his shoulders. A puka
shell necklace ringed a neck that had begun to turn to wattle.
He stood impassively, as if in a trance, a serene look
in the hooded eyes.
Raoul saw me and stopped his harangue.
“He’s gone, Alex.” He pointed to the plastic room
where I’d played checkers less than twenty-four hours ago. The bed was empty.
“Removed from under the noses of these so-called professionals.” He dismissed the trio with a contemptuous wave of his hand.
“Why don’t we talk about it somewhere else,” I
suggested. The black teenager in the unit next door was peering out through the
transparent wall with a puzzled look on his face.
Raoul ignored me.
“They did
it. Those quacks. Came in as radiation techs and kidnapped him. Of course, if
anyone had possessed the good sense to read the chart to find out if
radiologic studies had been ordered, they might have prevented this—felony!”
He was boring in on the fat nurse now, and she was on
the verge of tears. The tall man came out of his trance and tried to rescue
her.
“You can’t expect a nurse to think like a cop.” His
speech was just barely tinged with a Gallic lilt.
Raoul wheeled on him.
“You! Keep your damned comments to yourself! If you
had an iota of understanding of what medicine is all about we might not be in
this mess. Like a cop! If that means exercising vigilance and care to
insure a patient’s safety and security, then she damn well does have to think
like a cop! This isn’t an Indian reservation, Valcroix! It’s life-threatening
disease and invasive procedures and using the brain that God gave us to make
inferences and deductions and decisions , for God’s sake! It’s not
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