The Children's Ward (8 page)

Thirty-two

“What it is,” Tucker Smith said, “is a big magnet and a computer.” He looked at Abigail. “The field strength of the magnet is 0.6 Tesla…I don’t expect you to understand that…I’m not
sure
I
understand it entirely, but one tesla is equal to ten thousand gauss. But then…you wouldn’t know what that is either.”

Abigail waited, watching him intently.

“Gauss…the earth’s magnetic field is one half to one gauss, so you can imagine how strong this magnet is.” He patted the outside of the imaging chamber.

“The way it works,” he continued, “is that the magnetic field excites the hydrogen nuclei in the body which send off radio signals…the scanner receives the signals which are converted into two-dimensional images by the computer.” He gazed fondly at the scanner.

“This room was built of stainless steel, wood and copper…which are non-ferromagnetic. And the windows between the imaging room and the operator console are shielded by copper screening.”

“How long will this take?” Abigail asked.

“Oh…sorry.” He looked at her sheepishly. “I always forget that the patients aren’t as fascinated by all of this as I am. Okay, let’s get on with it.”

He helped her up onto the examination table, his fingers cold on her neck as he positioned her head into the molded headrest.

“Now the table will move until you’re partially inside the chamber…you’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

“No.”

“That’s good. I’ll be in the other room, behind the windows. I’ll be able to see you from the console. If you have any problems, just raise your hand, and I’ll come in to help you. Okay? Any questions?”

“No.”

He pushed a switch, activating the table which moved slowly into the imaging chamber.

Inside the chamber, Abigail closed her eyes.

At the console, Tucker Smith logged on and began recording the images of Abigail Ballard’s brain. Dr. Fuller had ordered both sagittal and transverse studies which Tucker programmed, watching the images with total absorption. He pushed the view select button for transverse after the sagittal views were completed and glanced through the window at Abigail…or what he could see of her.

It was going well.

Abigail felt it in the little finger of her right hand; a warm, tingling sensation. Like before, only stronger. It moved along the outside of her hand, up her arm to the right side of her neck. Growing warmer, it spread across the right side of her face and scalp.

She smiled, hidden from view.

“Almost done,” Tucker said, turning from the console to see who had come in.

No one was there.

Perplexed, he looked back at the video screen and then beyond it into the imaging room. He was certain that he’d heard a door open and close; there were only two doors that it could be.

That door was closed too.

“Hearing things,” he said to himself.

The last transverse slice was digitized and filmed and he logged off the computer and shut down the magnet.

As he finished he had a sudden strong feeling that someone was standing behind him and he whirled around.

Again, no one was there.

He helped Abigail down from the table and walked with her back to the radiology lobby.

For the first time since they’d installed the magnetic resonance scanner, he was not eager to get back to the department.

Thirty-three

“It’ll only be for a few hours,” Quinn said, watching as the orderlies transferred Russell from his wheelchair to the bed.

“I hate ICU,” Russell said.

“I want you under close observation until I’m sure you’ll be all right and ICU is the best place for you to be right now.” She waited until the orderlies were gone. “Tell me what happened.”

“I told you.”

“Russell,” she lowered her voice, “I think there’s something you’re not telling.”

He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“The therapist said you never indicated that you weren’t feeling well. Was it that sudden? One minute you felt fine and the next you were unconscious?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I think you do.”

“Where’s Dr. Fuller?” he asked.

Quinn did not answer. She reached out and turned his face toward her. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I refuse to believe that anyone as bright as you are would not recognize the early signs of syncope. Were you light-headed or dizzy?”

“I…yes, a little.”

“Why didn’t you call for help?”

For a moment they looked at each other.

“You told me that you didn’t like it when doctors weren’t honest with you,” Quinn said. “It works both ways. I can’t really help you if I don’t know what happened.”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” His voice held a hint of sullenness.

She hesitated. “What do you want me to tell your father? That I don’t know what happened to you? That for no apparent reason you just passed out? That you could have died?”

“I’m fine now.”

“You were unconscious and you weren’t breathing,” she stated flatly. “What if it happens again?”

“It won’t,” he said and now his eyes were clear and intent. “I won’t let it happen again.”

“I want vital signs every thirty minutes,” Quinn said to the ICU head nurse. “And a portable chest x-ray to be certain he didn’t aspirate any water. Also a blood sugar now and again in four hours.” She frowned, looking across at the boy’s pale face. “Put a cardiac monitor on him…just in case.”

The head nurse, who had been writing steadily, nodded. “Right away.”

“Let me know immediately if this condition changes. I don’t want any more surprises.”

She found Joshua in his office.

“How is he?”

“I wish I knew.” She sat down and leaned back in the chair, eyes closed. “Physically, I think he’ll be fine. Emotionally…”

“Are we talking about the same kid? Russell is one of the most emotionally balanced patients I’ve ever treated.”

“I don’t know him as well as you do, but I’d say he’s more than a little withdrawn. He’s evasive about what happened this morning…” She opened her eyes to find him watching her. “I think he’s hiding something.”

“Hiding what?”

“That’s what I don’t understand. The therapist said it all happened within a matter of minutes. What could have happened in so short a time to make him withdraw like that?”

Thirty-four

“Daddy?” Tessi sat upright, her face eager.

“Little Dove.” James Wolf moved soundlessly to his daughter’s side and leaned down to kiss her.

He smelled of the outdoors and Tessi wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in the soft cotton fabric of his shirt. She could hear his heartbeat and she clung to him, feeling secure in a way she never was with anyone else.

“I missed you, Daddy,” she murmured, feeling his gentle hand stroking her hair. “I want to go home.”

“Soon.”

“I want to go home with you.” She leaned back so that she could see his face. “I want to go back to the ranch.”

“It’s your mother’s turn to have you.” There was no anger in his voice but she felt his sadness.

“Mother asked a lot of questions about the ranch,” Tessi said, not wanting to add to his sadness but needing reassurance.

He nodded. “I know.”

“She’s mad at us.”

“At me. Not you.”

Tessie shook her head. “She
is
mad at me, I know she is.”

“Your mother loves you, Little Dove. If she is mad at anyone else, it is herself.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

Tessie studied her father’s face. “She doesn’t want me to live with you at all.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“I just know. She said she was going to talk to Mr. Kraft.”

At the mention of Kraft’s name, James smiled faintly. “Don’t worry about Mr. Kraft.”

“Why can’t…” her voice trailed off, her eyes downcast.

He waited for her to continue and when she did not, he finished for her: “Why can’t your mother and I live together?”

She nodded miserably.

“Because we’re too different. We want different things and we choose to live in different worlds.”

“But you were married…”

“A long time ago. We were very young. I wasn’t like the boys she grew up with and she needed to show her independence from her parents. She thought it was romantic to marry an Apache warrior and live on a reservation. She wasn’t prepared for what she found.” He brushed the hair back from Tessi’s face. “She had a bad time of it, I don’t deny that. The night you were born I was with a work party, trying to shore up the levee. It was raining and there was no one to take her into town…the tribeswomen didn’t know that she had intended to deliver in the hospital. She delivered in the way of my people, squatting on a dirt floor. She was scared and in pain, and half-delirious by the time I got there. There was nothing I could say after that to make her stay.”

Tessi’s eyes were questioning.

“I followed her to the city and we lived there…she went back to college and I went to work driving a cab. It was a world as alien to me as the reservation had been to her…and one day I watched as a man put a gun to an old lady’s head, took her purse and then blew her brains out.” His look was haunted. “After that there was nothing your mother could say to make
me
stay. I went back to the reservation and she filed for divorce.”

“She never could see,” he continued, “that her world was more savage and frightening than mine.”

Tessi hugged her father again. When she closed her eyes, she could imagine herself back on the ranch, the sun warm on her skin, the wind lifting her hair as she walked. It was her home.

She wanted to go home.

She had to go home.

Thirty-five

Quinn walked across the hospital parking lot to her car, shivering slightly as the sun disappeared behind a cloud. The weatherman had been promising rain but, with her winter coat still packed away, she hoped he was wrong.

She might have been wrong to tell Joshua
Fuller about her misgivings concerning Russell. In retrospect, it was possible that she had overreacted.

She unlocked the car, checking the back seat more out of habit than the fear that someone might be lurking there.

That was what was missing from Russell…the self-protective instinct. Why hadn’t he called out for help?

Something was not right.

Pulling out of the parking lot, she forced herself to concentrate on driving; three months in E.R. had convinced her that distractions on the road could exact a heavy price.

Being home in the middle of the day was something new for her. She did not see anyone on the way between the carports and the apartment, and the apartment itself was blessedly quiet.

Lunch could wait.

She went into the bedroom, pulled the drapes closed, then lay down on the bed. Eyes closed, she tried to empty her mind of thoughts of Russell…and Julie.

There was something in Russell’s evasiveness that reminded her of Julie. Something in his eyes.

An attitude of wariness that implied distrust.

He hadn’t been like that before; Julie always was.

Julie had been born when Quinn was fifteen, born of her father’s second marriage. In the three years before Quinn left for college, she had become increasingly aware of how…different Julie was from the young children Quinn babysat with.

Julie never ran nor did she exhibit the natural inquisitiveness of the other children. She preferred to be alone and usually could be found, alone in her room, tiny face solemn as she neatly arranged her toys.

Quinn accepted her stepmother’s pronouncement that Julie was just a quiet child. Her father seemed almost relieved, as if the prospect of an active, noisy three-year-old was something he’d rather avoid.

There were things, though, that weren’t as easily explained away.

Her fascination…obsession…with dead animals or insects. She collected them, a fact they discovered after Carol noticed an unusually strong odor coming from Julie’s closet. She found, in a cardboard box, a dead mouse, the partially eaten remains of a small bird, grasshoppers, flies, a wasp, and the severed tail of a lizard.

Her father disposed of the collection without comment.

Julie, with a desperation that Quinn had never seen her display before, set about the neighborhood in search of replacements.

Carol began to inspect Julie’s room on a daily basis.

Julie found new places to hide her treasures.

Even when Carol discovered the still-warm carcass of a puppy hidden among the winter blankets, no one suggested that anything was really wrong with Julie.

It was a phase, they said, that she would outgrow in time.

So, too, was Julie’s intolerance of noise. It was a passive intolerance—if anything was too loud for her, she would cover her ears and withdraw to her room where she would sit by the window and cry.

For this, they took her to a hearing specialist who tested her and found her hearing to be normal. She was not, as Carol insisted, overly sensitive to sound.

The specialist suggested a psychiatrist but the prospect of taking a three-year-old in for analysis was absurd, they agreed, and nothing more was done.

Quinn was glad to go away to school.

She was little more than an occasional visitor at home for the next eight years and Julie was growing up a stranger to her. They had nothing in common except their last name and their father.

There was nothing of their father in Julie; she was a faded reflection of Carol, like a photograph that was underdeveloped.

The summer after Quinn finished her residency, she came home, at her father’s request, to spend a month before going on to Stanford.

It was the summer that Julie turned thirteen. She had, apparently, outgrown her morbid preoccupation with death although she still hated loud noises. Their father joked that Julie was the only teenager in town without stereo headphones glued to her ears.

With both her father and Carol working during the day, Quinn was content to sleep late and do nothing much at all after nearly ten years of intensive study and work.

She was a little surprised to find Julie spending so much time at home.

They fell into a pattern: sleeping late, a light lunch on the screened porch, and polite conversation.

After the first week, Julie began to open up. She admitted that she had no friends and didn’t feel she needed any. The girls her age were mindless children.

But even as she talked, Julie’s pale hazel eyes were fixed on some distant object. She did not look at Quinn and she sat, knees drawn up to her chest, stiff and untouchable.

Quinn found the sessions disturbing. As the days passed, Julie progressed from revelations to tirades as she detailed every incident—real or imagined—that had added to her isolation.

Then, in the last week, Julie calmed down. She even smiled while they talked, although she still would not meet Quinn’s eyes. She dragged the rocking chair from the kitchen to the porch and sat, rocking, for hours on end.

The last Sunday before Quinn had to leave, the family went on a picnic. It was a hot, still day and they lounged in the shade, drinking lemonade and planning for Christmas.

Julie was quieter than usual, smiling her odd smile and plucking grass.

When it was time to go, Julie hung back, walking behind them.

Quinn, turning and walking backward, watched Julie’s face change, the smile fading. It was as if the bones had melted away; her face was blank, empty.

Quinn turned away.

A week later Julie was dead. She had hung herself from a rafter in the attic. There was no note.

She wondered, now, if the reason that Russell had not called for help was because he did not want any.

She might be reading too much into it. She had not yet come to terms with Julie’s death or her failure to recognize the signs preceding it. Perhaps her suspicions about Russell were a manifestation of her guilt over Julie.

Whatever the cause, she was determined that she would never again be deaf to a cry for help.