Urgent Care (36 page)

Tank sagged against the wall of the elevator as they began to move. “I know. It’s just—I never had someone to take care of before.”

 

 

LYDIA LEFT THE MEN’S LOCKER ROOM, NOT CARING if anyone saw her this time. In fact, she didn’t mind if they did. It would only bolster her story. She hurried down the hall to the security office and found Glen Bakker there chomping a sandwich as he scanned the security monitors.

“Glen, I think you should call the cops,” Lydia said in a breathless voice.

He looked up. “Lydia, what happened? Are you okay?”

“I went to my locker—well, I thought it was my locker, my mind was on this patient, and I wasn’t looking, and when I opened the locker, I found, I saw—” She paused for a breath. Glen stood, abandoning his sandwich. “Well, maybe you’d better see for yourself. I think I found Karen’s rape kit.”

They rushed back to the men’s locker room. “You came in here?” Glen asked as she pushed open the door.

“Yeah, I wasn’t thinking. No one was here.”

The locker room was still empty. Glen strode inside. “Which locker was it?”

“Seventeen. Same as mine in the women’s locker room.” The lie came effortlessly, and she knew he’d never check. Why should he?

Glen approached Jim’s locker as if it contained a bomb. Lydia had left the door open, so it was easy to see the rape kit, the broken evidence seal, Nora’s signature scrawled across it.

“I’ll be damned. Whose locker is this?”

“I don’t know.” Lydia hated lying—she tried not to, mainly because she knew how good she was at it. Maria had taught her well.

Glen grabbed his radio. “Carson? Get someone to cover the monitor room, and you come down to the men’s locker room on the first floor. I need you to protect some evidence until the cops get here.”

Lydia pretended to find the clipboard with the locker assignments. “Number seventeen belongs to Jim Lazarov,” she told Glen. “I know him. He’s an emergency medicine intern. He doesn’t like Nora. Seth Cochran said Jim attacked her earlier today.”

Glen raised an eyebrow. “Seth said that?” He grabbed the clipboard from her and scrutinized it. “Let’s go find this Lazarov.”

 

 

GINA LED TANK TO KEN’S LAB. HEAD-BANGING rock was blaring from behind the closed door. She tried the handle, but it was locked.

“Ken!” she shouted as she pounded on the door. No answer. Idiot probably couldn’t hear them over the music. She grabbed her phone to call him just as he came around the corner, juggling a tray of sandwiches and drinks.

“The cafeteria is closing early because of the gala,” he told them. “Why didn’t you wait inside?”

Gina rattled the door handle. “Locked.”

“Oh. Right, it’s the weekend, I forgot.” He handed the tray to Tank and swiped his name tag with its magnetic bar across the lock. It clicked open. “Sorry about that.” He held the door for Tank to enter, followed by Gina.

“Hey, way cool,” Tank said, stopping inside the door to marvel at the lab. Ken’s lab resembled a frat house on a Sunday morning more than a scientific endeavor, but because he brought in tons of grant money, no one complained.

“Wait a sec,” Ken told Gina. “Hand me your ID.”

“Why?” Gina asked, but she unclipped her hospital ID badge and handed it to him. He swiped it against the door lock, punched in a code, and swiped it again.

“Now you can come any time, day or night.” He grinned at her.

“What makes you think I want to?” She stepped aside as Tank knocked over a haphazard pyramid of aluminum cans stacked in the recycling bin.

Ken said nothing, but merely kicked the cans out of their way.

“What’s in here?” Tank asked, opening a glass-fronted door and revealing shelves of tissue culture. “Is this where you grow the clones?”

“Those are stem cell cultures. Very precious, and,” he said as an alarm sounded from his phone, “very sensitive.” He closed the door before opening his phone and shutting off the alarm. “I have it set up so any temperature fluctuation sends an alarm directly to me.”

“You guys have more security over here than we do in the patient tower,” Gina said.

“When they built this place, it was part of the funding deal,” Ken explained as he ushered them into the back room where his office was. It wasn’t any neater than the lab, but at least they wouldn’t be sharing their lunch with stem cells or white mice. “Lots of expensive equipment and research in this building.”

“Yeah, all we have to worry about are patients.” Gina removed a stack of journals from a chair and took a seat, letting Tank fend for himself.

Ken pulled out a stool for Tank and sat on the desk beside him. “How’s Narolie?”

It took Tank a moment to realize Ken was speaking to him, not Gina. “I found an article about music helping people in comas, so I programmed a whole playlist into my iPod for her,” Tank said. “It hasn’t worked yet, though.”

“Tell Ken about Amanda’s theory,” Gina said, grabbing one of the sandwiches from the tray and dividing it, putting half back to take to Amanda later.

“Oh yeah. Amanda thinks there’s a tera”—he stumbled on the word—“teratoma causing Narolie’s coma. She wants them to cut it out.”

“She has to prove it’s there first.”

Tank shrugged as he bit into his own sandwich. Ken picked at a salad, frowning at the wilted greens. “A teratoma causing encephalitis? Interesting. From an immunologic point of view, very interesting.” He abandoned his salad and jumped up, grabbing a marker from the collection scattered across his desk. “Tank, did they explain what a teratoma is?”

“No. Just said it was making her sick and it needed to come out.”

“Gina, grab that Robbins. There should be some good pictures in there.”

As Gina rummaged through the overflowing bookshelf, Ken drew a picture on the whiteboard mounted beside the window behind the desk. His picture looked like a lopsided cluster of grapes, and then he added lines to indicate hair, some ragged teeth, and a primitive-looking brain.

“So,” Ken began. “Teratomas are tumors that grow only in women. Know why?”

“Because girls have babies?” Tank ventured.

“Exactly. And the teratoma rises from one of those egg cells multiplying when it shouldn’t. And because these eggs are totipotential—”

“Toti-what?”

“They’re like stem cells,” Gina explained. “Cells that have the potential to form any organ or tissue.”

“Exactly.” Ken aimed a smile at her. “So when the teratoma cells multiply, they form the same organs that are in you and me.”

“You mean like a baby? It’s a person inside her?”

“No. Not at all like a baby. It’s random. The teratoma cells have all the ingredients of a human being—kidney, teeth, hair, thyroid, brain, whatever—but it’s a random mishmash. Like”—he snapped the lid on his salad and shook it—“a tissue salad. All mixed up.”

“And that’s what’s making Narolie sick?”

“No. Usually teratomas are benign, don’t cause problems.” Ken stepped back, pondering his sketch of the teratoma. “Tank, do you know how vaccines work?”

“They don’t. They’re a government conspiracy designed to—” Tank sounded like he was a machine reading a prepared message.

“His grandfather is a chiropractor,” Gina put in, waving Tank to a stop.

“Okay,” Ken said, without missing a beat, “then do you know how your body fights infections?”

“Yeah, we have an immune system. It makes antibodies and other stuff that wipe out germs.”

“What if your immune system thought part of your own body was a germ?”

Tank considered that. “I guess it would try to wipe it out. Fight it.”

“Exactly.” Ken threw his marker down in triumph.

Tank frowned. Gina gave him time to work it out as she perused the grotesque photos of teratomas from the textbook.

“You mean Narolie’s own body is making her sick? It’s fighting her brain?”

“It’s a plausible theory, although a bit simplistic. But if there’s brain tissue in the teratoma and she developed antibodies against that tissue, then those antibodies could—”

“Attack her own brain.” Tank finished Ken’s thought. He bounced off the stool and grabbed Gina’s arm. “Gina. They have to take it out. Now.”

Saturday, 12:49 P.M.

NORA HAD TAKEN OVER THE PICU’S BREAK ROOM, spreading out the contents of Narolie’s UR chart, pretending to read every scrap of information included. In reality, she was bored sick, but if Carlene or one of her spies asked, they’d be assured that Nora was doing her due diligence.

Thankfully, Mickey Cohen arrived before she ran out of forms to pretend to read. “Nora, when I said take a few days off, I was hoping you’d be spending them with Seth,” the lawyer said as she breezed into the break room and helped herself to a cup of decaf. “You guys did make up, didn’t you?”

Nora smiled, remembering exactly how they had made up last night. “We’re talking,” she said, hedging her bets.

“If I had a guy like Seth around, I’d be doing more than just talking.” Mickey slid into the seat beside her. “So, I had quite an exciting day of it yesterday, with the police storming my office and all.”

“Sorry. I meant to call to check on you. Did they find anything with those flowers?”

“No. And I never saw who delivered them—the guy just rang the bell and left them there. I forgot all about them until the police showed up asking for them.”

“So there was no card or anything?”

“Nope. Just the flowers.” Mickey tilted her head, scrutinizing Nora. “You’re staying with Seth, right?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. I don’t want anyone else caught in the crossfire. And besides, things are still—” She stopped, uncertain of how to describe her and Seth’s relationship.

Mickey took her hand and squeezed it tight. “Don’t worry, everything will be fine. Once the cops catch this guy, you and Seth can take your time, get things right.”

Nora forced a smile. “I hope so.”

After a moment of awkward silence, Mickey pulled Narolie’s chart closer. “So this is our girl, eh?”

“I know it’s not exactly your kind of case, but—”

“Are you kidding? If I can’t find constitutional grounds against yanking a comatose minor from her hospital bed and dumping her back into a third-world cesspool where she’ll be raped, tortured, and likely killed, then I need to find a new job.”

Nora blew out a sigh of relief. She’d been worried that Mickey might turn down Narolie’s case like Gina’s father had. “So you can help her?”

“Give me a few hours of peace and quiet and I think so, yes.” Mickey curled herself over the chart, reading and grabbing a legal pad and pen from her bag to take notes. “Oh, and coffee, lots of coffee.”

 

 

LYDIA WAS VERY SURPRISED WHEN GLEN BAKKER elected to question Jim Lazarov in his office before the police arrived. Then Oliver Tillman showed up, and she realized they were simply trying to get a jump start on any CYA maneuvers necessary to limit the medical center’s liability if Jim was the killer.

Idiots. Jim was no killer.

She knew the police would never be able to get a warrant to search Lazarov’s locker based on her suspicions. And that finding the rape kit there changed nothing, legally. No lock on the locker (supposedly) meant anyone could have left it there, trying to frame Lazarov. And the seal on the kit was broken, thanks to Jim’s opening it to extract the pictures he sold to Pete Sandusky.

All she wanted was to stop him from leaking anything further to Pete. Now that Jim was exposed, his career on the line, he’d think twice before giving the reporter any more insider information.

Sitting outside Glen’s office, the door strategically cracked so she could listen to everything, she wrote out her “statement.” Tillman looked ready to stroke out, his face was so red, as he shouted at Lazarov, threatening to remove him from the residency program. Lazarov blustered his way through, insisting that he was being framed, denying any knowledge of the rape kit.

By the end, even Lydia began to believe him, wondering if maybe she’d stumbled onto the evidence someone else had planted and was getting ready to “uncover.” Lazarov was a jerk, but he was no fool. Why would he leave the evidence there in his locker, practically in plain sight?

She finished her statement and handed it to the guard sitting at the front desk. On her way back to the PICU, her phone rang again. Trey this time.

“Where are you?” he said. “My mom’s getting worried.”

“I’m still at the hospital. I’m not sure when I’ll get over to your mom’s.”

“So you’re not going home anytime soon?”

“I doubt it. Why?”

“No reason. Just do me a favor and let my mom know when you leave the hospital. You know how she is.”

Lydia hung up. Suddenly, spending the day watching over Nora in the PICU seemed more appealing than baking cookies.

 

 

AMANDA PAUSED OUTSIDE DR. KOENIG’S OFFICE door before knocking. She was surprised how nervous she was about approaching the cantankerous OB-GYN attending. Gathering up her courage, she knocked and opened the door.

“I’m not sure if you remember me, Dr. Koenig. I’m Amanda Mason; I did my rotation with you last year.”

Dr. Koenig didn’t even look up. He was reading a journal, highlighter in one hand, pen in the other, scribbling notes. “Of course I remember. Your car had trouble making it to work on time with the snow, so you started sleeping in the hospital even when you weren’t on call. And unlike many of the other students, you seemed to appreciate my Socratic teaching methods, rising to the challenge a number of times. In fact, I gave you a B-plus, my highest grade for the year, if I recall.”

Amanda was stunned. She didn’t think anyone but Gina knew about her sleeping in the hospital during her rotation. And she’d been upset with the B-plus after all the work she’d done, but had had no idea that Dr. Koenig never gave anything higher.