Dark Moonlighting (13 page)

“I raise,” an elderly man with his back
towards me said with a dramatic pause. “One slice of chocolate
cake.”

“He’s bluffin’,” the woman to his left
said.

All eyes fell on the woman who was in the bed
the other patients were gathered around. She stared deep into the
eyes of the man who had made the bet, and acted as if the game was
for high stakes rather than fruit cups.

“Fold,” she said in fake frustration. She
pointed at the chocolate cake before adding, “That’s too rich for
my blood anyway.”

“Ah, you must be my diabetic patient,” I said
to the woman with a smile. “Mrs. Lancaster?”

“That’s me, doc,” she confirmed. “I’m feeling
much better now if you have sicker patients you need to see.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You’re a quick fix
anyway. They already patched you up, now we just need to discharge
you and free up this bed for a
real
patient,” I joked.

“I just feel so damn stupid,” she lamented.
“It was my own fault that I ended up here. Completely slipped my
mind that I was out of medication. I’m sure I gave my poor
granddaughter a fright when she found me on the floor.”

“These things happen,” I reassured her. “I’ll
write you a prescription for enough insulin to get you through the
week. Just make sure you make an appointment with your primary care
physician before then.”

“I will, doc,” she promised.

I pulled my prescription pad from the pocket
of my lab coat and jotted down the chicken scratching for which
doctors are known. The other five patients were far less agreeable
than the elderly woman in the bed. They complained about the seven
hour wait and demanded to know when they were going to be seen by a
doctor. I was in the process of explaining the hospital’s
first-come, first-serve philosophy when a welcome visitor entered
the room.

“Dr. Whittier,” Lara exclaimed. “The cavalry
has arrived.”

“Lara,” I said, making no effort to hide my
elation. “Glad to see you aren’t at home with your head in a
toilet.”

“You know,” she started. “I was actually kind
of mad that the interns weren’t invited to dinner. I guess the joke
is on them now. So, where do you want me?”

I had several ideas about how I wanted to
answer her question, but none of them were at all appropriate in a
professional setting.

“Me?” I questioned. “Shouldn’t you be
reporting to Dr. Condo?”

“I already did,” Lara explained. “He said I
should give you a hand because he didn’t want to hog me all to
himself and be
shellfish
. Then he laughed hysterically at
his own pun.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Condo,” I agreed.
“Are you comfortable seeing some noncritical patients? I know it’s
a bit unorthodox for you to be flying solo this early, but we could
really use—”

“You can count on me,” Lara confidently
interrupted.

“Great. Do the work ups and present to me so
I can sign off on your treatments.”

“Will do,” she said excitedly as she backed
towards the door. “You have any advice for a doctor who has only
been practicing medicine for a week?”

“Yeah, don’t mention that fact to your
patients,” I answered with a grin. “Oh, hey,” I said, stopping her
before she could leave the room. “Where was Condo when you ran into
him?”

“Up in radiology,” she answered. “He was
running an MRI on a little girl.”

“Good,” I said more to myself than to the
young medical intern. “Then he’s still on phase one.”

“Phase one?”

“Condo has a bad habit of seeing only one
patient during a shift,” I started to explain. “Typically he
misdiagnoses the patient at least three times before he comes to
the real explanation. Plus he’ll order a series of increasingly
expensive and unorthodox tests that burn through the hospital’s
resources. He always starts with an MRI, so he’s still on phase one
of at least three.”

“I had heard rumors, but I had no idea he was
that
bad,” Lara said in disbelief. “Why do they still let
him practice medicine?”

“No one knows,” I answered sorrowfully.
“There’s been a lot of malpractice suits against him. Oh, he’s also
addicted to crack cocaine.”

Lara started to smile at what she assumed to
be a joke. When she saw that my facial expression had not changed,
the smile turned into a look of horror.

“You know what,” I said to her as I thought
about the situation. “Go ahead and work up some patients, but I
need you to check in on Condo every half hour or so to make sure
he’s not… oh, I don’t know, applying leeches to that poor little
girl.”

Lara nodded her head. The enthusiasm she had
shown earlier was now replaced by the sobering reality of the
situation. She darted out of the room and turned right down the
hallway. I went in the opposite direction to meet my next patient
in the second examination room.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about
the next three patients I examined. The first was complaining of
heart palpitations, the second had a simple sprained ankle and the
third needed a tetanus shot after stepping on a rusty nail. They
were easy cases that any competent doctor could have diagnosed and
treated in their sleep. Given the calamity that had befallen the
emergency room, I was proud of myself for moving through the
workload in record time.

The name on the chart for my next patient was
listed as “John Doe”, but the triage nurse had added the initials
“A.H.” in quotation marks. Even though I did not work in the
emergency room often, I knew this code well. I sneered at the
abbreviated nickname, annoyed that this frequent guest of the
hospital had made it into the rotation. I found the middle-aged man
in one of the curtained beds. He was snoring contently while
enjoying the rare comfort of sleeping in a real bed.

“Hal,” I said as I stared down at the sad
excuse for a human being.

Hal, blissfully unaware of the crisis
surrounding him, continued to snore. I moved my hand to shake his
foot, but thought better of it when I saw the layers of mud and
grime which caked his boots. I protected my hand with a latex glove
before giving him a shake. Hal’s snoring ceased momentarily but
resumed after a few seconds.

“Hal!” I yelled in his face while hitting his
leg with the chart I was holding.

Hal awoke with a start and looked around in a
drunken stupor. His face showed recognition when he looked at me. I
had met him on several occasions, but I doubted that he remembered
me personally. It was the lab coat and stethoscope that brightened
his mood. They were familiar sights that let him know he had not
woken up in one of the many dank alleys that he frequented.

“Get up, Hal,” I said irritably. “I’ve got no
time for you today.”

“Oh, come on,” Hal belched out. “I think I’ve
really got a problem this time.”

I held my nose at the stench of booze that
escaped his open mouth. “That goes without saying,” I agreed as I
waved the air in front of my nose with my hand. “But it isn’t one
that can be solved with emergency medicine. Now get out, I need
this bed for a patient who isn’t drinking himself to death.”

“Please, doc,” Hal begged. “It’s cold out
there.”

“Well, you should have thought about that
before you started your downward spiral to the bottom rung of
society,” I said unsympathetically. “Get going before I call
security.”

Hal muttered a few profanities under his
breath as he struggled to pick himself off of the bed. Lara opened
the curtain to enter the area and turned her nose up at the
disgusting smell that clung to the homeless man.

“Dr. Russell, meet Alco Hal. Alco Hal, Dr.
Russell,” I introduced the pair. “You’ll likely be seeing a lot of
our resident drunk during your time here. If you’re wondering what
that smell is, it’s a combination of whiskey, urine and a complete
lack of self-respect.”

“Ma’am,” Hal greeted the young woman in an
uncharacteristically friendly manner. He even made a motion to tip
his hat even though he was not wearing one.

“Nice to meet you,” Lara said as she tried to
breathe through her mouth. She watched the drunk stumble out of the
curtained area before turning to me. “I think Dr. Condo has reached
phase two.”

“Uh oh,” I said. “What’s he doing now?”

“He brought the little girl back to the E.R.
and put her in a room. I only popped my head in for a second, but
it looks like he’s trying an electrocardiography.”

“Okay. At least he’s sticking with
noninvasive procedures for now. Do you have patients to present to
me?”

Lara walked me through the four patients she
had worked up. Most new medical interns are too terrified to do
much of anything by themselves, but Lara was proving to be a
valuable asset for the crisis. Her patient histories were thorough,
she ordered all the right tests and diagnosed her patients
accurately. Finding no mistakes, I approved all of her treatment
plans and complimented her on her abilities. She seemed very
appreciative of my confidence in her, and she trotted off when we
were done to start on her next batch of patients. I headed back to
the second examination room for my next patient, but I was
interrupted before I could get there. The double doors leading to
the first trauma room swung open violently, and I just barely
managed to dodge them.

“She’s waking up!” a frantic, middle-aged
woman yelled at me.

I followed her into the trauma room where I
found a much younger woman regaining consciousness on the
examination table. The older woman ran to a chair on the right side
of the table, gently stroked the patient’s hair and wept in
uncontrollable relief. I quickly scanned the chart attached to the
foot of the bed. I found that the young woman had been brought in
the night before after a car accident. I pulled a medical
flashlight from the pocket of my lab coat and moved up to begin a
basic neurological examination.

“Mom?” the young woman asked as she turned to
avoid the bright light I shined into her eyes.

“I’m here, honey,” her mother sobbed. “I was
so worried I was going to lose you.”

“Do you know where you are, Sarah?” I asked.
“Do you remember what happened?”

Sarah ignored me and said to her mother, “I
think I was in Heaven. I must have died and then come back. Dad was
there, and he told me that it wasn’t my time to die yet.”

“Sweetheart…” Sarah’s mother started
awkwardly. “Your dad isn’t dead. He just went to the cafeteria to
pick up some coffee.”

“That’s probably just a side effect of the
medication,” I explained after wrapping up the neurological exam.
“Our preliminary tests don’t show any sign of head trauma. Those
drugs are known to cause vivid dreams and even hallucinations
though.”

“So she’s okay?” Sarah’s mother asked.

I nodded my head and explained that I wanted
to keep Sarah at the hospital for observation for at least another
day. Sarah, still coming out of her drug-induced stupor, was slow
to put everything together.

“Daddy’s alive?” Sarah asked with glee.

“Yes, sweetheart,” her mother answered with a
smile.

“And Buttons too?” Sarah asked hopefully.

“Well…no. Buttons got hit by a car last year.
Remember?” her mother explained.

Lara popped into the trauma room before I
could help Sarah’s mother comfort her suddenly distraught daughter.
Lara, who had been cool and confident all morning, looked frazzled.
She locked eyes with me and waved frantically for me to join her
near the trauma room’s exit.

“He’s starting phase three,” she hissed.

“So soon?” I questioned. “What test?”

“He’s prepping his patient in the first exam
room for a lumbar puncture,” she said in horror.

“He’s going to tap that poor girl’s spine?” I
questioned in disbelief. I rubbed the bridge of my nose as I
reasoned out how to deal with the problem. “Go find Dr. Little and
tell him what Condo is about to do. He’s the only one here with the
authority to stop Dr. Mengele over there.”

“Got it,” Lara said before bolting from the
room.

I had to spend a few more minutes in the
trauma room to make sure Sarah’s condition was stable. When I was
confident that she was not in any immediate danger, I left the
trauma room and headed across the hallway to intervene in Dr.
Condo’s latest folly. However, I was again stopped from reaching my
intended destination. A loud ruckus from the direction of the
nurse’s station caught my attention, and I jogged down the hall to
investigate.

The cause of the commotion was quickly
apparent. The man responsible for it was easily 300 pounds, most of
which appeared to be muscle. He was a young man, probably not much
older than I pretended to be, but was prematurely bald. There were
large holes in the blue jeans that he wore, and the
Nirvana
t-shirt he had on had seen better days. The man’s balled fists were
pressed against the counter of the nurse’s station so hard that his
knuckles were turning white. His flushed face stared menacingly at
the nurse on the other side of the counter. The nurse, a saucy
Hispanic woman with twenty-five years of experience, stared back at
him unflinchingly. The two security guards who flanked the
monstrosity of a human being were not nearly as fearless. One of
the guards was nursing a sore arm, which let me know that he had
already made the mistake of trying to subdue the behemoth.

“I’ve been sitting in that chair for nine
goddamn hours!” the man screamed into the nurse’s face. “I want to
see a doctor… now!”

“Unless blood starts shootin’ out your ears,
you ain’t seeing a doctor any time soon,” the nurse countered.
“We’re doing the best that we can under the circumstances.”

“Bullshit!” the man screamed. “If I
don’t—”

“What seems to be the trouble here?” I
interrupted.

“About time,” the disgruntled patient
muttered. “Listen doc, my back has been killing me for three days.
You gotta give me something for the pain.”