Mystral Murder (Julie O'Hara Mystery Series) (14 page)

“What are you doing?”

“I’ve been sick. I’m making an appointment with the doctor.”

*
* * * *

CHAPTER 37

I
t was twenty minutes of eleven and the waiting room in the Medical Center was full to overflowing, most folks standing in line in front of a small sign set on the counter.

Are You Seasick?

Let
Us Help You Here.

No wonder I couldn’t get an appointment.
Julie had come later, hoping to arrange a lunch meeting with Michelle Sinclair, but she hadn’t considered how many passengers were sick from the stormy weather and the ship’s constant rolling.
How am I going to get any face-to-face time with her?
As she was mulling it over, Dr. Sinclair stepped into the room, looking for a particular patient. 

“Irene Serrano?”

A young woman with a splint on her finger stood up from a chair. Without giving it anymore thought, Julie beat her to it. She moved into Michelle’s space, looked straight in her eyes and said in a low voice:

“Dr. Sinclair, I have to talk to you about something that happened in Maine.
Something very confidential.”

Clearly shaken, Michelle Sinclair blinked her eyes as if in doing so, Julie would disappear. But Julie stood her ground, separating the doctor and her patient.  “Excuse me, Ms. Serrano,” she said, resigned to the situation. “I’ll be right back.”

With admirable control, Michelle Sinclair calmly led the way out of the Medical Center with Julie on her heels. As soon as they were out of anyone’s earshot, she whirled around, eyes ablaze. “What exactly do you want from me?”

Julie knew the value of putting on a confident front. She returned the stare, pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin.  “I know about Maine. I know about you and Captain Collier. I know you hated Adrienne. You can talk to me right now, or you can talk to Clyde Williams in Security.” 

It was a gamble, since Julie knew next to nothing about anything. One thing she
did
know: the first one of them to break eye contact would lose…

“I can’t do this now,” Michelle said angrily. “You saw the crowd in there.”

“Of course you can,” Julie said firmly. “You’re the boss.”

They glared at each other for a moment. Finally, the doctor closed her eyes, dropped her shoulders and sighed. “All right,” she said. “I’ll meet you in the Odyssey in fifteen minutes.” 

Julie didn’t exhale until the woman was gone…and then she sagged, amazed at her own audacity.
There’s not enough time to go back to the stateroom,
she thought as she hurried to the elevator.  She got off at Deck 4 and called Joe from the lobby, keeping her voice low:

“Joe, I did it. Michelle Sinclair is meeting me in the Odyssey Lounge in a few minutes. I can’t believe I got her to meet me! The Medical Center was jammed; I think half the people on the ship are sick. Thank God I took my medicine. ”

“You want me to come?”

“No. She hates my guts right now, but woman-to-woman is best. I don’t know how long I’m going to be, but I’ve got a feeling this is going to be some story.”

“All right. Don’t drink anything, not even a glass of water!”

“Don’t worry. The bar doesn’t open ‘til noon. I think that’s why she picked it. It’s a big place and fairly dark; we can sit out of sight there.”

“Are you sure that’s safe?”

“Oh, I think so. What could she possibly do? The whole front of that lounge is open to the main walkway and the Photo Gallery. Passengers are strolling by all the time and she’s in uniform, very recognizable. Look, she wants to allay my suspicion, that’s all. She figures all she has to do is keep me quiet for one more day. She plans to give me her best pitch…and I certainly want to hear it.”

“Okay. I’ll wait for you here. I’m going to try to get Janet, see what she’s found out about Sinclair. If she’s got anything, we can see how it squares with the doc’s story.”

“Okay. See you in a while
,” she said, hanging up.

Julie crossed the lobby and headed toward the front of the ship. She could see the Photo Gallery up ahead, busy with passengers hunting through the photo displays for their formal pictures taken the night before.

As she walked along, she tried to ignore the dark, violent storm raging outside the windows. It was impossible, like trying not to look at a bus full of people teetering on the edge of a bridge. 

Happy, oblivious people, looking for their pictures.

Julie shivered at the unwelcome connection and quickly turned into the Odyssey, weaving her way through the club chairs and cocktail tables that filled the shadowy interior.  The only lights left on in the lounge were recessed in the ceiling, casting a small pool of light on each of the curved booths that lined the walls. Julie slipped into one on the far right, positioning herself so that she would see Michelle Sinclair when she arrived.

She didn’t have long to wait. The doctor showed up almost immediately, caught sight of Julie and slid in opposite her. “All right, I’m here,” she said, angrily. “What do you want to know?”

“I’d like to hear your side of what happened in Maine.”

“Why is that any of your business?”

“Look, Michelle,” Julie said firmly, “you decided to tell me your side of things to keep me from talking to Clyde Williams, so let’s not waste our time here.”

Michelle slumped, her head in her hands.

“Oh, God, is this never going to be
over
?”

She sat up, inhaled deeply and willed herself to go on. “Obviously, you know what happened five years ago. What you don’t know is how I came to work under an arrogant bastard like Dr. Jonas Howland in the first place.”

“Start any place you like,” Julie said, as if she knew who Dr. Howland was.

“I was raised by my aunt, Cecile. It’s no exaggeration to say that she
hated
me.”

Julie was taken aback. She was sitting across from a beautiful, mature woman whose face had suddenly transformed into the blank, unloved hopelessness of an abused child.

“I was a duty, a burden,” Michelle said, “and Cecile never let me forget it. She was a widow and she must have done something awful to her husband, because she paid for my college and medical school as if she was clearing some terrible debt. She stopped supporting me when I graduated and I never saw her again, although I heard she passed away some time after that.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, and continued.

“I trained at Monroe Regional Hospital in Bangor. Only a doctor could appreciate what that first year of residency was like! I worked crazy hours, sleeping in the hospital for days at a time. When the year was up, I was exhausted, broke and had nowhere to go.

“Then Dr. Howland, who had visited Monroe Regional a month before, called and offered me an extended residency at St. Simon’s General Hospital in Portland. He said he would supervise me on a two-year specialist track in Internal
Medicine, and that my hours and my salary would be significantly better.  It seems so naïve now, but I was overcome with gratitude.  I couldn’t imagine that someone thought I was worthy.

“I was a fool, of course. His offer had nothing to do with my record as a doctor. I’m not proud of it, but I gave him what he wanted. I didn’t love Jonas Howland, but I
did
love Internal Medicine and I didn’t want to lose my position. To understand what happened, you have to understand Jonas. He was accustomed to
reverence
, to always being right.  He misdiagnosed Anne Dunston, plain and simple. It was his fault, but he would never admit it.”

“So what happened?”

“Mrs. Dunston was admitted in the emergency room and turned over to me, under Jonas’ supervision. She was seventy and had previously been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, but the only medication she was taking was Coumadin for Leiden Factor Five.”

“Wait,” Julie said, “I know Coumadin is a blood thinner; what’s the other term?”

“Leiden Factor Five is a genetic variant that causes clotting, but that’s not why she came in.  Her complaint was that she hurt all over and she had a headache. She was running a very low fever and she had a brace on her leg. She said she’d fallen recently and twisted her ankle.

“It was the ‘fall’ and the ‘Fibromyalgia’ in her record that threw everyone off, including the unimpeachable Dr. Howland. We had her leg and her spine x-rayed, and had a cardiologist check her heart. Fine, fine and fine. We ordered a complete blood work-up and there was nothing remarkable except for an elevated SED rate.”

“What’s that?”

“The sedimentation rate.
The higher number indicated widespread inflammation, which was undoubtedly causing her discomfort.  Jonas said that referred pain from the sprained ankle had probably caused the general flare-up, a reasonable assumption for someone with Fibromyalgia. We couldn’t give her anti-inflammatories because of her clotting problems, so he told me to order Percocet, which is Acetaminophen and Oxycodone, a mild pain reliever.

“It was late in the day, so with Jonas’ approval, I kept Anne
Dunston overnight. Four hours later, our patient…
my
patient …had a massive stroke and died.

“She had been ‘hurting all over’ from
Polymyalgia Rheumatica, not Fibromyalgia. What she needed was a high dose of corticosteroids to fight an immune system gone wild. That might have prevented the stroke. I say
might
, because it wasn’t the Polymyalgia that caused it.

“You see, Anne
Dunston had ‘a headache’ because twenty-percent of people who have Polymyalgia Rheumatica also develop GCA, or Giant Cell Arteritis, which restricts blood flow to the brain. That’s what caused her stroke. It happened in the middle of the night; she died instantly, with no time to call anyone. The night nurse found her when she made her rounds.

“I was sick about it. I had to tell her husband, and it was heartbreaking. He was such a sweet old man and he depended on his wife for everything.” Tears welled in her eyes as she remembered, and she paused and shifted her position to regain her composure. “As a doctor you have to get used to losing patients, Julie, especially the elderly ones.  But it was the first time for me, and the thought that we might have been able to prevent it…”

“Did her family sue you?”

“Yes, her son, on behalf of the family. It took a while; he had two years to file a Wrongful Death suit, but I knew it was coming. I also knew that Jonas would lie to protect his reputation, so I left the country before they filed. I was in Madrid for a while, and then I went to work in a hospital on Rhodes.”

Michelle sighed, “You might think living on a Greek island would be nice, but any island is confining after a while. When I found out that MediPro staffed the cruise ships that stopped there, I applied immediately.”

“Didn’t they check your background?”

“I never put Portland on my application, not in Rhodes, and not with MediPro.”

Julie nodded. “So Adrienne knew and threatened to tell Captain Collier?”

“No, not Andrew. I told him months ago. It was HCL and MediPro that Adrienne held over my head, or
tried to
, I should say.”

“You don’t think they would they have fired you?”

“I don’t know; maybe…maybe not. Andrew worried about it more than I did. I don’t think Adrienne would have told them, Julie. She was overbearing, always wanting special treatment for her clients, but there was no gain in actually getting me fired. She liked the leverage of the
threat
.  Do you know what I mean?”

Michelle’s candor had won Julie over.  She smiled and nodded, “I know what you mean. I saw it when she stood up and spoke at the Captain’s Table. She held her hands in a palms-down position. It was a dominant gesture that said, ‘you may be the Captain, but I’m the expert on this subject’.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Adrienne was so tiny
, Julie thought.
Manipulation was a way to compensate
…

“Michelle, I don’t know what to say. You’ve had a difficult time, but I’m sure you’re helping a lot of folks on this ship.  It was good of you to come. Thank you for doing that.”

Michelle Sinclair raised her eyebrows and smiled.

“I had a choice?”

* * * * *

CHAPTER 38

J
ulie’s stomach was growling and she remembered that all she’d had to eat was two donuts. She wouldn’t have thought so, given the movement of the Mystral, but she felt better when she ate something.  Since it was lunchtime, she stopped and called Joe:

“Hi, I’m in the lobby. I just left Michelle and it’s definitely not her. That woman’s no killer, quite the opposite.  She didn’t like Adrienne, but she had nothing to do with her disappearance. Listen, Joe, do you want to meet me here? We could go to lunch.”

“Sure. Where do you want to go?”