Silent Treatment (12 page)

“Yeah.”

Harry felt suddenly awkward sitting. He also felt incapable of maintaining a conversation—even one as superficial as this. He stood up and pushed the plastic chair away with the toe of his shoe. He still hadn’t called Evie’s family. Maybe he should call Steve Josephson as well In anticipation of Evie’s surgery, he had already canceled his morning patients and signed out to Steve until one. Maybe he should call and make it the whole day.

“Look, I’m sorry for blabbering on like this,” Hughes said. “I know you’ve got a lot on your mind and the weight of the world on your shoulders. But there’s something I really need to tell you.”

Harry hesitated, then crossed the corridor.

“That doctor,” Hughes went on in a near whisper, “the dark-haired one, the one who claims—”

“Yes, yes, I know who you mean. Sidonis.”

“Well, Dr. Sidonis seems to be making a big deal over the report from the nurse that you were the last one in with your wife before she got so—”

“Yes.”

“Well, you weren’t.”

“What?”

“You weren’t the last one. There was a man in with her shortly after you left. A doctor, in fact.”

“Are you sure?”

Tom Hughes thought for a few seconds before he responded.

“Pretty sure,” he said finally. “No, make that very sure.”

“But … but how do you know that?”

Again the policeman hesitated, his gaze fixed on one of the bed wheels. When he looked at Harry again, his expression was sheepish.

“My sister told me so,” he said.

“I’m sure she doesn’t look it to you right now, but Maura really is a very special, very talented, very
good
person.”

After just a few minutes of conversation with Tom Hughes, several things had become quite clear to Harry: although young, Hughes was very intelligent and as sharp as any policeman he had ever met; and despite his older sister’s obvious problems, he was absolutely devoted to her. He was also convinced that the man she claimed to have seen enter her hospital room had actually been there.

“A doctor in a white clinic coat came in shortly after you left,” Hughes related to Harry. “Maura was apparently hollering at the time—she said something to me about the nurses never paying any attention to her unless she makes noise. The doctor smiled at her, stroked her forehead, leaned over, and whispered to her to just relax. Then he went around the curtain, spoke with your wife for a short while, and left. He was in his thirties or early forties, five
foot eight or so, with brown hair closely cut, unusually dark brown eyes, a large diamond ring on the little finger of his left hand, and a blue and green clip-on tie.”

“A clip-on? How could she know that?”

“I’m telling you, drunk or sober, or even in the DTs, my sister is a remarkable woman. She’s an artist, a painter, and she has an incredible eye for detail.”

Harry recalled the . quickness with which she had spotted his lapel pin.

I notice things
, she had said.

“Well, maybe some doctor came up the back way, or slipped past the nurses.”

“Slipped past the nurses maybe,” Tom said. “But not came up the back way. The door is locked and alarmed after eight. The nurse warned me about that when I called to ask if I could come in late tonight. Anyone who comes on or off any floor in this building after eight has to come by elevator and check in at the nurse’s station.”

“I guess I knew that,” Harry said. “I mean I’ve only worked here for a decade or two. Why didn’t you say something about this mystery doc to Sidonis or the nurses?”

“The way things were going down, there really wasn’t much chance for me to say anything to anyone. Besides, they’re not very fond of my sister here on Alexander Nine. I hardly think they would give much credence to anything she has to say—especially if it conflicts with what
they
say.”

“I think you’re probably right.”

It was after eleven now. Rather than disturb the overextended staff on Alexander 9, the two of them had wheeled Maura back to her spot in room 928. Fifteen minutes later, the call Harry dreaded had come from neurosurgeon Richard Cohen. Evie was still in the CT scanner, but the initial images were as bad as they had feared. The hemorrhage was massive. The rapid swelling and pressure had forced a portion of her brain through the bony ridge at the base of her skull, totally and irreversibly cutting off circulation to her cerebral cortex—the gray matter responsible for all thought. Surgery was no longer even a long-shot possibility.
All that remained was a series of EEGs … and a decision.

As Maura Hughes continued her stertorous, unnatural sleep, Harry sat opposite her brother in the dimly lit room. As much as he wanted to be alone to sort out what had transpired with Sidonis and to deal with the decision he would shortly be asked to make, he was grateful for the man’s company.

“No one’s been able to explain to me what the DTs is, or why my sister got it,” Hughes said. “She definitely was on a bender when she fell, but I know a lot of people who are much heavier drinkers than she is and never seem to get into trouble.”

“Most alcoholics coming off alcohol just get the shakes and some intestinal stuff,” Harry explained. “There are two really frightening things they
can
get: seizures and DTs. Seizures usually happen in the first day or two. The DTs come on later—two days to a week or even more after the last drink. We have no way of predicting whether they’ll happen at all.”

“But Maura’s pretty damn lucid about some things—even while she’s seeing the bugs and such.”

“All I can say is, that is not unusual. The mix of fantasy and reality is unexplainable. You know, I take care of a fairly large number of alcoholics in my practice. Many of them have been sober for years, some of them against monstrous odds. If you and she would like, I can have one or two of them stop by and speak with her.”

“You mean AA?”

“Possibly.”

“I’ve tried to get her to go to AA. But she never would go. Too much pride, I guess.”

“Maybe you should take some videos or Polaroids of her right now.”

Tom Hughes grinned at the suggestion.

“Maybe I should at that,” he said. “Dr. Corbett, do you mind if I ask you a little about what’s going on between you and that other doctor?”

“Sidonis?” Harry shrugged. “I think you’ve heard most
of it already. He claims my wife has been having an affair with him, and that she planned to leave me for him. He thinks she told me all about it last night at the restaurant we went to. He even knew the name of the place. Now that I look back on our evening, I think Evie actually wanted to tell me. But she never did.”

“So you believe him? I mean, there
is
another possibility. He could have been obsessed with your wife and followed you to that restaurant.”

Harry looked down at the floor and swallowed at the fullness that had again begun building in his throat.

“No,” he said finally. “I believe him.”

“And he thinks that because of what you knew, you gave something to your wife to … to what?”

“To send her blood pressure up high enough to cause her cerebral aneurysm to rupture.”

“God. Are there such drugs?”

“A number of them, actually. They’re called pressors. We use them to treat shock, which essentially is dangerously
low
blood pressure.”

“So this stuff—this pressor medication—is what? Injected? Or is it a pill, or a liquid of some sort?”

Harry smiled grimly.

“No, no,” he said. “Not by mouth. The patients who need a medication like that are in too much trouble to take anything by—”

“What is it?… Dr. Corbett?”

Harry was on his feet.

“Maybe nothing,” he said. “But it just occurred to me. Evie had an IV in her arm. D-five-W—five percent sugar water. It was what we call a KO infusion. Keep open. Just fast enough to keep the plastic catheter in her vein from clotting off.”

“So?”

“It seemed a little unusual to me that she should have one in place the night before her surgery, especially when she had been so stable for so long. I even asked her who ordered it. She thought it was the anesthesiologist. But usually they establish their IVs in the OR.” He headed out of
the room. “If anyone calls, I’m at the nurse’s station. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The order in Evie’s chart read:

T.O.—telephone order
. Harry skimmed through the record. Baraswatti had seen Evie late in the afternoon for the preoperative history and physical required of every patient who was to receive general anesthesia.
Four-fifteen
, the nurse’s note read. However, the order for the IV wasn’t phoned in until six-thirty. Harry dialed the hospital operator. Dr. Baraswatti was still the anesthesiologist on duty in the hospital. He made no attempt to mask the fact that Harry’s call had awakened him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dr. Corbett,” he said in a clipped Indian accent. “I always insert my IVs in the operating room. Why should I wish to do otherwise?”

“I … I don’t know,” Harry mumbled. He set the receiver down as the anesthesiologist was asking if there were any other questions he could answer.

Harry sat on the edge of the counter and carefully reviewed Evie’s chart. She had arrived on Alexander 9 at one-thirty. At four-thirty the anesthesiologist had come up, examined her, and written preoperative orders. At six-thirty someone claiming to be that anesthesiologist had called the floor nurse and ordered a keep open dextrose infusion to be put in place. The nurse had notified the intravenous nurse on duty for the hospital. At six-fifty, the IV nurse’s notes stated, she had placed an 18-gauge angiocath in Evie’s left hand. A few hours later, at least according to Maura Hughes, a physician had entered their room. And a short time after that, Evie’s aneurysm had burst—either as a result of,
or resulting in
, a systolic blood pressure of over three hundred.

Now, Caspar Sidonis was accusing Harry of the intravenous injection of some sort of pressor that had caused the catastrophe. Was it possible Harry was being set up by Sidonis? The physician described by Maura—real or figment—bore no resemblance to the arrogant cardiac surgeon, who was significantly taller than five eight and had thick, jet hair and a mustache.
Something was wrong … very wrong
. Bewildered and apprehensive, Harry returned to room 928.

Maura Hughes was awake and thrashing about.

“Right after you left she started moaning like she was in pain or maybe having a nightmare,” Tom explained. “Then suddenly, like a shot, she woke up. She’s all over the place right now, fighting the restraints and hallucinating even worse than she was before.”

“Go ahead and ring for the nurse,” Harry said. Noting that Maura was drenched in sweat, he toweled her face off and assured himself that her IV was open and running. She looked stressed, but not in danger. “It’s probably just the sedation wearing off. None of the medicine we use actually changes what’s going on in a DT patient’s head. All it does is blunt their reaction to it. I’ll check her over.”

“Gene, Gene, don’t be mean,” Maura sang, thrashing against her restraints. She smiled up at him and suddenly adopted a Dixie accent that would have made Scarlett O’Hara proud. “I swear on my mother’s grave, darlin’, if you’d just get these fuckin’ bugs off me I’d be all right. I’d be fine.”

Using his own stethoscope and pocket ophthalmoscope, Harry did as good an exam as possible under the circumstances. Maura neither helped him nor fought him. Instead, she kept up a constant verbal stream as she tried to brush away the crawlies. The nurse checked in over the intercom. She was in the conference room getting the change-of-shift report. Unless there was real trouble, she would be in after they were done.

“I don’t find anything to worry about,” Harry said to Tom. “I think we’re just seeing what her condition is like without the mask of tranquiliz—”

“Hey, I’m looking for someone named Sidonis. Dr. Cash Sidonis. Something like that.”

Harry and Tom turned toward the door. A sallow, balding man in a polyester suit stood appraising them. He was holding a frayed, spiral-bound, stenographer’s notepad from which he had read Sidonis’s name. His small, sunken eyes were enveloped in shadow. From six feet away Harry could smell a two- or three-pack-a-day tobacco habit.

“Lieutenant Dickinson!” Tom exclaimed.

Squinting, the man bobbed his finger at Tom, trying to place him.

“The Yalie, right?”

Tom grimaced.

“Yes, I guess you could call me that. I’m Tom Hughes. This is Dr. Harry Corbett. Harry, this is Lieutenant Albert Dickinson. He’s a detective in the two-eight. They have an opening for a detective there that I’ve interviewed for. He was on the panel.”

“You and about half the force,” Dickinson said, none too kindly. “I wouldn’t count on nothing if I was you. The competition is fierce.
Fierce
. Some of the PR people and the image people think being a Yalie is to your credit. But a lot of us who work the streets ain’t so sure. A lot of us look for the guy with the degree from the College of Hard Knocks, if you know what I mean. Good ol’ Fuck U.”

His hoarse laugh dissolved into a hacking cough. Tom remained outwardly unfazed. Harry wondered if the man’s abominable rudeness was some sort of test.

“They call anyone they think graduated from college a Yalie,” Tom explained pleasantly enough. “In my case, not that it matters, it happens to be true.”

“Corbett, huh,” Dickinson said. “You’re the guy Sidonis’s complaining about. After I talk to him, I want to talk to you. Bastard must have some clout to have them send me here on a night like this. Some fucking clout.”

“Dammit, get off me!” Maura shouted. “Boogery little ants. Get off! I’m sick of this!”

Dickinson glanced over at her dispassionately. “Whozis?” he said, jerking his head toward the bed.

“She’s … um … she’s my sister Maura,” Tom said, forcing himself to stand just a bit straighter.

Harry noticed that one of Tom’s fists—the one out of Dickinson’s line of sight—was clenched. Dickinson peered at Maura again. In ten seconds his assessment was complete. Maura Hughes was a hopeless drunk.