Deadly Diversion: A Medical Thriller (25 page)

“What does that get them?”

“Access, mostly. When they go before the gaming commission, they want someone on their side. It’s not illegal, every group and their brother gives to candidates they think will help them later. That’s why they do it.”

“I thought some of them were going bankrupt. Casinos.”

“Probably a business decision.”

“I heard they asked a judge to okay thirty thousand so they could donate to all three mayoral candidates’ campaigns.”

“I rest my case,” he said, finishing his lemonade and perching forward, his arms flexed on the armrests.

“Everyone cheats, is that what you’re saying?” I asked, knowing my time was about up.

“Pretty much. Whether it’s legal or not is sometimes just a matter of who wrote the laws.” He looked toward his garden. A hoe was propped against the garage.

“That’s a nice garden you have,” I told him, pushing myself up out of the chair.

“Hard to keep up,” he said, with typical Southside self- deprecation.

“Looks like you do, though.” Only a few weeds had pushed up between the rows, unlike my garden, I thought.

He shrugged, brushing off my compliment once again.

“And now you don’t have to worry about the law.”

“Nope. I took early retirement and enjoy myself. Haven’t watched the news or read a newspaper since.”

“I CAN’T TAKE HER,” Mrs. Bauer’s daughter said, sitting down in a chair in the family waiting room. “I’m too busy and I travel for business,” the woman, dressed expensively in business clothes, explained to me. She turned to her sister. “You’ll have to do it.”

The shorter woman—her last name was Whitaker—frowned. “I have three bedrooms and five kids,” she said to me. “Where would I put her?” she asked, running a hand through her light brown hair in need of a trim.

“Mrs. Sheldon—”

“Ms. Sheldon,” the well-dressed woman corrected.

“Ms. Sheldon and Mrs. Whitaker, your mother’s stroke was serious, but I think she’ll have a good recovery. I suggest you consider placement for her at the Bethlehem Home.”

“No, no!” Mrs. Whitaker said, her face flushing. “Never! I’ll never put Mother in a nursing home!”

“I’m talking about their rehab unit.” She started to say something but I continued. “It’s for short stays—a few months at the most—and they have everything your mother will need to get back on her feet. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, and they’ll get her up and moving every day.”

Ms. Sheldon’s face brightened. “That sounds like just what Mother needs.”

“I don’t know,” her sister said, frowning. “What if she can’t manage it and she doesn’t get better or she goes downhill? What then?”

“Her prognosis is good,” I told them. “Dr. Lord thinks she’ll get back most of her functioning, if not all of it. From the other cases like hers I’ve seen, she should be able to go home to her own apartment after that.”

“Don’t they have assisted living there at Bethlehem?” Ms. Sheldon asked.

“They do. If she needed a bit more looking after, I imagine she could move into one of those apartments.”

“That sounds good, Dorothy,” Ms. Sheldon said to her sister, pulling keys out of her bag.

“Maybe,” her sister said.

Ruby popped her head in the door. “They want you up in psych,” she said. “ASAP.”

I nodded.

“Roger that,” she said, turning on her heel.

“I’ll call our social worker,” I said, standing, “and ask her to get you some information about it. If you come back tomorrow, you can talk to your mother about it.”

LISA WAS SITTING IN the chair next to Peggy’s desk, shrunk down as if she was folded in on herself. She didn’t look up when I arrived.

Peggy asked me to shut the door and, when I did, she nodded toward Lisa. “She wants help.”

Lisa sniffed.

“She’s agreed to go to treatment.” Peggy smiled at Lisa’s downturned head, her hair mussed as if she had just woken up. “But there’s just one problem.”

I leaned against the door frame, not sure I wanted to hear what Peggy was going to ask of me.

“Judyth let her go, you know.” When I didn’t say anything, she went on. “That ended her health insurance.”

“What about COBRA?” I asked. Federal law allows former employees to pay their insurance premiums themselves for eighteen months after ending employment. The law was designed to enable people to keep their insurance until they found another job with health benefits.

Peggy shook her head. “The hospital’s self-insured.”

“What? When did that happen?”

“Didn’t you get the letter? About a month ago.”

It was probably in the stack of mail piling up on my desk. “It’s no big deal for us,” Peggy explained. “There’s no co-pay if we get our care here and go to doctors on staff.”

“So how does that help her?” I nodded toward Lisa who was rocking back and forth, her arms crossed over her abdomen.

“We have an agreement with Memorial for substance abuse treatment. But only current employees are eligible.”

“I don’t see how I—”

“Let me finish. We, uh, I, thought maybe you could talk to Judyth. Ask her to reinstate Lisa just so she can get treatment.”

“Why don’t you ask her? Or, Lisa, you could yourself.” Lisa moaned as I went on. “Judyth and I, we haven’t exactly been pals,” I said, turning back to Peggy. “I doubt I could do any good.”

“I can’t ask her,” Peggy said. “She thinks I’m ‘over-identifying’ with Lisa because of my history. And she won’t even talk to Lisa.”

At that moment, Lisa doubled over and vomited. Undigested matter splashed on the tile floor and splattered my shoes. Peggy shoved a wastebasket toward Lisa but it was too late. Lisa wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as Peggy grabbed a wad of tissues and handed them to her, giving me some to wipe my shoes.

Lisa was swaying again as Peggy called housekeeping for a cleanup.

I opened the door for some air and tried to clean the mess off my shoes with tissues. And no gloves. I tossed the soaked wad in the trash can.

Lisa’s chalk-white face was punctuated with red-rimmed eyes. “Can’t you get me something?” she asked Peggy.

“No.” She dropped another wad of tissues onto the vomitus on the floor, covering it partially. “You’re not a patient here. No one’s going to write you a script to get anything. But when you get to Memorial—there’s a bed open there.” She looked me. “They can take her today.”

Lisa choked again and we braced for another episode but it was only a sob. Peggy put her arm around Lisa’s shoulder and looked up at me, pleading.

“I don’t know...”

“Please, Monika. What have you got to lose?” She looked at Lisa with a small smile. “There’s a lot to save.”

“All right. I’ll try—•” I began.

“That’s all we’re asking.”

In the restroom I washed my shoes with soapy paper towels and scrubbed my hands for a full five minutes, lathering twice, worrying about what Lisa’s vomit might contain. An IV drug user, it was likely that she’d taken clean drugs from the hospital, but had she ever shared needles with a street user? What might she have picked up from those?

As I walked down the stairs to Judyth’s office on the main floor, I came up with one argument to use. If Lisa was on the payroll, Judyth would have one more name to convince Joint Commission that we had enough staff. It wasn’t much and I didn’t know if Judyth would buy it.

She didn’t.

She had a better argument. “If we hire her back, knowing she’s been using drugs—and probably stealing them from us—and then someone gets hurt...”

“No one would get hurt. She wouldn’t even be working. She’d be in treatment.”

“Then what?” Judyth asked, leaning back against the desk, her arms full of files.

“When she’s released, she comes back to work.”

She shook her head. “No way.”

“You could fire her then.”

“And get slapped with a discrimination suit? Addicts are a protected class. We have to make ‘reasonable accommodations’ for their disability,” she said. “What kind of accommodations do we make for a nurse so she’s not around drugs? In a hospital, for godsakes!” She pushed off from the desk. “Monika, I know you mean well, but please stay out of this.” She waved a dismissive hand in my direction. “I have to see to our accreditation. They’re giving their final report,” she said, leading me out the door.

“I tried,” I told Peggy her a few minutes later. She’d been waiting for me in my office.

Changing emotions played out across her face: sadness, dismay, frustration and, finally, anger. “She’s dead then.”

“What?”

Peggy shook her head. “There’s no hope, Monika. If an addict doesn’t get help, they’re dead.”

“Aren’t you overdoing it a bit? Can’t she go to AA or something? You could take her with you.”

“She needs more help than that.”

“Alcoholics do it.”

“Drugs are tougher, and she’s not strong enough.”

“You mean she doesn’t want to get off them.”

“No. I mean they’re just more powerful.” She leaned forward. “You just don’t know how it is, Monika. Once drugs have hold of you, they don’t let go. Not without a fight, they don’t.”

 “What about Bart? Can’t he help?”

“He’s pretty fed up with her.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said.

“She’s threatened to kill herself.”

“Yeah?” Another ploy to get sympathy, I thought, but didn’t say.

“When there’s no way out.” Peggy looked away somewhere in her memory. “If you can’t live without them, and you can’t live if you keep taking them...” Her voice trailed off.

“Look, you did it. Maybe she’ll find some other way to get help.”

“Yeah. Right,” she said, standing. “And you’re going to be six feet tall.”

I WAS CHECKING the weekend schedule later when the phone rang. I picked it up cautiously, hoping it wasn’t another staff member calling in too sick to work on the weekend.

At first I couldn’t understand her.

“It’s in the bag,” Lisa repeated, slurring her words.

“What? What’s ‘in the bag’ ?”

“Don’t you understand?” she asked. “It’s in the bag.” Her words slid off into nothing.

“You’ve taken something, Lisa. What was it?”

She mumbled something.

“I can’t hear you!”

“It’s for my back,” she said. “Takes away the pain.” She sounded far away.

“You’d better get some help, Lisa. Call Bart or Peggy.”

“I’m right all right,” she said, giggling.

“Call someone, will you? You shouldn’t be there alone.”

“All right,” she said, enunciating each word.

She hung up.

I tried to reach Peggy, but she’d left for the day, and there was no answer at her home number. I called Lisa back but she didn’t answer.

I sighed and went back to my work. Apparently Lisa had found some drugs after all, something in a bag. I still had two extra shifts to cover for the weekend. Tim had refused; he was working the union election the next two days and probably would have said no in any case. Jessie, without complaint, said she’d work both shifts.

Still thinking about Lisa, I stopped at Judyth’s office on my way out. “I’m going by Lisa Milligan’s and I could take her last paycheck if she didn’t get it the other day,” I told Norma.

“I have it right here.” She sorted through some envelopes in her desk drawer and handed one to me. “You’ll save me mailing it,” she said with a smile.

BLACK BEAUTY STARTED right up and I slid out of the garage in record time since the rest of the day shift was long gone. Now I was caught in rush-hour traffic, catching a red light at every corner, or so it seemed.

Stopped at a light at Hampton and Chippewa, I hunted around on the front seat for my phone, sticking my hand in the crack between the back and the seat. Where was that darn phone? I stretched to reach under the seat and a horn honked behind me. I jerked up, hitting my head on the steering wheel. The driver laid on his horn. I scooted through the intersection on the yellow, followed by a long line of drivers.

Where did I have it last? I slid into the right-hand lane on Chippewa, cutting in front of a truck. The driver gave me an obscene gesture as he slammed on his brakes. My office, that was where it was. I’d kept trying to reach Lisa until I left, then I’d hurried out, anxious to get there now that I’d decided to check on her.

The sun played long shadows across the tiny yard in front of the house that Lisa and Bart shared in Dogtown, the South St. Louis neighborhood originally settled by Irish immigrants. The street was deserted but the steady beat of rock music punctuated the stillness. I pulled my scrub top loose from the seat where sweat had pasted it to the leather. A traffic copter whirled overhead, stirring a short-lived breeze.

I knocked several times with no response. Sweat trickled down my back.

A woman came out of the house next door and shook a dust mop over the side of her porch. “She’s home,” the woman said, propping herself up on the mop. “I saw her come in before he left.”

I smiled and went back to knocking.

“Hear that music?” the woman asked. “Better knock louder.”

“Thanks,” I told her, hammering my fist against the door.

“She’s always playing it loud when he’s not home,” she added, looking as if she planned to stand there until Lisa came to the door.

We waited while the music continued to pound. Finally, the woman shrugged and went back inside.

I peeked through the picture window, cupping my hands around my face to block out the glare. Lisa was sprawled on the sofa, one arm hanging down to the floor, the other covering her eyes as if the light was too much for her.

“Lisa,” I said, rapping on the glass with my knuckles.

She didn’t move.

“Lisa. Wake up!” A hard knot of worry formed in my throat. “Lisa,” I yelled. I beat on the window with my fist.

I tried the door. Locked.

I looked around for a hiding place for a key. No flower pots or statuary. Just a dented, rusty metal chair. I pulled it over to the door and climbed up, rocking on the unsteady chair. I felt along the ledge above the door. Nothing. Where would they hide a key? Several pieces of mail were peeking out of the box next to the door. I took the mail out and reached in the box, stretching on my toes to reach the bottom. There it was.