Death Glitch (5 page)

When she left the restroom, she was confronted with orderly chaos. Everybody seemed to be busy saving lives, doing what doctors and nurses did in an emergency. She started for the exit.

“
Where’s Dr. Shaffer!” the young intern Izzy had seen earlier shouted. “If he doesn’t get here quick we’re gonna lose this one.”

“
What is it?” an older doctor, one Izzy didn’t know, one who looked like he had a foot in the grave, said.

“
Look at this X-ray, she’s got a bullet in her heart.” She was sweating bullets. “It’s beyond me.”

“
Me too,” the old guy said.

“
Shaffer’s halfway between here and Carson City,” a woman in black said, black skirt, black blouse. “He’s twenty minutes away.”

“
Shit,” Izzy muttered. Then, “I’m a heart surgeon, maybe I can help.” She moved passed them. The patient was a young woman, she was on her side, nude from the waist up. There was an entrance would in her back, no exit would. “Let me see that.” She snatched the CXR out of the intern’s hands, looked at the chest X-ray. “Double shit.”

“
Who are you?” the older doctor, named Irwin Shaw, according to his nametag, said.

“
I’m going to need an OR,” Izzy said. “OR 3 would be good.” She gave the older guy a look. “You any good?”

“
Who’s asking?” His hands were shaking.

“
You shouldn’t be here.” She recognized the symptoms. He was a drunk in need of a drink. “I don’t want you anywhere near my OR.”

“
How about you?” She turned to the intern. “Who are you and have you ever assisted in open heart surgery?”

“
Kathy Wells, and yes, I’ve assisted Dr. Shaffer several times.”

“
If you’re good enough for Aaron, you’re good enough for me,” Izzy said.

“
Wait a minute!” Shaw said.

“
I don’t have a minute.” Izzy turned to the woman in black. “You must be Aaron’s right hand woman, Belinda Quinn, right?”

“
Yes.”

“
Fine, get me a perfusionist, an anesthesiologist, the best two surgical nurses you can muster up and get them all into OR 3.”

“
I don’t know, Dr. Shaffer will be here in twenty minutes.”

“
And this young woman will have been ten minutes dead.” Izzy turned to the intern. “We’re going now.” Back to Quinn. “Do your job.” To an orderly who was watching. “Let’s move her on up.” She clapped her hands. “Now, do it now!”

“
Yes, ma’am.” The orderly went to the gurney.

“
Dr. Shaffer’s not answering his cell,” Shaw said.

“
I said move it, Belinda.” Izzy felt the walls closing in.

“
Okay, okay,” Quinn said.

“
There’s a bullet in my heart?”

“
What?” Izzy said. “She’s conscious?”

“
Where’s my daughter? Is she okay?”

“
She has a daughter?” Izzy said. “Where?”

“
Your little girl is fine.” Kathy Wells pointed and all heads turned to the other side of the glass wall. There was a little girl there, four or maybe five years old. She was alone.

“
For God’s sake, get her!” Izzy said. “Bring her here.” She turned to Shaw. “You do it!”

“
Who are you?” Shaw was getting to be a real pain.

“
Get the girl,” Quinn said. Then to Izzy, “Well, who are you?”

Izzy was stuck. She’d stuck herself in where she didn’t belong, but she hadn’t any choice. She had to say something, had to make it believable.

“
I’m Dr. Linda Eisenhower. My mother is Dr. Isadora Eisenhower,” she said, making up a fictional daughter. “I’m sure you’ve heard of her, because she practiced here for years.”

“
I came after she left,” Quinn said.

Shaw was approaching with the girl.

“
What are you doing here?” Quinn said.

“
I practice in London, at St. Thomas,” Izzy lied. “Aaron’s trying to recruit me. I was going to observe him today and talk after.”

“
Good enough for me.” Shaw was back with the girl.

“
So, you’re not licensed here?”

“
Mommy!” The child was frightened.

“
Is it true? Am I going to die if I don’t get an operation right away,” the woman on the gurney said.

“
Yes,” Izzy said.

“
Then do it.” She was very weak. It was a miracle she was conscious.

“
Blood pressure is 84 over 42, down from 95 over 55,” Kathy Wells said. “We have to do something!”

“
She’s passed out,” Shaw said.

“
Save my mom,” the child said.

“
We will,” Izzy said.

“
You can’t operate in this hospital,” Belinda Quinn said.

“
Heart rate is up from 110 to 120.”

“
Shit, we’re going now,” Izzy said. “We’ll worry about the legal after.”

“
Okay.” Quinn nodded to the orderly. “Take her up.”

“
Are you gonna make my mommy better?” the child said.

“
I am,” Izzy said.

“
Promise?”

“
Yeah, I promise.”

The orderly and Wells started moving toward the elevator with the patient.

“
I’ve paged Dr. Stanley, he’s the best perfusionist in Reno,” Quinn said. She had a Blackberry in her hand. “He’s in the hospital and on his way to the OR. I’m paging Dr. Seger now.”

“
Ralph Seger,” Izzy said. “He’s good.” He was the best anesthesiologist she’d ever worked with. He had to be in his seventies. She didn’t know he was still working. He’d recognize her. Damn. Still, she’d said she was her daughter and she’d kept her family life to herself. Ralph wouldn’t know she didn’t have a daughter. Maybe she could pull it off. She had to pull it off.

By the time she’d prepped and got to the OR, the patient had been prepped and the perfusionist was there and ready.

“
I’m Dr. Eisenhower.” She introduced herself.

“
I’m Dr. Stanley, call me Stan.”

“
Your parents didn’t?”

“
They did.”

“
A Performer, good, gotta love Medtronic,” Izzy said, referring to the heart lung machine. It was a third the size of what she’d been used to, so it could be used closer to the patient and at table height. She’d heard a lot about it, had been waiting for it when she’d retired years ago. She’d never used one. Still, she was a heart surgeon. If Dr. Stanley could do his job, so could she. She’d be alright. She had to be alright, she’d promised a little girl.

“
She’s tachypneaic and her breathing is decreasing,” Kathy Wells said.

“
Then we’d better get going,” Dr. Stanley said.

“
I’m set here.” It was the anesthesiologist, Ralph Seger.

“
I believe you knew my mother,” Izzy said, continuing the lie.

“
You look like her, though a younger version.”

“
Thanks, I think,” she said. “She’s ready, the patient?”

“
She is,” Seger said.

“
Then let’s do it.” To Kathy Wells. “We’re going to do a median sternotomy and we don’t have the luxury of time.”

Izzy made a six inch incision down the middle of the chest and all of a sudden she was home. She’d done this more times than she could count. This is what she’d been born to do and she did it well.

It was as if she were on automatic pilot when she cut along the breast bone and set the retractor. Once the heart was exposed she sighed.

“
Are you ready, Stan?”

“
Yes.”

“
Good.” Izzy cannulated the ascending aorta and venae cava, then cross clamped the aorta as Seger administered the cardioplegia, which would stop the heart.

“
Okay, Kathy Wells. The patient is on bypass and is doing fine. We can slow down now.”

“
That was fast,” Seger said. “You’re good.”

Once the heart was drained of blood, Izzy stepped aside.

“
You have good hands.” Izzy said to Wells.

“
You noticed, with all you were doing?”

“
It’s my job.” She smiled beneath the surgical mask. “I’d like you to palpate the heart.”

“
Me?”

“
This is a teaching hospital. You’re here to learn and I’m a teacher.”

“
Okay.” Kathy Wells slid her hands under the heart.

Aaron Shaffer burst into the OR.

“
What’s going on here?”

“
Not now, Aaron,” Izzy said. “I’ve a student with a heart in her hands.”

“
You what?”

“
Aaron, calm down or leave the OR.”

“
Nobody talks to me like that in my hospital.”

“
It’s my OR. Built with money I brought into this hospital.”

“
Who are you?”

“
I’m the first girl you ever loved. The one you couldn’t have, because the stars weren’t aligned. Because the time and place were wrong. God has given us a second chance. Don’t blow it. Stand back and let us save this young woman’s life.”

“
Iz?”

“
Don’t say a word. If you ever loved me, don’t say a word.”

“
Right.” Aaron stepped back, stunned.

“
I feel something,” Wells said. “In the distal septum.”

“
That’ll be the bullet,” Izzy said. “You’ll need to make a transverse incision—”

“
In the apex of the left atrium,” Wells said, finishing Izzy’s sentence

“
Right,” Izzy said.

“
Okay, I got it.”

“
Can you close, or do you want me to do it?”

“
I’ll do it with a running 3-0 Prolene suture.”

“
Good, then reinforce the entry wound with a 3-0 pleggeted Prolene suture. Can you do that?”

“
Piece of cake,” Wells said.

“
Aaron,” Izzy said. “I’m feeling a little faint. Can you close up after she’s finished with the heart.” She turned to face him, met his eyes and though they were both wearing surgical masks, she could see the astonishment painted all over his face.

“
Ha, ha, how?”

“
Don’t stutter. I’ve told you about that.” She smiled.

“
You were—”

“
Not now. You have a patient.”

“
But—”

“
It’s a miracle.” She started for the door. “We’ll talk when you finish.”

Outside the OR, she pulled off her gloves, then made for the stairs. It would take them an hour or so to finish and she had to be long gone by then.

Detective Bob Mouledoux, called Mississippi by friend and foe alike, drove the unmarked Crown Vic into the parking lot at St. Catherine’s. This was his first case in Robbery/Homicide and he wanted to impress his new partner, Joe Friday, who everyone who’d earned the right called Peeps, because early in his career he’d busted prostitutes by peeping in the windows of a motel they were known to use. These days prostitution was legal and they mostly looked the other way when girls plied the trade illegally.

Although only a day in Robbery/Homicide and only a cop for a couple years, Mouledoux had earned the right. Three months ago Mouledoux and his partner, an out of shape windbag named Reymundo Galvez, rolled into a gunfight. Three bad asses hopped up on meth had robbed a convenience store on Virginia, shooting and killing the girl behind the counter. They’d also shot a cop attempting their getaway, a young woman with a couple kids. And they’d had her partner pinned down.

Mouledoux floored the cruiser, smashed into the pickup they were hiding behind, jumped out of the ride, screaming like a banshee. One of the three was on the ground, knocked down by the collision. The other two were stunned. Mouledoux shot and killed them all.

Galvez demanded a new partner, believing the suits were going to crucify Mississippi Bob Mouledoux, but the gangbangers had killed a nineteen-year-old girl and shot down one of their own, which didn’t sit well with those in charge because they were cops too. Galvez got his new partner. Bob Mouledoux got Robbery/Homicide and the right to call Joe Friday by his nickname.

Mouledoux glanced over at Friday, who had his head back against the headrest. If his eyes had been open, he’d be staring at the headliner, but they weren’t. He was asleep.

“
Hey, Peeps, we’re here.”

“
Yeah, alright.” Peeps was a good cop, who’d taken endless ribbing because of his names, his real one and his nickname. “Park over there.” He pointed to the handicapped parking by the emergency entrance.

“
Yeah, sure.” On his own, Mouledoux would’ve found an empty spot in patient’s parking and walked, but Peeps was known for using any perk he could get.

They entered through the emergency room, walked straight through, Peeps showing the way. He’d been here before, probably several times. This was Mouledoux’s first. At the reception, Peeps told everybody’s great aunt, a woman named Elizabeth Chandler, according to her badge, that he wanted to see Dr. Romero about the Eisenhower homicide.

A few minutes later they were ushered into the office of the President and CEO of St. Catherine’s, an athletic looking man with a full head of ash grey hair and skin so white it looked like he hadn’t seen the sun in forever, named Aaron Shaffer. He was a doctor and his office was large and afforded him a prime view of Reno’s downtown casinos. Must be gorgeous at night, Mouledoux thought, as Dr. Romero introduced them to the hospital’s CEO, then to Simon Drake, the hospital’s attorney, and lastly to Dr. Elizabeth Jordan, the attending who’d treated Isadora Eisenhower in the emergency room.