Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) (5 page)

"So why does she have to go through
it again?" demanded Jodi.

"This is a teaching hospital. You
know how it works, don't you, Reena?" Nancy's body language, her comments,
were all directed at Reena. I realized part of my mistake was probably that I
was trying to talk to both of them instead of concentrating on the patient.
"We have medical students, residents, and staff physicians at St.
Joseph's. It's part of the process."

"Yeah, but why
her
?" Reena's voice had turned more nasal, more whiny. My
shoulders relaxed. I could handle brattiness, not hatred. Thank goodness for
Nancy.

Jodi said, "Aren't we allowed to
refuse?"

I gulped. Nancy said, "Yes, that's
true, but we like there to be a reason. Do you have a reason?"

Silence. Jodi looked hard at Reena, who
said finally, "I just can't."

Nancy glanced at me. "I'm sorry, Dr.
Sze. Would you mind—?"

"No, no, that's all right." I
handed her back the chart. Oops. I still had Mrs. Lee's envelope underneath. I
tried to grab it back and flip it over, but it skittered off my fingers and
landed on the floor, face up, with a bang.

I snatched it back, covering it with my
body. "Excuse me."

Reena was already screaming, her hands
welded into fists, her mouth one giant O, her body arched in misery, while Jodi
yelled at me, "Get out, get out, get out!"

Chapter
5

My hands were still shaking ten minutes
later.

I paced the resident's room. It was smaller
than Room 14. It was also dominated by a bed. But the door locked and I could
be alone. So no one could see me gasping. The whites of my eyes. My heart
throbbing in my throat, choking off my words.

Breathe.

I checked my watch. Twelve minutes. Long
enough for them to subdue Reena. I should be back there. I should be running
it.

Instead, I was alone with my panic
attack.

"CODE WHITE. EMERGENCY ROOM.
CODE BLANCHE, SALLE D'URGENCE
."

The words had echoed through the room.
Men in white uniforms had descended. For one wild moment, I'd thought they were
coming for me.

"Two of Ativan? She's allergic to
Haldol," Nancy had said.

I'd nodded yes and bolted.

Some doctor I was, yelling at Tucker,
telling him to respect me and my decision to return to work.

I couldn't even do psych.

Hell, I was too busy
being
psych.

Something about the room, the screaming,
the
loathing
emanating from the two
women threw me off.

Breathe.

I pressed my back against the white
concrete wall and forced myself to take my own pulse, pressing my fingers
against my carotid while I stared at my watch.

One hundred and twenty-four beats per
minute.

Normal is usually between sixty and one
hundred.

Breathe.

Well, at least pressing on my neck and
providing some vagal stimulation might slow me down.

Lame medical humour.

Breathe.

I took my pulse again. One hundred and
twenty-six.

Come on, Hope.

I glanced at my watch. Sixteen minutes
away. Long enough for them to start asking, "What happened to the
resident?" Nancy would have given medication already.

Even though the emerg doctor was always
in-house, and the psychiatrist was presumably on the way, I had to get back
there.

On top of everything else, I felt
terrible about dropping Mrs. Lee's envelope. I hadn't even realized I'd brought
it into the room. It seemed like a violation of Mrs. Lee's privacy, although
all it showed was her name and address. For all they knew, she could have been
sending me Jehovah's Witness flyers.

Breathe.

Count: one twenty-two.

Better. Come on.

Even though I still felt sick, I unlocked
the door leading back to emerg and stood just inside it. The acid green walls
of the room seemed to push in on me. I could hear someone flushing the toilet
of the staff washroom across from me. The opposite side of the resident's room
faced the main hospital hallway, so I could hear people talking in stereo, from
the emergency department on one side and St. Joe's passers by on the other.

"—got to make a phone
call—"

"I told him, no way. You want to,
you do it."

"They're going to tap it under
ultrasound. You might want to be there."

The key to the resident's room dangled
from my hands. It was attached to a foot-long stick painted bright yellow, to
prevent someone from accidentally walking away from it.

Footsteps approached the residents' room.
"—think she's in here."

My breath hitched in my throat. I threw
open the door and stepped into the hallway. My favorite emergency doc, Dr.
Dupuis, gave me a quizzical look. He was pointing at the conference room just
beyond both the resident and staff room. It had nothing to do with me.

I smiled at him and, even though I still
felt nauseous and clammy and like I wasn't in my own body, I pushed past him.
Back to the salt mines.

First I just took a good look at everyone
to see if hell had truly fallen into a hand basket while I'd disappeared.

The unit clerk popped her gum as she sent
a fax through. One nurse asked another, "Did you see the old chart?"
as they both stepped aside for a janitor to empty the trash can. Someone had
abandoned a chest X-ray on the light board. Even after a week away, I could
spot the congestive heart failure at twenty paces.

I heard loud, angry women's voices from
Room 14 before it went silent.

When Dr. Dupuis passed by me again, he
said, "Don't worry about it" and kept walking with no other explanation.
Still, I felt better, especially when Nancy emerged from Room 14 and said,
"She's calmer now."

Forty minutes later, after Dr. Gatien had
talked to Reena alone and signed off the chart, he called me into the psych
office. I knew I was in trouble even before he tented his fingers and said,
"Rapport is a very important part of psychiatry."

I nodded. The less talking I had to do,
the better. I was just grateful the med students weren't around to witness my
humiliation.

"It is perhaps even the most important
part. Rapport, through talk therapy, preceded the medications we rely on so
heavily today."

I waited for him to get to the point. He
was French. It might take a while.

"This is why I want you to consider
very hard what you might have done to alienate this patient. This—"
He picked up the chart and read off the name. "—Ms. Reena
Schuster."

I squeezed my eyes shut. I wondered if
beads of sweat had broken out on my forehead like in the movies. I resisted the
urge to check. Better not draw attention to it.

"You may not have done anything, of
course. It may have been a case of transference. However, it is unusual to get
transference from the first moment. I'm not saying it's your fault."

Like hell you're not. But it was only a
replay of what I was saying to myself.

"I am simply saying that some
reflection is in order. She's calm now. She doesn't need to be admitted. Nancy
told me a Code was necessary. Nancy is a woman who knows what she is
doing."

Meaning that I didn't. That was certainly
true. Tucker's voice rose in the back of my mind.
Grinding yourself to powder
.

"Dr. Sze?"

I jammed a smile on my face. "Yes.
Thank you." I started to stand.

"About Mrs. Lee."

My heart dropped into my stomach.
"Yes."

"It's natural to feel sympathy
toward her. However, it is unwise to get
involved
with patients, if you understand my meaning."

I paused. "Yes. Thank you." He
frowned at me, so I belatedly added, "Dr. Gatien."

This time, I managed to leave the psych
office and close the door softly behind me.

A familiar brown envelope sat beside the
printer in the psych corner of the nursing station. I'd abandoned it during my
panic attack.

I flipped over the envelope. Mrs. Lee's
handwriting stared at me again.

Nobody else wanted me to do this. And,
for the first time, I seriously doubted I could do anything for Mrs. Lee, even
offer basic words of comfort.

I could return the file to her unopened
and say I was sorry. No can do. No harm, no foul.

Instead, I tucked the envelope under my
arm so I could open it in private.

Chapter
6

They
say psychopaths are born, not made.

I
don't know about that, but when I was a kid playing Clue, I wanted to do the
crime, not just solve it.

Think
about it. Colonel Mustard, creeping up behind the victim, trying not to let his
tweed suit rustle just before he whacks the guy with a candlestick in the
conservatory.

I
went and looked up 'conservatory' in the dictionary so I could picture it
better. In case you're interested, it's a glass room, like a greenhouse.

Nice,
huh? The blood would look so cool spraying against the glass.

***

I popped into the tiny St. Joe's library
and cloistered myself at a study desk behind the journal stacks, away from the
windows, with my back to the rest of the room. When I opened the envelope,
photocopies of newspaper clippings topped the pile.

YOUNG DOCTOR SLAIN IN HIT-AND-RUN

Montreal police are urging the driver who
struck and killed Dr. Laura Lee on Île Ste-Hélène early yesterday morning to
surrender.

Lee, 27, was struck by a speeding vehicle
believed to be a late-model, black Toyota, at approximately 5 a.m. as she
walked the Concord Bridge to the Formula One track for her usual, early-morning
in-line skate.

The motorist abandoned the scene, leaving
Lee on the ground.

Lee was rushed to the Montreal General
Hospital, where she was pronounced dead from multiple injuries sustained at the
scene.

The motorist was last seen on
Pierre-Dupuy Avenue, heading toward Montreal.

Lee was a recently graduated emergency
doctor at St. Joseph's hospital. "She will be missed," said Dr. David
Dupuis, emergency room chief. "She's been part of the St. Joe's family for
the past two years."

"I want to find who is
responsible," said Regina Lee, the victim's mother, in a press statement.
"If anyone has any information, if you might have seen anything at all,
please tell the police."

Anyone with information about the
accident is asked to call police at 514-555-1922, Crime Stoppers at
514-555-TIPS (8477), or online at www.555tips.com

***

I shifted my weight in the library chair.
From the very beginning, Mrs. Lee had been determined to find the driver. I
couldn't explain why, but it made me a touch uncomfortable. Even though I pride
myself on speaking my mind and being goal-oriented, like Mrs. Lee, I did not
know what to do with an actively grieving mother who was as fixated today as
she was in 2003.

The obituary didn't help.

***

LAURA LEE, 1977-2003

Doctor, pianist, and most of all, beloved
daughter, died tragically in a hit-and-run "accident" August 8th,
2003. Funeral August 12th at 10:00 a.m. In lieu of flowers, please contact
police with any information regarding her death.

***

ONE MOTHER'S VIGIL FOR HIT-AND-RUN VICTIM

Montreal police are no closer to finding
the driver who struck and killed Dr. Laura Lee, 27, on August 8th on the
Concord Bridge from Île Notre-Dame to Île Ste-Hélène. If her mother has
anything to say about the six-month investigation, that will change.

"This is unacceptable," says
Mrs. Lee, a tiny woman whose strength belies her size. "They have no
suspects, even though they found the car that hit her. Only a handful of
witnesses have come forward, and their stories contradict each other."

Regina Lee is determined to do something
about it. She has placed ads in the Montreal Gazette,
Le Devoir
,
La Presse
, and
even in alternative media such as the Montreal Mirror and Hour Magazine, all
asking witnesses to come forward for a "substantial reward."

She will not answer specifics about the
reward, except to say, "It is substantial in two ways. It is a
considerable amount of money and the evidence must be substantiated."
Crimestoppers has run a feature on Laura, but without obtaining any helpful
leads. Mrs. Lee is determined to do it on her own: "Next week, I will hold
a vigil on the bridge. I will be wearing a sign: 'WHO KILLED LAURA LEE?' I will
hold a cross for her."