Authors: Priscilla Poole Rainwater
Chapter 26
Cassandra fidgeted impatiently as she waited to see the supposed specialist Granger had flown in from Europe. Glancing at her husband, who was seated beside her and reading business reports, she drank in the sight of him. He looked gorgeous in the expensive gray suit, and from the lusty looks four office workers were giving him, she wasn't alone in her assessment. It made her feel drab sitting next to him, in her simple white blouse and jeans.
Why would this man want me, he could have any woman he wants..
She
wondered. A sudden sharp, blinding pain in both temples made her flinch involuntarily, and she closed her eyes and had a sudden flashback of some sort. It was brief glimpse of a woman, but it vanished just as suddenly as it came, and she couldn't make out the woman's face or any other details. Rubbing her temples, she flinched as the vision returned, only this time the blurred image seemed to be charging towards her, brandishing a weapon of some type over her head. Then, just as suddenly as the last, it vanished.
“Cassandra, are you alright?” Granger asked as he touched her arm.
Not knowing what to make of it all, she merely nodded and replied, “Yeah, I'm Ok, guess I'm just tired.”
“Cassandra Mortensen?” a voice called.
Looking up, they both saw a nurse standing there, dressed in crisp pink scrubs and holding a clipboard.
Getting to her feet, Cassandra began following the woman as she led her to what looked like an exam room.
Once they were inside, the nurse said, “Please, have a seat. I need to take your vitals and get some personal information.” Pointing to a plastic chair, she turned and saw Granger standing in the doorway. “Sir, I'm sorry, you'll have to go to the front check in for help, I'm with a patient now.”
“Uhhh, your patient happens to be my wife.” he chuckled, clearly amused.
Cassandra could tell the nurse was embarrassed, her face turned bright red, and she was suddenly having a hard time making eye contact with either one of them.
Mumbling an apology, the nurse quickly took her vitals, withdrew three blood samples, asked several more routine questions, marked the answers off on her own chart, then led them to the doctor’s office.
Looking around, Cassandra felt at ease almost immediately. The room looked more like a library than your run of the mill
doctor’s
office. Four wooden bookshelves were completely filled with books, and in the center of the room a cherry wood desk faced two large, comfortable looking leather chairs. There was even a natural gas fireplace to the
right of the desk.
Taking a seat in one of the overstuffed chairs, she sighed contentedly and tried to brush away the sudden, nagging feeling that she was somehow betraying Brett.
Sitting down in the chair to her left, Granger smiled at her and patted her hand reassuringly.
Several minutes later a tall, almost painfully thin white man came walking in, and the first thing Cassandra noticed was how startling the man's dark eyes were in contrast to his fair skin and light hair. He reminded Cassandra of Ichabod Crane, and the bright way in which he smiled at them made him look younger than she had first thought.
“
Mr.
and Mrs. Mortensen, I'm Doctor Zachrick. I'm glad to see you've made yourselves comfortable.”
Rising to his feet, Granger shook the man's hand. “Pleasure. I'm Granger, and this is my wife, Cassandra.”
Turning to her, the doctor clasped her hand in his two thin ones. “Nice to meet you, Cassandra, I'm looking forward to trying to help you.”
“Thank you.” she replied.
“Doctor, I noticed your degrees on the wall.
But I thought you practiced overseas?”
Chuckling, he replied, “That I do. This here is my home away from home, I have more than one, matter of fact. This facility, and the one I maintain in Montreal, are ran by a very competent protégé' of mine.” Releasing her hand, he took his seat behind the large desk.
Cassandra liked him immediately. His warm, open smile, gave her a sense of comfort unlike any other doctor she had ever been treated by, including Brett Parker, and the thought filled her with vague feelings of guilt yet again.
Opening a desk drawer, the doctor withdrew the medical file on her that Brett Parker had reluctantly sent to him. Opening it, he read for a moment, then picked up the chart his own nurse had filled out, studied it for a moment, then leaned back and looked at the couple with a puzzled expression on his kind features. From what his own nurse had noted in the examination room, Cassandra had stated Dr. Parker had had her on some type of medication, but there was no mention of it in the records he sent. He wasn't very surprised however. When he had spoken to the man on the phone, requesting that Cassandra's medical records be sent to him, the man had came off as rude, paranoid, belligerent, and condescending.
“Doctor, do you really think you can help restore her memory?”
Granger asked in a hopeful voice.
Tired from his long flight, he let out a
long,
audible breath, then leaned forward and rested
both forearms on the desk. “Mr. Mortensen, Granger, I’m not
embarrassed
to say I've enjoyed an extremely high success rate in that endeavor. However, you must understand up front that the process doesn't, or won't, happen overnight. There are many tests we have to run first, only then can we plan a course of treatment. This isn't like treating a dozen different people who all have the flu. In cases such as that, each individual will almost always be given the identical treatment. But we're talking about the human mind here, and every individual is different.”
“I understand.” he replied.
Turning to face Cassandra, the he continued. “I'd like to admit you to the Dominion Behavioral Hospital, it's about six hours from here. There you would undergo several physical exams over the course of a week, and after that, we begin the recovery process.”
An unreasonable panic suddenly welling up within her, she shook her head back and forth vigorously. Although she didn't understand her own sudden apprehension at the thought of being in a psychiatric hospital, she knew there was no way she was going. “No, I can't, I won't go to a place like that.”
“Cassandra, the doctor knows best, it's his specialty. If this is the only way you can recover your memory, honey, I'd suggest you follow his advice.” Granger said as his blue eyes bored into hers.
Crossing her arms under her full breasts, she shook her head in a stubborn, childlike manner, showing no signs of relenting. “No way. Doctor, either you treat me outpatient, or not at all. Brett never felt the need to hospitalize me.”
Snorting derisively, Granger glared at her in spite of his best efforts not to, then turned and faced the doctor. “Do you want to know what Brett Parker's treatment…I refuse to call him doctor…do you know what his treatment has accomplished in the last three years? Jack shit, that's what. But for some reason, known only to her and God, she seems to think he's some kind of miracle worker.” he finished as he turned to glare at his stubborn wife again.
Clearing his throat tactfully in order to head off an argument between the two, Doctor Zachrich looked at her and replied, “Alright, if that would make you more comfortable, fine, we could see how an outpatient approach works. But it would at least require daily visits.”
Calming down somewhat, she considered the proposal for a moment, then replied, “Ok, but I can only come in once a day, late in the afternoons. I work at an orphanage, and my classes are all in the morning.”
Biting his lip to keep from speaking and making things worse, Granger drummed his fingers on his leg instead. He was growing impatient with her, she seemed to fight him, and everyone else but Brett Parker, at every turn.
As an expert in human behavior, Doctor Zachrich could easily see Granger was upset, and quickly steered the conversation in another direction. “Cassandra, I'm going to have the nurse take you down for an MRI right now, and we'll see about getting you checked in here. Outpatient, of course.”
“Alright.” she replied, obviously relieved that there had been no confrontation with her husband.
Punching a button on his intercom, the doctor summoned the nurse, then looked at Granger. “Mr. Mortensen, would you remain here for a few moments, please? There's some additional information I'll be needing.”
“Anything you need.” he replied, just as the nurse stepped inside.
“Mrs. Mortensen, this way please.” the nurse gestured with one hand and smiled.
“Nurse, would you please close the door behind you when you leave?” the doctor asked.
“Yes doctor.” she replied, and a moment later, both her and Cassandra were gone.
Walking around the desk, the doctor sat down beside Granger, in the same chair Cassandra had occupied only moments earlier. Looking him square in the eye, he spoke in a low, confidential tone. “Listen, that additional information I said I needed was just a ruse. May I speak freely?”
“Sure, say whatever’s your mind, doc.”
“This is just between you and I, agreed?”
“You have my word.” Granger replied.
“Alright. To be completely honest, some of my colleagues would consider this highly unprofessional. Mr. Mortensen, police men and women aren't the only professional community who can and will close ranks to protect one of their own. Believe me, the medical community does it as well. Most of the time, anyway. But there are exceptions to every rule.”
“You're...you're referring to Brett Parker, aren't you?” he asked with wonder, hope beginning to surge within him.
“Well, after examining the records he sent me, he had no choice to send them, by the way, it's required by law, I strongly feel that the methods he used to treat you wife were not only incompetent, but criminally negligent. And another thing struck me as odd too, before taking on your wife as a patient, doctor Parker was very highly regarded in his particular field. Still is, by the way. I called in a few favors and did some discreet checking, and all of his other current patients are actually doing pretty well. Everyone but your wife.”
“So you're suggesting....” Granger stammered, his voice trailing off, then rose to his feet and began pacing. “I knew, I knew it,
I KNEW it.
” he muttered angrily. “The bastard doesn't
WANT
her to get better.”
“Well, it certainly appears that way. He ran no neurological tests to assess the possibility or extent of brain injury, and it seems that for the entire three years he did absolutely nothing that would help her recover her memory. Oh, he did a fine job pencil-whipping it, but I'm the foremost expert in this particular field, and none of what he did could have helped her in the slightest. And he's smart enough, educated enough, to know that himself. And there's the matter of this mystery medication he had your wife on, none of that was annotated in her records. I understand that any day now the test results on the medication he gave her will come back, your aide, Malcolm, told me that. I'll be weaning her off of it, but gradually. Taking a patient off any type of medication cold turkey can be dangerous at times, especially if we don't know the chemical compounds.”
Stopping in his tracks for a moment, Granger looked at him gravely. “I don't trust the man myself, never have, never will. I know in my gut that he somehow played a role in her disappearance. He didn't even report her attack to the police, and went out of his way to hide it. I believe he's always wanted to have more than just a professional relationship with my wife.”
Doctor
Zackrich's
lips thinned with anger. “If that's true, then that alone puts him on my shit list. But listen Mr. Mortensen, in order for the treatment to be effective, I'll have to ask that you do your best to support your wife in any way you can, and for the short term, that means including reigning in your negative comments about Doctor Parker. She obviously still trusts him, and we'll have to earn her trust ourselves, in time.”
“Well, if you're sure about this.” he replied doubtfully.
“You have to understand, for three years he's more or less controlled her life, even her very thoughts, about who she is, or was. She depends on him. It seems to me she's developed a co-dependency on him, I've seen it happen before. He's the doctor, and she honestly believes he has her best interests at heart. She more than likely also feels he's been sheltering her from whoever attacked her. Don't forget, after the attack took place, when she awoke from unconsciousness, his face was the first she saw. He was there to comfort her when she was at perhaps her most vulnerable point in life. I know you don't like hearing this, no one in your position would, but believe me, it's going to take some time, and substantial proof, for her to be convinced he's never had her best interests at heart.”
Grinding his teeth at the mere thought of what could have been going on between Cassandra and Brett, he muttered, “Bastard!”
“Granger, can you tell me a little more about your past? With your wife, I mean?” he asked in a soothing voice.
Returning to his seat, Granger sighed and began telling him everything he wanted to know.
*********************************************************
“Chief, the package you requested to be sent to the inn arrived. I put it in your room, would you like to go there before we take Mrs. Mortensen to her apartment?” Malcolm asked over his shoulder from the front passenger seat.
“Yes, that's fine.” Granger replied, then turned to face his wife. “Listen, there's a wonderful restaurant at the Flagstone Inn and Resort, would you like to have lunch there?”
Cassandra had heard about the restaurant, named The Magnolia, The Flagstone Inn had been featured in 'Southern Living' magazine, and several television cooking shows had been taped there. She and Cynne' had discussed going for there this year for a special Christmas dinner, so naturally she was excited, and couldn't wait to tell Cynne' what the place was like. Her excitement subsided a bit when she glanced down and was reminded of what she was wearing, she was hardly dressed for such an upscale restaurant.