by Barbara Ebel
“I just came from doing an after-hours catch-up but, before I left, Varg Dagmar called my cell. One of the realtors in his office has a written offer on our old house. It’s fine and I’m taking it.”
Danny sat on the table in front of her. “Fantastic. One less thing.” He searched her eyes and put her hand in his. “It’s kind of sad, too.”
“I know,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “But life marches on whether we like it or not.”
While slowly nodding his head, Danny held her with a firmer grip. He looked serious. “Are you sure you won’t marry me again?”
“Incontrovertibly.”
“At least you’re smiling and not annoyed I gave it another shot.”
“There’s a limit, you know, but you haven’t reached it yet.” She got up and he headed around the coffee table to leave. “I’ll stop and sign the papers on the way home.”
“I’m waiting for Casey to call me back about something. Another possible event might have occurred this afternoon incriminating that energy drink. I’ll see you at home.”
After seeing his last patient, Danny took Casey’s second call. “What’d you find out?”
“Sure enough. You and I never saw Garret here because Katarina says he mostly came in the morning. Been a member a long time. His account statements show he’s been a long-time chronic user of Blue Bridge. A faithful customer in the gym but also buying it by the 12-pack and taking them home.
-----
Rachel’s attorney, Phil Beckett, waited at the top of the courthouse steps hoping the light rain would stop. Knoxville’s weather could be as unpredictable as a jury, he thought, as his cell phone rang and he grabbed it from his pocket.
“Beckett here,” he said.
“Hi, Phil. This is Kirk Thompson, the prosecuting attorney on the Leo Ramsey case. We’ve never met but I wanted to thank you for perhaps encouraging your client, Rachel Hendersen, to testify at trial. Not that she had much choice.”
“Glad to be of service.”
“Although it’ll be in the papers by tonight, we just wrapped up Leo Ramsey’s manslaughter trial. He was found guilty. It’s a moot point as far as his jail term, but I had also added child abuse to his record.”
“Congratulations on winning a big case.”
“Thanks. My next cases will be a smaller and take me out of the limelight. Anyway, since I wanted to give you a courtesy call, you might as well also know I’ll be sending you a letter about your client.”
“Oh?” The rain had intensified and Phil stepped further back from the blowing drops.
“The state is going to prosecute her for failure to report her baby’s physical abuse. At the least, it will be a misdemeanor. It’s clear Hendersen knew it was going on and yet she failed to provide a minimum standard of care … child neglect. You get the picture.”
Phil took a deep breath, ready to respond, but the quick-talking New Yorker continued.
“But this will be a new one for me. Her taking a payoff to keep quiet about her own daughter’s abuse.”
“I’m sure those stories are blown up out of proportion.”
“Maybe so. But we’ll let a grand jury decide. You know, I hate the dirt bags we put away, their hands filthy from the physical rapes or murders they’ve committed but I despise even more the ones like your client.
Chapter 31
It smelled like stale pizza. Varg rented out the building a few doors down and its last business tenant was a small Italian restaurant; its clay ovens were still in the kitchen, its take-out boxes still stacked on a shelf. Rachel and Varg brought in cheap card tables, increased the staff, and kept them part-time so they didn’t ramp up benefit packages. They had two shifts a day: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and then 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Now Blue Bridge deliveries from Atlanta went straight to ‘the pizza place’ for repackaging, postage and handling.
Rarely did Rachel have to package the drink anymore. The days she didn’t work in the OR, she handled the phones, paperwork, advertising and business problems at Max-Point Realtors. Varg had his hands on every aspect of the drink.
As the Blue Bridge invoices piled up each week like dead leaves in autumn, Varg and Rachel’s revenue swelled like windfall inheritances. Their bookkeeper, Trent, asked for additional hours to keep up with it all.
Rachel’s busiest time at the office was Friday mornings. Having been absent for three days, she first eyed the books and financial aspect closer to make sure there was no hanky-panky while she’d been away.
Like being cross-eyed from too many hours on the computer, she finally got up from the desk to stretch her legs. When she moved the stiff green curtain with her hand and looked out the front window, she noticed the car seat in her Mazda and thought of Julia.
Since Rachel had embraced Varg’s business deal, she wasn’t seeing her daughter routinely. But her overall plan to get her daughter back full time was still intact, only delayed. She had no doubt she’d straighten it all out. And, more importantly, she was building a solid foundation, a desire into her daughter to want to be with her mother.
Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned and looked.
“Sorry I didn’t get here from the pizza place until now,” Varg said. He closed in fast and gently put his hand on her shoulder. “Friday is my favorite day. You arrive and make the place vibrant. My pulse flutters!”
The light flickered in the window, catching the spark in his eyes. “When we get back to my place tonight, will you stay over? You will miss me if you don’t,” Rachel said.
“Your place?” He ran a locket of her hair between his thumb and index finger. “Whatever the lady would like, she shall have. Within reason,” he replied, smiling.
Simultaneously, Rachel’s cell rang as well as the business phone. Varg swiftly picked up the landline and Rachel stepped into the lobby, extra product boxes still stacked along the wall.
Rachel’s caller ID showed her attorney. “Hello, Phil. To what do I owe the pleasure since I’m caught up with all your bills?”
“Have you looked at your mail yet today?”
“No,” she said, emphasizing it like a song. “I’m at one of my jobs.”
“Unfortunately, I had an idea Leo Ramsey’s prosecuting attorney would be sending you something, but I couldn’t comment on it until I saw it myself. I received it today.”
“Is a celebration in order? He’s advising me of the trial’s verdict, isn’t he?”
“That’s the good news. He’s …”
“Guilty! I knew it. I figured he had it in him to be doing malicious things to women. He spiked one too many drinks by hitting on the mayor’s daughter. You’ve made my day, Phil, even if you send me a bill for telling me this.”
“Your verdict assumption is correct, Rachel,” he said but then left a pregnant pause.
Rachel glanced at the phone to check on the connection … and then Phil continued. “But you won’t be happy with the paperwork which reads, ‘The State of Tennessee vs. Rachel Hendersen.’”
When the words sank in, her nerves tingled from anxiety so quickly that she thought she was going to wet herself. Was that attorney crazy? She hadn’t been an accomplice to what Leo had done and she never killed anyone in any manner whatsoever - directly or indirectly - like he had. She gasped into the phone.
“Sorry, Rachel, you’ll have to read it. Then we’ll talk about what we’re going to do about it. It looks like the state is going to use your case to make a point about turning one’s head away from child abuse. Your case is more serious because you also blackmailed him for your silence.”
It was as if someone had given her the last blow to finalize the knockout. Out of nowhere, she thought of an unladylike saying she’d never used before and, barely audible, murmured it into the phone. “You have to be shitting me.”
When the call ended, Rachel stumbled back into the office. Varg finished logging in an order and glanced her way. “Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen an apparition.”
“O
h, yes … sure.” She ignored another call coming in.
“That ringing doesn’t help the pressure in my skull,” Varg said. “I’ve always wondered what people meant by having a ‘headache.’” He clasped a hand to the left side of his head and furrowed his brow.
Rachel wasn’t listening as she reluctantly answered the phone.
-----
Danny stood at the front desk of the OR staring at the clock. His first case delayed, he was annoyed that his in-house patient hadn’t been transported downstairs on time because staff was stretched too thin. He tapped the counter absent-mindedly with his fingers. Cutbacks, he thought. No business was spared these days.
Emerging from an OR down the hall, Matthew Jacob untied his face mask and let it dangle into a garbage can. He approached Danny. “What a night. You might want to hear all of this.”
“Sorry to see you,” Danny said. “Tell me.”
Matthew’s skinny frame veered off inside the doctor’s lounge door, waving his colleague to follow. “One of Jeffrey’s patients - one he showed us arteriograms on like the patients you’ve been following - came in after a major stroke … DOA.”
The ‘dead on arrival’ acronym for another collateral circulation patient was the last thing Danny wanted to hear after Garret Archer’s recent mortality.
Matthew freed his hair out of the flimsy OR bonnet and quenched his thirst at the water fountain. “I’ve been in surgery but I heard there’s a patient in the ER named Rob King. One of yours.”
Danny grimaced. “Thanks. My scheduled patient’s not here yet so I’ll run downstairs.”
Although a sleepy mood hung over the ER, it seemed like it was the lull between horse races. A bloody-sheeted stretcher was parked in the trauma room and disheveled towels were strewn in the corner. From two side rooms, Danny heard beeps and someone’s raspy cough sounded all the way to the desk. Looking at the big board on the wall, he found Rob King’s name.
“Danny!” Hunched over a chart, Penny Banks stared up at him - an easy thing for her to do since she had a rounded back. Being only middle-aged, Danny worried about that; her thoracic spine would probably get more hunched as she aged.
“Hi, Penny. I suppose you know about Garret Archer.”
“Yes.” She nodded her head more than once. “Isn’t life fickle? I shudder we’ll have these kind of fates someday like our patients.”
“I’ve become more religious after a personal experience with a weather phenomenon, Penny, so I’ll say a prayer you don’t.” He laughed softly. “You’ll be fine.”
“You are so sweet. I can use all the prayers I can get.”
“I heard Rob King is here.”
“Bad stroke, Danny. Do you know him?”
“He had an acute subdural hematoma after a car accident. I did his surgery. And then I had to go in again as he continued bleeding. But, besides that, I know him personally from my gym because he’s my trainer. He’s one of the patients I’m tracking for an abnormal, increased brain circulation. He has phenomenal coordination and other skills which are secondary to this collateral circulation.”
Penny looked at Danny with a blank expression. “Have you heard about Blue Bridge, the energy drink?” he asked.
“Ohhh,” she said, trying to sit as tall as possible. “Yes, I have. Not only from the talk in the medical community, but from the media exposure as well. It’s too bad your name got plugged in with such a commercial product.”
She put a pen on the page she had open, closed the chart, and got up. “This can wait. Come on and look at these before you see him. Mr. King doesn’t have great circulation anymore.”
Moving to a private room behind the desk, Penny gestured towards Rob’s angiogram and CT.
Danny thumbed through the big folder for his older films, the ones he had gotten months ago after Rob’s surgeries. He placed them side by side with the others for comparison.
Both physicians studied quietly. “Sometimes pictures are worth a thousand words,” Danny remarked softly as Penny shifted to face him.
“Look here.” He pointed and said, “I’ll put this into perspective. We found these over active middle cerebral artery branches only because of the car accident and hematoma. I had to go back in and re-drain because of a vasculature that wouldn’t clot properly; there was so much of it. I was suspicious that such a blood supply could warrant problems and, when he kept bleeding, it made me more leery of such a fantastic vasculature in a brain. And, of course, we know the importance of intracranial pressure and the dynamics between brain tissue and vasculature. Upsetting one will upset the other.”
Danny sighed and now pointed to the next film.
“Yet, since then, that overabundant vasculature of his parietal lobe seems to have not only stopped its growth spurt but it’s shriveling up like a dying rose.”
“Explaining his lack of oxygen to the area and the stroke he’s just had,” Penny remarked. “Are you aware that he’s been drinking Blue Bridge?”
“Yes, and I’ll call it an addiction. Come on, let me go see him.”
“Brace yourself, Danny. Unfortunately, he never got to treatment soon enough. Not within three hours for tissue plasminogen activator and way too late for endovascular treatment. I’ll be admitting him and making sure everything appropriate gets done. At this point, I’m not sure about his chance for survival.”
Walking into the ER room, Danny vowed to keep the objectivity of a physician. He was glad he did because he felt emotional right away, forcing himself to push away his sentiments until later.
Rob seemed to recognize Danny but he wasn’t sure as the man’s long face and pointed nose looked like they had been rearranged; his facial anatomy seemed asymmetrical. And Danny grappled with the difference in his posture; his broad neck and sloping shoulders seemed to have aged.
Danny could barely stay any longer than needed. After further discussion with Dr. Banks outside the room, he left when the buzz in the ER started to pick up. He entered the damp stairwell; usually he felt vibrant walking up the hospital stairs but now his bones ached as he reached the second floor.
He thought of his father, Greg, who had stroked near the end. There wasn’t a day that went by that Danny didn’t think of him or his mother. He remembered his dad’s fondness for sayings and quotes and smiled. When he was a boy, sometimes he had no clue as to what his father was talking about. “An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind,” he had once said.
For years, Danny wondered when humanity was going to lose its eyesight.
-----
Rachel felt like a week-old used washcloth by the time they got to her place; Varg fared not much better. Over seafood and salads, their appetites had been suboptimal as well as their conversation which was a series of short sentences … just reaffirmations of what the other had said.
As Rachel poured Varg a glass of wine without asking him, she continued to stew over the news Phil Beckett had presented to her that day. When she handed him the Chardonnay, he shook his head no.
Varg settled deeper into the couch and put his feet on the table. Her attention shifted. What a Nordic hunk he was with his outdoorsy weathered look, and black trousers and shirt. Perhaps what they both needed was good sex. The best answer to a bad day.
She slid her wine away from the edge of the table, moved her hips close, and then easily swung her left leg over him. Straddling him, she slowly came to his lips while his burly arms wrapped around her. That was it, what she needed. Their mouths melted together as their bodies tightened against each other. Rachel pushed back and felt for his belt while wondering why she didn’t feel a hardness beneath her.
Varg pulled his eyes away from her hands and looked directly at her. “It doesn’t seem to be a good time.” They stared in silence. She slipped off and slumped into the couch beside him.
“My head,” he said. “It’s not like me. Worse yet, this is a first.”
Chapter 32
Rachel opened her eyes in the darkened b
edroom but couldn’t see past Varg to check the alarm clock. His back faced her; his white undershirt clinging to his musculature and his ponytail spread out on the pillow. Perhaps getting a long night of sleep had helped them both. When he wakes up, she thought, maybe they can finish what they barely started last night.
Not disturbing him, she slipped out of bed and padded to the bathroom. When she came back she glanced at the time – not yet six a.m. Her side of the mattress was still warm as she nestled back on top, putting one hand comfortably under the pillow. With her right hand she softly felt Varg’s bicep and increasingly exerted more pressure, massaging the firmest part. She bridged the narrow space between them so she fit along his back, breathing into his neck, feeling the warmth of him.
“Varg?’ she whispered.
He didn’t respond and she wondered about the silence; he was an early riser so she knew he wouldn’t be upset with the attention she was giving him.
“Varg?” she said again. She eased him into a supine position but, he was still so she bolted upright.
“Wake up!” With more instinct than nursing skill, she checked for breathing and pressed his neck with her fingers for a pulse. His respirations had a lot to be desired so she jostled him several times.
Shit! she thought, and – hitting the floor – ran to dial 911.
After being assured of an ambulance, she made a quick decision to call Danny. Why not? Not only had Varg been his patient and realtor, but they went to the same gym. It may not be a neurosurgical problem but why take the chance that it wasn’t?
-----
Danny didn’t have a work-related reason to get up early so he grumbled when their phone rang; he hurried over to answer and saw Rachel’s number. However, he never got a chance to even say hello.
“An ambulance is on its way to my place,” she said, sounding unnerved. “It’s Varg. He’s not responsive. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Sure. I’m not on call but I’ll come to the ER.” They disconnected, he grabbed his pants draped on the dresser and slid them on. “Sara,” he said softly near her ear. “I’ll be at the hospital. Something’s come up.”
