Simpatico's Gift

by Frank Martorana

  “Thanks, Elizabeth. I’ll meet you over there after I help with Hubris. I’ll give you all the details then.”

  Elizabeth’s use of the word “suffering” was like a fist reaching into his chest and clinching his heart.

  To no one, he said, “If one hair on Hubris is damaged, I will personally rip that bastard’s lungs . . .” but cut himself off. As he stared back at their table, his blood was replaced by ice water. Figurante was gone.

  The waiter made a decisive effort to take the phone, but Kent wrestled it back, and dialed VinChaRo’s barn number.

  “Aubrey, how is Hubris?”

  “Bad. He’s down now. Peter says he’s in shock. His heart is absolutely pounding out of his chest.”

  Kent heard her start to cry.

  “Aubrey, hold on. Peter will bring him around.” He wanted to say more. He longed to hold her and console her. Instead he said, “Tell Peter that the poison is probably an intentional overdose of Ventipulmin.”

  “You think Maria O.D.’ed Hubris with Ventipulmin? No way!”

  “She may have.”

  “On purpose?”

  “The symptoms would fit.”

  “Could that do it? I mean, is that stuff strong enough to kill a horse?”

  “Yeah, it could. Too much affects the heart. It causes arrhythmias. Just because there’s a jar or two of the stuff around most horse barns, doesn’t mean it’s not a potent drug.”

  “God, I’ve been giving Ventipulmin to coughing horses for years. I never thought much of it. I just figured it was the veterinary version of Sudafed. I had no idea it could be poisonous. How much would it take?”

  “I’m not sure right off hand.”

  “Would one canister be enough?”

  “Probably. You think he’d eat that much?”

  “With a little grain he would. The guy is a bottomless pit. Eats like a steam shovel.”

  “All right. Tell Peter. I’ll be there in a little while.”

  When he was sure everyone was marshaled in the right direction, Kent apologized to the waiter and headed for VinChaRo. His brain whirled with morbid images of what he would find there.

  CHAPTER 38

  Kent’s mobile unit went up on two wheels when he power turned through VinChaRo’s main gate. He knew this was the most important call of his career. If Hubris died, the last of their truly great stallions would be gone. He tore up the drive, then skidded to a stop at the stallion barn. Peter’s truck was already backed up as close to the barn as possible. Several of its doors were open, drawers were pulled out, and work lights were on.

  Kent pulled his grip out of his unit. He knew Peter would already have everything they’d need inside, but there was that certain security all doctors feel in having their own grip.

  The stallion barn lights were on full. The alleyway in front of Hubris’ stall was littered with medical debris. Sterile wrappers from catheters and syringes were strewn about, while a green oxygen cylinder stood braced against the wall like a sentinel. A hose from it snaked through the door into the stall. Kent heard Peter shouting orders with military terseness. Deep grunts resonated up Hubris’s enormous trachea.

  “Hold his head still,” Peter yelled.

  “We are trying, Doctor Murphy!” came Osvaldo’s voice. “Estamos haciendo lo mejor que podemas.”

  Kent rounded the corner into the stall just in time to see Osvaldo and Barry fly across it, catapulted from their position at Hubris’s head. Aubrey was still hanging on, but barely.

  Peter straddled the thin of Hubris’s neck and held his right hand high, clutching a syringe of sedative, attempting to maintain sterility as the stallion convulsed under him.

  “Is that pentobarbital?” Kent asked, as he crouched to help.

  “Yes, but he won’t hold still long enough for me to hit a vein.”

  As if for emphasis, Hubris thrashed violently. He struck with both front feet in vicious clawing arcs that would crush any part of a human they contacted. Peter forced all of his weight onto the massive head pressing it to the floor, but again it rose like a monster from the sea of straw.

  “Give that to me and hold on as best you can,” Kent said. “Osvaldo, you and Barry get a hold, too.”

  He wanted to tell Aubrey to stay back where it was safe, but he knew it would be wasted breath. Her eyes flashed, her jaw was set, as she ducked and dodged Hubris’s flailing limbs, each time diving back in, trying for a better hold.

  “Jesus, Aubrey. Watch those feet!”

  Among the entanglement of humans and horse, Kent saw a ropey jugular vein. He plunged the needle in, drew back the telltale blood, and forced the sedative in. He flipped the empty syringe into the alleyway and joined the others in restraining their patient.

  One sweep of pentobarbital through Hubris’s brain quenched the cataclysmic electrical impulses, and the big horse began a descent into flaccid exhaustion.

  Kent eased his grip slowly, cautiously. “Get the trach tube in first so we can get oxygen going.” He wrenched the giant head around to allow better visualization of the horse’s mouth and throat.

  Peter grasped Hubris’s meaty tongue in one hand, slid the latex pipe into his airway with the other, then attached the oxygen. Next, they clipped and scrubbed the skin over his jugular, inserted a catheter, and suspended a plastic bag filled with close to a gallon of lactated Ringer’s solution.

  Kent lifted the horse’s lip. “His membranes are blue and his heart is pounding through his chest wall. We need to send an EKG.”

  Barry scrambled for the truck. “I’ll get the transmitter.”

  “I’ll get a phone line in here,” Aubrey said.

  In less than five minutes, Barry was back with the EKG transmitter and Aubrey had jerry-rigged a line from the phone in the alleyway. Peter attached the transmitter’s electrodes to Hubris, and sent an EKG to the cardiology center. In even less time a specialist was back on the line.

  Peter took it, and repeated the cardiologist’s words for Kent to hear.

  “He’s in V-tach. Okay. Yes, we’ve got an i.v. line in. Yep, and oxygen. Probably a beta-agonist overdose — Ventipulmin. We don’t know the exact amount. Orally. I’d guess about two hours ago. Uh-huh. Right, he’s under with pentobarb now. He convulsed. Oh, he probably goes right around eleven hundred pounds. Yeah, I’ve got it. A slow i.v. bolus of Propranolol. Fifty milligrams.”

  Peter glanced at Kent to be sure he understood.

  Kent nodded. “I’ll get it.”

  Aubrey followed him to the truck. “What is V-tach?”

  “It’s short for ventricular tachycardia, a mess up of the heart’s electrical system so the chambers beat out of synch — the ventricles flutter. Any kind of overstimulation can cause it.”

  “Like Ventipulmin.”

  “Yes. In V-tach, the heart beats really fast, but it doesn’t pump very efficiently.”

  Aubrey did not have to ask what happened then.

  For the next hour, the crew lavaged Hubris’s stomach with huge volumes of water pumped in and out using a stomach tube the size of a garden hose and stainless steel pails. They filled him with a repulsive black paste of activated charcoal. Intermittently, Peter would call for a brief pause in the nursing to transmit another EKG.

  Except for words related to the immediate task at hand, no one spoke. Mostly, they watched impatiently for signs of improvement — and worried.

  When they had done all they could do, they waited. Then they sat, backs braced against the stall wall, knees hunched up, clinging to mugs of coffee, hypnotized by the drip of the i.v. and the monotony of Hubris’s breathing.

  Kent quietly reached over and took Aubrey’s hand and moved it to rest on his knee. She rolled her head to face him with a tired, grateful smile. In the stillness of the stall, even such a tiny gesture caused the others to glance toward t
hem. It was rare for Kent to openly display his affection for Aubrey. The exposure of emotions felt wonderfully satisfying and strangely just.

  Aubrey leaned her head onto his shoulder and closed her eyes.

  Peter said, “You know, there’s nothing here we need you guys for. Barry, Osvaldo, and I can handle it.”

  Barry and Osvaldo nodded agreement.

  “Why don’t the two of you get out of here?” Peter continued. “Go check on Maria or something. We’re all anxious to know how she’s doing.”

  It was what Kent wanted to hear. “We’ll call you from the hospital,” he said, as he got to his feet. “Good luck, you guys. You did great.” He stepped over to Hubris and gave the horse a slow gentle pat. He felt a wave of emotion rise in his chest that he knew he couldn’t handle right then. Swallowing hard, he took Aubrey’s hand and led her out of the barn.

  When they were alone in the mobile unit, Aubrey asked, “What are his chances?”

  “We’ve done all we can.”

  “How did you know Hubris was sick? And Maria? You knew something was going on with her, too.”

  Kent kept his eyes on the road. A light rain had begun to fall.

  “Okay, here’s all I know,” he said. “Elizabeth asked me to stand in for her in a meeting with Figurante. He and I were at The Red Horse when I got a call. I could barely make out the voice. But I finally figured out it was Maria. She said she’d just poisoned Hubris.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She said she poisoned Hubris, that she was sorry, and that she wanted to die. Then she hung up. That’s when I called you. You pretty much know everything from there.”

  “Why, Kent? Why would she poison Hubris?”

  “I have no idea. And now, it looks like she’s tried to kill herself.”

  “Where’s Figurante now?” Aubrey asked.

  A ball of panic expanded in Kent’s chest, cutting short his breath.

  CHAPTER 39

  The visitors’ lounge at Community General had that eerie, late-night quiet, in spite of its bright ceiling lights, cheery murals, and fresh flowers.

  Emily was stretched out on a faux-leather couch with her head in Elizabeth’s lap. Elizabeth gently stroked the girl’s hair. Maria was in ICU, the doctors and nurses were doing all they could. There was nothing more to do. Now, the excruciating wait.

  “I hate this place,” Emily said.

  “They help a lot of people here.”

  “I’ve been in here a zillion times, and they haven’t helped me.”

  “They’re trying.”

  “It’ll be too late.”

  A long pause.

  “My mom’s pretty, don’t you think?” Emily said softly. “At least she was when she was my age.”

  The abrupt change of subject caught Elizabeth off guard. “She was the princess of the high school.”

  “Doc is a handsome man, too, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Uh-huh. Where are you going with this?”

  “Then how come I’m not pretty?”

  “You are pretty.”

  “What about my legs?”

  Elizabeth sighed. Emily was too bright to accept condescending fluff about beauty being in the eyes of the beholder.

  “I don’t think anyone knows for sure why your legs are the way they are. I do know that your parents were very, very worried for you, and they tried everything they could to get an answer. No one has one.”

  “So they just let me grow up?”

  “Right. With lots of love and attention. Then, when they, and all the rest of us, realized what an especially good mind you have, they just sort of forgot about the rest.”

  “I wish I was like Maria and Aubrey. They’re beautiful.”

  Elizabeth wrinkled her brow into an insulted look. “What am I, chopped liver?”

  It made Emily laugh. “You, too. You know what I mean.”

  Elizabeth was relieved when Emily did not continue the conversation. Soon after, she heard the girl’s soft, regular breathing.

  When Figurante sneaked down the hall at Community General and peeked into the visitors’ lounge, he saw Elizabeth’s head slumped forward, and her chest rising and falling rhythmically. He tiptoed down the hall to the ICU.

  A window in room 326, Maria’s room, allowed observation from the hall. Figurante stared through the eight-foot long pane of glass like a father looking for his new baby. On the left, three beds were arranged perpendicular to the wall, each surrounded by a myriad of medical gadgetry. All he could see were the knees and feet of each patient under light cotton blankets. Their bodies and heads were hidden from view by pale yellow curtains attached to a ceiling track. All three beds were occupied and each had a makeshift label on the footboard — a white swatch of medical tape with block letters of permanent marker. The middle one read, M. CASTILLE.

  On the right side of the room was a nurses’ station that had so many monitoring screens and other electronic devices that it looked more like a television control room than a medical facility. Among the instrumentation sat a lone nurse dutifully recording data onto clipboards. Eventually, she looked up, her young face registering momentary shock at the sight of a man peering at her through a window. Then, she smiled amiably when Figurante smiled at her.

  Figurante was contemplating how to bypass the woman when she set aside her clipboard, rose, and exited the ICU. As she passed him, she nodded a simple hello. He took a few steps as if he was headed in the opposite direction — just another bored person whiling away the nighttime vigil of a family member. Over his shoulder, his gaze followed the sway of the nurse’s hips as she proceeded down the hall, no doubt to the restroom.

  He saluted her with a triumphant flip of his cane. What luck. No female could be expected to emerge from a restroom in less than five minutes, and now the ICU was unattended. How the sparks would fly if her supervisor were to get wind of this breach of protocol.

  He eased open the heavy door and slid into the forbidding world of beeping, humming, hissing machines. Electrical smells mixed with the odor of medicines and sickness.

  Three steps and he was concealed behind the curtain next to Maria. She looked so pale! The nest of pillows around her head contrasted repulsively with the blackness of her hair, which framed her face like a disheveled wig. Figurante reveled in her vulnerability. He wished there was a respirator to simply switch off or unplug. That would make it easy. Even a person on the brink of death resists the final nudge. It must be subtle and quick — and it must be undetectable.

  His eyes fixed on a large plastic suction syringe taped on the wall. He peeled it down and pulled back the plunger, drawing in a full volume of air. He pulled apart the i.v. tube from a bag of fluids that trickled into Maria, and attached the syringe to the line. Without the least hesitation, he began to push in air.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” came a loud voice from behind him.

  Figurante whirled around, startled. The syringe dislodged from the tubing.

  It was that awkward little girl he remembered from the breeding shed at VinChaRo. Her glance darted from him, to the syringe, to Maria, and back to him.

  He returned to his task, struggling to reconnect the syringe, but excitement made his hands clumsy.

  “Get away from her!” Emily screamed, lunging at the man she hated. One sweep of Figurante’s cane sent her sliding across the tile floor.

  Elizabeth, who had been lagging behind, suddenly approached, alerted by the commotion. “Hector? What are you . . .”

  “He’s trying to kill Maria!” Emily yelled from the floor. “See that syringe? He had it hooked to Maria’s tube.”

  Figurante’s mind was locked on one purpose. He made no effort to explain himself, but continued to fill the tube with a lethal bolus of air.

  Elizabeth grabbed at the syringe. It rattled to the floor. F
igurante cursed, swung his cane again, and Elizabeth grunted, then fell onto her knees.

  As Emily struggled to her feet, she searched the room for a weapon, snatched a mushroom-shaped electrode paddle from a defibrillator, and swung it with all of her strength. It made a dull thud as it hit the bone above Figurante’s right ear, and sent him crashing to the floor. He lay there momentarily, quaking. Then he regained consciousness and rolled onto his back. In a perfect rage, he aimed the muzzle of his cane gun at Emily, and squeezed the trigger.

  The shock of impact forced the air from Emily’s lungs in a choking cough. Instinctively, she raised both hands to the wound in her abdomen and felt warm fluid flowing over her fingers. She pivoted slowly and sank next to Elizabeth. Her eyes, wide with disbelief, begged for an explanation of what just happened, but Elizabeth could only stare back, horrified.

  Neither Elizabeth nor Figurante moved. Finally, as blood loss darkened Emily’s brain, she melted gently into Elizabeth’s arms, and the matriarch released a guttural scream.

  CHAPTER 40

  Kent and Aubrey were going up the elevator at Community General, deep in conversation about Maria and Hubris. They never heard the explosion from Figurante’s gun. Nor did they realize that he managed to stumble into the adjacent elevator and pass within a few feet of them on his way down. When the doors slid open on the ICU floor, they were startled by the commotion.

  They stayed close to the wall, out of the rush of medical personnel and equipment flowing down the corridor.

  Kent hooked the arm of a nurse as she brushed by and waved at the chaos. “What’s going on?”

  Her face was flushed with excitement, she made no attempt to maintain hospital decorum. “We just had a shooting! It’s crazy.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. A girl just got shot right here on this floor!”

  Aubrey’s hand came up to her mouth. Through her fingertips, she half asked and half prayed, “Not Maria Castille?”

  The nurse shook her head. “No, it wasn’t her, but it happened in her room.” Instantly Kent’s grip went slack, and the nurse disappeared back into the flow. Kent broke into a dead run, cutting and swerving through the procession, following it to its destination, ICU room 326.