Nothing Sacred (FBI Agent Dan Hammer Series Book 1)

by Douglas Wickard

  There was an on call room for the residents in the basement. Next to Central Supply. Nothing special. A cot made daily with clean linens, some old worn out pillows, but more importantly, another coffee pot. This particular model, though, was no Mr. Coffee. The hospital kept it filled with water and it sat sadly, on a hot plate. Since staff rarely got the opportunity to use the room, hospital administration felt they were saving money. Pastel-colored Easter baskets sat beside it, jammed with an assortment of herbal teas, instant coffee packets and synthetic creamers. Underneath, a knee-high refrigerator held sodas, juices and outdated yogurts. Magazines, playing cards, and a television, complete with a CD player furnished up-to-date extravagant entertainment. The only problem -- she couldn’t remember the last time in five years she had stayed in the room and actually watched a movie. Come to think of it, she couldn’t even remember the last movie she saw.

  What was it?

  Her favorite accommodation was the private bathroom furnished with a single stall, a lock and a shower. Strong, hot water, soap, and a toothbrush had raised her soul to higher levels of coherency quicker than eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

  Yes… sleep!

  Her preferred hiding place was on the second floor. In Radiology. Late at night, after being up for some twenty hours, give her that long, flat, black cold table. And darkness. In darkness, her mind went quiet. She had, on occasion, settled into one of the narrow wooden pews that lined the hospital chapel. But each time she had used it, somebody in the middle of the night would sneak into the small, quiet sanctuary for a silent vigil and wake her up. Her head would droop, her shoulders drop and she’d be sprawled out like a human map in full view of the crucified Jesus hanging above the miniature pulpit. Embarrassed, she’d clean the drool from the side of her mouth and cross herself before exiting. And, she wasn’t even Catholic! Listening to the tranquil sound of water falling from the fountain outside in the hallway may be high on her list for meditation, but for sleeping? No, thank you. She’d take X-ray.

  * * *

  It was late. She checked her watch. Almost eleven forty and quiet. For a change. Deadly quiet.

  A few hours earlier she’d assisted Dr. Stearns, the Senior Medical Resident on call in the ER, sew up a smartass, ten year old. Evidently, the brat had put his hand through a window, lacerating his left index finger. His mother gave that history. Luckily, the arterial blood supply wasn’t damaged enough for a skin graft. She was able to reattach the flap without surgery, but twenty four stitches later, the kid refused to cry. Not even a flinch. This boy was tough. She wouldn’t want to meet him in five years in a dark alley. While she was working on his finger, he kept staring at her with dazed, black eyes. In a creepy sort of way. She thought maybe he was on drugs or something. Or, maybe he’d never seen a female doctor before. But what bothered her the most, was after she’d completed the procedure, the kid’s mother; a trailer park trollop with a bad dye job and daisy ducks two sizes too small, grabbed the boys hand -- the one she’d just finished working on -- and pulled him out into the hallway. As he was leaving, he turned around and with that same strange look mouthed directly at her… nigger.

  Nigger!

  After everything she’d accomplished, competed against and succeeded in, won, some white trash trailer park brat could still hurt her by calling her the “n” word.

  She had gotten better. Before, she would have walked right out into that hallway and slapped his young white face, with or without the mother present. Now, she took it as a part of her oath. Everybody got sick. Everybody was entitled to treatment. Tonight, she was on call and had to take what they gave her. It was all a part of her job, her training. So, instead of slapping the little shit, she called him back into the examination room and gave him a painful tetanus shot.

  And, as she administered it, she gave him an enormous, ear to ear smile.

  She retreated from the ER, content with her revenge, and took the elevator back up to the fourth surgical floor. She would do quick rounds, go through some charts and chat with Brenda, one of her least favorite night nurses. She would grab another cup of coffee and quietly slip away to the second floor and Radiology. Sleep. She took the back stairway to consolidate time; after all, she needed exercise too. No sooner had she taken her first long sip of coffee and made it to the stairs, her beeper went off, her name reverberated over the loudspeaker.

  “Dr. Garrison…”

  She glanced again at her watch.

  Wasn’t it too late to be using the paging system?

  “Dr. Garrison to the Emergency Room. Dr. Garrison to the Emergency Room. STAT!”

  It was the “STAT” that concerned her. She knew Dr. Stearns was down there. Stearns was an excellent intern, an exemplary resident, and would make a terrific doctor. She’d taken notice of him when he went through his surgical rotation. So whatever was happening in the ER must be something over his head. There was a good team playing down there this evening. Beth, the head nurse, who’d assisted her with the kid, knew her shit. One of the best trauma nurses Sydia had ever worked with. If she ever woke up staring into the ceiling of a moving ambulance, Beth would be the nurse she’d want waiting for her. Not much on sentiment, in fact, Beth could be downright abrasive at times, but the lady knew what to do in a crisis. And, as everybody knew, the ER was full of minor crises and major emergencies.

  “Damn, you Beth.” She ran down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor. The intercom was calling a code. Somebody had stopped breathing. Somebody’s heart had just quit. Somebody was dying. The green tiles of the hallway went static. Electricity crackled as every available white coat headed in the direction of the ER. Whoever this player was had decided to expire. And, as a doctor, Sydia took that personally.

  As she approached the ER, Hawkins, a third year medical student pushed through the double doors. Short and stocky, he reminded Sydia of Danny DeVito. His white lab coat grazed the floor. Even in a state of emergency, she couldn’t help but be offended by his slovenliness.

  “You’re not going to believe this hit. I tried calling Davenport…”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Sydia interrupted him. Every resident knew that Dr. Davenport, the Chief of Medicine at MUSC never picked up a call from the ER. Never. Especially when he knew the surgical resident on call was...Sydia. “What is it?”

  “This one’s on her way to the OR. Or the box, whichever comes first.”

  She hated it when medical students talked flip like that.

  “She’s on support. I drew her labs. And a blood gas. Dr. Stearns wants her carbon load. I’ll be right back.” Stearns waddled away in the direction of the laboratory.

  Sydia noticed Housekeeping. Usually, she would wave a perfunctory “hello” to the team of African American and Latino workers who methodically cleaned the floors, the tables, straightened up magazines and emptied the trashcans. Now, they stood together, leaning on their brooms, their carts. Silent.

  She needed to accelerate. Pump up the volume. Get in there and take charge. And, yet another side of her wanted to stay outside. With Housekeeping. Be among them for once. Looking in. Let Dr. Stearns earn his stripes, take responsibility and bark out the orders. But, then again, he had paged her for a reason. Maybe this patient was on her way to the OR.

  She entered into familiar grounds and pushed past the ubiquitous smell of rubbing alcohol, room deodorizer, blood, and bleach. Beth motioned from one of the trauma rooms. She was in the process of taking an electrocardiogram. Sydia passed by another examining room. It was hard to believe a young girl was getting her throat swabbed for a culture right next door to a life or death emergency. An ER nurse patiently dabbed at the girl’s tonsils. Beth grabbed Sydia’s coat and pulled her into the room. The resuscitation team was in full dizzying motion. Under her breath, Beth said, “I don’t know about this one, Doc.” She rubbed her nose with the backside of her hand.

  Was this Beth?

  Hard-driving, aggressive Beth, holding back tears.

/>   “She must be all of twelve, if that.” Beth said.

  Stearns was at the front of the examination table yelling commands at the patient. “Stay with us. Come on, honey, you can do it. Stay with us. Another milligram of Epi, please!” Even in pressure, Stearns maintained politeness. Control. She had to hand it to him, she wasn’t sure if she could.

  The Respiratory therapist had inserted a tube down the girl’s throat. She was breathing, but only with the help of the respirator. Fluids were pushed through an IV line into her left arm at an increased rate. A blood pressure cuff was secured around a liter bag of Ringer’s lactate to help accelerate the liquids into her system. Technicians, nurses and interns, dressed in scrubs and white lab coats, hovered around her as if they were performing a séance. Sydia approached the table and, like Moses parting the Red Sea, everybody made room.

  She had never seen Beth so visibly shaken. She expected the worse. “How much Epi did you administer?” Her position as Senior Resident was never finished. Always questioning. Always training.

  “SDE.”

  Stearns wanted to impress her. “What is it, Stearns?”

  “She’s stabilizing. That’s what’s important.” Tension ignited in the room. “That’s not the reason I paged you.”

  He was right. Sydia backed off. She checked the heart monitor, listened for ventricular arrhythmias. She grabbed the lead from the electrocardiogram and started reading it through her fingers. “Blood pressure?”

  “Seventy over thirty, but coming back. Pulse is getting stronger, too.” Another junior intern piped in. He logged his findings into the patient’s chart. It appeared as if volumes had already been entered.

  Sydia removed the stained white sheet covering the girl’s lower body. The pillow elevating her legs was drenched with blood.

  Beth stood beside her. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” She removed the oversized ice pack from between the girl’s legs. “Not in all my years.” She covered her eyes.

  “Jesus Christ, Stearns, this girl needs blood, not just Ringer’s. Did you do a type and cross?”

  “Of course, I did. It’s with the rest of her labs. Should be back any second now, along with a blood gas.”

  “If we’re lucky, we’ll get it by tomorrow. Get some O negative units, just to keep her going? Now!” Her cynicism never ceased to amaze her. “Hello? Is there a doctor in the house? And what about some Dopamine?”

  “No.”

  “Do it,” she ordered. “We have to get some blood circulating to her heart. She’s in shock.”

  She re-examined the patient as Stearns broke an ampule of Dopamine, retracted it into a syringe and injected it piggyback into the patient’s IV line. Sydia began doing a meticulous head to toe evaluation of the girl. She checked for broken bones, dislocations, any deep or soft tissue injuries. “Has anybody contacted the cops? What we have here is definitely an assault victim.”

  “Who had time?” One of the nurses shouted back.

  Sydia gave a dismissive look. “Who found the girl? What about x-rays, particularly of the pelvic region?”

  Stearns shot Sydia a similar stare. Everybody was on overtime. Overtaxed and overworked. Patience was a luxury. Tempers flared and fanned.

  A decision needed to be made. So, Sydia made it. “Beth, call the OR. I want a room. And clean up this girl. Call Dr. Randall in, too. I want him doing anesthesia.”

  Beth turned away from the table. “Are you sure you want to call..?”

  “Just do it, Beth. Please.”

  Sydia’s personality shifted from first gear into fifth. Dr. Stearns probably wasn’t too happy with Sydia’s attitude, but, in the end, this little girl would be. At the front desk, Sydia called the OR and talked to the technician on duty. He would have a room ready. No hassle. No wait. What a surprise! Then again, it was midnight.

  As Sydia exited the Emergency Room, an older, intense looking man stood by the entranceway. He approached her, panic dancing in his eyes. “Is she goin’ to be okay? Is she alive?”

  This must be the man who transported the girl to the hospital. Sydia did an assessment. Her immediate perception of a person’s physical state greatly inspired her insight into their mental status. Or, as her mother had shared with her, secretly, late in the evening, serenaded by the rush and swell of the wind whipping through the dying Eucalyptus trees outside their hut, “Sydia, you’ve got the gift.”

  He appeared to be in his early sixties, slim build, six feet or so, and under severe stress. Increased blood pressure and heart rate, he seemed greatly agitated. As she was talking on the telephone to the technician in the Operating Room, she noticed him nervously pacing back and forth in the waiting room. Every so often, he would look out the window, lost in thought. He wore a large green scrub coat over his civilian clothes and, upon closer examination, Sydia realized the colorful plaid shirt he wore underneath was soaked with blood.

  June 15, 2007

  12:22 AM

  Friday

  4

  Tips.

  Every reporter’s dream. Or nightmare. Take Bob Woodward, for example, from The Washington Post. He got whispered tips on the Watergate story from a guy named Deep Throat. In a parking garage. It happened. And personally, Janice Porter was not opposed to having it happen to her. In fact, she felt tips had real merit. Especially when she was the proud recipient of them. Which was rare. You just never knew what might break. Did Woodward know that Deep Throat had national news involving the President of the United States?

  Jesus!

  Then again, this was Charleston. And everybody knew nothing ever happened in Charleston!

  The evening started out innocently enough. Janice was out with her girlfriend, actually not really her girlfriend. It was only their second date. But Janice liked her. She liked her a lot. They were having a few beers; actually, Janice was drinking beer. Lisette was drinking Merlot. That’s her name. Lisette. Beautiful, huh? They were at a bar/French restaurant located on South Market Street called The Mistral, minding their own business, enjoying the atmosphere, and listening to Shrimp City Slim’s Jazz Band. It was Lisette’s suggestion. Janice wasn’t much of an aficionado on jazz. To her, Slim and his band sounded more like some lounge act from Vegas, but Lisette knew one of the musicians, so, hey, she was learning early on in this game about the big “C” -- compromise.

  So, there they were, mechanically picking at the bottom of the bowl for the last few cheddar cheese Goldfish and appreciating Slim’s last set. Thank God. Janice was down to her last drop of Sam Adams draft and taking in the earnest ambiance of the place. Old movie posters hung on salmon-colored walls. Loud floral banquettes screamed out in discomfort. Francoise, the short, plump, bar maid rearranged what seemed like a million miniature bottles of booze. She emptied a twelve pack of Absolut Citron, unloading them in neat single files on the wood shelf, all the while swaying her ass back and forth to the sounds of Slim City’s South.

  It must have been around midnight. Janice forgot to wear her watch, but was working up her courage, thinking about asking Lisette to spend the night, when, of course, her cell phone went off. Shit! Everybody turned to look. Sorry. Janice thought she had turned it off. She retrieved it from her shirt pocket and put it on mute. She checked the number. Nothing familiar. She excused herself, walked to the back of the restaurant and reconnected. Several waiters dressed in long-sleeved white shirts, black pants, and a wild assortment of colorful ties darted past her. They were closing down the back dining room as Janice counted down the rings. About to disconnect, the line picked up. Quiet. Nothing on the other end.

  “Hello?” Stillness. Not even static. “You called me? This is Janice Porter.”

  Silence.

  “Fuck you.” Janice ended the call and strode back to the bar. To her surprise, the bowl of Goldfish had been replenished. Yes! Why was she so hungry? They had just finished dinner. Nice place, too. The Magnolia on East Bay Street. Very expensive and delicious. Nerves, she guessed. She proceeded to order
another Sam Adams. She checked out Lisette’s wine glass. Always considerate. Half full. She thanked Francoise, took a mouthful of cold ale and watched Lisette’s back move, swaying gently to the music. Nothing hard or jarring about Lisette, just long, winding curves. A fan in the back of the room made Lisette’s sleeveless, silk shirt flutter against her cocoa skin. Janice imagined a thousand yellow butterflies trapped inside and all of them enjoying the view.