Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  We, my client and I, were in a really cheesy motel on the edge of Tempe, a few miles south of Scottsdale. I'd finally looked back. No Alda Cimarron, no police cars, no signs of pursuit. And, after making sure nobody could possibly be tailing the Subaru coupe, I had pulled into the first motel I saw with a vacancy sign. The car was parked behind the motel; I was reasonably certain nobody had seen me carrying Romanelle into the room. I had patched the superficial wound in my side, temporarily, with a towel under my belt, and except for a little burning pain it didn't bother me, didn't inhibit my movement. The blue jacket, white shirt, and trousers were of course ruined: torn and stained with blood. I figured Romanelle and I were both safe enough for the moment, but—what next?

  At least, I was lucky with the phone call. Paul was at his apartment, not having stopped at his club, or a bar, or lady's boudoir on the way home from his office. Unusual for 1:30 p.m. Arizona time, which would be the same as California's daylight saving time.

  When Paul answered, I told him who was calling and went right on with my tale, overriding his “Hi” and “What the hell are you doing in the desert?"

  When I'd finished, he said, “Your informant said these heavies sent some ‘electricities’ through his head?"

  “That's what he claimed."

  “Describe the equipment with the dials and funny paddles again."

  I did, telling Paul everything I could remember, which wasn't a great deal because I'd been more concerned about Romanelle and getting him—and me—out of the hospital. But Paul said, “Sure. The thing on the red table—which is called a crash cart, by the way—sounds like a defibrillator. Those paddles could hardly be part of anything else."

  “Is that the thing they use in hospitals when a guy's heart stops?"

  “Right. They put those paddles on the chest at opposite sides of the heart, press a button on the handle's end, and send a current from one paddle to the other—through the heart—to shock it back into activity if it's failing. When it works, that is. From what you say, they must have put those paddles on both sides of your roan's head. That's unbelievable. It would be incredibly dangerous...” He paused. “Few hospitals are equipped to perform ECT—electroconvulsive therapy, sometimes electroshock as you called it. But just about any hospital would have defibrillators for use in emergency situations, in the OK, for critical heart patients. But, my God, to use a defibrillator like that ...? The current is only in milliamps, but in untrained hands it could ruin a man, even kill him, rip through those delicate neurons and synapses and fragile pathways in the brain like a bowling ball through glass. If that's really what they did—but, you know, it does sound like it, Shell. You say the man is not unconscious, but he can't talk. Makes sounds, not words. Apparently attempting to communicate, but unable to make it work. Right?"

  “Right. Something's in there. He looks at me. Moves his mouth, nods his head. But that's it."

  “Can he walk?"

  “I'm not sure. I got him on his feet here in the room, and he was able to stand. But that was as far as we got. Is there any kind of doctor who might do ... well, something? Anything? I'm sure Romanelle can't even eat or drink, the way he is."

  “Yeah, there's one man, Shell, and he's in Scottsdale. I was going through my book while we talked. No guarantee he can help, but if anybody can, Barry Midland is your man. Barry is something special. He's a fine, superbly qualified orthomolecular physician, but also a homeopath, into a number of unorthodox therapies. Something of a maverick and brutally outspoken at times, thus considered somewhat beyond the pale by his more conservative peers—but he is very, very good. Equally important, he owes me a large favor. And this one sounds maybe gigantic.” He paused. “If I get this to work for you, pal, it means he and I are even and you owe me."

  “You've got it."

  “Here's his number. Write it down.” He read it off to me. “Wait ten minutes after we hang up, then call him. I'll phone him first and pave the way. No guarantees, but I think Barry will do what he can."

  “I hope so. And thanks, Paul. Incidentally, speaking of favors, you might be interested in knowing that Kay, the lovely lady who put you down so unpleasantly in my apartment, did it merely as part of a devious plan."

  “How's that?"

  “The only reason she was hanging around was to find out about the job I was on, pick up what she could about my working for a client—assignment from an outfit she works for here called Expose, Inc.—and she got considerably more than I thought I was giving her."

  He had started to laugh. “You mean she was investigating the investigator, playing your game?"

  “I ... guess you could say that. Turned the tables on me. And I didn't much like it, now you mention it."

  “So, then, this lovely Kay Denver really did lust and hunger for me, as I suspected, and sent me on my way in order to deceive the deceiver. Thus she is probably now pining away, regretting—"

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “I thought I would do you a small favor and tell you this, Paul, to help you overcome your crushing feelings of inferiority. Her name isn't Denver, by the way. It's Kay Dark."

  “How about that? Well, pal, I appreciate your telling me. I really do. OK, I'll call Barry and try to pave your way."

  We hung up. I waited ten minutes, phoned the number Paul had given me. The receptionist put me through to Dr. Midland immediately. He was fast-talking, efficient, brisk. He said his good friend. Dr. Anson, had explained the situation to him and he had agreed to help, if he could. He asked three questions about Romanelle's condition and appearance, then asked where the patient and I were. I gave him the motel's address. He said he had to see one more patient in his office, but would be at the motel in thirty to forty minutes. He made it in thirty-five.

  When the light knock came at the door, I cracked it, saw a man in a brown business suit, carrying a black medical bag and something that looked like pieces of pipe or thin metal tubing. I opened the door, stepped back as he came in.

  He glanced at the revolver in my hand, then ignored it, looking around for the patient. “I'm Dr. Midland,” he said. “You're Mr. Scott?"

  “Right."

  The man was young, I thought, for a doctor of whom Paul spoke so highly. In his middle thirties, I guessed, slim, about five-ten and 150 pounds, a lot of dark brown hair, professionally styled, rimless glasses over sharp brown eyes.

  Looking at me, he said, “What happened to you? Those are bloodstains, aren't they?"

  He was indicating my right side. I'd taken off my jacket, so the red stains were obvious on my shirt and pants.

  “Yeah,” I said, “it's blood, but I've got practically a full tank left. I'm OK, the bleeding's stopped.” I jerked a thumb. “He's the patient."

  Dr. Midland cocked his head on one side, apparently noting the holes in my shirt. “Would that have occurred in connection with ... what happened to the patient?"

  I said, “It sure did. The patient's name, as Dr. Anson may have mentioned, is Claude Romanelle. He hired me to do a job for him, which I haven't finished yet. But when I located Mr. Romanelle, I had a little difficulty getting him away from the people who did this to him."

  “Hmm. I'll look at your side later."

  He turned, stepped to the large overstuffed chair in which Romanelle was seated, placed his bag on the floor and opened it. For the next couple of minutes the doctor concentrated on his patient, speaking to me from time to time but without looking around. He took Romanelle's temperature, then affixed a blood-pressure cuff to Romanelle's arm, started pumping air into it with the small hand-operated bulb. After that he listened to heart and lung sounds through a stethoscope.

  I finally stuck the .38 S&W back into my holster, and said, “I appreciate your coming here, Doctor. And I'll certainly pay you whatever—"

  “You'll pay me nothing. I wouldn't do this for money."

  While speaking, he'd put the blood-pressure apparatus and stethoscope back into his bag and picked up the pieces of what I'd thought was met
al tubing. In a few seconds he'd erected a six-foot-high tripod with a projecting hook at its top. When he hung on the hook a plastic bag containing about a quart of amber-colored liquid, I recognized the setup as the kind I'd seen often in hospitals, with fluids running from such a bag through a plastic tube down to a needle in the patient's arm.

  Dr. Midland cleaned a spot on Romanelle's left arm using a moist cotton pad, took a hypodermic needle from a glass vial, saying, “Mr. Romanelle's temperature and blood pressure are subnormal, but not seriously so. He's been treated abominably."

  I said, “I guess they damn near killed him. I thought he was on his last legs when I—"

  For the first time since he'd approached his patient, Dr. Midland looked at me. And it wasn't just a look, it was a glare. He snapped his head around and fixed his eyes on my face, glowering, saying rapidly, “Mr. Romanelle is going to be fine, Mr. Scott. There is no serious damage. He has suffered physical and neurological insult, but fortunately the symptoms of disability are transient. In a very short time he will be his normal self."

  He almost barked the words at me, those brown eyes seeming to become darker. And that was when I decided Barry Midland was not only a doctor for sure, but a damned good one, everything Paul Anson had said he was.

  I should have known better than to blurt out the comment I'd just made about Romanelle's condition. It was Paul himself, here in Arizona at the Mountain Shadows Resort during an earlier case, who had told me some very important things that I'd temporarily forgotten. Everyone, even the healthy, is affected by the suggestions—maybe even the thoughts—of those around him. But the already ill patient, particularly one in an impersonal hospital setting, isolated and weakened and with his energies and defenses further diminished by surgery or other treatment, is hypersuggestible. Make him believe he'll get better and the chances are he will; but convince him there's little hope, or even worse that he has a fatuously named “incurable” disease—meaning only that the particular fathead treating him doesn't know how to improve the patient's condition—and there's a wonderful chance he'll obligingly kick the bucket on schedule, thus brilliantly confirming the criminal diagnosis.

  But what had struck me most about Paul's comments to me on that earlier occasion—when, as it happened, I was the patient—was that even when anesthetized or unconscious or asleep or deep in coma, the patient hears everything, all the moaning and negative predictions and “Yuck, will you look at that crap next to the liver?” and “A friend of mine had exactly the same thing and died three days later, poor dear,” or “I thought he was on his last legs.” Maybe he doesn't consciously hear the words but an always alert inner part of the self hears it, records it with a completeness and fidelity far more perfect than the electronic engrams of a computer's memory, and sometimes lets it seep into consciousness with devastating effect. Or with splendidly positive effects, if the suggestions were like those of Barry Midland.

  I watched, with increased interest, as Dr. Midland deftly thrust the needle into a vein in Romanelle's arm, removed a clamp from the plastic tubing above it, watched the fluid dripping, adjusted the flow to speed up the drip.

  I said, “Any objections, Doctor, to telling me what you're giving him?"

  “Not at all.” He glanced up at me again, and almost smiled. “I'm not one of those physicians who feel the patient is better off when kept in ignorance of the doctor's magical unpronounceabilities.” At that, he actually did smile. “I had my nurse prepare this IV bag before I left the office. The base is the usual lactated Ringer's injection, essentially water and electrolytes—little else of value, unfortunately. I think if you're introducing fluids into a patient's bloodstream, that's the best possible opportunity to nourish him, provide nutritional support to restore his energies, support the glands and nerves and cells that will help him recover."

  “You keep making more and more sense to me, Doc—Doctor."

  “Doc's OK, Mr. Scott.” He touched the IV bag with one finger. “Primarily, and most important, I've added to the Ringer's several grams of sulfite-free sodium ascorbate, vitamin C suitable for venous infusion. In every case of infection, toxemia, shock, injury, or trauma—as, for example, the trauma of surgery—ascorbate should be given the patient by the physician, at least in large oral doses, and preferably by intravenous infusion if the situation is acute or the prognosis doubtful."

  “Ascorbate. That's a fancy word for plain old vitamin C?” I said, squinting at Midland.

  “Plain old miraculous vitamin C. Its administration should be routine, especially in hospitals and surgical wards. Sadly, most physicians simply will not employ this extraordinarily safe and effective modality, even though their refusal to do so may, and often does, result in the delayed recovery or even death of the patient."

  “Death of the patient? Isn't that a little strong, Doc? A little exaggerated, maybe?"

  “Not at all.” He scowled, looking much as he had when glaring at me a minute before. “Any physician, but particularly any surgeon or oncologist, who withholds needed ascorbate from his hypoascorbemic patient should be considered guilty—and in truth is guilty—of criminal negligence and medical malpractice."

  “Paul told me you were unusual,” I said. “But I'm beginning to think maybe he didn't tell me the half of it.” I grinned, and the doctor actually smiled again. “What else is in the soup?” I asked him. “Liquefied prime ribs and potatoes?"

  “Not quite. Additional calcium and potassium, plus a seasoning of zinc and magnesium—mostly in the form of orotates and aspartates. Emulsified vitamin A, laetrile, a small amount of dimethyl sulfoxide, or DMSO. We're going to feed those nerve complexes, support the immune system, restore the electrolytic balance disrupted by what must have been quite brutal, and excessive, electrical insult."

  While talking, Midland had prepared another hypodermic syringe, filling its barrel with solutions from two separate vials, then affixing a new sterile needle. He didn't stick that one anywhere into Romanelle, but instead introduced it into a port in the plastic line between the IV bag and needle already in Romanelle's left arm. Slowly he depressed the plunger, sending the syringe's contents into the tube, thence almost immediately into the needle and the bloodstream.

  “Pentothal,” Dr. Midland said, without being asked.

  “Sodium pentothal? Like the—truth serum?"

  “Same thing. This will relax Mr. Romanelle completely, throughout his body—particularly with the other ingredient of the recipe, which is anectine, a curare derivative. These drugs will also block normal brain-cell transmission. But, later, I'll give the patient sublingual drops of homeopathic acetylcholine, which will reestablish normal transmission."

  “Just what I was going to say,” I said.

  He smiled. Not a bad sort at all, this guy.

  Dr. Midland told me it would take perhaps another hour for the IV fluid to drip into Romanelle's vein, even though he was infusing it so rapidly that it could later become painful to the patient. But since he would remain here until the job was done, he might as well take a look at me. Fifteen minutes later he had disinfected and bandaged the gash on my right side, and also replaced the amateurish gauze and tape lumpiness I'd affixed to my left shoulder last night. Had that been only last night? It seemed like a week ago to me.

  As he finished, Midland said, “I can see you're not a doctor."

  I grinned. “I can see you are."

  He pressed a final strip of tape against the shoulder bandage, saying, “Same fellows who gave you the most recent bloodiness?"

  “Same kind."

  “I'll give you an injection, if you'd like. About five grams of that miraculous sodium ascorbate, plus a few trinkets."

  “Fine. Give me a little of everything you've got. Although ... could I swallow it?"

  He smiled, fumbled in his bag, took out an absolutely enormous plastic syringe, and proceeded to fill it from one large and several little-bitty bottles.

  “Couldn't I just swallow it?” I asked again.


  As he affixed a horribly pointed, and sharp, and ugly needle at the syringe's end, I said, “Doctor, maybe I don't need ... Uh, getting shot by bullets, that's one thing. But one of those needles, perhaps I should confess—"

  “Don't tell me you're afraid of a little needle, Mr. Scott."

  “That is not a little needle. I have seen samurai warriors beheaded with smaller..."

  He swabbed my skin, bringing the pointed instrument closer and closer to a bulging vein in my arm.

  “Oh-hh,” I said. “Hey, I've changed my mind—"

  “Just pretend this is a gun,” he said.

  “Don't I wish ... Hoo! Boy, that hurts."

  He smiled some more, the way doctors do, and with his thumb began slowly depressing the plunger.

  “That hurts, too,” I said.

  “Ummh-hmm,” he said.

  It took about two depressing minutes, but by the time he slipped the needle out and pressed a small bandage over the puncture wound, I was feeling better. At least, I no longer felt embarrassingly faint.

  “That should prevent infection, and also help you get around more easily,” Midland said. “Assuming your plans include some moving around."

  “They sure do. Right about now, in fact—if you've no objections."

  He shook his head.

  I said, “I need to get out of here for half an hour or so. And about the only chance for me to leave is while you're here with Mr. Romanelle. At least, until he's less ... until he's better."

  “Mr. Romanelle will be fine, very shortly."

  “Are you—” I stopped, started over very softly, mouthing the words, “Are you sure?"

  “I'm certain of it,” he said in a normal tone, quite loud enough for Romanelle to hear, if he was hearing. I wished I knew if that answer was meant for me, or primarily for the patient.