The Complete Book Of Fallen Angels

by Valmore Daniels

  “Chase,” Andrea said. She masked her emotions with a professional demeanor.

  “For now,” I added. Then I winced when I realized how spiteful I was being, and I felt like a heel at the hurt look Andrea gave me.

  The older detective lifted an eyebrow. He directed his next question at her. “Were you aware of your husband’s involvement in Professor Chase’s illegal activities, Mrs. Chase?”

  “If you don’t mind, Detective, I need to make a quick phone call.” Andrea opened her business handbag and pulled out her cellular phone.

  “A phone call?” he asked, nonplussed.

  “Well, if you’re going to interrogate my husband and me, we should have a lawyer present, don’t you agree?”

  The detective recovered quickly, and that maddening smile crept back to his lips. “Not at this time, Mrs. Chase. I have everything I need for now.”

  He turned to me and dropped his business card on the foot of the hospital bed. Then, winking, he made the shape of a gun with his finger and thumb. “I hope I don’t need to remind you not to leave town.”

  Andrea kept her composure until both detectives disappeared down the hall, and then she closed the distance between us with two quick steps.

  “Oh, Kyle, I’m so sorry. What happened to your father?”

  I tried to reply, but my voice caught in my throat. I took a deep breath and tried again.

  “There was an accident at the lab on campus. I’m not even sure what happened. One minute everything was fine, the next thing this guy who’d volunteered, Lawrence, went berserk on us. He killed my father and then tried to kill Tim and me.” I shook my head. “If that earthquake hadn’t hit, he would have.”

  “Earthquake?” Andrea asked. “What earthquake?”

  We both stared at each other in confusion for a moment, but before we could say anything more, the doctor came in.

  He examined my leg and showed me an x-ray of my knee. I thought, when I’d landed on the ceramic floor of the lab, something had cracked, but the x-ray showed no sign of a break or even a hairline fracture.

  “Your patella is bruised,” the doctor said. “You’ll be fine in a week or so.” He added, “It’s a minor miracle you didn’t suffer any chemical burns or get smoke inhalation.”

  “So,” I asked, “I’m all right?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “You can leave anytime you like. Just, take it easy for a few days, and if you feel any nausea or dizziness, come back in to get checked out.”

  With that, he left Andrea and me alone.

  “Do you have some place to stay,” she asked me, her voice tentative.

  “I still have the apartment,” I said. “For now.”

  “Why don’t you come home—just for tonight,” she added in a rush. “You can stay in the guest room.”

  “I don’t know,” I started to say.

  “You shouldn’t be by yourself after…”

  Emotions warred inside me: anger, grief, despair, confusion. Part of me wanted to lash out, as if that would somehow assuage the feelings that were running riot through me.

  In the end, I nodded to Andrea. “Thank you. I would really appreciate that.”

  * * *

  On the drive home in the small hours of the morning, I found myself growing anxious the closer we got to the house we’d shared for seven years. Would it feel like I was going home again, or entering a stranger’s house as a guest?

  After moving out, I’d found a room at an apartment complex. My father had never invited me to return home, and I never asked.

  Since my mother had passed away when I was a teenager, my father had withdrawn inside himself emotionally and had remained aloof the rest of his life. We’d always been cordial toward each other, but we’d never had the kind of closeness other families experienced.

  I’d grown up to be self-reliant, independent. I’d never turned to him for help, and he’d never offered, but things had changed a few days ago when he’d found me trying to drink my problems away at the bar near the apartment.

  That was when he’d done something I never would have expected from him: he offered to make me an assistant on his project.

  “It was you who told him I’d hit rock bottom,” I said to Andrea as we reached our block. I looked over at her.

  She kept her eyes on the road ahead. “Both of you were always too stubborn to tell each other the truth. You needed someone to help you, someone to remind you that you’re not alone.”

  “I didn’t think you cared,” I said, hating myself for the hurtful words.

  Andrea took it and didn’t hit back with an insult of her own. Instead, she said something much worse.

  “I haven’t stopped loving you, Kyle. But I can’t be with someone who doesn’t love himself.”

  Chapter Six

  It happened when I was in my last year of residency, training to become a cardiac surgeon.

  The hospital administration had informally offered me a fellowship the day before, and Andrea and I went out for a night on the town to celebrate. Despite the chill in the air and the slush on the ground soaking our shoes, we took a long walk along the shores of Lake Michigan to cap off the evening.

  When I arrived at the hospital in the morning for my shift, I was feeling fine, but over the course of the next few hours, I began to feel a tickle at the back of my throat.

  By the twelfth hour on duty, I was coughing, my nose was running, and my temperature was up. The only thing I was looking forward to was the end of the shift, going home, and crawling into bed. My throat felt like it was being torn to shreds with razors, and knowing that all I had on my plate that day was paperwork, I took several doses of cough medicine to ease the pain.

  Just as I was hanging up my smock at the end of my shift, I was paged to report to the operating room section. When I got there, I saw the attending physician, Doctor Mescalli, approach from the other direction.

  Getting right to the point, he said, “There’s been a major traffic accident. EMTs report at least five vehicles and a city bus. We’re the closest hospital.”

  “I’ll get down to emergency—” I started to say.

  “No,” he said, “I need you with me. One of the victims is Brad Carlson.”

  The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d heard it from.

  Doctor Mescalli frowned at me. “He’s the son of Alderman Roger Carlson.”

  “Ah,” I said. I’d never really paid too much attention to city politics.

  “The EMT who called it in said he believes Mr. Carlson may have a broken rib from hitting the steering wheel of his car. A splinter might be touching his heart.”

  Now I knew why we were there. Doctor Mescalli was the only cardiologist on staff that day. If there was any tear in the heart, it was a long and complicated operation to repair the damage.

  “I’ll get into my scrubs,” I said, and followed the doctor into the change room.

  By the time I’d changed, a nurse informed us the patient was in the operating room, and had been anesthetized.

  Though surgical blankets covered most of his body, I could see a few cuts on his face and shoulders. It didn’t look as if his head had hit the windshield, but he must have suffered a few injuries when the EMTs extracted him from the vehicle.

  With me assisting, the doctor operated on the patient for close to three hours, using a retractor to pull the ribs away from the heart. While he explored the heart and aorta, gently probing tears or punctures, Doctor Mescalli found several ruptured blood vessels, which he sealed with clamps.

  At last, the doctor declared the heart was out of danger, which was a relief. A year ago, I’d assisted in operating on a torn aorta; the surgery had taken over twenty hours, and in the end, we’d lost the patient.

  “His lungs look intact. All right, Doctor Chase,” he said to me in a professorial tone, “you might as well get practice repairing the blood vessels, closing the ribs, and sealing the incision.”

  I was exhausted and mor
e than a little dizzy from the cough medicine, but I knew better than to refuse, or make excuses. My fellowship wasn’t guaranteed, and I’d need Doctor Mescalli’s recommendation before it was official. I wasn’t a stranger to working excruciatingly long shifts; the first year of my internship, I don’t think I worked less than sixteen-hour days.

  The cough syrup I’d taken had helped, and I was able to finish the surgery over the course of another hour. While I worked, Doctor Mescalli went out to the waiting room to inform Brad’s family the operation was successful.

  He arrived just as I finished and did a summary inspection of my work.

  “Good, good,” he said, then nodded to the nursing staff to take the patient to the recovery area and gave them a few final instructions while I headed to the scrub room to clean up and change.

  The doctor joined me a minute later. “I understand they’ve offered you a fellowship,” he said.

  “Informally.”

  “Of course.” He smiled. “You know I’ll give them my recommendation.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “And,” he added, “after today, helping to save the son of a prominent Chicago alderman, I’m sure they’ll make it official and lock you in. We’ll be glad to have you.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Mescalli.”

  We finished washing and headed to the change rooms to get out of our bloodstained scrubs.

  Just then, one of the nurses burst into the room.

  “Doctor Mescalli! You need to come quick.”

  “What is it?”

  “The patient. His blood pressure has dropped. I think he’s bleeding internally. He won’t stop screaming.”

  “What?” he barked. “What did you do?” It wasn’t an accusation. He needed to know what procedures they had or had not followed.

  “We gave him one unit of heparin, doctor.” The nurse held the door open as we both hurried through to the recovery room. The nurses had the crash cart ready by the time we got there.

  I could hear the young man's screams long before I entered the room. The visible skin was ghastly white, but when the nurse pulled back the blanket, I could see darkening throughout as his torso filled with blood. I could only stare in horror as his cries turned to whimpers. Within moments, he fell unconscious.

  Doctor Mescalli ordered a dose of protamine sulfate to counteract the blood thinning. When that didn’t help, he started a blood transfusion. Despite all efforts, however, Brad Carlson had endured too much injury and died from myocardial infarction due to extreme internal bleeding.

  The screams of Brad Carlson had woken me from my sleep every night since.

  It wasn’t until the next day, after the autopsy demanded by Alderman Carlson, that it was determined that one of the blood vessels had not been properly sutured. Once the heparin—administered to thin the blood and prevent clots—took effect, the patient had bled out into his chest.

  At first, the hospital lawyers backed my case, but the alderman’s lawyers argued that the cough syrup I’d taken had impaired my judgment—a fact I couldn’t hide if I’d wanted to, since I endured the worst head cold of my life in the days following the surgery.

  I hadn’t disclosed to Doctor Mescalli or any of the other staff that I’d taken the medication before operating.

  The hospital settled, as much to avoid a costly trial as to reduce the storm of negative publicity the alderman threatened. They also needed to protect Doctor Mescalli, who was one of the more prominent cardiologists in Chicago.

  One condition of the settlement had to do with me, specifically. Since they hadn’t officially given me a contract, the hospital had no problem acceding to the stipulation. The offer of fellowship never materialized, and they fired me. The medical board notified me they’d begun the proceedings to revoke my medical license.

  Once I didn’t have the hospital’s lawyers protecting me, Alderman Carlson brought a second suit against me for malpractice. They argued that I’d been practicing medicine under the influence of pharmaceuticals.

  I fought for months, but when they brought in Doctor Mescalli as an expert witness, he testified that he’d long suspected that I’d been pilfering prescription medication for my own recreational use.

  I lost control of my emotions. Outside the courtroom, I confronted the physician, demanding to know why he lied.

  “The guiltier you look, the more innocent I look,” was his reply. “I’ve been offered a seat on the medical board, and I won’t risk my future on a second-generation washout like you. Your father was a failure, and you’re no better.”

  I slugged him. It was the first time I’d ever struck another person since I was a child. Though I felt immediate regret for lashing out, I couldn’t help but feel some small measure of satisfaction.

  It was short-lived. The courtroom security monitor caught the assault, and Doctor Mescalli pressed full charges against me.

  Thirty days in jail was hard enough to endure, but what was worse was that the day before I got out, my wife served me with divorce papers.

  * * *

  From the time of the fateful operation until now, my life had fallen deeper and deeper into an abyss that I wasn’t sure I could ever get out of again.

  Despite my exhaustion, I slept fitfully in the guest room of my house.

  I decided to get out of bed shortly after the first rosy streaks of dawn streamed through the blinds of the window.

  My knee still throbbed no matter how many painkillers I took, but at least I could hobble to the bathroom with a minimum of grunts and expletives.

  Once I concluded my morning business, I got dressed in the clothes I had worn last night, staring at the fresh tears and blood stains in them as if only realizing at that moment how they had gotten there.

  My father was dead…

  It had only been a few hours since the tragedy, but some part of my mind tried to convince me it had been nothing more than a nightmare. I knew it wasn’t; it was real.

  I had to do something to stop thinking about it, so I headed to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee.

  While I watched the dark liquid stream into the glass carafe, I heard a creak above me. Andrea either had smelled the brewing coffee, or had heard me rambling around the house.

  Though there wasn’t a molecule of humor left in my body, I struggled to put on a polite smile as she came down the stairs, draped in a thin robe. Her hair was still mussed from sleep, and she’d neglected to wash the makeup off her face before going to bed.

  “What time is it?” she asked, even though I was sure she’d checked her alarm clock before coming downstairs.

  “Too early,” I said. “Sorry if I woke you. I couldn’t sleep.”

  The coffee was ready, and I held an empty cup up in question.

  “Please.” She sat down at the table and waited.

  I grabbed a second cup from the cupboard and went through the ritual. First, I sprinkled artificial sweetener into each cup—one in hers, two in mine. Then I added cream to mine; she took hers black. Finally, I poured the coffee in and stirred both with one of those tiny spoons that usually came with a tea service.

  After placing the cup in front of her, I sat down opposite her and stared into my coffee.

  “Kyle,” Andrea said, and I could hear the grief in her voice, “I’m so sorry about your father.”

  I know she was just trying to express her sympathy, but her words felt like a knife slicing through my gut.

  I didn’t want to lay my emotions out on the table for her, or anyone, to examine. When my mother had died, the pain of loss had ripped me to shreds. My emotional connection to her had been deep. After the funeral, it was months before I smiled without forcing it, and years before I was ready to begin accepting any other kind of relationship in my life.

  With my father’s workload, he was rarely home, both before and after my mother’s passing, and he’d always been a kind of a stranger in my life. It was really only in the past week that he’d reached out and offered me
a lifeline.

  I had felt loss and grief from my mother’s death; from my father’s, I felt anger and regret. If I spent any time thinking about it, I knew it would only lead me to a dark place.

  I tried to deflect the conversation away from my emotions. Even though I knew it sounded pitiable and selfish, I said, “What do I do now?”

  I didn’t have a lot of hope for my future: no career, no marriage, no home, and no family.

  “Don’t worry about it right now,” she said. “Stay here awhile. There’s no hurry. I’ll help you through it; I’ll make all the … arrangements.”

  When I looked up, there was something in her eyes that made me feel even worse about myself. It was pity.

  How far had I fallen?

  At that point, I didn’t know whether I was going to break down in grief, or explode in anger at the world and myself.

  Before I could do either, the doorbell chimed, and I felt a gripping sensation in my guts. Was it the detective from last night, finally deciding to come and arrest me for whatever part he imagined I played in my father’s death?

  “I’ll get it,” I said. Andrea wrapped her robe tighter around her body, her face drawn in concern.

  As I headed toward the front door, much as a man moving inexorably to his own doom, I felt an odd sense of relief. If I were going to be arrested, at least my fate would be in someone else’s hands.

  When I opened the door, however, I was completely surprised to see a tall, thin, silver-haired man standing before me, a congenial smile on his aged face. He wore a plain black suit with a white clerical collar. He was a priest.

  My first thought was not to wonder why a man of the cloth had come to visit me, however, but why he was escorted by two very large priests that looked more like bodyguards than holy men.

  Chapter Seven

  He was the first one to speak, since I could not find my tongue.

  “Mr. Kyle Chase?” he asked, though from the brightness in his eyes, he already knew who I was.

  “Yes.”

  “Forgive the intrusion.” He held out a hand for me to shake. “I’m Father Miles Webber.”