“And I promise not to let you,” she said with a laugh. She withdrew her hand but immediately reached across and patted his hand before he could move it away.
His face turned to concern. “How are you feeling right now? Would you like to get some of Houston’s fabled Mexican food?”
“Nope. I want a roast beef sandwich on the plane, and I want to stay up all night watching the kids sleep. I really do.”
“Then I’ll stay right up with you. Is that okay?”
She slowly nodded.
“I wouldn’t want it any other way, Thad.”
4
Albert Turkenov was driving across Flagstaff to see his mother, Nadia. It was Friday morning, and Nadia hadn’t checked in with work to begin her three-day home nursing duties. So the registry had called Albert, who was listed as next of kin.
He was behind the wheel of a brand new Chrysler New Yorker convertible with the top down and the wind whipping through his long hair. Wraparound sunglasses shielded his gray eyes from the mid-morning sunlight, which was always harsh at the altitude of Flagstaff with so much less atmosphere at 6500 feet to soften the sun’s rays. He checked himself in the rearview on the windshield: teeth free of any bagel bits; three-day growth of beard in keeping with the current style; hole in earlobe where the earring went in after he came off duty at night from the auto dealership and before he began hitting the bars in search of Miss Right; perfect smile looking back at him as he put on his new car salesman’s face—it was all there. He was top salesman so far that month and had been top salesman three months previous.
The drive from his side of Flagstaff to his mother’s side was only fifteen minutes, but for Albert Turkenov it was a drive that always felt like a march to the guillotine. His mother hated him; he was sure of that. She hated him for so many reasons: he had barely graduated high school, had dropped out of college before semester one was concluded; had failed miserably with three very nice women his mother had approved of; a bankruptcy at twenty-two. And he had lied to his mother about his position at the dealership: he wasn’t a sales manager, he was a lowly salesman. At least, that’s how he viewed it. His father would have maintained that no employment was lowly, but Albert wasn’t his father. Besides, it was more that he had lied to his mother than anything else. Why was that? He wondered. Why did he lie to her? For her part, Nadia had tried to embrace him no matter what was going on. But Albert could tell that her efforts were forced, that there was no real mother-son bond between them. Unconditional love wasn’t who she was. There were terms and conditions with her; always had been.
Eyes fixed on the road, he continued his thoughts. Mother, Nadia. Why hadn’t she reported to work that morning? Was she sick? Had someone broken in and strangled her to death? He put both of those thoughts out of his mind immediately. No, she was probably just asleep, having forgotten to set her alarm or just blowing it off—which wasn’t even in her vocabulary, he knew: Nadia didn’t ever just blow things off. She was super-responsible and always right in anyone’s face who might make the mistake of hassling her. A real tiger. So where the hell was she?
He turned north on San Francisco Street and went up past the hospital, where he took the second left. Down two blocks and there, at the far end of a residential street, was Nadia’s apartment complex. He parked beside her Corolla and headed for the stairwell. His mood was growing darker the closer he came to actually being with her. His stomach flip-flopped when he acknowledged she might ask him about work. She should have been a lawyer, he thought. She was great at cross-examination of her family; always had been.
At the top of the stairs, he entered the hallway and went left. Three doors down and he paused outside 206. He slowly raised his fist. He expected her to respond immediately to his knock. She always responded immediately. So he rapped his knuckles on the wood. He waited. He rapped again. “Mom?” he shouted at the door. “You awake in there?” He waited several minutes, but no sound could be heard from inside. For just a moment, he was relieved: maybe he wouldn’t have to face her after all. But that relief immediately dissipated. After all, she might be in there sick or injured. So he did the next best thing: he went back downstairs to the manager’s office. He explained his visit and his mom’s non-answer, and Susan Norbert jumped up to follow him back and let him inside his mother’s home.
Susan turned her key and motioned Albert to pass by, which he did. She waited at the door. He disappeared into a side room. Then she heard a yelp—a cry for help.
“My God, call 911! She’s unconscious!”
Susan whipped her cell out of her pocket and made the call. In under a minute, she could hear the sirens nearing.
What Albert had found was his mother, sitting upright in her recliner, her arms inside the armrests, with a yellow page in her lap with printing on it. Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t appear to be breathing. He felt for a pulse on her neck and couldn’t find one. Immediately he was breathing hard and without any idea what to do. He found himself wishing he’d taken one of those community courses on CPR so he would be able to try to revive his mother.
“Ma’am,” he called to Susan, “Do you know CPR?”
“No. I know the Heimlich Maneuver is all.”
“Great.”
Closer the sirens came, and soon they were in the parking lot and the crew was running for the stairs as Susan called to the medics from the upstairs landing.
The standard procedure had them arriving with oxygen and a defibrillator. The first one in, a woman dressed in the black pants and black shirt of the Flagstaff EMT corps, immediately placed a stethoscope on Nadia’s chest. Close behind her came a short blond man with a graying goatee. He edged in beside the female and muttered something to her that Albert couldn’t make out.
The female EMT shook her head. “Nothing,” she said loud enough for Albert to hear. He immediately understood: there was no heartbeat. Then the two EMTs turned to the third one in, a Hispanic man lugging the defibrillator; a huge commotion broke out as Albert’s mother’s T-shirt was ripped open and defibrillator paddles placed against her chest.
“Charging,” said the Hispanic man. “Charged. Clear!”
All hands pulled back as the paddles delivered their jolt of electricity into Nadia. Her upper torso lurched upward a good six inches but then flopped back, still lifeless.
The female listened with her stethoscope. She shook her head.
“Clear!” said the Hispanic man and he shocked Nadia again. Again the female listened.
Meanwhile, the second man was preparing a syringe of a clear liquid. When the second shock produced no result, he inserted the syringe into Nadia’s chest and injected epinephrine directly into the heart muscle. Again the woman listened. Then she raised a hand.
“Something,” she said. “Very faint.”
And at that moment a second EMT team arrived and pushed a cart into the room. Nadia was loaded on and rushed from the room.
Albert followed helplessly behind. He didn’t see Susan lock the door behind them once everyone had cleared out. He didn’t give a second thought to the note he’d found in his mother’s lap, but it was carried along by the EMTs and now attached to her hospital file.
Ready to be examined by cooler minds.
5
Dr. Emerick Sewell was still on his book tour. This time, he appeared on Good Morning, L.A. and he was answering a question from his host, a young woman. It was two days after Nadia had swallowed down her overdose of narcotics so that she might experiment with near death and see for herself.
“So, Doctor, please amaze us with something we don’t know about the near-death experience.”
Dr. Sewell smiled his increasingly famous smile at the young woman.
“Did you know that among quantum scientists there is a growing number who think human consciousness is located inside microtubules in the brain?”
“I didn’t know that,” she said.
“Did you know that these scientists believe this consciousness,
upon death, leaves the microtubules and goes back into the greater, universal consciousness?”
“No.”
Dr. Sewell nodded solemnly.
“As a neuroscientist who has experienced what death is like, this information supports what happened to me. My consciousness left my body and took a little trip.”
He was smiling, sure of himself and happy, for he’d received news from his publisher just an hour ago that his book was number two on the best-seller charts and headed for number one. Momentum was gathering and propelling his book to greater sales figures every hour. He had been told the Good Morning, L.A. viewership was more than one million so he was sure the morning’s brief appearance would sell a boatload of books itself.
“Took a little trip? That’s an interesting way of putting it. My gosh, you went to heaven!”
“That I did.”
“Can you tell our viewers what heaven looks like?”
“Well, it looks like it does here, except the light isn’t from a star. The light is from God.”
“How do you know that?”
The doctor nodded. “In heaven, there are some things you just know. Knowledge just appears in your mind with a certainty that doesn’t question it.”
She looked straight into the camera and said, “Tell us what God said to you.”
“He told me I was loved from before the beginning of time.”
“And what did you tell God?”
“I told Him thank you.”
Both host and guest laughed and smiled at one another. It was a great response.
The show broke away for a commercial. The host turned to her makeup artist and allowed her forehead to be sponged and her lip gloss to be renewed. The doctor sat smiling in his chair until his tour manager came out and bent down to whisper to him. Then a look of concern crossed his face.
“You’re sure of this?” the doctor whispered to his manager.
“Just got the call. The woman left a note with your name in it. She said she knew you were a doctor, and she was acting on your medical guidance.”
“Good heavens!”
“I know. I’ve got a call into our lawyers.”
“For the love of God! She OD’d because of me?”
The tour manager shrugged. “That’s what I’m told.”
“Well, what about it? Surely there’s no liability to my readers just for telling my story?” He was frustrated, sitting fully erect and defensive as if expecting to be jumped at any moment.
The manager looked very concerned. “Maybe, maybe not. You are a doctor, and it’s to be expected that some people might take your message as medical advice. It’s not unforeseeable. Legal is asking how this book got past them, as we speak.”
“Oh, my God!”
6
In fulfillment of her final semester of hospital duties before she would receive her M.D., Anastasia Millerton was paged by the general switchboard and immediately responded. A general switchboard page was very unusual for a mere student in the grand hierarchy of all things hospital. Anastasia hurried into the hall and returned the call on her cell phone. She was told to call her brother, Albert Turkenov. She made the call, got a muddled stream of words from her brother regarding her mother’s hospital admission in Flagstaff, and ten minutes later Anastasia was roaring out of Phoenix’s Good Samaritan Hospital’s staff lot on her way to Flagstaff. Her husband, Jack, had given her the Volvo she was driving as a present at the start of her senior year. “You need to look successful, now,” he had said, although she was still looking at years of residency before the money flow would change directions. But she graciously accepted the car from her husband, a CPA, who knew all about tax write-offs and who assured her the car would pay for itself with “deductions against income,” whatever that meant.
She entered the freeway northbound just beyond Nineteenth and floored it. The speedometer swept up to eighty-five where she pegged it, thinking she could explain the illegal speed to any traffic cop, since she was still wearing scrubs and was, in fact, responding to a medical emergency.
Truth be told, she was very apprehensive at the interruption in her hospital shift. Albert hadn’t been very clear about what the hospital admission was all about, but, knowing her mother, she knew it wasn’t some imagined or fleeting pain. No, her mother—the nurse—was the last one who would have wanted to spend time in a hospital with its staph germs and exhausted workers. Which was why she worked home health: it allowed her to avoid hospitals and be her own boss. Anastasia knew all this, and so she was taking the trip very seriously.
But as she went north on Interstate 17 her apprehension increased. Her mother would be confrontational, angry and upset that Anastasia had left her training to visit. Mother was never a person to put family or feelings before the responsibility of holding a job or attending school. She just wasn’t like that and Anastasia, as she passed the Prescott turnoff, just wasn’t ready to hear the condemnation.
She pulled open her glove box and retrieved the hidden box of cigarettes. With the hidden Bic. She lit one and put the sunroof back. Air streamed inside the car, toying with the hair she kept short to reduce the time it took to climb from her cot at the hospital and respond to a page. She inhaled and blew a long cloud of smoke into the slipstream. Her pulse quickened as her heart responded to the nicotine. She knew all about the physiology of cigarette smoke and how deleterious it was to one’s health, but, frankly, she didn’t give a damn. The closer she got to medical school graduation the less she was allowing herself to be herded around like a cow in a feed lot. Cigarettes were her way of rebelling. She was someone her mother had less and less sway over.
In Flagstaff, she drove up to the Medical Center and almost parked in doctors’ parking, but instead chose the visitors’ lot.
The elevator took her up to the ICU and she quickly located her mother’s room. Albert was there and he turned and nodded to her. She approached and put a hand on his shoulder. Together they studied their mother, unconscious and connected to a ventilator for life support.
“Let’s go in the hallway for a sec,” said Anastasia.
Once outside, she could talk in a normal tone. “So what the hell, Al? What’s going on?”
Albert shrugged. “They don’t know. They’re doing tests right now. One of them said it looked like a drug overdose.”
“Drug overdose? Seriously? Nadia? Huh-uh, that’s never gonna fly!”
“I know,” said the son. “They just don’t know Nadia.”
“Besides, why would she ever so such a thing?”
“One of the EMT’s showed me the letter she left. It said she was experimenting with near death?”
“Holy shit!” cried the sister. “Near death? She’s not that stupid, Albert.”
“I don’t know. I know she hasn’t been happy.”
“She hasn’t ever been happy, really happy.”
“Not since Dad passed away.”
“She misses him.”
“No doubt. Maybe it was an experiment.”
“Highly doubtful. Do you have the note?”
“No, they gave it to the nurse.”
“So it’s in her chart. I would like to see that.”
“Good idea.”
Back inside the suite, Anastasia went to her mother and touched her hand lying at her side.
“Mom? Can you hear me? It’s Ana.”
No response.
“If you can hear me, please move your eyes.”
No response. Albert shook his head. “I don’t like this,” he whispered.
Anastasia nodded and backed away. “Let’s do this in shifts,” she whispered. “I’ll stay until midnight, then you come in and wait and I’ll grab a bed in the doctors’ lounge. I’m beat. Thirty hours without sleep when they called me.”
“Okay, if that’s what you want. But I can’t go home and sleep right now. I think I’ll just go back to the lot and peddle some cars.”
“You should do that. She doesn’t need us both here. Be
sides, you need to pay your rent. You’ve got to earn while you can, little brother.”
“There’s always that.”
Just then Uncle Roy Underwood came bouncing into the room. He was Nadia’s younger brother and he owned a used furniture store on the east side. The specialty was used appliances and oak furniture. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and gray slacks with black NB sneakers. His silver eyeglasses were hung around his neck and his eyes were full of fear.
“Jesus,” he said to the siblings, “what’s up with Nadia?”
“Outside, please,” said Anastasia, and she steered her uncle into the hallway.
“I dropped everything when Albert called me.”
“We don’t know much yet. I just got here myself.”
“I don’t know,” said Uncle Roy. “I don’t like all that crap they’ve got her hooked up to. That doesn’t look good. You’re the doctor, Ana. How’s it looking to you.”
Ana folded her arms across her ample bosom. “Way too soon to know anything, Uncle Roy. They’re doing blood work right now. Then we’ll know something.”
“Is it a heart attack? Stroke? It looks like a stroke to me. Did anyone check?”
“We’ll just have to wait for the blood work. That’s the key.”
“All right. Well, I’ve been concerned about her anyway, before this.”
Ana moved her head to the side. “Concerned? Why’s that?”
He leaned closer and said confidentially, “I’m concerned there’s something with her finances.”
Ana leaned away. “You mean she needs money?”
“No, no, no, not that. I think there’s lots of money squirreled away someplace. Which makes me wonder if maybe someone was trying to get her to move money around and so they gave her drugs.”
“My, a conspiracy theory? Already, Uncle Roy? You usually come in later with those.”
The stout little man shrugged. “I’m just saying. We need to give this some thought.”
The Near Death Experience (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 10) Page 3
