Do No Harm (2002)

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Zeke faced the crowd, his throat cording with muscle as he yelled. "Someone call the hospital. Tell them a doctor got hurt. Tell them it's the Jew doctor."

  "I'm afraid," David said, just before passing out, "that won't sharply narrow it down."

  Chapter 67

  DAVID monitored his own pulse, two fingers laid across his wrist, as the ambulance screeched to a halt outside the ER. Though the screen near his head flashed his exact heart rate--98--he found something calming in feeling for himself.

  "Ready, Doctor?" one of the EMTs asked, and then the back doors swung open and the gurney slid out with David on it, the legs snapping down into place.

  The glass doors opened as they approached, impervious, heavenly gates. The length of wood protruding from David's side seemed oddly humorous to him, like a shot-through-the-head-with-an-arrow hat. As they rattled through the lobby, Jill recognized him and leapt up from her chair, spilling a cup of coffee across the triage desk.

  "Dr. Spier? Are you all right?" She turned and shouted up Hallway One, "Clear Procedure Two!"

  They banged through the swinging doors. A scramble of faces, and then Don standing overhead, the stifling smell of his aftershave permeating the hall. A nurse tried to pry David's stethoscope from his hand, but he didn't let her.

  Don's face registering concern. "Dave--Jesus!"

  Carson ran through the CWA as the gurney swept into the procedure room, his disheveled hair bouncing with his steps. He fought through the sea of nurses and interns, taking David's hand.

  David squeezed his hand reassuringly. "What do we do first, Dr. Donalds?" he said weakly.

  Carson took a step back. "I don't . . . "

  Don pushed Carson aside with a glare. "Carson, get out of here. This is a serious trauma. We can't have you mucking around like before."

  Through the arms of two nurses, David saw Carson's face wilt. Someone hit the brakes and the gurney slid to a halt.

  "Dr. Donalds will be treating me," David said.

  "Bullshit," Don said. "I'm not having that kid in here. Not after what happened last time."

  "He will be my physician." David's voice was uneven from the pain, but firm.

  "We don't have time for this right now, Dave," Don said, readying a syringe. "He's a medical student."

  "And I'm the chief," David said sternly. "At least for now. Get out of Dr. Donalds's way."

  Don lowered his hands, irritation flickering across his handsome face. "And who's going to be the attending on this case?"

  David managed a smile. "I am."

  Carson's voice cracked when he spoke. "Look, I don't think this is such a--"

  A nurse leaned over David, then an IV needle dug into his arm. "I am not presenting either of you with a choice," David said.

  "Fuck this," Don said. "Let him kill you. What the hell do I care?" Storming from the room, he shot a latex glove at the rolling trash bin, but it flew wide and landed on a counter.

  "Dr. Donalds," David said. "Dr. Donalds."

  Carson's eyes slowly found focus. "Yeah?"

  "What do we do first?"

  "Check vitals?"

  "How are we looking?"

  "We're looking good." Carson slid his cold stethoscope along David's side, checking his lungs. David inhaled without being prompted.

  "What do you want to ask me?"

  "Do you have pain anywhere else aside from the entry site?"

  "No," David said.

  A note of confidence crept into Carson's voice. "I want a Foley in, let's see if it nicked a kidney."

  "Exactly." David clenched his teeth to fight down the next wave of pain as the nurse reached for a urine catheter. "But you may want to think about giving me something for the pain first."

  "Shit. Morphine." Carson turned to the nurse. "Five mgs."

  "Let's start with two," David managed. "We can always step it up."

  "Two mgs. And someone get that Foley in."

  A flurry of hands at David's pants, and then his penis laid bare in a gloved hand.

  "Listen for bowel sounds," David said. He sensed the nurse readying the catheter to shove up his urethra and wished the morphine had kicked in. Carson took his hand. The nurse's arm tensed, and the pain set David's body ramrod straight in the gurney. Pat appeared from nowhere and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a moist roll of gauze.

  Carson set the bell of his stethoscope on David's stomach.

  "Lower," David said. When he released Carson's hand, the white imprints of his fingers were visible. "Lower."

  "Good bowel sounds," Carson announced.

  "No blood in the urine," Pat said. "I'll send it for a UA."

  "Dr. Donalds, why do we send urine for a UA?" David asked.

  "To check for microscopic blood."

  "That's right. Next step, next step," David said. "Where are we going next?"

  "We're getting you a CT to see if the shard penetrated the abdomen wall?"

  "Is it a question, Dr. Donalds?"

  "We're getting you a CT to see if it penetrated the abdomen wall," Carson said with more conviction. His head snapped up. "Let's move him."

  Nurses scrambled around David's body like industrious rats. The gurney started moving again, heading over to radiology. Someone's arm brushed the protruding shard and David cried out in pain. His face felt as if it were on fire. Sweat ran into his eyes. He tried to slow his breathing.

  They slid David onto the large white scanner and the room was cleared. He began the slow, lonely journey through the quietly whirring machine. He felt peaceful and drowsy, either from the morphine or the calm, hypnotic movement of the scanner.

  When he emerged, he saw Carson through the window, peering into the computer monitor, looking relieved. The machine printed out a few sheets of CT cuts, which Carson picked up and snapped into an X-ray box. He stepped back into the scanner room with the sheet of CT cuts, finally allowing himself to smile. "Missed your large bowel by a few centimeters," he said. "No perforation, no free air. You're looking at a deep flesh wound. Why don't you take a look?"

  Still lying on his back, David raised the sheet above his head so he could view it through the overhead lights. Carson's read was accurate, but before David could agree out loud, Carson had already turned to the others and said, "Let's get him back to Procedure Two."

  Another hallway ceiling, and then through the doors and back into the procedure room. David's hands hovered protectively around the protruding shard. The pain was rising through him in waves, deepening the lines of his face.

  Snapping on a fresh pair of gloves, Carson turned to one of the nurses. "Another two mgs of morphine," he said.

  "I don't think that's really necessary," David said.

  The nurse paused, needle near the port of David's IV.

  "Another two mgs of morphine," Carson repeated, ignoring David.

  David smiled weakly. "Congratulations, Dr. Donalds," he said. "You are now acting like a physician."

  After the second morphine injection, David felt only pressure when Carson gripped the shard firmly with two gloved hands. Had David been less drugged, the sucking sound it made upon being extracted would have been disagreeable.

  He lay back, watching the walls slide around as the nurses irrigated him with sterile water. "Don't even think about ducking out on the sutures like you usually do, Dr. Donalds. You're going to tie every last one of them if it kills me. Which it might."

  Carson had gotten through the deep tissue sutures and was working on the superficial ones when Yale and Dalton arrived.

  David smiled at them sloppily.

  "We're getting awfully tired of running around after you and picking up the pieces," Dalton said.

  "Yes," David said, grimacing as Carson slipped with the needle. "I can imagine it's quite trying for you." He pointed into his open wound. "Try to approximate the edges better. There you go. Perfect." He glanced back up at Dalton, who was beginning to look a bit green. "Did you catch him?"

  "We have thirty u
nits sweeping the area, but he seems to have disappeared on us again," Yale said. "The Tibet protests had our traffic units tied up at the Federal Building, so it took over ten minutes to get a unit to the scene. The Captain's apoplectic, the Mayor's foaming at the mouth, and Clyde is gone, baby, gone."

  Dalton hitched his pants, his grimace indicating that the gesture took considerable effort. "My guess is, he's still in Westwood, holed up somewhere. We've locked down the Village pretty well and are beating the bushes. Some of the boys are starting to go door-to-door. Oh, and we found your painting in his trunk. The mangled naked lady. Looks like she got a bit more mangled in transit."

  "That's fine." David tried to grin. "It was my mother's. I've grown less trusting of her taste."

  Carson continued to work on David's side industriously.

  "You want to fill us in here, Evel Knievel?" Dalton said.

  "I went out to Venice to show Clyde's photograph around some other places I thought he might have gone. Gas stations, 7-Elevens." David's head was reeling from the morphine, but he fought his thoughts back into focus. "I stopped by to take another look at the Pearson Home. I discovered he's been back there, hanging out in that scorched car in the lot. I found what I think are recently smoked cigarettes in the glove box, mashed together in twos like Clyde smokes them."

  "The fucker was right there," Dalton said. "I don't believe it."

  "You should be able to determine how old they are, right? The cigarette butts?"

  "I'd imagine." Yale nodded at Dalton. "We'll get some SID guys over there."

  "I think he was watching me there," David continued. "He sent me an emergency page--Diane's number--from the phone booth right around the corner from the Pearson Home. Then he followed me and tried to run me over the minute I got out of my car."

  "From the looks of his vehicle, he's been hiding out in it the past few days," Yale said. "We're not sure where, but we found an unusual white gravel stuck in the tires' tread. Same type of rock he used to weight the sock he hit the guard with when he attacked Dr. Trace. Looks to be fake quartz."

  With the morphine, David's face felt loose. "There's a storage facility called Poppy's at Lincoln and Venice. It's got a white gravel lot. Look around there." Carson looked up at David reverently, but David gestured at his wound with his head. "Get back to work."

  Dalton removed his notepad from a back pocket and, with a self-conscious glance at Yale, jotted down some notes.

  Yale touched the end of his nose with a knuckle. "Are we gonna keep pretending you're gathering all this information yourself?"

  "Yes."

  Dalton broke the resultant pause. "You were wrong about him leaving all the DrainEze behind at the apartment. He kept a spare in the trunk."

  "Well, he doesn't have it anymore," David said. "And at least no one got hurt."

  Dalton's eyes traced over the gash in David's side. "Right."

  "Clyde's been slowly deprived of his necessities," Yale said. "Pushed out of his apartment, forced to leave behind his car. He has no drugs, no alkali. That makes him more desperate. He's out of resources, so he'll have to steal or surface. A car, meds, some food, something, and we'll nab him then."

  "Do you have men on those people I red-flagged?" David asked.

  "We have a unit at Mrs. Connolly's around the clock, and one at the chief of staff's house nights. Mrs. Trace is being covered too--"

  "Dr. Trace," David said faintly.

  "--but your buddy Peter Alexander is being a stubborn pain in the ass. He says he doesn't need protection, that he's perfectly capable of taking care of himself."

  "Infuriating," David said. "But not entirely surprising. We have to keep him covered. Clyde's seen him on two occasions--during his escape, and just now when he tried to run me over. Both times were antagonistic. Is there anything we can do?"

  Dalton shrugged his familiar shrug. "The guy refuses, the guy refuses."

  "I'll see if I can talk some sense into him."

  "Good luck."

  "We need a more extreme plan," David said, "so I picked his next victim."

  Dalton scratched his cheek with the end of his pen. "Who?"

  "Me."

  "I don't know," Yale said. "Your theories haven't exactly been airtight. I thought you said he wanted to scare you, not kill you. Trying to run you over in a car would qualify as the latter, I believe."

  "That's because by going to that lot and poking around--near the house that is his sanctified ground--I committed a violation so great I probably pushed him over the edge. That was the first time I've seen him close to that enraged, including when he was dragged into the ER by a wire noose. He came at me with blind wrath. I want to find a way to make him that angry again. So angry that he'll no longer want to scare me. He'll want to kill me."

  Yale and Dalton regarded David silently, as though taking in a new person. Carson continued to stitch and pretend he was not listening.

  "He's grown more and more aggressive," David said. "You want to intercept that trajectory we talked about? Let's push him to the limit."

  "Your getting him enraged did make him more prone to fuck up," Dalton conceded. "He followed you in broad daylight in a vehicle he knows we're on the lookout for. And he attacked you in front of witnesses--that's a first too."

  Yale asked, "How do you get him in that state again?"

  David guided Carson's hand to help him get a better angle at the wound. "I'm a hot target. The Pearson Home is a hot location. The combination today did the trick. I say we combine the two again. I think it'll be too much for him to resist."

  Yale studied the gash in David's side. "I'd rather use undercover cops. Dress some females up as nurses like we talked about, then have them exit the Pearson Home and walk through the deserted streets."

  "In that neighborhood? They'll be more likely to get propositioned than attacked. I'm more believable. He knows I'm familiar with the neighborhood. He knows I've gone poking around after him. I'm your perfect lure. If I go near that house, he'll sniff me out."

  The only sound was of Carson working on David--the pickups pinching flesh, the needles pushing through skin.

  "He's stranded in Westwood without a car," Yale said. "What's to say he'll head back to Venice?"

  "He's been persistently drawn back near that house for much of his adult life. He'll find a way. Unless he comes after me at home, someone at the hospital, or the people we red-flagged, in which case we'll catch him anyway."

  Yale brushed something off the sleeve of his suit jacket. "We won't hesitate to use necessary force."

  "Will you kill him?"

  "If we have to," Yale said. He held up his hand when both David and Dalton started to speak, stopping them. "You'll just have to trust me on this one."

  David chewed his lip, trying to bring his thoughts back into focus. Out in the hall, an orderly pushed an empty gurney. "I guess we don't have a choice," he said.

  For the first time, David couldn't read Dalton's eyes. David stared at the detectives positioned at the foot of his gurney. The room seemed charged, a triangle of intensity moving between the three men.

  "Well?" David said. "What do you say?"

  Dalton looked over at Yale, clearly waiting for him to make the call. Carson finished the last suture, pulling the excess through until the last segment of the wound was brought to a close.

  "All right," Yale said. "I'll run it by the Captain, and we'll flesh out a plan once you're . . . intact."

  David offered a weak hand and, at last, Yale stepped forward and took it.

  Chapter 68

  LYING on the gurney in the empty room, floating on a post-morphine mist, David surveyed the tools and equipment around him. A wall suction unit, lead aprons, otoscope and ophthalmoscope hanging on the walls. Casting his mind back over the past seventeen years, he tried to think about how many accident victims he'd seen wheeled in this very room, how many family members he'd consoled, how many he'd reassured. People left in wheelchairs and gurneys, they left wal
king and limping. Sometimes they left in bags.

  He tried to figure out why he had been so fortunate. Why the wood hadn't struck half a foot to the left and perfed his intestine, or a foot higher and pierced his heart. He would have liked to think it was because of fate--that he was a divine instrument whose usefulness had not yet been depleted--but he knew that was not the case. He would live for the same reason that a three-millimeter embolus had lodged in Elisabeth's basilar artery and killed her. Brute chance.

  David recognized the last couple of years for what they'd been--his period of mourning, his time withdrawn. He'd been letting go of Elisabeth in small, meaningful steps, savoring each part of her before relinquishing it. The soft skin of her nape. Her cold feet pressed against his legs beneath the sheets. The cant of her smile--slightly left. The last memories of his wife, lingering in his half-closed hands like hourglass sand.

  A flash of Nancy lying upstairs, her mouth moving in a chant. I wanna die I wanna die I wanna die. Clyde's flat, senseless eyes: illness incarnate. They'd all retreated into their respective agonies--why had David been left a road back?

  A knock on the open door drew his attention. Diane.

  She did not advance. Her face was unbandaged, and her wounds looked raw and healthy. She propped a shoulder against the doorjamb and regarded him for a full minute. A tear swelled at the brink of her left eye, then dropped.

  "I wasn't worried about you at all," she said.

  "Nor I you," David said.

  "I don't think you're fucking insane," she said.

  A little boy walking by in the hall stopped to stare at Diane's face until his mother whispered an apology and tugged him along. Diane raised her eyebrows at David, a gesture of mild amusement. "We're like Beauty and the Beast without a Beauty."

  "You can be Beauty," David said.

  "You're sweet when you're wounded." She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. "Plastics checked me out. I'm again free to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of the paparazzi." She smiled, but sadness found its way through.

  They stared at each other across the distance of the room.

  "Are you going to come over here?" David asked.