“Jesus, Gloria, what—”
“Dr. Ford, I think you should come with me. I’m sorry, but I didn’t want to have you beeped.”
It was Haynes. The suspension. It had to be.
“It’s Sunny,” said Gloria. “She’s in ER right now.”
The way she said it, the way she looked—Ford felt the blood rush from his face.
“Sunny?” he said. His mouth was suddenly dry. “Here?”
“Taxi dropped her off about a half an hour ago. Looks like some kind of food poisoning. Code Blue team took care of her.”
“Food … food poisoning? Jesus Christ.”
He was already hurrying from the cafeteria, leaving Allen at the table. Gloria followed hard on his heels.
“Dr. Lee said she’s okay,” she said. “He’s gonna transfer her to pediatrics pretty soon.”
Dr. Simon Lee was one of the senior residents in the Code Blue team, a group that handled medical emergencies such as heart failure, strokes, and ruptured appendixes. Although he had been at the Willowbrook for nearly five years, Ford did not know him well. One of only two Asian doctors in the Emergency Department, he seemed to keep most of the other staff at a distance.
“What did she eat?” asked Ford. “I mean, when did she get sick? I only left the house a few hours ago.”
“I don’t know. I only just…” Gloria was struggling for breath. “I only just found out. I don’t think she was fully conscious when they brought her in.”
Lee was checking Sunny’s blood pressure when they arrived. They found her stretched out on the gurney, her face turned away from the light. It gave Ford a jolt, seeing her plugged into a drip, electrodes stuck to her chest, machines monitoring her vital signs. She looked no different from the critical cases he handled every day, one of the kids laid out by a blade or a bullet or a joyride gone wrong—she looked just like one of the kids who never made it, who flat-lined in the middle of the night and were gone from their beds by morning.
“Sunny?”
He touched her forehead. It felt cool. She turned and looked at him. A faint smile flickered on her lips.
“Mr. Bear.”
Her voice was barely audible.
“How do you feel, honey?”
She blinked. The bright fluorescent lights seemed to bother her.
“Not … not so bad now,” she said.
“She was dehydrated,” said Lee. “But we took care of that. Pulse was one hundred five, but now we’re down to eighty-five. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, Dr. Ford.”
“Hear that, honey? You’re gonna be fine.”
“I took a cab. I didn’t want to call an ambulance, in case…”
In case they drove her someplace else. Ford carefully reached for her hand, taking care not to disturb the line.
“I wanted to find you.”
“You have found me. You did the right thing. Don’t worry.”
She blinked slowly and smiled again. She looked so small and fragile he felt a sudden surge of remorse that he had not been there to take care of her, that no one had been.
“When did you get sick, honey? Was it when you got up?”
She shook her head.
“In the night. I felt real bad, and then I was sick.”
“You were sick in the night? Honey, why didn’t you call me?”
She screwed up her face and hunched her shoulders for a moment, as if she were trying to squeeze herself through a gap between the truth and a lie. It was one of her little-girl gestures.
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
Ford squeezed her hand. It was worse than he’d thought. Instead of looking after his daughter, he’d been out getting laid, had crawled home at three in the morning and crashed—too far gone even to hear that she was getting sick.
“I’m sorry, honey. It’s all my fault.”
“Dr. Ford?”
Ford could sense a degree of impatience, of disapproval in Dr. Lee’s voice. Visitors were not usually permitted in the Emergency Department, and a visitor was what he was, surgeon or not. But, in her own way, Sunny had made sacrifices for the Willowbrook, just like most of its staff. She was entitled to something in return.
“You’re gonna be all right now, honey. We’ll have you home in no time, I promise.”
Dr. Lee drew him aside.
“I did a stain. We’ve got a gram-negative bacterium,” he said. “Probably salmonella of some kind. The lab results’ll be with us in about three days.”
“You plan to prescribe a prophylactic?”
“Yes, I do. Chloromycetin seems to have the best gram-negative coverage from my experience. And I want to add tobramycin as well. It’s got a good record against bowel infections, and I don’t think we should take any chances. Her symptoms were pretty severe. It seems she almost blacked out in the back of that cab. I’ve already given her something to check the diarrhea.”
Ford turned to look at Sunny again. Why hadn’t she woken him? Could it be she thought he might not be alone? As if he would let anyone take her mother’s place so quickly. Yet, in a way, he realized with another stab of guilt, he already had.
Dr. Lee was still talking. “In the meantime we need to know exactly what she ate, where she ate it, and when. It should help us work out what we’re dealing with. Can you get all that for me?”
Half an hour later Sunny was installed in one of the main pediatric wards, next to a young Hispanic girl with a shattered pelvis from an auto-versus-ped and a fourteen-year-old homegirl with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. The high-pitched crash and twang of the homegirl’s stereo headphones was loud in Ford’s ear. It felt odd being a visitor in his own hospital.
“I got home about eight-thirty,” Sunny was saying, her voice hushed. “I ate some crackers, and then I went out to the MistaTaco on Robertson. About nine o’clock. I didn’t touch the meat loaf.”
“Wait a second, honey. You told me you went straight from the school to the taco place with your friends.”
“Oh,” said Sunny, looking down at the end of her bed. “No.”
Ford locked his hands together and squeezed them into his lap. She’d lied to make him feel better.
“So you went alone?”
She nodded.
“And what did you eat? Can you remember?”
“A MistaTaco spicy cheese taco,” she said. “Plus a regular diet Coke.”
“Okay. And what was in this taco?”
Sunny sniffed.
“Just minced meat—like in spaghetti bolognese—chili, and lots of gooey cheese. I didn’t like it much.”
“And that’s all you had?”
“No. I had a regular salad too. You’re always telling me not to eat junk. So I had the salad for the vitamins.”
“And what was in this salad? Try and think, now.”
“You serve yourself. I had lettuce, tomatoes, red peppers, kind of toasty cube things—”
“Croutons?”
“I guess. And an olive oil dressing.”
“And that’s it?”
“And I had a lot of corn. Dad, how long will I have to stay here?”
Ford looked up and down the ward. It was brightly lit, spartan, like everything else at the Willowbrook. The only concessions to the age of its occupants were a cardboard Fred Flintstone propped up in one corner and some dinosaur stickers along the bottom of the window.
“It’s just for one night, probably. As soon as Dr. Lee’s satisfied his treatment is doing its job, I’ll be able to take you home. And I’ll be there to look after you myself. I’m … taking a few days off anyway.”
“You are?”
Her face brightened up.
“Sure. You’ll have your own private doctor.”
Sunny closed her eyes. He could see that she was still very weak. He was about to stand up when she said, “What kind of treatment?”
Ford sat down again.
“Well, antibiotics. Two kinds.”
Sunny opened one eye.
“Properly treated a bug can be cleared up in seven days. Left to itself it can hang around for a week. Isn’t that what Conrad said?”
Ford smiled, though the mention of Allen’s name brought a wave of difficult, negative feeling. You know what your problem is?
“A strep throat, is what he said. A strep throat can hang around for a week.”
“A strep throat, which I still have, by the way.”
“Still? Does it hurt?”
“No. I can kind of feel it sometimes. But it’s more than a week I’ve had it, for sure.”
“Well, that is a little different. A sore throat is just an irritation. The bug can’t do you any serious harm. But a salmonella can. If you were a baby, then it could be serious. That’s when you should use antibiotics. When people are actually sick, like you were last night.”
Sunny took a deep breath and closed her eyes again.
“That’s okay, Dr. Ford,” she said. “I trust your prognosis. Just so long as I don’t become drug dependent or anything.”
Ford leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
“You get some sleep. I’ll come and check on you again in a little while. I have to go tell Dr. Lee about what you ate.”
Lee had gone into OR by the time Ford got back to the Emergency Department, so he decided to type up his findings in the meantime. It was important to get Environmental Health on the case before any more people were struck down with food poisoning—if they hadn’t been already. It would be something useful for him to do. He was just going into his office when the phone rang. It was Russell Haynes.
“I’m sorry, Marcus,” he said. “But things have gone pretty much as I expected at the health department. I’m instructed to advise you that as of midnight tonight you are suspended from your duties at the Willowbrook Medical Center.”
2
Charles Novak opened his eyes and squinted across the small sitting room. He had fallen asleep on the sofa, the whisky glass still balanced on his chest, the Mahler still playing full volume on the stereo. But now the Mahler was finished and all he could hear was the ugly, insistent trilling of the phone.
Slowly he sat up, blinking at the weak, yellow lights. How much had he drunk? For sure more than he was used to. He felt all dried up inside, poisoned. He hauled himself to his feet and stumbled towards the source of the noise, kicking over the whisky bottle as he went. He cursed, picked the bottle up, slammed it down on the side table. What time was it? He glanced at the carriage clock over the fireplace: just coming up to midnight.
“Hope I didn’t get you out of bed.”
Novak recognized the voice at once. It was Scott Griffen, one of the few Helical people he was still in touch with. But it didn’t sound as if this was a social call.
“No, I was just … I was—”
“So guess who just called me, Charles.”
Novak tried to clear his throat. He could hear the anger in Griffen’s voice.
“I don’t know. How should—?”
“The same person you called a few hours ago. The same person you called up and threatened to put in a very difficult position, if I understand it right.”
“No, Scott, it wasn’t like that. I didn’t threaten anything. I—”
“Did you mention my name?”
Novak hesitated. Of course he had mentioned Griffen’s name; he’d been trying to make a case, trying to suggest he wasn’t alone in feeling the way he did. He’d been well into the booze by the time he’d made the call. Now he questioned the wisdom of what he had done.
“No, Scott. Of course not.”
“Charles, did you mention my name?”
“No. No, I didn’t. I just voiced my own concern at—”
“To him?” Suddenly Griffen was shouting. “Jesus, Charles, are you out of your fucking mind? I thought we agreed to keep all this between us. We agreed that if we were going to do anything, then we’d have to keep it to ourselves.”
“But I didn’t…”
Novak sat down. It had been a mistake, going behind Griffen’s back. It had aroused suspicions, that was clear, fears that their silence could no longer be guaranteed. But how important was that when so much more was at stake?
“Look, Scott, maybe I was a little hasty, but…”
“Jesus Christ, hasty?”
“But I thought he’d support us. I thought he’d see things our way. I’ve heard his views on drug resistance. I thought he’d be an ally. He could get something done, directly. That has to be better than leaks and—”
“Christ, Charles, how can you be so fucking naive? I guarantee you he was on the phone to Washington within five minutes of your call. Now anything that happens, anything that shows up in the press, any rumors even, they’re going to pin them on us. They’re going to think we started them. And they’re watching now, Charles, thanks to you. You’d better believe it. You see what you’ve done?”
“I’m sorry, Scott, I … I just…”
Novak closed his eyes. Somehow it had all gone wrong, gone bad. Yet nobody seemed willing to do anything. Everybody was too worried about guarding their position.
“Scott, listen to me. None of this would matter if they’d take the steps we agreed upon. That’s all we’re asking, isn’t it? That they do what was envisioned all along.”
Novak heard Griffen’s breath push against the mouthpiece.
“Now you listen, Charles. These are powerful people. We made the decision five years ago to bring them in. When we did that, we gave them control. We knew that’s what would happen, and it happened. It’s too late to try and change the rules now. It’s in their hands. They’ve got control, and they aren’t going to let it slip.”
“Then why don’t they do something? People are dying, for God’s sake. And they just sit there. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. What we did, it was supposed to be for … it was supposed to be for everyone.”
For a moment there was silence on the line.
“Scott?”
“Too late, Charles. It’s too late.”
3
At five-thirty the following morning, Sunny called the duty nurse to her bed complaining of a dry mouth. The nurse refilled the carafe Sunny had emptied during the night, then checked her blood pressure and pulse. They were normal, the pulse, if anything, a little sluggish. The diarrhea had stopped, but her stomach was distended and sensitive to even gentle palpation.
“S’probably jus’ my throat,” said Sunny. “Strep throat. Thas … that’s what my da’ says I have.”
The nurse was struck by the way Sunny slurred her words, but put it down to the early hour and her probable fatigue. She helped Sunny drink, noting that despite her obvious thirst, she seemed to have difficulty in swallowing. Before leaving, the nurse explained that Dr. Lee would be on the ward at around ten o’clock and that she would review Sunny’s condition with him at that time.
“Try to rest a little,” she said.
Sunny closed her eyes and pushed back into her pillows. It was better with her eyes closed—the faint dizziness she was beginning to feel receded then.
Ford had the key in the ignition, was about to start the car, when he saw it. Chained to one of the two Spanish oaks at the bottom of the drive: an aluminum stepladder, the kind you used for odd jobs around the house. It wasn’t exactly in the way, but it was nevertheless there. Right where he reversed into the road. He stared for a moment, puzzled. A small aluminum stepladder attached to a tree with a heavy-duty steel chain and shiny new padlock. He got out of the car and walked to the end of the drive.
It was seven-thirty and people were leaving for work. Cars drifted by, slowing down for the dip at the corner. Julian Merrow, the father of one of Sunny’s friends, gave a friendly honk as he went past, and Ford offered a distracted wave. He looked up and down the street. Then back at the stepladder. There was a red sticker on one of the steps with the letters BZZ written on it.
He was on the Santa Monica Freeway before he started to make sense
of the thing. Racking his brains, trying to think of where he had seen something like it before, suddenly he remembered. Three years previously, a short time after his wife’s death, he had gone up to Malibu with Conrad Allen on a fishing trip. They had chartered a boat, gotten sunburned and more than a little drunk. Driving back in the twilight, sobered, hungry, they had stopped off at a restaurant Conrad knew. Part of the restaurant, an attractive terrace, shaded by vines, had been given over to a private party, and by the look of the cars parked outside, the clients were a pretty select bunch. Going into the main building, Conrad had pointed out a number of photographers who were standing on stepladders to get a view of the party. “Trying to catch a shot of Julia Roberts’s derriere,” was what Conrad had said. Ford pushed irritably at the vents controlling the flow of cold air and wondered if that fishing trip had been the last they would ever take together.
Then, like the pop of a flashbulb, Ford understood. Some agency photographer must have heard about his suspension and decided there was a story in it. Assuming that the news would soon be out, and that Ford’s modest home would be overrun the way the Willowbrook parking lot had been, he had established a ringside seat in the shade of a conveniently placed tree. He must have come real early, then, seeing that nothing was going on, driven up to Pico for coffee and donuts.
Ford couldn’t help laughing. It was so ludicrous. The guy was going to be real disappointed when he saw the car was gone. Ford laughed, but at the same time the realization came to him: his departure from the Willowbrook wasn’t going to get him out of the media spotlight after all. And that had been his one consolation in getting suspended. That and the idea that Lucy Patou would have to face the many-headed monster of LA’s press and TV on her own.
Now he realized it wasn’t going to be like that. If he was right about the stepladder, the media scrutiny of his professional and personal life was only just beginning. But how had they found out about the suspension so quickly? He couldn’t see Haynes picking up the phone to call the LA Times. Haynes hated the press, had ever since the riots in ‘92, when not one of them had come down to the Willowbrook to see what was happening. They’d been too scared. Lionel Redmond might have called them. Or Lucy Patou, of course. But why? Unless the hospital was setting him up for a fall, looking for a scapegoat. Ford had an unpleasant folding sensation in his gut, followed by a cold trickle of anxiety.
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