Fatal Care

by Leonard Goldberg

  Abruptly his heart skipped a beat, then another. And with the skipped beats came a burning pain high up in his chest. Rhodes hurriedly flipped the cigarette out the window and held on to the steering wheel tightly, praying the pain wasn’t what he thought it was. The pain grew less intense, but it still frightened him. He brought his hand up to his carotid artery and felt for a pulse. It seemed even and regular. But why didn’t the burning pain go away?

  Rhodes came to another red light and stopped. He took deep, slow breaths and tried to calm himself. The pain had subsided almost totally. Rhodes breathed a sigh of relief. Probably a false alarm caused by the damn cigarette. But better have it checked out, anyhow. Memorial Hospital was only six blocks away.

  As the light turned green, the chest pain returned. But this time it was a crushing pain in the middle of his sternum, radiating into his left shoulder and arm. He sensed his heart flip-flopping and beating erratically. Oh, God! he screamed to himself, feeling the terror of impending death.

  Rhodes sped down Wilshire Boulevard, blowing his horn loudly and continuously. He was having trouble breathing, and the cars and people he was passing seemed out of focus. He came to another red light and ignored it.

  Rhodes made a sudden left turn into oncoming traffic. Drivers slammed on their brakes, trying to avoid a collision. Tires screeched and cars spun out of control, but Rhodes got through unscathed. His weakness had become so overwhelming that it took all of his effort just to steer the car. And the pain seemed even worse as it spread to his entire chest. Rhodes heard himself gasping for air.

  Up ahead he saw the imposing buildings of the Memorial Medical Center. Just two more blocks!

  He sideswiped a parked car and swerved to the middle of the street, narrowly missing an oncoming truck. Horns were blaring at him, but they sounded like he was in an echo chamber. The pain seemed to lessen for a moment; then it came back with a vengeance. His vision blurred more and he could barely make out the large sign that read EMERGENCY ROOM with a large red arrow pointing to the left.

  He turned left, straining to follow the signs. The road curved and curved again. Rhodes’s right hand went numb, and he had to steer the car with one hand. Just ahead he saw the ramp leading up to the ER.

  He tried to drive up the ramp, but all the strength had left his body, and his hand slipped off the steering wheel. The car careened off a cement pillar and crashed into the wall of the hospital.

  By the time the medical personnel reached Oliver Rhodes, his lifeless eyes were staring up at the clear blue California sky.

  3

  A photograph of Oliver Rhodes made the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

  Simon Murdock, the dean at the Memorial Medical Center, stared down at the newspaper on his desk and wondered how many more nightmares would befall the Rhodes family. They were like the Kennedys. Both families were wealthy and powerful and cursed by one tragedy after another. And theirs was the worst of all tragedies. The children were dying before the parents.

  Murdock’s mind drifted back twenty years to the death of his only son from a drug overdose. He still felt the pain and emptiness that didn’t seem to abate with time. He could only imagine the heartache that Mortimer Rhodes was experiencing. Mortimer Rhodes, the patriarch of the family, had now lost all three sons. The eldest, Alexander, had been governor of California before being elected to the United States Senate. He died in a plane crash at age fifty-two. Jonathan, the middle son, had the business mind and controlled the family’s oil and real estate fortune. He, too, had died in his fifties in a motorcycle accident outside Munich. And now the last of the sons, Oliver, was dead.

  The intercom on Murdock’s desk buzzed loudly. “Dr. Murdock, you have a call from a Mr. Lawrence Hockstader on your private line. He’s Mortimer Rhodes’s attorney.”

  Murdock picked up the phone and pressed a lighted button. “Simon Murdock here.”

  “Dr. Murdock, I hope I’m not calling at an inconvenient time,” Hockstader said.

  “Not at all.”

  “Good,” Hockstader said, his voice all business. “I represent Mortimer Rhodes, and I’m calling on his behalf. If you wish to verify this, you can—”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Murdock interrupted. “I know who you are.”

  “Good,” Hockstader said again. “Let me begin by telling you how much Mr. Rhodes appreciates the flowers and card you sent.”

  “We were all saddened by Oliver’s death,” Murdock said, wondering what the lawyer really wanted. One didn’t have a four-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorney just to say thank you. “If there is anything we can do for the family, please let me know.”

  “There are several things Mortimer would like done as soon as possible.”

  Murdock quickly reached for a pen and legal pad.

  “First,” Hockstader went on, “Mr. Rhodes wants to know the cause of Oliver’s sudden death. He would like an autopsy done today, and he wants it to be performed by Dr. Joanna Blalock.”

  “Blalock,” Murdock mumbled as he wrote.

  “Is there a problem with that?” Hockstader asked.

  “None whatsoever.”

  “The autopsy is to be done in a private setting, and the results are to be kept strictly confidential. No one—I repeat, no one—is to know the results until Mortimer Rhodes is informed. At that time he will give you further instructions.”

  “Mortimer can rest assured that—”

  “And if by chance there is any evidence of foul play,” Hockstader continued, “Mortimer Rhodes is still to be the first person to be informed.”

  “Oh, I don’t think we need to be concerned about that.”

  “One never knows,” Hockstader said darkly. “Powerful people with political ambitions always seem to have enemies, don’t they?”

  Murdock hadn’t thought of that. Like most people, he believed Oliver Rhodes had died of a myocardial infarction, given the man’s past medical history. “He will be carefully examined for that possibility.”

  “Finally,” Hockstader concluded, “if it is determined that Oliver died from heart problems, Mr. Rhodes is prepared to donate ten million dollars to establish a cardiac institute at Memorial in his son’s memory.”

  The sum took Murdock’s breath away. Ten million dollars on a silver platter. Unbelievable! Murdock quickly gathered himself. “Please thank Mortimer for all of us at Memorial.”

  “Mr. Rhodes will expect to hear from you later today.”

  Murdock put the phone down and hurriedly reached for the button on the intercom. “Find out where Dr. Blalock is.”

  Murdock moved away from his desk and paced the floor, rubbing his hands together. A new cardiac institute was exactly what Memorial needed. It would be a perfect fit, the crowning achievement of Murdock’s tenure as dean at the medical center. Ten million dollars, Murdock thought again. Astounding! And with that ten million in hand, he could go to his friends in Washington and obtain another ten million in matching funds. Twenty million would construct an incredible institute.

  Murdock went over to the window overlooking the huge medical complex. Before him he could see the high-rise redbrick institutes that had been built during his twenty-year stay at Memorial. There was the Cancer Institute and the Neuromuscular Institute and the Biogenetics Institute, all lined up with their windows sparkling in the morning sun. It had been Murdock’s vision to build new, impressive institutes that he was certain would attract America’s best and brightest physicians and researchers. With the exception of Mortimer Rhodes, the board of trustees did not agree and were firmly against the large expenditures. But Murdock prevailed—with Mortimer Rhodes’s assistance—and time had proved him to be right. Memorial was now considered to be the finest medical center west of the Mississippi and was consistently ranked among the top five hospitals in America.

  The intercom on his desk buzzed. “Dr. Blalock is in the autopsy room. She’s about to start a case.”

  Murdock grabbed the legal pad off his desk and h
urried out of his office. Passing his secretary, he said, “Tell Dr. Blalock not to start the case. I’m on my way down.”

  Murdock took the elevator to the B level and walked quickly down a wide corridor, thinking about the instructions he’d received from Mortimer Rhodes’s lawyer. The family wanted privacy and confidentiality, the two most difficult things to deliver in any hospital, even when a patient was dead and in an autopsy room. Doctors and residents and medical students were always roaming around in the pathology department, as well as technicians and assistants and orderlies. And when the patient was famous, everybody wanted a look at the patient or his chart. Plus, the autopsy report would have to be dictated and then typed by a secretary who would read it and talk about it with her friends over lunch. Then there was the press, which would do anything to get a picture or a story. The body of Oliver Rhodes would have to be isolated, Murdock decided, maybe even guarded.

  Murdock went through a set of double doors with a sign that read POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. Then he pushed through another set of swinging doors and entered the autopsy room. He scanned the area with its eight stainless steel tables lined up in rows of two. There were bodies on all the tables with doctors hunched over them. Standing on his tiptoes, he saw Joanna Blalock at the rear of the room.

  Murdock walked around the periphery, passing corpses in various stages of dissection. As usual, they seemed so unreal to Murdock. They looked more like plastic models than dead humans. He wondered for the hundredth time what it was that attracted doctors to become pathologists and be constantly surrounded by death.

  Joanna Blalock saw Murdock approaching and held up a finger, indicating she’d be with him in a moment. Then she turned back to the X rays on the view box and pointed out a finding to a young assistant professor, Lori McKay.

  Murdock stepped in for a closer look. The films showed multiple views of a human skull. Someone had drawn an arrow in red crayon to highlight something in the posterior parietal bone. Murdock saw nothing abnormal.

  He moved back, his gaze wandering to the refrigerated wall units where the corpses were kept. Oliver Rhodes was in one of them. In his mind Murdock began laying the groundwork for the Oliver Rhodes Institute of Cardiology. From drawing board to completion would probably take two years. With a little luck they could have the institute’s grand opening on Murdock’s seventieth birthday.

  Seventy years, Murdock groaned to himself. Where had all the years gone? When he had first come to Memorial, the staff physicians all seemed to be his age. Now most of them looked young enough to be his children. He looked at Joanna Blalock, who still seemed too young and pretty to be so bright. She was strikingly attractive with patrician features and sandy blond hair that was pulled back severely, held in place by a simple barrette. Although she was close to forty, most people thought she was five years younger. The only signs of aging were small crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes when she smiled.

  Murdock’s gaze turned to Lori McKay, who appeared young enough to be a medical student. She was thin and petite with long auburn hair and scattered freckles across her nose. She could have passed for Murdock’s granddaughter. Murdock sighed deeply, knowing that a sure sign of getting old was when everybody else seemed so young.

  Joanna broke into his thoughts. “Sorry to keep you waiting, but these skull films are really tough to read.”

  Murdock gestured with a hand toward the view box. “Well, somebody must have seen something and drawn arrows to point to it.”

  “Those arrows are mine,” Joanna said, turning back to the view box. She used a magnifying glass to review the skull once more. “I think I see a small linear fracture, but I’m not sure. And it just might be the single most important clue I’ve got. It could tell me everything.”

  “Such as?”

  Joanna pointed at the autopsy table with her magnifying glass. “Such as how and why this man died.”

  Murdock stared down at the grotesque corpse on the stainless steel table. The face and body were badly bloated, and the skin had a peculiar green color. In scattered, localized areas on the man’s legs, the flesh was torn open. Murdock backed away, detecting the stench of rotten eggs. “What caused all this?”

  “Drowning, presumably,” Joanna told him. “When a body has been submerged for a week or more, as this one has, it begins to putrefy and form gases. That’s what causes the bloating, and that’s what causes the body to float to the surface.”

  And the gases cause the stench, Murdock thought, and took another step back. “And the open wounds on his legs were caused by decomposition, as well. Right?”

  Joanna shook her head. “I don’t think so. Most likely some sea creatures were feeding on him.”

  “I see,” Murdock said, feeling a twinge of nausea. He looked down at the corpse once more, now wondering why a drowning victim would require an autopsy by a forensic pathologist at a leading medical center. “Is there a reason why this case is being done here?”

  “An insurance company asked for my help,” Joanna told him. “It seems this man took out a two-million-dollar life insurance policy last year.”

  “I see,” Murdock said again, trying to hide his displeasure with Joanna Blalock doing private cases at Memorial Hospital. But he had allowed her to do consultations for a fee five years ago when she threatened to resign because of Murdock’s insistence that she limit her work solely to patients seen at Memorial. At first he’d given real thought to firing her, but then decided he couldn’t let her go. She had become too valuable to Memorial. Her reputation was outstanding, and it grew every time she handled a high-profile case for the LAPD. So Murdock had grudgingly allowed her to spend a third of her time doing private consultations. He had heard she charged five thousand dollars a case. Murdock’s jaw tightened noticeably, once again feeling that Joanna had taken advantage of Memorial to further her own goals and enrich herself.

  Joanna could sense the tension growing between them and knew exactly what Murdock was thinking. Her private consultations were a source of constant irritation to Murdock, and given the chance, he would happily replace her. But that was easier said than done. He knew it. She knew it. Joanna shrugged. She wasn’t going to worry about it. She wasn’t going to change her professional life to suit Simon Murdock.

  The awkward silence continued.

  Lori McKay cleared her throat and turned to Joanna. “Do you want me to have these skull films reviewed by a radiologist?”

  Joanna nodded. “I want to know if that’s a fracture, and if it is, I need to know its exact location.”

  Lori thought for a moment, tapping a finger against her chin. “He may want more films with different views. Maybe even an MRI.”

  “Whatever. Just pinpoint the fracture if it’s there.”

  “You know, Joanna, even if he does have a skull fracture,” Lori thought aloud, “it doesn’t mean somebody conked him on the head. Remember, he fell off a yacht. He could have hit the boat on his way into the water.”

  “Or it could have happened postmortem,” Joanna added. “His head could have bashed up against some rocks while he was submerged on the bottom of the sea.”

  “Then why spend so much time studying the fracture? It could have happened before or after he died, and we can’t tell the difference.”

  “Sure we can.”

  “How?”

  “Think about it.”

  Lori wrinkled her forehead, concentrating. Maybe the brain tissue beneath the fracture would show some reaction and that would only occur if he was alive when the fracture occurred. But they’d have to examine his brain to find out, and by now it had probably turned into jelly.

  “From a vascular standpoint, tell me one thing live people do that dead people don’t,” Joanna clued her.

  Lori’s eyes brightened. “Bleed! Live people bleed; dead people don’t. If there’s blood in that fracture line, his skull was fractured while he was alive.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But
,” Lori countered, “he still could have hit his head on the side of the yacht as he fell into the sea. So, finding blood in the fracture doesn’t necessarily mean our guy got bashed on the head and thrown into the sea.”

  Joanna grinned and gave Lori a big wink. “But it would surely open up that possibility, now, wouldn’t it?”

  Lori grinned back. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Ask the radiologist to read those films for us today.”

  Lori quickly took down the X rays and placed them in a large manila envelope. She glanced over at Murdock, wondering what he wanted from Joanna. It had to be something big. Otherwise Murdock wouldn’t have come down here. “Dr. Murdock, do you want me to hang around for a while?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Murdock said, and gestured dismissively with his hand.

  Screw you, you pompous ass, Lori wanted to say. But she held her tongue and looked over at Joanna. “I’ll be down in radiology if you need me.”

  Joanna waited until Lori was out of earshot. Then she turned to Murdock. “What can I do for you, Simon?”

  “You’ve heard about Oliver Rhodes?”

  “Of course.”

  “The Rhodes family wants an autopsy done now, by you, and in the most private setting possible. Do you have any problem with that?”

  “None whatsoever,” Joanna said at once.

  “Where will you do it?”

  Joanna thought briefly. “In the room we use for contaminated cases. It’s separate and isolated and has no windows.”

  “Good.” Murdock nodded his approval. “Now we’ll want as few people as possible involved in the autopsy.”

  “Lori McKay will assist me. She’ll be the only other person in the room.”

  Murdock sucked air through his teeth. “She’s so young, and she’ll talk.”