Twisted Justice

by Patricia Gussin

  “He just took the girls down to the vending machines,” Peg explained. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  “I’ve got to see Greg. Steve’s taking Mike and Kevin to Alaska!”

  Peg gasped. “What? Can he do that?”

  “Tomorrow, Mom. Greg’s working at the hotel. Can you call him and tell him to come right over? I need to check on Patrick now, but I’ll be back by the time Greg gets here.”

  Laura stood by Patrick’s bedside in the surgical intensive care unit. It was strangely quiet except for the beeping of monitors, the hum of machines, and the occasional doctor’s beeper. As she glanced around, she saw how a roomful of children could be so quiet. Most were on ventilators, deeply sedated, others too sick or weak to even babble or cry. So eerie and profoundly sad. She was surprised to see so many diverse faces — Arab, Indian, Asian, black, and white faces, all with one thing in common: a desperately ill child struggling to emerge from a dangerous yet life-saving surgical procedure. Laura recalled that most of those Siamese twin separations had been done at CHOP, but never in her worst dreams had she ever thought she’d be here, totally helpless, in street clothes no less, by the side of her own critically ill child. Even with that heart murmur, Patrick had always been so healthy, so carefree. Sure, everybody said they’d spoiled him. Steve made no pretense that Patrick was his favorite and for reasons buried deeply in her very being, Laura acknowledged that Patrick held a special place in her own heart. Yet despite this undisguised favoritism, he was just a sweet little boy.

  And here he lay, so pale and still. Though his chest was covered loosely with gauze, Laura knew what lay beneath. They’d split his chest from just below the neck to the umbilicus to reach the massive tumor in his heart — and she’d never even suspected a medical problem. Had she been so wrapped up in her own surgical conquests that she’d missed this horrible thing growing in her own little boy? She should have overruled the pediatric cardiologist and had him checked more frequently.

  Amid a maze of tubes, all of which Laura recognized so well, Patrick did not move. The clear plastic endotracheal tube, which extended into the main bronchial tube leading to the lungs, was taped to his face and secured with a strap around his neck, the other end connected to the rasping ventilator. She walked around to look at the settings. Still set on mandatory, which meant that the machine was driving each breath. So far no signs of spontaneous breathing, but it was too early to expect this. Next she checked the gastric tube draining his stomach and found a yellow tinted liquid with flecks of mucus. There was a Foley catheter draining his bladder and the urine in the plastic collection bag looked normal, a clear pale yellow. The wires attached to his flesh were connected to the EKG monitor at the left-hand side of his bed, displaying every heartbeat. As she expected, there was a catheter in the large subclavian vein to infuse blood, antibiotics, and electrolytes and to monitor pulmonary artery pressure and heart function. The insertion was just below the right clavicle and protected by a large, bulky dressing.

  Though she knew that her child would still be heavily sedated, she wasn’t prepared for the awful stillness — except for the wheezing of the ventilator and the heart monitor’s beeping. Surrounded by the frenetic activity so characteristic of ICUs everywhere, Laura stood as if paralyzed.

  As she closed her eyes, Tim Robinson’s words floated through her mind again: “Laura, I know what you’re thinking, but these tumors are silent. Silent until they cause an arrhythmia or heart failure. There’s no way that you or anyone would have a clue that he had a serious problem until very late. This has absolutely nothing to do with the patent foramen. Nothing.”

  “If only I’d taken him in to be checked or gotten an X-ray or an EKG —” she remembered saying.

  “You know very well that these things aren’t routine in healthy kids. They would have thought you were paranoid.”

  She heard Tim’s real voice then and felt a hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes.

  “Laura, that lawyer is outside the ICU looking for you. Some kind of emergency? I couldn’t let him in.”

  “Greg’s here? Tim, I have to see him.”

  “What’s wrong?” He squeezed her shoulder. “That phone call?”

  She nodded. “I’ll tell you about it later. Can you stay with Patrick, just in case he wakes up? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Sure. Okay.” Tim slid onto the lone chair with a tired groan.

  After filling Greg in on Steve’s plan to take the boys to Alaska, Laura returned to her son’s bedside. Soon after, she slept fitfully in the surgical on-call room across from the ICU. There were four narrow cot-like beds and one unisex bathroom for the house staff that wandered in and out all night, thanks to their beepers. All shared the same shower, and the shelves were kept stocked with clean surgical scrubs. Tim Robinson slept there often and, without official permission, offered the off-limits room to Laura after finding her dozing on her feet by Patrick’s bed earlier when he himself awakened in the chair beside the boy’s bed. The child was still too heavily sedated to recognize her, but between lapses of fretful sleep, she rose throughout the night and walked across the hall, trying to stay out of the way of the doctors and nurses ministering to the desperately ill children in the beds all around her.

  At three in the morning she’d returned to the narrow bed across the hall and drifted wearily back to sleep. Almost simultaneously, three individual beepers sounded, waking the occupants of the other three beds who immediately jumped up and bolted across the hall. A code — cardiac arrest. Patrick! Oh God, no, she prayed. He would be most vulnerable to fatal arrhythmias as he emerged from the heavy sedation, which was why she insisted on being nearby to calm him if he panicked. She jumped off the bed, fumbled for her glasses, and followed the others into the hall, running directly into one of the doctors rushing into the ICU. It was Tim.

  “Tim!”

  “Not now, Laura.”

  Laura bolted toward Patrick’s bed. Curtains were drawn around his cubicle and she felt her heart lurch as she jumped to the ghastly conclusion that Patrick had died, that they’d already pronounced him while she slept.

  She felt a strong arm around her shoulders. “Get a grip, Laura,” Tim said sternly. “Patrick’s okay. They’re just adjusting the ventilator settings, trying to wean him off.”

  Laura gasped with relief and finally saw the commotion in the opposite corner, crowded with the on-call doctors and ICU nurses. A young girl had coded. The one with Eisenmenger’s syndrome, caused by a congenital defect in the heart that produces pulmonary hypertension. If not surgically corrected in time, damage was irreversible. The four-year-old daughter of a Saudi prince had already been cyanotic when she reached CHOP, and Laura and Tim had discussed her pessimistic prognosis despite the heroics of an experimental surgical technique. Laura’s professional instincts told her that they’d lose this child, and she was almost ashamed as she thanked God that it was not her son.

  Peeking behind the curtains, Laura confirmed that Patrick was indeed stable — as stable as a child could be a few hours after a huge tumor had been carved out of his heart. She stood there watching the respiratory specialist tweak the dials to ensure the precise combination of pressure and gases to support Patrick until he could breathe on his own.

  Would God continue to punish Patrick? It was she who should be punished, she prayed. It was she, not her innocent son, who had sinned.

  As he strode across his hotel room Monday night to answer the ringing phone, Greg dropped the printed confirmations for the flight back to Tampa onto the bed.

  “Hello?”

  “Greg, it’s Carrie.”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I…I thought you might be Celeste.”

  “What? Don’t tell me you two still haven’t made up?”

  Greg hesitated. “Carrie, I need to get back to Tampa. I did stand her up Friday night.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Y
ou know, yesterday I mentioned you coming up here. Have you made a decision yet about the Palmer situation? About Elizabeth going with them, I mean.”

  Carrie cleared her throat. “She left with them yesterday and I’m a nervous wreck. I just can’t see leaving town right now.”

  “I understand,” Greg reassured. “Carrie what you’re doing is already over and above. Now that Laura’s son made it through surgery, I’ve decided to head back to Tampa tomorrow.”

  “So surgery went okay?”

  “No cancer, but he’s still in the ICU.”

  “That’s great news. And Laura’s legal troubles should be clearing up now that the charges against her have been dropped. I was so relieved that Judge Potter came through. The draft press release you worked out with the D.A. today worked like a charm,” she added.

  “I spent almost my whole day on the phone back and forth with Jake Cooperman himself. Politics. We finally agreed that quote, the defense working with the prosecutor were able to determine Laura’s innocence, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “And the fact that he’s going public with Frank Santiago as the new suspect should be all over town by tomorrow. I’m glad we got Molly out of here, but I’m not sure I should have let Elizabeth go.”

  “Listen, you hang in there. When I get back we’ll sit down and figure out how long the girls should stay put on the island.”

  Carrie exhaled. “Greg, you read my mind.”

  Moments later, the phone rang again. Greg’s heart filled with the thought that it might be Celeste, but it was Peg Whelan. After learning the bad news from Traverse City, he rushed over to find Laura at the hospital and then back to the hotel to immediately set up a conference call with Carrie, Chuck, and Rob to develop a strategy for this new Nelson bombshell. They would retain a Detroit law firm to work with the Michigan courts to get a restraining order in the morning, and Greg would fly directly to Detroit to expedite. In the meantime, Rob would work the custody angles out of Florida, and Chuck would fly to Traverse City to track the boys’ whereabouts, ready to take them to Laura if and when they got a court order. Because Rob would be in the Tampa courts all day tomorrow, Greg designated Carrie as the continuity person at the office to coordinate any loose ends and facilitate communications between the courts in Florida and Michigan, and Laura in Philadelphia. As he worked out the schedule in his mind, Greg realized he had forgotten to tell Laura about the subpoena. Sam Sanders, that sleazy attorney for the Ruiz family, was going forward with the case against the hospital and the ER doctor, and he planned to serve Laura with a subpoena as a hostile witness.

  It was after midnight by the time Greg hung up the phone for the last time that night. Though he tried several more times, he never reached Celeste.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Tuesday morning at six, Greg’s phone rang. He grabbed the receiver groggily. “Celeste?”

  “Sorry to wake you so early,” Chuck’s voice boomed. “I’m at Tampa airport. Got a flight to Chicago, and a charter to Traverse City. Also got the Nelson flight information. Northwest Airlines. Leaves Detroit at eight tonight for San Francisco. Then they change planes to Fairbanks on Air Alaska. I debated as to whether to fly straight to Detroit, but I’d rather follow them all the way from Traverse City. I want them in my sights. I figure if I don’t catch them there, I’ll take the charter on to Detroit, be there in plenty of time before that flight takes off.”

  Greg stifled a yawn. “Sounds good, Chuck. I got a flight out of Philly to Detroit at ten.”

  “And Laura? She coming with you?”

  “I don’t know,” Greg said with a sigh. “I booked it, but as of last night she didn’t think she could leave her son at the hospital.”

  “Guess I can understand that. But it’d really help our end if she were there herself to convince the kids to head back with us. Avoid an abduction scene.”

  “I know, Chuck. I’ll try to convince her to do just that.”

  “Got it. So if I can’t reach you and need an immediate call, who’s our point person?”

  “Carrie’s in the office all day. Timing is tight. All this has to happen in only one day.”

  “Realistically, boss, it doesn’t look good. Hassles over jurisdiction with a twelve-hour window? What if it doesn’t work? Want me to grab the boys and worry about the consequences later?”

  Greg paused. “That’s a ‘maybe,’ Chuck. I told Laura we’d move heaven and earth to stop Steve from leaving Michigan with her sons, but I’d like to do it legally.”

  After Greg hung up, he went for a long run to clear his head. Once showered and dressed, he called his Tampa office. His first question was whether Celeste had tried to reach him.

  “No, Mr. Klingman,” Betty Harmon answered, “no calls since last week.” When he then asked to speak with Carrie, she said, “Ms. Diamond isn’t back yet. She did come in early, before I even got in at seven thirty. But then she left after she got that call.”

  “Call? Did she say where she was going? We’ve got a lot going on today.” He filled her in on the Nelson situation.

  “I see. No, Carrie didn’t say where she was going. She got a call about five after eight from no one I recognized. A Spanish accent, I think. He didn’t give a name, but he said he was an old client. I’m sorry, I should have insisted on a name before I put the call through.”

  “Just try her at her house,” Greg directed. “I’ll hold.”

  “Come on, Carrie, I need you at 100 percent today,” he mumbled as he waited for Betty to get back on the line.

  “There’s no answer at her house,” Betty reported. “I also tried her husband’s office, but he’s not there either and hasn’t called in. Not yet anyway. He has appointments, so he’s expected.”

  “Shit. Well, get in touch with somebody in Chuck Dimer’s office and have them check out Carrie and Don’s home. Nothing heroic or drastic, Betty. Just make sure everything’s okay there.”

  “Will do, Mr. Klingman. And well, it’s probably nothing, but —”

  “Go on, Betty,” he urged. “I’ve got a lot to do before I leave for the airport.”

  “Well, it’s just that Mrs. Diamond left in such a hurry after that call. She seemed upset.”

  “Did she say anything about Elizabeth?”

  “No, but she literally ran out after she hung up the phone.”

  “How long was she on the phone?”

  “Just a few minutes, I’d say. You know, this is just not like her.”

  Greg checked his watch. It was eight twenty when he left his luggage with the bellman at the Sheraton and headed over to CHOP. He had to talk to Laura before leaving for Detroit. It was important that she understood not only what they’d be doing in the Michigan and Florida courts, but particularly what Chuck would be doing in Detroit, if Laura did not accompany Greg to Detroit. If the boys came voluntarily with Chuck that was one thing, but the question was whether or not Laura wanted Chuck to take them forcibly if they protested and wanted to stay with their dad. They didn’t know Chuck from Adam, and at age fourteen and eleven, they were likely to resist physical force.

  As he approached the surgical ICU, Greg encountered a cluster of white coats exiting through the swinging doors, young doctors in discussion as they headed toward the elevator across the hall. One of them held back and called to Greg, “Sorry, you can’t go in there.”

  Greg ignored the comment and kept going until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to face Tim Robinson.

  “Ah Tim, I’m glad it’s you. I need to see Laura. It’s important.”

  “Sorry, the ICU is for immediate family only,” Tim replied.

  The two men faced each other, the younger draped in a freshly starched white coat with a stereoscope dangling from his neck; the other, seven years older, clad in a charcoal gray pinstripe suit embellished with an expensive silk tie in rich reds and golds.

  Glancing at his watch, Greg was the first to breech the silence.

  “I really do need to see Laura now.”


  “I understand. But meantime, you’ll have to wait in the visitors’ lounge.”

  “But I’ve got to catch a plane.”

  Greg watched Tim start to walk away, intending to step through the ICU doors as soon as the meddlesome doctors were far enough down the hall.

  Then Tim turned back. “Okay,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll go back in and ask Laura to come out.”

  “If you insist. It seems like such a waste of time.”

  Tim shrugged. “Rules are rules. It’s not like I made ’em.”

  The last passenger to board, Greg had to take the one remaining seat toward the rear of the plane in the center. He was still fuming about Tim forcing him to wait for Laura. But Greg remained dutifully in the visitors’ lounge until Laura appeared about ten minutes later. It was no easy task, but he’d finally convinced her to fly to Detroit. After some effort, he then managed to book her on a three o’clock flight out of Philly with a return flight at nine fifteen with the promise that she’d be back at her son’s side by day’s end.

  Amid all those logistics, there’d been no time to try Celeste at her job site in Atlanta again. There’d been no answer at her townhouse when he tried her just before he checked out of the Sheraton either. Claiming to be Mr. Marin, he’d tried the Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta once more, and he learned that Ms. Marin had requested that they hold her suite over the weekend for an anticipated return on Monday, which had not occurred. They’d requested notice should she need to postpone her arrival, because they needed the room, but received none and as a result they’d packed and stored her things. This was so unlike the Celeste he knew, so meticulous about planning, about showing up on schedule, and he was determined to track her down today.

  As Greg made his way down the aisle, he paid no attention to the mustached, overweight man in the watch-plaid shirt and thick black sunglasses, sitting comfortably by the window in first class, sipping a vodka and tonic. If he’d looked closely enough, he might have noticed that the man was wearing flesh-colored surgical gloves as the flight attendant started her spiel: “Welcome to the new passengers boarding in Philadelphia. We’re continuing our flight to Detroit for those passengers who boarded in Tampa —”