Dead Wrong

by Allen Wyler

  With a raised eyebrow, he asked, “You asking about the family or Dr. Witherspoon?”

  “Witherspoon.” Witherspoon was the code word used by staff to refer to a man impersonating a doctor who’d recently attempted to gain access to patient information.

  The nurse leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Well, he’s not been in here. But you heard, didn’t you, a guy fitting his description tried again last evening in the Neuro ICU?” He pronounced the acronym “nick you.”

  A jolt of adrenaline tingled down her arms to her fingertips. “Oh? NICU? As in neuro, not neonatal?”

  He nodded. “Right, neuro.”

  Her initial excitement morphed into a glow of vindication for having spent almost an hour at 2 AM convincing administration to break the rules and admit Bobbie Baker under a false name and Social Security number. Not only that, but to also place her in the cardiac ICU instead of the neurology intensive care. On second thought, panic hit. Maybe Bobbie wasn’t paranoid after all. Maybe someone really was really out to get her. She asked, “What exactly happened?”

  “Not much fortunately. I mean, no scenes or anything. Apparently a security guard recognized him from description and confronted him. He turned and walked away. Wasn’t much the guard could do by then.”

  Tom needs to hear about this. Now. “And he’s not shown up here?”

  The nurse gave a sideways glance of suspicion. “No, but now I get the distinct impression you’re part of this drama. Mind telling me what it’s about?”

  Tell him? Why not? As long as she didn’t divulge Baker’s true identity, what harm could it do? “What do you know about her history?”

  The nurse studied his palm computer a moment, then slid it back into the breast pocket of his scrubs. “She’s an overdose. She was admitted here because neuro is full.”

  Perfect. That was the fabricated cover story exactly. “This isn’t—” she caught herself before using Bobbie’s real name, “—Leslie’s first admit. During a prior admit to Nine West a man claiming to be Dr. James Witherspoon tried to access her chart. You know Diane Halvorson?”

  The nurse nodded. “Charge nurse on psych?”

  “Yup. She’s been here longer than God and knows just about everyone on staff. Anyway, this Witherspoon shows up on her ward asking for Leslie’s chart. Diane doesn’t recognize him so she asks him for his ID. He pulls one out of his pocket. It looks okay, but something just doesn’t sit right so she digs in and says no. You know how most docs would be—they’d go bat shit on her. But this Witherspoon guy just walks away without a word.

  “Soon as I heard about it I called medical affairs. Turns out Witherspoon’s not on staff. That got me curious, so I checked with the King County Medical Society and the state licensing office. Same thing. There’s no such doctor in this state. He’s a fraud.”

  The charge nurse adjusted his wristwatch. “So, what’s up with him? I mean, why all the lurking around?”

  Crap. She didn’t want to go into details. On the other hand, it’d feel good to defend herself against all the accusing stares from the other residents. She imagined the rumors floating around about her incompetence. Rumors that would quickly spill over from house staff to nursing staff.

  “It’s complicated, but here’s the short version: She’s in for a Valium overdose, obviously.” Baker had washed down a bottle of Valium with most of a bottle of Cutty Sark. “But here’s the thing: with her history of depression, she never should’ve been given the Valium in the first place. Turns out, when they checked the prescription, my name was on the bottle. And that’s nuts. I never prescribed a sedative for her, much less Valium.” Too much emotion spiced her words, she realized. Tone it down. “The only prescription I ever wrote her was Paxil.”

  The nurse’s silence prompted Sarah to continue. “Turns out the Valium came from the same Walgreens she uses for other prescriptions, but when I checked with the head pharmacist there, he claimed there’s no record of a Valium script for her. None! It was fake.”

  The nurse asked, “So what are you saying, that this Witherspoon gave her that prescription?”

  Exactly! At least, her gut knew that was it. But gut feelings didn’t prove a thing and certainly couldn’t exonerate her for apparently prescribing the wrong drug for Bobbie—a drug that would’ve killed her if Trent hadn’t come home in time. The only person to know for certain who gave her the prescription was Bobbie, and right now she was in the other room drugged and intubated.

  “I don’t know. But I intend to find out. Until this is cleared up I’m on probation.” She should get to work. “Sorry, I’ve taken too much of your time. I’ll let you get back to your patients. Thanks for the information.”

  AS SARAH ENTERED room 621 a nurse in purple scrubs connected a liter of normal saline onto an IV holder, a clear plastic tube snaking down to a vein in the back of Bobbie’s hand. A single sheet covered Bobbie’s body; her eyes were shut, and a breathing tube and bite block were taped securely in her mouth. At the head of the bed a corrugated plastic tube linked an air humidifier to a tube in Bobbie Baker’s trachea inserted three days ago as a lifesaving measure when Baker was too drugged to breathe. The respirator next to the bed stood silent now, allowing her to breathe on her own. The question being, Was she breathing well enough to remove the tube?

  “How is she?” Sarah asked.

  Caught by surprise, the nurse jumped and spun around. “Oh, hi, Dr. Hamilton. Sorry, didn’t hear you come in.” She took a deep breath before returning to Baker to prod her shoulder. “Leslie! Wake up. Dr. Hamilton’s here to see you.”

  Bobbie’s eyes flickered open but squinted in the light.

  Sarah leaned over the side rail and gently squeezed the young woman’s hand. “Hi, kiddo.”

  Way Sarah saw it, Bobbie owed her life to the Mariners’ lousy bullpen. If they had put away the Oakland batters instead allowing base hits, Bobbie’s husband, Trent, might’ve stayed at Safeco Field. Instead, he walked out before the end of the seventh inning, came home, found her sprawled over the couch barely breathing, and called 9-1-1.

  She should be dead.

  Bobbie closed her eyes and turned her head away.

  The nurse shrugged. “Her blood gases looked good enough for a trial off the respirator. She’s been on room air since eight o’clock. Plan to check another gas in a few minutes. If things still look good, they’ll pull the tube.”

  As a psychiatrist, Sarah wasn’t responsible for Bobbie’s ICU care, because Neurology handled overdoses. Bobbie had become her patient in the early morning hours two weeks ago when she showed up in the Emergency Room after being seen but not treated at the Lakeview ER.

  “What’s up?” She asks the ER doc who had called her down for a consult at 2 AM. She’s standing at the nursing station, the usual early morning bedlam of a busy ER playing out around them.

  He glances up from the chart he’s involved with. “She’s nuts.”

  “Can you be a little more specific?”

  Obviously irritated at the interruption, he sniped, “You’re the shrink, ask her. Room 5,” and returns to filling out a form. Then as an afterthought he added, “Husband’s name’s Trent.”

  “She remembers the delivery in so much detail—right down to the name of the nurses and the date and the time—that it just sounds too real to be made up.” Trent admits.

  Sarah asks, “Yet you say she’s never been pregnant?”

  He shakes his head. “No, never. And I know what you’re thinking. Believe me, I would know if she had been.”

  She looks at Bobbie, curled into the fetal position on the exam table, picking at something on the sheet only she can see. Sarah believes the acute problem is psychosis due to seventy-two consecutive hours of sleep deprivation. She tells Trent, “I’m sorry Lake view wouldn’t take her, but they don’t have an inpatient psych ward other than the medical ward of the county jail. We do. I think she needs to be admitted and allowed to sleep. The Haldol looks to be kicking in, so she shou
ld be okay.”

  Trent appears grateful. “Thank you, doctor. But what’s causing the memories?”

  Sarah didn’t have any idea. “Let’s take one thing at a time, get her settled down, and then see what we can find out.” She circles back to an important point. “The head injury, can you tell me a little more about it?” Trent has initially glossed over it, as if it were something difficult to discuss.

  He puts a protective hand on Bobbie’s shoulder, lowers his voice, and looks past Sarah at a spot far away. “She just got in her car … it was at Walmart, the parking lot … this guy jumped in the passenger seat and pulled a gun on her.” He swallows, looks at the floor. “Forced her to drive to this deserted road and raped her. Beat her pretty bad too. Would’ve died except for a jogger found her and called 9-1-1.”

  Sarah looks at the still-visible scar on Bobbie’s head. “Was that when her head was operated on?”

  “Yeah. The docs at Lakeview saved her life. That’s why I couldn’t understand why they didn’t admit her tonight. I mean, she was their patient.”

  Bobbie’s diagnosis had morphed into the psychiatric case from hell. No psychiatrist on staff had ever seen anything like it. And Sarah couldn’t find a case in the literature to come close to resembling hers. The symptoms—vivid memories of giving birth to Jordan, a son she never had—defied diagnosis.

  Multiple Personality Disorder?

  Sarah didn’t buy it.

  When her chairman, Herb Ripley, had suggested she ask Tom McCarthy about the case, she’d replied, “What good’s a neurosurgeon going to be diagnosing psychiatric symptoms?”

  “Because,” Ripley had answered, “what if it’s a little-known complication of head injury?”

  Now Bobbie was in the cardiac ICU recovering from an overdose of a drug Sarah didn’t prescribe but was being blamed for giving her. Nothing made sense. Sarah leaned close to Bobbie. “Hey, kiddo, did you hear that? You might get that tube out of your mouth later today. Isn’t that terrific?”

  Bobbie ignored her.

  Sarah nodded for the nurse to step out of the room with her. Once in the hall out of earshot Sarah asked, “You heard about the guy who tried to get into neuro ICU last evening? Witherspoon?”

  “I’m pretty sure everybody in the place knows about it by now. But so far there’s been no sign of him since.”

  “Let’s hope he stays away.”

  “You got that right.” The nurse checked her watch. “Jeez, I better get that blood gas going. You coming back later, after the tube’s removed?”

  “You bet.” Sarah realized her hands were balls of blanched knuckles. The bastard who’d slipped Bobbie the Valium knew enough medicine to kill her and get away with it. And he would’ve succeeded if Trent hadn’t come home. Well, she’d find out who gave her the prescription as soon as Bobbie started talking. But that still wouldn’t address the real question: Why would anyone want to kill the poor girl?

  3

  DOCTORS HOSPITAL, SEATTLE

  SPEECHLESS, TOM MCCARTHY stared at the man in the doorway and the gun in his hand. Another man moved into view behind the first. No facial hair, short haircuts, and serious as hell expressions—McCarthy thought military without knowing why.

  The white guy holding the gun said, “Sir, you’re Tom McCarthy. Affirmative?” His free hand withdrew a wallet from his inside coat pocket.

  Confused by the situation, McCarthy said yes, then realized his mistake. Always answer with a question, put your accuser the defensive, and then start a dialog to sort out this mistake before something goes sideways. But he couldn’t move his eyes from the gun barrel. Worse yet, it had a suppressor attached. Why the gun? Why a suppressor? His mouth went bone-dry.

  “Warren Sikes. Department of Defense.” Sikes let the wallet drop open, exposing an official-looking ID. “This here’s Elroy Washington,” he said with a nod in the black guy’s direction. Elroy didn’t offer ID, a nod, or a smile. He just stood emotionless, yet alert, muscles ready for the unanticipated.

  Sikes ordered, “Sir, keep your hands above the desk where we can see them and stand up slowly. No sudden movements.”

  McCarthy detected a touch of Mississippi cracker in Sikes’s voice.

  Jesus Christ! A silencer! The full impact of seeing the weapon took his breath away. Why a silencer? Heart pounding, gut churning, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Department of Defense? What earthly reason would a legitimate investigator have for aiming a gun at him? “What’s this about?”

  Sikes flicked the gun left. “Sir, move away from the desk.”

  McCarthy’s toe caught on the desk leg, tripping him. He lurched forward. Sikes stepped back, adjusted aim, tightened his finger on the trigger.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, take it easy.” Hands raised, McCarthy crab-stepped left, away from the chair. “Put the gun away. There’s no need for it.”

  Sikes flicked the gun left again. “Farther. Clear the desk so I can see all of you.”

  McCarthy did as ordered. “What do you want?” His dry throat was making his words coarse and weak.

  Sikes said, “Cooperation. That’s what we want. Total cooperation.”

  McCarthy flicked his parched tongue across his lip to no effect. His eyes locked on Sikes’s trigger finger. How much more pressure would be needed before firing? He realized nothing good would come of this encounter, yet felt powerless to change anything. And this realization terrified him even more than the gun. “No problem, just put that gun away; it makes me very nervous.”

  Sikes remained focused, his eyes never wavering from Tom’s hands. “Serves a purpose. See, in my experience it gives a boy like you good reason to cooperate.”

  McCarthy blew a hard breath and forced himself to not panic. “Cooperate? I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to cooperate with.”

  “So far, sir, you’re cooperating just fine.” Sikes flicked the gun toward the hall. “Move on out of there.”

  Cautiously, McCarthy sidestepped from the desk toward the door, making no sudden moves, giving Sikes no reason to misinterpret his intention. Sikes pointed to the reception area. “Out there.”

  In the waiting room Sikes pointed to a chair. “Sit.”

  Washington waited, leaning against the hall doorjamb, a similar gun in hand, taking in the scene as if this was routine.

  Heart pounding, forehead sweating, McCarthy sat in the chair, too afraid to raise a hand to wipe away the beads.

  Sikes asked, “The classified material you stole. Where is it?”

  “Sorry, I don’t think I heard right. Did you say classified material?” Not having a clue what Sikes was talking about made the anxiousness in his gut worse.

  Sikes rocked his head side to side like a fighter loosening up his neck before a round. “Don’t go that road, McCarthy, I’m impatient. Insult my intelligence, I get mad. And believe me, you don’t want the wrath of my vengeance brought on you.”

  Washington pushed off the wall, as if readying for action. “Man means what he says, McCarthy.”

  McCarthy raised both hands. “Take it easy; this is a mistake. I’m serious. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Sikes stepped closer, shifting the aim of the gun from McCarthy’s chest to his head. “Let me be specific: Where are the DARPA documents? Who’d you give them to?”

  “DARPA?” The word meant nothing to him. Did he hear wrong?

  Washington said, “My man gets downright medieval at times. Seen it with my own eyes, so I suggest you answer straight up.”

  McCarthy said to Washington. “If I had the slightest idea what the hell you were talking about, I’d be happy to cooperate. But I don’t. This is a mistake. You’ve got the wrong person. I don’t know how to say it any clearer.” He started to push out of the chair.

  Sikes aimed to McCarthy’s right and squeezed off a round, blowing away the table lamp. “Sit the fuck down.”

  But McCarthy was up now, heading toward the door. A sudden blur in the corner of
his eye appeared as pain exploded in his temple.

  THE NEXT THING he knew, he was on the floor, looking up at Sikes. Sikes grabbed his shirt, jerked him up into a sitting position.

  Breathing hard, face crimson, Sikes said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Your call, but I’m not leaving until I have the files and the names of anyone you gave copies to.”

  Mistaken identity or not, the situation was out of control. “Listen to me, I’m telling you the truth.” He spoke with a slight pause, punctuating each word. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a mistake.”

  “You don’t, huh.” Sikes turned. “Elroy.”

  A fist slammed into McCarthy’s cheek, whipping his head left. Stunned, McCarthy gasped. “Stop. I don’t know.”

  Sikes’s eyes were slits, his jaw muscles bulging. “Where are the DARPA files?”

  “You got the wrong person. I don’t have them.”

  Maria screamed.

  McCarthy turned to see Maria just inside the office door, hands to her face, cardboard tray, Coke, and sandwich strewn across the carpet. As she turned to run into the hall, Washington yelled. “Stop right there, ma’am; don’t move.”

  She kept moving, right hand pushing off on the doorknob. McCarthy heard a thump, like a fist hitting a pillow. Maria’s thin body hit the heavy door. Still upright, face against the dark wood, she struggled to move but her strength seemed to vanish as a red spot enlarged on her white blouse. Her mouth opened as both knees buckled. She slumped onto the door then slid to the floor, legs twisted awkwardly, leaving blood streaks on the wood.

  “Maria!” McCarthy scrambled up off the chair, rushed to her, and knelt. He slipped his right arm under her back and lifted. She felt surprisingly light and delicate. He put her flat on her back, straightening both legs, and felt the large exit wound on her chest. He heard the sickening sucking of her lung deflating. Gently, he pressed a palm against the wound to stop entering air from collapsing the lung further.

  He realized she was dying in his hands.