"Lucy, did you have an abortion? Lucy, can you hear me? Answer me!" He shook her gently. "Lucy tell me about your abortion!" He shouted.
Joanna almost intervened. It was not possible. Then Lucy stirred and murmured, "Friday."
Joanna collapsed and Bo led her to a row of chairs where he lowered her into one.
The pieces of the puzzle now fit together. Dr. Kelley was convinced that Lucy had a botched abortion. He gave orders to the emergency room nurses. "I think this girl has sepsis caused by something that went wrong with an abortion. We need a gynecologist who also handles infectious diseases and a hematologist. We need to get her to the medical center in a hurry. Call Life Flight. Take one of those vials of blood to type and cross match. Maybe we can get a transfusion started before Life Flight gets here. Give her Zosyn, three point, three seven-five grams, Gentamycin, one hundred and twenty milligrams, and Clindamycin, nine hundred milligrams. Start oxygen by mask, then a heart monitor and pulse oximeter. Also, draw blood to start cultures."
The blood would replace what Lucy had lost and to help stop the bleeding. The three medications were broad-spectrum antibiotics. Without knowing the specific bacteria, Dr. Kelley had no way of knowing exactly which antibiotic would be effective. The blood cultures would help the medical center physicians determine the exact bacteria and the correct antibiotics to fight it. In the meantime, Dr. Kelley could use a shotgun approach and hope that he would get lucky. As to what was happening in the uterus, the gynecologist would need to evaluate that condition. His worst fear was that Lucy would develop septic shock. As he completed his instructions, a nurse approached the bed, and after a brief, quiet conversation with her, Dr. Kelley turned to speak to Lucy's parents. His reassuring voice hid his concerns. "Mr. and Mrs. Brady, I've done what I can for Lucy right now. The nurses are taking good care of her. In the meantime, I've just been told that we have a man here who is complaining of severe abdominal pain and I need to check on him. I'll only be a few seconds away. The nurses know exactly what to do. They'll call me if there's a problem. Life Flight should be here in about thirty minutes."
"Is she going to be all right?" Joanna asked, trying to control the quiver that had taken over her voice.
"I hope so Mrs. Brady. Once we get her to the medical center, she will have the best care in the world. She's very sick, but if anyone can pull her through, they can."
He could have added that she had only about one chance in three of making a recovery without some significant, life-long medical problem. Now was not the time for such straight talk. Dr. Kelley excused himself to take care of the other patient. Joanna and Bo watched as the nurses went about their assignments, starting antibiotics, hooking up various machines, drawing blood and placing an oxygen mask over Lucy's mouth and nose.
Then Joanna turned to Bo and quietly said, "We need to be praying."
She walked over to Lucy's bed, got down on her knees on the hard floor, and touching Lucy's arm, started praying for her daughter's life. Bo saw what she was doing and kneeled beside her, head bowed, with his arm around the shoulders of his wife of twenty-five years. The nurses' voices were stilled and they silently joined in the prayer. Unlike the Bradys, they knew the odds were against Lucy. While the nurses were doing all they could, they were willing to hope that prayers might save Lucy's life.
Joanna continued to watch the nurses checking vital signs every ten minutes and the monitors. They asked about the helicopter and they waited. Dr. Kelley came into the cubicle, checking Lucy with a grim look on his face, then hurrying back to the patient next door. After about twenty minutes, a nurse started a blood transfusion. The Bradys saw it as a sign of some progress and some hope. Then the head nurse approached.
"The helicopter will be here in five minutes. We're beginning preparations. Your daughter is stable. We're going to temporarily disconnect the monitors. She will still have the IV and blood bag attached. Once the transfer is made, the EMTs will be monitoring her in the helicopter. Mrs. Brady, you can ride with her and I suggest that your husband drive to Hermann Hospital where they will be taking over her care. Mr. Brady, do you know how to get to the medical center and find Hermann?"
"Yes, ma'am," he nodded.
As he spoke, they began to hear the "thump, thump, thump" of a helicopter as it made its approach.
Unexpectedly, the nurse called Bo over to a quiet corner of the emergency room. "Mr. Brady, I'm a nurse and I despise malpractice cases, but something happened to Lucy that never should have occurred. You may need a lawyer. Years ago, I used to work at Parkland Hospital in Dallas with a nurse named Mildred Montgomery. She left there and moved to Palestine where she became a paralegal for a lawyer named Tisdale. I don't talk to her much any more, but she tells me that he's one of the best plaintiff lawyers in the country. In fact, he just handled a big asbestos case that's been all over the news lately. Here's her name and phone number in Palestine and her boss's name. If it becomes necessary, call and tell her you're a friend of mine."
The nurse handed Bo a slip of paper that he stuck in his pocket and returned to Joanna.
"It's landing now," she continued. "We have a space marked off on the parking lot as a helipad where it will land. If you don't mind, I'd like for both of you to go out and stand under the carport entrance. There's nothing you can do here. You can observe from there."
The modern medical helicopter was one of the marvels of the late twentieth century. Initially developed by the military, it soon became a mainstay in nearly every major metropolitan area in the country. In Houston the Life Flight helicopters flew for Hermann Hospital, one of the major hospitals in the sprawling Texas medical center, located about five miles south of downtown. By the late nineties Hermann had three fully equipped helicopters that ranged throughout Southeast Texas twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Their nurses were among the most capable and experienced trauma professionals in the country. When the emergency called for it, a trauma surgeon often went along. Their pilots were the best in the business. Usually denied the luxury of setting down on a helipad, they had to drop their craft on narrow streets, in unlit forests with only the smallest of openings between swaying pine trees, among storm whipped electrical power lines or on crowded freeways. They flew in wind and driving rainstorms with lightning streaking the sky. Only hurricane-force gales would keep them on the ground.
John Peterson was the pilot of the helicopter dispatched to pick up Lucy. Undoubtedly the most skilled and dedicated on the Hermann Hospital crew, he was in his fifties and had been flying helicopters since Vietnam. Life Flight had been his passion for fifteen years. His kindly face featured blue eyes above a bushy graying mustache, giving him the appearance of a good-natured grandfather that belied the conviction he had for his job. It was about saving lives and if there was a need, he could put his helicopter down in an area not much wider than the blades that whipped above it. He looked out of the cockpit as the nurses opened the doors, dropped out of the helicopter and dashed for the girl on the stretcher in Texas City.
The Life Flight nurses pushed a stretcher toward Lucy and two hospital nurses. They coordinated their efforts to transfer the patient and her IV bags of fluid, antibiotics and blood to the helicopter stretcher. Joanna and Bo watched with fear etching their faces until one of the nurses waved at Joanna to follow. She gave Bo a quick hug and ran toward the helicopter.
Bo turned to the parking lot, determined to be at the hospital by the time his daughter got to Hermann. As he reached his pickup, he glanced at the red pickup parked beside his and its license plate briefly caught his attention. The frame around the license read, "My Lawyer is J. Robert Tisdale." He paused long enough to pull the paper the nurse gave him from his pocket and, after comparing the names, he jumped into his pickup, backed out of the parking space and was soon out of sight.
Captain Peterson watched a scene similar to those he had witnessed so many times before, including the mother running along behind the stretcher and the father getting into a blue Fo
rd pickup and speeding out of the parking lot. The nurses loaded the stretcher and patient, locked the wheels in place and directed Joanna to a jump seat. They were starting to hook up the various monitors when they gave Peterson the okay to take off. Checking to make sure that everything was clear, he radioed his base and lifted the chopper into the air, rapidly directing it toward the Gulf Freeway.
Between them, the nurses had more than forty years experience and they wasted no time in assessing the patient, determining that they needed immediate help on landing. The older of the two radioed Hermann, "We've got a seventeen-year-old female in severe distress; pulse thready at one-twenty; blood pressure of eighty over fifty; temp of one-hundred-four-point-five, even after antibiotics; respirations of thirty-two; on oxygen by mask; H and H are nine and twenty-five. She's being transfused and is on Ringers, Zosyn, Gentamycin and Clindamycin. Bleeding vaginally, she's in and out of consciousness. We need to ready an O.R. for immediate surgery. Preliminary diagnosis is complications of abortion, sepsis and possibly the beginning of DIC."
After receiving an affirmative from the nurse at base, she turned to join in Lucy's care. Joanna understood most of the nurse's report, but DIC was something new.
"Excuse me, but what is DIC?" she asked over the thumping of the helicopter blades.
The nurse didn't pull any punches. "DIC stands for disseminated intravascular coagulopathy. It's a problem with the clotting factors in the blood that can be caused by many things, including sepsis and blood loss. If it can't be stopped, it can be fatal, but I hope we have your daughter on the way in time. The most important things are to keep blood products and the right antibiotics infusing while the doctors correct whatever is causing the problem. If the abortion caused it, a gynecologist will have to fix the underlying problem. We hope that the blood products and antibiotics will help her turn the corner."
The use of the word "fatal" shocked Joanna. Until that moment, she had never considered that her only daughter might die before she did. She expected to see Lucy married, to make her a grandmother. She couldn't picture herself crying at Lucy's funeral. She prayed harder than ever before, tears streaming down her face and sobs racking her body.
Up front, Captain Peterson was pushing the chopper toward Houston parallel to the Gulf Freeway when he spotted the father's pickup going at least ninety and being tailed by a police vehicle with lights flashing as they both weaved in and out of traffic. Seeing what was happening, he radioed the police dispatcher.
"Ann, one of your boys is chasing a blue pickup on the Gulf Freeway northbound. It looks like the number on the top of the patrol car is two eighty-three. The pickup is being driven by the father of a girl I've got in my chopper on the way to Hermann. It's a life or death situation. That pickup driver needs an escort, not a ticket."
"I hear you, John. I'll take care of it," Ann replied as she switched frequencies to radio Unit 283.
Peterson watched from above as within a minute Unit 283 moved over two lanes, put on a burst of speed to pass a truck and pulled in front of the pickup. It took Bo a moment to recognize that he now had an official escort and not a potential speeding ticket. Soon, he was following the police officer as he weaved in and out of traffic
CHAPTER 10
J. Robert Tisdale left the throng inside the courthouse and lumbered to his fire-engine-red Dodge Ram pickup. It was the biggest and finest that Dodge made, a quad cab with dual wheels on the back and a giant diesel engine. A light rack rose above the cab and a roll bar extended to the truck bed. The lawyer had installed a big red box directly behind the cab. When the door to the box on the passenger side was unlocked, it revealed storage space for his briefcase, files and law books. On the driver's side the box contained a specially made refrigerator, fed from the battery but designed to keep beverages cold as long as the truck ran at least an hour a day. The lawyer dropped his briefcase in the right side box and walked around to the driver's side, unlocking the refrigerator to find his usual supply of Lone Star beer along with sodas for his grandchildren. He picked out a cold beer, popped the top and took a giant swig even though he was on the town square right in front of the courthouse. Letting forth a loud and long belch, he climbed into the cab and started the engine. As he drove from the courthouse, Lone Star in hand, he turned on a siren that pierced the town square. It could be heard for six blocks in any direction. J. Robert Tisdale had won another case, and he wanted everyone in town to know it.
***
He came into the world at the community hospital in Palestine, Texas, a small town about one hundred miles southeast of Dallas where his father worked for the railroad. His parents named him John Robert Tisdale, but as a small town boy from Texas, he quickly became Johnny Bob. His nickname, "Tank," came from his size. As a sophomore in high school, he was six feet, four inches tall and weighed two hundred and eighty pounds.
Until his senior year, Johnny Bob assumed he would work for the railroad after high school. College didn't enter his mind until the coach over at East Texas State in Tyler called, offering him a scholarship to play football. What the heck, Johnny Bob figured, might as well give college a try. Besides, it would postpone having to look for a job. Four years later, he completed his stay at East Texas State, graduating with a "C" average. After college, he moved back home and loafed for the summer, hanging out with his old friends and drinking beer. When August came, his dad announced that Johnny Bob either had to move out or start paying rent.
After receiving the ultimatum, Johnny Bob borrowed his dad's pickup and drove around town, thinking and weighing his options. Nothing interested him except the few big houses on a tree-shaded street where the rich people lived…the doctors, lawyers, railroad executives and a banker or two. He drove up and down that street half a dozen times before making his decision. He would be an attorney. He'd live in one of those big houses where he could sit out on a shaded veranda at the end of the day and drink a beer or whatever it was that rich lawyers drank when they got off work. How to become a lawyer was a question he could not answer.
The next day he wandered down to the courthouse and asked to see Judge Arbuckle, a lifelong resident of Palestine and an attorney for thirty years, the last ten of which he had served as the local district judge. A big supporter of Palestine High School football, he never missed a game and had followed Johnny Bob's athletic career since he played in junior high school.
After sitting uncomfortably in the outer office watching the secretary type on an old Underwood for twenty minutes, Johnny Bob amused himself by trying self-hypnosis, staring intently at the ceiling fan. Not exactly a candidate for hypnotism, he had dozed off when Judge Arbuckle opened the door to his chambers. A slight man with white hair, the judge radiated a no-nonsense personality, particularly when on the bench. Having no court duties that day, he wore a white short sleeve shirt and thin black tie. Mopping his brow with a red bandanna, the older man greeted his visitor with a smile. "Well, Tank, what brings you here? You're not in trouble, are you?"
"No, sir," Tank replied forcefully to emphasize his point as he rose from the chair. "I just need some advice."
"Then come on into my office and let's see how I can help you. Have a seat."
Johnny Bob sat in a hard, straight-backed chair across from the judge's desk as the older man walked around it and settled into a large, comfortable chair with a black leather seat. Behind him was an open window facing the courthouse square.
"Boy, it's a hot one, ain't it, son? I've been trying to get the commissioners to air condition this courthouse, but they won't do it. Maybe the next time I have a three-week trial in July, I'll subpoena every one of their fat asses and make them serve jury duty in that oven of a courtroom. Maybe that'll do the trick. Meantime, I may just have to dig into my own pocket to buy a window unit for this office. How're your mom and dad?"
"Just fine, sir."
"You tell them I said hello. Now what do we need to talk about?"
Johnny Bob didn't hesitate. "Sir, I want to be a
lawyer and I don't know how to do it."
"Well, well, ain't that just fine," the judge chuckled. "Tank Tisdale for the defense. Not sure we have a courtroom in these parts big enough for you. Just kidding, son. How were your grades up at East Texas?"
Johnny Bob looked down at the floor as he responded, "Not very good, sir. I spent a lot of time playing football and most of my grades were 'C's' with an occasional 'B'."
Judge Arbuckle spun around in his chair and stared out the window while he pondered a moment before he spoke. When he swiveled back around, he leveled with Tank. "Then, I suspect that the better law schools in the state, Texas, Baylor, S.M.U., are probably out. They require pretty good grades and a good score on the LSAT to get in. You even know what the LSAT is?"
"No, sir."
"That's the Law School Admission Test. All these damn schools are requiring it these days. Not like in my day when you just showed up on the first day of class, paid your fees and became a law student. There's a law school down in Houston that's probably your best choice. It's called South Texas College of Law. It started in the basement of the YMCA and used to be strictly a night law school where people working full time could go and eventually become lawyers. It didn't have much of a reputation for a lot of years but it's improving and, from what I've seen, it has turned out some damn fine trial lawyers. It's a private school, pretty expensive. You'd probably have to work in the daytime and go to school at night. Might take you an extra year."
So Help Me God Page 6
