“Is it that you don’t trust yourself or that you don’t want anyone to spread the word about you and have the girl’s family come looking for you again?”
“Truthfully, it’s both. The girl’s family has tormented me for ten years, but not nearly as bad as I have tormented myself.
“You know of all the towns I’ve been to in the past ten years I like this one the best. I really feel at home here even though not a soul takes notice of me or cares if I live or die, or stay or go. Well, I guess I’ll move on in the morning,” Jesse finished with dismay.
“Why? If you like it here so much?”
“Because you know. In every town I’ve ever been, as soon as one person knows or suspects who I am, then a private investigator or one of the lawyers shows up. I’m not sorry I told you though. It didn’t help me to talk about it, but I needed to just the same. Do you understand that?”
Strangely enough he did understand. The man had been keeping this bottled up inside him for years and just letting it out to another human being, especially a doctor, had to ease the pressure, even though it did not ease the pain.
“Yes, I understand and you can rest assured your secret is safe with me. You’ll not have to leave this town on account of my knowing your past.”
“I’ll think about it,” Jesse said as he got up and walked slowly across the street to the shack without so much as a glance back.
Doc watched him as he disappeared into his shack and then he slowly got up and walked back to his room, deep in thought. Inside the Bed and Breakfast he asked the owner, “Seen that motorcycle guy around?”
“Not lately. He ain’t been bothering you has he?”
“No, just curious is all. Seems like an odd sort of fellow.”
“He is that. Pays for his room okay, but I don’t think he has the money for many more nights. Looks like a flat broke bum to me.”
Doc grunted and smiled to himself as he went back outside to look around for Mike and thought, if you only knew.
He found Mike down the street in a little coffee shop, there was nothing big in the whole town, and pulled up a chair at the same table.
“Hello, Doc. How’s the vacation going?” Mike chuckled.
“I got your vacation, Michael,” he scowled with a smile and continued, “now listen, I need some information and no questions, okay?”
“Okay, sure, Doc, shoot,” Mike replied in his all-business tone.
“I want you to find out all you can about a Jesse Blockman, a doctor. Check the records at St. Mary’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. There was also a civil trial for wrongful death in the local courts there around ten years back. See what you can find out and be very, very quiet about it. If at all possible I’d like to see the medical records on the little girl who died. That’s what the court case was all about. Okay?”
“Sure I’ll do what I can and when I want to be quiet I can be real quiet. What have you gotten in to?”
“Please, no questions. Besides, you got me into it. Just get me what you can and get it to me as quietly and as quickly as possible. I’m not sure how much time I have to waste.”
“Right. I’ll get on it,” Mike said, as he got up, paid for his coffee and left.
~*~
“Swenson,” the voice answered crisply.
“Maltby,” Mike said back just as crisply.
“Maltby! How did you remember me?” Swenson said not so amiably into the phone.
“I never forget the name of someone who owes me a favor and I not only remembered you Craig, but I remembered your phone number, too. You have the easiest phone number in the world to remember. The hard part is remembering the prefix, but everyone knows the area code for Washington D.C. After that, even I can’t forget four ‘ones’ in a row,” he chuckled and continued, “I need a favor, Craig. I need to know all you can find out about a Doctor Jesse Blockman. Used to be at St. Mary’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, probably about ten years ago. Something about a wrongful death suit and a little girl. This has to be on the quiet. You didn’t even talk to me about it, okay?”
“I’m used to that where I work and you definitely do not know where that is, right?”
“Roger, over and out, and thanks,” Mike said as he hung up the phone after having given Swenson a number where he could be reached.
Mike wondered if that was necessary. He suspected Craig could find him faster than he liked to think about. Craig and the organization he worked for were experts at finding people. Especially, people who didn’t want to be found.
~*~
Two weeks passed and Doc had heard nothing from Mike. He knew it would do no good to talk to him. If Mike said he was working on something, then he was and there was no use in asking more of him.
He had been watching for Jesse to be back at the park bench, too, but had not seen him. The shack was still there and twice he had caught fleeting glimpses of Jesse in the alleyways of town, but before he could get to him he had disappeared. It was November and getting too cold to be sitting out for too long.
Later that night he lay awake in his bed waiting for sleep to come. He had gone to bed early and it had done him no good. Now as he glanced at his watch it read, “10:00”.
A clatter from downstairs brought him fully awake. He guessed he had been somewhat sleeping for he had to strain for a minute to identify the new noise of footsteps running up the stairs. Then a series of loud bangs on this door followed by a nearly screaming voice brought him to full consciousness.
“Doctor, Doctor, come quickly. Please, Doctor you must come…you can save her…you can save her. Please, Doctor,” the voice said and now that he was fully awake and sitting up in bed he recognized the voice as that of Jesse Blockman. No one else in town, other than Mike, knew he was a doctor anyway.
He jumped up, pulled on his trousers and jerked open the door to see Jesse standing in the light of the hallway and the proprietor right behind him with a look of half anger and half dismay on his face. Jesse had tears streaming down his face and as Doc listened he began again, “Please, Doctor, you can save her!”
“What is it, Jesse, what has happened?”
“Amanda Carlson. She fell down the stairs. Bad head injury. She looks shocky already. Please, you can help her.”
Doc reached under his bed and pulled out his black doctor’s bag. He might be in this town incognito, but he was still a doctor and he couldn’t go far without his bag.
“Okay, Jesse,” he said, as he buttoned on a shirt and continued, “show me where.”
Jesse’s face lit up like a child on his birthday and he gestured for Doc to follow him. Jesse practically ran down the stairs with Doc in hot pursuit, leaving the proprietor standing at the top of the stairs.
Jesse turned left toward the intersection of Main and Main as soon as they reached the street. They both practically ran through the intersection and in the next block Jesse slowed in front of a two-story brick apartment building.
“In here,” Jesse said as he held open the front entrance doors and gestured for Doc to go up the stairs.
When they reached the last step at the top of the stairs Doc was completely out of breath and his legs were feeling rubbery as if he had just run a marathon. He missed the last step and tried to catch himself on the railing, but missed it, too. He tumbled backwards down the stairs making at least two complete revolutions before he hit the landing at the bottom.
He felt an enormous pain in his left lower leg and when he shook himself alert he reached down to discover something sticking out of his lower leg. When he looked down to where his hand was he saw blood, a lot of blood. There was also a pointed bulge in his pants leg and he knew that part of his leg bone was sticking out through the skin. A classic compound fracture, he instantly diagnosed, as if he were detached and examining a patient, just before the pain almost overwhelmed him.
Jesse was immediately at his side and so were two other men who had run down the stairs from somewhere. The two men lifted him as
gently as they could and carried him back up the stairs and into the front room of an apartment. Behind them trailed Jesse, having retrieved Doc’s bag. Doc was put on a sofa with his head propped up and through the haze of pain he saw a little girl stretched out on a coffee table. There was blood flowing freely from an injury near her left temple area. Jesse sat the bag down by the sofa, just standing and staring at the little girl.
“Who’s he?” A man who was kneeling by the little girl asked.
“Don’t know for sure, Dick, but the bag he had with him looked like a doctor’s bag so we brought him up here. Thought maybe he could tell us what to do.” One of the men who had carried Doc up the stairs said.
Doc was hearing things, but not fully comprehending them. The world seemed to be in a red haze and he was sure it was from the extreme pain in his leg. He looked over at Jesse, but he was just standing there. Straight as a ramrod and motionless. Almost motionless anyway. Doc could make out a twitch on the side of his neck and though his hands were balled into tight fists he was flexing them involuntarily. His face looked as if it had been carved in stone and his eyes had a faraway look in them. It was as if Jesse were in a trance.
Doc was still conscious enough to figure out that while Jesse’s body was here his mind was gone. Probably, two thousand miles to the east, in a courtroom, or in a hospital room, staring at the chart of a little girl. Possibly he was seeing the little girl from 10 years ago, severely injured or maybe she was dead.
“Let me see that bag a minute,” another man said. And it was handed to him by another.
“What you doing, Keith?” The man kneeling by the little girl asked.
“When I was in ‘Nam the medics always gave wounded men a shot of morphine. It seemed to help calm them down and bring them around. I seen it done a lot. If there is any in here I can give your little girl some and maybe it will bring her around. We don’t have much choice. That ambulance is still 45 minutes away and the hospital is three hours on top of that.”
No! Doc screamed to himself, but he could not make himself speak it. His pain was too great now and it was all he could do to remain conscious. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
“Here we go! Okay, now I got to fill this syringe with some of it. Not too much. She’s awful little.”
Doc tried in vain to make himself get up off of the couch and stop them, but he couldn’t. He had to fight just to stay conscious.
The man filled the syringe, squirted a little out the end to remove the air bubbles, as he had undoubtedly seen on TV a hundred times and then bent over the little girl lifting her left arm gently.
The room exploded. Doc saw and felt it through the red haze. Jesse jumped forward, grabbed the man with the syringe, and bodily tossed him out of range of the little girl. Doc heard the syringe strike the wooden floor and clatter away. Two other men immediately grabbed Jesse by the arms to restrain him and the man who had been thrown aside hunted for and found the syringe again.
“Get that stinking, crazy fool out of here!” The little girl’s father yelled and the men started pulling back on Jesse’s arms.
“No! No! You’re the fools, not me. You don’t give morphine to someone with a head injury. You might kill them. You don’t know how bad their brain is damaged. She could go in to a coma and never recover. You have to keep the brain alert. Morphine dulls the brain’s function. You can’t do that with a brain when it is injured. The brain has to be able to feel to recover and to tell you where it is hurt,” Jesse finished, pleading, with tears flowing freely down his cheeks.
“What?” Asked the father, clearly taken aback at this clinical outburst from a known bum.
Jesse responded very calmly and clinically now, “I said, you don’t give morphine or any other pain killer to a person with a brain injury. Any first-year medical student could tell you that. I’m a doctor and I know what I am saying.” Then he gestured with his head at Doc on the sofa, who was taking all this in, but was unable to talk through his clenched teeth and the red haze. “Ask that doctor he will tell you.”
The man with the syringe looked from Jesse to Doc on the sofa and asked, “That right? Is he a doctor and is he right?”
Doc could not make himself conscious enough to speak, but he did manage to clearly shake his head in an affirmative sign while grimacing through his pain.
“Let him go!” The little girl’s father said and continued looking at Jesse, “if you are really a doctor what can we do?”
Jesse stepped forward as the men dropped his arms and he gently lifted the little girl’s left arm and felt for her pulse. “Look in that bag and see if you can find a sterile transfusion kit. It’ll be in a sealed plastic bag and look like a coil of rubber hose or tubing. About one quarter inch or maybe three eights in diameter.” Then looking over at the woman who had been silently holding the little girl’s right hand he asked, “You the girl’s mother?”
“Yes,” she responded weakly.
“What blood type is she, do you know?”
“O-positive,” the woman stated flatly.
“Okay. Good. Now who in this room is O-positive, if you know for sure.”
“I am,” one of the men who had been holding Jesse’s arms earlier replied.
“Good,” Jesse said and continued, “someone go get a clean cloth and dampen it.”
When the mother returned with the damp cloth Jesse said to the father, “You hold that clean damp cloth on the wound firmly, but gently to slow the blood flow. You can’t stop it, but you can slow it. Don’t try to stop it, just hold it there to slow it down.”
“Got something here,” the man who had been digging through the bag said.
“Good. That’s it, now tear it open careful not to touch the needles. Make it fast, we are about out of time. This little girl needs some blood in a hurry. A couple of you start rubbing her arms and legs. We have to get her circulation improved. Come on hurry up. Faster—rub faster.”
At that point Doc could no longer fight his pain and he slipped into unconsciousness.
Chapter Two
Doc first noticed the smell. Even without his eyes being open he knew he was in a hospital. He had seen and smelled more hospitals than the average person had been to the grocery store. Slowly, he came around and his senses began to take in his surroundings. His eyes weren’t open, but he knew he was being treated.
He drifted in and out, between reality and dreams. Hearing pieces of things and feeling portions of others. There was no sense of time to it. At times it all seemed like a dream. Finally, after how long, he didn’t know, he opened his eyes and blinked them rapidly to bring them into focus. He was positive he was in a hospital room now. The first thing his eyes focused on was the tiled ceiling and a central light fixture. He could feel the IV needles in his arms and his left leg was tightly restrained, but elevated. He glanced down and saw that it was elevated by use of pulleys and weights. A cast was evident from above the knee to the ankle.
He rolled his head back and forth, as far as he could, but found no one in the room. Being a doctor, he knew that no matter how long he had been unconscious, the doctor in charge of his case would want to know as soon as he awakened. He felt around with his right hand, being careful of the IV which had been inserted in his forearm, and found the remote control for the bed, TV, and nurse’s call. He depressed the call button and a nurse bounded into his room within a matter of seconds.
“Hello, Doctor. How are you feeling?” the nurse asked pleasantly, but with a business tone.
He responded weakly and hoarsely, “Weak and tired. How long was I out?”
“A little more than two days,” she answered flatly, while she lifted his right wrist to feel for his pulse.
“How did you know I was a doctor?”
“Late the first day a man called and told us your name was Bill Collins and that you were a doctor. He asked that we give you the best of care and that you were a friend of his.”
“Did he give you his name?
” He asked, feeling sure it was Mike who had called.
“Just his first name. Dan, I think it was,” she responded and continued, “now that’s enough talk, Doctor. You know as well as I do that you need rest and quiet for a while. I have to go notify the doctor in charge of your case.” Upon finishing the last sentence she turned and walked out the door.
He put his head back and let it settle into the pillow. He was tired. Plus, he was willing to bet that one of those IVs was feeding a mild sedative into his veins. Dan, he thought, as he drifted into what this time was a complete and restful sleep.
The next time he awoke there was a different nurse on duty and she was even more business-like than the last one.
“How’s the little girl?” He queried as she took his pulse.
“I’m sorry?”
“The little girl that I broke my leg trying to run too fast up a flight of stairs to help.”
When she responded with a puzzled look he continued, “the little girl with the head injury. She had fallen down the stairs.”
“Sorry, but I don’t know. I don’t work emergency. I see patients after they are admitted. If a little girl came in with you I don’t know about it. She could and probably would have gone to a different floor. Pediatrics is on the second floor. I only work the fourth, which of course, is where you are.”
“Who could find out for me?”
“Maybe Doctor Nelles. He is the doctor on your case.”
“When can I see him?”
“Doctor Nelles has been in to see you several times, but you were asleep. He will be back in the morning between 7:00 and 10:00 for his rounds. If you are awake you can talk to him.”
Doc put in rather acidly, since he was tired of this business-like voice droning on at him, “I WILL be awake if you will shut off the IV that is laced with the sedative.”
The nurse looked at him and raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t forget nurse. I’m a doctor and I know the routine. Now hand me my chart. I want to see what this Doctor Nelles has been doing to me.”
The nurse, as cold and clinical as she was, knew only one thing for sure. Never argue with a doctor, even if he is wrong, unless you have a real good reason and don’t care about losing your job. No one had told her this patient couldn’t look at his chart and so she handed it to him. She had never had a patient before who could have understood the silly thing anyway.