Jonathan Kellerman - Devil's Waltz

“Ever have any hassles with her before?”

“Nope. Never met her before.”

He shook his head. “Well, I’m sorry for you, but she seems to be taking really good care of Cassie. And Cindy likes her. I think she reminds Cindy of her aunt — she had an aunt who raised her. Also a nurse, real tough egg.”

After we passed a gaggle of dazed-looking medical students, he said, “It’s probably territorial — Vicki’s reaction to you. Some kind of turf battle, wouldn’t you say?”

“Could be.”

“I notice a lot of that kind of thing around here. Possessiveness over patients. As if they’re commodities.”

“Have you experienced that personally?”

“Oh, sure. Plus, our situation heightens the tension. People think that we’re worth kissing up to, because we’ve got some sort of direct line to the power structure. I assume you know who my dad is.”

I nodded.

He said, “It rubs me the wrong way, being treated differently. I worry about it leading to substandard care for Cassie.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know, nothing specific — I guess I’m just not comfortable with being an exception. I don’t want anyone missing something important because they hung back or broke routine out of fear of offending our family. Not that Dr. Eves isn’t great — I have nothing but respect for her. It’s more the whole system — a feeling I get when I’m here.”

He slowed his pace. “Maybe I’m just talking through my hat. The frustration. Cassie’s been sick with one thing or another for virtually her whole life and no one’s figured out what’s wrong yet, and we also... What I’m saying is that this hospital’s a highly formalized structure and whenever the rules change in a formalized structure, you run the risk of structural cracks. That’s my field of interest: Formal Org — Formal Organizations. And let me tell you, this is some organization.”

We reached the elevators. He punched the button and said, “I hope you can help Cassie with the shots — she’s gone through an absolute nightmare. Cindy, too. She’s a fantastic mother, but with this kind of thing, self-doubts are inevitable.”

“Is she blaming herself?” I said.

“Sometimes. Even though it’s totally unjustified. I try to tell her, but...”

He shook his head and put his hands together. The knuckles were white. Reaching up, he rotated his earring.

“The strain on her’s been incredible.”

“Must be rough on you, too,” I said.

“It hasn’t been fun, that’s for sure. But the worst of it falls on Cindy. To be honest, we’ve got your basic, traditional, sex role-stereotyped marriage — I work; she takes care of things at home. It’s by mutual choice — what Cindy really wanted. I’m involved at home to some extent — probably not as much as I should be — but child rearing’s really Cindy’s domain. God knows she’s a hell of a lot better at it than I am. So when something goes wrong in that sphere, she takes all the responsibility on her shoulders.”

He stroked his beard and shook his head. “Now, that was an impressive bit of defensive pedantry, wasn’t it? Yes, sure, it’s been damned rough on me. Seeing someone you love... I assume you know about Chad — our first baby?”

I nodded.

“We hit bottom with that, Dr. Delaware. There’s just no way to...” Closing his eyes, he shook his head again. Hard, as if trying to dislodge mental burrs.

“Let’s just say it wasn’t anything I’d wish on my worst enemy.”

He jabbed the elevator button, glanced at his watch. “Looks like we caught the local, Doctor. Anyway, we were just coming out of it — Cindy and I. Pulling ourselves together and starting to enjoy Cassie when this mess hit the fan... Unbelievable.”

The elevator arrived. Two candy-stripers and a doctor exited, and we stepped in. Chip pushed the ground-floor button and settled with his back against the compartment’s rear wall.

“You just never know what life’s going to throw you,” he said. “I’ve always been stubborn. Probably to a fault — an obnoxious individualist. Probably because a lot of conformity was shoved down my throat at an early age. But I’ve come to realize I’m pretty conservative. Buying into the basic values: Live your life according to the rules and things will eventually work out. Hopelessly naïve, of course. But you get into a certain mode of thinking and it feels right, so you keep doing it. That’s as good a definition of faith as any, I guess. But I’m fast losing mine.”

The elevator stopped at four. A Hispanic woman in her fifties and a boy of around ten got on. The boy was short, stocky, bespectacled. His blunt face bore the unmistakable cast of Down’s syndrome. Chip smiled at them. The boy didn’t appear to notice him. The woman looked very tired. No one talked. The two of them got off at three.

When the door closed, Chip kept staring at it. As we resumed our descent he said, “Take that poor woman. She didn’t expect that — child of her old age and now she has to take care of him forever. Something like that’ll shake up your entire worldview. That’s what’s happened to me — the whole child-rearing thing. No more assumptions about happy endings.”

He turned to me. The slate eyes were fierce. “I really hope you can help Cassandra. As long as she has to go through this shit, let her be spared some of the pain.”

The elevator landed. The moment the door opened, he was out and gone.

When I got back to the General Peds clinic, Stephanie was in one of the exam rooms. I waited outside until she came out a few minutes later, followed by a huge black woman and a girl of around five. The girl wore a red polka-dot dress and had coal-black skin, cornrows, and beautiful African features. One of her hands gripped Stephanie’s; the other held a lollipop. A tear stream striped her cheek, lacquer on ebony. A round pink Band-Aid dotted the crook of one arm.

Stephanie was saying, “You did great, Tonya.” She saw me and mouthed, “My office,” before returning her attention to the girl.

I went to her consult room. The Byron book was back on the shelf, its gilded spine conspicuous among the texts.

I thumbed through a recent copy of Pediatrics . Not long after, Stephanie came in, closed the door, and sank into her desk chair.

“So,” she said, “how’d it go?”

“Fine, outside of Ms. Bottomley’s continuing antagonism.”

“She get in the way?”

“No, just more of the same.” I told her about the scene with the nurse and Chip. “Trying to get on his good side but it probably backfired. He sees her as a shameless ass-kisser, though he does think she takes good care of Cassie. And his analysis of why she resents me is probably right-on: competing for the attentions of the VIP patient.”

“Attention seeking, huh? There’s a bit of Munchausen symptomology.”

“Yup. In addition, she did visit the home. But only a couple of times, a while back. So it still doesn’t seem likely she could have caused anything. But let’s keep our eyes on her.”

“I already started, Alex. Asked around about her. The nursing office thinks she’s tops. She gets consistently good ratings, no complaints. And as far as I can tell there’s been no unusual pattern of illness in any of her patients. But my offer’s still open — she causes too much hassle, she’s transferred.”

“Let me see if I can work things out with her. Cindy and Chip like her.”

“Even though she’s an ass-kisser.”

“Even though. Incidentally, he feels that way about the entire hospital. Doesn’t like getting special treatment.”

“In what way?”

“No specific complaints, and he made a point of saying he likes you . He’s just got a general concern that something could be missed because of who his father is. More than anything, he looks weary. They both do.”