Jonathan Kellerman - Blood Test

“What did these Touch people do, exactly?”

“Nothing I can prove. But all I know is things were going smoothly, the consents were signed, then two of them — a man and a woman — visited the parents and disaster!”

A plate heaped with scrambled eggs arrived along with a dish of yellow sauce. I remembered his affection for hollandaise. He poured the sauce on the eggs and used his fork to divide the mound into three sections. The middle segment was consumed first, followed by the one on his right, and finally the left third disappeared. More dabbing, more imaginary crumb disposal.

“What does your Fellow have to do with it?”

“Valcroix? Probably plenty. Let me tell you about this character. On paper he looked great — M.D. from McGill — he’s a French-Canadian — internship and residency at Mayo, a year of research at Michigan. He’s close to forty, older than most applicants, so I thought he’d be mature. Ha! When I interviewed him I talked to a well-groomed, intelligent man. What showed up six months later was an aging flower child.

“The man is bright but he’s unprofessional. He talks and dresses like an adolescent, tries to get down to the patients’ level. The parents can’t relate to him and eventually the kids see through it, too. There are other problems, as well. He’s slept with at least one mother of a patient that I know about and I suspect there’ve been several others. I chewed him out and he looked at me as if I were crazy to be worried about it.”

“A little loose in the ethics department?”

“He has no ethics. Sometimes I’m convinced he’s drunk or on something, but I can’t trip him up on rounds. He’s prepared, always has the right answer. But he’s still no doctor, just a hippie with a lot of education.”

“How’d he get along with the Swopes?” I asked.

“Maybe too well. He was very chummy with the mother and seemed to relate to the father as well as anyone could.” He looked into his empty coffee cup. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to sleep with the sister — she’s a looker. But that’s not what’s bothering me right now.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“I think Dr. August Valcroix has a soft spot in his heart for quacks. He’s spoken up at staff meetings about how we should be more tolerant of what he calls alternative health care approaches. He spent some time on an Indian reservation and was impressed with the medicine men. The rest of us are discussing the New England Journal and he’s going on about shamans and snake powders. Unbelievable.”

He grimaced in disgust.

“When he told me they were pulling the boy out of treatment I couldn’t help but feel he was gloating.”

“Do you think he actually sabotaged you?”

“The enemy from within?” He considered it. “No, not overtly. I just don’t think he supported the treatment plan the way he should have. Dammit, Alex, this isn’t some abstract philosophy seminar. There’s a sick boy with a nasty disease that I can treat and cure and they want to prevent that treatment. It’s — murder!”

“You could,” I suggested, “go to court on it.”

He nodded sadly.

“I’ve already broached the subject with the hospital attorney and he thinks we’d win. But it would be a Pyrrhic victory. You remember the Chad Green case — the child had leukemia, the parents pulled him out of Boston Children’s and ran away to Mexico for Laetrile. It turned into a media circus. The parents became heroes, the doctors and the hospital, big bad wolves. In the end, with all the court orders, the boy never got treated and died.”

He placed an index finger against each temple and pressed. A pulse quivered under each fingertip. He winced.

“Migraine?”

“Just started. I can handle it.” He sucked in his breath. The paunch rippled.

“I may have to take them to court. But I want to avoid it. Which is why I called you, my friend.”

He leaned forward and placed his hand over mine. His skin was unusually warm and just a bit moist.

“Talk to them, Alex. Use any tricks you’ve got up your sleeve. Empathy, sympathy, whatever. Try to get them to see the consequences of what they’re doing.”

“It’s a tall order.”

He withdrew his hand and smiled.

“The only kind we have around here.”

The walls of the ward were covered with sunny yellow paper patterned with dancing teddy bears and grinning rag dolls. But the hospital smells that I’d grown used to when I worked there — disinfectant, body odor, wilting flowers — assaulted my nostrils and reminded me I was a stranger. Though I’d walked this same corridor a thousand times, I was gripped with the chilling uneasiness that hospitals inevitably evoke.

The Laminar Airflow Unit was at the east end of the ward behind a windowless gray door. As we approached, the door swung open and a young woman stepped into the hallway. She lit up a cigarette and began to walk away, but Raoul hailed her and she stopped, turned, bent a knee and froze the pose, one hand on the cigarette, the other on her hip.

“The sister,” he whispered.

He’d called her a looker but it was an understatement.

The girl was stunning.

She was tall, five eight or nine, with a body that managed to be both womanly and boyish. Her legs were long, coltish, and firm, her breasts high and small. She had a swan’s neck and delicate, slender hands ending in crimson lacquered nails. She wore a white dress made of T-shirt material and had cinched it with a silver cord that showed off a tiny waist and flat belly. The soft fabric molded to every angle and curve and ended midthigh.

Her face was oval with a strong cleft chin. She had prominent cheekbones and a clean jawline leading to lobeless ears. Each ear was pierced with two threadlike hoops of hammered gold. Her lips were straight and full, her mouth a generous red slash.

But it was her coloring that was most striking.

Her hair was long, lustrous, combed straight back from her high smooth forehead, and coppery red. But unlike most redheads she had no freckles and lacked the buttermilk complexion. Her skin was blemishless and burnished a deep California tan. Her eyes were wide-set, thick-lashed, and inky black. She’d used a bit too much makeup but had left her eyebrows alone. They were full and dark, with a natural arch that gave her a skeptical look. She was a girl anyone would notice, with a strange combination of simplicity and flash, almost overwhelmingly physical without trying to be.

“Hello,” said Raoul.

She shifted her weight and looked both of us over.

“Hi.” She spoke sullenly and regarded us with with boredom. As if to underscore her apathy, she gazed past us and sucked on her cigarette.

“Nona, this is Dr. Delaware.”

She nodded, unimpressed.

“He’s a psychologist, an expert in the care of children with cancer. He used to work here, in Laminar Flow.”

“Hello,” she said, dutifully. Her voice was soft, almost whispery, the inflection flat. “If you want him to talk to my parents, they’re not here.”

“Uh, yes, that is what I wanted. When will they be back?”

The girl shrugged and flicked ashes onto the floor.

“They didn’t tell me. They slept here so they probably went back to the motel to clean up. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.”

“I see. And how have you been doing?”

“Fine.” She looked up at the ceiling and tapped her foot.

Raoul raised his hand to offer the classic physician’s pat on the back, but the look in her eyes stopped him and he immediately lowered it.

Tough kid, I thought, but then, this was no day at the beach for her.

“How’s Woody?” he asked.