Michael Palmer - Flashback

And finally, there was the lack of any really good explanation as to why the man might have been singled out for destruction in the first place Certainly, his widow's belief that Ultramed was trying to rid itself of a potential troublemaker was possible, but the response seemed absurdly out of proportion to the threat Guy posed-like shooting a fly with an elephant gun. Zack retrieved Cheap dog from where he was lurking beneath the window of a neighbor's unspayed collie, and chained him on a long run in the yard. Then he showered, dressed, and headed for the hospital, wondering what he would do if he had to confront Marie Fontaine and her mother with hard evidence that Guy had been, in fact, irrational, unstable, and paranoid. Even with a negative autopsy, the man could have been in the early stages of Alzheimer's or struggling with nonanatomical mental illness. As he was pulling into the small Doctors Only lot at the hospital Zack flashed on another saying-this one from a poster he had tacked to the wall of his med school apartment. Just because you re paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you. The emergency ward was in a louder-than-usual morning hum, with several private physicians doing minor procedures, and the E. R. physician of the day, Wilton Marshfield, huffing from one of four "active" rooms to the next, clearly upset that things were not proceeding at a more gentle pace. Zack stopped by the lounge for one final cup of coffee, and was in the process of failing to confound two candy stripers with a thumb palm, when he was paged for an outside call. "Zack, it's Brookings here, Phil Brookings."

"Oh, yes, Phil. If you're calling about that youngster, Nelms, I had to postpone his appointment because of Guy Beaulieu's funeral. I'll be seeing him tomorrow afternoon."

Zack glanced over at the candy stripers, one of whom was completing the more-than-passable thumb palm of a penny on her first try. "I know," the psychiatrist said. "The boy's mother called me. She was, how can I say, a little concerned that you told her to meet you on the side of some mountain. I promised her I would check with you to see if… ah… if there was anything further I could do."

"Actually, " Zack said, smiling at Brookings's discomfiture, "It's near the base of the mountain. Not on the side."

"Oh… I see… Well, I'll just give Mrs. Nelms a call and reassure her that you're not the, how should I say, the eccentric she thinks you might be."

This time, Zack laughed out loud. "Phil, forgive me for being glib. The truth is, I probably am the eccentric she thinks I might be. But this time, at least, I'm just doing 1, what I can to avoid the difficulty you had. It's a little tricky doing a detailed neurological exam on a moving target."

"I understand, " Brookings said, although his tone suggested some lingering doubts. "I'll speak with the boy's mother and make sure they show up. And just in case, perhaps you should wear your sneakers.

The kid is fast."

"Thanks, Phil. I'll be in touch."

Zack hung up as the candy stripers, still practicing, were preparing to leave the lounge. "Here you go, ladies, " he said. "One more. This one's called a finger roll. In it, this perfectly normal American quarter will be magically transported across the tops of my fingers and back without the aid of a crane, bulldozer, or my other hand."

Between the second and the third roll, the quarter slipped between his fingers and plunked into his coffee. "Now, I suggest that you two stay away from this trick until you're old enough to work with hot coffee," he warned. He stood proudly by the cup and waited to retrieve his coin until the bewildered pair had left the room. "Me, eccentric, " he muttered as he headed through the emergency ward. "That's ridiculous.

Absolutely ridiculous."

A set of X rays, five views of a teenager's cervical spine, were wedged up on a four-paneled viewbox in the corridor. Hours later, when the tension and excitement had died down and there was time to reflect, Zack would be unable to explain what it was about those films that had caught his eye. But in that one microsecond as he passed by, something did. It might have been the widening of a shadow, or perhaps the slightly unusual curve in the lateral view. Or it might have been nothing more or less than the instinctive processing of the films against thirteen years of study and God only knew how many other C-spines in how many other settings. Whatever it was, something made him stop, turn, and study the X rays in more detail. The fractures of vertebrae C-1 and C-2 were far from the most obvious he had ever seen, but they were certainly present-and unquestionably unstable. If the spinal cord had not already been damaged, a sudden twist, or turn, or bump could be disastrous.

Either way, he certainly should have been called in on the case. He checked the name and birthdate, Stacy Mills, age 14 Next, he cut through the nurses' station, looking for Wilton Marshfield. The portly physician was hunched over a counter, hurriedly writing a set of discharge instructions. Next to the instruction sheet was a soft cervical collar.

"Hi, " Zack said, moving close enough to verify that the instructions were, in fact, for Stacy Mills. He looked past the man to bed 3, where a dark, pretty girl in riding jodhpurs and a lavender T-shirt was waiting with her parents. She was sitting on the edge of the litter with her feet dangling down, and she was rubbing gently at the base of her skull.

"Oh, hi, Iverson, " Marshfield said. He glanced up only long enough to nod, and then returned to his writing. "This is one bitch of a morning, I'll tell you… Saw you at Beaulieu's funeral yesterday Terrible business. Terrible."

"Wilton, could I talk to you for a moment? " Zack asked softly Marshfield shook his head. "Can't stop right now, " he said, pulling a prescription pad from his clinic coat. "I've got to get rid of this kid, and then I still have two more patients to see. I'm getting too old for this pace, Iverson. Too damn old. Tell your brother he'd better hurry up and get this place straightened out so I can get back to my trout stream and my grandchildren."

"It's about that girl you're getting ready to send home, " Zack said.

"Stacy Mills."

Marshfield squinted over at the girl, and then picked up the cervical collar and the instruction sheet, and began writing a prescription for a muscle relaxant. "Fell off her horse and strained her neck muscles, " he said as he wrote. "Look, Iverson, " he added curtly, "I'm sorry I snapped at you the other night. But please, just don't make any trouble for me today. I'm too far behind to-"

"Listen, Marshfield, " Zack whispered. "I just looked at her films over there. She has a fracture. Two of them, I think. C-one and C-two."

The older man froze. In slow motion, his pen wobbled in his fingertips and then fell, clattering onto the counter. "Are you sure? " he rasped.

Zack nodded. "Jesus…"

"Come, let me show you."

Moments later, Zack led a mute, badly shaken Wilton Marshfield across to Stacy Mills and her parents "Hello, Stacy, Mr. and Mrs. Mills, " he said. "My name is Iverson. Zachary Iverson. I'm a neurosurgeon."

He glanced back at Marshfield, who looked as if he were listening blindfolded to the final counts from a firing squad. Inwardly, Zack smiled. If the man was waiting for gunfire, he was in for a pleasant surprise. Hey, Wilton, relax, he was thinking. As far as I'm concerned, this business of ours has never been a contest or a game. It's life.

It's the real bananae And it's hard enough to do right even without the bullshit and the oneupsmanshipw You did the best you could, and that's all we got-any of us. There's no way I would hang you out to dzy. "Dr.

Marshfield, here, has just made an excellent pickup on Stacy's X rays," he said. "He spotted a shadow he didn't like, and wanted me to check it before he would consider sending her home. I'm afraid his suspicions were correct. Stacy, there is a small fracture-a broken bone right up here."