Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) (26 page)

"Yeah." Now I felt silly.
"Well, I hope you have a good day." In emerg, it's bad luck to say
the word "quiet," because it seems to guarantee the opposite. Of
course, some people, like me, crave the excitement and say it on purpose, but I
wasn't working today.

"So far, so good. Nothing much going
on. I thought I'd rearrange the office and check over some old charts that
finally came in." A peculiar smile plucked the corner of her mouth, so I
had to ask.

"Like what?"

"Like Reena Schuster's old chart
from the Douglas. They sent it here instead of to the floor."

"Maybe I could take a look," I
said quietly.

She shrugged and pointed at the psych
office. "It's on the desk."

I licked my suddenly dry lips, paging through
Reena's chart. I noticed something very interesting about the dates of her
visits. The rest of her records were on the internal medicine floor with her,
so I took the elevator to 5 South and skimmed through the complete box set of
Reena's charts from St. Joe's. Finally, I walked over to see the woman herself,
in room 5312.

It took me a minute to realize that on
the H-shaped internal medicine floor, odd numbers were on one side of the
hallway and even on the other. I cut through the middle of the ward, the
horizontal bar in the H, past the nurses' lounge, and only spotted 5312 because
of the the woman coming out of it.

She was wearing sunglasses and a
short-sleeved taupe blouse with an A-line skirt. Her highlighted blond hair was
drawn back in a sleek ponytail. I assumed she was a social worker or something,
but a woman yelled from down the hall, near the nursing station, “Jodi! Hey,
Jodi!”

Right, Reena's old emerg friend, Jodi.
Now I recognized her, but she'd come a long way from chomping gum. Like the
surgical residents said about colleagues who went from greens to gorgeous, she
sure cleaned up well.

Jodi swept into the horizontal hallway in
the middle of the H without turning to look at me or the woman calling her.

Wendy, red-faced, stormed after her.
"Wait!"

I ignored them both and slipped into
Reena's room. With any luck, I'd be gone before Wendy or anyone else returned.

Reena lay alone in bed in her private
room. She looked much the same as the last time, except her lips had cracked
and, on closer inspection, she breathed a little too evenly and seemed to wear
a purposefully blank expression on her face. I couldn't put my finger on why,
but I bought the coma act even less this time around.

I glanced around the room, at the bedside
tray pushed along the wall and the telephone resting on a bedside table,
reflecting how useless most of the stuff was for someone in a coma, even a fake
one. They hadn't bothered to hook up the TV. I pulled the one padded armchair
up to the side of the bed, making sure to scrape it along the tile floor.

She didn't wince at the screeching or
crack open her eyelids. Not bad.

"Hi, Reena," I said in a
friendly way. "It's Dr. Hope Sze."

No reaction.

"That's a better reception than you
gave me in the emergency room. Remember, I'm the resident on psychiatry."
My voice crept up as if in a question. I paused to tame it. "I understand
you've been in a coma."

Stillness. Really, she was pretty good at
it. I darted forward and lifted her arm up over her head. She let me. I
released her arm pointed straight up in the air, at ninety degrees from her
body. Slowly, her arm fell down the same path it had come up.

A truly comatose patient would have let
it fall down and hit her face.

"That's a pretty good act, but not
good enough. I heard they're transferring you to psych."

Her lips tightened a fraction before
relaxing again.

"What are you so afraid of,
Reena?
 
What makes you rather stay here,
in the hospital, with your eyes closed, not talking or moving 24/7? That's the
'life' you want?"

Her left eyelid twitched. Maybe she was
getting tired of faking it.

"Talk to me, Reena. Tell me what it
is."

I sat in silence, watching her, for five
minutes. It doesn't sound like long, but if you've ever tried to meditate or
otherwise remain completely silent and still for that long, it feels like
eternity.

I was pretty comfortable in the armchair,
of course. I wasn't the one faking the coma. But I didn't particularly want to
run into Wendy, either.

So I leaned forward to whisper in her
ear. "I have an idea why you might be doing this. I read your old chart
from the Douglas."

Her nostrils flared. Her breath caught up
short before it restarted.

"In the chart here, it says you
threatened or attempted suicide in 2003, 2005, twice in 2007, and again in
2008. Slashing your wrists. Overdosing on Advil. Overdosing on Tylenol.
Threatening to jump out your second-story window. But until I got your chart
from the Douglas, I didn't know the exact dates: August 6th. August 7th. August
8th. August 10th. In other words, always on or around August 8th, the day Dr.
Laura Lee was killed."

Her eyelids clamped down but didn't open.

"Lots of people try to kill
themselves, Reena. But I doubt most people have your burden of guilt. It must
be terrible, holding that inside for the past eight years."

Were those tears beading the roots of her
eyelashes? I was too close to pull back now, but a tiny needle of compassion
for Reena pricked me. "Talk to me, Reena. That's what I'm here for."

Her lips cracked open. Her breath puffed
out, hot and fetid. I waited for her to speak.

Chapter
26

Her eyes opened, at long last. She
studied me, making no move to clear away the sleep crusted at the corners of
her eyes.

Her curly brown hair was matted by the
pillow. Her skin was flaking, and she seemed to have lost weight. Her cheeks
looked flaccid, making her nose more prominent. Finally, she whispered, her
voice rusty with disuse. "I'm scared."

"Of what?"

She turned her head toward the door and
fell silent.

I gestured at it and, at her nod, I
closed it. The dull thud resonated through the room as I made my way back to
her side.

Her eyes filled with tears. "I have
to talk to someone. I'm going crazy." The tears began dripping on her
pillow in fat white splotches.

I placed the tissue box next to her hand
and leaned forward.

She mopped her eyes and rasped, "You
look so much like her."

I became very still. I needed her to say
it. "Who?"

"You know."

I shook my head.

Finally, she said, "Laura."

"Laura Lee."

She nodded.

I wanted to wait her out. I wanted to be
patient. On the other hand, Wendy could still burst in at any moment. I took
some deep breaths while Reena sobbed quietly, ripping tissues out of the box.
After a minute or two, I asked, "What happened?"

"I was in that borderline group. It
was supposed to
help
me." Her
mouth jerked once, twice.

"The one with Laura and Dr.
Ven."

She nodded and blew her nose, unsurprised
that I knew. "All it brought me was—" Her mouth worked again.

My breath was growing short. I tried not
to look at my watch.

"I wish I could take it all back. I
wish I could take it all
back
!"
Her voice broke on the last word.

Should I touch her hand? Would she let
me? I pushed the tissue box toward her again and said, "What
happened?"

She shook her head and stared up at the
ceiling. The plastic-covered pillow crackled with her movement. The tears
leaked straight down from the corners of her eyes. "I can't tell
you."

"Why not?"

Her lips moved, but the sound was almost
inaudible. "...kill me," I thought she said.

"No one's going to kill you."

Her eyes darted to meet mine.
"Ha!" she barked. Her expression was bizarre, a mix of scorn and
terror and defiance and something else I could not read.

We both heard footsteps then.

Reena's eyes widened before she clamped
them shut and lay still. I scooped up her balls of tissues, barely registering
how gross that was, before Wendy pushed open the door and called,
"Reena?
 
How come this door
is—oh." For a second, she looked alarmed to see me before her face
smoothed out.

Wendy and I hadn't spoken since our bike
rack confrontation. My shoulders tensed. I stood up, the snot rags balled in my
fist, acutely conscious of the box still on the bed and the tell-tale dampness
of Reena's sheets. "Hi, Wendy. I was just trying to talk to her."

She crossed quickly to my side. I had to
fight the urge to step away from her. Instead, I shoved the tissues in my pants
pocket.

"Any luck?" she asked.

I shook my head. "I'm concerned
about her, though. She seems to have a lot of mucous discharge today." I
thought I sounded convincing.

"Is that bad?" Wendy bent over
Reena and touched her forehead, smoothing back her locks.

"Well, I might mention it to the
internal medicine team."

"She's supposed to go over to
psych."

"Yes, I know."

"Maybe she shouldn't. If she's still
sick." Wendy's hand shook a little and she shoved it in the pocket of her
cut-offs.

"I'll mention it to the team."
Part of me wanted to get the hell away from Wendy, even though she was playing
nice today, at least in front of Reena. But the other, stronger instinct was to
get Reena alone again. I decided to wait Wendy out. "Have you noticed
anything that you're concerned about?"

Her lower lip jutted out. "Well, the
fact that she's not getting any better."

I nodded as neutrally as possible.

She seemed to inflate with rage.
"Are you going to do anything about it? Or are you just going to keep
nodding and smiling and switching her to different wards because you have no
idea what's going on?"

I clamped down on my tongue and tried to
act all psych-y about it. "I know this must be very difficult for you and
your mom."

"You don't know jack shit. None of
you do!" She snatched the tissue box off the bed, from beside Reena's
thigh, and her arm jerked back like she was going to whip it at me.

I automatically threw my arm up to block
her.

Her lips drew back in a snarl, but she
hesitated.

I watched her while silently calculating
how fast I could reach Reena's bedside phone to dial a Code White.

Wendy read the determination in my eyes
and brought the tissue box down toward the bed.

I relaxed for a millisecond before she
ripped up the cardboard box, tearing it open with her blunt nails.

The last few tissues fell out in a lump
beside Reena's thigh. Wendy seized them and shredded them, too. The tissue bits
floated down on the bed and on Reena's legs like limp, second-rate confetti.

The entire time, Reena didn't twitch. She
was a better actress than I'd given her credit for. Maybe I would be, too, if
my foster sister was this cuckoo.

Wendy's chest heaved up and down. Her
breathing filled the room. Her hands were still clenched in fists and she
glared at me, daring me to take her on.

I eyed her carefully. She did not want to
back down. Neither did I, but I wasn't willing to fight about it. Not unless
she was about to harm one of us.

Abruptly, the energy seemed to drain out
of Wendy's body. She put her hand to her forehead. "Oh, my God. I think
I'm going nuts."

Since I was on psych, I felt like I
should say something wise. But because I really wanted to agree with her, I was
stumped. I nodded and said, "Hmm."

She grabbed my hand, pressing her warm,
sweaty palm against mine before I extricated myself. Wendy said, "I didn't
used to be like this, I swear. This isn't me."

"Hmm." I had no idea what her
baseline was like, but I had to try and help. Not for the first time, I wished
I actually got trained in counseling instead of just winging it. "Would
you like to consult our service today?" She'd probably have to register in
emerg or something because she wasn't registered as a patient, even though she
was a patient's family member.

"Oh, my God, I'm, like, begging you
for help, and you just ask me if I want to consult your service? No wonder
Reena's still a fuckin' vegetable!"

Wendy looked ready to shred my face. I
backed away from her, toward the only door. I'd have to talk to Reena later.
Wendy was just too volatile. "What would you like me to do instead?"

"Oh, forget it! Just save my sister,
okay?
 
That's what you signed on to do,
now do it!"