V.I. Warshawski 04 - Bitter Medicine (3 page)

“When her mother gets here, she’ll be able to give you the insurance information,” I said stiffly. I was pretty sure Consuelo was covered under Mrs. Alvarado’s health insurance-the group benefits were a major reason Mrs. Alvarado had stayed with Meal Service Corporation for twenty years. After signing a space for “Admitter-if not patient,” I returned to the emergency entrance, since that was where Tregiere would arrive. I moved my car to a proper parking space, prowled around in the heavy July air, pushed thoughts of the cool waters of Lake Michigan out of my mind, pushed thoughts of Consuelo attached to many tubes out of my mind, looked at my watch every five minutes, trying to will Malcolm Tregiere’s arrival.

It was after four when a faded blue Dodge squealed to a halt near me. Tregiere came out as the ignition died; Mrs. Alvarado slowly emerged from the passenger side. A slight, quiet black man, Tregiere had the enormous confidence needed by successful surgeons without the usual arrogance that accompanies it.

“I’m glad you’re out here, Vic-would you mind parking the car for me? I’ll head on in.”

“The doctor’s name is Burgoyne. Follow this hallway straight down and you’ll get to a nurse’s station where they can direct you.”

He nodded briefly and disappeared inside. I left Mrs. Alvarado standing in the entrance while I moved the Dodge next to my Chevy Citation. When I rejoined her, she flickered flat black eyes over me in a glance so dispassionate as to seem contemptuous. I tried telling her something, anything, about Consuelo, but her heavy silence made the words die in my throat. I escorted her down the hallway without speaking. She followed me into the garish sterility of the waiting room, her yellow Meal Service uniform pulling tightly across her generous hips. She sat for a long time with her hands folded in her lap, her black eyes revealing nothing.

After a while, though, she burst out, “What did I do that was so wrong, Victoria? I wanted only the best for my baby. Was that so bad?”

The unanswerable question. “People make their own choices,” I said helplessly. “We look like little girls to our mothers, but we’re separate people.” I didn’t go on. I wanted to tell her that she had done her best but it wasn’t Consuelo’s best, but even if she wanted to hear such a message, this wasn’t the time to deliver it

“And why that horrible boy?” she wailed. “With anyone but him I could understand it. She never lacked for boyfriends-so pretty, so lively, she could pick from the boys who wanted her. But she chooses this-this garbage. No education. No job. Gracias a dios her father didn’t live to see it.”

I said nothing, certain that this blessing had been heaped on Consuelo’s head-“Your father would turn in his grave”; “if he hadn’t died already, this would kill him”-I knew the litany. Poor Consuelo, what a burden. We sat again in silence. Whatever I had to say could bring no comfort to Mrs. Alvarado.

“You know that black man, that doctor?” she asked presently. “He is a good doctor?”

“Very good. If I couldn’t have Lotty-Dr. Herschel-he would be my first choice.” When Lotty first opened her clinic she’d been “esa judia”-“that Jew”-first, then the doctor. Now, the neighborhood depended on her. They went to her for everything, from children’s colds to unemployment problems. With time, I supposed, Tregiere would also be looked on as a doctor first.

It was six-thirty before he came out to us, accompanied by another man in scrubs and a middle-aged priest. The skin on Malcolm’s face was gray with fatigue. He sat down next to Mrs. Alvarado and looked at her seriously.

This is Dr. Burgoyne, who’s been looking after Consuelo since she got here. We couldn’t save the baby. We did what was possible, but the poor thing was too little. She couldn’t breathe, even with a respirator.“

Dr. Burgoyne was a white man in his mid-thirties. His thick dark hair was matted to his head with sweat. A muscle twitched next to his mouth and he was kneading the gray cap he’d taken off, pushing it from one hand to the other.

“We thought if we did anything else to retard labor it might seriously harm your daughter,” he said earnestly, to Mrs. Alvarado.

She ignored that, demanding fiercely to know if the baby had been baptized.

“Yes, yes.” The middle-aged priest was speaking. “They called me as soon as the baby was born-your daughter insisted. We named her Victoria Charlotte.”

My stomach lurched. Some age-old superstition about names and souls made me shiver slightly. I knew it was absurd, but I felt uneasy, as though I’d been forced into an alliance with this dead infant because it bore my name.

The priest sat in the chair on the other side of Mrs. Alvarado and took her hand. “Your daughter is being very brave, but she’s scared, and part of her fear is that you are angry with her. Can you see her and make sure she knows you love her?” Mrs. Alvarado didn’t speak, but stood up. She followed the priest and Tregiere to whatever remote recess harbored Consuelo. Burgoyne remained in the waiting room, not looking at me, or at anything. He’d stopped working his cap over, but he had a thin face with mobile, expressive planes, and whatever he was thinking was clearly not pleasant. “How is she?” I asked.

My voice brought him abruptly back to the present. He jumped slightly. “Are you part of the family?”

“No. I’m their attorney. Also a friend of theirs and of Consuelo’s doctor, Charlotte Herschel. I brought Consuelo in because I was with her at a plant up the road when she got sick.”

“I see. Well, she’s not doing very well. Her blood pressure went down to the point where I was really worried she might die-that’s when we took the baby so we could concentrate on stabilizing her. She’s conscious now and reasonably stable, but I’m still listing her as critical.”

Malcolm came back into the room. “Yes. Mrs. Alvarado wants to take her back to Chicago, to Beth Israel. But I don’t think she should be moved, do you, Doctor?”

Burgoyne shook his head. “If her blood values and blood pressure remain this way for another twenty-four hours we can talk about it then. But not now… Will you excuse me? I’ve got another patient I need to look in on.”

He walked away with hunched shoulders. Whatever the hospital administration might feel about treating Consuelo, Burgoyne clearly had taken her situation to heart.

Malcolm echoed my thought. “He seems to have done his best. But the situation was very chaotic up there-it’s hard to come into the middle of a case and know for sure what the progress has been. Hard for me, anyway. I just wish Lotty were here.”

“I doubt she could have done more than you have.”

“She’s more experienced. She knows more tricks. It al-ways makes a difference.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I need to dictate my report while if’s still fresh in my mind… Can you look after Mrs. Alvarado until the family gets here? I’m on call tonight at the hospital and I have to get back- I’ve talked to Lotty-she’s standing by if Consuelo’s condition changes.”

I agreed, none too happily. I wanted to get away from the hospital, from my dead namesake, from the smells and sounds of a technology indifferent to the suffering people it served. But I couldn’t abandon the Alvarados. I followed Malcolm into the hall, returning his keys and telling him how to find his car. For the first time in hours I wondered about Fabiano. Where was the father of the baby? How great would his relief be to learn that after all there was no baby, no need for a job?

I stood at the emergency entrance for a while after Malcolm left. This wing of the hospital faced open land, with a housing development perhaps a quarter mile away. By squinting it was possible to create the illusion of being on the open prairie. I watched the softening night sky. Summer twilight, with its caressing warmth, is my favorite time of day.

At last I turned sluggish steps back down the corridor toward the waiting room. Close to the doorway I met Dr. Burgoyne coming the other way. He’d put on street clothes, and he walked with his head down, his hands in his pockets.

“Excuse me,” I said.

He looked up, focused on me uncertainly, then recognized me. “Oh, yes-the Alvarados’ attorney.”

“V. I. Warshawski… Look: There’s something I need to know. Earlier today the admissions clerk told me you weren’t treating Consuelo because you thought she should be moved to a public hospital. Is that true?”

He looked startled. I thought I could see “Malpractice Suit” flash across the mobile ticker-tape of his face.

“When she first came in, I hoped we might be able to stabilize her so that she could get into Chicago and be treated by her own doctor in familiar surroundings. It soon became obvious that wasn’t going to happen. It certainly wouldn’t occur to me to ask a comatose laboring girl about her financial status.”

He forced a smile. “How rumors spread from behind an operating-room door down to the clerical area is a mystery to me. But they always do. And they always end up garbled… Can I buy you a cup of coffee? I’m pretty beat and I need to unwind a bit before I head home.”

I looked into the waiting room. Mrs. Alvarado hadn’t returned. I suspected the invitation for coffee was in large part a desire to be friendly with the family lawyer to quiet any concerns about negligence or failure-to-treat. But my day with the Alvarados had worn me out and I welcomed a few minutes’ conversation with someone else.

The hospital restaurant was a pleasant improvement over the dingy cafeterias most city hospitals sport. The smell of food made me realize I hadn’t eaten since breakfast twelve hours ago. I had broiled chicken and a salad; Burgoyne picked at a turkey sandwich and drank coffee.

He asked what I knew about Consuelo’s medical history and her family’s and pried gently into my relationship with them.

“I know Dr. Herschel,” he said abruptly. “At least, I know who she is. I trained at Northwestern, and did my residency there. But Beth Israel is one of the best places to go for high-risk OB training. I was accepted there for one of their house-staff OB slots when I finished my residency four years ago. Even though Dr. Herschel is now only part time at the hospital, she’s still a bit of a legend.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

He grimaced. “Friendship opened this hospital in 1980. They’ve got about twenty in the Southeast, but this was their first Midwest venture and they were pulling out all the stops to turn it into a showcase. They offered me so much- not just money, but new facilities they were planning-I couldn’t turn it down.”

“I see.” We talked a little longer, but I’d been away from my post for forty minutes. Much as I disliked the duty, I thought I should get back to Mrs. Alvarado. Burgoyne walked me to the bend in the corridor leading back to the waiting room, then headed for the parking lot.

Mrs. Alvarado was sitting motionless in one of the orange chairs when I came into the room. She answered my inquiries about Consuelo with ominous comments on divine providence and justice.

I offered to take her down to the restaurant for something to eat, but she rejected the offer. She lapsed into silence and sat waiting impassively for someone to come with news of her child. Her dignified quiet had an air of helplessness that got on my nerves-she wouldn’t go to the nurses and demand information on Consuelo; she sat until permission was granted. She didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to do anything but sit with her sorrow wrapped around her, a sweater on top of her cafeteria uniform.

It was a relief when Carol arrived with two of her brothers around eight-thirty. Paul, a large young man of twenty-two or so, had a heavy, ugly face that made him look like a particularly menacing hoodlum. When he was in high school, I used to spend the summers bailing him out of the Shakespeare Station after he’d been picked up on suspicion. It was only when he smiled that his underlying intelligence and gentleness showed.