Electronic Medical Record system and key in the name of his dead colleague. Within moments, Jeremy Lee’s official patient records were on screen for us to see.
My father leaned closer, scanning the information with the mental dexterity of a natural speed reader. His face darkened as he read on in silence, his only movement to stab the key to page down. We didn’t interrupt him until he was done.
“Fabrication,” he snapped, almost throwing himself back in the chair. “Maybe they’ve been more thorough than I first thought.”
“What does it say?”
“That Jeremy suffered multiple fractures of his thoracic vertebrae in his fall, causing hemiplegia—lower-body paralysis—which led to a urinary tract infection, in turn leading to septicemia, which killed him.”
“And is that feasible?”
“As a course of events? Perfectly,” my father said, even more clipped than usual. “Hemiplegia often causes such problems, in that the patient can’t adequately empty his bladder. Having a lot of urine in the bladder at all times is a situation ripe for a UTI.” He nodded toward the screen. “They note that he had an indwelling Foley catheter to keep his bladder empty, which is a common enough route for infection. All very logical,” he said bitterly. “All very made up.”
“So, no mention of osteoporosis?” Sean said. “Spinal or otherwise?”
My father gave a snort. “Oh yes, as a minor side issue. But as a major factor of his condition? No.” He scrolled back up through the document. “Nor is the Storax treatment mentioned anywhere in his records, despite the fact that the technicians Storax sent clearly identified its presence. They state he was on heavy-duty antibiotics for the infection, and Oxy-Contin for the pain. Nothing else.”
“What about cause of death?” I asked.
“Well, I’d hardly expect them to admit in black and white that it was the hundred milligrams of morphine injected into his IV line that did the job.” He unhooked his glasses and almost threw them onto the desktop, hard enough for them to clatter against the surface, and stared after them as though he was going to be able to divine some kind of answer in the grain.
Eventually, he looked up, hollow-eyed. “We’re at a dead end. Jeremy’s already been cremated and they’ve covered their tracks to the point where it would be just my word against theirs. And they’ve ensured that my word would not carry very much weight at the moment.”
Sean glanced at his watch. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “That little stunt you pulled downstairs is likely to have them looking for a practical joker.”
My father reached towards the keyboard again, but Sean leaned across him and switched on the printer. “Print it all out and we’ll take it with us,” he said. “Mrs. Lee will be able to testify how much of it is false.”
For a moment, my father looked scandalized at the thought of actually stealing a patient’s records. Then I saw the realization hit that the originals had been stolen well before he’d been anywhere near them.
A watched printer, like a watched kettle, takes forever to boil. This one looked modern but might as well have been a monk with a quill pen dipped in ink for all the time it took to go through its start-up routine and begin spitting out the pages. Just as the last one settled into the catch tray, the phone on the desk began to ring.
My father glanced up. “They’re on the ball,” he said tightly. “They must have the file flagged on the EMR and they’re checking up on who’s accessing it.”
Sean snatched the papers out of the printer. “Okay, we’re out of here,” he said to my father. “You may as well leave the computer on—they already know we’ve been in there.” He jerked his head to me. “I’ll take him out the way we came in. You get your mother and meet us, okay?”
I nodded and opened the door a crack as if expecting to see security men rushing to detain us. The corridor outside was deserted.
I slipped through the gap and made for the nearest staircase, taking it at a run and jumping the last few steps onto each half landing as I went, heedless of the residual bruises from my taxi encounter. After the first couple of flights my left leg started complaining bitterly at this treatment, but I ignored it.
I reached the ER and spotted my mother sitting in the waiting area, pretending to leaf through a magazine. She looked tense and awkward, but so did everyone else there. They all looked up when I hurried into view.
“Ma’am, would you come with me, please?” I said in my best generic East Coast drawl.
I didn’t have to feign the urgency in my voice, nor she the way her face paled at my words, but nobody watching saw anything amiss. Some even threw her sympathetic glances as she jumped to her feet and followed me out.
“What it is?” she said as soon as we were out of earshot. “Where’s Richard?”
“He’s fine,” I said. “We got what we came for, but they know we’re here.”
I was aware of a tension in my chest that had nothing to do with running down a flight of stairs. We’d pushed our luck coming here to begin with, and were pushing it even further with every minute we stayed. If anything, the disguises made it worse, like being caught out of uniform behind enemy lines. As if it made the difference between being treated as a legit prisoner of war, or being shot outright as a spy.
Not that I was expecting hospital security to gun us down if they got hold of us, but when we turned what should have been almost the final corner to our escape route, I found it was a close run thing.
The two security guards we’d slipped past earlier had cornered Sean and my father by a bank of elevators. They looked up sharply when I appeared.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded, East Coast again.
There was a pause, then one of the guards said, “Nothing that need concern you, ma’am.”
My brain clicked over. Clearly, they’d been looking for my father alone. Sean, I surmised, had been caught up in this purely by association. Any threat I might present was quickly weighed and dismissed.
“Of course it does,” I said, pushing a note of weary belligerence into my voice. I advanced, careful in my positioning, forcing the guard who’d spoken to turn away from Sean slightly to keep me in full view, just in case we couldn’t talk our way out of this. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sean shift his balance. Almost imperceptible, but enough.
I stabbed a finger towards my father. “This man’s a doctor—a damned good one. I need his expertise for a consult. Right now.”
“We got orders to hold him,” the guard said, but I saw the crease in his brow as the indecision and the worry crept in. He glanced at his partner for support, received only a halfhearted, puzzled shrug in return.
I sighed and deliberately lowered my voice. “Look, whatever the problem is, can’t it wait? I got a kid about to go into the OR whose legs are in a million pieces. You want to explain to his mother why he’s gonna spend the rest of his life in a goddamn wheelchair?”
I waved an arm vaguely behind me and felt rather than saw my mother step in closer. The guard who’d been doing all the talking let his eyes flick over her. Then he frowned again, his expression hardening.
My eyes met Sean’s.
The guard opened his mouth, got as far as, “Look, Doc, I got my—”
“Oh, Doctor!” my mother cried suddenly. “Is this the surgeon? Is this the one who can save my poor Darcy’s legs?”
I turned. My mother had come to a faltering stop, a picture of anxiety, twisting her hands together in front of her breast like a tragic Shakespearean actress. All she needed was a handkerchief to dab at her eyes, but I thought that might have been overplaying the role a little, even for her.
“Ah, Mrs. Bennet,” I said, as the
“Oh, but you can’t!” my mother cried, her voice rising, jagged. Her eyes swiveled wildly from one to the other. They couldn’t hold her gaze, shuffling awkwardly. They fetched and held and ejected people. They didn’t get into conversation with them. Not for minimum wage across a twelve-hour shift. And clearly not enough to be thrown by my mother’s obvious English accent, either.
“Look, lady—” the guard tried again.
