Lee had never been to the ninth floor of the MDC’s northwest wing before. He knew the deluxe rooms were up there. They had been modified to attract the rich and powerful, and D.C. had plenty of foreign dignitaries who did not have to contend with insurance-imposed spending caps. The floors on the private wing were carpeted, the walls decorated with fine art, and many rooms had a glorious view of the National Cathedral.
Lapham and Duffy escorted Lee to the concierge desk, where two agents from the Secret Service stood guard. The agents perked up like Dobermans as Lee reached for his wallet to show them his ID. After authenticating Lee’s ID, an agent used a wand to check for hidden weapons. Satisfied, they opened the frosted-glass doors and Duffy and Lapham led Lee into the reception area. An aroma of some splendid cuisine wafted down the hall, which Lee found incongruous with a hospital setting.
A perky receptionist seated behind a mahogany desk offered a genuine smile at Lee, who smiled back. Duffy and Lapham gave her no notice. A cadre of Secret Service agents stood guard outside a set of solid oak doors leading to the waiting room.
“Karen is in there,” Duffy said, pointing, “probably getting an ass-chewing from Gleason and the president.”
“The president is here?”
“He and the first lady. You know, historically speaking, a shaman had the most influence over the chief.”
Duffy’s glib manner and a trace of foreboding Lee picked up in the agent’s voice set him on edge. It was Lee who had ultimately set this chain of events into motion. If this all proved unwarranted, Karen would not be the only one taking heat.
At that moment, Brian Seneca popped out of a hospital room and waved Lee over. The two shook hands. Seneca, who had an athletic build, wore a long white lab coat over his blue scrubs. His well-trimmed beard and thick head of dark hair enhanced his olive complexion. He was a talented and committed golfer, which was why Lee saw Seneca at the hospital and nowhere else.
The name “Lincoln Jefferson” was written on a small whiteboard mounted to the wall outside the room from which Seneca had emerged. This was the alias the hospital had picked for Cam, aka Bishop. Lee peeked inside the room, which more resembled a suite at a fancy hotel than a hospital, and found the bed was empty.
A nurse in floral-pattern scrubs was busying herself with the telemetry monitors that transmitted Cam’s vitals to the nurses’ desk down the hall.
“Where’s Cam?”
“Coming back from CT.”
Lee turned to Duffy. “Do you think you can give me a little time before I speak with the president and first lady? Let them know I’m here and getting a debrief from Dr. Seneca, and I’ll come see them in a moment.”
Lee could not believe he was asking the president of the United States to wait for him, but he needed to get abreast of the situation privately before confronting parental royalty.
“The shaman speaks, the chief listens,” said Duffy with a tilted smile, before he slipped into the waiting room to inform the president.
“I think he’s going to be okay, Lee,” said Seneca after Duffy departed. “He was a bit tender when I compressed his left lower ribs, but he’s not splinting to avoid pain. I went over the scans with the radiologist, Dr. Patel.”
“Do you mind if I take a peek?” Lee asked.
“No problem.”
Lee followed Seneca over to the nurses’ station, which was expensively constructed from dark wood. He was mindful of the plush carpeting under his feet and fragrant air piped through the vents. Comfortable as he was roughing it in the woods, Lee liked how the 1 percent lived.
With a few clicks of the mouse, Cam’s scans magically appeared on the high-definition monitor. If Lee’s father were alive, he would have marveled at the advancements in medical technology. Then again, his dad was an amazing diagnostician without all the gizmos, and had taught Lee to rely more on his observations than on machines.
Come home, son. Come back to Beckley and run the practice for me.
Lee heard his father’s voice in his head all the time, even at the most unlikely moments. The practice his father opened back in 1961 was the only one around for miles, nestled within the mountains of Appalachia, where coal mining was still thriving, guaranteeing its share of black lung disease, poverty, and alcoholism, but also a binding sense of family and pride.
Lee had revered his dad. He did it all. Delivered babies, treated the mumps and measles, doled out pills, and stitched up the wounded. Lee spent most of his free time in high school helping his father out in the clinic. He’d say that’s where he caught the bug to be a family doc, and taking over his father’s practice had always been Lee’s plan. But Karen had given him no choice, or so he told himself. She was committed to her new career, and Lee was committed to her.
He knew his father would grow too old to run things on his own. Sure enough, when the hospitals came courting, Lee’s dad sold his practice for a fraction of its worth and tried settling into retirement. He grew morose, then got sick, and was dead five years later—a death Lee believed he had hastened. A year after his father’s death, Lee’s mother was gone. Now his sister, a pastor at the church where he and Karen had married, was the only Blackwood living in Beckley.
Lee’s dad might not have been an early adopter of new medical technology, but there was a place for advanced machinery, and high-resolution CT imaging was extremely useful for uncovering rib fractures that x-rays might miss. The CT scan also made injuries to soft tissues and blood vessels easier to spot, which was why Lee had encouraged Karen to have Cam brought to the MDC in the first place. The variety of angles and cross-sectional slices of the body’s internal structures gave Lee a crystal-clear view into the underlying architecture.
What he saw was not particularly alarming. The lungs were healthy, the bones intact, the tissue unbroken, the vessels functioning fully. But Lee’s eyes narrowed when Seneca brought up a scan showing Cam’s spleen.
“That doesn’t look enlarged to you?” asked Lee.
Seneca gave it a closer inspection. “No. Dr. Patel would have said something if he thought so. I’d say normal.”
Lee did not feel like getting into a heated debate about spleen sizes. He could perform other tests to rule out his concern. Out of his peripheral vision, Lee caught sight of an attendant and nurse pushing Cam in a wheelchair down the carpeted corridor on his way back to his room. Three Secret Service agents, disguised in casual business attire, accompanied them. If Lee did not know to check, he never would have noticed the earpieces all three wore.
Lee waved to Cam as he rolled by him.
“I’ll be in to see you in a minute,” said Lee.
Cam returned a slight hand wave and away he went.
A few moments later, Lee entered Cam’s room and found the patient already tucked into his hospital bed. Dr. Seneca had gone off to check in on another patient. A different nurse, this one with the body build of a greyhound, busied herself hooking up Cam’s telemetry leads and adjusting his IV.
“Bet you haven’t had one of those in before,” Lee said to Cam, as he checked out the IV for himself. It was a saline drip, standard hydration for any hospital patient.
“The nurse said I had good veins.”
“Just one of the many privileges of being young,” Lee said.
“Hopefully another privilege is getting out of here soon. I hate hospitals.”
“You kidding me? This place is like the Ritz!”
“I live in the White House, remember?”
“Point taken,” Lee said with a smile. “Sorry you’re here, but Karen told me your symptoms, and well, they didn’t sound great. I like to err on the side of caution.”
“All I know is you’re not going to make Dr. Gleason’s Christmas card list,” Cam replied.
Instead of answering with a smile, Lee burst out laughing. “Good to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor. Dr. Seneca told me you’re doing fine. Maybe this will be just a quick overnight stay.”
“Hmmm,” Cam said, sounding contemplative. “Now I’m wondering if Taylor might have hit me on purpose.”
“Why is that?”
“Because he’s first alternate for the U.S. team at the world juniors tournament. If I’m out of commission, he takes my place.”
It was obvious Cam said this only in jest.
“I have all the confidence you’ll be able to play, but I’d still like to examine you again, if you don’t mind?”
“No problem,” said Cam.
Lee wondered if he needed to get the president’s permission to proceed. He decided to follow the same advice he had given Karen, and ask for forgiveness instead.