Nine

JUNE 22

Dear Diary,

Bliss.

Lindsey floats in her ecstatic daze for the next few days, despite a sharp twinge of disappointment when Newman calls to cancel their plan for another sauna and a meditation lesson. He can’t get free to see her again before he flies off to Bali for a couple of weeks.

“There’s a crisis with one of my textile sources in India, got to get that straightened out before I go. And I need to spend some time with Melani, she has to come first.” A pause over the phone waves. “Lindsey, just hearing your voice is stirring me up. I’ll be holding the thought of you until I get back.” Somewhere in his rush out of town he manages to leave on her porch the Rumi book she’d forgotten to take with her, wrapped in a beautiful pale-paisley silk shawl.

Lindsey hugs to herself that solstice turning with him, feels her cells still humming with the visceral imprint of their lovemaking. With the way they simply flowed on into the early morning hours, opening their hearts to each other about their lives, the pains and setbacks, the dreams old and new. And the way he encouraged her to “turn down the volume” on self-doubt and dive back into her writing.

When Megan calls to chat, Lindsey doesn’t mention Newman. She doesn’t want to share this yet, let it out into the daylight. If it weren’t for the fringed shawl to wrap herself in at night, and the book of poems, she’d wonder if it were all a dream. Wouldn’t believe that she could feel this way. Only now can she let herself realize how fearful she’d been that her heart had died to cold ashes, that she’d never feel the fire again. She has to admit it’s a major relief to discover that all her parts still work!

Birds write freedom in the air.

Who teaches them?

They fall, and falling,

they grow wings.

Lindsey reads the poem again, tracing the worn page with her fingertips. She doesn’t know if she can learn that kind of trust. But here she is, mid-air.

She manages to show up at work, get through the shifts, and again she’s relieved by the routine of it all, requiring just enough focus to siphon some of the effervescent bubbling energy and hold her feet on the ground for the daylight hours. At night she’s untethered, soaring in the widening gyres so high and swinging so far out from center she wonders if she’ll ever find her way back to her old self. Then realizes she doesn’t care to.

She’s head over heels.

Lindsey reminds herself this is totally insane, she really doesn’t know Newman, and she can’t be doing this. It’s too reckless. She’s not strong enough yet. But every time she tells herself that, she’s back there beside him, feeling the warmth of his fingertips soaking in through her breast to her wounded prisoner heart and freeing it.

“Earth to Lindsey!”

She startles, realizes she’s been staring at the computer monitor gone into screensaver mode, fingers poised above the keyboard.

“Whoo-Hoo!” It’s Gayle, popping her dreadlocked head around the edge of the partition like another of those grinning puppet-heads Lindsey can’t quite exorcize from the weird dream months before. She waggles her fingers, lifts her pierced eyebrow with the little silver barbell through it. “I’ve been trying to get you to answer for like five minutes! What’s up with you? Anybody’d think you were major crushing….”

She trails off, staring, as Lindsey feels her face burning.

“Holy shit! You are! No wonder you’ve had that crazy grin on your face even when you had to transcribe all those catch-up charts of old Doc Beasley’s.” Gayle’s head disappears momentarily, then she comes whizzing around the partition, wheeled chair and all, halting against Lindsey’s like bumper cars. She giggles, looking around conspiratorially, then whispers, “Okay, spill! Who is he?”

Lindsey bites her lip, not ready to be outed this way. And though she likes Gayle, they’ve hardly been confidants. “It’s nothing. Just an old friend I got together with.” She manages a shrug, not convincing even herself. “It’s way too early to be making a big deal out of it.”

“Yeah, right.” Gayle digs an elbow into Lindsey’s ribs. “You’ve got that glow, gal. Like you just got your socks knocked off in the bed department, huh?”

Lindsey’s shaking her head, face really hot now with another flash coming on. She rips off her cotton zip and fans herself. “Give me a break, Gayle. Aren’t raging hormones enough?”

Gayle, probably half her age, purses her lips, giving an assessing once-over to Lindsey in her tank top. “Hey, you are one hot-looking older babe, and I don’t mean those flashes. Anyway, my mom calls them Power Flashes. So c’mon, dish! I want to know what I have to look forward to.”

Lindsey just keeps shaking her head. “I’d take the curse back any day over these hot flashes.” She nudges Gayle’s chair back from her keyboard. “And if we don’t want the wrath descending, we better back to work.”

“You’re not getting off that easy. I’ll worm it out of you later.” She starts to push her chair back around the partition, then pauses. “Oh, speak of the devil, I almost forgot!” She smacks her forehead with the heel of her hand. “That’s what I was trying to tell you—Olivia’s stuck in that meeting, but she wants you to switch over to the E.R. line. They need the reports from last night.”

Lindsey groans. “Trauma Jock?”

“No, I think it was Aufhauser’s night on.” With a thumb’s-up, Gayle gives a push of her feet and rolls backwards into her own cubicle.

Lindsey switches dictation channels and cranks out the reports on a minor accident, with some contusions and a broken arm, a six-year-old admitted for observation of possible appendicitis, a homeless man with the D.T.’s. Aufhauser is easy to transcribe, speaks clearly and cuts to the chase.

Then there’s a pop and static, and a new voice comes on the line. “Bennerton here.”

There’s a sinking in her gut as the backup neurosurgeon rattles off the patient ID, date and time of motor vehicle accident. All she can see is the face of Mrs. Montague in the hospital cafeteria as she sits not drinking her coffee, eyes blanked-out windows. On coma watch.

Lindsey takes a deep breath, backs up the recording to catch the patient name. Bennerton’s reciting so fast, she can’t nail it and has to try a third time. Finally she gets it: Kevin Spieler, age 20, motorcycle accident, head trauma.

Cold dread settles in the pit of her stomach. She’s not sure of the last name. Doesn’t want to be sure.

Her fingers keep typing on auto-pilot. Patient a student, leaving restaurant server job at one a.m., lost control of motorcycle and impacted head-on into a cement abutment. The familiar phrases float up from her robotically clicking fingertips: Cranial fracture… fluid pressure buildup… emergency neurosurgery… EEG activity irregular… family consent—

“Uhn.” Lindsey’s hands jerk upwards, off the keyboard, pushing her back, away. But it’s finally penetrated beyond denial. Nausea rising in her throat, she stands, takes a deep breath, moves shakily to the stack of new admitting forms to verify the name.

Kevin Spieler. And under parents: Robert and Marcia Spieler, 1228 Gardenia Lane.

Rob and Marci, best friends of Lindsey’s sister Joanie. She closes her eyes, seeing the crowd at last summer’s 50^th birthday barbecue for Dan. Kevin always a fixture in these extended-family affairs, his lanky height and curly mop of dark hair as he galloped Fran’s grandkids around on his back, laughing.

Somehow she’s back at her keyboard, finishing the surgery report with grim determination. Maybe they’ve called in another consultant, and they need the report. She finishes it, sends it to the printer, hurries over to pull it out and attach it to the admittance sheet. Her body efficiently going through the motions, she looks up the Intensive Care location and starts out the door, numbly noting that Olivia isn’t back yet.

She halts, turns back to tell Gayle she’s running the report up herself. “They need it Stat,” she lies. Usually the records clerk waits for a pile of transcribed reports, takes them around to add to the charts at the nursing desks.

Gayle looks up, the start of another grin fading as she sees Lindsey. “Are you okay?” She pulls off her headset.

Lindsey fans herself with the paper, faking another hot flash. “Yeah. But I think I’ll take a break after I deliver this.”

“Maybe you better lie down in the break room. You look kind of green.”

“Maybe I will.” Lindsey hurries off to the stairwell, grips the rail and takes some deep breaths. Then launches toward the third floor, hurrying and hoping it’s not too late to hurry.

She passes the long windows of the ICU rooms, beds surrounded by tangles of wires, fluid lines, portable monitors all clustered around sheeted shapes barely recognizable as people beneath all the attachments and bandages. At the nursing desk, she hands over the report to a nurse she doesn’t recognize.

“How’s he doing?” she asks as he pulls out the metal chart cover, inserts the emergency surgery report into an already thick collection of color-coded lab and EEG reports.

The nurse looks up, tall guy folded into a short chair, squinting behind wire-rimmed glasses. “Too soon to tell, looks like. Why?”

Lindsey manages a shrug. “It’s just—such a young kid. Seems like a shame.” She takes a breath. “If there are any other consultants coming in on it, and you need any other reports transcribed Stat, just let us know in Medical Records.”

He frowns, checks the chart again, gives her a sideways look. “Well, sure. But I don’t see any request here. Just a couple of progress notes from Bennerton this morning. Did someone call you?” He’s giving Lindsey an odd look. This is not standard procedure.

“Oh, no.” Lindsey waves it off, turning, tosses back, “Just letting you know, we can prioritize if you need the reports.”

“Oh. Well, okay.” A buzzer goes off, light blinking outside one of the windowed rooms, and he drops the chart on the desk, hurries past Lindsey.

She sucks in a quick breath, her glance darting over the busy, pale-green suited figures attending the rooms. Her ears are ringing. She seems to be watching from far away as her hands reach out, flip open the chart to the progress notes. She scans, flips to the EEG readouts. The ice in her gut swells heavier.

“Can I help you?”

Lindsey startles, drops the chart, and turns.

It’s another nurse, a young woman with curly red hair, giving her a questioning look, glancing at Lindsey’s ID badge.

“No, no, I just brought up the emergency report from Medical Records, wanted to make sure it was slotted in the right spot.”

“Oh. Okay, thanks. That’s Spieler? Doctor wants it now.”

“Oh. Here.” She watches the nurse bustle over to the second room down, move in past the monitors and hand the chart to a tall, balding man in a rumpled shirt and tie. It must be Dr. Bennerton. Lindsey’s never seen him before, only knows his dreaded voice over the lines.

She hurries past the glimpse of a long figure in the bed, one leg swaddled and raised in traction, head wrapped in bandages, face covered with an oxygen mask, lines and tubes plugged in everywhere. She heads for the stairwell again, down to the family waiting area on the second floor. Halfway there, she suddenly reverses, ducks into a handicap toilet room and locks the door. She grips the edge of the sink and stares at herself in the mirror. Her eyes look wild, face pale and damp. She’s surprised the ICU nurses didn’t call Security. She pulls in a deep, shaky breath, splashes water over her face and blots it, takes one of the little paper cups and gulps down more water.

Think, Lindsey.

She stares into her cloudy green eyes. Whistleblower? Is she ready to risk it—again? Take the wrath for speaking up? Like voicing those earlier forbidden words: “Your son’s psychologically unbalanced. Rageaholic. He needs to be in treatment.” Nick’s parents chose “loyalty” to their offspring and turned on her, after Nick convinced them that she was delusional, lying about his rage attacks. With a surgical knife-stroke, they cut off the “daughter we never had before.”

So how does she find the words now? “Marci, Rob, your son’s surgeon is incompetent.” Then brace for the backlash? She signed a confidentiality oath when she hired on here. Does she swallow more words, more damned secrets? Is she still afraid to find her voice?

It’s her own eyes she’s got to face in the mirror. To hell with privileged information and the hypocrisy of the medical bureaucracy. She takes another deep breath and hurries down the hall.

Marci and Rob and Kevin’s younger sister Patty are there, hunched over in chairs in the waiting room. Their faces snap up as the door opens, hope flickering across them for a second, then surprise.

“Lindsey?” Marci shakes her head, face gone blank.

Rob stands, starts to step toward her, then stalls, looking down at his hands.

“I just found out,” Lindsey explains uselessly. “I’m so sorry.”

Marci frowns, then gets it. “Oh. Lindsey. I forgot you work here.” She stands, makes an aborted movement.

Lindsey comes over and gives her a hug, reaches to touch Rob’s arm. Patty is still hunched in her chair, crying.

“Lindsey, it’s so… I can’t….” Marci sinks back into her chair as Rob paces across the narrow room, stops facing away from them. “It’s so awful! He wasn’t drinking or anything, he was just coming home from work. They don’t know what happened, why he went into that wall. He cracked his skull, they had to do surgery, and we don’t know….”

“I know.” Lindsey squeezes her hands, gives her a minute. “Have they told you anything yet?”

Rob clears his throat, makes surreptitious motions wiping his eyes, drops heavily into a chair. “We talked to the doctor this morning. The neurosurgeon. He says it’s too early to tell if… if there’s brain damage. We have to wait.”

Lindsey pulls over another chair to face them, and sits. “Was that Dr. Bennerton? There isn’t anyone else working with him?”

“Bennerton….” Rob seems to go inside himself for a moment, gathers himself, focuses on Lindsey. “Bennerton, that’s right. He’s the neurosurgeon. He said he’d let us know as soon as… as the signs stabilize.” He looked down at his hands again. “He’s in Intensive Care,” he added.

“I know. I was just up there,” Lindsey says.

Marci turns quickly from stroking Patty’s back. “Did you see anything? They won’t let us see him yet. Well, just for a minute from outside the windows after they got him settled in there from surgery. Did they tell you anything?”

“No, but—”

“Mom, is Kevin going to die?” Patty has finally raised her head, her face blotched and red. “Lindsey, is he going to die?”

“Honey, the doctors are doing the best they can. They’re not going to let him die.” Marci hugs her daughter. “Why don’t you go down to the bathroom and rinse your face? If you could bring me back a cup of water, that would be really nice.”

Patty bites her lip, gives Lindsey an imploring look, hurries out.

Marci stiffens, looks Lindsey in the eye. “What?”

She takes one more deep breath, searching for the way to say what she needs to. “Marci. Rob. I want you to listen to me. I could get into trouble for telling you this, but it’s important.”

Rob straightens in his chair. “Okay.”

“You need to get another neurosurgeon to take over. Right away. Call Dr. Peters, he’s good. Or his partner, Steinberg. Just get Bennerton off the case.”

Marci gasps. “What? What are you talking about?”

Rob leans forward to grip Lindsey’s wrist so hard it hurts. “What are you saying?”

“I type up the reports all the time. I see the complication rates.” The roaring in Lindsey’s ears is so loud now, she can hardly hear. This is a nightmare, maybe she shouldn’t be doing this, maybe it’s too late already and there’s no point. Maybe she’s taking away their hope, that faith relationship you’re supposed to have with your doctor. Maybe everything will be okay with Bennerton in charge, and she shouldn’t meddle. But it’s too late.

“Lindsey.” Rob’s grip tightens, and she flinches, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Tell me.”

“Bennerton’s been audited more than once, but they never kick him out. His patients don’t do well. Lots of complications. Way too many. You need to get someone else working on Kevin.”

Rob leans closer, staring right into Lindsey’s eyes. “You’re sure of this?”

She nods. “Everyone in the hospital knows, but no one stops him.”

Rob jerks to his feet. “Well, by God I will! He’s off the case right now. What’s this other doc? Peters? I’ll call him.” He starts toward the door.

“Rob, wait.” Marci half rises, sinks back into her chair. “I don’t think….” She shakes her head. “This is crazy.” She shakes her head again, slowly. “I volunteer with Dr. Bennerton’s wife, at the Womencare Shelter. Renee. They’re terrific people, they’re involved in all these community-service projects.”

Lindsey spreads her hands. “I don’t know him. All I know is there’s no way I’d let him take a scalpel to anyone I care about.”

“But he’s a doctor! He’s respected. He comes in on all these emergency cases. The hospital wouldn’t let him keep working if he was messing up that way.”

Lindsey rubs her eyes, takes a deep breath, tries to find another way to explain. “It’s the system, Marci. The insurance companies and the doctors are all afraid of malpractice cases maybe. I don’t know. But the docs protect their own. We process the audit reports, it’s all on paper, Bennerton’s complication rates are way higher than they should be. But they just keep letting him operate.”

Marci’s still shaking her head, staring unfocused, like she can’t get it to make sense.

Rob steps over to touch her shoulder, then looks Lindsey in the eye. “You’re sure of this?” he repeats.

She nods.

“Well, I don’t believe it!” Marci stiffens and pulls away from Rob’s hand. “It doesn’t make sense! We’re all supposed to pull together. I’m not going to alienate Dr. Bennerton, get him thinking we’re the enemy. We need him focusing on getting Kevin better.”

“Great! You want to make all nicey-nice with your fucking high society pals while our son’s life could be on the line?” Rob glares.

Marci glances at Lindsey, back at Rob, twisting and twining her fingers together. “I just don’t think we should fly off all…. crazy.”

This is worse than Lindsey could have imagined. She stands. “I’m sorry, this is horrible. But I had to tell you. I couldn’t just let it go.” Eyes burning, she starts toward the door.

“Lindsey.” Rob stops her, gives her a hug. “Thanks.”

Ducking her head, Lindsey hurries out, down the hall to the stairwell, managing to avoid seeing Patty. She clatters down the steps and out through the nearly-empty cafeteria, heading instinctively for the garden. She remembers those beautiful tulips glistening their fleshy egg shapes in the rain. But today, as she sinks onto the bench in the dappled sun beneath a vine maple, she sees the tulip petals have already dropped, bare stalks all they offer to the sky.