The Children's Ward (3 page)

Seven

“Joshua, wait up.” Simon Harrington, M.D., did not quicken his pace, relying on Joshua’s good nature which would require him to stop and wait for his elders.

“It’s been a morning,” Joshua said as Simon came up beside him.

“As always. Today’s the big day, isn’t it?”

Joshua nodded. “Three of the kids are in already…”

“I can guess which one isn’t.” He snorted. “If either of them had a lick of common sense, they’d leave Courtney behind when they get an uncontrollable urge to jet-set.”

“Or they might attempt to control the urge and stay home with her,” Joshua suggested.

“Not a chance.” He cast a sidelong glance at the younger man. “I understand Dr. Logan arrived this morning.”

“Yes…I gather she drove all night to get here.”

“I love dedication in a young doctor. I was very impressed with her at her interview.” He cleared his throat. “As I recall, she’s what we used to call a ‘dish.’ “

Joshua smiled. “She’s very attractive.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“I’m not a poet, Simon.”

“What am I going to do with you? You have no romance in your soul.”

“You have enough for both of us.” He stopped in the hallway. “Isn’t your office in the west wing?”

“I thought I’d come along with you and welcome our new doctor to the fold.”

“Simon…behave yourself.”

“I’ll remind you that you’re talking to the chief of staff.”

Joshua bowed slightly. “I’ll try to show the proper respect.”

“Dr. Logan,” Simon said, taking Quinn’s hand in both of his. “Good to see you again.”

“Thank you, Dr. Harrington…”

“Call me Simon,” he said, still holding her hand. “I heard that you had an offer from Pete Doyle at Stanford.” He smiled broadly. “Stanford’s loss is quite obviously our gain.”

“I’m very glad to be here.”

Joshua made a point of looking at his watch. “We’d better get over to the ward,” he said.

Simon arched an eyebrow. “We’ll talk later, then,” he said to Quinn, releasing her hand.

“I’ll look forward to it.”

As Joshua passed him on the way out of the office, Simon whispered: “Eyes the color of smoke and don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

“Later, Simon.”

Eight

“Dr. Fuller, I’m glad you’re here,” the nurse said as they came in. “Russell awoke from a nightmare a little while ago and he’s in a lot of pain.”

“Have you…”

She held out a syringe. “He wouldn’t take it from me.”

“Russell,” Joshua said, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed and encircling the boy’s wrist with his hand, finding a pulse.

Russell’s color was ashen and a sheen of perspiration covered his face. His chest rose erratically as he labored to breathe. His eyes opened slightly and he turned to look at Joshua. He attempted to smile but it was more of a grimace.

“It hurts,” he whispered.

“Let me give you something for the pain,” Joshua said.

“What is it?” He licked his lips and swallowed hard.

“Demerol and Vistaril.”

“I’ve had that before…” He struggled to open his eyes wider. “It made me dizzy.”

“You don’t look like you’re feeling too good now.”

The corners of Russell’s mouth twitched and he laughed, a short soft sound that conveyed the measure of his pain. “Promise me I won’t get addicted.”

“I promise,” Joshua said solemnly.

Russell allowed his eyes to close. “Just this one time,” he said.

Joshua drew the curtain around Russell’s bed. The boy had fallen into an exhausted sleep as the medication freed him from his pain. He took the chart that the nurse held out to him and made a notation before turning to Quinn.

“It’s times like this when I wonder if there is a God,” he said quietly, but his eyes were angry.

“Abigail, this is Dr. Logan. She’s going to be your doctor too.”

“Hello, Abigail,” Quinn said.

“Hello.” She looked from Joshua to Quinn and then back again. “Is Russell going to be all right?”

“I think so,” Joshua said.

“Good.”

“How are you feeling?” Quinn asked, moving to the side of the bed and placing her hand on Abigail’s forehead. The chart indicated that the child’s temperature was normal but Quinn’s purpose had less to do with vital signs than a desire to make contact. It was physical contact that mattered, that was essential for forming and maintaining a bond between doctor and patient, particularly with children.

“I had a headache earlier but it went away.” Abigail’s brown eyes watched her.

“It went away by itself?”

“Sometimes they do that,” Abigail said patiently. She looked at Joshua. “It’s in my history.”

“Dr. Logan hasn’t had a chance to read all of the chart yet,” Joshua said. “It’s a pretty thick chart.”

Quinn thought she detected a look of satisfaction in Abigail’s eyes. “Tell us about this headache.”

“It started behind my eye, like a sharp pain.” She squinted in her effort to recall. “My vision was a little blurred but I didn’t feel sick at my stomach…then I laid down and it went away after a while.”

“How do you feel right now?” Joshua asked. “Good enough for me to draw your blood?”

In answer, Abigail withdrew her right arm from under the covers, and extended it by her side. She watched steadily as he wiped her arm with an alcohol swab, watching still as the needle penetrated her skin. She did not flinch.

The glass tube filled with blood and he removed it, handing it to Quinn who handed him a second, slightly larger one. When he was done he released the tourniquet and withdrew the needle, placing a cotton ball over the puncture wound and positioning her arm to apply pressure.

“Thank you,” she said primly. “That didn’t hurt at all.”

“I’m glad. Do you have any questions?”

She shook her head. “I’m going to have an EEG this afternoon and a brain scan tomorrow morning.”

“That’s right.”

“I’ve had them before,” she commented.

“Then on Wednesday, you’re scheduled for a scan in our magnetic resonance imaging system, which you haven’t had before, but I don’t want you to worry about it. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

“I’m not worried,” she assured him.

Tessi watched the blood pressure cuff as it expanded around her arm, clearly concerned. Only when Joshua released the pressure valve and allowed the cuff to deflate did she raise her eyes to his.

He winked.

“Almost normal,” he said, removing the stethoscope from his ears. “How do you feel?”

Tessi frowned. “My stomach hurts.”

“Have you eaten anything today?”

“I started to…but…”

“But?”

“My Dad came to the motel room and mother got upset.” Her dark eyes glistened. “The food got cold.”

“It’s a little early, but I can order lunch for you right now if you think eating something might settle your stomach.”

“I don’t know…” her frown deepened, “it might make it worse.”

“Well, you know your stomach better than I do. But try to eat some lunch later. You can get sick from not eating, too.”

“That doesn’t feel like
this
. . . like someone is squeezing and twisting my stomach.” She rubbed her abdomen. “It feels terrible.”

“I know it does.” He patted her hand.

Tessi blinked and brought her hand up to her face, shielding her eyes. “It hurts now,” she said. “It hurts.”

Joshua sat at the desk in the nurse’s station, finishing the admitting orders. The nurse was stocking the medication cabinet, talking quietly with the pharmacy clerk as they went over the drug list.

Quinn stood at the doors, looking into the ward through the observation window. Abigail was sitting upright, facing the other children.

It looked almost as if she were keeping watch.

Nine

Abigail did not mind being taken out of the ward for the EEG. Visiting hours only reminded her that she had no one coming to visit her and she did not want anyone feeling sorry for her.

Even at the hospital in Baltimore, less than twenty minutes away from her home, she was always the child with the fewest visitors. One time her second grade teacher came and brought a construction paper card signed by her classmates. She knew that it was all the teacher’s idea and that none of the kids really cared if she was in the hospital, although if she died they might feel differently.

The teacher had only stayed for ten minutes. Abigail did not blame her for leaving so soon, but after she left it was somehow harder than usual to wait out the remaining time until visiting hours were over. She did not much like the sense of expectancy that the visit evoked in her; for weeks afterward she waited, in vain, for the teacher to come back.

Her grandmother came when she was feeling well enough. She would pull a chair up to the side of the bed and settle herself in to listen to the other visitors’ conversations. She said little to Abigail.

After a while Abigail began to request that the curtain be pulled around her bed when the visitors began to arrive. She could still hear them, but she did not have to see their faces or endure their pitying looks.

Tessi’s parents arrived just as she was being helped into a wheelchair. They stood on opposite sides of the bed, each holding one of Tessi’s hands. Tessi’s father smiled at her as she was wheeled past the bed.

Russell was still asleep. A man stood at the foot of the bed watching him sleep. He looked like Russell, she thought.

She was relieved when they were through the double doors and on their way. With luck, the EEG would take until after visiting hours. She crossed her fingers.

It was breezy outside but not too cool and she breathed in the fresh air. It was snowing back home, another thing she did not miss at all. Everyone was always making such a fuss about the seasons, how the west coast missed out on nature’s illustration of time passing.

She did not agree. Winter was something to be gotten through back home. This was another world entirely.

She was very still as the EEG technician applied the electrodes to her head. It was a familiar procedure by now; attach the electrodes, snap in the leads, and the command to close her eyes and relax. Later they would ask her to breathe rapidly until her fingers tingled— hyperventilation, they called it—and then they would flash the bright lights in her eyes.

For now she rested.

It was after three when they started back to the ward. She hoped the afternoon nurse was strict about enforcement of the visiting hours which ended at three. Some nurses were very lax about it, feeling perhaps that as long as the family of a patient remained, that patient would make few demands on the nurse’s time.

The inconsistency of making rules and not enforcing them bothered Abigail.

Breakers of the rules were often not penalized or punished, but even worse, in her mind, was that those who followed the rules were even more often not recognized as being keepers of the rules. No one acknowledged their obedience.

It made her wonder whether any of the things she did right mattered to anyone but herself.

Ten

It was late afternoon by the time they finished the grand tour of the hospital grounds and headed back toward the main building. The lobby was full of people and Joshua was stopped three times before they made it back to his office.

“So…what do you think of Valley Memorial?” he asked, shutting the office door and looking at her expectantly.

“I think I’ll get lost the first time I go anywhere by myself.”

“I still get lost on occasion,” he said, laughing. “But they always find me.”

“I’m impressed; I had no idea the hospital was so well-equipped diagnostically.”

“We receive a great deal of private funding which allows us to acquire the technology as soon as it receives government approval.” He glanced at his watch. “I have a couple of patients to see up on medical, so why don’t you take a break and then meet me back here at five?”

“I’d be glad to assist you with the patients,” Quinn said.

“Not necessary. These are private patients I’m checking for another doctor. Besides, we might have to wait for Courtney. Go have an early dinner…take a break.”

Her new apartment was two miles from the hospital and she decided that a quick shower and a change of clothes would do her more good than a cafeteria dinner. The refrigerator was empty— it hadn’t even been turned on—but she wasn’t hungry anyway.

She moved the suitcases into the bedroom and then had to search for the box with the towels. The movers had stacked all of the boxes in a corner of the living room and the one she wanted was, naturally, near the bottom of the pile.

By the time she was showered and dressed it was four-thirty. She looked reluctantly at the bed—a nap would have been nice—and then locked up, leaving a light on so that the apartment would not seem quite so empty when she came home.

With any luck, it would be a busy evening and she wouldn’t have time to think about anything but work.

Eleven

“Mr. Delano, I understand you wanted to speak to me,” Joshua said, extending his hand.

Frank Delano stood, his face lined with worry.

“I want to get it clear in my mind what is going to happen to my boy.”

“We’re going to try and help him…”

“You told me before, there’s nothing to be done.”

“I said surgery wouldn’t help him, Mr. Delano, but there are other alternatives.”

“To make him walk again?”

“I can’t promise anything at this point…”

“I don’t want him put through any more pain.” The big man’s face was drawn tight. “He’s just a kid, he shouldn’t have to be hurt like that.”

“At this point, we’re not planning anything invasive. After we complete the work-up, we might try some new forms of therapy.”

“But will it hurt him?” The muscles in Delano’s throat worked as he sought to maintain control. “I don’t want him hurt.” He looked away, watching people pass through the lobby, and took a deep breath.

“Neither do I. But,” Joshua repeated, “I think I can help him.”

Delano nodded, his eyes still searching other faces for some indefinable sign that this was right. Finally, he looked at Joshua.

“Russell is all I have,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.

“I know.”

“If you can help him…”

“I may be able to at least ease his pain,” Joshua said, “and we’re learning more about spinal cord injuries every day. I’ll do everything I can…for both of you.”

“No, I…I’ll handle what I have to…Russell is what matters.”

“Russell may be stronger than you think. A lot of these kids do better than adults in the same situation.”

“My boy’s a fighter,” Delano said, smiling grimly.

“He’s that and more. I have a great deal of respect for your son, Mr. Delano, and I want to give him every possible chance.”

Delano ran a callused hand through his short-cropped hair. “I’d appreciate,” he said, voice breaking, “anything you can do.”

Joshua watched Delano cross the lobby, back straight and walking with obvious determination. Russell came by his perseverance honestly, Joshua thought.

There would be no pain inflicted upon Russell Delano in the name of medical progress. He wasn’t sure how much the program would help the boy, but he would not allow it to harm him.