Twisted Justice (8 page)

“Call a locksmith,” she mumbled to herself.

She went back in and checked the back door, which was still locked. Dressed only in her faded blue dressing gown, still wearing her glasses, she walked across the yard and headed toward Marcy's apartment over the garage.

“Good morning,” Marcy called out over the flower boxes she kept under each window. She was an early riser and had already returned from 7:00 a.m. Mass. “Thought you'd be out of here already you've got such a full day.”

“Well, I …” Laura faltered. “I was looking for the kids.”

“You're a few hours late. Guess you didn't wake up when Steve came?”

“What time did he pick them up?”

“Around five thirty. In a station wagon. They all left with their little tote bags.”

“They're not staying overnight.” Laura felt a prick of panic as her heart picked up speed.
A station wagon? Could it belong to the guy who's apartment Steve is staying in?

Marcy shrugged. “Maybe he's taking the kids swimming or something.”

“Maybe. Steve said he had plans, but I didn't ask him what they were. Tell you what, I'll call you if I'm not going to be home
by seven. Or you page me if the kids come back before then, and I'll see if I can get home earlier, okay?”

Though Marcy nodded in agreement, Laura worried all day. Something was not right.

By noon, Laura had made post-op rounds with the residents and med students. She felt nauseated and hadn't had a thing to eat — refusing even a Snickers bar, her favorite. Scattered throughout the morning there'd been three surgical admissions from the ER, but only one requiring immediate intervention, an appendectomy in a healthy young man, which she supervised. Counting her own patients and those of her four colleagues, she had five in the ICU to watch over. One — not hers — had gone into kidney failure following the repair of a dissecting aortic aneurysm that had required all day heroics just to keep him alive on a ventilator. The others were in critical condition following major surgery, but when all was said and done, they were doing well.

At four o'clock she headed reluctantly to the small alcove next to the chapel for the meeting with Mr. Sanders. Roxanne was already there sitting next to the tall, gangly attorney. Unexpectedly, Louis Ruiz, in a wheelchair, was seated on her other side. Both legs, still in casts, were elevated and protruding forward. Wearing a teal and black striped silk bathrobe with a gold sash, his jet black hair was combed neatly over his ears, his sad eyes seeming brighter. Laura looked from him to Roxanne as she hesitated at the threshold of the room and noted the tasteful décor in comforting muted patterns of beige and maroon. She made a mental note to use this room on those occasions when she had to deliver painful news. Focusing on the situation at hand, she felt irritated. Roxanne should have told her that Mr. Ruiz would be here too.

“Dr. Nelson,” Roxanne began. “You remember Louis Ruiz?”

“Of course,” said Laura. “I hope your recovery is going well.”

“Thank you, doctor, it is. Allow me to apologize for being so rude the last time we met.”

“Please,” Laura said quickly, “I understand.”

“And this is Mr. Sanders,” Roxanne went on. “I know you've exchanged a few words, but let me introduce you properly.”

“It's Sam, Dr. Nelson.” The attorney rose and held out his hand to Laura. He held her gaze without a waver. “Appreciate your meeting with us. We know how busy you are.”

“Of course. I should warn you that I am on call.” She took a seat in the chair nearest the door and placed her beeper on her lap.

“Then I'll save time and be perfectly blunt,” Sam Sanders began. “Mr. Ruiz was the victim of a horrendous accident. He lost his wife and two daughters. He's left with three sons to bring up on his own and two are still in this hospital. His medical insurance is inadequate. The driver who hit him was legally intoxicated. He's had prior DUIs. He'll go to jail, but that won't help Mr. Ruiz. The guy has no insurance and has no assets to attach. The only way we can help Mr. Ruiz cope is by suing this hospital for negligence in treating his oldest daughter, Wendy.”

Laura stiffened. She could still see the small form, could hear the clink as her forceps hit the shard of glass in the aorta so near to the heart. She could hear the dying blip of the cardiac monitor as they lost Wendy. The same frustration engulfed her as it had that night. The ER should have called her in earlier. The excuse of the fracture in the cervical spine and the chaos in the ER that night was just that, an excuse. There had been too much blood in those chest tubes, and she'd told that doctor from the ER that. When Laura had looked at the electrocardiograms afterwards, there'd been evident signs of cardiac tamponade, signs that should have triggered immediate chest surgery.

“The point is, Dr. Nelson, we know what you told the ER resident about the delay in calling you in for surgery that night.”

“Still, I'm not certain —” Laura couldn't continue. How would she feel if the medical system had failed her ten-year-old daughters? She looked directly at Louis Ruiz and couldn't ignore the tears he was attempting to hide. She watched Roxanne reach over and gently caress his hand. Taking a breath, she turned to Sam Sanders.

“Listen, I wasn't in the ER that night, and I will stand by my
statement that I should've been called in for Wendy earlier. I'm not certain whether that would have made a difference. There was a hole in her aorta —” She forced herself to keep looking at the attorney, not at Mr. Ruiz, “—she had a broken neck, and no matter what, she would have been paraplegic had she lived.”

“But she might now be alive,” Sam quickly concluded. Turning to his client, who was now weeping openly, he added, “I think that's enough.”

Exhausted by six thirty, Laura called Marcy for the second time from a corner in the hospital records room. Because the kids weren't home yet, she decided to stay to sign discharge notes and deal with the endless paperwork that plagues all physicians. She had two remaining charts in front of her.

“Still quiet here,” Marcy said, “too quiet. Why don't you just stay and finish what you're doing?”

“Okay. But call me the minute they get home, okay? And one more favor. If Steve brings them home before I get there, would you mind going over so he can leave before I get home? I really don't feel like fighting with him tonight. I have all day with the kids tomorrow. I just want to relax with them, take them to the beach on Anna Maria Island with my parents. Anyway, I'll only be here another forty-five minutes or so.”

Home long before midnight, Laura's concern escalated from annoyance to a mix of panic and rage as the night wore on. She called Steve's number three times, each time reaching the answering machine Steve still had, compliments of Channel Eight so that he wouldn't miss any news-related calls. The first message she left on his machine was polite; the second, irate; the third, anxious.

She lay fitfully on the living room sofa. The family room furniture was a lot more comfortable, but after what Steve and Kim had done there, she just couldn't relax in the room. She couldn't focus on the old Elvis movie on the TV either —
Viva Las Vegas
. She
clicked off the TV set. She tried to read the new novel her mother had left for her,
The Thorn Birds
, the kind of sweeping saga that usually stole her attention completely, but she couldn't concentrate. She could not eat; had not eaten all day. Anger grew as she realized that Steve had simply defied her by keeping the kids overnight in his small apartment. Marcy said they left with bags, right? They must be sleeping on the floor. You'd think he would have at least called. She could not wait to see that lawyer next week; things with Steve were getting out of control. Eventually she went into the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea. Her stomach growled and she rummaged through the refrigerator for that last slice of cherry cheesecake. But what if they'd had some kind of horrible accident — like the Ruiz family? While the water heated, she paced, saying one Hail Mary after another. One more look up and down the street, then she settled on the sofa to wait and, finally, she dozed.

Waking at dawn, still slumped over the arm of the sofa, Laura felt groggy and disoriented. As she massaged a vague pain on the left side of her neck, she noticed that the hall light was still on. Could Steve have dropped off the kids while she slept? Rushing upstairs with false hope, she faced the empty bedrooms. Damn Steve. Damn him.

She picked up the phone in the hallway, dialed Steve's number and got the same recording. She left a fourth message: “Get the kids home now. I'm taking them to Mass at Sacred Heart before we leave for Mom and Dad's.”

When the phone rang at nine, Laura leapt to answer it. It was only Marcy, calling to say that she was going to visit her sister-in-law in St. Petersburg and would Laura be okay. Laura tried to sound reassuring.

At noon, Laura called Steve's apartment again — a furnished one bedroom in the lower floor of a house on Oregon, between Horatio and DeLeon in Tampa's Old Hyde Park section. Again, no answer, and this time she left no message. She then called her mother and postponed the day's trip to Sarasota, asking her to make
apologies to her dad. They'd planned a beach picnic to celebrate his sixty-sixth birthday.

The Whalens were a close-knit family. After finishing med school in Detroit, Laura had chosen Tampa for her internship and residency so she could be close to her mom and dad. With her marriage breaking up, she now needed their reassurance, to hear from them that she'd be okay. That she wasn't a failure. That somehow this wasn't all her fault. That she was doing the right thing. If only Janet, her sister, could be there too. Janet was two years younger than Laura and as kids they'd been inseparable. Even through med school with Laura living so far away in Detroit, they'd remained close, but since Jan married a French professor five years ago and moved to Paris, they'd drifted apart. Laura hadn't seen Jan for two years, and she hesitated to burden her with her problems.

Then there was Ted, her younger brother. Her problems, Laura was sure, paled against those he experienced in the poor, remote village in Uganda where he'd been stationed — there was a cholera epidemic there. If Ted were here, would he disapprove of her walking out on a marriage? She'd have to try to explain what happened between her and Steve and hope that he'd understand. As a Catholic priest, he'd have to support the sanctity of the marriage vows, but as her kid brother, he'd always trusted her. Deep down, she knew he'd take her side. If only he were here, he'd be such a positive influence on the boys, especially now. The girls needed some TLC too, but they'd always been closer to her than to Steve.

Lately Laura spent more and more time thinking about the twins. Steve had a problem with them and it was getting worse. She'd never faced it head-on. Always making excuses, hoping that as the girls grew older the shadows of the past would recede, but the truth was that Steve was finding it more and more difficult to mask his ambivalence toward the little girls. An ambivalence that to an outsider may appear barely perceptible. Everyone always declared that the Nelson twins were images of their mother with their
blonde, wavy hair worn shoulder length and faces the same heart shape as Laura's. Everyone also claimed that they couldn't tell the girls apart, and wherever they went Natalie and Nicole attracted attention. When they were toddlers Laura had started to part their hair on opposite sides as a helpful clue to babysitters, but whoever got to know the Nelson twins quickly appreciated that their personalities differentiated them. Natalie, sweet and compliant. Nicole, aggressive, the ringleader. Laura usually dressed them identically, which they'd always loved. Hardly a day went by that a stranger wouldn't stop them on the street just to gaze in fascination or say a few admiring words.

Laura realized that most men would dote on such charming young daughters, but Steve remained aloof and only she and Steve's father knew why. Steve, too, had been an identical twin and his daughters were a constant reminder of a horrible childhood scar. At the age of ten — the girls' age — Steve had uncharacteristically shoved his brother, Philip, during a fight in their tree house.

Philip had tumbled to the ground, his neck snapping on impact, dying instantly. For months Steve's mother had been hospitalized with major depression, never resuming a nurturing relationship with Steve, her remaining only child. Her life became recurrent panic attacks, leaving her socially debilitated. It did not matter that the tragedy had been an accident.

Laura and Steve had been married almost five years before she learned the truth. After this revelation, which came not from Steve but from his Aunt Hazel, Steve refused to discuss the accident. Since the birth of Natalie and Nicole, Laura had repeatedly tried to get Steve to confront the impact of the accident on his feelings toward his daughters, but to no avail. Even after his mother died when the girls were five, Steve would not face it. If only he'd gotten psychological help, things would be so different. Not that Laura had that much confidence in therapists; she'd seen her share of incompetents; but Steve's mind was locked in concrete and there was no key.

As these thoughts flooded her mind, Laura wandered through
the house, straining to hear a car pull up in the driveway. She tried calling Steve's apartment several times, but there was no answer, just the answering machine. Where could they be? How horrible, how unforgivable, not to call. Certainly there could be nothing wrong or she would have heard. Repeatedly, Laura tried to tackle the stack of accumulating medical journals on her desk, but she couldn't focus. Where could they be? Where could they possibly be?

Frank Santiago adjusted the incline of the passenger seat to accommodate his lanky frame. “So, Ritchie, what do you tell your kids when they ask you what kind of business you're in?”