Bitter Medicine Read online

  “What do you mean you haven’t seen her since Malcolm left? Of course you can see her. You’re her mother. Come on, Mama, this is crazy—you think you have to wait for a doctor’s permission to go to her?” She swept Mrs. Alvarado from the room.

  “How is she?” Diego asked me.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Malcolm didn’t leave until he thought her condition had stabilized—I know he talked to Lotty, so she must be holding her own.”

  Paul put an arm around me. “You’re a good friend, V.I. You’re like family. Why don’t you go home now, get some rest? We’ll look after Mama—no need for us all to stay.”

  Carol returned just then and reiterated his thanks. “Yes, Vic—go on home now—no point in all of us staying—she’s in intensive care, so only one person can go in at a time, and that’s only every two hours. And you know that has to be Mama.”

  I was fishing my car keys from my handbag when we heard an eruption outside—a crescendo of shouting coming down the hall toward us. Fabiano stormed into the room, a nurse hurrying behind him. He stopped dramatically in the doorway and turned to the nurse:

  “Yes—here they are—this fine family of my wife—my Consuelo—hiding her from me. Yes, indeed.” He stormed up to me. “You! You filthy bitch! You’re the worst of them all! You pulled this trick. You and that Jew-doctor between you!”

  Paul grabbed him. “Apologize to Vic—then leave—we don’t want your face in here!”

  Straining against Paul’s arms, Fabiano continued to yell at me. “My wife gets sick. She almost dies. And you steal her away. Steal her away without telling me! I find out only from Hector Munoz when I am looking for you after our meeting. You can’t keep me from her. You think you can trick me—she isn’t really sick—that’s a lie! You’re just trying to keep me from her!”

  I felt faintly nauseated. “Yeah, you’re awfully concerned, Fabiano. It’s almost nine o’clock now. It take you seven hours to walk two miles from the plant, or did you sit in the road crying until someone gave you a ride?”

  “Spent it in a bar, by the smell,” Diego observed.

  “What do you mean? What do you know? All you want to do is keep me from Consuelo. Keep me from my baby.”

  “The baby’s dead,” I said. “Consuelo’s too sick to see you. You’d better go back to Chicago, Fabiano. Go back and sleep this off.”

  “Yes, the baby’s dead—you killed it. You and your good pal Lotty. You’re glad it’s dead—you wanted Consuelo to have an abortion—she wouldn’t, so you trick her and kill the baby.”

  “Paul, make him stop. Get him out of here,” Carol demanded.

  The nurse, who had been hovering uncertainly in the doorway, spoke up as forcefully as she could. “If you don’t quiet down, you are all going to have to leave the hospital.”

  Fabiano continued to yell and writhe. I took his left arm and worked with Paul to frog-march him out the door. We went up the wing leading to the main entrance, the one that held the admitting office and Alan Humphries.

  Fabiano was shouting obscenities loudly enough to rouse Humboldt Park, let alone Schaumburg; various people came out into the hall to see the parade go by. To my amazement, Humphries appeared, looking extremely annoyed at the disturbance—I thought he would be long gone to Nautilus training or blackened redfish.

  He did a double-take at the sight of me. “You there! What’s going on here!”

  “This is the dead baby’s father. He can’t control his grief.” I was panting.

  Fabiano had stopped shouting. He was looking at Humphries slyly. “You in charge here, gringo?”

  Humphries raised shaped eyebrows. “I’m the executive director, yes.”

  “Well, my baby die here, gringo. That’s worth much money, no?” Fabiano assumed a heavy Mexican accent.

  “You can speak English,” Paul growled, adding a threat in Spanish.

  “He want to hit me because I look out for my wife and my baby,” Fabiano whined to Humphries.

  “Come on,” I urged Paul. “Let’s move this garbage. Sorry for the disturbance, Humphries—we’ll get him out of here.”

  The administrator waved a hand. “No, no—that’s okay—I can understand—very natural he should be so upset. You come in and talk to me a minute, Mr.—?”

  “Hernandez.” Fabiano smirked.

  “Now listen, Fabiano—you talk to him, you’re on your own,” I warned him.

  “Yeah,” Paul chimed in. “We do not want to see your ass again tonight. And I wish I would never have to see it again, you slime. Comprendes?“

  “But you have to give me a ride to Chicago,” Fabiano protested, indignant. “I don’t have no car out here, man.”

  “You can walk home,” Paul snapped. “Maybe we’ll all get lucky and a truck will run over you.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Hernandez—I think we can arrange transportation for you after we’re through talking.” That was Humphries, very smooth. Paul and I watched him usher Fabiano solicitously into his office.

  “What’s that heap of shit up to now?” Paul demanded.

  “Humphries is going to buy him off. He figures he can get Fabiano to sign a release for a couple of thousand, maybe save the hospital a big loss from a lawsuit.”

  “But why sue?” Paul furrowed his brows as we retraced our steps. “We know they did what they could for Consuelo and the baby.”

  I thought of Mrs. Kirkland’s hasty remarks earlier this afternoon and wasn’t so sure, but didn’t say it aloud. Don’t trouble trouble, and trouble won’t trouble you, Gabriella used to tell me—advice I occasionally followed.

  “Yes, well, my innocent young friend, anytime you have a dead baby you have a potential claim. No one, apparently not even Fabiano, likes to see a baby die. And a claim like that can cost a hospital several hundred thousand dollars, even if they are blameless as—as you.” That’s probably why Humphries was staying late—worried about liability, I added to myself.

  I kissed Paul good-bye at the waiting-room door. Carol and Diego came out to me.

  “My God, Vic, after all you’ve done for us today—that that vermin should insult you so. I apologize again and again,” she said.

  “Don’t.” I kissed her lightly. “You didn’t create him. Anyway, I’m glad I was here to help. I’m going home, but I will be thinking about all of you tonight.”

  The three of them walked me to the side exit. I left them standing in the doorway, a forlorn but valiant tribe.

  4

  Ten O’Clock News

  The hospital, air-conditioned to the point that my bare arms were covered in goosebumps, had been uncomfortable, but the heavy air was no better. It draped me like a sock; I had to make a conscious effort to move each muscle, to make my lungs go in and out. Pushing, cajoling my body—come on, quads; work together, hamstrings—I got to the Chevy.

  For a while I leaned across the steering wheel. The events of the day had ground my mind to fine powder. Driving forty miles through the dark seemed a task beyond my ability. At last, sluggishly, I put the car into gear and set off into the night.

  I never get lost driving in Chicago. If I can’t find the lake or the Sears Tower, the L tracks orient me, and if all else fails, the x-y street coordinates keep me on target. Out here, though, there were no landmarks. The hospital grounds were dotted with streetlamps, but once beyond them the road was dark. No crime in the northwest suburbs, so no need for brightly lighted streets. I hadn’t looked at street names in my frenzied drive to the hospital, and in the dark the little cul-de-sacs, tiny malls, car dealerships, provided no clues. I didn’t know where I was going, and a dread I never felt in Chicago’s traffic hit me in the stomach.

  I hadn’t seen Consuelo since she’d passed through the double steel doors six hours ago. In my mind she appeared as I’d last seen my mother, small, fragile, over-shadowed by the machinery of an indifferent technology. I couldn’t help picturing the baby, a small V.I., unable to breathe, lying with a shock of black hair, lost i
n the medical maze.

  My hands were wet on the steering wheel when I passed a sign welcoming me to Glendale Heights. Thankful for a landmark, I pulled over to the side of the road and looked at my Chicago map. It seemed I was headed more or less the right way. Ten more minutes of meandering got me to the North-South Tollway, which fed a roar of traffic onto the main eastbound expressway. The noise, the speed, the sodium lights, restored my equilibrium. At Austin Avenue, where we crossed the border, I sketched a bow to the city.

  Back in the comfort of my own briar patch, the ugly images of Consuelo receded. She would be fine. It was only the heat and fatigue and unnatural sterility that had unnerved me.

  My little co-op on Racine north of Belmont welcomed me with stacks of papers and a thin film of summer dust. Reality. A long shower washed the day’s grime from me. A generous slug of Black Label and a peanut-butter sandwich completed my recovery. I watched an old Kojak rerun and slept the sleep of the just.

  In my sleep I tried to find the source of an anguished wailing. I went up the stairs in my parents’ old house and found my ex-husband snoring loudly. I shook him. “For God’s sake, Richard, wake up—you’d rouse the dead with your noise.” But when he got up the sound continued, and I realized it came from a baby lying on the floor next to the bed. I tried to comfort it, but it wouldn’t stop wailing. It was baby Victoria who would not stop crying because she couldn’t breathe.

  I came to covered with sweat, my heart pounding. The noise continued. After a few disoriented seconds, I realized it was the front-door buzzer. The orange clock readout said six-thirty—pretty early for company.

  I staggered to the intercom. “Who is it?” I asked thickly.

  “Vic. It’s Lotty—let me in.”

  I pressed the buzzer, put my front door on the latch, and went back to the bedroom to find some clothes. I was fifteen when I last wore a nightgown—after my mother died there was no one to make me put one on. I found a pair of terry-cloth shorts in a stack of used clothes next to my bed. Lotty came into the room as I was pulling a Cubs T-shirt over my head.

  “I thought you would never wake up, Victoria. I was wishing I knew your skill in picking locks.”

  The words were light, but Lotty’s face was unbearably drawn, a mask of a pietà.

  “Consuelo died,” I said.

  She nodded. “I just got back from Schaumburg. They called at three—her blood pressure had dropped again and they couldn’t raise it. I made a trip out, but it was too late. Facing Mrs. Alvarado was terrible, Vic. She gave me no reproach, but her silence was a reproach in itself.”

  “Fucking victim,” I said inadvertently.

  “Vic! Her daughter is dead, tragically dead.”

  “I know—sorry, Lotty. But she’s a damned passive woman who runs her guilt-filled bus over the nearest passerby. I really don’t think Consuelo would have gotten pregnant if she hadn’t had an earful of ‘Thank God your father died instead of living to see you do x or y or z.’ For Christ’s sake, don’t let her pull you into her net—she can’t be the first bereaved parent you’ve ever faced.”

  Anger glittered in Lotty’s eyes. “Carol Alvarado is more than my nurse. She is a good friend and an invaluable assistant. This is her mother, not any bereaved parent.”

  I rubbed the heels of my hands into my blurry face. “If I wasn’t so groggy—and upset myself—I wouldn’t have spoken so bluntly. But, Lotty, you didn’t give Consuelo diabetes. You didn’t impregnate her. You treated her to the best of your ability.

  “In your head now you’re thinking, ‘If only I’d done this instead of that, if only I’d been there instead of Malcolm’—but you can’t. You can’t save the world. Don’t go on a doctor trip about how omniscient you are and how omnipotent that should have made you. Grieve. Cry. Scream. But don’t act out a play for me because of Mrs. Alvarado.”

  The black brows snapped shut over the strong nose. She turned on her heel. For a moment I thought she was going to walk out on me, but she went to the window instead, stumbling on a stray running shoe as she went. “You should clean up in here sometime, Vic.”

  “Yeah, but if I did, my friends wouldn’t have anything left to complain about.”

  “We might find one or two things.” She nodded a few times, her back still turned to me. Then she returned and held out her hands. “I was right to come to you, Vic. I don’t cry or scream anymore—those are skills I’ve long forgotten. But I need a little grieving time.”

  I took her with me to the living room, away from the unmade bed, to a big chair like the one Gabriella used to hold me in when I was a child. Lotty sat with me a long while, her head pushing into the soft flesh of my breast, the ultimate comfort, spreading through giver and receiver both.

  After a time, she gave a deep shuddering breath and pulled herself upright. “Coffee, Vic?”

  She went with me to the kitchen while I put water on to boil and ground beans. “Malcolm called me last night, but he only had a few minutes—he could only give me highlights. He says they gave her ritodrine to retard the onset of labor before he arrived—they pump in steroids to help the baby’s lungs develop lipids if they can hold off delivery for twenty-four hours. But it wasn’t working and her blood values were getting bad, so they decided to take the baby and do the best they could and concentrate on her diabetes. It sounds right. I don’t know why it didn’t work.”

  “I know you can do a lot with high-risk deliveries. But some of them must still have this kind of outcome.”

  “Oh, yes. I haven’t gone that far overboard with my doctor’s omnipotence. And she may have had scarring from that cyst surgery we did two years ago. I was monitoring her pretty close just in case…” Her voice trailed off and she rubbed her face tiredly. “I don’t know. I’ll be anxious to see the autopsy report—and Malcolm’s—he says he dictated most of it in the car driving back. But he wanted to check a few things with Burgoyne before he finished it.” She grinned briefly. “He was on call at Beth Israel last night after spending the day in Schaumburg—who’d be young and a resident again?”

  After Lotty left I wandered aimlessly through the apartment, picking up clothes and magazines, not feeling like running, not knowing quite what to do with myself. I’m a detective, a professional private investigator. So that’s what I do—detect things. But there was no action I could take now. Nothing for me to find, nothing to figure out. A sixteen-year-old girl was dead. What else was there to know?

  The day dragged on. Routine phone calls, a case report to complete, a few bills to pay. The oppressive heat continued, making all activity seem futile. In the afternoon, I paid a condolence call on Mrs. Alvarado. She sat in state with a dozen or so friends and relations in attendance, including a wilted Carol. Because of the need for a postmortem, the funeral was postponed until the following week. It was to be a double funeral, for Consuelo and the baby. It didn’t sound like a function I could bear to attend.

  The next day I went to the clinic to give Lotty a hand. With Carol away, she had hired a nurse from a temporary agency, but the woman didn’t have Carol’s skills, nor, of course, knowledge of the patients. I took temperatures and weighed people. Even with my help, the day didn’t end until after six.

  As Lotty bade me a tired good-night, I remarked, “This helps convince me that I made the right choice in going into law, not medicine.”

  “You’d be a good pathologist, Vic,” she said seriously. “But I don’t think you have the temperament for clinical work.”

  Whatever that comment meant, it didn’t sound like much of a compliment—too detached and analytical to be good with people? I wrinkled my face—what a commentary on my character.

  I stopped at my apartment to change into a bathing suit and cutoffs and then headed to the Montrose Avenue park—not the beach, where lifeguards assiduously keep you from going farther than knee-level into the lake, but the rocks, where the water is clear and deep. After swimming a half-mile circuit of the buoys strung out to keep boats off the
rocks, I floated on my back and watched the sun set behind the trees. When the oranges and reds had faded to a purply-pink I swam slowly back to shore. Why live in Barrington when you could have the lake for nothing?

  Back at home I prolonged my cocoonlike state with a long shower. I fished half a bottle of Taittinger’s from the jumbled cupboard in my dining room that serves as a liquor cabinet and drank it unchilled with some fruit and pumpernickel. At ten, I decided to tune back in to the city by turning on the least offensive of Chicago’s TV news shows.

  Mary Sherrod’s sophisticated black face filled the screen. Serious look. Top-breaking story is sad. I poured the last drops of wine into my glass.

  “Police tonight say they have no suspects in the brutal murder of Chicago doctor Malcolm Tregiere.”

  It took the close-up of Malcolm’s thin, fine face—his medical-school graduation photo—and the next few sentences for the news to register. A close-up of Malcolm’s apartment. I had been there, but it hadn’t looked anything like this. His family was Haitian and the place he’d rented on the fringes of Uptown had been furnished with many artifacts from his homeland. On the television screen, it looked like the aftermath of Tet—the few pieces of furniture were smashed, the masks and pictures had been pulled from the walls and shattered.

  Sherrod’s voice continued mercilessly. “Police suspect that housebreakers surprised young Dr. Tregiere, who had spent a grueling twenty-four hours on call at Beth Israel Hospital in Uptown and was home sleeping during the day, at a time when most apartments are vacant. He was found beaten to death at six this evening by a friend who expected to join him for dinner. By air time at ten tonight, no arrests had been made.”

  The picture changed to an anorectic, hysterical woman excited about lean sausage patties. Malcolm. This didn’t happen. I made it up—it was as real as the grinning woman and her frenzied children eating sausages. I turned off the TV and turned on WBBM, Chicago’s all-news station. The story was identical.