“Uh, yeah.” Callahan’s face fills with confusion. “Iamokay, but I haven’t been in a car accident in years. Not even a fender bender.” He adds proudly, “I’m a great driver.”
My father may have been a great liar, but I’m willing to bet Henry Callahan isn’t. He sounds like he’s telling the truth. And it’s hard to deny that he does not look like somebody who was in critical condition only a week ago—he appears perfectly healthy, without so much as a scratch on him. “I… I thought I read about it in the newspaper. You drive a blue Dodge, right?”
He arches an eyebrow. “I drive a blue Ford. Maybe it was another Henry Callahan you read about?”
Except the article didn’t include a name in it. I assumed it was him, because I thought I saw him get into the blue Dodge and that was the car that was following me. But I was inside the bar, so I didn’t have a clear view of the car. Maybe the blue Dodge belonged to someone else.
But if it wasn’t Henry Callahan, who the hell was following me last week?
“You okay, Doc?” He squints at me. “You look kind of sick.” He laughs at himself. “Although you would know better than me, wouldn’t you?”
“Excuse me,” I manage.
I push past the other people in the line for breakfast pastries, leaving Callahan behind, a perplexed expression on his face. My meager appetite is gone.
I head straight to the surgical lounge, and I log into one of the two computers. While I’m waiting for it to load my profile, I can’t stop thinking about what Henry Callahan just told me. He wasn’t driving the blue Dodge. He wasn’t the one following me. It was somebody else.
And that person crashed their car and was brought to this hospital in critical condition.
Once I’ve logged into the electronic medical record, the first thing I do is look up Henry Callahan. I’m not surprised at all to see his story checks out. His last admission to the hospital was when he had his successful hernia repair courtesy of Dr. Nora Davis.
I stare at the computer screen, chewing on my thumbnail.Somebodywas in the car following me.Somebodywas brought to the hospital after that accident. It said so in the paper.
I click on the census for the surgical ICU. If someone were in critical condition following a car accident, they would most likely end up there. I bring up the list of names on the screen, checking to see if any of them look familiar. None do.
So I check one other thing. I look at the admissions that came in the night of the accident.
There’s only one.
William Bennett Jr. He’s thirty-five years old. Admitted from a multi-trauma the same night the blue Dodge collided with that tree. He’s in bed twelve in the surgical ICU.
The name doesn’t sound even remotely familiar. Even though it’s highly unethical to do so, I click on his chart. I read the history and physical, my eyes darting quickly across the page. He was in a motor vehicle accident, car versus tree. No alcohol involved. Fracture to the right humerus, right clavicle, left femur, left tib-fib. A skull fracture with a small subdural hematoma. Multiple broken ribs with a pneumothorax requiring a chest tube and respiratory failure, now with ventilator-associated pneumonia. The guy is sick. He’s still intubated. He might not survive.
I look down at my watch. I’ve still got ten minutes before I have to be back in the OR.
I’ve got to see him.
Chapter 39
The surgical ICU at our hospital is a twenty-bed unit, but only about half the beds are filled at any given time. There are a few private rooms, but it’s mostly individual beds, separated only by curtains. When I walk into the room, it’s quiet aside from the sound of beeping monitors and the whoosh of the ventilators.
As I linger by the entrance, a twenty-something nurse in scrubs, a green surgical cap, and too much mascara hurries over to me. I recognize her, but as usual, her name doesn’t come to me right away. I glance down at her ID badge, which is thankfully flipped around the right way.Meagan.
“Hi, Dr. Davis!” she chirps. “Who are you here to see today?”
I frequently have patients in the surgical ICU, but I don’t have any here at the moment. Which leaves me with little excuse to be here. And it’s not like I can tell Meagan the truth.
I want to get a look at William Bennett and see if I recognize him.
No, that won’t go over well. Fortunately, I constructed an excuse on the way up here. And Meagan has no reason to doubt it.
“Dr. Corey asked if I could round on his patients here,” I explain. She knows Philip is my partner and we cover each other’s patients. “But of course, he failed to tell me who his patients are.”
I flash her a conspiratorial look.Isn’t that just like Dr. Corey? To ask someone else to see his patients and not give a proper sign-out?She smiles sympathetically—I’m sure she’s had plenty of interactions with Philip.
“Any way you could check the census in the computer and tell me who his patients are?” I ask.
Meagan nods, eager to help. She’s a young nurse, so she’s willing to do what I say without questioning the fact that I could just as easily log into a computer and find out the same information myself.
