Chapter 23
The automatic doors of Mount Auburn Hospital opened as Charlie approached. It was midafternoon on a Thursday, and on any other day he’d turn right and walk the all too familiar fluorescent-lit linoleum hallway toward Ellison 5 and his mother’s ICU bedside. This time he had to pause to scan a wall placard in front of him, looking for the directional arrow that would point him toward the ER. The ER was in the opposite direction of Ellison 5, and while walking along that corridor, he bumped into June Hollie, the nurse in charge of the ICU and one of Joe’s favorites.
“Are you lost, Charlie?” June asked with a warm smile.
Charlie froze and stared blankly back at June. “Yes … I guess I’m just wandering the halls, thinking,” he managed to say.
She squeezed his arm gently; her eyes felt kind and practiced.
“Of course,” she said. “I just took a bit of a walk myself.”
“Actually, I’m glad I bumped into you,” Charlie said. “I was wondering if you got my message.”
“About your mother’s responsiveness?” June asked.
“Yes,” Charlie replied. “It’s just that I thought the last time I was here, she was moving her arm. And it seemed voluntarily to me, at least whenever I touched her. I pinched her even and was certain there was movement after that, too. Did you notice the same?”
June kept her eyes locked on his. Her compassion and empathy were visible, as though she were a part of the family and not a paid professional.
“We’ve kept a close watch. And we’ve tried the same things you reported,” June replied. “I’m sorry, Charlie. But we didn’t notice any movement at all.”
Charlie nodded. “Perhaps, it’s just that I wanted there to be,” he offered.
“That can certainly happen. Will we be seeing you soon? I’ll tell Judy and Samantha to be on the lookout.”
He nodded again, more eagerly than he had intended. A lengthy visit to the ICU felt like a blessing compared to what he was about to go through.
“I’ll be up soon,” he said.
June squeezed his arm again, smiled politely, and walked past him, on her way to Ellision 5, the ICU, and Alison Giles’s bedside. With a deep, anxious sigh, Charlie turned and made his way for the emergency room.
The waiting room of the Mount Auburn ER was mostly empty. A boy sat with his arm encased in ice, tears welling in his eyes, while his worried mother sat stoic by his side. On another chair a man in his late fifties watched a soap opera airing on the wall-mounted T V. He wore a tattered olive green army jacket that seemed to come straight out of the “to be tossed” bin at an Army-Navy store. Whatever his ailment, it wasn’t visible to Charlie, and he showed no eagerness to be seen by hospital staff.
Charlie announced himself to the intake nurse. Mindful that Rachel might follow through on her threat to call, he made certain she wrote down his name before taking the forms and clipboard she handed him to the waiting area as instructed. Even without a heavy influx of patients, the wait lasted past the end of the soap opera and a good fifteen minutes into the start of another. The man in the olive green army jacket hadn’t moved and didn’t seem the least bothered by his wait. A nurse had called the boy into the ER, his mother in tow. A few others arrived, none seriously injured, and took their seats with the requisite forms to complete. Nobody sat near Charlie or the olive green army jacket man. They were the poisonous ones, Charlie thought. The men without cuts or visible trauma, loners in the ER, who seemed to be viewed by the other patients with a caution one might reserve for a wild animal.
Thirty minutes had passed before a nurse emerged from the waiting room and called his name.
He needed a moment for his name to register. The idea that he was actually going to be a patient in the hospital had yet to sink in.
“That’s me,” Charlie said, standing.
“Follow me,” the nurse said.
Charlie walked a few paces behind. She pulled back a thin white sheet hanging from a semicircular rod, like that in a hotel shower, and directed him to take a seat on the empty bed.
“How are you feeling today?” she asked. “Your chart indicates you were referred to us by your psychiatrist. You didn’t list your physician’s contact name. Can you tell me your psychiatrist’s name?”
“She’s not really my psychiatrist,” Charlie said. “She’s more of a friend, I guess you could say, who also happens to be a mental health professional.”
“Okay,” said the nurse, her tone warning him not to try additional avoidance tactics. “Then can you tell me why your friend suggested you come in today?”
He hated how she emphasized the word friend. Charlie took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts, hoping that she would nod her head, as if what he would say was commonplace.
“I’ve been experiencing lost time,” Charlie said.
She looked at him. “Lost time?”
“I may have done things that I can’t remember doing,” Charlie explained.
“I see,” she said. “That can be very scary.”
Though her body language didn’t offer any solace that a quick diagnosis was to come, Charlie was grateful that she didn’t seem judgmental, or worse, act afraid of him. The willingness to listen to a total stranger who made outlandish, perhaps committable statements was beyond his comprehension. If the roles had been reversed, he would have dismissed the person as crazy. But her compassionate attitude suggested she was willing to listen and, above all, to believe.
She asked a few more questions and jotted down additional information on a PC tablet. Charlie was uncomfortable that his personal information was now the official property of the Mount Auburn patient database. If Rachel had not threatened to contact Mackenzie, Charlie would never have come.
The vital tests were quick. She checked his blood pressure, heart rate, and gave him a brief eye exam, presumably looking for drug use. In minutes she had completed her checklist.
“I’ll tell the doctor to hurry. I can see you’re anxious to get this over with.”
They made eye contact. It was as though she could look right through his armor and tell that he was truly scared.
“I appreciate that,” Charlie said.
“It won’t be long. I promise.”
The nurse slipped outside the curtained enclosure with a quick wave good-bye.
Charlie looked down at his watch. He wondered if Rachel had kept her promise to call. Perhaps, he thought, it was all a bluff to get him to seek the help she thought he needed. For the first time since this nightmare had started, he began to believe that she was right.
The curtain was pushed aside, and an Indian woman entered.
“I’m Dr. Asha John,” she said, extending a hand to Charlie. Dr. John’s handshake was strong, the nails on her hand cut short. She had wavy dark hair past her shoulders and wore a white coat over a pair of green hospital scrubs and white tennis sneakers. A pair of tortoiseshell glasses hung around her neck from a gold chain lanyard. Charlie stared at her name tag longer than he had intended.
“My husband is an American. I took his name,” she preemptively explained.
Charlie reddened, then nodded.
“So tell me, Mr. Giles. What is troubling you today?”
Charlie repeated what he had told the RN.
“And these episodes … How many do you think have occurred?” Dr. John asked.
“If I could answer that, I wouldn’t have lost that time, would I?”
Her expression revealed nothing. “Have you had any severe headaches since this began?”
“No.”
“What about fevers? Vomiting? Drowsiness?”
“No to all,” Charlie said.
She placed her long, delicate fingers along the sides of Charlie’s neck and began pressing them against his skin, as though playing keys on a piano.
“My throat feels fine,” Charlie said.
“Yes. I’m sure it does,” Dr. John said. Then she moved her fingers higher and felt up by his ears and across his cheeks with the same pressing motion.
“Can I ask what you’re looking for?”
“Well, Mr. Giles, normally I would have to phone the psychiatrist on call, seeing as I’m not trained in that specialty. However, patient volume is light today. I’d like to rule out some other possibilities if I could before making that call.”
“Such as?”
“Encephalitis, for one.”
“Encephalitis?” Charlie had heard of the condition before but wouldn’t have been able to identify the symptoms.
“It’s an inflammation of the brain,” she said. “It’s brought on by a viral infection. It has been documented to change behavior in some patients, alter personalities. It could explain your lost time. Do you have any viruses you know about? Herpes, for instance?”
“No,” Charlie said.
She continued to feel around his cheeks. “I’m checking your parotid glands for any sign of the mumps. It’s rare for mumps to cause encephalitis, but less so than mosquitoes. At least around these parts.”
“Why do you think it might be encephalitis?” Charlie asked.
That stopped her examination. “Right now, Mr. Giles, my job is not to figure out what might be causing this,” she said. “My job is to figure out what isn’t. I’d like to rule out several possibilities. It’s going to take some blood work. I’d like for you to stay here. At least until the blood work is done and I’ve had a chance to contact our staff psychiatrist if needed.”
“How long will that take?” Charlie asked.
“A few hours,” she said. “No more than three.”
Charlie thought. It was strange that something as dire-sounding as encephalitis would seem like a blessing. It felt curable, at least. Even though he hadn’t been entirely truthful about all his symptoms, he’d been honest about his lost time. Perhaps Rachel’s first suggestion was correct: something was physically wrong with his brain. Waiting a few hours for an explanation for the madness of the past several weeks was a small price to pay. He couldn’t do anything for
Gomes now. The police would find him soon enough. But perhaps
something could still be done to save himself. “Do you want me to wait right here?”
“That’ll be fine. I’ll get one of the nurses to draw your blood.” “Bring it on,” Charlie said. For the first time in days he felt a small
glimmer of hope. A swelling brain felt a lot less scary than a mind he
couldn’t control.