Solemn Oath Page 24

  Yes, she was feeling brave. She reached out once more and took his hand, and this time she didn’t let go but relished the power of that connection to him. His very touch was a healing balm.

  Lukas looked down at their hands clasped together, and his smile died as he raised his gaze to meet hers. The affection warmed to something deeper, bolder, more serious. He leaned forward and brought his other hand across to cup the side of her face in a featherlight touch. With a sense of wonder, he also seemed to acknowledge the strength of attraction that started to spin out of control.

  I love you, Lukas. She couldn’t speak her thoughts aloud, but they reverberated inside her in a continuing echo. And she acted on them. She leaned forward and found his lips in a moment of unthinking ardor, and pleasure spiraled. She heard him catch his breath and felt his hand tighten on hers.

  That was when the door swished open behind them. They broke apart to find Lauren standing there, a blush creeping up her neck and face.

  Mercy glared at her. Did she know what the word private meant?

  “Sorry to interrupt you, Dr. Bower, but a patient was brought in by ambulance a few moments ago. His wife called 911 when he fell and was knocked out in the garage of their house. He presented drunk but alert, but while I was doing my assessment his condition deteriorated. Dr. Mercy, you’re listed as his family physician. It’s Abner Bell.”

  Mercy groaned, and Lukas looked at her as he pushed back from the table. “Alcoholic,” she muttered. “What’s new? Sometimes I think half the world is alcoholic.”

  Together they followed Lauren out the door and down the short corridor stepping in quick time. Lauren continued her report. “His wife told us he fell and hit his forehead on a concrete step going into the garage. His blood pressure started rising just before I left him, and his heart rate started to drop, although it was hard to tell because he was so belligerent.” She led the way into the second trauma room.

  Abner Bell lay strapped to a backboard and c-collar on the exam bed, wearing a worn, stained white T-shirt and dirty jeans. His feet were bare, and he had a couple of days’ growth of bristly beard on his face. From what Mercy could see of it beneath the nonrebreather mask, it was matted with blood from a contusion on the right side of his jaw and a bloody nose. His dark blond hair fell across his brow. He also had an IV in his left arm, and the monitor to which he was attached beeped in perfect rhythm.

  Mercy recognized his wife, Delphi Bell, standing in the far corner of the trauma room, her eyes swollen and red from crying, her arms crossed over her chest. She was a short, plump woman in her late twenties with light brown hair and a glassy expression in her hazel eyes. She always had that glassy expression, along with the occasional black eye, broken finger or cut lip. Mercy knew there was spousal abuse, but she could never get Delphi to admit anything. It was a good thing the couple had no children. No telling what kind of a mess that would be.

  While Lukas tried to rouse Abner with a sternal rub, Mercy stepped over to his wife and laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder. Delphi winced, as if in pain.

  “Delphi, why don’t you come out to the other room with me,” Mercy said.

  Delphi gave a curt shake of her head, her gaze trained on her husband, arms held tight to her body. “I wonder if he’ll die.” It was not a question, and it held no emotion.

  Mercy turned to watch as Lukas poked at Abner’s foot with a neurological pinwheel and got no results.

  Lukas turned to Delphi. “Mrs. Bell, you did say your husband hit his forehead on a concrete step going into the garage just before he lost consciousness?”

  Delphi blinked at Lukas, then turned to Mercy. “He fell on his face. I told them that.” Her arms crossed even more tightly in a self-protective gesture.

  “Did Abner display any evidence of nausea or vomiting after he woke up?” Mercy asked. “Any headache?”

  “Yeah.” Delphi glanced at Lauren. “I told you that, too, didn’t I? He was sick to his stomach, and his head hurt just before the ambulance got there, but he wouldn’t tell anybody but me. I told the nurse about that when she asked him.”

  Lauren picked up her chart and checked it. “No, I don’t remember that.”

  Mercy gave Lauren an irritated glance.

  Lauren shook her head. “I’m sorry. He was yelling so much when he came in I must have missed what was said.”

  Delphi snorted. “Figures. He does that to me all the time.”

  Mercy made eye contact with Lukas. “Unconsciousness, then a lucid interval, then deterioration,” she said. “We need to get him to a Class I trauma center.”

  Lukas nodded in agreement.

  “What?” Delphi asked. “What’s that?”

  As Lukas issued orders for an Air Care lift, and lidocaine and vitamin K through Abner’s IV, Mercy turned her attention back to the patient’s wife. “Delphi, we think he could be suffering from an epidural hematoma, which is bleeding and swelling between the protective sheath of the brain and the skull. The swelling could be dangerous to him. We need to do a head CT on him to see if he needs surgery to relieve the pressure.”

  Lukas turned to Lauren. “Call Respiratory Therapy. We need to intubate him and get him on a ventilator stat, and we need a noncontrast CT. Mrs. Bell, if we find an epidural hematoma, we’ll call a neurosurgeon.”

  “How long will that take?” Delphi asked.

  “Depends on how soon we find something,” Mercy said. “And we need to find it as quickly as possible.”

  While other staff members filed into the room to work on Abner, Mercy urged Delphi out of the room at last. As they stepped into the suddenly busy E.R. proper, Mercy noticed a telltale sign of dried blood on Delphi’s right hand. Then she noticed fresh bruising on the side of the woman’s face. She brushed the hair back from her neck to get a better look, and Delphi winced.

  “Okay, what aren’t you telling me?” Mercy asked.

  Delphi’s wary gaze flitted to Mercy’s face, then away again. “What do you mean?”

  Mercy guided her into exam room four. “Get on that bed. I want to take a look at you. He’s been hitting you again, hasn’t he? Did you have a fight?” She turned to call for a tech.

  “No, don’t!” Delphi cried. “I’m okay. I’ve got to see what happens in there.”

  “They’ll keep us posted.” Mercy reached for a stethoscope in the side drawer of a metal cabinet, wiped the bell with an alcohol swab and turned back to Delphi. “Just let me check you out, okay?” She used her motherly, forceful tone and gently helped her patient onto the exam bed. “He hit you again, didn’t he?”

  Delphi clenched her jaw. She jerked when Mercy touched the stethoscope to her chest, and Mercy pulled the collar of the button-down shirt aside to reveal another bad bruise on her shoulder.

  “Delphi, why do you keep covering for him like this?” Mercy demanded. “Breathe deeply.” She checked breath sounds and was satisfied. Stepping back, Mercy looked down at Delphi. “Don’t you know this is dangerous? I want you in a gown, and I want to check you over thoroughly. Are you going to tell me what happened this time?”

  Delphi crossed her arms back over her chest and bent her head. “No gown. No check. He hit me a couple of times when I mouthed him. It’s all he did this time.”

  “He broke your finger once.”

  “I’m not better than him. I’ve hit him, too. Just like today I—” She broke off and looked away. She pursed her lips together.

  “Today you what?” Mercy prompted.

  Delphi shook her head.

  Mercy curbed her own frustration. She could understand how it felt to want to hit your husband. She could understand the need to protect herself. A big man like Abner could do a lot more damage…

  She bent down and looked Delphi in the eyes and finally got so close she forced eye contact. Why wouldn’t this young woman trust her? “Honey, tell me what happened.”

  The eyes welled with tears. Delphi closed them. “I told myself I was trying to protect myself.”r />
  “How were you trying?”

  For a long moment, Delphi didn’t respond. Then she took a deep breath. “He fell on his face, just like I said.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “There’s a goose egg on the back of his head.”

  “On the back of his head? But—”

  “When the drunken skunk turned over onto his side and tried to get up, I was afraid he’d hit me again. I grabbed him and shoved him over onto his back.” She looked at Mercy, then away. “I shoved hard. It felt so good I shoved him again. I heard his head hit the concrete, but instead of backing off and calling for help, I grabbed him by his stupid ears and shoved him back down again.” Her eyes narrowed, and the words came faster, more forcefully. “That’s when he passed out. I did it to him this time, Dr. Mercy. I put that goose egg on him. I got him back for all the times he hit me and shoved me around. I don’t need to call the cops on him because I took care of him myself!”

  Mercy couldn’t afford to give in to the shock that tried to freeze her. She pivoted and ran out to find Lukas. He was watching the CT tech wheel his ventilated patient out.

  “Better check the back of his head,” Mercy said when she reached Lukas. “Delphi forcibly slammed him into the concrete, cerebellum first. I don’t think it’s an epidural hematoma. It sounds like a—”

  “Cerebellar hemorrhage.” Lukas’s eyes mirrored her own shock. “Wow. Good thing you caught that, or we wouldn’t have known to look.”

  Lukas notified CT. They found the bleed immediately, and Lukas contacted the neurosurgeon on call. They had just started the patient on fresh frozen plasma when Air Care arrived.

  Mercy was in the exam room with Delphi when she heard the chopper’s blades as it carried Abner away.

  “I really did it this time, didn’t I?” Delphi said with a sigh. The bruise on her shoulder had deepened in color to purple-magenta.

  “I want to x-ray your shoulder, Delphi.”

  The woman shook her head, strings of light brown hair falling across her forehead.

  In frustration, Mercy stepped out of the room, saw Lukas standing at the central desk and walked toward him. “Lukas, I could use a consult on—”

  Two uniformed police officers came through the front entrance doors and walked to the desk. “Hello, Dr. Bower, we got your call. Where is Delphi Bell?”

  Mercy stopped as if she’d rammed face-first into a wall of ice. “What? Lukas, you called the police?”

  Lukas looked around at her in confusion. “Of course. I had no choice. It’s an assault case.”

  “But the woman was defending herself!”

  “I’m not making any judgments. As E.R. physician, I’m required to report any act of violence that comes into this department. You know that, Mercy.”

  Mercy planted her fists on her hips.

  “Then you’d better examine Delphi, too, because she’s the real victim here, and she has been for a long time!”

  He glanced at the police, then back at Mercy and lowered his voice. “They’re the police, Mercy, not the bad guys. It’s not like they’re going to—”

  “I should never have told you about Delphi,” she snapped. “I should have kept my mouth shut and let you keep looking for the hematoma in his forehead.”

  “And Abner might have died,” Lukas said quietly. “You know how difficult a cerebellar hemorrhage can be to pick up on a CT. Would you want that on your conscience?”

  “Do you want Delphi on your conscience?” She heard the outrage in her own voice, felt it on her face, and she sensed the sudden, waiting silence that surrounded them.

  Lukas stared back at her, prolonging the silence another few seconds. “I’ll go check Delphi.”

  A moment later he returned. “She’s gone.”

  “Dr. Bower, Mrs. Pinkley is calling for you.” Tonya’s voice came through the call room speaker thirty minutes after the helicopter lifted off with Abner Bell.

  Lukas glanced over at the blinking button on his phone and sighed. Mercy’s anger and her words still hurt more than he would have ever imagined. He had learned something else about himself and their relationship—if her tenderness, her tears and her kisses had power over him, her anger felt as if it would break him in two.

  He punched the button and picked up the receiver. “Don’t tell me the police already called you, Estelle.”

  There was a short silence, and then came Mrs. Pinkley’s voice, the deepest nonsmoker voice in a woman that Lukas had ever heard. “And good afternoon to you, Lukas. I gather you’re having a good day?”

  “I’m not even supposed to be here. It’s the same old story—Dr. Cobb called in sick, and I couldn’t get a replacement.” He grimaced at the whiny sound of his own voice. Something about Estelle’s motherly ways brought out the little boy in him.

  “You’ll learn how to be a department director in time. Hang in there.”

  “But I don’t want—”

  “The police did not call me, Dr. Bower. I called them. I don’t think you need to worry about Delphi Bell. They’re not going to much trouble to find her, and if they do, they will treat her like a battered wife who fought back.”

  Her words soothed something inside him. “How did you read my mind?”

  “I spoke with Mercy a few moments ago. She wanted to make sure Delphi was treated well.”

  “Mercy called you?”

  “Relax, Lukas. She wasn’t calling to complain about you. She didn’t even mention your name. She was just concerned about her patient. You did what you had to do. You followed hospital protocol and reported an obvious act of violence. Anyway, that’s not what I called about. We have other problems.”

  Lukas stifled a groan. There were always other problems.

  “Have you read today’s Knolls Review?”

  “I haven’t had the time.”

  “I didn’t think so.” There was a long silence and a huff of air over the receiver. “Brace yourself, Lukas. We’ve got another rough ride ahead of us.” Her voice was nearly a growl now. “Bailey Little has issued a public letter of resignation as the hospital board president, and it came out in the ‘Letters to the Editor’ column of the paper. I could kill that editor, but the letter will probably increase ratings. Harvey is surely expecting a rebuttal from me, and he’s certainly going to get one.”

  Lukas didn’t doubt that. “I thought you wanted Bailey to resign.”

  “You’ll see what I mean when you read the paper, but let me give you the highlights. Not only has Bailey broadcast the news about our COBRA investigation, but he states that he is resigning due to ‘alleged’ faulty conduct in our hospital, led by the administrator. That would be me.”

  Lukas could feel a headache coming. He rolled his head around on his shoulders and took a deep breath. “What kind of conduct?”

  “Taking on pro bono cases like Clarence and Darlene Knight, by paying their bills with public assets.”

  “That’s a lie! You and Mercy and I paid those bills out of our own pockets. And there’s a special fund designated for—”

  “Bailey didn’t bother to include that. He also complained about the hospital retaining the services of a physician with life-threatening tuberculin encephalitis who has a compromised mental capacity.”

  “But everyone in town knows Jarvis George hasn’t been back to his office since his collapse.”

  “This letter was meant to place doubt in their minds.” She paused a moment. “A further complaint, which he says he has tried to rectify, is about how the acting emergency department director—”

  “That would be me.”

  “—was dismissed from his residency program due to questionable professional conduct and came here with his tail between his legs because he couldn’t make it in the city.”

  Lukas got that old sick feeling in his stomach. “I told you I shouldn’t be the director.”

  “Are you questioning my administrative expertise?”

  “Not with anything else.”
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br />   “Just trust me with this, Lukas. Consider it a growing experience.”

  “Haven’t I grown enough?” Here came the whiny kid again.

  In her years as attorney in this community, Estelle had probably won cases for or against half the citizens. People either loved her or hated her. Most loved her.

  “There’s more,” she said.

  “You’re ruining my day.”

  “From what I hear, it was already ruined. Bailey also announced RealCare’s interest in purchasing Knolls Community Hospital and suggested that the county might have more cash flow for other important community-oriented services, such as the police and fire department, if they didn’t have to spend all their tax dollars on us.”

  “Is that how the county financial policy is set up?”

  “No, and Bailey knows that. He’s just stirring up trouble. I’ve seen him work too many times to be surprised by anything he does. He knows how powerful his little innuendos can be to a mob mentality, and this letter is going to stir things up. He also hints at the trouble they’re having apprehending the arsonist.” She fell silent, as if catching her breath.

  Lukas waited a few seconds. “Anything else?”

  “Just expect repercussions in the E.R. You’ll get the backlash from the patients, and you need to be warned. Everybody who has had any experience with Bailey will see through this ruse, and that could put us ahead of the game.”

  Lukas was still reeling from the shock of the news, but he thought he detected a familiar quality in her voice. He shook his head. “I think you’re almost enjoying this.”

  She hesitated a moment, then chuckled. “You know, I think you’re right. When I first took over this job, I thought I would be bored. That isn’t proving to be the case. I’ll be in touch.”

  As soon as she hung up, Lukas got another call.

  “This is the emergency room. Dr. Bower speaking.”

  “Yes, Dr. Bower, you’re the person I wanted to talk to,” came a woman’s voice over the line. “I’m calling from Cox South ICU, and we thought you might like to know that Darlene Knight just woke up.”

  Lukas thanked her and hung up, then sank down onto the nearest chair. Once, when he was about nine years old, his big brothers took him on a wild roller-coaster ride at Six Flags in St. Louis. They thought he was enjoying it until he lost his lunch. He felt like that now.