He separated her eyelids and used his penlight to check her pupils' response to light again. This time the results were different.
"Pupils are both reacting," he announced to the EMT.
"Great," Kirsten said. "Her oxygen sat is ninety-seven."
"Decent enough. I can't say why, but she just doesn't seem that deep to me."
"I know what you mean. She's sort of begun chewing on the tube a little."
Matt brushed her sodden hair from her forehead. Her face, distorted some by the breathing tube, still had a peaceful, gentle quality to it — pale, unlined brow… high cheekbones… wide, almond-shaped eyes. He lifted her limp hand and set it on his. Her fingers were long and slender, nails cut short. If there was polish on them, it was clear. There was a gold claddagh friendship ring — two hands supporting a heart — on her right fourth finger, and a single gold bangle on her left wrist. No other jewelry. Her palms were soft without a hint of callus, but there was a fullness to the muscles. Matt imagined the hands playing piano or writing or throwing clay pots — something manual and artistic.
Come on, you, he urged silently, wake up!
The mobile MRI facility that served the region was currently in its two-month rotation at Hastings Hospital, twenty-five miles away. Montgomery County, though, did have a CT scanner, which for blunt head trauma was nearly as definitive. Matt radioed ahead and asked that the room be reserved in one hour. He also asked the nursing supervisor to call the Belinda Police Department and request that an officer come down to the ER to begin investigation of a possible shooting, and also to try and determine the identity of their patient. He wondered as he rang off whether or not the powers at BC amp;C had filed any complaint with the police against him.
Patient saved, doctor arrested.
The sort of news a small town loves.
The ER crew was waiting for them as they backed into the ambulance bay. For the next fifteen minutes, Matt was a secondary player. The nurses and respiratory technologist became the major caregivers while the phlebotomist from the lab and the tech from radiology spearheaded the gathering of diagnostic information. Their comatose Jane Doe was lifted from the stretcher to an ER bed, stripped down, and covered in a johnny and a sheet. Her IV and monitor lines were quickly transferred to hospital equipment. A catheter was placed in her bladder to keep close track of hydration and urinary output, and she was hooked up to a ventilator. Next, a portable chest X ray and skull film were taken.
Finally, the crew stepped aside and Matt resumed his position at the bedside. This time, his examination would be more detailed, including the critical visualization by ophthalmoscope of the retinas in the back of Jane Doe's eyes. He was relieved to see pulsation in the veins there, as well as a sharpness to the margins of the optic nerves. Loss of either would be a grave sign, indicating significant brain swelling from trauma and/or prolonged lack of oxygen.
"So, Dr. Rutledge, I understand you called?"
Grimes.
Matt turned slowly to face the Belinda police chief. The two of them had had some conflicts over the years, usually surrounding some action or other Matt was running against BC amp;C. Matt also complained more than once of being harassed with tickets — parking and speeding. Grimes was ex-military and kept the town on a pretty short leash. A displaced northerner with some sort of degree in criminal justice, he had adopted something of a mountain accent. He was divorced, with a kid in Florida someplace that Matt heard he never saw. Their contrast in styles alone would have strained their relationship, but Grimes's connection with Armand Stevenson and the other directors of the mine all but sealed their enmity.
Over the years, the police chief had appointed himself as a one-man watchdog committee to step in whenever Matt didn't have an appropriate permit or was posting notices against a town ordinance. Matt suspected Grimes or his lackeys were behind the disappearance of most if not all of the magenta fliers.
"I just asked for a policeman," Matt said, "not the policeman."
"You're a very important person to us," Grimes replied, smiling civilly. "What do you have?"
Matt gestured to his patient. At the sight of her, Grimes's lips tightened noticeably.
"This woman plunged off Niles Ledge and into the lake," Matt said. "One of the two kids who rescued her said he heard several shots. The other kid doesn't think so. She's got a big bruise over her eye. That may be why she's unconscious, but she also has a scalp wound that could be from a gunshot. I'm legally required to report any possible shooting."
"Thanks for telling me that, Doctor. From time to time I forget some of the laws. How long was she underwater?"
"I estimate two minutes minimum, four maximum. She had no ID, so in addition to reporting the possible bullet wound, I hoped maybe you could find out who she is."
Grimes stepped forward, set his hands on the bed rail, and gazed down at the woman.
"Her name is Nikki Solari," he said flatly. "She drove down from Boston to attend Kathy Wilson's memorial service earlier today. I spent some time talking with her there. Wilson was her roommate. You know who she was?"
"I know about her, and I've heard some of her music, but I didn't know her personally."
"Well, she was hit by a truck in Boston. Died instantly."
"I heard something about it from Hal Sawyer. Apparently he knew the family and Kathy."
"Yeah, he was at the service. Well, this woman played fiddle in Kathy Wilson's bluegrass band."
Matt decided that playing fiddle was close enough to pianist. He was mentally patting himself on the back for astutely concluding that Nikki Solari's hands were those of an artist, when Grimes added, "She only played music as a hobby. She's actually a pathologist — a coroner up in Boston. Spends her time working up to her elbows in gore and guts."
Matt immediately stopped the patting.
"What do you think about that wound above her ear?" he asked.
Grimes studied it.
"I guess it could be from a bullet," he said. "But it could just as easily be from something else, like a broken branch."
"Well, we'll find out for sure when she wakes up."
Grimes suddenly whirled to face him.
"You just make sure that she does!" he snapped.
CHAPTER 15
Much of what I write here of my infection with the Lassa virus and my miraculous recovery I gleaned from conversations with those who cared for me during my thirty-day hospitalization. I use their accounts because I was delirious for much of the time, and remember almost nothing.
The words were those of Dr. Suzanne O'Connor, a missionary physician. She was working in the central Nigerian city of Jos in the spring of 1973 when a patient, Lila Gombazu, crazed with fever, clawed through her rubber gloves and broke the skin on the back of her hand.
Cloistered in one corner of the Library of Medicine at the NIH, Ellen Kroft read O'Connor's harrowing account with a dry mouth and an unpleasant fullness in her chest.
The poor woman who scratched through my glove went into convulsions the next day. In spite of the most heroic measures we could muster, she began hemorrhaging from her nose, womb, and rectum, and died horribly, crying out at the end for her children, two of whom, she had no way of knowing, were already showing symptoms of the disease. Twelve days after my encounter with Lila, my good health and the crush of work caring for our patients had driven the incident to the back of my mind. That day, a Monday, I mentioned to one of the nurses that I had a stuffy nose and scratchy throat, and thought I might be coming down with the flu. Tuesday was more of the same, although the discomfort in my throat was steadily worsening. I couldn't possibly take time off from my work, though. The hospital was filled to capacity and then some. I put myself on a high dose of penicillin and tried to force fluids past the inflammation and the raw, white sores that now dotted my palate and pharynx.