Just an hour before, Dr. Hard had led him back into the depths of the Emergency Department, coming to a stop outside of the trauma room where the paramedics had taken Emma. After telling Brian he had very bad news for him, he’d not said anything until that moment. Brian had known what was coming and had tried to brace himself.
“We ran an emergency EEG, which is an electroencephalogram, on your wife, which is a recording of brain waves.”
“I know what an EEG is,” Brian had said irritably, not yet ready to hear what else the doctor had to say.
“Your wife had a flatline EEG, including no activity from the brain stem, which is responsible for basic life function. What we believe is that her status epilepticus had gone on too long, depriving her brain of oxygen for a protracted period.”
Although Brian had suspected as much, Dr. Hard’s words were like lightning bolts and suddenly the meaning was clear: Emma was dead. A seizure caused by brain inflammation from a disease carried by a mosquito had killed her. To him, the odds seemed impossible. Was human life really so fragile and tragic? The question kept reverberating in his mind, as did Emma’s last wish to be readmitted to the hospital, where she could have been treated immediately for her third seizure and thereby might still be alive.
At that point Brian had been permitted to view Emma’s body in the trauma room. Gazing down at the pale, lifeless form on the table with an endotracheal tube protruding from her mouth and an IV line going into her arm was an image straight from a nightmare. It was hard to believe that someone in her prime, with such vitality and strength, could be so easily brought down by an insect, which seemed so tiny and inconsequential in comparison.
After viewing Emma’s body, Brian knew he had to make some decisions. In a kind of a trance he remembered the funeral home that had handled his father’s funeral a year and a half prior. After a quick call, it was arranged, and he couldn’t believe the finality of it all. Brian was told that after Emma was seen and cleared by a medical examiner investigator, her remains would be picked up by the Riverside Funeral Home. Then after signing some forms, he was told that he could go home.
The wail of a siren yanked Brian out of his momentary trance as he watched an ambulance race up the hospital driveway and then make a rapid three-point turn to back against the ED receiving bay. He watched the doors open as a patient was extracted, similar to the way Emma had been handled a few hours earlier. Had it really only been a few hours ago?
After taking a deep breath, Brian pulled out his phone. He’d been putting off calling home to report the news, but he knew he’d have to do it at some point. Of course, he could wait until he got back and do it in person, but he thought that was somehow unfair since he’d promised he’d keep everyone informed. Involuntarily he shuddered at the thought of having to tell Juliette that her mother was gone and never coming home. Considering how much she had suffered when Emma had been hospitalized, he knew this was going to be devastating.
Marshalling his courage, Brian opened his contacts and was about to tap on Aimée’s number when he paused. Something arresting caught his attention. About a hundred feet away, a uniformed, mildly overweight driver carelessly flicked a cigarette butt onto the sidewalk. Equally attention-grabbing was the vehicle whose front passenger-side fender the chauffeur was leaning up against. It was a gleaming black Maybach parked in a clearly marked no-parking zone directly in front of the hospital’s main entrance. Although Maybachs and other luxury cars were common in some areas of Manhattan, particularly Wall Street and Midtown, in Inwood they were scarcer than hen’s teeth. Brian pocketed his phone and, desperate for a diversion from the paralyzing sadness, headed over to get a closer look. As he approached, the driver went through the ritual of lighting another cigarette, and after doing so, he proceeded to toss away the used match with the same disregard he’d exhibited with his cigarette butt. He then crossed his arms and assumed a posture of boredom and haughtiness that truly rubbed Brian the wrong way. The man had a face mask, but it dangled uselessly from an ear.
Without any particular plan in mind, Brian approached. The driver eyed him with a kind of colonial disdain as if Brian was a native of a distant, semi-civilized part of Manhattan. Feeling a tidal wave of anger at this individual’s self-satisfied superiority as clearly a member of the capitalistic world that had also created Peerless Health and the MMH hospital chain, Brian tensed. From his experience as a police officer, he could see the man was wearing a shoulder holster from a characteristic bulge in his overly tight chauffeur’s uniform. Even the fact that the man thought it necessary and appropriate to be armed for his visit to the “wilds” of Inwood struck him as offensive.
In fact, he was about to tell the man that he had to pick up his cigarette butt and used match, which he was certain the man would refuse, when a sudden realization popped into Brian’s head. Up until that moment it hadn’t occurred to him to question who the owner of the Maybach might be.
“Quite a nice set of wheels,” Brian voiced, nodding toward the Maybach’s imposing hulk.
The driver didn’t respond but rather eyed him with hooded eyes that Brian could just make out through the man’s aviator sunglasses. He was wearing a chauffeur’s hat, but it was jauntily sitting back on his shaved head.
Purposefully being provocative while maintaining the required six-foot distance, Brian walked directly up to the Maybach’s rear passenger-side door. With almost every muscle tensed in his six-foot-one, nearly two-hundred-pound frame, he quickly rapped on the window with his knuckle. As he expected, it made almost no sound, confirming his suspicion that the Maybach limo was armored.
The snobby chauffeur was caught off guard by Brian’s actions. He straightened up, flicked away his half-smoked cigarette, and spoke in a strong Brooklyn accent: “Don’t touch the car!” It wasn’t a request but rather an order.
With his body taut like a high-note piano wire, Brian was fully ready to take the man down. But the driver did not follow up his threatening order with any gesture whatsoever. Instead, he added, “Please step away.”
With some disappointment, Brian relaxed a degree and then said: “An armored Maybach! We don’t get to see too many of these babies around here in Inwood.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t seen this one on occasion. It comes up here maybe two or three times a week.” He then leaned back against the car’s front fender and looked off into the distance as if Brian didn’t deserve any more of his time.
Brian bent down and looked at the rear tire. “Wow! Run-flat tires, too.” He stepped back from the vehicle so he could see both passenger-side tires at the same time. “Yup. Run-flat tires, front and back.” He was now reasonably sure who the owner of the vehicle was, especially if this person visited the hospital two or three times a week and could afford an armored Maybach. It had to be the MMH Inwood CEO, Charles Kelley.
Turning his attention from the car, he looked over at the main entrance to the hospital. It seemed to him, particularly in his current state of mind, that fate might be providing him with a rare opportunity to address his pent-up anger at Emma’s avoidable death. If she hadn’t been discharged, she would have been under seizure watch and likely still alive. Suddenly there was little doubt in Brian’s mind that Charles Kelley and Heather Williams bore significant responsibility not only for Emma’s passing, but also for his future bankruptcy, the possible loss of his home, and the ruin of his life.