Gideon Read online

  “Oh, my god… oh, my god… oh, my god… her mother’s gonna shit when she finds out what happened,” Paris prattled. “Is Tara gonna die?”

  Kelly and Annie exchanged glances, exercising the utmost in tolerance. “Not tonight,” Kelly responded. “Where have you two been?” One of the elemental components of diagnosing a patient was getting background information, but prying useable particulars out of teenagers who were high and afraid of parental repercussions was often a difficult proposition.

  “Uh, you know. Some party.”

  “If you want to help your friend, I’m going to need a few more details.”

  “It was a house party in Cow Hollow. Some guys from USF. They had this sick DJ and one of our friends was cousins with…”

  Kelly interrupted her, “If the party was in Cow Hollow, why’d you come all the way over here instead of going to the ER at Kaiser?”

  “Someone at the party said that the doctors at Kaiser were kinda tightass and that this place was cool.”

  Kelly shook her head. “The doctors at Kaiser are extremely professional.”

  Somewhat chastised, Paris continued, “I didn’t mean they were narcs. Just the guys who were having the party didn’t want this coming back on them, you know?”

  Even though Kelly wasn’t that far removed from college parties herself, she was constantly amazed, and distressed, at how the minds of today’s teenagers worked. “Were you with Tara the whole time?”

  Paris stammered. “Kinda. I mean, not the whole time. She looked like she was gonna hook up with this hot guy on the soccer team so she, like, gave me the signal, you know?”

  Kelly remained non-judgmental. “I assume there was alcohol and drugs.”

  She shrugged and nodded, as if to say, “It was a party.”

  “Darlin’,” Annie interjected with a warm Irish smile, “we’re not gonna call anyone’s parents, but we need to know what Tara ingested if we’re gonna help her. We really don’t care what you did or who you did it with. We only care about what she put in her mouth.”

  “Like I said, I wasn’t with her the whole time, but she was just having some cocktails. She used to be all into Mike’s Hard Lemonade, but lately she’s been drinking Jack Daniels Southern Peach.”

  “I’m not about to lecture you about underage drinking. Lord knows, I did a wee bit of that myself, but if you are gonna have a drink, it most definitely shouldn’t be Jack Daniels Southern Peach.”

  Paris brightened up a little. “I know, right? It’s like totally gross. I’m strictly Grey Goose and Sprite,” she declared with a swell of sophisticated pride.

  Kelly looked at the clueless little rich girl and didn’t dare venture a guess as to what her SAT scores were. “It looks to me like Tara took some kind of sedative. Maybe a Valium or a Xanax.”

  Paris shook her head. “She totally wouldn’t do that. Her sister is like a Valium freak and Tara rags on her all the time.”

  “It’s possible she took it unintentionally,” Kelly said. “Someone could’ve slipped Rohypnol into her drink.”

  Paris reacted. “Seriously? Roofies? Those fucking assholes!” Paris caught herself. “Oh, uh, sorry, but I thought those guys looked like D-bags.”

  Annie handed Kelly a syringe with clear liquid. “This is Flumazenil, which will counteract the sedative.”

  Kelly injected Tara, and after a few minutes the teen started to come around. Kelly turned to Paris with a penetrating look that conveyed importance. “Listen carefully. Tara needs rest, hydration and someone to stay with her tonight. I’d suggest you take her home and tell her parents everything, but that’s up to you. Either way, you need to watch her. If she gets worse, get her to a hospital immediately. Can you handle that?”

  Paris nodded gratefully. “For sure. I will. I promise.”

  Putting the fear of God into hapless teenagers was not an AMA-sanctioned tool, but it rarely failed. “Paris, don’t let your friend down.”

  A look of panic crossed her otherwise vacant face. “I swear, I’ll take care of her.”

  As Annie began filling out a release form, she asked, “How’d you get here? Dear Lord, please tell me you didn’t drive.”

  Paris shook her head as if she’d never dream of doing something so irresponsible. “No way. I get pulled over for an underage DUI, my parents would take away my Beemer in, like, two seconds.”

  “I know everyone your age loves to party,” Kelly said, “but don’t put yourself, or your friends, in a position where someone can easily take advantage of you. Tara’s lucky you were with her tonight, or else this could’ve ended in a really bad way. You’ve got to be more careful out there.”

  “We thought we were, but some random guy slips something into your drink. I mean, like, what can you do?”

  “Keep clear of random guys.”

  “It’s not so easy, doctor. All the guys we hang with are pretty random.”

  Just then there was a rising din from the admitting area. Never a good sign. Kelly whisked open the curtain surrounding the medical bay to see the tall, lean Doctor Viknesh Danabalan hurrying past, holding a handful of vinyl ice packs.

  “Vik. What is it?” Kelly called after him.

  Vik answered over his shoulder, “Gunshot victim. Alma Sanchez’s son.”

  Kelly inwardly swore. She knew that one of these days the Sanchez boy would end up on the wrong side of a bullet.

  She ran and caught up with Vik. “How bad is Oscar hit?”

  “It’s not Oscar. It’s the younger one, Diego.”

  Kelly grabbed Vik by the sleeve and stopped him in his tracks. “Are you sure? Diego’s only a kid.”

  Vik hailed from Singapore and spoke with an unaffected Oxford-educated accent. “The gangs indoctrinate them young.” Kelly had known the Sanchez family for years and optimistically hoped that Diego wasn’t going to follow in the footsteps of his older brothers, but unfortunately the allure of the gang was a powerful siren call for young Hispanics who wanted all the perks that went along with membership. They never thought about the downside, because going to jail or getting shot happened to other people, not to you.

  Unless tonight your name was Diego Sanchez.

  3

  Diego lay on a padded table in the emergency operating area. This room was larger than the medical bays and reserved for patients who needed immediate triage.

  Ten years old and reed-thin, he writhed in pain. Despite being taught at an early age to suck it up and never show emotions (“because emotions made you a chavala”), tears streamed down Diego’s prepubescent face. An IV line had been inserted into his wrist and he was draped with a sheet from his groin to his neck. His pants were cut away, exposing his scrawny, bloody leg. Luckily for Diego, he was in good hands; those of Dr David Harper, the driving force of the clinic.

  Dr Harper was just shy of his sixty-fifth birthday, had an enviable full head of steel gray hair and was in excellent health. His penetrating blue eyes were once compared to Paul Newman’s, but David’s had lost their twinkle almost two decades ago when his wife Mary was killed. Combine that life-altering event with years of treating the sick and dying, and even the most optimistic men grow hard.

  Prior to establishing the clinic, David Harper had a distinguished career as the chief surgeon at St Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco. Every year he’d take a two-week sabbatical and donate his time to Doctors Without Borders, travelling to impoverished, quake-ravaged or war-torn areas. His well-thumbed passport included stamps from Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka. It was David’s way of giving back, and truth be told, dealing with real-life crises gave him a much-needed respite from the red tape and politics of a major metropolitan hospital. Despite the filth, the insects and deplorable living conditions, he always came back a stronger, wiser and more focused physician.

  While David flew off to the far corners of the globe, his wife held down the fort and looked after the family. Mary Farnsworth-Harper was universally beloved and respected. She’d m
et David when he was doing his residency and she was clerking for the US District Court of Northern California. Her career in law was as promising as his in medicine, but once they decided to get married she took a leave from work to help support David. She’d always intended to return to the legal profession at a later date, but with the arrival of their first child, Jessica, that intention became progressively smaller and smaller in Mary’s rearview mirror of life.

  Instead, she threw herself headlong into community service. At one point, Mary was on six different volunteer committees and chaired the local chapters of both The Surfrider Foundation and the Children’s Council of San Francisco. While David was on staff at St Francis, she spearheaded fundraising for the Coronary Care Unit renovation.

  After Mary tragically died, David stayed on at St Francis, but bowed out of his yearly trek to stay close to home. He had two daughters who’d lost their mother, and David vowed to spend as much time with them as possible.

  David’s thirteen-year-old daughter Kelly was savvy beyond her years and could take care of herself, but the situation with sixteen-year-old Jessica was far more complicated. Jess was a spitting image of her father, from his cleft chin to his iridescent eyes. She was a gifted student, a superior athlete and had a dynamic personality. From the moment she could wrap her chubby toddler fingers around David’s stethoscope, she wanted to be a doctor, “just like Daddy”.

  Few parents will ever admit they have a favorite child, but it was clear Jessica and her father had a special bond. It became a family joke, because it was equally evident that Kelly and Mary had a simpatico relationship. Fortunately, there was enough love to go around, so no one ever felt slighted.

  One man undid that all in less than thirty minutes.

  It was a lovely summer day in the city. Jessica had just gotten her driver’s license and begged her mother to let her take the car so she and Kelly could go play tennis. Mary was reluctant because there was construction on almost every block in San Francisco, which meant congestion, closures and detours. But she was in the midst of getting the house ready for a fundraising event and was expecting deliveries from the florist and the caterer, so it was easier to relent than to waste time arguing with a headstrong teenager.

  When the girls arrived at the court, Kelly realized she’d forgotten to bring the tennis balls. After a few minutes of Jessica questioning her little sister’s memory and intelligence, Kelly indignantly offered to jog the two miles home to retrieve the missing balls. Jessica said that was ridiculous (which was the response Kelly was going for). Jess would drive back and Kelly would stay behind to stake their claim to the court.

  When Jessica arrived home, she walked in to find a strange man spattered in blood, running down the stairs. She had no idea that this man had just killed her mother. She had no idea that a second later he’d savagely strike her in the head with a lead-filled, sawed-off baseball bat.

  From that moment on, Jessica had no ideas at all.

  Kelly blamed herself for what happened to Jessica. It was her fault that Jessica had to return to the house and come face-to-face with the demon that killed their mother. It was her fault that Jessica’s life was shattered and ended up in a healthcare facility in a semi-vegetative state.

  David did everything he could to make Kelly understand she had no hand in the horrible events of that day, but every once in a while she felt that he wished it had been Kelly lying in that bed instead of Jessica. She could see it in his eyes. Those penetrating blue eyes that he shared with her older sister. Kelly’s feeling of guilt dissipated somewhat over the years, but hadn’t gone completely.

  It never would.

  After Mary died, Kelly watched her father slip into an uncharacteristic funk and a dangerous routine. Despite his attempts to get closer to his daughter, he became more distant. David had never been more than a social drinker, but Kelly noticed that his scotch consumption increased. She also suspected he was taking valium to help him sleep, as well as some kind of stimulant to help him get through the day. If she didn’t snap him out of this cycle, things weren’t going to end well.

  Kelly confronted him. She knew what her father needed; to get away from it all. The hospital, the police investigation, the ever-deepening hole. Doctors Without Borders needed him, and he needed them. She could fend for herself for a few weeks, and she’d look in on Jess every day. David unequivocally refused. Maybe next year he’d think about it, but not now. The wound was still too fresh, their family’s future still too much in flux.

  Kelly had inherited Mary’s looks and her drive, but David underestimated how much she embraced her mother’s stubborn streak. Kelly wouldn’t let down, and finally, after much coercion, she convinced her father to take an extended sabbatical. He agreed on one condition: that she came with him.

  So while Kelly’s friends were spending their summer boating on Lake Tahoe and sunbathing in Maui, she, along with a team of international relief workers, was cooking meals and handing out clothing to people in Sumatra who’d been rocked by a major earthquake. David and a dozen doctors from around the globe worked eighteen-hour shifts doing triage on the sick and the broken. It was like an extended version of M*A*S*H without the punch lines.

  After two exhausting, soul-scrubbing weeks, David and Kelly arrived home with new outlooks on life. Kelly had originally set her sights on fulfilling her mother’s dream and becoming an attorney (she, at age thirteen, was “leaning toward family law”), but this recent experience made a massive impact upon her and she recalibrated her aspirations. After a long heart-to-heart with her father, where she explained she wasn’t trying to tread in Jessica’s footsteps, Kelly asked if it would be okay if she became a doctor. David’s eyes brimmed with tears of pride and love. Nothing would make him happier.

  Nothing except quitting his position at the hospital and opening a neighborhood clinic. His colleagues at St Francis were stunned that he’d throw away his seniority and years of practice as a surgeon. David was equally stunned at their reaction – he wasn’t throwing anything away – he was starting something new and important.

  Kelly and David mutually supported each other through the new challenges they faced, and along the way the most wonderful thing happened. They not only grew closer as father and daughter; they became friends.

  Eighteen years later, David never regretted his decision. He called the shots, paid the bills and took incredible pride in the service they provided. Like his daughter, David was chagrined by the fifteen-foot-high visage of his face on the outside of the building, but the upside was everyone in the neighborhood knew him by sight. He never paid for a drink at any of the local watering holes. Not a one.

  As David cleaned Diego’s gunshot wound with alcohol, the boy let out a yelp like a puppy nipped by its mother. “Sorry, Diego. It’s going to hurt, but we’re giving you something for the pain.” He turned to a short, dimpled Guatemalan nurse in her late twenties named Sonita. “Add 5ccs morphine to the drip, and he’ll need a tetanus shot. And where is Dr Curtis?” he asked with a tinge of annoyance.

  “He left about twenty minutes ago.”

  “Wasn’t he scheduled to work tonight?”

  “I’m not sure, doctor.” Sonita was relatively new to the clinic, and the last thing she wanted was to get tangled up in personnel matters, especially between the doctors. On the other hand, Dr Harper signed her checks and she wasn’t going to cover for a doctor who seemed to be on thin ice. Truth be told, Dr Curtis was kind of a cabrón.

  David wouldn’t allow his frustration to affect the work at hand. “Where are those…?”

  On cue, Vik and Kelly arrived with the ice packs.

  As Vik applied the packs around Diego’s calf to slow down the bleeding, Kelly leaned over and watched as her father gently probed Diego’s wound. “What’ve we got?”

  “Small caliber through and through. Luckily it missed the arteries.”

  Kelly laid her hand on Diego’s face. “How you doing, big man?”

  Diego turne
d his face away, embarrassed by his tears. Kelly spoke soothingly, “I know it hurts, but it’s going to be fine. Plus, you’re going to have a wicked scar to show off.”

  Diego stopped sobbing for a moment. He hadn’t thought about the fact that he was going through a rite of passage in the Mission. His first gunshot wound, and only ten years old. His brother Oscar didn’t even have a knife wound. It was kinda cool.

  Vik held Diego’s leg as David wrapped it with a sterile dressing and a pressure bandage. Diego winced and drew in a sharp breath as they increased the tension on the wound.

  Sonita returned with two hypodermic needles; one loaded with tetanus vaccine, and the other with morphine. Kelly took the tetanus hypo, while Sonita added the morphine to the IV bag.

  Vik called out Diego’s blood pressure. “BP is 90 over 52.”

  It was low, but tolerable. “We just gave you something that’ll make you sleepy, okay?” David said in a warm, fatherly tone.

  Diego nodded. “Okay.”

  “Doctor Kelly is going to give you a shot so you don’t get an infection; understand?”

  He nodded, but had obvious trepidation.

  As she swabbed Diego’s butt cheek, Kelly said, “Diego, this is going to sting a little bit.”

  “Why does everything have to hurt?” he asked pathetically. “This sucks.”

  Kelly and David shared a look. Out of the mouths of babes.

  Without further hesitation, Kelly plunged the needle into Diego’s quivering flesh and he let out an involuntary squeal. No one had told him this rite of passage was going be so damn painful.

  Diego’s howl was only partially muffled by the wall, and out in the waiting area his mother Alma sprang to her feet. “That’s Diego! I need to be with him!”

  Ramona shook her head. “Doctor Harper asked that you wait here until he called for you.”

  Alma Sanchez was an obstinate old bird, especially when it came to protecting her brood. She’d moved to the States from Sinaloa thirty years ago after her husband was killed by the Cartel. She’d made her way up the coast of California and settled in San Francisco, where she raised five sons. She never remarried and none of the fathers stuck around, so Alma was on her own. She held down three jobs, and it was only through sheer perseverance that she managed to be there for her kids.