Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Two:
A Hunger in the Gut

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
― Marcus Aurelius, The last of the ‘Five Good Emperors’ of the Roman Empire

The room was that ugly institutional green that only hospitals and army bases seem to favor. The chairs were waiting room modern — stackable metal and green plastic torture devices specifically designed to be uncomfortable for any length of time — and they’d already been waiting for the best part of an hour, so George and Frank were both reacting as planned. The nurse had left, but the security guard at the door was reason enough to wait as she’d told them to. Frank paced nervously while George, having tried the chairs already, sat patiently on the more comfortable table.

“What’s going on here? Why are we being held here?” Frank demanded of the guard.

The guard looked bored and ignored them. Frank was about to pursue the issue farther when the nurse returned along with a short balding, pot-bellied man in a white coat.

“Hello, boys. I’m Doctor Dunlevy. I’m the internist treating your friend, Jack Renfrew.”

“Why are we being held here?” said Frank.

“I apologize, gentlemen, but I felt it was important to speak to you, and you were present in a patient’s room in violation of hospital policy.”

“So why didn’t you call us in the first place?”

“I would have been glad to call, but you didn’t leave a telephone number when you called earlier in the week, several times, in fact, but according to the call log,” he consulted a file folder, “first ‘Frank’ called for ‘his friend Jack,’ then ‘George called for Jack Renfrew,’ and so on through the week. While I’m sure you’re both extremely famous people within your circle of intimates, unlike ‘Cher,’ ‘Madonna,’ and ‘Björk,’ you haven’t yet reached that stage of notoriety in which last names are superfluous. It was you, wasn’t it?”

George made a sour face. “So why didn’t you call the college and ask them to connect you?”

“Actually, Nurse Cattrell tried several times,” he nodded towards the nurse, who smiled briefly but coldly in response, “but the college has some rather stuffy rules about giving out information regarding their students to perfect strangers, citing” he looked at his folder again, “ ‘privacy concerns’ and ‘confidentiality’ regarding putative students who’d completely failed to leave adequate contact information, and for some strange reason wouldn’t give us a list of their students so we could go out fishing for the right students amongst thousands, and so refused to give us the opportunity to contact you earlier. And then, lo and behold, you show up in person and invade a patient’s room after having given out false information regarding your identities in an effort to subvert strict medical seclusion intended to protect the public from what might be a dangerous and contagious disease. How am I doing so far?”

Further discussion was interrupted by ironic applause from George, who was still sitting on the table. “Very interesting. I’m totally awed by your bullshit. Now can we get down to basics? Why is there what appears to be a woman in his room, with his chart hanging on her bed, and what the Hell’s happening to our friend?”

Nonplussed for a moment, Dunlevy cleared his throat. “Have a seat.”

He gestured to the others and then moved to sit at the head of the table. The guard remained at the door, but the nurse joined him at the table, as did Frank. George crossed his legs and remained sitting on the table. He split his attention between glaring down at the others and staring out the window at the hospital courtyard through the dimming light of the setting sun.

“Your friend is suffering from a variety of symptoms not usually associated with each other. First there is hypertrichosis. That means unusual hair growth in some areas, in this case his head. He’s growing hair at an astounding rate. Then there’s hypotrichosis, which means unusual hair loss. In your friend’s case it means that he’s losing the hair on most of the rest of his body, again at an astoundingly rapid rate. These two symptoms don’t usually occur together and usually there is a genetic cause for each.

“Next, there is gynecomastia, the growth of breast tissue, which is usually associated with the intake of any of a variety of drugs. We’ll get back to that later. He also seems to have hypogonadism, which means his testes are quite small and one is undescended. This is not uncommon, but it is unusual for someone to live to be as old as your roommate without someone diagnosing and treating it, especially as testicular cancer is common if an undescended testicle is left untreated.”

“That’s impossible,” Frank interjected. “We’ve taken gym together. Hell, as kids we used to compare sizes to see whose was biggest. We would have noticed something like that. The last time we saw him, Jack was a perfectly normal guy.”

“Be that as it may,” Dr. Dunlevy continued unperturbed. He was in his element when he talked about medicine, even though his bedside manner was the pits. “Next there is hypotension, the opposite of high blood pressure.”

Frank looked confused, but George appeared to be listening intently.

“Finally, there is osteolysis, which means that he is losing bone mass, which could be the result of some undiagnosed metabolic disease, although his kidneys seem to be working properly and he doesn’t appear to be suffering from a vitamin deficiency.” Dr. Dunlevy took a breath and looked about the room. The hostile young men were gone, replaced by two very anxious and worried young boys.

“So what are you doing to help him?” George asked as he slid off the table and into a more respectful position in one of the uncomfortable chairs.”

“Androsterone and testosterone. Male hormones,” Dr. Dunlevy explained. “We’re using them in an effort to slow the physical changes, I confess in desperation, because nothing else seemed to work. They have the secondary benefit of treating the hypotension, and seem to have helped slow the progress of what would have been a fatal complication of whatever it is he’s suffering from. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t even be talking to you, but were hoping that you might remember that he’d fallen into a pit of toxic waste or something that might give us a clue about what’s happening.”

“But why does he look so … so strange?” Frank asked in confusion.

Dr. Dunlevy’s answer was postponed by the beeping of his verbal pager as the PA system outside echoed the same words, “Doctor Dunlevy, Doctor Dunlevy. Doctor Hart, Doctor Hart. Room fifteen fourteen please. Code Blue.”

“Excuse me.” The physician ignored the question as he jumped up and headed toward the door at a fast walk.

“Hey! That’s Jack’s room,” George noted. “What’s the matter?”

Hurrying out the door, followed closely by the nurse, Dr. Dunlevy called back. “I don’t know, but I can’t wait to answer your questions now. Please wait here and I’ll return when I can.”

“Oh no you don’t. We’re coming with you.”

“No, you’re not,” he impatiently paused by the door. “You’re going to let me do my job and help your friend.” Then he was gone.

Frank stood up, unsure what to do, but George moved purposefully toward the door, only to be stopped when the security guard’s beefy arm moved from his chest to stretch across the door.

“Let us out,” George said, his voice pitched low and angry.

The guard said nothing as he reached behind himself with his other hand to slowly close the door. Still without saying a word, the guard stepped back to place himself against the now closed door and refolded his arms. Frank hesitantly sat down again. George stood almost chest-to-chest with the guard. At a head taller and easily a hundred pounds heavier than George, the guard calmly watched the smaller man bluster. Finally, George stalked off towards the other end of the room, grabbed a chair, moved it to face the window and stared grimly out at the lights of the city.

“You could at least tell us what ‘Code Blue’ means,” Frank grumped, but the guard said nothing so Frank looked to George in desperation, hoping he would know the answer.

George just shrugged, but said, “It’s probably a hospital emergency code, but they all have different names for the codes, so patients don’t know exactly what they mean, but it’s nothing good.” He looked worried.

Frank settled for pacing impatiently.

An hour later, the nurse came back and had the security guard escort them out of the hospital, still without any explanation. At least George was able to give her their telephone number before they left.

The orderly was pushing the gurney at top speed while a nurse ran alongside holding an IV bag with several doctors in tow, one giving chest compression on the run, the other with a stethoscope monitoring her vitals as best he could. With a loud slam, they all burst through the double door into the operating theater section of the building, leaving a wake of startled people. With another slam, the door to the emergency operating room burst open and a middle-aged man with a slight potbelly and receding hairline looked up from the cot he’d been sleeping on.

“We’ve got a code here, Doctor Venkataraghavan,” the orderly called out as he backed out of the room, happy to avoid the confrontation he expected, leaving both of the trailing doctors and the nurse behind.

“Well, well, it is Nurse Ratched, is it not?” he asked, speaking rapidly and with the slight singsong common to those born in India and speaking English as a second or third language.

“That’s Richards,” the nurse responded angrily, hands on her hips. “Unless, of course, you want another grievance filed.”

“Whatever,” the Doctor growled, but then decided to end the battle of words and turned to the patient on the gurney. “What do we have here?”

“Female, approximately twenty years of age.” One of the doctors said, all business, but still trying to catch his breath. “They had her in critical care and she entered atrial fibrillation, unresponsive to diltiazem and metoprolol. We haven’t tried digoxin, as she seems healthy otherwise and is very young for that to be her problem.”

“History.”

“Here’s the chart.”

Taking it from him, he flipped it open and examined it briefly. “This is useless. It is the wrong chart.” He threw it off to the side.

“It’s the one from her room.”

“Well, unless she is a twenty year-old male named Jack Renfrew, it is still the wrong chart. Never mind.” He was all business as he started checking pulse and respiration. “Get me some Lidocaine. I want a five CC IV drip stat, and the rest of you, clear out. This room is too small for a peanut gallery.”

“Yes, Doctor, said the nurse, as the two other doctors left, irritated by the ER specialist, but he was right; they’d just get in each other’s way in such a confined space.”

“And hook her up to the monitors.”

“Yes, Doctor, she said.”

They worked frantically and then there was an erratic beeping from the monitor.

“It’s hooked up. Her heart is racing. Blood pressure is two ten over fifty. Pulse is rapid and thready. If she keeps this up she’ll stroke out.” The nurse and the physician huddled about the body in the bed from room fifteen fourteen while the noises of the unhappy humanity in the emergency services waiting room occasionally wafted into the operating room.

“Increase the Lidocaine drip to 10 CCs.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Damn. She’s still fibrillating. I need Digoxin stat.”

“Yes, Doctor.” A syringe slapped into his hand.

“No change. Get me another syringe of Digoxin.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Another syringe slapped into his hand.

She said, “BP is down to one fifty over fifty and still dropping … one hundred over forty … eighty over thirty….”

“Give me the paddles and clear. I want four hundred joules. Clear!” The body jerked like a puppet on a string.

“Still nothing. Six hundred joules. Clear!” Another jerk.

“Still no heartbeat.”

“Damn. What the hell do we have to do here? Live already!” the ER Doc cursed and pounded on her chest with a series of rhythmic blows, then began chest compressions. “Crank it up to eight hundred.”

“But, Doctor, six hundred joules is the recommended maximum.”

“And the patient is in terminal cardiac arrest. If eight hundred joules works, we have a living patient who can sue me, if she wants to. If it doesn’t work, we have a slightly singed body. Now do it, stat!”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Clear.” He placed the paddles carefully, then thumbed the trigger. The patient’s body arched off the table, but her heart was still and she wasn’t breathing.

“Still nothing. She’s gone, Doctor.”

“Let’s try it one more time.”

“Doctor!”

“Again!” He still had the paddles on her chest, properly placed and waiting for the therapeutic charge to build, which never happened. He turned to the nurse, who held up her hands to plead with him.

“Doctor, please stop. If you do this again, I’ll have to report your conduct, and I don’t want to do that. Do you want to face the Medical Practices Review Board? Do you want to face censure or maybe loss of privileges? She’s gone, Doctor. I’m sorry.”

The silence was deafening. Finally, he took the paddles away and slowly lowered them to their places in the crash cart.

“You’re right. I do not know what came over me. I could not keep my detachment. I could not bear the thought of losing her.”

“I’m very sorry, Doctor. I didn’t realize you knew her. My deepest sympathy and condolences.”

“But that is just it. I do not know her. I have never seen her before in my life, but she seemed so familiar.” Two confused people shuffled arm-in-arm towards the door of the operating room leaving behind one corpse and the continuous tone of a still connected heart monitor. The nurse seemed to be comforting the physician until his hand slid down to give the woman’s buttocks a firm caress.

“Why you….” She turned to slap him, but instead her hand reached around his neck and pulled him into a kiss as they both began frantically pulling at each other’s clothes. Seconds later they were half-naked, in the throes of carnal passion on the tile floor as the nurse cried out, “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! I never realized!” and the Doctor crooned, “Alison! Alison! My beautiful Alison! I’ve always wanted you!”. They never noticed the corpse’s hand twitch or the monitor start beeping again.

“Hey, Frank. Get the phone.”

“You get it. I’m working on my project and I can’t move until the glue dries.”

“And I’m in the bathroom,” George called back.

“Then I guess they’ll have to leave a message on voice mail.”

“So, tell me again. What did they say?”

“I’ve told you twice,” George responded irritably. “Here, listen to it yourself.”

Frank waited impatiently while George dialed for his voice mail and then shoved the phone at Frank. When the message was over, Frank punched the keys to repeat it yet again. After the hearing the recording for a second time, he carefully replaced the telephone on its cradle and sat down on the living room couch facing George. Neither spoke for quite a while.

“So what do we do now?” Frank’s question finally broke the silence.

“I guess we go down there and identify the body. Gee, that might even be more fun than being rejected by Julie Oliver again.”

Frank didn’t even acknowledge George’s pitiful attempt at humor. “That was in the message. I meant after that, George.”

“I don’t know. Make arrangements for a funeral?”

“Yeah. With no family, I guess it’s up to us.” Frank shook his head as if in pity, but his moist eyes put lie to the illusion. He ran his hand through his brown crew cut and surreptitiously wiped his sleeve against his cheeks on the way back down, trying to avoid acknowledging his tears. “So, how do we do that?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

More silence.

“We’d better get down there.”

“Yeah,” George answered, but neither moved.

More silence.

Finally, George shook himself as if to get himself moving and slowly stood. Frank just stared after him. “Coming?”

“Yeah.” Frank swiped at his face, this time more blatantly, then got up and dragged along behind his friend.

At the dorm entrance, they stood under the starry moonlight sky. “Car or bus?”

“I don’t know. Car, I guess.”

“Are you up for driving?”

“I guess so. I just don’t really want to see anyone else right now.”

“Okay.”

“Geez these guys are confused,” George noted for the fifth time. “You’d think that they had lost the body or something.”

The trip to the hospital had taken only a few minutes, but they had been waiting in the lobby of the emergency room for almost two hours.

“That’s not really funny, George,” Frank said angrily.

“I know. I’m just getting ticked off at all the waiting and the mealy-mouthed excuses. I’m going to check again.” George stood and stalked over to the information desk. When the family in front moved on, he spoke. “Excuse me, but we’re still waiting for Doctor Dunlevy. It’s been quite a while now.”

“Yes, sir,” the gray-haired receptionist responded. “Doctor Dunlevy has been paged, but he hasn’t answered. I’ll try again.”

“You did that three times already.”

“Yes, sir. This is a hospital. Sometimes our physicians are busy. He’s probably dealing with an emergency.”

“Yeah, right. He’s probably worried that he’s hooking his golf balls again or something. Then is there anyone else we can see? We’re supposed to identify someone at the morgue.”

“Certainly, sir. Why didn’t you say so?” the receptionist said and smiled brightly as she dialed another number. George just stared at her and muttered to himself about incompetence while wondering what color her hair had originally been.

Not for the first time, Frank marveled at how many contradictory ideas could rattle around in George’s head without stumbling over themselves. If it was a blonde joke, it seemed to be in poor taste, considering that he was crazy about a blonde who was clever enough not to date him. Then again, maybe it was a case of sour grapes, with all blondes everywhere tainted by Julie’s failure to fully appreciate exactly how wonderful George really was.

“I’ve reached Doctor Nikruma. She’s Chief of Pathology and she said she would see you. Please follow the green lines to the elevator,” she pointed to the various colored lines on the floor, “and go to the basement. Then follow the black line to Pathology.”

“Thank you.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice as George gestured for Frank and headed off. The basement hallways were empty and they had to knock repeatedly to get someone to come to the locked door that was the entrance to the Department of Pathology.

“Geez,” George grumbled. “Don’t they even answer the door when they know someone’s coming? If this is how well they do when the body can’t move, I’d hate to think about how well they do with the living.”

“Shh. Someone’s coming.”

“At last,” George snorted.

The door opened to a tall, pretty, black woman of indeterminate age, wearing blue scrubs and removing a second bloody surgical glove. “Yes? What do you want?” The words were brusque.

“Are you Doctor Nikruma?”

“Yes. Once again, what do you want?” The gloves were tossed into a red contaminated waste container.

“We were told to see you about identifying the remains of our friend.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’ve been awake for the last two days. We’ve been busier than usual. People have been dying to get in here you know.” When they failed to smile at the old chestnut, she continued in a more business-like manner. “Come this way, please.”

At a desk in what looked like a small reception area, she brought out several sheets of paper. “Please sign here.” She pointed.

“What’s this for?” George asked, curious despite his annoyance.

“It’s a wavier releasing the hospital from any damages resulting from your viewing of a body.”

“Damages?”

“You know. Legal action, in case there are any pathogens or biohazards you may come into contact with.”

“Fine.” They both signed. “Where’s our friend?”

“Name?”

“Jack Renfrew.”

“One moment please.”

She wrote the name on the sheet of paper walked through a set of double doors into the back area. The two friends fidgeted while they waited. After what seemed like an hour, the Doctor returned with a scowl on her face.

“There’s no one here by that name. Are you sure this is the right hospital?”

“Yes, we’re sure,” they responded in tandem and looked at each other aghast. “We brought him here ourselves about two weeks ago.”

“Let me check again. Describe him.”

“I’m not sure we can,” George answered.

“What? Is this some kind of prank? If it is I’m not amused.” Her voice rose in annoyance.

“No.” George’s voice rose to match hers. “It’s not a joke. He was being treated by Doctor Dunlevy for a variety of symptoms that were changing his body shape. We don’t know what he looks like any more. The only reason we’re here is because we were told by a Doctor Ven … Vena … V-something to come here to identify our friend so he could be released for burial. Now I really think an explanation is in order and rather quickly.”

“Just a moment. That was probably Doctor Venkataraghavan from Emergency Services. Let me try to call him.” She turned on her heel and strode rapidly through a second set of double doors into the lab area.

“Great,” George snarled as he turned to Frank who, although silent, had been shaking in rage. “You weren’t kidding about them losing the body, were you?”

Frank just shook his head, afraid to speak. They silently paced as they waited.

Finally, Dr. Nikruma returned and spoke a bit more politely than before. “I just spoke to Doctor Venkataraghavan. He says … well, I’ll let him explain himself. He’ll be here in a couple of minutes. In the mean time, why don’t we move into the conference room to wait?” She gestured to a door off to the side of the reception area.

“Gentlemen, this is Doctor Venkataraghavan,” Dr. Nikruma made introductions as she gestured towards the swarthy man just entering the conference room.

“You can call me Doctor Vee, if you prefer” he said with a smile. “Most people in this country don’t find it easy to say my full name.” After shaking hands, he sat next to Dr. Nikruma, facing George and Frank.

“Doctor, this is George Dombrowski and Frank Ahtram. They’re here about Jack Renfrew.”

“Hello. And how are you two today?”

Frank and George just nodded without even a polite smile in return. As it was, they were both so angry that they had almost refused to shake hands.

“Let’s get right to it then,” Dr. Venkataraghavan said, after clearing his throat. “I called you about a Ms. Jackie Renfrew. Your names were on the contact card, but it was probably a mistake. There was some confusion about the records and they also listed Ms. Renfrew as male.” He shushed them before they could correct him. “So, after calling you, I attempted to contact the primary care physician, a Doctor Dunlevy. Unfortunately, Doctor Dunlevy has taken ill. He is currently unavailable, so I was not able to correct the records. I assume your friend is still in his room being treated. I am sorry for any inconvenience.”

Dr. Venkataraghavan stood to leave.

“That’s it?” Frank took over the conversation at a near bellow. “You called us down here to arrange for the burial of our friend and then tell us he’s not dead?” George just sat back and listened. He knew from past experience that Frank was not easy to anger, but once he was, watch out.

“I think an explanation is in order. I want to hear you explain exactly how this hospital could possibly be so inept that it could confuse people who were not even the same sex. I also want to know exactly where Jack Renfrew is and I think you better show us our friend right now.” Frank gulped air. “Oh, and he had better be alive, as you’ve said.”

“But of course. I understand your anger,” the physician responded, smiling brightly. “I am waiting to be paged with exactly that information.”

As if it were planned, the pager buzzed. Dr. Venkataraghavan glanced down and smiled even more brightly, if that were even possible. “If you will excuse me, that should be the information we seek right now.”

He quickly rose and left the room. Dr. Nikruma fidgeted uncomfortably under Frank’s glare while George just rocked back in his chair and smiled evilly. A short while later Dr. Venkataraghavan returned, accompanied by several large security guards. The guards stood silently by the conference room door while he sat down again. This time he was not smiling.

“Mr. Dombrowski, Mr. Ahtram, on behalf of this hospital I owe you an apology. Something extremely unusual has happened and I assure you there will be a thorough investigation. At this time I cannot go into detail, as I have been advised not to comment in any way. I can, however, assure you that the individual you know as Jack Renfew did not die in this hospital. Now, I am going to ask you to leave the hospital with the assurance that as soon as our internal investigation is completed you will be advised of the outcome.”

He turned to the guards. “Please escort these gentlemen off the hospital premises.”

 

Copyright © 1998, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2009 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah