Okay, I'm posting this just to post something to show I am working. I've jumped ahead several chapters again. Read at the peril of missing parts of the novel. Eventually, I will get them in here, but I cannot do it now. The three after the ?-mark means it is 3 chapter after the last leap forward. I HAVE WRITTEN the in-between chapters, but they are at my office, and not available to be posted. (NOTE: Crouse Irving is a hospital in Syracuse located on the corner of Crouse and Irving Streets.) Also note that this is a VERY first draft!
Chapter ?-3: Crouse Irving
"Peter, I need you to come immediately," Rune said without
preamble. "Yes, I know it's almost three AM. Eliza needs to go
to the hospital; she’s been poisoned. Yes, I know you are terribly upset
with her, but Peter, I think she was raped. Please come immediately, I
can't take her to the hospital on my motorcycle, she’s too weak from barfing.
If you’re not here in five minutes, I am calling Jody. Peter, it's life and
death, and this is not a joke."
Rune could have called one of the others, but she knew that Peter loved Eliza
and deep down would want to help her if he could get past his shock and dismay
over what he, what they all, had witnessed a few days ago. She was hoping
she was right and wasn't going to make things worse rather than better by
meddling.
As soon as she set the phone down, she dialed Elizabeth. Three AM be damned! She hoped Elizabeth
kept her cell near the bed and on and would pick up.
It rang about five times, but the voice at the other was not foggy with sleep.
"Elizabeth, it's Rune. Is Dr. McHaggerty okay? He's
not? He's sick? He's vomiting? Take him to the
hospital. He doesn't want to go? He thinks what? NO! it's not Coprius and
alcohol. There's no evidence that Shaggy manes react with alcohol that
way. He said so himself. The old beliefs[1]
are leaking back because he’s sick. Elizabeth, he's been poisoned, I'm sure of
it. Someone's trying to kill him. Take him to the hospital
now. If he won't go, call me back and I'll send Carter, Scott and Bart
out there to get him. Tell him that! It's urgent. Go now."
Peter flew in through the door and Rune pointed toward the bathroom. He
reappeared with Eliza in his arms like a child, and headed out the door with
her. Cassie appeared from the hallway, wiping the sleep from her eyes.
"What's . . ."
"No time to explain," Rune said, pausing in the doorway.
"I think Eliza has been poisoned. We're taking her to the
hospital," and with that, she darted out the door, slamming it behind her
and made it to Peter's car as he was pulling away. She leapt in.
Peter looked grim. Eliza was collapsed in the back seat, dry-heaving
still, with spittle hanging from the side of her moth. Her eyes were
glazed-looking and unfocussed.
Driving like a madman, Peter squealed around corners. They weren't
far from the hospital and there was no traffic. Peter carried Eliza into
Emergency, and for once, she was taken right in, before a man with a mangled
hand who was moaning on the
closest bench, a feverish looking child in the arms of her father, and a horde
of other late-night injuries and illnesses.
"Mushroom poisoning," Rune calmly and firmly told the RN and then the
night resident. Peter laid Eliza on a gurney and drew the curtains around
them.
"Do you have any of the mushrooms?"
"Yes, they are in a Ziploc bag in my pocket. Amanita phalloides, the destroying
angel."
"Are you sure."
"Yes," Rune said, sounding utterly confident. In truth, she was
not. Not 100 percent confident. But in her heart of hearts, she was
sure.
"We'll have to call a mushroom expert," the resident said.
"We are mushroom experts,” Rune said, standing tall, indicating Peter and
herself. "And Dr. Colin McHaggerty from the College of Environmental
Sciences and Forestry is on his way in." Rune didn't know that,
either. She hoped it was true, but a peek at her cell phone indicated no
signal. Maybe the hospital had some way of blocking cell phones.
She'd have to slip out and check on McHaggerty.
"Milk thistle," Rune said. “It will help save the liver.
Too late to pump her stomach, the mushrooms have already moved through.
She needs to hydrated . . ."
"Let me do my job," the resident said, in a tired, irritated
voice. He was young and handsome, dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, a five
o’clock shadow. Rune peered at his nametag.
“I’m
sorry,” the resident said, “it’s been a long, trying night already, and it
doesn’t look as if it will let up any time soon. But I should have introduced myself. I am Dr. Ibrahim, Aariz Ibrahim. Pleased to me you.”
Rune
and Peter introduced themselves and Eliza, who seemed to be feeling a little
better. She sat up and shook the
residents hand. Her heaving had
stopped, at least for the moment.
"What
is your relationship to the patient?" The resident asked.
"I
am her fiancé," Peter said, speaking up sharply, his first words since he
carried her in. Rune had done all the talking. Rune looked at him
in surprise and gratitude. She wasn't sure if he was just saying it for
the resident’s benefit or if he meant it, but it eased her heart a little.
After
questioning Eliza to be sure she had eaten mushrooms, listening to her heart,
palpating her stomach, and examining her eyes, Dr. Ibraham left. A few minutes later, a nurse bustled in
with a milk-shake size container of charcoal. It was incredibly black. Eliza drank it.
She gagged on it a couple of times, but managed to choke it down.
“It
tastes like chalk,” she said.
About
five minutes later, she clambered down off the gurney looking green around the
gills.
“Where are you going?” Peter asked,
looking alarmed. Rune grabbed the
orange upchuck pan from the bedside stand and Eliza vomited into it.
“It’s possible she may need a liver
transplant,” Dr. Ibrahim said, a little while later. “We’re thinking of sending her to Strong Memorial in
Rochester. They have really the
only well-equipped liver transplant unit around.”
“Milk thistle,” Rune repeated
stubbornly.
“She has to hold it down,” Dr.
Ibrahim stated. “We can give her massive doses of penicillin, that’s been shown
effective in some cases.”
Rune was almost holding her breath. Destroying Angel consumption used to be
an out and out automatic death sentence.
Now, patients had a chance of surviving if they got in early enough.
Again, after Dr. Ibrahim left, the
nurse hurried in with a huge needle—the penicillin. To Rune, Eliza looked so tiny and frail. Peter must have felt that way too. He hovered close to her, and Rune
thought he wanted to put his arms around her.
“I gotta go!” Eliza said, half
sobbing, grabbing the nurses arm, “”Where the bathroom?”
The nurse pushed us out of the
curtained area, and a smell of diarrhea flooded into the area outside. The nurse got another orange pan and
washcloths and cleaned her up—and put her in a diaper. She then hooked her up to IV. And took her blood. Rune watched, peering through a crack
in the curtains.
“Stay here,” she ordered Peter, “I
want to check . . . I need to check on something.” She went to the waiting room
and looked for McHaggerty and Elizabeth, but there was no sign of them. She went to the front desk and waited
behind a man who was bleeding from the head. Gunshot wound.
When he was told to wait and sat on the nearest chair with blood
dribbling down his face, she asked if Dr. McHaggerty had been admitted. She said no.
Rune went out to call Elizabeth and
ask what was keeping them. Maybe
they’d gone to another hospital; she hadn’t thought of that. She got out her iPhone and sat on the
curb, feeling suddenly overly exhausted.
A car came tearing up the entry way; it looked like Scott’s Subaru. And it was.
As soon as the car stopped, Bart,
Carter and Scott leaped out and dragged a protesting Dr. McHaggerty toward the
Emergency room. Elizabeth opened
the front door, got out, and stood beside Rune, who had stood up and leaped out
of the way as Scott had come careening toward her.
“He wouldn’t come and I couldn’t
reach you. I called Bart and he
woke Scott and Carter. They
came in Scott’s car because it was the biggest, newest and safest,” Elizabeth
said, somewhat breathlessly, and then turned to follow the others. Rune followed them in and inserted
herself at the front of the cue at the reception desk.
“It’s another mushroom poisoning,
she said, before anyone spoke, from the same batch of mushrooms.” A gurney appeared and McHaggerty was
wheeled away. The others followed
and McHaggerty was placed in a curtained area 4 slots down from Eliza’s.
Peter stuck his head out and
whispered under his breath to Rune, “I hope he dies.”
2 comments:
Excellent!
Thanks, John!! I'm under the gun time wise--8 days to go for 50,000 words and I only have 20,000.
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