"Van Lustbader, Eric - Dark Homecoming(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

Matty nodded mutely and Dr. Marsh signed for a lab tech to come in.
"Doctor, I'd appreciate some details on my niece's condition," Croaker said as the tech began to draw blood from Rachel's arm.
The cubicle had gotten uncomfortably cramped, and Dr. Marsh said, "Why don't we continue this conversation outside." She and Croaker stepped out into the center area, but Matty stayed behind.
"My sister-"
"Personally I'm relieved you're here," Dr. Marsh said. "Mrs. Duke is having difficulty assimilating everything that's happened to Rachel. That's perfectly understandable, given the nature of the situation. However, she tells me you're an ex-cop, is that right?"
Croaker nodded.
"Then I assume you've had experience with teenagers on drugs."
"Too much."
Jenny Marsh nodded as she led him out of the Dialysis Unit and through a frosted glass door with a cardboard sign taped onto it that read: palm beach county drug abuse research study-grant AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Croaker found himself in one of two windowless rooms, crammed with zinc-topped lab tables covered with Bunsen burners, banks of autoclaves and centrifuges, and microscopes. Behind these were neat rows of test tubes, retorts, pipettes, glass slides, eyedrop-pers, and precisely tagged glass bottles of chemical reagents. A single electron microscope hulked in one corner. This paraphernalia made him vaguely uneasy. It could not help but remind him of morgues he had been in, escorting relatives or close friends of murder victims making painful and traumatic identification while he stood by stoic and, for the moment, helpless.
Against one wall was a row of stainless-steel cabinets, along with an outmoded refrigerator and a small table laden with a hot plate, coffeemaker, paper cups, jars of Cremora, and the like.
"There's a drug abuse research study going on," Jenny Marsh said. "It's county funded, but because the hospital's involved, I volunteered to oversee it."
"Don't you already have enough on your plate, Doctor?"
Jenny Marsh smiled. It was a nice smile that caused her physician's cool mask to slip just a fraction. "Yes, I do. But this study's important. Frankly, I'd rather be a part of it than sleep."
Croaker watched the lab assistant he'd seen in Rachel's cubicle come in, presumably with her blood, and go into the other room. While there was activity here, it was far calmer than in the CCD.
"As soon as Rachel was diagnosed as a drug O.D. blood and urine samples were taken for the study," Dr. Marsh said. "It's being done twice a day. Her contribution to the study is very helpful, and I promise you the amounts of blood withdrawn will not affect her in any way."
"Matty said okay?"
"Once the value of the program was explained to her," Dr. Marsh said.
Croaker nodded. "It's fine by me then."
"Okay, first things first." Jenny Marsh went to the table with the coffeepot. "Rachel was brought in through Emergency. She was exhibiting all the classic signs of drug overdose."
Croaker said, "What? She was confused, highly agitated, hallucinating?"
Dr. Marsh nodded as she poured coffee for them both. "All of the above. Plus, she was having seizures with severe vomiting in between. In the attending physician's opinion she was clearly in shock." She looked at him. "Black? Cream?"
"Black's fine," he said.
She methodically put four packs of sugar into the dark and unreadable waters of her coffee. Then she handed him a paper cup. "Dr. Niguel, the attending, tried to revive Rachel without success. At this point, he dispatched one of the nurses to talk to your sister-who had brought Rachel in-to see if she could tell him what sort of drugs Rachel was into." Dr. Marsh's gaze turned sympathetic. "I'm afraid that's when Mrs. Duke freaked out."
Croaker put his cup down. "What do you mean, she freaked out?"
Dr. Marsh perched on the edge of a backless lab stool. "She went into hysterics, said she wanted her daughter back, that she'd sue us up and down for malpractice, that her daughter had never taken drugs in her life, and we were a bunch of incompetents to insinuate otherwise."
"But she was wrong."
"She was wrong." Dr. Marsh crossed her arms over her breasts. "At the tender age of fifteen your niece is a habitual drug user."
"How bad? Was she shooting?"
"That's the good news. The only good news, I'm afraid." Dr. Marsh sipped her coffee. "We found no evidence of needle tracks. Coke, uppers, pot were her thing. Blood work confirmed this." She sighed. "Then, according to Dr. Niguel, her kidneys started to shut down. In Emergency they were looking for signs of bacterial endocarditis, which is an infection you find in needle drug users."
"Right. Infection of the heart valves. Causes blood clots that can break off and go to the brain-or the kidneys." He put aside the coffee. The acid was doing unpleasant things to the lining of his stomach. Or maybe it was the subject of their conversation. This was his niece they were talking about, not someone off the inner city streets. "But Rachel didn't have bacterial endocarditis."
"No." Dr. Marsh got up, rummaged through the old refrigerator. She sniffed at an open container of yogurt, then used a forefinger to taste it. "You want anything?"
"A million dollars, the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound." When she gave him a wry look, he said, "But nothing from in there."
"Smart man. You have to be a doctor who hasn't eaten in thirty-odd hours to be desperate enough to ingest this stuff." Jenny Marsh closed the refrigerator door. "A renal ultrasound revealed no trace of polycystic kidneys, the most typical problem for young people. It's hereditary."
She took some more yogurt with a plastic spoon. "But the ultrasound did reveal something interesting. At this time Dr. Niguel called me in. I determined her blood pressure was dangerously low and there was a serious lack of oxygen in her kidney."
"Nephro-toxic poisoning."
"Bingo."
"But you said kidney, as in singular."
Dr. Marsh ate her yogurt slowly and methodically, savoring it as if it were manna from heaven. "That's the anomaly the renal ultrasound showed us. Your niece was born with only one functioning kidney. The other is shriveled, nonfunctional."
"Did you get her medical history?"
Dr. Marsh nodded. "After I got her started on dialysis I asked
Mrs. Duke for Rachel's family doctor. His name's Ronald Stansky-he's in West Palm. While you're here you'll surely run into him. He seems genuinely concerned." She swiped her fingers around the inside of the container, gathering the last of the yogurt. "Anyway, Dr. Stansky knew nothing about the one kidney. But that's hardly surprising. Unless Rachel had had renal trouble in the past, there's no way he would have known or had cause to check."
"And she hadn't."
"No."
Croaker thought this sequence of events over in his mind until he could picture everything that had happened, step by step. The process served to settle him down. His emotions were so roiled they threatened to impair his reasoning. That wouldn't do anyone any good, especially Rachel.
In the other room, a phone began to ring. "I want to know what I can do," he said. "You've made it clear her condition's very bad and I..." He paused to take a breath as a painful image of Rachel lying unconscious and helpless not twenty yards away blazed in his mind. "Jesus, I just found her again and..."
"Take your time," Dr. Marsh said softly. For the first time, he noticed her eyes seemed to change color with the light, from green to hazel. "This is a large dose of emotion to deal with at once, I know." A lab tech stuck her head in, told her there was a phone call, and Dr. Marsh mouthed, "Not now." To Croaker, she said, "I want to be sure you're with me completely for this."
Croaker nodded. "I'm okay. It's just that her life's just beginning. The thought of her spending the rest of it on dialysis-well, it's going to take some getting used to."
"If only it were that simple."
Croaker felt as if he were in free fall. "What do you mean?"