Entering the six-bedded room, he appreciated that it was now dark and peaceful, with Ortiz’s suite-mates asleep after all the excitement. The curtain at Ortiz’s bed was still pulled out and the reading light was still turned on. Mitt walked up along the bed’s left side, looking down at Ortiz’s sheet-covered corpse. He wasn’t surprised the body was still there. He suspected its removal had to be held up until the death was cleared by the medical examiner.
Although he meant to lift the edge of the sheet to allow him to look directly at Diego Ortiz’s face, his attention was drawn to the IV tubing that snaked out from beneath the sheet. What he was looking at was a second IV line joining the main one. He then looked up at the top of the IV pole where the IV source bags were hung, and as he did so, he recalled the anesthesiologist’s description of having added a micro drip setup to allow a constant, slow infusion of synthetic thyroid hormone not only during the operation but also for days afterward until it was certain the patient could take the necessary medication by mouth.
“What the hell?” Mitt questioned softly as he looked at the micro drip’s source. It was completely empty. To be absolutely certain, he even reached up and felt the empty plastic container. There was no doubt. That meant the patient had gotten many days’ worth of thyroxine all at once, perhaps enough to cause a severe thyroid storm.
Suddenly Mitt was no longer tired as he stared off into the middle distance trying to reconcile what he’d just learned. How could this have happened? Was it a mechanical issue, meaning the micro drip malfunctioned, or had someone purposefully turned up the rate of flow? If so, was it done on purpose or by accident?
Mitt shook his head slowly, wondering what he should do — if anything — and whether he should mention what he’d learned to anyone. Madison was the first person who came to mind, but he certainly wasn’t going to call at that moment and wake her up. Maybe there was a simple explanation for what he’d found that was just eluding him at the moment. Maybe one of the nurses mistakenly turned on the micro drip full blast when they turned off the main IV after Mr. Ortiz’s death. Mitt shrugged. Maybe a lot of things, but it was something he would definitely need to think about, and at that time in the morning after such a busy day he wasn’t at his rational best by any stretch of the imagination.
With an obviously false burst of energy, Mitt power walked out of Diego Ortiz’s room. The situation with the micro drip troubled him. As he turned into the night-darkened hallway, passing the nurses on his way to the elevator lobby, the thoughts about the micro drip were chased out of his mind by concern he might again be confronted by the blond girl, and he slowed his pace. The first time he’d seen her had been in similar circumstances of time and place. But to his relief, there was no blond girl, nor a crowd of surgerized people, nor any rats.
Suddenly Mitt found himself wondering if he might have some control over the hallucinations. Was it possible that the mental process of anticipating them could keep them at bay? He didn’t know, but he thought the idea had to have a certain amount of validity since hallucinations were mental phenomena. At least that was how he explained their absence at the moment. Feeling somewhat reassured he wasn’t going to be hounded, he quickened his step.
When he arrived at the elevator lobby, he checked his phone for the time. It was 3:20 in the morning, but as wide awake as he felt, he rashly decided to go to the cafeteria. He felt suddenly more hungry than tired. Besides, the last thing he wanted to do was go back to the on-call room and potentially end up staring at the ceiling in the dark with no answers to any of his current questions, particularly about all his patients dying. In a few hours, he was going to be off duty for the Fourth of July, meaning he could sleep all day if he so desired. On top of that, he’d heard through the hospital grapevine that the nightshift’s “midrats” were some of the best food of the day.
Chapter 23
Thursday, July 4, 3:25 a.m.
The cafeteria was far more crowded in the wee hours of the morning than Mitt had expected. He even had to wait in a short line just to get a tray before joining the queue moving along in front of the steam table. And the food selection was impressive, as good or better than when he’d eaten his early-evening meal more than ten hours previously. On this occasion, he selected a roast chicken breast with mashed potatoes. At the drink dispenser, he was again very careful not to fill the cup to the brim, and when he placed it on his tray, he did so with great care. He wasn’t about to suffer that ignominy again.
Thinking about the number of people required to keep a state-of-the-art, nearly thousand-bed modern hospital running 24/7 to provide general care as well as maintain sophisticated treatments, Mitt pondered the difference between the current, modern Bellevue Hospital and the old Bellevue Hospital almost two hundred years ago when his ancestor Dr. Homer Fuller had joined the staff. At that time, the hospital had just moved from its almshouse location in downtown Manhattan up to its current location on the East River and had assumed the name Bellevue, taking it from the title of the property itself. Here, in what was then countryside, it was able to expand, eventually reaching upward of two thousand beds. Still Mitt hazarded a guess that the night staff back in those days was probably minimal in sharp contrast with current day, meaning the patients most likely had had to fend for themselves.
Mitt had made it a point to read an engrossing history of the hospital during the early part of June before his residency started. He’d been particularly interested in the hundred-plus years his ancestors were on the staff. Because the field of medicine in those times, particularly when Homer was professionally active, had very few curative treatments to offer patients and much of what it did do — such as bloodletting and the use of powerful purgatives — only added to patients’ distress, the hospital served more as a kind of storage bin for the sick, injured, and mentally compromised poor than as a treatment center. Mitt had even read that during pandemics, particularly those involving yellow fever, typhus, and cholera, there had sometimes been more than one patient per bed and even people sleeping on the floors and in the hallways. Because Mitt had some appreciation for the distressing symptoms of these infectious diseases, particularly propulsive diarrhea with cholera, it was difficult for him to imagine what the conditions had been like.
Holding his tray of food and drink, Mitt paused to let his eyes roam the room, hoping to see a couple of fellow residents to join. Maybe he could engage in conversation to avoid thinking about his patient situation, or more accurately, the lack thereof. But he didn’t see a single person who fit the bill. The vast majority of diners were nurses, along with a fewer number of orderlies, janitors, and maintenance men. The level of chitchat was intense.
Abandoning the idea of finding residents, Mitt looked for a seat where he wouldn’t be intrusive, yet most tables were either full or nearly so. Sensing he would not be able to add to any of the ongoing conversations, he opted for a table with only a single person that looked promising. It wasn’t the best table in the house, as it was over near the soiled-dishes intake window, but he couldn’t have cared less. The sole occupant was an older Black woman, dressed in a long white coat over a conservative dress, making Mitt believe she might be an attending. Why an attending would be eating in the middle of the night was a mystery, but he was encouraged, thinking that it would be easy to initiate a conversation just by asking her about her specialty. As an added incentive, she was at the moment steadily and invitingly staring at him despite being in the middle of her meal.