“Ay ay ay,” Mitt muttered under his breath. He assumed that Homer probably hadn’t washed his hands or his instruments or even changed his clothes before operating on poor John Mercer, even if he’d been doing something like an autopsy in the morgue. Back in those days, Mitt knew that as many as half the people suffering through surgery died of sepsis within days.
He raised his eyes and looked at Lashonda, who was still watching him. Since all the light in the room was coming from two flashlights sitting on the floor, he couldn’t see her eyes, and her sockets looked like black holes. “What a sad story,” he said. He waved the document in her direction. “Were all the records you looked at similar to this?”
“I’m afraid so,” Lashonda said. “But remember, I didn’t look at that many, so don’t jump to conclusions. Although the ones I did read were similar. Well, let me clarify. When I looked at Otto’s and Benjamin’s records, there were significant differences, but it seemed that the outcomes, meaning frequent deaths, were the same.”
“That’s not encouraging.”
“I’m sure not. What I’m hoping is that by seeing even this one record, you’ll take my warning and my advice to heart.”
“You mean leave Bellevue.”
“Yes.”
Mitt struggled to organize his thoughts. Although he’d been rather successfully fighting his exhaustion, it was starting to truly influence his ability to think. He’d also noticed the record was fluttering in his hand — he’d developed a mild tremor that he couldn’t control.
“What would you like to do?” Lashonda questioned. She gestured toward the stack of boxes. “We’ve a bit more time. Would you like to see more of the records? Here they all are.”
“I don’t know,” Mitt managed. He felt momentarily incapable of making up his mind. To give himself something to do while he organized his thoughts, he carefully returned John Mercer’s record to its place within the short stack of documents he’d originally removed and then replaced them all back into the bankers box. When he was finished, he straightened up and looked directly over at Lashonda.
“I’m having trouble dealing with all this,” he admitted.
“That’s entirely understandable,” Lashonda said. “We can come back at some future date, but I recommend we do it sooner rather than later, even tomorrow night. No, sorry. I’m off tomorrow because of the holiday. We could come back Friday night, about this same time. I’m truly distressed to hear about all your patients dying. Although we can’t be certain, it suggests to me that my fears are well grounded. This many angry ghosts, from the three-hundred-year history of this hospital, are a force that has to be respected and reckoned with. It’s not only for your safety, but it’s also for all your future patients’ safety.”
“I’m certainly getting the message that the Bellevue paranormal forces have to be respected,” Mitt said. He thought for a moment and then added: “Here’s what I’d like to do tonight before we leave. I’d like to see Charlene Wagner’s record. Would you be able to put your finger on it with reasonable ease?”
“Of course! I can find that after we return all the boxes to the lavatory closet. Charlene’s is in the top box, which unfortunately at the moment is on the bottom.”
“Fine, let’s do it,” Mitt said with newly found resolve.
With Lashonda restacking the boxes and Mitt bringing them to her, all the records were returned to their original resting place in short order. When it was done, Lashonda opened the last box after taking it from Mitt and, as promised, quickly produced Charlene Wagner’s record.
“I’m impressed,” Mitt said, taking it. “How did you find it so quickly?”
“I’ve seen her so many times and had referred to the record often enough that I ended up flagging it.”
“A wise move,” Mitt said as he rapidly leafed through the stapled, eight-page record. Although it was typed and not handwritten, the font size was small, making it very difficult to read in the available light, but at least it was a hundred years newer than Homer’s handwritten record, and it was in the format of a modern inpatient medical record. He skimmed the last page, which tersely described that the bedside lobotomy had resulted in death. Below that there was an equally brief summary of the autopsy findings, with the cause of death listed as exsanguination and intracerebral hemorrhage. The final sentence of the report, which had been underlined with red ink, noted that the patient had been found to have an aberrantly positioned anterior cerebral artery. Mitt looked at the underlining and wondered if Clarence had done it in an attempt to absolve himself of the child’s untimely demise, as it was probably true that if there hadn’t been an anatomical anomaly, the child might not have died. But the same was true for the lobotomy itself — even more so.
When he was finished with his quick scan and feeling more enticed than satisfied, Mitt looked up at Lashonda and said: “Do we have time for me to read this with a bit more care? It won’t take long.”
“Of course,” Lashonda said, but Mitt saw her look at her watch. “That’s what we’re here for, but time is marching on.”
“I appreciate it,” Mitt said. “I’ll be very quick.” He flipped back to the first page but paused.
What suddenly flashed through his mind was Robert Pendleton and how ecstatic the man must have been when he’d first stumbled across this trove of old Bellevue Hospital records. For a bioethicist, it would have been nothing short of a gold mine. Mitt now knew that the discovery had happened right after Clarence’s retirement but before the hospital administrator had been able to deal with these records. Perhaps Pendleton’s discovery forced the administrator to panic and coopt Lashonda’s mother into hiding them in the housekeeping supply room in the basement. For the administrator, Pendleton’s discovery and threat to publish must have been a nerve-wrackingly close call.
On his second read-through, Mitt squatted down to make better use of the meager light. He was hoping to find a reasonable and understandable explanation for why a lobotomy — of all things — had been done on eight-year-old Charlene Wagner, considering the procedure’s irrevocability. He quickly confirmed that the child’s diagnosis had indeed been in the realm of a behavioral disorder, probably what was now called an oppositional defiant disorder, but then nowhere in the relatively lengthy chart was the issue of whether or not to do a lobotomy even raised. Since it was generally known, even back then, that such behavioral disorders often resolved as the child aged, especially in girls, this drastic treatment option was the last thing that should have been done. Yet as the issue was not addressed in the file, Mitt had nothing to refute Pendleton’s claim that Clarence Fuller had been advocating the use of lobotomies for his own personal reasons and not in the patients’ best interests. Mitt felt the selfsame letdown and even anger that he’d experienced reading that Homer had chosen not to use anesthesia when he amputated John Mercer’s leg.
Mitt let out an agonized sigh along with another disappointed shake of his head. He then extended Charlene’s record toward Lashonda as if he didn’t even want to hold it any longer.
“Not good?” she questioned as she took the record.
“Not good,” Mitt repeated. “Not good at all. I’m thinking I want to disown some of my ancestors.”
“Unfortunately, even if you do, it’s not going to do you much good. It’s certainly not going to improve your reputation with the Bellevue ghost community.”
“At the moment, I’m thinking more about my own state of mind.”
“Fair enough,” Lashonda said. She again looked at her watch. “It’s five after five and sunrise is fast approaching. We have to leave before it gets light outside. Are you ready?”