The records showed:
DALLAS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
Dallas, Texas
Date of admission: July 12, 1991
Date of discharge: June 2, 1992
Patient History: A twenty-seven-year-old American Indian male involved in automobile accident, also had alcohol in blood, admitted with multiple trauma-compound fracture of tibia and fibula, ruptured bladder, and multi focal cerebral contusions, assorted abrasions, gunshot wound to upper left quadrant of chest.
In hospital for eleven months, initially comatose and encephalopathic. At time of leaving hospital, patient was fully conscious, alert, quite full of complaints. Further, patient understood that a device was in place on his left leg, and that he must be careful in this regard to not place any undo weight on this area. He was to be given primary care by his aunt, uncle, and grandparents, all of whom seemed most concerned for his well-being, each being attentive to doctor's directives. Arrangements were made with in-home health-care providers to help with the supra pubic cystostomy as well as the pin care of the Hoffman device.
Dr. Rhymer, operating orthopedic surgeon, made plans for all follow-up care to be provided by Dallas Memorial. Arrangements were made for Mr. Stonecoat to be seen by Dr. Karl Wilkerson, urology, who performed the bladder operation and left the suprapubic cystostomy in place.
During Mr. Stonecoat's eleven-month stay, he underwent a tracheostomy as well as a hip replacement (left), a debridement of the compound infected leg, and many consultations with Dr. Sanders, on loan from the Veteran's Administration Hospital. Dr. Sanders was also involved in his rehabilitation efforts.
Final Diagnosis:
1. Severe chest injury- gunshot wound left upper q.
2. Severe closed-head injury.
3. Compound tibia-fibula fracture- left.
4. Wound infection, tibia-fibula.
5. Crushed hip; replacement-left.
6. Partial paralysis, right arm, hand.
7. Acute respiratory distress syndrome.
8. Conjunctivitis.
Operations:
1. Chest wound amp; closure.
2. Tracheostomy.
3. Swan-Ganz placement.
4. Laparotomy.
5. Hip replacement-left.
6. Bladder repair.
7. Suprapubic cystostomy.
8. Arm, shoulder, and forehead lacerations.
Daniel Garvey, M.D.
TLT-219#4314
D: 6/6/92
T: 02:07:52
Stonecoat, Lucas Daniel Garvey, M.D.
368-58-7899 Discharge Summary
It hardly touched on the whole story. There were subsequent operations as well. Removal of this, removal of that. He had had so many needles stuck into him that soon he felt like the proverbial porcupine who was asked where it hurt the most. He didn't feel a thing.
The part of the doctors' many reports on him that'd hurt him the most in a legal sense was the part about the blood-alcohol level. He and his partner had been drinking, having just gotten off duty when the police band, at the police bar where they routinely drank, radioed the news that an armed heist was in progress at a store on Lincoln at Talmadge, a location they had been watching for days in the hope this exact guy would strike. There had been a string of armed robberies in the neighborhood and witnesses tied it all to one guy, a black man with red hair who actually called himself Malcolm and wore at one time an X cap, at another a T-shirt bearing Malcolm X's likeness. The man had grown increasingly daring, increasingly violent, and he was expected soon to graduate to murder if not stopped.
They raced out after having had two shooters apiece, and they went to work. It was the last bad idea his partner, Jackson, ever had, and for Lucas, the results became a living nightmare and continued to be so.
But no one, not even the doctors, knew of his bouts with epileptic like seizures that came and went at unaccountable moments, coming on him as they did only after leaving the hospital for good.
He had never mentioned it to his doctors; he hadn't wanted to undergo another battery of tests, praying the new assault on his system would eventually end of its own accord, but so far, the blackouts showed no sign of abating. In fact, over the four years since the accident, the seizures had steadily claimed more and more of him, until now they might last several minutes. It was enough to disqualify him as a candidate for police duty, so he had dared not confide it to anyone.
If the force knew of such a weakness, he'd be gone in a blink.
He had spent several years recuperating out at the reservation home of his forefathers, but since his arrival in Houston and acceptance of both a rookie's status and a rookie's pay with the Houston Police Department, thirty-two-year-old former detective Lucas Stonecoat had told his lawyer to plead or bribe Dr. David L. Cass to release all his psychiatric and medical records into the care of the attorney and to destroy all remaining copies from files and computers alike. Being placed under psychiatric care after the accident was standard procedure in the Dallas Police Department, but his psychological profile was at least one area of his life which Lucas intended to keep in that rare realm called privacy.
The media coverage of the accident, his subsequent battle back from death, and the media circus surrounding both his divorce and the suit he filed against the Dallas Police Department had been enough limelight for both his lives.
Meanwhile, his body each day made war on him. Who was tougher? Who had more will, God Mind or God Pain? Often, the body seemed to be winning the struggle for control, taking delight in torturing the mind. It seemed a forced old age, the constant struggle to overcome his own physical deficiencies and turmoil, from the onset of arthritis in his hands to a near-constant bout with what could only be termed a continuous, living headache that had taken up residence inside his cranium, a pain which nothing could completely extinguish, certainly not anything found in a drugstore.
Lucas and Jackson were proven to have been under the influence while giving high-speed chase through the city streets, and Jackson was judged to have been killed in the pursuit due to his own negligence and disregard for protocol and proper procedure, so the city had little reason to do more than the minimum for Jackson's family or for Stonecoat's mounting bills. Instead, the department, via the press, stripped Lucas of his rank.
Lucas took the DPD to court, but in Texas, a lone Cherokee cop stood little chance against the circus, as the system was called. Awaiting a trial, he had little reason to stay in the city he had adopted, and he no longer felt at ease there; he had few friends to speak of on the force, fewer since his attempt to stand up for both Jackson and himself. So now he was pulling a paycheck here in Houston, working over the dust-laden files of the Cold Room. Case after piled-to-the-ceiling case of murdered men, women and children gone unsolved, cases the department had wanted badly to close out but had been unable to do so; cases that, if closed, would gain the HPD more recognition and a better statistical average on murders solved, a more sterling record, which inevitably led to more federal dollars.
Lucas Stonecoat had a simple enough job, and where better to place a deformed cop, one with half a face of scar tissue, so as not to frighten children and white women? He couldn't even pull crossing guard duty.
He suddenly pounded frustrated fists onto the desktop, and the noise reverberated about the Cold Room, sounding like a kettle drum. He stood and paced the crowded little space of his new existence like a caged bear, consciously trying not to breathe too deeply the musty, dust-laden air. He wasn't exactly Toulouse-Lautrec; he still had some height, a strong, firm body that some might call gaunt. Only the slight hunch of his back, the scar tissue along his right side, at his cheek, neck, and down to the biceps, and other telltale signs marked him as a maimed man, damaged goods.