stealing a few hours of free time.”
He could hear her effort not to sound panicked. “You’re probably right, but it could still be a case of a young woman escaping the responsibilities of parenthood. There’s no reason to assume she’s in danger.”
“I want to get inside her house and get on her computer. I need to find Chad’s last name so you can run a background check.”
Jackson lowered his voice. “It’s not a good idea. What if Danette is in trouble? What if the perpetrators come to her house looking for something? You could be in danger.”
A pause. “I hadn’t thought about that. What could Danette be involved in?”
“Drugs come to mind.”
“She’s not a user. I would know.”
“She does need money, and there’s money in running drugs.”
“I don’t believe it.” In the background, Micah started to wail. Kera said, “I’ve got to go. Call me later.” She got off the phone.
Jackson wanted to wail too. The hot-knife pain that used to come and go was now constant and nailing him on both sides. If both kidneys hurt, it probably wasn’t cancer .
Jackson looked around to see if anyone had been called back while he was on the phone. The young man with the bloody hand was gone. Had he got tired of waiting?
Two hours later, he climbed on a table and closed his eyes as they slid him into a big square machine with a round hole in the middle. The ER doctor, a thin man with an Indian accent, had ordered a CAT scan. When Jackson had mentioned his primary care physician’s theory about constipation, Dr. Malik looked alarmed. “That is nonsense.”
Two hours after that, Dr. Malik came into the little exam room where Jackson was stretched out on the narrow table trying to nap. He sat up, pulling the thin blanket with him. The doctor looked distressed. Jackson’s heart missed a beat. “Mr. Jackson, I think I know what’s going on.”
“Yeah?” His heart slammed so hard he expected the doctor to hear it. “What have I got?”
Dr. Malik pulled up a rolling stool and sat close to the exam table. He held out CAT scan images for Jackson to view. “Do you see these white swirls here?”
All Jackson saw was a big black-and-white mess, but he nodded. They’d given him a painkiller earlier. It hadn’t done much for the hot knife feeling, but his brain was a little fuzzy.
“We’re looking down from your skull into your abdomen. The round area in the middle is your aorta, and the white swirls are a fibrotic growth. I consulted with a local urologist and we believe it’s retroperitoneal fibrosis. You’ve probably had it a long time.”
Jackson’s hand went to his heart. It wasn’t cancer, but it sounded serious. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Is it going to get me?”
“That’s hard to say. It’s very thick around your aorta, but it doesn’t seem to be growing over your heart.”
“Why do my kidneys hurt?”
“Because this growth goes around your aorta all the way down to the top of your legs. See here?” The doctor held up another black-and-white image and pointed at something. “These are your ureters. The fibrosis is strangling them and preventing your kidneys from draining properly. You’re lucky because I’ve seen this disease before even though it’s very rare. Most ER doctors wouldn’t have any idea what this is.”
Jackson tried to feel lucky. “What do we do now?”
“Step one. We put stents into your ureters to open them up.” The doctor used his fingers and his clipped Indian accent to outline the plan. “Step two. You make an appointment to see a urologist and a cardiologist.”
“Can you give me a clue? Is this thing reversible?”
“The growth can often be controlled with steroids, but you will likely need surgery to free the ureters from the fibrosis.”
“There’s no cure?”
“No, but you may be able to live with it for quite some time.” Dr. Malik gave him a grim smile. “Sometimes, but not often, it goes into
Massimo Carlotto, Anthony Shugaar