Miracle Cure Read Online Free PDF Page A

mind going in there.”
    Brian felt an immediate adrenaline rush.
    “I’d be happy to,” he replied, perhaps too eagerly.
    He glanced at Jack, who was resting comfortably, eyes closed. His respirations were not at all labored and his monitor pattern was regular. There would be no problem in leaving him for a short while. Brian took a step toward the door, but the head nurse continued to block his way. She motioned him to a spot in the hall, out of earshot of both Jack and the staff.
    “Before you go in there,” she said in a stern half-whisper, “I want you to know that I insisted SherryGordon tell me who you are and at what hospital you are working. She told me you had lost your license.”
    “So?”
    “And when I pushed her for an explanation, she told me why.”
    Brian’s reaction to the woman had blossomed from a kernel of wariness into full-blown mistrust. He pulled himself up to his full height plus half an inch or so.
    “Get to the point,” he said.
    “I don’t want anyone without a valid license practicing medicine on any patient on my emergency ward.”
    “Frankly, I don’t see where sharing my experience and ideas is practicing medicine.”
    Carol Benoit’s eyes were hard.
    “I’ll be in there watching,” she said.
    Brian stepped back into the room to reassure Jack that he’d be nearby and would be right back. Then he flexed a bit of tension from his neck and headed over to room 4.
    It had been ten years since Brian and Phil Gianatasio were in training at Eastern Mass Medical Center. They had worked well together during those two years. Phil seemed at ease with Brian’s flamboyance and self-confidence, and Brian appreciated that Phil, more steady and meticulous than brilliant, always worked within his limitations and was never afraid to ask for help. After residency, Brian had won a cardiac fellowship at one of the finest hospitals in Chicago, and Phil had temporized by enlisting in the service—the Army, Brian thought. At first, they had exchanged a few letters and calls. Gradually, though, their connection weakened, then simply vanished.
    Phil greeted him from the far side of the gurney. He had always been overweight, but since residency he must have gained twenty pounds. His dark hair was yielding to an expanding bald spot on top and was longer in the backthan Brian remembered. One thing that hadn’t changed a bit was the warmth and kindness in his face. At this moment, though, Phil looked worried. It was not difficult to see why.
    On the gurney, unconscious and clearly toxic, was a disheveled woman with graying red hair in her late sixties or early seventies. Her grunting respirations were barely moving air, and the paleness around her eyes and mouth were a frightening contrast to the crimson of the rest of her face. Also in the room were Dr. Ethan Prince, Sherry, another nurse, the anesthesiologist, and, over in one corner, an older man with a rumpled suit and a stethoscope protruding from his jacket pocket. The woman’s private physician, Brian guessed. It was just a snap judgment, but the man seemed ill at ease in the face of such a crisis. Just inside the doorway, observing more than participating, stood Carol Benoit.
    Monitor pattern … cardiac rate … pulse oximeter reading … complexion … fingernail-bed coloring … cooling blanket.…
By the time Brian had gone from the doorway to the bedside, his mind had processed a hundred bits of information. He breathed in the action and the urgency. It would only be for a few fleeting minutes, but for now that didn’t matter.
    “Brian, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Phil said. “Like one of those gods in Greek tragedy who pops out of the wall of the theater just when he’s needed.”
    “Hey, careful. I’m through doing the god thing. It ended up causing me nothing but trouble. What’s the scoop here?”
    “Well, Mrs. Violet Corcoran is a sixty-eight-year-old patient of Dr. Dixon’s. That’s Fred Dixon right there.