Page 76 of Two Kinds of Stranger

‘We have her symptomology. She had nausea, vomiting, drowsiness and dizziness. When the paramedics picked her up, she was fully unconscious. Her blood pressure was really low. She came round in the hospital enough to vomit, but couldn’t answer any questions or give a history to the treating medical team. Even though she was vomiting, her heart rate never got above fifty-two beats a minute. They had to shock her heart and give her a clot-buster injection, IV fluids and ACE inhibitors. Strange that they gave her ACE inhibitors.’

‘What are they?’

‘They open up the blood vessels, allowing the heart to work a little less hard, but her heart wasn’t working overtime at all. I don’t understand. You should speak to the doctor who treated her. Something’s not right here.’

The name of the treating doctor was Ted Jones. I asked Denise to try to get him on the phone. It was already close to noon.

Denise called out, ‘Doc Jones on line three.’

I took the call in Harry’s office and put it on speaker.

‘Doctor, thank you so much for taking the call. I’m here with my colleague Harry Ford. We were just looking over our client’s medical records and we had some questions.’

‘Any questions about your client’s treatment should be addressed to the hospital’s legal department. I can’t discuss this. . .’

‘No, you misunderstand. This isn’t a lawsuit. The release our client signed for her medical records states that we are not seeking these documents in contemplation of litigation,’ I said.

‘Wait a second – let me check that.’

He put us on hold.

Came back after thirty seconds.

‘I see the release here on her file. How can I help you?’

‘Our client believes that someone spiked her water with some kind of poison. Something that would cause the symptoms she was treated for. I don’t know if you are aware, but her husband and her best friend were murdered some time just before Elly was admitted to hospital. We’re not sure when they were murdered, but we believe they may have been poisoned too. We were wondering if you might have an opinion on Elly’s condition and if it’s possible she was poisoned?’ I asked.

‘Oh, she definitely had some kind of toxin in her body. A healthy female of that age does not present with those symptoms without something being introduced to her system to cause it.You know, I’ve been in the ER six years now. When I first started, I thought I’d be dealing with stab wounds, gunshot wounds, broken bones from falls and all the usual illness and disease. I never thought I’d be treating ten, sometimes fifteen young women a week who are brought in because some asshole spiked their drink.’

‘Do you know what the drug might have been?’ asked Harry.

‘We screened for the usual date-rape drugs, but didn’t hit a match. Thing is, these assholes are using ever more exotic cocktails to drug these young women. Unless we screen for a specific drug, we’re not going to know, and you can only take so much blood for screening. In this case, like many others, we find that it’s better just to treat the symptoms and if the patient shows signs of recovery then that’s about all we can do.’

‘I noticed Mrs. Parker was given ACE inhibitors, but her heart rate was fairly low. Would you mind explaining that?’ asked Harry.

‘Her blood oxygen level was eight-five. We had to increase her SATS. The ACE inhibitors worked. They opened up her veins and her SATS returned to normal very quickly.’

‘Doctor, do you have any idea what kind of drug she might have been given to induce those symptoms?’ asked Harry.

‘Hard to tell. Like I said, it could have been a cocktail of drugs, maybe a vasoconstrictor of some type, which would account for the narrowing of the blood vessels–maybe epinephrine, and, again, that could have been cut with Fentanyl, PCP or something else. Whatever it was, unless she got treatment for those symptoms she would’ve died.’

We both thanked the doctor and I hung up the call.

Harry took out his phone, and started working on a search.

‘Holy shit,’ said Harry.

He gave me his phone.

He had been googlingVasoconstrictors.

He showed me one of Elly’s social media videos.

She had been to CVS for all the essentials a young woman needs. L’Oreal shampoo, Colgate toothpaste, nail clippers, make-up, eye drops. . .

‘What am I watching?’ I asked.

I heard footsteps on the stairs leading up to our office.