Broken Hope by Carrie Rubin

Author:Carrie Rubin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indigo Dot Press

25

Pacing my hardwood floor in my fuzzy slippers, I listen to one, two, three rings of Michael’s bedside hospital phone. Middle-of-the-night phone calls in a patient’s room are no doubt a rarity, and this one will likely surprise the nursing staff as much as the patient.

Answer answer answer! my brain hollers.

On the fourth ring I lose hope that he will, but to my relief he picks up, his raspy breathing the only confirmation I need that it’s him. As I imagine him trying to shake off the fog of a sedating narcotic, panic grips me. What should I say? How am I going to relay my concerns to him without sounding like a psycho?

I start with a simple, “Michael?”

His strident breaths pause.

“It’s Hope. Hope Sullivan.”

The rasping returns as a rabid croaking. It’s as if he has a thousand things he wants to say but can’t, his crushed vocal cords still refusing to cooperate.

I interrupt him. “You don’t have to talk. Just listen. I understand what you were trying to tell me the other night. You said Acher, but I think you meant Baker. As in Kimberly Baker. Grunt once for yes.”

He grunts once.

“She was involved in your wife’s care and is your doctor now too, correct?”

Another single grunt.

“Your wife’s name was Jasmine Bonnet.”

An emphatic single grunt.

“Look.” I feel an inexplicable urge to hurry but am unsure how to proceed. “I’m truly sorry for your loss. I reviewed your wife’s medical records and found some discrepancies, not necessarily with how she died. It could have been the pulmonary embolisms that—”

An angry burst of double grunting cuts me off. I imagine Michael’s face flushed red, his hand gripping the phone, his heart-rate monitor ticking up.

“Wait, let me finish,” I say. “I agree it’s odd that, according to the autopsy report, Jasmine’s pulmonary embolisms weren’t all that large and yet she still died. But,” I stress, “it’s not impossible. She had several areas of lung infarction and could have had other issues going on that weren’t detected.”

More agitated double grunting.

“The other discrepancy I found was that your wife’s hospital summary was entered into the EMR under my name. That’s no doubt why you…why you felt I was responsible. But it wasn’t me who submitted that note. I wasn’t there when your wife died. You have to believe me. I was back in my rheumatology rotation the next day. When I finished my call shift in the morning, your wife was still stable.”

I pause. Michael’s coarse breathing comes through but no more grunting, as if he’s waiting for me to go on.

“So if anyone might know more about it, it would be Kim Lombardi. Her married name was Baker, but she changed it back to Lombardi before her second year of residency. While I can’t believe she did anything intentional to hurt your wife—”

A loud grunt of protest from Michael drowns out my response.

“Please, Michael.”

“Sheee kiii errr.”

Although his words are forced out in wheezy rasps, I understand what he’s trying to say.

“If you knew

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