Chance

Chance and the unimaginable thing

He arrived at the hospital shortly before the lunch hour, availing himself once more of staff parking but not bothering with the white coat. He was not feeling much like a doctor, or anything else for that matter, reduced by things as they were to little more than some bit of exposed nerve, passing like a shade through familiar corridors as if seeing them for the first time, returning straightway to the emergency care wing where he was just in time to find them spilling from one of the waiting rooms in varying states of rage and panic. They were all there, his soon-to-be ex-wife together with her support team, a small gaggle of soon-to-be ex-relatives and former friends, the dyslexic personal trainer among them. Chance, the only son of deceased parents, was quite alone in the face of their onslaught. If he had been hoping for a friendly face anywhere within hailing distance he was shit out of luck, having already been informed at the nurses’ station by a Hispanic orderly of no more than twelve that it was Gooley’s day off.

The source of their consternation, apart that is from the sudden appearance of Chance, apparently enough in and of itself to produce in his ex-wife an immediate and violent outburst, was the sudden disappearance of Chance’s daughter. It seems that she was no longer in the building. Chance could only gape in wonder, to ask how such a thing had been allowed to happen. He might as well have stood upon the shoulder of the Great Highway at high noon to inquire of the wind.

“You’re a fine one to ask,” Carla shouted at him, drawing stares from staff and passersby, a pat on the shoulder from her current flame.

Chance just looked at her.

“About anything,” she cried, shaking off the boyfriend’s hand. “Why are you even here?” When he attempted to answer she turned away, burying her face on the shoulder of her mother, a faded glamour queen with heavily bleached hair Chance could scarcely recall ever having a single meaningful conversation with during the entire length and breadth of his marriage and who looked upon him now with the withering stare of a deep and lasting disapproval. He could only guess at his appearance.

In time certain things were made clear. Facts were established, emerging, it seemed to Chance, as might icebergs from a dense fog. At approximately ten fifteen that morning, the pulmonary doctor in charge of her case had decided that Nicole had been stable long enough to remove the breathing tube and to bring her back around. This had gone off more or less as planned and she had indeed regained consciousness, emerging from her long sleep in what was described to Chance as a rude and grumpy mood, wondering what the big deal was and wanting only to go home. “She kept on asking for her cell phone,” the dyslexic personal trainer from Sausalito told him, his particular contribution to the unfolding narrative.

It was the first time that Chance had actually been in the same room with the man or spoken to him face-to-face. The guy was a head taller than Chance and in excellent shape. Chance declined to speak to him directly, preferring to address himself to Carla instead: “And you let her have it?”

“How dare you,” she said. “How dare you stumble in here after all this time and start making accusations…” She paused as if really taking him in for the first time. “My God,” she said, “you look like absolute shit.” In the aftermath of which she raced off to speak to a nurse. Her mother shot Chance a last hateful look before striking out in pursuit of her daughter. Other members of the support team withdrew in silence. Chance was left in the hallway, in the company of the trainer.

“Hey, man…” the trainer said to him. “I’m really sorry about all of this. I really am. I can only imagine how you must be feeling.”

Chance nodded. The guy really was, it seems, the only person among the current support team willing to give him the time of day. “We’re not sure how she got the phone,” the trainer said. It occurred to Chance that in point of fact he could not recall the man’s name. “We’re thinking it must have happened this morning, just after they took the tube out and removed the restraints. There was some kind of a break where one nurse went home and this other nurse came on… Looks like Carla must’ve left her purse in the room. She sat up in there with her all night. Anyway… Nicole must’ve seen this and seen she was alone and grabbed Carla’s phone and made a call… There really wouldn’t have been time for more than one.”

“Looks like maybe one was enough,” Chance told him. In light of the man’s stab at some form of camaraderie, he was hoping to keep the rancor from his voice, or at least hold it to a minimum.

“It’s fucked up,” the trainer agreed.

“And then what? It’s not that easy to just walk out of here.”

“She said she wanted to use the bathroom. She would just have to have gotten to those stairs.” The man pointed to a doorway at the end of a short hall, a green exit sign above the door. “It’s only one floor down,” he added. “If somebody was waiting right out there, with a car…”

“Have we looked at the phone… to see who she called?”

“She took the phone with her.”

“Right.”

“She’s very enterprising.”

“Ah.”

“We’ve called the police.”

Chance was still trying to decide how he felt about this when the man went on once more. “We’re hoping they can get to the records from Carla’s phone, get an address for whomever she called.”

“We’re guessing it was the boyfriend,” Chance said.

The man nodded. They were guessing that it was.

“And do we know his name?”

“Tao.”

“That’s it?”

“Nicole’s never said much about him. Carla got what she did from one of her friend’s mothers.” The man gave it a beat. “I know it’s a mess,” he added. “But they will find her. She may even come to her senses and come home. She was together enough to walk out of here.”

Well, Chance thought, the guy was trying, however clumsily. Not trusting himself to speak, he simply nodded and looked down the hall, in the direction taken by his daughter while making good her escape. If the worst were true, the name probably wouldn’t help much. It was doubtful Blackstone’s boy toys went about using their Christian names.

Eventually Chance was able to speak with the pulmonary specialist who had treated his daughter and from whom he was given a list of the drugs the hospital had used in her care. It was all standard stuff, an antibiotic, a sedative… She would still, wherever she was, be a little groggy but all of her vital signs had been stable throughout the night. Shortly before making her escape she had admitted to the use of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid, one of the so-called date rape drugs currently so in vogue, known on the street as G. There had been, he was told, no signs of assault, sexual or otherwise. They had hoped to keep her another day.

The physician was interrupted by the arrival of an officer from the San Francisco Police Department whereupon Chance and Carla were whisked off to a private consultation in the course of which the officer proved himself professional and sympathetic if only a trifle detached, leaving Chance to wonder if it had ever been like that for certain of his patients, if he too had appeared professional and sympathetic and a trifle detached. Phone records, they were assured, would be obtained from Carla’s provider. The appropriate number would be tracked. A missing persons report would be filed.

My God, thought Chance, in a refrain that was to run on a more or less continuous loop throughout the proceedings, it was all so absolutely sad, fucked up, and unimaginable that it had come to this, that he should now find himself at long last in the position of so many of his patients, the recipient of unthinkable news at the hands of a mild and sympathetic if only vaguely present professional. At which point the officer exerted a new claim on Chance’s attention by announcing that a missing persons report would go out to all law enforcement personnel in the area, not only in San Francisco but throughout the region, including the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, east of the bay.