Deficiency

FIVE

The young dark-haired woman in the Cherokee was totally naked and slumped low in the driver's seat. Even her shoes and stockings were off. Her eyes were bulging and she was in a heavy sweat. She looked like she was slowly pouring onto the floor as if her body was liquefying. Terri immediately saw she was hyperventilating.

"Miss, can you talk? Can you tell us what's happening to you? Do you have any pain, any serious ailments? Are you on any medication? Why are you naked?" Terri hated firing questions like this at the obviously distressed woman. It was like throwing everything in her repertoire against the wall and hoping something stuck, but she needed something, some helpful information to help her start a sensible protocol. From the looks of the woman, she needed it quickly. She opened and closed her mouth without uttering a sound. She was either too weak or a mute, Terri thought. Then she smelled alcohol on her breath.

"How much did you drink?" she fired at her, sounding almost like an angry parent.

The woman shook her head.

"I just found her like this," the highway patrolman said. "Her clothes are on the rear seat and on the floor. Actually, I was off duty and heading home myself and I saw this vehicle pulled over with the lights still on," he continued, ranting. He looked very young and Terri imagined he hadn't had all that much experience. He continued to talk as Terri went back to her car to get her bag.

"The engine was running so I pulled up to see if anything was wrong. She wouldn't speak. I don't see any blood, although she's very red."

"Did you call for an ambulance?" she fired back at him.

"Not yet."

"Do it!" she screamed.

The patrolman lunged toward his car and got on the radio.

Terri moved in on the woman and began to wrap her blood pressure cup on the woman's arm. She was gasping for breath like someone who had been under water too long.

"Jesus," Terri said when she went to feel the woman's pulse. "She's got a water hammer pulse."

"What's that?" the policeman asked, returning.

"It's pounding. You don't have to press much to feel it. I think she's going into cardiac arrest!"

Terri checked the woman's blood pressure, which revealed a high systolic and a low diastolic. Her arm felt very warm as well.

"Her heart can't keep up!" she said.

"What should we do?" the policeman asked.

"I need some more light."

The patrolman brought his flashlight and reached in and over her to flip on the interior light. The illumination highlighted all the swelling in the woman's face and neck, as well as on her chest, breasts, and stomach. She looked as if she had been attacked by a hive of bees.

"I didn't see that before," the patrolman said. "Maybe she was stung."

"Were you stung? Axe you allergic to bees?" Terri asked quickly. The young woman managed to shake her head. Her eyelids were trembling with her effort to keep them open as her gasping grew more desperate.

"He," Terri thought she whispered.

"Do you have any oxygen in your car?" Terri asked the policeman. He nodded and hurried back to get it as well as a blanket. Terri fit the mask over the woman's face, took her pulse again and then her blood pressure. Everything was worse.

Suddenly she went into a violent convulsion. Terri moved quickly to keep her tongue from going back in her throat. The woman's body was shaking so vigorously, the vehicle seemed to be swaying.

"Holy Jesus!" the young patrolman cried and actually stepped back as if he expected the woman would explode. Terri held on, trying her best to comfort her.

A few moments later, the woman stopped convulsing and her whole body sunk in Terri's arms.

Terri felt for a pulse and then moved back slowly. The woman's head fell to her right side. She looked as if she had just fallen asleep.

Terri ripped away the blanket and began to administer CPR. She worked frantically over her, pumping, blowing air, pumping, and then, exhausted from the vain effort, stopped and sat back.

"Is she all right?" the patrolman asked.

It seemed like such a ridiculous question. Terri almost laughed.

"No. She's expired," Terri replied and closed her bag. She hated using that word. It sounded like she was talking about a parking meter and not a human being, but it was the word the medical community employed, more, in her opinion, to make it easier for themselves than the loved ones waiting for news.

"Expired? She's dead?"

"I'm afraid so," Terri said looking at her bag. Inside, she had prednisolone, specifically for serious insect stings. She could have injected it, but there had been so little time. If this woman died of an insect bite and she hadn't done that... her thoughts trailed off.

The patrolman stood there with his hands on his hips, looking in and shaking his head. Then, as if remembering he was a law enforcement officer, he tapped Terri gently on the shoulder.

"Better not touch anything in the car," he said. "We don't know the situation yet. It's strange, to say the least, for her to be totally naked." Terri nodded and stepped out. The patrolman began to search around the vehicle. She watched him with a strangely detached curiosity. She was actually feeling numb, in a daze herself. Two young women had died in her presence within a week's time. One dying almost immediately after she had touched her, and now this one dying in her arms. Maybe I'm cursed, she thought. Of course she realized this was a very small community, especially during the off-season. The chances of knowing about or confronting a serious situation were very high. This woman, too, looked familiar, but her features were distorted.

The patrolman carefully searched the glove compartment and stood back with his flashlight to read the documents.

"Who was she?"

"Kristin Martin," he said. "It's a Loch Sheldrake address." Terri shook her head. At least she didn't know this woman personally.

"There's a paycheck stub in here from Diana's Restaurant," he added.

"I know it," she said. Great veal Parmesan, she thought, and then shook her head at how ridiculous the mind could be at times like this.

He opened the rear door and directed his flashlight over the seat and the clothes. He shook his head at how everything was strewn about and then noted the panties were torn.

"It looks like a rape to me," he muttered loud enough for Terri to hear. "Think she had some sort of a reaction to that?"

Terri shook her head.

"No. This is too much to blame on emotional trauma. We'll have to wait to see the exact cause of death. We need to know the level of blood alcohol and what other possible poisonous element is in her."

She returned to her own vehicle and sat staring at the dead woman's SUV. She thought about calling Curt on his cell phone, but then imagined him saying something cold like she should have followed him home. Then she would not have confronted this nor been a part of it. She thought about calling Hyman, but she hated the idea of sounding as if she was in a panic, even though to be truthful she was. She was a doctor. She was supposed to be able to confront and handle situations like this and remain cool, efficient, effective. All she could think of was some idiot saying her reactions were a result of her being a woman and that's why men were better suited to the profession.

She decided to call no one.

Fifteen minutes later, another patrol car arrived and then the ambulance, its bubble light swinging like a multicolored light bulb on the end of a string, ripping through the darkness, slicing trees and bushes and waking the sleeping birds, who rose from branches and like chips of shadows dissolved into the night.