Hiss Of Death

Peering out from under her umbrella, Thadia Martin said, “Rain, rain, go away, little Thadia wants to play.” She was waiting for a break in the rain to make a dash for her car.

“So they say,” replied Dr. Cory Schaeffer, also under an umbrella, a navy blue one. “How’s it going?”

They were in the hospital parking lot, close to the emergency room wing.

“Good. More and more keep coming through the door. Eventually the hospital will see that my rehab groups make money. Then I’ll ask for another assistant.”

“How many groups?”

“Right now five. I keep them at ten people. It’s difficult, because there’s such a need—a need for more counselors, more space. I’ve also been trying acupuncture. Need a special room for that.”

“Really?” He took her by the elbow. “Raining harder. Let’s step under the overhang.”

They walked back to the hospital, ducking under the protective overhang. It was quiet but for the pounding rain. They closed their umbrellas.

Thadia raised her voice to be heard over the downpour. “Acupuncture helps. I don’t know why, but it does. I got the idea from reading papers from Fenway Health.”

“The organization in Boston?”

“Right. They’re cutting-edge on so many things; curing addictive behavior is just one.”

“I’ll have to look into that.” He raised his voice. “How are you doing with the vitamin therapies?”

“Works for some. Not for others.”

“This all comes back to body chemistries. Cancer changes the body chemistry. I put some patients on a vitamin regime. I can’t say it provides a cure, but it sometimes provides a rollback: a slowing down of the cancer’s proliferation. I really will have to look into acupuncture.”

“People around here act like we’re practicing voodoo.” Thadia grimaced.

“If we did, we’d probably have more patients and would definitely have more fun.” He reached over, giving her arm a light pinch. “I can see you with a python wrapped around you. Thadia, Voodoo Queen of Crozet.”

“Worth a try.” She smiled. “Hey, not every patient responds to conventional treatment. If voodoo works, I’ll do it.”

“Me, too. Paula Benton, before her death, cussed me out.”

“Why?”

“I was getting to that. She didn’t say I was practicing voodoo, but she did say she didn’t think central Virginia was prepared for alternative treatments and therapies.”

“If she meant people’s attitudes, she was right,” Thadia responded.

“I don’t know. People aren’t as backward as they might appear. Paula told me to stick to surgery and let other people worry about what comes after. I took offense at that.”

“Tear her a new one?”

“No. I told her if she wanted to go toe to toe with me, she should go to med school and emerge with her M.D. Then it would be a fair fight.”

“Bet that pissed her off.”

“Did.”

“Thought you liked Paula. She was good-looking,” Thadia went fishing.

“She was.” Cory stared off into the distance for a moment, then snapped back. “I enjoyed working with her. I didn’t like when she’d question me. Nurses don’t question doctors. She thought she knew more than she did.” He shivered. The temperature was dropping as fast as the rain. “But she was good.”

“Nosy.” Thadia couldn’t resist a little jab.

He shrugged. “Speak no ill of the dead.”

“I guess.” Thadia spoke louder due to the downpour. “I don’t know why she was so opposed to trying new things, but the one thing she said, which I thought had some merit, is that we might give people false hope with alternative treatments. They haven’t been rigorously tested and don’t conform to the scientific method.”

“Some do. I have reams of tests with control groups for new drugs, like Crizotinib, which can be used to shrink lung cancer tumors. So what if the test group is only five hundred patients instead of fifty thousand? It may be a life preserver in a stormy sea. If someone is desperate and has the genetic anomaly for which Crizotinib is effective, why shouldn’t they try new approaches? As long as patients understand it’s a new approach. Studies, too. If a patient agrees to this. Good.”

Wryly, Thadia remarked, “My clientele can help you there. They’re so used to popping pills or sticking needles in their arms, they’ll volunteer.”

“Body chemistry.” Cory spoke louder, too. “I had this discussion with old Izzy Wineberg.”

“He’s getting old.”

“He ran the five-K, in good order. I’ll give him credit for that. He’s always telling me what it was like before this hospital was built.”

“He does vacation in the past. Anyway, what was the discussion?” Thadia leaned toward Cory, the picture of receptiveness.

“We were talking about how each patient is an individual. He was complaining that so many young doctors miss the whole person. He’s right. This started with us joking about how two different bodies, if opened, would not conform to the drawings in Gray’s Anatomy. One person might have their heart on the right side of their body. Another could have one less rib than the normal number, or two more. The human body is variable, and so is chemistry. In fact, I think blood chemistry is the most variable of all.”

“I know. Many of us are missing something, usually serotonin.”

“Cocaine or alcohol supplies it.”

“Right. It’s a bit more complicated. Family background factors into it, the person’s outlook on life, how much responsibility they’re willing to accept for their actions.”

“Back to Paula. Did she say why, other than false hope, she opposed a lot of what you’re doing?” Cory inquired.

“She thought it was wrong to charge for treatments that haven’t yet been proven effective.”

“What?”

“Her argument was if someone can kick their habit, it may not be because acupuncture or whatever helped. It might be something else, since there’s a medley of treatments and I can’t isolate one from another.”

“I don’t know what got into her.” Cory peered out from under the overhang. “This rain isn’t going to end anytime soon.”

“No.” Thadia reopened her umbrella, preparing to go to her car. “None of it.”

“Meaning?”

“Hostility toward new methods.”

“Ah.” He reopened his umbrella with a whoosh. “We have to keep keeping on.”

As Cory splashed through the puddles, now all over the paved parking lot, for the rain was unrelenting, he had the strange sensation that he was being followed. When he peered out from under his umbrella, though, he saw no one. He opened the door to his Lampo, keeping his left arm outside, then turned, closing his umbrella. His left arm was soaked. As he closed his door he thought he heard another door close nearby, but he couldn’t see anyone behind the wheel of a car.

He shook off the odd feeling, started the silent machine, and drove home.