Natural Causes

CHAPTER 20

The teen, who was trying with no success to calm her grandfather, just shook her head.

Sarah grabbed a small, cane-back chair and helped induce the old man to sit down. Kwong continued, though hoarsely now, to rattle at Debbie and everyone else in machine-gun Cantonese. Sarah knelt beside him and stroked his hand until he finally began to quiet down.

"I don't know what happened," Debbie said. "He scooped out the herbs and put them in the Baggies, and everything seemed fine. Then all of a sudden, he took a bit from the jar, smelled it, and started shouting. I'm very frightened for him. He's not been well."

Kwong's complexion, sallow to begin with, did seem even paler to Sarah. Reflexively she checked the radial pulse at his wrist. For a moment she thought his heart was beating wildly. Then she realized that it was her own pulse she was feeling, hammering in her fingertips. Clearly the significance of this turn of events had registered in her autonomic nervous system, if not yet completely in her mind. The confusion… the apparent error… the hysterical reaction. These were the last things she would have ever expected from her herbalist. But then again, Kwong Tian-Wen was not the man she remembered.

"Dr. Blankenship, do you think he's okay?" she asked.

"Are you?" he whispered.

Sarah bit at her lower lip and nodded. "I just can't believe this is happening."

"Just what is going on here?" Mallon demanded.

Sarah turned on him like a startled cat.

"He's getting sick, that's what's going on!" she snapped. She took a deep breath to calm herself. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jump all over you. Listen, I need to speak to Mr. Daniels, and I think Dr. Blankenship should check Mr. Kwong over."

Mallon backed away while Sarah held a whispered conversation with her lawyer. Meanwhile, Eli Blankenship tested Kwong's carotid pulses and cardiac impulse, checked his pupils and fingernail beds, and assessed his respiratory excursions.

"Okay," Matt said, after hearing Sarah out. "The situation is this. The fourth herb on the list is supposed to be a type of chamomile. Apparently Mr. Kwong is upset because the herb in this jar is not what he expected."

"Well, what is it?" Mallon asked with sharklike eagerness. "Is it on the list at all? Debbie, ask him what that stuff is. Ask him whether he put it in the mixture he gave to Dr. Baldwin."

"Debbie, do nothing of the sort," Matt ordered. "God, Mallon. What is with you? Eli, how does he seem to you?"

"I wish I had my stethoscope," Blankenship said. "I think he's okay, but I can't say for sure."

Kwong was much calmer now, though clearly no less bewildered. He sat, hands on knees, staring at the offending jar, shaking his head.

"Debbie, is your mother home?" Sarah asked. "I think we should get him upstairs and have him lie down."

"No one's home," the girl said. "I could watch him, though. Maybe give him some Chinese wine. He loves that."

"Just a moment," Mallon said. "I'd like to have my questions answered."

"Stuff it, Counselor," Matt snapped. "This session is over."

Peter, who had been conducting an examination of the herb, cleared his throat for attention.

"I might be wrong," he said, his tone suggesting that he knew very well that he wasn't, "but I believe this is a herb called noni. Morinda citrifolia is its scientific name. It's used throughout the Pacific Islands as a poultice to stop bleeding, and as a brew to regulate menstrual flow and abnormal internal hemorrhaging. Very effective. Very potent."

The implications of Ettinger's declaration, if correct, were lost on no one. A powerful herb that affected blood clotting, erroneously dispensed by Kwong Tian-Wen as chamomile. For a time, everyone seemed to be talking at once, Mallon urging Peter to get a biological and chemical report prepared on the herb as soon as possible; Matt telling Mallon to back off; Blankenship reassuring Kwong and asking if he was feeling strong enough to continue; Sarah inquiring if Debbie could fetch her grandfather's medicines so that they might get a sense of his medical problems.

The confusion and noise were brought to an abrupt halt by Sheriff Mooney.

"Excuse me, everyone," he said loudly. "I have a meeting I need to get back to my office for. However, before I go, I'm afraid Mr. Kwong, here, might have another little situation to explain." He turned to Blankenship. "Doctor, is Mr. Kwong okay to reach up there and get that jar down for me? The one with the brownish powder. Way in the back, there. At the very end of the shelf."

"I suppose if it's important, there's-"

"Hold it," Matt cut in. "Sheriff Mooney, what are you doing? You have no right to harass this man."

Mooney, with an inch or so of gut overhanging his belt, bobbed a stubby index finger at the lawyer.

"We never met before today, Matt," he said, "but I sort of feel like I know you. I enjoyed watching you pitch. In fact, I was at that famous Toronto game. However, I don't much take to you telling me what I do or do not have the right to do."

"But-"

"Especially when you're wrong." He withdrew a paper from his inside suit coat pocket and passed it over to Matt. "This warrant was issued by Judge John O'Brien yesterday afternoon. It gives me the right to enter this shop and to take whatever samples I wish."

"Issued on what basis?" Matt asked.

"On the basis of a call regarding this man, made to our drug hot line. I obtained the warrant just in case. I hadn't intended to use it until I had had some time to check up on him. But I used to work for the DEA, and I know opium when I see it. And I think that is precisely what is in that jar back there."

Kwong's English, though limited, clearly included "opium." His agitation immediately began to crescendo again.

"Opium no! No mine!" he shouted between staccato bursts of Cantonese.

Sarah could see not only confusion in his face, but sheer terror.

"Dammit, Mooney," Matt exclaimed. "Can't you see the old guy is in no shape for something like this?"

"Young lady, would you ask your grandfather to get that jar for me?" the sheriff persisted.

Matt snatched the jar from the shelf and banged it down on the counter. "You want the bottle so damn bad? Here, take it. What kind of policeman are you, doing this to an old man in front of his grandchild?"

"One who doesn't like dope pushers no matter what age they are."

At that moment, Kwong, who had been screaming and waving his sticklike arms about, stopped abruptly. His breathing became suddenly labored and grunting, and his color immediately darkened.

"Grandpa!" the girl cried.

Sarah and Eli grasped what was happening almost simultaneously. Acute pulmonary edema-heart failure-almost certainly from a coronary. Quickly they lowered Kwong onto the floor. He was battling for air now, wheezing audibly, breathing at a rate at least twice normal, and fighting any attempt to lay him on his back.

"Get an ambulance," Blankenship ordered to no one in particular. "Sarah, can you communicate with him?"

"Some."

"Come on down here beside him then, and do your best to calm him down. We've got to buy some time until the rescue squad gets here with some oxygen and morphine."

Sarah toweled off the old man's forehead and face, both of which were drenched with sweat. She whispered in his ear and rubbed his back. Oxygen and morphine, she was thinking. Oxygen and morphine…

"Dr. Blankenship," she said suddenly. "The opium."

The professor understood immediately. Acute heart failure-even if caused by a coronary-often responded dramatically to narcotic sedation. Morphine was one of the treatments of choice for the condition. And morphine was a chemical derivative of opium.

"Are we sure of what's in that jar?" he asked.

Sarah mopped Kwong's brow again. His color now was truly ghastly. It was quite possible his pulmonary edema would result in full cardiac arrest before the rescue squad arrived.

"Debbie, come quickly, please," she said. "Please don't be frightened. We need your help… Ask your grandfather if that really is opium in that jar. Tell him it's very, very important."

The girl stayed where she was.

"Debbie, please," Sarah begged. "It may save his life. We need to know. Please ask him."

"I don't have to," the teen said suddenly. "It is opium. It's his opium. Everyone in the family knows-he smokes it with his friends. But he hardly does it anymore. And he always keeps it locked up downstairs. I don't know how it got onto that shelf."

"Thank you, Debbie," Sarah said. "You did the right thing telling us. Don't worry."

Eli Blankenship was already working some of the crystals beneath the old man's tongue. Sarah returned her attention to Kwong, reassuring him, and drying him off. After a minute, Blankenship dosed him again.

"You practiced in the jungle," he said. "For an old hospital man like me, medicating this way is a bit scary."

But already Kwong's respirations had begun to slow and his color to improve. He was still laboring for every bit of air, but the mortal fear in his eyes was clearly abating.

"His pulse rate is coming down, and it's stronger," Sarah said excitedly.

For the first time during the crisis, she looked over at Matt.

"Nice going," he mouthed.

By the time the rescue squad arrived, Eli had administered a third pinch of opium, and Kwong was no longer in extremis. In minutes, with the two legal sides watching in silent fascination, the paramedic and EMTs had their new charge strapped onto a stretcher with Oxygen in place, an IV running, and medications given. As treating physician, Eli Blankenship had ordered the meds. Now, although the situation seemed under control, he insisted on riding with Kwong. They loaded the old man into the ambulance, and Blankenship, with surprising grace, hopped up behind the stretcher. Then with a final nod from him and a thumb's-up to Sarah, they were gone.

Jeremy Mallon mumbled something to Matt about being in touch and led his two stunned associates from the shop. Debbie ran upstairs to leave a note instructing her mother to meet them at White Memorial.

Sarah, suddenly only marginally less pale than Kwong had been, sank onto the cane-back chair. Matt brought her a glass of water.

"You did an amazing job there," he said.

"I'm grateful Dr. Blankenship was here. He's the best."

"You're the one who thought of using the opium, remember? Is the old guy going to be okay?"

"I don't know. He-he's so frail. It's as if he's turned old just since the last time I saw him."

"Not like he was then?"

"Not at all. Matt, I'm in trouble, aren't I?"

"Well, that depends. Do you believe Kwong was giving you the wrong stuff all this time?"

"I don't know. I don't know what to believe."

"Well I, for one, smell a rat. What was that opium doing on the shelf like that?"

"Tian-Wen may be getting senile. He could have put it in the front window if that's the case."

"I don't buy it. At least not yet. An anonymous call to the drug hot line? Give me a break."

"What about the noni herbs? If Peter's right, and I think he is, how do you explain that?"

"I don't know. Maybe the old guy has messed up there. Maybe that part's legit. The opium part seems too neat, though. Too packaged."

"But you have no idea how to prove that Tian-Wen was set up-if in fact he was?"

"Not a clue."

"So I'm in trouble either way."

"Well, I will allow as how we've got some hard work ahead of us," he said grimly. "But hard work never scared me. We'll be all right."

At that moment, Kwong's black, long-haired cat stretched to its feet, padded over to where Matt stood, and settled down on his shoes.