Chapter 2 - The Medical DiscrepancyThe knock on the door came again, louder this time.
“Mrs. Oakes? Open up, please.” It wasn't Daniel anymore. It was a crisp, professional voice belonging to the attending physician, Dr. Marcus Vance, whose name tag I had glimpsed through the glass partition earlier.
I didn't rush. I gently pulled back from Lily, keeping my hands on her shoulders, and checked her face. “Are you in pain?”
“They gave me something in an IV ten minutes ago,” Lily whispered, her voice thick from the sedative. “It hurts, but... but it feels fuzzy now. Grandma, don’t let her back in here. Please.”
“She won't cross this threshold unless she has a battering ram,” I promised.
I unlocked the door and pulled it open just enough to block the threshold with my body. Dr. Vance stood there with a chart in his hand, looking slightly flustered, while Daniel and Natalie hovered a few feet behind him like bad weather.
“Mrs. Oakes, I understand you’re family, but this is a restricted medical area—” Dr. Vance started.
“I am the child’s maternal grandmother and emergency legal proxy,” I said smoothly, pulling a laminated document from my folder and holding it up for half a second before sliding it back in. It was a notarized medical power of attorney I had forced Daniel to sign four years ago during a custody scare. “What is the official diagnosis, Doctor?”
Dr. Vance blinked, thrown off by my cadence. He cleared his throat. “Ah, yes. Lily has a distal radius fracture of the right wrist, with some moderate displacement. We’ve applied a temporary fiberglass splint and administered pain management. She’ll need an orthopedic consultation later this morning for possible closed reduction or casting.”
“And the cause of the injury, Doctor?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.
Natalie immediately pushed past Daniel, her voice sharp and defensive. “She slipped in the tub! I told you that! The tiles were wet because she took a bath right after gym class—she’s always so careless—and when she stepped out, her foot went out from under her. She tried to catch herself on the edge of the porcelain vanity.”
I turned my head slowly, fixing Natalie with a look that made her step back. “Did I ask you, Natalie?”
“I’m her stepmother!” she hissed.
“You’re a footnote,” I replied evenly. Then I looked back at the doctor. “Dr. Vance. In your professional medical opinion, does a distal radius fracture sustained from slipping on a wet bathroom floor typically present with volar or dorsal displacement combined with concentric bruising around the mid-forearm?”
Dr. Vance frowned, looking down at his chart, then up at me with sudden, professional wariness. “Well... the fracture pattern is somewhat atypical for a simple backward fall. The force vector suggests a direct, high-impact torsion or a defensive warding injury, but given that the patient was half-asleep and panicked—1 “Doctor,” I interrupted softly, “did you inspect the bathroom floor in my son’s house, or are you simply repeating what this woman told you while standing over a terrified teenager?”
Dr. Vance’s mouth opened slightly. “Well, I… I take patient histories based on what the accompanying adults report.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “Because in an ER at 3:00 A.M., doctors stitch wounds and set bones; they don't conduct crime scene investigations. But I do.”
“Now see here!” Daniel finally found his spine, stepping forward with a red face. “Mom, this is ridiculous! You’re turning a simple accident into a criminal investigation! Natalie was terrified! She called 911 the second it happened! Why are you trying to vilify my wife?”
“Your wife,” I said, looking at my son with a mixture of pity and ice, “told the ER triage nurse that Lily fell off a stool trying to reach a cabinet. Then she told Dr. Vance she slipped in the tub. Which is it, Daniel? Did your daughter fall off a stool or slip in the bathtub? Because in my line of work, when someone changes their story before the coffee maker has even finished its first cycle, it usually means the story never happened.”
The silence in the hallway dropped like a lead curtain.
Natalie’s face lost every trace of color. She opened her mouth, closed it, and grabbed Daniel’s arm with claws disguised as fingers. “Daniel, take me home. Your mother is unhinged. She’s harassing me. If you don't take me out of this hospital right now, I swear to God—”
“No one is going anywhere,” I said, pulling my second phone from my coat pocket. “Because before Dr. Vance submits his final discharge notes to the county health department, I’m making a phone call.”
“Who are you calling?” Daniel demanded, panic flickering in his voice.
“An old friend,” I said, dialing a ten-digit number from memory. “Dr. Aris Thorne? No. Dr. Arthur Pendelton. Chief Forensic Pathologist for the state medical examiner’s office, retired. He owes me three favors from the Charleston harbor drug ring case in ninety-eight.”
May you like
I pressed the phone to my ear as it began to ring in the quiet hallway.
“And trust me, Daniel,” I whispered, staring straight into my son’s terrified eyes, “Arthur loves nothing more than looking at X-rays that don't match the fairy tales told by people who wear cashmere at three in the morning.”
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