Warrior Reborn Page 5

  She wouldn’t even look at him. “You will find out anyway.”

  The whisper of hopelessness almost killed him. What could be so bad, beyond already having a child so desperately ill? “Try me.”

  “I make this trip in for Mario when my girls are in school. When I have time off.”

  Jason nodded in encouragement. The hours, the travel, the strain was hard on many of the parents. Considerations he’d been trying to work for several parents lately.

  “My husband, he works building construction. He sees Mario at night, when he gets off work. We’d be here more but money…”

  It was coming, Jason could tell from the shredded state of the tissue. Mario’s mother closed her eyes and Jason considered calling for a nurse.

  “He lost his job.” Her whisper came out like a cry. “They said with the economy—they don’t need his position. His job paid for our insurance. Now they will make Mario leave. I will lose my baby.”

  All hell broke loose. Consuela Sanchez sobbed as if she’d already lost her eight-year-old son. Jason slowly put his arm around her and pulled her closer to his chest. The blue Hermes tie he’d worn would be forfeit, not that he cared.

  “Mrs. Sanchez, no one is going to toss Marco out of the trial or this hospital. I promise.”

  She looked up and blinked, a choked sob erupted like a hiccup. “But the insurance…”

  “This trial doesn’t go to the insurance for funding.”

  “We can’t afford to pay.” Her head shook back and forth with renewed vigor and her hands tightened on the pitiful excuse for a paper product.

  Jason reached into his pocket and handed her the cloth handkerchief he always carried. Habit, because he never used them. “Here, now try to take a deep breath and relax. There are many resources within this project. This is not an issue, at least not for Mario continuing in the trial.” One less income would inundate this family with other problems. Perhaps not entirely out of his scope either. “How about you let me take care of this for you? You and your husband take this opportunity to spend more time with Mario.”

  She’d stopped crying, with his handkerchief twisted into the tightest spiral of fabric he’d ever seen.

  “You would do this for us?”

  “Marco is part of this project. His success brings success to the project. But between you and me…”

  She waited, hanging on his every word.

  “This isn’t the first time families have had financial difficulties during trials. It won’t be the last time. This is what I do. Because I can’t do what Dr. Hyden does.”

  Her face brightened. He saw the first glimmer of a smile. “Bless you, Mr. Ballard.”

  “No. It’s my job. Save your blessings for the kids in the program.” He covered her hand and gave it a squeeze. I will get back to you and your husband soon with some options.” He handed her his card. “Better?”

  “Thank you.”

  ***

  Briet looked at the clock and debated. Annie had fifteen more minutes of treatment and she’d calmed down enough to go in and sit with her.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  Briet froze. Found. She had been so close to escaping.

  “Just ten minutes.”

  “Five.”

  “Deal.” Jason looked at Annie through window. “She looks good.”

  “Hmmm.” Briet was terse, but when Jason didn’t chime right back with a response, she cast a glance at him. He was staring at Annie, a wrinkle marring between his brows. Then he blinked several times.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine.” He shook his head and turned around to lean his head against the glass. “Probably just need coffee.”

  “I don’t have time for coffee.”

  He didn’t even look at her and shrugged. “Okay, so you’re still angry with me.”

  “Ed already told me the testing is approved.”

  Jason slid his hands into his pockets and sighed. “Briet, I brought up the consideration of testing, not you—Sanyu made his own leap.”

  He glanced at her, but she couldn’t trust herself to meet his eyes, so she looked back at Annie instead. “Good, we’re clear. Nothing more to talk about. Is there anything else you wanted?”

  “This issue of the testing is business. For the project, I respect your opinions and your input. I respect them outside of the project as well.”

  She closed her eyes and took a breath. When she spoke, she tried to keep her voice low, calm. “So, what do you want from me?”

  “What would I really like? The next time you get angry with me, I want you to trust me.” He held up his hand to hold her comment off. “Trust me enough to talk to me and hear me out.”

  She swallowed the hard lump in her throat along with her overwhelming sense of vulnerability. She couldn’t trust him. He knew it, so now he was bargaining for the benefit of the doubt. The man was incorrigible. “So sure I’m going to be mad at you again?”

  He turned his head and grinned. “I’m positive. You’re passionate and honest about your work and I’m a behind-the-scenes guy. It’s inevitable.”

  “Why do you care?”

  He rolled around and faced her, his shoulder against the glass and his face inches from her ear.

  “Because aside from the business aspect of our relationship, I’m enjoying getting to know you, Briet Hyden.”

  She was stunned. By his pronouncement, by the warmth of his breath on her skin, by the dimple and earnest look in his eyes, by her mind’s stubborn refusal to let the dream die.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. When did she become so weak?

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” She managed to squeak the word out.

  “This is where you’re supposed to promise to at least come and talk to me next time you’re pissed off at me.

  Her lips twitched. She couldn’t have controlled them if she’d tried. “Okay, I promise to give you a chance—just one—to vindicate yourself.”

  He smiled and turned back to watch Annie with her, his arm brushing against hers. “I promise not to lure you out on a limb and leave you there, I swear.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Jason leaned against the counter of the nurse’s station and waited for the young nursing assistant on the phone to finish with her call. She turned to him, held up a finger, granting him visibility to the name on her ID: Tasha King. Boy, was she young. Didn’t look more than nineteen, even though he knew she had to be at least twenty-two.

  He was starting to feel old.

  “…that’s correct. Yes. I’ll let Patrice know.” With a click to the button on the phone, she gave him her attention. “How may I help you?”

  “I’m Jason Ballard. Nurse Rasmerson left me a message she’d finished with the parent waivers I’d dropped off.” Jason gestured to an orange folder at the far right of her workstation.

  “Oh, yes. Sandy told me. She’s—”

  “Right here. This is the file with the forms for Dr. Arnault’s and Dr. Brisborne’s parent groups as well.” Sandy slid the folders onto the counter.

  “Thank you.” Jason flipped through each, mentally checking for a corresponding waiver from each parent against the master patient list in his head. “Problems with any of the parents?”

  “Nah, they’ll do anything to help the trial or the docs. The parents appreciate how much they do for them and want to reciprocate. Especially the parents of Dr. Hyden’s patients.”

  Such a commendation made Jason pause. He was very good at reading people. Sandy’s wide, friendly smile harbored no allusion to a come-on or sarcasm, only warm sincerity. Tasha’s head nodded right along with her.

  “The kids seem very comfortable with her,” Jason said, hoping to catch the women in a conversational mood. He’d noticed Annie Bremar’s quick response to Briet’s presence the day he’d talked to her in the hallway. Briet’s hand signal, the pictures the child held up, depicted an ease and confidence in their communication.

  “She’s very i
nterested in them. They sense that.” Sandy slid her patient charts into the caddy behind the counter, touched the computer screen for a search, and stopped to take several more files from the head nurse, Patrice Walker, as she joined them.

  “Any problems with her patients?” Jason asked, finished with his review of the files Sandy had collected.

  Silence. He could feel the air thicken with his question. Glancing between the three women, he caught the scowl Nurse Patrice sent Sandy, but the younger woman shrugged at her boss.

  “It’s not a secret,” said Sandy.

  Guess the scowl was a deterrent, not a threat, because Sandy seemed undaunted.

  Jason waited, watching Sandy and Patrice, as another nurse joined the group. The tag only displayed a last name, Groden. Jason wasn’t familiar with the woman. Not that he knew all the nurses on the wing, though he made it his business to introduce himself and be approachable. Risk management on trials could take any number of directions, good communication and rapport provided options. Success was all about the options.

  “Brian Paulson had some severe vomiting. Half-hour before every treatment he’d lose it, never failed. Annie Bremar didn’t sleep for the first eight days she was here. And Davis Randall—why, he was so shy he wouldn’t tell anyone that he couldn’t pee for days.”

  Jason lifted his eyebrows in surprise. Once the team leaders reviewed the week’s trial status, the data became available for Jason to view, which he did every week. The trial participants were only inpatients in the hospital for the first six weeks of the trial, everything about their activities meticulously monitored. There had been no note of extraneous medications for any of Briet’s patients since the inception of the trial, with the exception of one. He frowned at Sandy. “She’s not prescribing anything for Brian or Annie...”

  “Not like any normal doctor,” muttered nurse Groden.

  He didn’t bother to look at her, instead waiting for an answer.

  Sandy obliged, ignoring Groden’s remark. “She worked with Brian. Got him to focus on breathing and visualization—”

  “You’d think this was a yoga clinic, not a hospital,” Nurse Groden cut in.

  Jason saw the scowl Sandy gave Groden. She continued undeterred. “It took three days, but she got him to work through a series of meditation and self-hypnosis routines. Now, a half-hour before every treatment, he’s relaxed as a cat in a sunbeam. Even throughout the whole procedure.”

  “In three days?” Skepticism leapt forward. Logic compelled him to ask. Not that he didn’t like Briet.

  “Three days, five times a day. Repetition and patience. She would sit with him and talk him through it, still does when she can.”

  Interesting. “What of Annie Bremar?”

  “She had terrible nightmares,” said Sandy.

  Nurse Groden shook her head again. “Would wake up screaming and wake up every kid on her hall.” She held her hands up at Sandy’s look. “Don’t get me wrong, these kids go through a lot. It was just tough on everyone. I mean…”

  “Vicki.” Patrice Walker’s voice stifled whatever direction Nurse Groden had intended with her complaint.

  “And?” Jason pushed.

  “Annie always has books, pads, and colored pencils in her room. The doctor had her draw what she saw in her nightmares.”

  Tasha gave a quick shake to her head, pursed her lips, and wrapped her arms around herself. “Awful stuff.”

  Vicki Groden rolled her eyes and left with her charts.

  “Yeah. Dark images. Horns, fangs, snake eyes—a little color, but mostly lots of black and scary, too realistic and detailed. Not stuff you’d expect an eight-year-old to be able to draw.” Sandy nodded. “Dr. Hyden had her do that a few times and then she brought her these colorful markers, the ones that erase. Had her draw new images over the nightmares, so the marker sort of bled the bad images away. Had her draw fresh pictures of things she loved before she would go to sleep.”

  He couldn’t resist. “Let me guess? Three days?”

  Sandy crossed her arms and looked like she was just going to leave him there without responding. He held up his hands in surrender. “Please, go ahead. Tell me.”

  Nurse Walker snorted and shook her head, but Sandy gave a toss of her long ponytail. “It took a few days.”

  “So what? Five nights of pictures and no more nightmares?”

  “Oh, no.” Sandy cocked her head at him a fist on her hip. “You don’t understand. The nightmares happened every few hours. That kid was running on luck and air after the first several days. No sleep, pale, wouldn’t eat, bruising under her eyes. She would jump anytime someone came in her room.” She tapped her finger on the counter. “Dr. Hyden sat by her bed and every time Annie started to thrash with the bad dreams she would wake her up, have her look at the happy pictures she’d drawn, and wait for her to go back to sleep. For days she did that.”

  He frowned at the woman. “She stayed in the girl’s room the whole time.”

  “She didn’t sleep there if that’s what you’re asking—not in the girl’s room at any rate.” The comment came from Nurse Walker. She nodded her head down the hall to the doctor’s lounge. “Dr. Hyden would catch a little shut eye between shifts.”

  Jason took a deep breath, not certain he wanted to hear the last story. Briet Hyden was turning into Mother Theresa. From the three pairs of eyes staring at him, the nursing staff expected him to join her fan club. Well, at least most of the staff. Vicki Groden wasn’t a club member.

  “Hit me with the last one.”

  Sandy grinned. “Davis Randall. Painfully shy. Barely talks to his parents. How they figured out enough to determine he even had cancer is beyond me.” She licked her lips. “Any rate, Doc figured something was wrong. She asked us to watch for trips to the bathroom, but some kids are just stealthy. Davis wouldn’t pee in the cup and the setup in the toilet caught nothing. We couldn’t tell what he was doing. He’d barely answer our questions.”

  Jason would have laughed if the situation weren’t so serious. “Okay, so how did anyone confirm the problem?”

  “We organized to keep an eye on him, very discrete. Two days and no sample. Hyden had us put a chemical in the toilet water and disconnect the flush mechanism.”

  He shook his head. “But he goes and you can’t tell if it’s once or more often.”

  “We could tell that he didn’t go at all.”

  “For how long?” Jason was quickly trying to calculate the ramifications for a potential lawsuit in his head.

  “Two days from the time she had us make the changes. Anyone’s guess before that. She had some tests run at the same time. We confirmed the problem before the tests came back. He was put on medication.”

  Yes, he was. Jason remembered the reference in the status. Thank goodness, but not a surprise. Briet was nothing if not diligent with regard to her patients. Nurse Groden’s issues aside, he considered Briet’s support well deserved.

  “Enough chit-chat. Don’t you have rounds or something to do?” Nurse Walker asked Sandy. Tasha ducked her head lower behind the nurse’s desk, trying to shrink into the furniture.

  “They seem pretty impressed with her,” Jason said to the head nurse. She struck him as no-nonsense, not easily snowed by warm and fuzzy approaches. She’d been straightforward with him the several times he’d come down to the ward with questions.

  “We have a lot of good doctors here. There’s a lot to respect about the woman. She’s not a one-stop-shop. She looks at each of her patients as individuals and puts in the time needed to resolve their problems.”

  Nurse Groden chose that moment to pass by the station and paused at the comment. “She’s not a full-time doctor on staff so she has the luxury to pick and choose. Of course she has time to do nice by everyone.”

  “That’s seriously infringing on inappropriate comments.” Nurse Walker gave her a formidable scowl, which sent Vicki on her way again.

  “Seems to be some difference of opinion,” Jason noted.


  “To each their own. Dr. Hyden treats her patients with respect as well as the nurses and staff. That’s all I expect of the professionals I work with.”

  Jason bit back a smile at the woman’s staunch advocacy in the guise of professional demeanor and watched her walk away. He looked to Nurse Tasha. “Nothing to add?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m the new kid. I just lay low.”

  “Really. No Dr. Hyden stories.”

  Tasha glanced down both directions of the hallway. “She’s just an all-round nice person. Most of these doctors are. But she’s even helping Mario Sanchez’s parents.”

  He looked at her for a moment, assessing how far her endorsement of Briet would go. “The father who was laid off?”

  “Yep, she’s trying to find them some free housing and a work situation for the dad.”

  “She must have a lot of energy. I’m exhausted just hearing about her work.” Jason gave the young nurse an appraising look. “Would you do me a favor?” He took out a card and placed it below the counter on top of her charts.

  Tasha looked skeptical.

  “I’m not asking you to do anything that will get you in trouble. Promise.”

  She raised an eyebrow. Okay, a little more astute than her age implied. Good.

  “I just would like you to call me if something happens with any of B—Dr. Hyden’s patients.”

  “That’s against policy.”

  “Not exactly, I don’t want names or specifics. I’m on the notification list anyway because of the trial. But my company has a lot of resources. If the Sanchez’s need help, or one of the kids has a problem, I want to be able to pull my resources to help them as fast as possible. Before it gets analyzed all the way up the chain and back down again. I don’t want info on the doctors or the nurses. I’m not a troublesome guy. Really.”

  His bigger concern was what Dr. Sanyu would do with unfavorable information. A nagging suspicion told him Nurse Groden’s animosity spawned from Sanyu’s influence and Jason’s intuition was excellent. It was worth sticking his neck out a little to deflect focus from Briet’s efforts.