“I agree,” said Dr. Farnsworth. “She claims to have trouble seeing but her ophthalmology exam is normal and with this near vision card she can read the small row of numbers with ease.”
“What about her visual fields?” asked Dr. Thomas.
Farnsworth got to his feet, preparing to leave. “Seem normal to me. Tomorrow we can have a Goldmann field done, but we don’t do them on an emergency basis.”
“And her retinas?” asked Dr. Thomas.
“Normal,” said Farnsworth. “Thanks for the consult. It’s been swell.” Picking up his suitcase of instruments, the ophthalmologist left the room.
“Swell! Shit,” said Dr. Lowry. “If I have one more Goddamn prissy eyeball resident tell me they don’t do Goldmann fields at night, I think I’ll punch him out.”
“Shut up, Ralph,” said Dr. Thomas. “You’re starting to sound like a surgeon.”
Dr. Langone stood up and stretched. “I got to be going too. Tell me Thomas, why do you think this girl is sick: just because of her decreased sensation? I mean, that’s pretty subjective.”
“It’s a feeling I have. She’s scared, but I’m sure she’s not hysterical. Besides, her sensory abnormalities are very reproducible. She’s not faking. There’s something screwy going on in her brain.”
Dr. Lowry laughed. “The only thing screwy about this case is what you’d like to be doing if you met her under more social circumstances. Come on, Thomas. If she were a dog, you woulda’ just told her to come back to clinic in the A.M.”
The whole lounge laughed. Dr. Thomas waved them away as he pulled himself from the easy chair. “I give up with you clowns. I’ll handle this case myself.”
“Be sure to get her phone number,” said Dr. Lowry as Thomas left. Dr. Huggens laughed, he’d already thought it wasn’t a bad idea.
Back in the ER Thomas looked around. From seven to nine there was a relative respite, as if people took time out from misery, pain, and illness while they ate. By ten, the drunks, the auto accidents, and the victims of thieves and psychos would begin to arrive; by eleven it would be the crimes of passion. So Thomas had a little time to think about Lynn Anne Lucas. Something was nagging him about the case; he felt as if he were missing some important clue.
Stopping at the main desk, he asked one of the ER clerks if Lynn Anne Lucas’s hospital chart had arrived from the record room. The clerk checked, said no, but then reassured him that he’d call again. Dr. Thomas nodded absently, wondering if Lynn Anne had taken any exotic drugs. Turning down the main corridor, he headed back to the examination room, where the girl was waiting.
Denise had no inkling what Martin’s “fabulous idea” was. He had asked her to come back to his office around 9 P.M. It was about a quarter past when she had a break from reading trauma films in the emergency room. Using the stairs across from the closed hospitality shop, she reached the Radiology floor. The corridor seemed a different place from the commotion and chaos of the day. At the very end of the hall one of the janitors was using a power polisher on the vinyl floor.
The door to Philips’ office was open, and Denise could hear his dictating monotone. When she entered, she found him finishing up the day’s cerebral angiograms. In front of him on his alternator was a series of angiographic studies. Within each X ray of the skull the thousands of blood vessels showed up as white threads which appeared like an upside-down root system to a tree. While he spoke he pointed with his ringer at the pathology for Denise’s benefit. She looked and nodded, although it was incomprehensible how he knew the names and the normal size and position of each vessel.
“Conclusion:” said Philips, “Cerebral angiography shows a large arteriovenous malformation of the right basal ganglia in this nineteen-year-old male. Period. This circulatory malformation is supplied by the right middle cerebral artery via the lenticulostriate branches as well as from the right posterior cerebral artery via the thalamoperforate and the thalamogeniculate branches. Period.” End of dictation. Please send a copy of this report to doctors Mannerheim, Prince, and Clauson. Thank you.”