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  Trapped

  By

  Lawrence W. Gold, M.D.

  Trapped 2013 © by Lawrence W. Gold, M.D.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters names, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Grass Valley Publishing Production

  Cover Art©2013 by Dawné Dominique

  Dedication

  To my wife, Dorlis.

  To my readers who encourage me to write.

  Acknowledgments

  Donna Eastman of Parkeast Literary Agency who first encouraged me to write.

  Joseph Barron, a true renaissance man and my writing buddy. Gone but not forgotten.

  Dawné Dominique, a gifted artist and cover designer.

  Writers groups on both coasts. WOW in Palm Coast, Florida and Sierra Writers Fiction Critique Group in Grass Valley, CA

  “The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.”

  G. K. Chesterton

  “The way to final freedom is within thy self.”

  The Book of the Golden Precepts

  “Eternal nothingness if fine if you happen to be dressed for it.”

  Woody Allen

  Other Works

  By

  Lawrence W. Gold, M.D.

  Fiction:

  Brier Hospital Series:

  First, Do No Harm

  No Cure for Murder

  The Sixth Sense

  Tortured Memory

  The Plague Within

  Other Novels:

  For the Love of God

  Rage

  Deadly Passage

  A Simple Cure

  Non-Fiction:

  I Love My Doctor, But…, a lighthearted look at the doctor/patient relationship

  All available in print and in Kindle.

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Lisa Cooke pulled the faded floral quilt to her neck against the penetrating cold of the Sierra California winter night. The long sleeves of her pink flannel nightgown protected her arms, while she warmed to the third reading of When Love Awaits by Johanna Lindsey, her favorite romance novel.

  Lisa was about to reach for the dim reading light when the unmistakable sound of the rusted-out muffler of her father’s truck resounded from the road. The engine slowed as he turned the corner into their driveway and then it accelerated as he moved toward the house. Rudolph Cooke had received his second ‘fix-it’ citation, but he had not yet brought the old truck in for service.

  Lisa quickly extinguished the bedside lamp, hoping that he hadn’t seen it.

  Not quick enough, sister, Rudy thought as his daughter’s light blinked off.

  Lisa felt the force of the truck door slamming. The leather soles of her father’s black Oxfords scraped in an aimless pattern of starts and stops across the exposed granite cement walkway.

  He’s really loaded tonight, she thought.

  Rudy’s house key clicked and scratched as he probed for the keyhole with increasing urgency. Frustrated, he began pounding on the door.

  “Sandy, God damn it, open the fuck’n door!”

  Lisa’s mother, Sandy, struggled out of bed, and went down the hall. Her leather slippers slid across the wooden floor, and then stopped as Sandy descended the carpeted staircase.

  “I’m coming…I’m coming,” she pleaded.

  The front door opened with a thud. A loud slap was followed by her mother’s muffled cry, and then the strident scream of her father.

  “Where is she?” came his slurred words.

  Lisa shrank further into her bed, pulling the covers up to her eyes.

  Not again, she thought, not again.

  The boards creaked under his weight as he climbed the stairs to her door. Her doorknob rattled as it turned against the lock.

  “Open the door,” he said, shaking the knob with more urgency. “I told you to never lock it.”

  Lisa was trembling.

  He’ll have to kill me this time, she thought.

  His fist banged against the door’s aging plywood panel. “Open up the God damn door, Lisa, or you’ll be sorry.”

  “Go away!” she shouted.

  Suddenly, the door shuddered from the force of his shoulder, and when the lock shattered, the door flew inward hitting the wall.

  Rudy’s bulky frame was silhouetted by the florescent hall light.

  “No, Rudy,” Sandy shouted from the hallway. “Leave the girl alone.”

  “Get the fuck out of my way, Sandy, or you’ll be next.”

  Lisa sat up in bed, clutching the book across her chest.

  As Rudy lumbered toward the bed, he shouted, “What kind of shit do you have, there?”

  He grabbed the book from her hands, and then exclaimed, “When Love Awaits.” He taunted her in a sing-song voice. “I told you not to bring any of that shit into my house.”

  “Give it back,” Lisa demanded.

  “What did you say, girl? Fifteen years old, and that’s the way you talk to your father?”

  “She didn’t mean anything by it, Rudy,” Sandy cried. “It’s okay, sweetie.”

  “Give it back.” Lisa said.

  He grabbed the front of Lisa’s gown in his right hand, and lifted her against the oak headboard of her four-poster bed. “What…did…you…say?”

  “Give me my book. It’s mine.”

  Her face was on fire as he slapped her repeatedly with his free hand. When her head crashed against the headboard, he smiled.

  When she wrinkled her nose at his whiskey breath, he pushed her back again.

  “Say it again. Please,” he snarled.

  Lisa felt herself a spectator, as if she was watching the scene from a distance.

  “Not this time, you fucking bastard,” she shouted. “The book is mine, and I want it.”

  As he punched her face repeatedly, Lisa became blinded by rage. She felt her lip split like a crushed grape, yet, through those bloody lips, she managed to let out a gurgling, “Kill me…kill me…go ahead and kill me!”

  “Stop!” Sandy yelled as she flailed ineffectually against his back.

  He pushed her off, as if swatting a fly, and she crashed against the wall.

  He returned to Lisa with his fists. His sweat-drenched face a mask of rage.

  Lisa watched him bare his tobacco-stained teeth; brown saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth. She suddenly felt weak and nauseous. The light in the room dimmed, but a second before the blackness swallowed her, Sandy swung the baseball bat, which issued a sickening thud as it met Rudy’s skull. His body crumpled onto the bed, trapping Lisa’s legs under his dead weight.

  When Lisa awoke, she was on a litter. She turned, and next to her laid Rudy. His face was swollen to the size of a small watermelon. A translucent plastic airway stuck out of his mouth. She raised her head to glance through the ambulance door. Sandy stood with her hands cuffed behind her back.

  The police officer placed his hand over her head to protect it as he put her in the back seat of the squad car.

  When Sandy arrived at the Nevada City Jail, Sheriff Herman Manning listened to his patrolmen’s explanation, and then said, “You guys are out of your minds. Take those cuffs off. That son-of-a-bitch finally got what he deserved.”

  Herman turned to Sandy. “Can I drive you home?”

  “Not home, Sheriff. Drive me to the hospital, so I can see Lisa.”

  “Sure,�
�� he said. “One more thing, Sandy. I can get you an order of protection against Rudy.”

  Sandy studied the sheriff, and, with an innocent smile, said, “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  Chapter Two

  Mike Cooper had grown up in a home with four loving women: his three older sisters, and his mother, Nora. When his Dad, Aaron, died from a cerebral hemorrhage when Mike was ten, a large part of Nora died with him.

  The circumstances surrounding Aaron Cooper’s death were akin to a lightning strike. One morning, he had complained of a headache, and by noon, he’d descended into a deep coma from which he’d never recovered.

  The girls had been more mature, and had simply collapsed into grief, while Mike had been bewildered.

  Nora was an experienced acute care nurse, and understood that Aaron’s condition had been hopeless, but she kept it to herself, an attempt at delaying the shock.

  The children had gathered around Nora in the cavernous ICU waiting room trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

  “Where is he?”

  “Why can’t we see him? “

  ”What’s wrong?”

  “When will he come home?”

  Nora had wiped her face, and blown her nose.

  I don’t have the words she had thought.

  “Your father is very sick. I don’t know if he’ll get better.”

  “What happened?” Lilly, the eldest, had asked.

  “Daddy burst a blood vessel in his brain.”

  “How does that happen?” Mike had wondered.

  “The doctors are not sure, but he may have had a blood vessel that got swollen, like a balloon, and it finally burst.”

  “Can’t they fix that?” Sally asked.

  “Maybe, but all that blood in Daddy’s brain is dangerous.” Nora had hesitated, and then continued, “The doctors think he may not live.”

  “No…No…No,” screamed Emma, who had buried her face in her mother’s lap.

  “Daddy’s going to die?” Mike had whispered.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” his mother said. Tears ran down her cheeks.

  Aaron lingered for three days. After the second electroencephalogram showed no brain wave activity, they had turned off the respirator.

  Mike hadn’t done well after the death of his father. Through the efforts of his mother and sisters, he’d managed to remain functional, although he remained unhappy and bitter. Finally, through the help of their pediatrician, who had embraced the role of Mike’s surrogate father, the boy had been able to move forward toward his newly discovered objective, medicine.

  Over the summer between his second and third year of medical school, Mike worked with Bernie Sax, a hematologist and cancer specialist, an oncologist.

  Patient rounds with Bernie, while fascinating, were disturbing, as hope’s pendulum for these children swung between elation and devastation.

  Bright sunlight streaked over the east bay hills as they arrived at Children’s Hospital of Oakland for rounds on Cathy Green, a nine year old girl with lymphoma.

  The nurses had drawn the shades against the bright morning light. The cot in the corner held the sleeping figure of Marcia Green, Cathy’s mother.

  After years of treatment and contact with adults, Cathy had developed a level of maturity well beyond her age. She lay in bed with her legs drawn into the fetal position. Pale and wasted, she looked as if she was only five or six.

  Bernie Sax and Mike Cooper stood outside the room.

  “I’ve been treating Cathy for two and a half years for Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Bernie said. “We had some initial success, but each time it recurred. I’ve tried everything, including all available experimental drug protocols, but I’ve failed to control the disease. She’s terminal.”

  Mike felt a strong desire to turn away as they entered the room.

  Marcia stirred, rubbed her eyes, and then stood. “Oh, Bernie. I’m sorry. We had a bad night.”

  Bernie embraced her. “How are you holding up?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “It matters, because Cathy needs you.”

  “Have you heard anything from the National Institutes of Health?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, but they don’t have anything for her.”

  “What do you mean ‘they don’t have anything’?” she asked, standing. “They have a dozen studies going, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but Cathy’s had too many forms of treatment. That excludes her from all remaining studies.”

  “I couldn’t care less about their god damn studies. Will they make the drugs available to Cathy on a compassionate release basis?”

  Bernie looked at Mike, and then shook his head. “I’ve studied each drug. They’re either too close to what we’ve tried before, or there’s no reason to believe that any one of them might help. We have to have some rational basis for such a request.”

  “Rational basis.” Marcia shouted. She paused for a moment to regain control, and then whispered, “She’s dying! Isn’t that rational enough?”

  Bernie didn’t respond. He walked to the bed, sat at the sleeping child’s side, and pulled the covers down so he could examine her.

  The child’s appearance left Mike uneasy, and, in addition, his reaction to her illness had him disappointed. Her body was skeletal with atrophied muscles. Her tendons were a textbook perfect anatomical array. Her skin was purple-brown with bloody spots over the entire surface. When Cathy stirred, and opened her eyes, Her prominent, intense blue eyes, two bright beacons in the darkness of night, shocked Mike.

  “Hi, Bernie,” came her weak voice.

  “Hi, sweetie. How are you feeling?”

  “Tired, very tired.” When she looked behind Bernie, her eyes widened as they rose to absorb Mike’s size. “Is that a giant?”

  “This is Dr. Mike Cooper. He’s a medical student working with me for the summer.”

  “Hey, Dr. Mike,” she said, offering her hand.

  Mike moved to the bed, keeping his eyes on this tiny girl. He felt the cold doll’s hand in his palm, and then embraced it.

  “That feels so good, and warm.”

  Cathy looked to Bernie. “How much time do I have?”

  Bernie’s eyes filled, as did Mike’s. “I don’t know, but it’s not too long. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

  “No, I’m just tired. Nothing hurts. I’m okay, don’t worry.”

  “Stay with her, Mike. I want to talk with Marcia outside.”

  “No problem.”

  After they left, Mike sat next to the little girl.

  “Do you have any kids, Dr. Mike?” she whispered.

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  “What do you want, a boy or a girl?”

  “Maybe a few of each, but I’d be overjoyed if I had one just like you.”

  Cathy smiled, touched his arm, and then closed her eyes.

  Mike watched the girl as she slept.

  Her tragedy left him lost in his own thoughts.

  After several minutes, her mouth opened as she inhaled her last breath, exhaled, and then lay still.

  “I don’t know how you do it, Bernie, one sick kid after the next, the pleading eyes of the parents…it’s too much for me.”

  “That’s because you forget what this kind of medicine is all about. Maybe you should go into dermatology.”

  “Dermatology? Give me a break.”

  “If you allow the disease and its outcome to define you, Mike, then it doesn’t matter how smart or hardworking you are, because luck will become the measure of your success. If you judge success by how you help your patients, you’ll always be successful. Death lies too soon on the road for most of my patients. I think we succeed when we pave and repair, and insert a Las Vegas, or a Disneyland along the way.”

  Chapter Three

  Lisa Cooke’s mother, Sandy, came from a strong family tradition of abuse. She, like her brothers and sisters, carried the “that’s the way it is” imprint, and, at an
early age, she could see the festering anger that would allow the passage of this noble practice into the next generation.

  I could never do that, Sandy thought, I couldn’t hurt a fly.

  Paralyzed with fear, Sandy endured Rudy’s lessons on wifely behavior, and suffered as a silent spectator to her daughter’s cruel beatings.

  Lisa’s bruises had attracted the attention of school officials, but each inquiry by the principal or Sheriff Manning only made the abuse worse.

  Finally, the sheriff had forced Rudy into an anger management program in lieu of a month in jail, but no program—not even a well-intended one—could overcome his malevolence and lack of insight.

  After one of Lisa’s worst beatings, while she wept in her mother’s arms, Sandy had voiced the feeble excuses that Lisa had heard too many times before. “It’s just the booze. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Then, there was the worst one; the one that nearly made her puke. “Don’t take it personal. He really loves you; he just doesn’t know how to show it.”

  “Oh please, Mother, how can you believe that?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand perfectly. I know what he’s done to you. I won’t let that happen to me.”

  “Don’t be cruel. He has his problems, you know.”

  “Leave him before he kills one of us.”

  Sandy cowered, as if Lisa had threatened her with a whip. “I can’t do that. Where would we go? What would I do? What would we live on?”

  “What does it matter? We can’t go on this way…at least I can’t. I don’t want to be cruel, Mother; but if you don’t respect yourself, okay, but you should give a damn about me.”

  “Don’t talk to me that way. I’m still your mother.”

  The one thing that Lisa Cooke had taken from her last beating and hospitalization was that Rudy Cooke had gone too far. Sandy wore her motherly concern as a badge of honor, even as she stood witness to Rudy’s brutality toward her family. At the end, however, she had rallied to save Lisa’s life.