The conversation had become almost routine; Sally playing the part of the concerned mother trying to find a husband for her wall flower child, and Leana the part of the stubborn daughter refusing to admit that she was right. It was always done with sincerity and Leana appreciated Sally's concern. But the truth was that Leana never considered herself the 'social' type, preferring to spend her time buried in her work instead of socializing. But it did leave a rather large gap in her personal life, her sex life to be exact, and although not a virgin, she was what you might consider a novice when it came to such things. And the surprising fact of the matter is that by looking at her, one would never have guessed it; young looking for her age, a shapely figure that would draw notice, even though hidden under the myriad of pens, pencils, papers and Doctors coat she wore almost around the clock.
But now was not the time to dwell on Sally's words, Leana thought to herself. She wanted to take a walk over to Dr. Thompson's office and see the patient he'd mentioned to her earlier. Closing the patient file folders and neatly stacking them in a pile next to the other ten or so stacks of files that lined her office floor, Leana headed out for Dr. Thompson's office. The halls of the clinic were slowly clearing out as the day wound down, most people heading home for the weekend, and Leana rounded the corner and walked slowly past the row of emptied desks toward Frank's office. A light rap of the door brought Frank's invitation to come in, and Leana found Frank studying the numerous MRI scans that hung from the lightbox on the wall.
"Take a look at the last one." Frank quipped to Leana, his attention still fixed on the scan he was studying. Leana strolled down to the end of the lightbox and began to scan through the dozen or so images, immediately noticing something very peculiar.
"This is your sleepless patient?" Leana asked.
"Yup." Frank replied, turning to observe her expression.
"And this isn't some kind of prank?" She asked again, with a distrustful smile.
"I'm good, but not that good. Take a look at the various angles, it's real all right." Frank laughed, with his own smile of disbelief.
Her eyes flicked from image to image, noticing the subtle variations of the angles of view, the telltale data for the imaging system databank, and came to realize that it was indeed real.
Sitting deep inside of the man's cranium was... a paperclip.
Leana looked at Dr. Thompson wide eyed, and he laughed at her reaction.
"Yup." He laughed knowingly, sharing his own amazement with her.
"And...?" Leana asked sarcasticallyy, waiting for Dr. Thompson to fill in the details that he had obviously withheld.
"Well, I don't really know. He is... was... a merchant marine by trade and apparently had an operation over ten years ago, stemming from an accident. Somewhere in Africa... he's kinda sketchy on the details, but does remember being in a hospital for some time there. But apparently after he healed enough to be discharged, he never suffered any more problems and never bothered to have anyone here look at him. That was until about 2 years ago when the sleeplessness began." Frank Thompson went on. " Too bizarre... it's a miracle that he's still alive."
"You're gonna go in for it?" Leana asked curiously, staring again intently at the scans in amazement.
"Yup."
"He's gonna lose a lot..." She mumbled to herself, analyzing the damage that had already begun, and the precarious position of the object.
"Well, he won't last much longer if we don't try." Frank said. Leana noticed the slight inflection he'd put on the word 'we', and turned to look at Frank.
"Interested?" Frank asked with a smile.
"Sure, I'd love to. What would you like?" Leana replied.
"Well, I thought maybe you'd like to try those ideas on the modeling you were talking about this morning. I can't think of a better case than this one."
"Definitely." She replied, studying the scan once again. "I can get started this weekend."
"One problem, the patient hasn't consented to treatment yet."
"You're kidding?" Leana said in surprise.
"He'll come around. I'm trying to get him to come back in next week. He's insistent that he have some time to think about it." Frank mentioned, then was interrupted by the chirping of his beeper.
"I'm sorry, I've got to take care of this. Listen, I'll let you know as soon as I get the okay to start work on him." Frank said while grabbing some things from his desk, and lifting his coat from the back of his chair.
"Oh, by the way, this is for you." He said, handing Leana a letter from his desk. "Do me a favor, lock up the office when you're through?"
"Sure." Leana replied. "Oh, and Frank...?" She stopped him as he headed out the door, " ...Thank you."
Leana knew that Frank Thompson was one of the reasons she'd landed her appointment at the University. He'd lobbied hard to get her the spot and she appreciated what he'd done for her.
"Anytime." Frank replied.
Leana stood looking at the scans for a while, contemplating a course of action of testing out her ideas on modeling the procedure. She'd been working on the idea of combining both a three dimensional MRI model along with a three dimensional Angiographic model to provide a more accurate analysis of the surgical strategy in cases such as this, using multiple angioplasty to restrict blood flow and lessen the chances of major blood loss. It was a risky procedure, but in these cases there were few alternatives. It would be nearly 8:00pm before Leana left Dr. Thompson's office, turning off the lights and locking the door as she left.
Chapter Three
As Leana walked down the empty hallway back to her office, she pulled the letter that Frank had given her from her lab coat pocket. It struck her as a rather odd looking letter, appearing worn and somewhat crumpled, as if it had seen the inside of several letter carriers hands before reaching it's destination. And as Leana looked closer, she began to realize why; the hand written address had been penned to an address that she hadn't seen or used for some time. It had been addressed to a mailbox she'd used when she was a resident at the University some four years ago. She opened the letter with curiosity to realize it was a form questionnaire that she'd used when doing work on her residency thesis.
"Wow!" She whispered to herself as she walked, amazed to see the paper and figuring out in her mind how long it had been since she'd received one of the forms. It had been a brief questionnaire directed towards patients that had suffered from lightning strike accidents. While doing her residency, she'd worked on physiological changes in patients who'd been struck, trying to possibly associate some of the interesting side effects they suffered with physical changes to their bodies. Common among the patients were mysterious pains, both internal and external, that couldn't be explained but also in some cases there were some rather odd symptoms; loss of taste, loss of sensitivity to certain things like hot or cold, even a few cases of highly altered sleep patterns.
Sitting at her desk, Leana scanned down the document, reviewing the responses to the questions but not finding anything unusual until the very last. The questions had covered most of the commonly reported symptoms to which all had been marked as negative, but the final question had been designed to give the questionnaire a space to add additional information concerning symptoms not included in the survey. Leana found single word penciled in; OTHER.
It was very intriguing, but also mysterious as the cover page of the questionnaire was missing, leaving no information as to whom it had come from. "Other"... the word began to peck at her curiosity as she looked through the survey one more time, looking to see if she'd missed anything. Leana flipped over the tattered envelope to see if there was perhaps a return address on the back but found nothing. She read through the questionnaire one more time and again found nothing, other than the tantalizing word at the bottom of the page. She looked back to the mystery envelope when she noticed the postmark. It appeared as thought the letter had gotten wet, leaving the stamp only partially legible, with only the zip code remaining. She didn't recognize the number but with her curiosity up, Leana flipped on the power switch of her laptop and waited for her browser to load. She gazed back down at the envelope, enjoying the fun of solving the little mystery, like it was a game, and as the browser loaded she ran a search on one of the map finder sites to locate the zip code. She waited with anticipation as the page began to load, slowly revealing a map of Beaumont County. With another click of the map, it zoomed in further, revealing the small county seat of Clarey. It was then that Leana noticed a small town about 15 miles to the west; Johnson.
"Johnson..." the name sounded so familiar, and then it hit her; Johnson was the name of the town where she'd stopped on her way to her parent's place to see the boy... "God! What was his name!" She thought to herself. "The boy in the window... and the paranoid old woman!" Her heart began to beat a little harder at her realization, as well as the remembrance of how cold the woman had treated her... and of the small face in the window.
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