A Mother's Trial (21 page)

She paused. “Thursday the twenty-third—the day they put down the NG tube, and the twenty-fourth, a real bad night. I remember that no formula was made on the twenty-fourth. What was there had been left out of the refrigerator. That was a mistake by the nurses. And of course there were all the mistakes on the twenty-third—the day two nurses took me to lunch. That was planned long in advance, incidentally.

“I don’t know who mixed the formula on the twenty-third—it was such a stressful day,” she went on. “And Mindy continued to be very ill while I was out to lunch. There was the consultation with Dr. Applebaum, and all the changes in Mindy’s treatment, and Dr. Shimoda apologized to me for making all the changes while I was away at lunch, and then they put the wrong medication in the wrong tube,” she said. She told him about that at length.

“What about the formula?” he asked. “Did you use tap water or distilled water to mix the formula?”

“Tap water,” she said.

“Have you ever seen anyone use distilled water?”

“Yes, someone—I’m not sure who—used it.”

Steve tapped her on the shoulder then. “Ask him about the bottles we sent over—about the sodium chloride.”

“Oh, my husband’s asking about the bottles we sent,” she said into the phone. “Our concern was just the possibility of whether that sodium chloride was used to make the formula, and would that have done whatever was wrong with it?”

“I wish it was that simple. So far the only thing I know about the sodium chloride irrigation is that the percentage of sodium is what would normally be found in the human body,” Lindquist said.

“So that’s not unusual.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if that mixed together with the formula would produce a high sodium. I can’t answer that question. But I know that the mixture that routinely comes in those is point nine percent.”

“I see. I don’t know anything about that so it doesn’t—it didn’t mean enough to me other than that it was a possibility and if that were the case it could have been a total accident. But I guess things don’t come that easy,” Priscilla said.

“No. I’ve been looking for lots of easy answers and there just aren’t any.”

Then he asked her about the afternoon shift change of the nurses on the twenty-fourth, the day before the contaminated formula had been discovered. Did she remember a question about the formula?

“No, I really don’t. I don’t—I can’t think of any kind of conversation at all. I just—I remember expressing a lot of—yeah—like my husband just thinks—fear. I called him in a state of panic and said, ‘You know, I can’t believe it. She’s getting worse and I know you’re waiting for me to come home and eat and I can’t do it.’ I remember that—the only conversation I remember with the nurse at all was indicating that I was upset.”

“How about Debby Roof who was working day shift that day?”

“Yeah. I don’t re—don’t—what—any conversation about formula?”

“Yeah, right. Around the shift change.”

“No. I don’t re—don’t—no—uh-uh,” Priscilla said, hesitating.

“Okay.”

She didn’t remember any formula being made that day, she told him, or anybody asking her how to make it. Because they were all still double-checking with her on the proper amounts to be added to the formula, even on that Saturday when they had moved Mindy to the ICU.

“I don’t have any further questions. If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them for you,” he said.

Priscilla pawed at her forehead. “I have lots of questions—I don’t know how many to even talk about at this point. I’m under a lot of stress because I’m the one who’s suffering the most. My family has obviously lost their child temporarily, and we have a lot of questions, but mainly, why haven’t we been questioned? There are a lot of things we’d like to point out that somehow may change the—shed a lot of light in our favor if you want to put it that way.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like up until Thursday, every time somebody started feeding her, I was cautious—I’d say, ‘No, let’s wait a little longer.’ I was trying to give her the opportunity to get well. And I repeatedly did that—and I can’t help but think things like that are important because if I wanted to put something into her, I wouldn’t be trying to put less in her. I have a lot of questions to raise, like how come it’s not significant that our entire family had viruses the three days between the two hospitalizations? And when Mindy went into the hospital, she put out an awful lot in terms of diarrhea and vomiting in a short amount of time, lost a lot of weight—and if that was induced, why wasn’t her sodium high at that point? A lot of questions like that. I lie awake all night and those things go through my head and it’s like—who do I point this out to—you know, other than you? The one thing I know about medically is electrolytes—because of Tia—that was one of the biggest problems with her. And Mindy—the only thing that really happened before that day or before all that end stuff was that her potassium went really low, but her sodium never went abnormally high to my knowledge.”

“Are you talking about Tia or Mindy?”

“Mindy. Mindy. And Tia’s a whole other ballpark. I mean I understand there’s been some implication at this point—” she laughed nervously.

Then she went on. “To put anything into Tia—that was a medical impossibility. Tia had twenty-four-hour nurses—lots of time there was no privacy for the family because of that. She went weeks without oral intake. And all this is especially distressing because of the loss of Tia—which we’ve never recovered from. And it was not only our loss but a community loss.

“We had a lot of friends and support, and that implication about Tia is the most painful to me—because if anybody looked back it was just a medical impossibility. There were nights with doctors at her bedside for hour after hour with no oral intake and Tia just continually stooling. Maybe if there had been just one consistent person with her in terms of medical personnel or something, then perhaps someone could have induced something into her.”

“Right,” Lindquist agreed. “But there are similarities between Tia and Mindy. And given that both had high sodiums, and given the contaminated formula, just based on that twenty-five-words-or-less statement, one could logically conclude that it’s possible somebody, involving both children, intentionally induced something into their food supply and it’s possible that the parents did, and just on that, it’s—”

“But not knowing the medical facts on Tia, that’s what—”

“Yeah, but just knowing that much, I have to go into the entire history of Mindy and Tia—”

“So, then Tia is part of this investigation.”

“Yeah. That’s no secret as far as I’m concerned. It has to be looked into, but no accusations have been made, at least not by the police department.”

“The only accusation that’s been made to us at this point is by only two doctors,” Priscilla said calmly. “But the whole thing about Tia is very distressing—it didn’t matter what hospital she was in, or whether she was on oral intake and I don’t know—I don’t know enough about what—I don’t know anything about what you would even give somebody to do something like that—but it seems to me that to induce anything into Tia that caused her to be as ill as she was for as long as she was—somebody would have to find something or notice something, or—ah—seen somebody doing something. It’s like my husband says, we brought Tia home with a line in her—a central venous line that went into her heart that nobody’s brought a child home with—that had to be taken care of under sterile conditions, injecting heparin daily, that kind of thing. I mean, we went through every—it’s like we, at that point, totally donated our lives to her—and every moment was spent protecting her—and when you’ve lived through something like that and then you have somebody turn around and say you could have done something to that child—ah—”

“That’s tough. That’s real tough. I wouldn’t trade positions with you for a million dollars,” Lindquist said.

“That’s pretty hard to live with, and at this point—I m sorry—but at this point the way we look at the whole thing is we’ve got something like nine years of a perfect record in this community of being nothing but caring, loving people without a spot on our background, and one bottle of formula—and suddenly we’re the one.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not necessarily the ones. All I’m telling you is that—”

“Well, I know you’re not saying that, but I know other people have, and I have no reason to believe that the doctors at this point are any less suspect than we are—I just wonder how thoroughly things are being looked into.”

“Very thoroughly.”

Then she went on. She reminded him about Mindy’s viral symptoms, and suggested that the sodium level of 160 in Mindy’s blood on Saturday had been a mistake, as she had told Dr. Carte. She told Lindquist about Mindy’s CMV, about all her efforts to enroll Mindy in special programs, about having to leave the baby-sitting co-op because of it.

“Why would we have invested so much in Mindy? It just doesn’t make sense unless, obviously, unless I’m crazy,” she said. “I mean, that would have to be. And that would have to show up in some other aspect of my life, it seems like. And I just—it’s a hell of a lot to live with to have invested your life day in and day out to meet Mindy’s needs and see a lot of improvements and then see this happen.”

“Like I said before, I wouldn’t trade places with you for a million dollars. I’ve been trying to think of how I would feel if knowing in my own mind I’ve done nothing wrong, to have my child taken away from me—I just don’t know how I would deal with that,” Lindquist said.

Beside her, Steve was gesturing wildly.

“Look, my husband’s upset—he’s getting on the other phone,” Priscilla said. After a moment Steve came on.

“I was just trying to explain to you why Tia is a part of this. They never could really diagnose her illness—” Lindquist began.

“They did find things wrong—they did find abnormal things,” Priscilla said.

“They did an intensive autopsy and didn’t find anything,” Steve said, at cross-purposes.

“Right,” Lindquist agreed. “That’s what I just said.”

“Well it sounds to me like hospitals being institutions—they’re walling up—trying to cover their backsides, and I’m really hot about it—” Steve was nearly screaming. “You know we sweated blood, sweat, and tears with that child and because of one high sodium count—”

“One—that’s what we don’t understand—” Priscilla broke in.

“Someone put something in a G.D. formula—it’s bad enough to have this laid on us for the formula thing and to have two doctors—and I won’t mention their names for obvious reasons—lay it on us for her whole illness, and I’m going, ‘Wait a minute, man, what about conjunctivitis, what about the flu I had, and what about this?’—I’m not a damn doctor. That’s why I go to a doctor—”

“Honey—”

“Steve, let me just give you a simple explanation, make you see the logic of the question—” Lindquist put in.

“I don’t see the logic only on the basis that Mindy’s sodium only was high at the end when something crazy happened,” Priscilla interrupted heatedly.

“I see the logic of a group of doctors trying to—-well, I see a different logic—” Steve said.

“Honey, let him—”

“I’m going to listen to what—” began Steve again. Priscilla broke in.

 “I just want to ask you one question. It’s still my understanding that Mindy’s sodium was never abnormally high until the end when they—when they discovered everything.”

“That’s not the case,” Lindquist said.

“But Dr. Carte agreed with me on that point.”

“It’s my understanding that that was not the first time,” Lindquist said.

“I know there was high sodium in her stool—” Priscilla said.

“But her blood—there has never been high sodium—” Steve started.

“—that was Tia’s problem. We’re coming across pretty upset because the doctors are telling us different things—I know her sodium was high in her stools. And Debby kept saying, and Dr. Shimoda, that it was a relief to know that obviously she’s not falling in the pattern of Tia because her sodium’s not so high.”

“Well, I see a close similarity—” said Lindquist.

“No. I think you’re going to find a medical impossibility,” Priscilla said.

“The point is this,” Steve said. “You said you had Mindy’s medical records. Do you have her entire medical records, or do you have what a certain Chief of Pediatrics gave you?”

“No, I don’t,” said Lindquist.

“Well, I suggest you get that information—”

“I agree with that a hundred percent,” Lindquist said.

“Because I smell a big—”

“Honey—”

“You can shade the information to a certain extent. End of comment. Get the whole record, okay?” Steve said.

“Uh-huh. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do, Mr. Phillips. You brought up a very good point—that you can have a self-fulfilling prophecy—or make an assumption at the beginning and then find facts to fit that.”

“That’s right. And that’s what I’m saying a couple of doctors have done,” Priscilla said.

“My intention is to come up with all the facts, and I expect the facts will lead me to an inescapable conclusion. And I won’t reach a conclusion till I’ve done that.”

“I would like to have faith in that,” Priscilla said.

“Well, you can bet on it.”

Then they covered the same ground again. Priscilla pointed out that Mindy’s illness was different from Tia’s if the last three days—when perhaps something was going into her formula—were considered separately. Mindy had not had high sodium before and it would be impossible to induce anything into Tia when she was having no oral intake, particularly at so many different hospitals, she said.

“There just isn’t a common denominator,” Lindquist said with deliberate innocence. The response he elicited was to prove disastrous to Priscilla.

“Obviously the only common denominator is me—and my husband—as her parents, and that’s going to be a common denominator any time there’s something wrong with any of our children. There’s not a day that we weren’t with her so that’s obviously a common denominator. I don’t mind admitting that there’s not a person in the world who wasn’t totally amazed that Tia developed and lived a life in spite of her illness; that was attributed to me. She was a remarkable child who stood out in the minds of everyone because we were with her and gave her as normal a life as you can have with that kind of illness. So you know, that common denominator works both ways,” Priscilla said in a rush.