Cell (10 page)

WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

TUESDAY, JULY 1, 2014, 10:41
A.M.

S
al DeAngelis glanced up at the clouds scudding across the sky.
What a great day
, he thought. He was dressed in a red T-shirt that had
I L
OVE
M
Y
O
LDSMOBILE
emblazoned across the front in white lettering. It was a gift from his oldest sister, Barbara, and happened to be his favorite piece of clothing. It was the same red as the exterior of his ride, and the off-white lettering matched the upholstery.

Sal carried a can of car wax in one hand and a toolbox in the other in case he came across something that needed repair. He had washed the car, and now it was time for a wax. He had only a vague sense of when it had last been waxed and couldn't pin the exact date down. The reality was it had been the day before and the day before that.

He started on the grillwork, intending to proceed to the hood and front fenders. But he would never make it that far. All of a sudden an unpleasant feeling spread through his body. It was a sensation he used to experience frequently before iDoc entered the picture, when he would forget to eat on a regular basis. Since iDoc, such episodes had been a thing of the past. But now the sensation was back, and back with a vengeance.

He put down the can of car wax, tossed the polishing rag onto the hood of the car, and made a beeline for his apartment. Inside he went directly to the refrigerator and grabbed the half-gallon container of orange juice he had just bought. With shaking hands, he filled a glass and gulped it down. He stood still, waiting for the dizziness to recede.

Unfortunately he didn't feel any better. With some difficulty he poured another glass of OJ. When that had no effect, he panicked, especially since he had begun to sweat profusely.

Dashing into the bathroom, he stared at his reflection. Perspiration was now literally drenching his face, and he could feel his pulse in his temples thumping rapidly. This was bad.

He dashed back out to the car, where he had foolishly left his phone. Even before he got to the car he heard his phone's honk. Relieved at having his doctor available, he held the phone in front of his face. His hands were so sweaty that iDoc couldn't make a biometric read of his fingerprints, so it automatically switched to visual verification. Finally, his iDoc doctor avatar appeared on-screen.

“Sal, we're on speakerphone again,” Dr. Wilson said. “Can I speak openly?”

“Yes!” Sal shouted at the phone.

“I can tell you're very anxious. I suggest you lie down.”

“Something's wrong! My blood sugar is out of whack.”

“Nothing is wrong,” Dr. Wilson answered in his calm, reassuring voice. “You're agitated. You need to lie down.”

“I need sugar,” Sal shouted back at the phone.

“Your sugar levels are normal,” iDoc stated soothingly. “Please, Sal. Go inside, lie down, and close your eyes.”

“Screw that!” Sal blurted. He knew he was getting worse, despite the orange juice. Dang it all, iDoc wasn't working right. Damn computer glitches! Maybe he even screwed it all up himself. He might have broken that thing they put in him when he was bending over waxing the car. Sal pulled his T-shirt up to inspect the small, narrow pink scar on the left side of his lower abdomen. His anxiety growing, he tossed his phone onto the front seat of the Oldsmobile and massaged the pink scar with his fingertips. He'd always been afraid to touch the area, but now he pinched it, feeling the square, waferlike object implanted under his skin.

With sudden resolve, he bent down and opened his toolbox, rifling through his collection and sending screwdrivers and wrenches clattering to the concrete floor of the carport. There it was! His utility knife. He extended the razor-sharp blade, then looked back down at the thin scar, evaluating it. Abruptly changing his mind, he turned and ran.
George!

Sal pounded hard on George's front door, nearly shaking it off its hinges. There was no response. Sal's anxiety level shot off the scale. He gasped for breath. On top of everything else, his COPD was acting up, causing him to wheeze.

“George! George! Open up, it's an emergency!” George's door didn't open but the door to the adjacent apartment did.

“What the fuck, dude!” An angry, sleepy Joe stood in his doorway, sporting a pair of paisley boxers and nothing else. He looked at Sal: wild-eyed and clutching an open utility knife. “Whoa!” Joe immediately took a step back into his apartment, pulling the door halfway closed. “I'm trying to sleep, you crazy old fart!”

Unlike George, Joe had never found Sal worthy of sympathy and, having been awakened after a night of wild sex, he regarded Sal with irritation and disgust.

A naked tattooed young woman had come up and was peeking over Joe's shoulder.

“What the hell are you doing disturbing everybody!” she yelled at Sal.

Sal didn't respond. Instead he sprinted away, tearing down the path to his Olds. He yanked open the driver's-side door. For a moment the world spun. He was forced to wait until the vertigo passed. As the sensation subsided, he climbed behind the steering wheel, still clutching the knife in his right hand. Securing the lap belt he'd retrofitted in the vintage vehicle didn't cross his mind. He turned the key and the engine roared to life. At least the Olds wasn't going to let him down. He was vaguely aware of the muffled voice of iDoc Dr. Wilson, still trying to get him to go into the house and relax.

Sal threw the car into reverse and backed up too fast, colliding with the trash cans lined up opposite his parking space. Unconcerned, he put the car in drive and careened down the street. His mental capacity was deteriorating quickly as he tried to get to the L.A. University Medical Center. They had an ER and would help him. George would be there, too. Without thinking about what he was doing, Sal hiked up his T-shirt and used the utility knife to try to cut open the scar on his left side. He had to get the damn device out!

Sal had been told what they were embedding in the fatty tissue just under the skin of his abdomen, but he didn't really understand. He was leery of all things high-tech but had trusted that the doctors knew what they were doing. Now something had gone wrong. What he sensed on an intuitive level was that the damn thing in his belly was killing him, and he wanted it out. He felt no pain as he cut into his tissue.

Irrational as it was, a part of his compromised brain was horrified by the narrow jets of blood spurting onto the Oldsmobile's white leather upholstery. But he had no choice. Gritting his teeth, Sal pushed the blade in as far as it would go and then drew it laterally. He could feel the tip scrape across plastic or metal.

Sal knew the route to the medical center by heart. He sped up. Suddenly there was a sickening sound of metal against metal, and he felt the shudder of his car as it ricocheted off a vehicle parked along the street.
Jesus!
He used the back of his right hand to try to wipe the sweat from his eyes while still holding the utility knife. Suddenly he was bouncing along the sidewalk without knowing how he got there. He wrenched the steering wheel to the left, sending the Olds careening back onto the street, clipping the back end of a parked Mercedes. Now he was driving into oncoming traffic; horns blasted as Sal yanked the car back into his own lane.

Sal thrust his index finger inside the four-inch gaping wound, feeling for the implant. Just as the tip of his finger touched the edge of the object he glimpsed the red blur of a traffic light. Its message no longer registered in his brain, and he sailed through the light and onto Wilshire Boulevard. He was totally oblivious to the cacophony of metal slamming into metal.

“Hey! Watch out!”

The loud yell came from less than a foot away. Sal jerked his head up. He had arrived at the hospital. A man on crutches, crossing the street, whom he had almost hit, had just screamed at him. Sal slumped his weight to the right. At that point it was all he could manage to do, using his body weight to turn the wheel in that direction. The car swerved and jumped the curb, crashing through a privet hedge, still moving at over forty miles per hour.

Sal's foot no longer responded to the feeble messages sent from his brain and remained heavy on the accelerator. Shocked parking valets dived out of the way as the Oldsmobile plowed across a patch of grass on a direct path toward them. Their abandoned valet stand exploded into a mass of flying wooden shrapnel as the car-turned-ballistic-missile blasted through it on its way toward the floor-to-ceiling windows of the contemporary-designed ER.

The Olds knifed through the plate-glass wall and bounced across the ER's marbled foyer, barely missing the department's stunned concierge greeter, frozen in her tracks, digital tablet in hand. The car zipped by Debbie Waters's command post and smashed into a massive LED screen displaying a slide show of the medical center. The vehicle crashed into the screen's supporting concrete, its back end rearing up in the air before slamming back down onto the marble floor.

The old car was not equipped with an airbag. Sal was launched through the car's disintegrating windshield like a rocket-propelled grenade. Headfirst his body buried itself into the display board. He was killed instantly.

Sal's smartphone followed him through the windshield, deflecting off a shard of glass that sent it skidding across the sign-in desk and into the lap of a shocked Debbie Waters.

For a split second no one in the emergency department moved. Then, as if a television image had suddenly been un-paused, all hell broke loose.

EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT

L.A. UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

TUESDAY, JULY 1, 2014, 11:07
A.M.

G
eorge felt and heard the tremendous crash. His first thought was
earthquake.
He'd felt a few temblors in his three years in Los Angeles, but this didn't seem to fit the bill. It was too localized. His mind raced through the other possibilities, arriving at the one option almost everyone considered these days: Was it a bomb? A terrorist act? All around him, people were leaping out of their seats and heading for the door.

Dust and smoke streamed through the shattered floor-to-ceiling windows. A trail of debris was strewn across the lobby, ending at the smoldering wreckage of an automobile at the base of what had been the ten-foot-high LED screen. Three staffers had surrounded the fuming hulk of the vehicle and were dousing it with fire extinguishers. Patients who had been waiting to be seen were either scrambling to get out the entry doors or were standing immobile, staring vacantly at the scene with shock. Luckily, it appeared that no one, either patient or employee, had been hurt in the crash.

George noticed Debbie Waters trying to get things organized, pointing here and there with a cell phone in her hand, as if it were a conductor's baton. George scanned the room, coming to rest upon the wrecked vehicle. He froze, recognizing the car immediately, even in its mangled state. Its vintage and rarity left few conclusions for George to draw. His eyes moved past the large fragmented windshield to where a number of orderlies and doctors were extracting a mutilated body.

Rushing forward, George got a look, better than he really wanted. It was Sal. His body was a mess, with major head and torso damage. But George knew it was his friend, and the familiar T-shirt clinched it, even if Sal's face was unrecognizable. As they pulled the body free, it was placed on a gurney and rushed down to one of the trauma rooms.

At that instant the Los Angeles Fire and Police Departments invaded the ER. A number of firemen in full gear came in through the missing windows. Senior hospital officials arrived as the remaining patients were escorted away from the debris.

George rushed down the main hallway, grabbed one of the portable X-ray machines, and pushed his way into the trauma room where they had taken Sal. By the time he got there the doctors had decided that the patient was beyond saving, mostly due to the massive head trauma.

“No ID. At the moment anyway,” the head of the trauma team said to the ER nurse holding a tablet in her hand, entering notes. “List him as a John Doe—”

“His name is Sal,” George interrupted. “Salvatore DeAngelis. He lives at 1762 South Bentley Avenue, apartment 1D.”

The group turned to him with surprised, quizzical looks.

“He is my neighbor.”

George walked off down the hall as Sal's body was covered by a white sheet. Another iDoc patient was dead!

•   •   •

S
o, other than his Alzheimer's symptoms,” the LAPD detective said to George, “were there indications of any other factors at play? Drugs, alcohol?” The detective was trying to be gentle, obviously picking up on the fact that George had an emotional attachment to the victim beyond being a neighbor.

“No. Nothing,” George replied. He was at a table in the ER staff lounge, his head in his hands, still trying to digest what had happened. The detective, seated across from George, was typing notes into his smartphone.

“Had he been drinking much lately?” he asked. “I mean, did he drink during the day as far as you know?”

“No. Sal didn't drink alcohol, not even beer.”

“Were you aware he had been diagnosed with depression and was taking medication to treat it?” The detective asked.

“No—I mean, he hadn't mentioned it. But I wouldn't have expected him to, either. A lot of people, even someone as open as Sal was, don't talk about psychological problems. He was a gentle, seemingly cheerful guy. I've never known him to have ever done anything reckless or illegal.”

“I understand.” The detective took some more notes.

George eyed the policeman's phone, noticing a thin red bar across the top of the display face. Even though he was reading upside down, he was pretty sure the word in the bar was
RECORDING
.

“Are you taping this?” George asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” the detective replied. “It makes things easier later. People tend to forget details.” He glanced up.

“Don't you have to ask my permission first?” George asked. He was surprised and, needing something to take his mind off the reality of Sal's death, found himself irritated that he was being recorded without his knowledge.

“No. It doesn't work that way,” the detective responded offhandedly. He returned to his line of questioning. “Were you aware that Mr. DeAngelis had an appointment here today?”

George ignored the question. “If you're recording the conversation, why are you taking notes, too?”

The detective stopped typing and looked up. “I take notes of my initial thoughts of questions that may not be appropriate at the time. Or maybe my own reaction about something that was said. I know how to do my job, Dr. Wilson. As I assume you know how to do yours.”

“I'm sorry,” George said. “I'm upset.”

“It's okay.”

“Anyway, I was not.”

The detective looked confused. “You were not what?”

“I was answering your question. You asked me if I was aware that Mr. DeAngelis had an appointment at the medical center today. I was not. I knew he had been coming here for tests recently, but he hadn't shared the details about them, and I didn't ask. We have HIPAA rules. A right to privacy. That extends beyond these walls.” George had done his fair share of violating HIPAA rules, especially after Kasey had passed away, but without knowing why, he wanted to rub this guy's nose in it. “You probably shouldn't have even told me he was taking medication for depression when you get right down to it. I'm not his personal physician. His current doctor is a . . .” George motioned to the detective's cell phone. He trailed off, unsure of just what he meant to say.

“Is a what?”

“Nothing. It doesn't matter.”

The detective stared at George in silence. “His family,” he finally said, moving on to another topic.

“Estranged at some level. I'd met his two sisters once. Actually I had been thinking about trying to contact them this week.”

“Why was that?”

“Because Sal's Alzheimer's was advancing. I was hoping to get them involved in his life.”

The detective nodded. “Okay.” He stood up. “I think I have the gist of it. Thanks for your help.”

“Sure. What is the ‘gist' that you got, anyway?”

“That the man got confused and overwhelmed while driving his vehicle. Likely due to his Alzheimer's. And a tragic accident resulted. We're lucky no one else was injured. Or killed. Remember that crash out at the Santa Monica farmers' market a few years back? A gentleman, in his mid-eighties, I think, plowed his car right through the market's produce stands, killing nine people, including a three-year-old girl. Another fifty-some people were injured. By comparison, we got off easy here today.”

“Yeah. Easy,” George mumbled.

“Thanks again for your time.” George watched the officer turn off his phone and then leave.

•   •   •

G
eorge made his way back to the ER reading room and threw himself into a chair. Carlos was glad to see him, since a number of X-rays needed review. George thought keeping busy might be the best thing he could do to feel better. He delved into them but struggled to keep his mind focused. He had the paranoid feeling that death was mocking him. He knew such thoughts were irrational, but that didn't make them any less disturbing.

“There's one more,” Carlos said, bringing up an X-ray of an arm fracture on the monitor. “I think it's a—”

“Excuse me,” George said, cutting off Carlos as he abruptly stood. “I need to step out a moment.”

Carlos looked at him surprised. “Yeah. Sure. Everything okay?”

George remained silent a moment. “Not really.” He turned and left the room.

“Will you be back soon so we can finish?” Carlos called, but the door had already closed, and George apparently hadn't heard him.