Chapter 9
Adoctor walked into the ICU room and introduced himself to Bridget. He didn’t look like he could be old enough to be a doctor, but there he was. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Dr. Lyons. You’re her caseworker?”
“Yes. Bridget Ellis.”
“I’m the neurologist on call, and I’d like to take her back for an MRI. The fact that she is still unresponsive is not good. They probably should have done this test last night, but the ER was overrun.”
“Do I need to come with her?”
“It shouldn’t take very long. It will almost take longer to get her up there than it will to do the scan. And you can’t go back with her anyway.”
“All right.” Bridget looked from the still girl back to the doctor. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m concerned about a traumatic brain injury. Something that is putting pressure on her brain and prohibiting her from waking up. We can’t see anything when we look at her eyes, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something in another part of her brain.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“It doesn’t have to be, but if we don’t check and there is a problem, it could cause long-term issues. That’s what I want to avoid. If the scan comes back clean, then we can check that off the list of possibilities and move to the next.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s what we often have to do when a patient presents without a medical history.”
“You’re the ultimate detective.”
“In some ways.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Your signature authorizing the test as a representative of the state.”
“I’ll confirm I can do that with my boss.”
“Do it quickly because if there is bleeding or something else occurring in her brain, I don’t want to continue delaying identifying that.”
When he put it like that, the pressure landed on her shoulders like a weight. She placed the call and got reluctant permission to only approve the MRI.
“You have to call before anything else is allowed.”
“Understood.” She hung up and looked at the doctor. “Where do I sign?”
As she watched a tech prep Jane Doe for transport, Bridget hoped she’d made the right choice.
She didn’t have a real choice when the girl remained still.
Bridget wished Todd would return. He’d been gone all morning, and she felt the walls of the small hospital room closing in.
Other than signing a paper, she hadn’t done anything all day.
However, she wouldn’t abandon Jane. The girl needed someone to fight for her, and Bridget would be that person, no matter how long or uncomfortable the process.
As the tech wheeled the bed down the hallway, Bridget pulled out her phone and called Todd. When he picked up, she felt her shoulders relax at the sound of his voice.
“Everything good?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” She made herself stop. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like a nag.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please tell me you’ve learned something.”
“Yeah, we did. Sorry, we’ve been chasing down leads, or I would have called sooner.”
She didn’t bother to point out that he hadn’t called her. “What do you have?”
“I think your Jane Doe’s name is Eliza Brandenberg.”
Her stomach dropped. “Any relation to Bill and Odette Brandenberg?”
“Those are her parents.”
“Were her parents.” She wanted to slap her forehead.
“What do you mean?” His tone had sharpened as if she had his full attention.
“I’m pretty sure they were the couple killed in a car accident outside Omaha about a week ago.”
“A few days ago?” His voice was louder, probably than he realized. She had to pull the phone away from her ear.
“Yeah. I’d have to double-check, but I don’t remember anything in the articles about them having a daughter. Just something about a son who had died in the last year.”
“Wow. That’s the family.”
“How do you know?” She could barely keep up as he told her about finding the backpack and then talking to a school principal. “You did all of that this morning?”
“It’s been full.” She could hear clicking as if he were on a computer while they talked. “Where did you say the accident was?”
“Somewhere near Omaha. Maybe a week or two ago. I just remember how sad it was that the couple died.” She grimaced as she realized how harsh that sounded. “It’s always sad.”
“But I know what you mean.” The clicking continued. “Why can’t I find anything about the deaths?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was across the river in Iowa?”
“It should still show up. How many times are there links to tragedies like that, a couple of states away?”
“True.” She too often let herself get sucked into other people’s pain that was remote from her life. “If they died a week ago, where has Jane or Eliza been this whole time?”
“I’ll keep looking. There must be a report if that’s what happened.”
“What was the principal’s name?”
Todd gave it to her. “What are you going to do?”
“I need to find people who might be willing to take her in once we get her healthy enough to leave the hospital. If we’re piecing together her story, the last thing Eliza needs is foster care on top of everything else.
” What Bridget really needed was for the girl to wake up so she could tell Bridget what had happened.
“There has to be more to the story.” It didn’t make sense for someone to come into the hospital.
“Why would someone try to harm her last night?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll see what I can figure out.”
Todd didn’t know how to tell her that he hadn’t wanted to spend an extended time in security with Ben Rice.
Sure, they’d been good friends during their National Guard days, but Ben knew the parts of Todd’s life that he’d walked away from, the parts that could fill him with shame if he didn’t remind himself about the goodness of God in covering all his past.
He didn’t want to think about what a woman like Bridget would think if she knew about the things he’d done. The way old Todd had treated women. He wasn’t proud of his old behavior and worked hard to become a new man, one worthy of his Savior.
None of that changed the fact that he needed to get into that room and review last night’s video. He couldn’t begin to answer the question of why someone had tried to hurt Eliza if he couldn’t identify who was in the room. Nothing made much sense on this case.
Why should he expect it to start?
He knocked on the security door and then entered. He tried to hide his reaction when Ben Rice sat in front of the bank of monitors. “You still here?”
Two empty coffee cups sat in front of Ben. “Guy called in sick. Ready to look at the video from last night?” His voice was admirably steady despite all the caffeine he had consumed.
“Yes, the time would have been within ten or fifteen minutes of eleven o’clock.”
“So about the time you arrived?”
“Watching me?” That didn’t feel creepy.
“No, but I figured if I identified when you arrived, the event had to happen around then.” It wasn’t a bad supposition.
“Eliza. . .”
Ben’s brows crinkled together. “You mean Jane Doe?”
“We identified her this morning. With about eighty percent accuracy.” Give or take.
“Eliza Brandenberg was in ER bed five. At around eleven p.m., an unknown white male entered her room and was seen standing over her, possibly administering a syringe of fentanyl. We’re unclear on exactly what was in the syringe. ”
“Is that about the time the caseworker left and came back? A guy about five ten?”
“Yes, on the social worker, unsure about the perp.” Todd stood back and crossed his arms. “How much time have you already spent on the videos?”
“Enough to think I’ve isolated the incident.” There was an edge, maybe of pride, to Ben’s voice.
“Okay. Show me.” Todd tried not to be annoyed at how much Ben had figured out on his own.
The man held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “Hey, don’t get mad at me. It’s been a slow morning. I figured you’d be back eventually, and I was trying to stay awake. It can be boring in here.”
The words were right, but Todd didn’t quite believe the man. He’d give him the benefit of the doubt for now because he needed to see the video, but he’d remember this.
“This is about the right spot.” Ben looked from the sheet of paper in front of him to the timestamp on the screen in the center.
He pointed at the screen. “Here’s your social worker leaving.
I’ll speed it up, and now you see a man slip in.
He’s in scrubs, so he doesn’t stand out, but I think he’s holding something at his side.
See how his arm is unnaturally stiff there. ”
Todd leaned forward and nodded. “Yeah.”
“I can’t see what’s happening in the room.
It’s odd because the camera’s out and it shouldn’t be.
But then the social worker goes in again before he leaves.
She pauses and then gets agitated. See how she says something to someone out in the hall.
The next thing she goes in and then a minute later he’s out. ”
“Where does he go from there?”
“I’m not sure. I lost him on the next floor.”
Todd studied him. “Take me through it.”
Ben spent the next five minutes flipping from video to video, then ran through it again until Todd had to agree with him. The man disappeared.
“Take a photo of the clearest shot of his face you have. Then we’ll turn that into something we can circulate. See if we can get an ID.” He handed Ben his card. “Email it to me when you have it.”
“Where are you going?”
“Upstairs. I have a social worker to update.” He leaned over and took a snapshot with his phone, then strode out as Ben watched from his chair.
He sent the image to Caleb.
See if you can identify this man.
Maybe they were starting to get a break.
He felt a ray of hope as he quickened his pace. That had to be what made him excited to see Bridget. He’d keep deluding himself.