Saving Meghan(31)

Zach nodded grimly. “She was quite upset when she came to see me. She thinks you’ve sentenced her daughter to death, which could very well be the case if we take your approach, couldn’t it?”

Zach felt good about his retort. It was not too forceful, but carried impact. Then again, rattling Nash was like a wind blowing against a tree—it would take a mighty gust to get her to sway even slightly.

Nash placed a finger to her lips, showing off a strawberry-colored manicure done to perfection. “You’re making this worse for Meghan, for the family,” she said.

“That’s your opinion,” Zach said.

“Did she play you the recording of our conversation?”

“She did,” Zach said.

“And you didn’t find it a bit strange?”

Zach leaned over his desk, arms resting atop Meghan’s hefty medical history. “To be honest, I thought you were a little aggressive with her. Not much bedside manner on display.”

Amanda attempted a smile, but it could not hide the firm set of her jaw. “To be honest with you,” she said, “I was testing her.”

Zach appeared nonplussed. “Testing her how?”

Nash said, “A mother is given news that her daughter might not be deathly ill, that it could be something else entirely, that she may not have a devastating disease for which there is no cure—a disease, by the way, that’s guaranteed to shorten Meghan’s life, perhaps considerably—and it doesn’t even register to her that this could be good news? Why, Zach? Why is that?”

“I don’t know,” Zach said, feeling compelled to take another bite of his protein bar. It was already the end of the day, which meant he was going home to an empty refrigerator and not much of an appetite to do anything about it. He’d probably bang out some sits-ups and push-ups, maybe go for a run, but chances were, he’d put on the TV, grab some journals and his research materials on mitochondrial disease, and read in front of the Red Sox game until he fell asleep on the couch. Rinse and repeat. His mother worried he was losing weight, which he was. Zach worried he was transforming into his father, who had let life’s normal hardships prematurely age him.

“Maybe Becky felt threatened by you,” Zach offered.

“Spare me. That woman knows as much medicine as we do, which I might add should be a red flag for you.”

“Or maybe she’s convinced her daughter is sick because she is sick. You have no proof of anything, Amanda. You’re making a very serious accusation based on some misguided test you devised in your office. I think that’s unfair to Becky and to Meghan.”

If that barrage flustered Nash even in the slightest, she did not let it show. “I think you may be too blinded by your past, Zach, to see things clearly.”

Zach’s eyes narrowed. “Watch your step here, Amanda.” There was a low rumble to Zach’s voice, and he wondered if his warning tone and glowering look might have gotten to her.

Nash shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her eyes flaring momentarily before they cooled. Zach understood he was taking the hard-line approach with Meghan’s case. If he were even a little more open-minded, he’d have to give some credence to Nash’s thinking. In fact, Zach would bet a million dollars he knew what accusation Nash was about to make next.

“It’s Munchausen by proxy, Zach. I’m sure of it.”

Zach suppressed a gloating expression. In essence, Nash had fired the first volley in the coming war for Meghan Gerard’s future. Munchausen syndrome by proxy, aka medical child abuse, was about to become Becky Gerard’s new nightmare—and Zach’s, too, because he was not about to abandon Meghan to Nash, not by a long shot.

Unfortunately for the Gerard family, mitochondrial disease, with its array of puzzling and hard-to-predict symptoms, often aroused doubts and suspicion in the medical community. With a case like Meghan’s, a medical history as long and perplexing as hers, any physician worth their license would be on high alert. Maybe some would think Meghan was after the attention, but the majority would probably focus on the mother, just as Nash was doing.

Zach knew the etymology of the name was a nod to Baron Munchausen, a literary character from the 1800s who told fantastical stories about himself, lifting the art of exaggeration to new and impressive heights. Nash did not have to be aware of the origin of Munchausen syndrome to accuse Becky Gerard of exaggerating Meghan’s complaints or inflicting illnesses upon her daughter for the attention.

As for Zach’s diagnosis of mitochondrial disease, his reputation at White would work against him. The belief around the hospital was that Zach, because of his son’s death, saw mito where others did not. It was understandable that Nash would think he was too biased to call out a case of Munchausen by proxy even if he walked in on Becky injecting Meghan with poison.

“You have no proof.”

“Maybe not, not yet anyway, but I wanted to tell you what I thought to get your take on it.”

“Why?” Zach could see the ambush laid out in front of him. Nash was up to something.

“You know the patient better than I do. I want your take is all.”

Zach turned his head and bit the inside of his mouth to keep from blurting out the first thing that popped into his mind, which would not have been polite.

“I told you what I think. It’s mitochondrial disease.”