“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever we can. Monitor him and keep him rested, give him painkillers. But that’s about all we can do until the situation clears up out there. His heart has to work enormously hard to pump blood, and that causes him intense pain. Perhaps that’s where you can help.” He took his time to look at each of them. “After we gave your friend our diagnosis and told him the circumstances we’re facing, Mr. Dupree told us he intends to leave the hospital. He insisted we release him.”
“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” Johnson asked.
“Extremely. Mind you, recovery could happen naturally. But without treatment, if he comes under stress, his left ventricle could rupture. That would mean instant death.”
“Then we can’t let him leave,” Bull said.
The doctor shrugged. “On any other day, I’d keep at him until he was willing to listen to reason, but just look around.” He waved at the crowded hallway. “I need every bed, every stretcher. Any physician worth his salt would find a Takotsubo cardiomyopathy fascinating; I’d love to see how it evolves. But right now, we’re almost out of resources. We’ve had to shut down the air-conditioning because the generator has only enough fuel to keep vital systems functioning. There’s even talk of evacuating the hospital. I’m not going to keep anyone here against his will. It’s up to you to convince him.”
“May we see him?”
“They’re medicating him right now, but you can go in in a few minutes. Before that, we need your cooperation on another matter. The neurologists and psychiatrists treating the woman you brought in want any additional information you might have. They are literally spellbound by the case.” He gave Amaia a wry glance. “Like I said, it’s a freak show.”
Her expression let him know she still wasn’t amused.
“I’ll stay here,” Johnson said, gesturing toward the closed door. “Just in case.”
“I’ll go,” Bull replied decisively, following the physicians.
“So will I,” Amaia said in a tone that left no room for discussion.
“Me too,” added Charbou, giving Amaia a defiant look.
“Where did you find this woman?” one of the physicians demanded as soon as Amaia and the cops appeared.
The silence was palpable. The team members’ faces were grim. Realizing he’d been too abrupt, the doctor paused and started over. “I’m Dr. Stone, head of neurology.” He stepped forward and offered them his hand as he gestured over his shoulder at his colleague. “Dr. Matteau is the chief of psychiatry.”
“How’s the patient?” Bull asked.
The doctors exchanged a glance. “She’s . . . not in bad shape, considering she had a very serious open fracture. We’ve had some problems treating it. The operating rooms are all downstairs, so they’re flooded. When the water started rising, we brought as much equipment as we could to the second and third floors, but even so, our setup isn’t really adequate for surgery. They’re working only on life-and-death cases.” The doctors looked at one another again. “Let’s get down to it: you brought her in. The emergency department told us it had something to do with a kidnapping, so we assumed . . . well, was she the victim?”
Now Amaia and Charbou were the ones to trade glances.
“I’m sure you noticed that despite the seriousness of the injury, she wasn’t complaining. In fact, she wasn’t making any sound at all. We thought she was in shock; some people react that way because they’re terrified by the sight of their own injuries. But we’ve established that she’s in a state of complete analgesia. She shows absolutely no signs, physical or neurological, of feeling pain. We think it’s probably congenital, perhaps hereditary. It would be helpful if you could identify her. That way we can see if we have the medical history of any of her family members in our files. This is an extremely rare affliction, on the order of one in a million.”
Bull nodded. Amaia and Charbou looked down, not in the least surprised.
The physicians exchanged baffled glances once again. “They’ve realigned the fractured bones and applied a splint to immobilize the leg. We administered antibiotics and bound the wound; nothing more can be done until we have a proper operating room. But that’s far from what interests us the most.” He invited them to approach a broad plate-glass window behind him.
They stepped forward. The window gave them a view of a poorly illuminated padded cell. The dimness was attenuated only by the daylight filtering through the blinds on their side of the window. A hospital bed was in the center. The woman stood in a corner, her head lowered and her face partly hidden by her tangled mop of hair. The staff had replaced her rough poncho with a blue hospital gown patterned with tiny white flowers; it made her look even more out of place.
“We did everything we could to keep her lying down. We were tempted to strap her down; we had to immobilize her while treating her leg, but then we decided it would be better to release her. We didn’t want to have to put her under heavy sedation, because that would have made communicating with her virtually impossible. She’s been standing quietly in that corner since then. She’s in a semihypnotic state, similar to that of a sleepwalker, but she does respond to simple questions.”
His colleague took up the thread. “I was hoping you could help us out. We need to know anything you can tell us. We heard she was involved in a kidnapping. If you can, please tell us how long you think she was held and whether she ever received medical treatment.”
Bull swallowed hard. “Well, that’s not exactly how it was.”
“She says her name’s Médora, but all she remembers is her first name. This case is unprecedented. I’ve been practicing psychiatry for twenty years, and I did major research on Cotard’s syndrome, but I’ve never actually seen a case like this.”
Charbou spoke up. “You mean it’s a disease?”
“What did you think?” the doctor said with a smile. “No, don’t tell me; you thought she was a zombie.”
“She said—”
“Of course she did! I know she says she’s dead. I’m from Louisiana too. But that is the textbook definition of Cotard’s syndrome, also known as the delusion of denial or nihilistic delusion. People suffering from Cotard’s syndrome believe they’re dead. Did she say anything else?”
“Just a minute,” Amaia said. “What does all this have to do with being from Louisiana?”
“Only that I’m perfectly aware of the myth that’s behind it. I mentioned that I studied Cotard’s syndrome. I published a paper titled ‘The Delusion of Denial and the Living Dead.’”
Charbou gave Bull a funny look. “So you think Cotard’s syndrome explains zombies?”
“The first case on record was documented by the French neurologist Jules Cotard in 1880. His patient, also female, insisted she was dead. She believed her heart had stopped beating and her organs were decomposing. In some cases, patients are convinced their bodies don’t exist at all and that their spirits are wandering. In the most acute cases, the patients experience olfactory hallucinations and smell their bodies rotting. Some even claim to see worms devouring their flesh. All too often, they stop eating entirely and starve to death.”