Intervention by Robin Cook Page A

Anything like that happen recently?”
    “Heavens, no,” Mrs. Abelard repeated more forcefully.
    “So she’d been completely well up until yesterday. No neck aches or headaches.”
    “Well, now that you mention it, she did complain of some recent headaches. She’s been under stress because of a new job.”
    “What kind of work?”
    “Advertising. She’s a copywriter for one of the up-and-coming ad agencies in the city.
    It’s a new position, and a bit of a stressful situation. She’d been laid off recently, so she was feeling pressure to do her best in her new position.”
    “Did she say where the headaches were centered, like in the front or back of her head?”
    “She said they were behind her eyes.”
    “Did she do anything about them?”
    “She took ibuprofen.”
    “And . . . did it help?”
    “Not very much, so she asked one of her friends, and the friend recommended a chiropractor.”
    Jack sat up in his chair. In the far reaches of his mind, he recalled a case he’d read about in an issue of the Forensic Pathology Seminars involving a chiropractor and stroke.
    “Did Keara go to this chiropractor?” Jack asked, while trying to recall the details of the published case. He remembered it dealt with the vertebral artery dissection, just as he’d found that morning in Keara.
    “She did. As I recall, it was this past Thursday or Friday.”
    “Did the visit help her headaches?”
    “It did, at least initially.”
    “Why did you say ‘at least initially’?”
    “Because the headache located behind her eyes went away, but then she got a different one in the back of her head.”
    “You mean like the back of her neck?”
    “She said the back of her head. Now that I’m remembering the discussion, she also said she had a bad case of hiccups she couldn’t get over, and they were driving her crazy.”
    “Do you happen to know the name of this chiropractor?” Jack asked, as he supported the phone receiver in the crook of his neck. With his hands free, he went on the Internet and Googled “dissection, vertebral artery.”
    “I don’t. But I do know the name of the friend who recommended the doctor.”
    “You mean the chiropractor,” Jack said reflexively, then regretted it. He didn’t want to take any chances of upsetting Keara’s mother. While the man may well have been a doctor of chiropractic, Jack knew many people thought they were medical doctors. Jack was leery of chiropractors, although he admitted he didn’t know too much about them.
    “Her name is Nichelle Barlow,” Mrs. Abelard said, indifferent to Jack’s comment.
    “Thanks for your cooperation,” he said, writing down the number. “You’ve been so generous, especially under such trying circumstances.”
    Replacing the receiver, Jack stared blankly at the wall. Seventeen years ago when his first wife and children died, he remembered how long he had been in denial as friends and family had called. Shaking his head to free himself from such morbid thoughts, he forced himself to turn his attention to his computer screen, but he couldn’t concentrate.
    Instead he recalled the scene a couple of nights previous, of John Junior sobbing with what he and Laurie worried was bone pain from the tumor in the marrow cavities of his long bones. His tiny, perfectly formed infant hands seemed to gesture toward his legs as if hoping his parents could provide relief, but of course they couldn’t.
    “Shit!” Jack yelled at the ceiling in hopes of shocking himself out of his downward-spiraling self-pity. At that point, a head poked in through the open doorway. It was Dr.
    Chet McGovern, Jack’s former office mate.
    “Is that a reflection of your personal state of mind,” Chet joked, “or a general assessment of the current stock-market trend?”
    “All of the above,” Jack said. “Come on in and take a load off.” Despite being preoccupied, Jack welcomed the diversion.
    “Can’t do,” Chet said, with a lilt to his voice. “I met