The Dark Side - Danielle Steel Page 0,85
and many people were afraid to or didn’t want to get involved. With a three-and-a-half-year-old in this case, Dan didn’t want to let it slide. A child that age couldn’t defend herself, particularly not against a clever mother who hid what she did. He wouldn’t have suggested Munchausen by proxy on his own, but he had read about it, and was fascinated by the disorder. It was his first case of its kind.
He picked up his cellphone and called Cathy’s office number. He gave the receptionist his name but not who he worked for, and Cathy was about to refuse the call when she suddenly wondered if it was someone from CPS being discreet. The woman she’d spoken to the day before had told her that an investigator would call her.
“Yes? Dr. Clark,” she said officially when she picked up.
“Hello, Doctor. I’m Dan Knoll, CPS. I think you know why I’m calling. I have to interview someone in your area early this afternoon. Could I have a few minutes of your time after that?”
“Of course.” She was impressed that he had called so quickly.
“It would usually take me a little longer to get to you, but the subject is young in this case. I don’t like to let those cases sit around. Thank you for reporting it. Interesting situation. Will five o’clock work for you?”
“That’s perfect. My last patient is just a measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, so it should be quick.”
“I can wait,” he said in a smooth, even voice. She couldn’t tell how old he was, but he sounded intelligent, and interested. She could only imagine the shitstorm that would happen when he interviewed Zoe. She would go insane. The world’s #1 super-mom, interrogated by CPS.
* * *
—
When Zoe took Jaime to the allergist Cathy had recommended, he did a number of scratch tests on Jaime’s arms and back. They had to wait in a room for an hour, watching to see what would react to the substances they’d applied, and come up in red blotches and welts. He was an older man and was wonderful with Jaime. He spoke to her with a red clown nose on him the entire time and she couldn’t stop laughing, great big belly laughs, and he asked her innocently why she was laughing at him, and she pointed at the red nose. When he came back into the room for the second time to check on her, he wore a clown wig to go with it, and she laughed even harder, and Zoe laughed too. It was a blessed relief from the shock of Jaime nearly dying two days before. He made it an easy stress-free visit for them.
The result of his skin tests showed that she was allergic to asparagus and eggplant, which weren’t part of her diet. She’d never eaten either, they were easy to identify, they wouldn’t be a problem. She had minor allergies to some pollens, a slight allergy to dust, which he said everyone had. She was allergic to cats and not dogs. And Cathy had relayed her amoxicillin allergy to him. But her allergy to honey was off the charts. And she was as allergic to bees as she was to honey. Either of those allergies could prove fatal, and both were in the anaphylactic range. Her parents would have to carry a double EpiPen Jr for Jaime, and so did the nanny, in case she ever got stung by a bee, at the playground or elsewhere. All of the other allergies were to a lesser degree which might make her sneeze or give her a rash or hives. But bees or honey would close her throat or stop her heart, and adrenaline, steroids, and a powerful antihistamine had to be administered immediately. As the doctor at the hospital had said, the allergist told Zoe that honey was tricky because it was in so many packaged foods and couldn’t always be detected. She would have to ask the question or read the label every time. But other than that, he found Jaime sound, and she said goodbye to “Dr. Clown” when they left and blew him a kiss.
“Come back and visit me sometime,” he said as he waved at her. He and his nurse agreed she was an adorable child. He took his clown nose off after she left.
The doctor reported his findings to Cathy, which she relayed to Zoe and Austin as soon as Zoe and Jaime left his office. The