The Dark Side - Danielle Steel Page 0,89

see Constance Roberts, who was intelligent, clear, lucid, well-informed, and convincing. There was no doubt in Dan’s mind that Zoe had Munchausen by proxy by the time he had seen Cathy, Austin, and Connie, and he’d believed it from the beginning. But the question was how to prove it or catch her at it. She was too cunning to be obvious about it or get caught easily, like most people with MBP.

He decided to wait before interviewing Fiona, in case she said something to Zoe, and the following week, he met with all the physicians Jaime had seen in her lifetime. Austin had given him the list. The gastroenterologist for her apnea as a baby, the neurologist after the fall off the changing table, the ENT she had lied to, to get the ear tubes put in, and more recently the allergist, the orthopedic surgeon about possible scoliosis, both plastic surgeons, and the ER doctor and surgeon Zoe had tried to push into an appendectomy. Austin didn’t remember their names, but the hospital had a record of them, and both orthopedists who had set Jaime’s arm and wrist in casts. It was a long list, and by the end of it, Dan was more worried than before. The ones that alarmed him the most were the gastroenterologist she had asked about an abdominal feeding tube when Jaime was five weeks old, and the ENT she had lied to, to get ear tubes inserted surgically, claiming Jaime had recurring ear infections when she’d only had two. The back surgeon admitted that Zoe had inquired about steel rods in Jaime’s spine and claimed she suffered from severe backaches, which both Austin and Cathy said wasn’t true. But the back surgeon was no fool.

“She seemed neurotic to me, and very insistent. We get patients with mothers like that. They want surgery for their kids, they want to feel important. They lead boring lives, and they want something major to happen. I never touch them, unless the children genuinely have a severe problem. I either tell them it’s unnecessary, or refer them to someone else. No one needs patients like that. Guaranteed you’ll end up in a malpractice suit or wind up with a nut job on your hands. Plastic surgeons see a lot of them too. They’re lawsuits waiting to happen. In my line of work, most people beg to avoid surgery. With people like that, they want you to operate on them or their children. It’s crazy, but most of them stick out like a sore thumb. She’s supposed to come back in six months, which is just a stalling tactic. I plan to send her on her way then. I avoid patients like her like the plague.” Dan shared what the orthopedist had said with Cathy, and she sounded shocked that Zoe had asked for rods for Jaime and claimed she had backaches, which was a flat-out lie. But it all confirmed what they feared.

“The sad thing,” Dan told her, “is that less reputable doctors, or less alert ones, will perform surgeries they shouldn’t, that’s how a lot of these kids die, from surgical procedures they never needed. The doctors either believed the mothers who were lying, or didn’t know what they were doing. The worst case is a woman who talked a doctor into a gastric tube for her infant, and then moved all over the country and left it in. She used it to pour salt into her five-year-old’s abdomen and killed him. She’s serving life in prison, and her little boy is dead. We don’t want something like that to happen to Jaime.”

“Her father wouldn’t let it, and neither would I,” she said firmly to Dan. “He stepped in when she wanted an appendectomy for Jaime, and they called in a surgeon and he flatly refused after he saw a normal sonogram.”

Dan saw Fiona and was cautious with her. He didn’t ask her any leading questions, or to confirm anything they were worried about. He said that the meeting was entirely confidential and he preferred she not tell her employers about it. All she said was that Zoe was a wonderful woman, an outstanding employer, and an adoring mother, and Austin was a kind, loving father, and he let it go at that. She was not going to tell him anything of value. And that afternoon, he showed up at Zoe’s office. Her assistant asked if he had an appointment, and he politely said he