Chapter 196: Smart Baby Babble

Wonder what has Steve walking on air today?

“Hey Steve. I know I haven’t seen you this happy before. Did you two have good weekend?” I asked.

“Having to clean Paula up each time the food went right through her, over a dozen times, wasn’t fun, but it was also the worst thing we had to face. I never changed or bathed Paula when she was a baby or toddler, her mother emphatically declaring it inappropriate for a father to touch, or even see up close, his daughter’s genitals. If I wasn’t so naïve back then I would’ve realized she was bat shit crazy,” Steve said. “You see, my ex-wife had me working myself to the bone so we could just barely afford to go to the social functions she decided we must attend if I was going to move up the corporate ladder. I only saw Paula for very short periods of time up until around the time she refocused some of her attentions from social status to making our life miserable. This past weekend was a joy that further deepens my hatred for my ex-wife. I got to experience her being a toddler who had just learned to say ‘what that’ as she pointed at something. You can’t fathom the intense joy it gave me to answer her questions and watch it unlock something in her brain. Never once did I have to tell her who her mom was in any of the pictures in the photo albums, not even those of her mom as a baby. She remembered all of those and would point to them and with pure venom in her voice, to call her a bitch. Not even a second later she was all bubbly and happy when pointing to anyone else in the picture, even cousins she has always disliked for one reason or another. I also didn’t have to tell her who you were. The first one we found was from the birthday party where my wife began her crusade against you. Paula hobbled off, as quickly as her body would allow, to go get it from her room. I’m pretty sure you never knew it, but that was the only doll Paula ever wanted and has ever had. It stayed with her the entire weekend. Whenever she saw a picture with you in it, she had this amazing, bright, beaming smile. I don’t think she was even doing it consciously. That is not to say that she didn’t get her share of the never-ending variations of the unrealistic, disproportioned blonde doll and accessories as gifts, but those were always regifted at the next birthday party of a girl. Well, all but one which she found out was a limited run and a manufacturing mistake at that. She donated that to one of the children’s cancer center’s annual silent auctions. It sold for over a million dollars. We filled the rest of our weekend with her giggling and babbling away. She even crawled up into by bed because she had a bad dream. That was something else her mom prohibited.”

Not how I would even want anyone to get back some of the moment they missed when their child was young, even if she isn’t knee high or a little one you can toss up in the air as they giggled away happily. He does look every bit the happy papa.

The doors to the area restricted to staff, patients, and exceptions like me, closed behind me a girl about eight came running at me as fast as her little naked body would let her. She was trying to make something that sounded like she was trying to talk, but they weren’t intelligible. At the far end of the hallway a nurse and orderly rounding the corner at a quick trot. Before the girl got to me a nurse managed to grab her. The girl screamed her lungs out as she hit and kicked with everything she had. Like a lard covered piglet she managed to get free of the nurse to continue heading right at me. My reflexes were much faster than the nurses or orderly. Down on one knee, with my arms outstretched, I pulled her into my arms before she realized she was no longer running away.

“Gotcha,” I said as I very gently pulled her to me.

Her arms were around my neck and her legs around my stomach. She buried her face in my chest.

She is really freaked out. This girl is completely terrified.

When the nurse and orderly came up to us I saw the orderly reach for the girl. I don’t know if he had heard about me or her brain was fast enough to process that I was standing at my full height as I made sure he saw my muscles. Whatever it was, he backed away quickly.

“One question,” I said. “What level is she on the autistic spectrum?”

Both looked at me like I was speaking one of the other languages I knew and only a few others in the world still understood.

“Where can I find the head doctor, big wig, head honcho, you know, the top person here with a medical license responsible for supervising the staff. The person listed as a co-defendant on every malpractice lawsuit filed against anyone on staff working here,” I asked.

So, I wasn’t speaking a strange language they don’t understand. Only one person makes hospital staff go pale when someone asks where they can find them.

As soon as they gave me directions, they quickly made themselves scarce. None of them challenged me taking the young naked girl, who I was holding protectively, off toward that office. It was obvious a business office versus a doctor’s office. When he came out of his office, he was wearing a starched, obviously never used outside of this office, lab coat with a named sewn into it starting with Dr and ending with M.D. He got right up in front of me.

“Just who the hell do you think you are walking into my office carrying a naked female patient,” he demanded to know after telling someone to call security.

Take a guess, based on the personal objects on her desk, I said in Romanian, “Better call this companies lawyers, all of them, first. Then call security. It will get you on the top of their favorite person list. They will want to have someone up here to make sure security doesn’t screw things up as badly as the incompetent staff on the floor where I caught her as she looked to be running for her life.”

Only after she replied that they did have a hot-button for their lawyers for shit hitting the fan moments, I turned to the head man to say, “Come with me so I can answer the video conference call waiting for us in your conference room.”

When Molly’s expressionless face came up on the video conference screen I explained, “Starting now, you have thirty minutes to convince my friend Molly why you shouldn’t be the sole defendant, due to your primary supervisory responsibilities, on a lawsuit regarding the gross mistreatment and abuse of patients with mental disabilities? Specifically, your staff’s treatment of patients with Autism, like the scared young girl clinging to me as if her life depends on it.”

Security came rushing in. All I needed to do was snarl, since the place in my head had placed an image in their heads of a pack of hungry pit bulls chasing them into a dark alley full of rabid Dobermans and Rottweilers. They did take up positions to ensure I didn’t leave with the patient, or do anything to harm her, they didn’t approach me.

That is a lot of lawyers coming into the conference room.

I got very odd looks as they each looked at the naked girl clutching me like a baby monkey.

“This is preposterous. I will not permit a child molester to take over my office,” he boomed.

Dumb shit. The only part of me that has touched her anywhere near her pussy is my forearm supporting her tiny butt.

I’ve never really had the chance to see what Trudy’s mom meant about my eyes having some of odd effect on people. When my eyes locked on his I saw his attitude change instantly.

“You will tell everyone to be seated. This is the call you want to take. You will not mess your pants,” I said with a wave of my hand.

I didn’t expect that it would really work.

I doubt I will ever know if that worked or he realized if he didn’t want to end up completely fucked by the lawyers throwing him under the bus, he had better get things underway.

The admin assistant, the same who made the phone calls, came with a blanket for the girl. She let me put her down long enough for the woman to wrap her up in it. Her arms were up on the air for me to pick her back up. She was sound asleep as soon as her head laid against my chest.

With Molly waiting patiently to get this show on the road, I decided to twist the lawyer’s panties in a knot.

“Have any of you happened to hear about the Molly Speaks app for non-verbal, or those who chose not to speak, to be able to communicate with the rest of us by interacting with fast moving patterns that they somehow understand? If not, go ahead and look it up while we wait to start,” I told them.

One of the lawyers, who looked pretty senior given her Rolex, having a Rhodium dial with a three carat Musgravite center stone surrounded by one carat Alexandrite stones, and rare four carat Pinite mounted in an oval of Rhodium and surrounded by Red Beryl, asked me why I was asking.

“So are you aware of the app then,” I asked ignoring her question.

She did her best to remain a seasoned, stone-faced, cold, unshakable lawyer at the top of her profession, but got a bit misty eyed with tears of happiness when she said, “I’ve spent millions of dollars trying to find a way to reach into my brilliant son’s mind. Out of the blue he brings me my phone with a hundred-dollar app that has done what the best medical minds in the world could not. If you tried to use the three-level Autistic Spectrum to grade his Autism, he would be a five. This inexpensive app has opened a doorway into his world which we would never have gotten without the app.”

“That app is tied to the main reason why I am here holding the precious little non-verbal autistic girl in my arms. In the last week it has become obvious that many of your medical professionals here, from the chief of staff all the way down to lift and shift orderlies, has even the slightest clue about Autism. Except for those I have given some basic guidance, none have any training for dealing with autistic patients. As an aside, I’m not sure many of them can even read or they would have seen the large warning about the patient’s unique challenges and the best ways to accommodate their needs. Knowing I had some success with autistic kids a nurse asked to see if I could get through to a girl who had gone nuclear. All the nurse knew about the patient was that she didn’t speak to anyone. She had no clue the girl is on the spectrum. Mental health arrived while I helped the girl bathe, as had her father. Even though the girl was completely calm, they attempted to heavily sedate and medicate her so they could lock her in a padded room. I met patients in the physical therapy area, each locked in sound-proofed rooms and doing their darnedest to be as uncooperative as possible. The techs know of their being Autistic, so they gave them a lot of slack as they tried to get them to do what was on the schedule for that day. Their records listed them as non-verbal, but they weren’t, in fact they speak quite well and clearly. Each only chose to stay silent and fight their therapists because they were treated like dim-witted cattle,” I explained. “Then you have this little girl sleeping in my arms. She was scared to death of the nurse and orderly running to try and corner her. They gave blank stares as their answer to what level this girl was on the spectrum or even if she was on the spectrum at all, but I digress.”

Turning to the lawyer who desired to know why I asked about the Molly Speaks app, I said, “On the video conference is Molly and she is Autistic. If we tried to use the Autism Spectrum Disorder grading scale, she, like your son, would be a five, or maybe higher.”

“What the hell does this have to do with why you are wasting our time,” the asshole chief of staff asked angrily now that he had worked up his courage again.

“I’m so glad you asked. Molly wrote the Molly Speaks app as a way for her to communicate with her family. I could say so she could communicate with me, but we seem to have done just fine without us needing to say a word to each other. Until the day she met me, her mother had only heard Molly make grunts, and other rudimentary sounds. The rest is her story, but I think a more social setting would be best to talk with her about that. Right now, we are here for you to explain why your facility and those who insure you, shouldn’t find yourselves sued into bankruptcy, and subsequently non-existence, trying to settle a medical malpractice class action lawsuit? I’m only guessing here, but given percentage of your patients with Autism, those I have met here so far haven’t been your only special needs patients.”

Directly access, and obviously upgrading it to have speech, Molly used the Molly Speaks app on the head lawyer’s phone to add, “Your facility has treated a significant number of special needs patients. To clarify David’s comment, the class action lawsuit is being filed on behalf of all current and past autistic patients, whose records I obtained via a bench warrant issues two minute prior to the start of the proceedings today. The ADA, AMA, APA, and any other professional organizations are likely to file their own lawsuits after deciding if there are any remaining assets after the judgment of the class-action lawsuit.”

Before they could even challenge Molly about what she said, their phones and the video conference screen showed a list of this facilities patient record numbers and first names for every Autistic past or present patient, including the sleeping girl in my arms. That record came up showing that whoever sent it over went to great lengths to stamp every page to denote the girl was autistic and to see the first section of her records for information. Molly changed to the referenced section. It showed all the specific triggers for the girl, how to calm her if she encountered one of those, how to work around them to treat her and ways to have her deal with any of the things which had to happen in the course of her treatment.

“As part of the medical facilities staff you are already authorized to view the list of Autistic patients David has had interactions since he arrived with his friend last week,” she said and then her voice began coming from the monitor, it clearly showing that her lips were not moving. “As with the first record, each clearly notes their mental health impairments. Interestingly I’ve found that since he made their medical caregivers aware of their challenges, their records show frequent accesses. Prior to that time only the admissions staff accessed their records when they arrived, the automated billing system pulling out billing codes, and your psychiatric ward when a patient it reported as appearing combative, uncontrollable, or unresponsive to techniques used on non-special needs patients. They restrain the patients, heavily sedate them, and inject them with various pharmaceutical cocktails until they find the desired zombie-like state. I assume all data I receive is suspect. It would greatly surprise me if you accept the data I provided as truthful and factual. You will find the HIPPA data compliance regulations and digital copies of the bench warrant and just issued federal warrant. For those claiming an inability to review those documents electronically, the administrative assistant will be able to provide hard copies in approximately seventy-two seconds from now.”

Only the dip shit medical chief of staff was thick headed enough to order security to restrain me and forcibly take the child from my arms to return her to her room, after medicating her according to the doctor’s orders. He wanted me charged with aggravated sexual assault on a child, aggravated child molestation, criminal trespassing, and any charge the police could find to ensure I never saw the light of day again.

“Someone needs to call the FBI to have this little girl hacker, Molly, arrested for every possible digital hacking law she had violated during her illegally accessing patient records,” the moron screamed.

Bad move idiot and Molly ignored your rant about her being a hacker.

All his yelling accomplished was to wake the little girl enough that she saw two orderly thugs from the psychiatric ward rushing toward us following by a nurse holding a large, prefilled syringe.

“Before she can move you need to hold her down so I can sedate her. Then we can transfer her to a padded cell until they put her with the other crazy kids they keep sending here for physical therapy. All those kids do is scream, kick, hit, bite, and throw things. She is obviously as crazy as they are,” the nurse yelled as she continued to rush toward me.

I know Kung Fu!

The girl was back to clinging onto me like a baby monkey whose mother is doing her best to get away from some predator.

Nice trip. See you next fall.

I only had to move a few inches for the nurse to trip on the wheels on one of the executive chairs during her haphazard lunge at the little girl with the needle on the syringe already uncapped. I don’t know how much sedative was in it, but a tiny push of energy on the needle caused it to sink in to the shoulder of the orderly a foot away from me. Her thumb automatically pushed down on the plunger. I saw the color of energy the sedative was changing in his brain to a different color and pulled that out of him. He staggered for a second, maybe two, before dropping to the floor like a bag of boulders. He had to be three hundred pounds.

One of the first group of security guards was close enough to me to grab his stun gun from the holster. I used it to put the nurse on the ground after she pulled out another syringe from her smock that had twice the amount of sedative as the first one. She managed to uncap it and make a lunge at the little girl before the wires had made her a twitchy mass on the floor.

Using my now permanently deep voice, I asked, “I have no clues about medicines or dosages. If the first syringe of sedative dropped that three hundred plus pound orderly in a few seconds, what would twice the amount of sedative have done to this not even fifty-pound little girl? The syringe stuck in the seat here had twice as much as the one from her first attempt.”

“Please continue to keep the stun gun on the assailant. The FBI and State Police will be exiting the elevator momentarily,” Molly’s App said in her voice through the monitor. “As no one has given an answer to your question, I will provide it based on the manufacturer’s literature provided with each vial. The sedative clearly states that it is not for use in children. Testing in juvenile monkeys and rats gave clear indications of permanent brain damage at three times the suggested dosage for the test subjects weight. Calculating the quickened reaction of the orderly to the safe dosage for his size, the syringe contained three times that dosage. I have already updated the law enforcement officials to charge the nurse with two counts of attempted murder on a child in the care of the medical facility where she worked. Either of the syringes would have instantly caused systematic organ failure and multiple aneurisms. For the legal staff present, this employee violated your established protocols which require monitoring equipment, atropine, epinephrine, and medications to counteract the effects of any sedative administered, none of which is currently available anywhere in this office space or floor of the building you currently occupy. Ensuring the collection of all evidence required for the class action lawsuit, I also obtained federal wire-tapping warrant for all electronic communication for every facility employee. You will find that on your devices. Your chief of staff has verbally and electronically ordered this child’s sedation. His electronic communications clearly indicate that the dosages are to be such that the child is unconscious for hours, if not the remainder of the day. Below that he requested that David likewise received as much sedative as could fit in the largest syringe available. If unable to get close enough to sedate the David and the patient, they were to resort to using multiple Tasers to aid in sedating them.”

The conscious lift and shift orderly lucked out. He was only following orders, not that he wouldn’t still find himself in their custody for days as they questioned him. The security guards had to put the unconscious security guard into a wheel chair.

Security was still diligently doing their jobs of keeping a close eye on me holding the little girl.

As it had been over thirty minutes Molly’s generated voice asked, “In light of the addition of murder charges, and can argue successfully as being a contract to have the patient killed, can you provide any reason why I shouldn’t request expedited class action status for the lawsuit filed as part of obtaining the subpoenas and warrants? During the altercation I reviewed all medical files of patients transferred to the psychiatric ward. In the last two years, only two patients were clinically in need of psychiatric services as a result of illegal drug consumption prior to treatment. All the rest had clear notes regarding their special needs and unique triggers which caused the reported unwanted behaviors.”

“As senior counsel for the treatment facility, and a parent of an Autistic child, I would like to request you delay your legal actions for the remainder of the day and that of tomorrow to permit a full investigation of this matter. Accusations of medical malpractice, and the facilities associated liability, are minefields for defendants and plaintiffs. As a lawsuit is already filed, we, as counsel for the facility, can no longer discuss this matter any further until after the hearing,” the senior lawyer said. “If you grant me this delay, I will ensure all measures are implemented immediately to prevent any further patients with psychiatric or mental disorders become additional plaintiffs in this lawsuit. If you deny my request, I will be unable to take these actions.”

Molly said she would grant the facility a two-week period to do their review on the condition that she would be closely monitoring all communications, via the wiretap, and patient records closely. Any attempts to discharge patients with special needs or transfer them elsewhere would cause her to proceed immediately.

When everything seemed settled between Molly and the facility’s lawyers, I asked the head lawyer, “Do you see any legal problems for the facility if I take this terrified child back to her designated room? In additional to needing to use the bathroom urgently, she needs a bath. I doubt she will allow the medical staff to give her the needed assistance anytime soon. I’m already residing here overnight in my friend’s inpatient room, which has an extra bed where I sleep, when I don’t crash in the chair. If permitted she can use that bed so she will have me near her when she awakes. If I go to the PT area, I will carry her down to the area they have there for kids to rest and be able to find me when she wakes up.”