"Which means ... ?" Curran questioned.
"Probably a rupture of the aorta," Danforth answered. She had her hands
folded in her lap as if she were at a tea party. "The aorta is the main
vessel that leaves the heart," she added for Curtan's benefit. "It
carries oxygenated blood out to the body."
"Thank you," Curran said.
"Sounds like either lung cancer or aneurysm," Danforth added. "An
aneurysm is an abnormal outpocketing of the blood vessel."
"Thank you again," Curran said. "It's so handy when people know I'm
ignorant."
Jason had a momentary flash of Peter Falk playing Detective Columbo. He
was quite sure that Curran was anything but ignorant.
"Would you agree, doctor?" Danforth asked, looking directly at Jason.
"I'd vote for lung cancer," Jason said. "Hayes was a prodigious smoker."
"That does raise the probability."
"Any possibility of foul play?" Curran asked, looking at the medical
examiner from under his heavy lids.
Dr. Danforth gave a short laugh. "If the diagnosis is what I think it
is, the only foul play involved would have been perpetrated by his
Maker-or the tobacco industry."
"That's what I thought," Curtan said, flipping his notebook closed and
pocketing his pencil.
"Are you going to do an autopsy now?" Jason asked.
"Heavens no," Dr. Danforth said. "If there were some pressing reason, we
could. But there isn't. We'll get to it first thing in the morning. We
should have some answers by ten-thirty or so, if you'd like to call
about then."
Curran put his hands on the table as if he were about to stand. Instead,
he said, "Dr. Howard has alleged that the victim thought someone was
trying to kill him. Am I right, doctor?"
Jason nodded.
'.'So ..." Curran said. "Could you keep that in mind when you do the
autopsy?"
"Absolutely," Dr. Danforth said. "We keep an open mind in all cases we
do.
That's our job. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get home. I
haven't even had a chance to eat dinner."
Jason felt -a mild wave of nausea. He wondered how Margaret Danforth
could feel hungry after spending her day cutting up corpses. Curran
actually said as much to Jason as they descended to the first floor. He
offered Jason a lift, but Jason told him he was expecting a hiend. No
sooner had he said it than the street door opened and Shirley walked in.
"Some friend," Curtan whispered with a wink as he left.
Once again Shirley stood out like a mirage. For entertaining she'd
dressed in a red, fitted, silk shirtdress, cinched with a wide black
leather belt.
Her appearance bespoke so strongly of life and vitality that her
presence in the dirty morgue was a collision of opposites. Jason had the
unnatural urge to get her out of there as soon as possible, lest some
evil force touch her. But she was resistant to his urging. She'd thrown
her arms around him and pressed his head against hers in a genuine show
of sympathy.
Jason melted. His response surprised him. He found himself fighting back
tears like an adolescent. It was embarrassing.
She pulled back and looked him in the eyes. He managed a crooked smile.
"What a day," he said.
"What a day!" she agreed. "Any reason you have to stay here?"
Jason shook his head.
"Come on, I'm taking you home," she said, hurtying him outside to where
her BMW was parked in a no-parking zone. They got in and the car roared
to life.
"Are you okay?" Shirley asked as they headed toward Massachusetts
Avenue.
"I'm much better now." Jason looked at Shirley's profile as the city
lights illuminated it in flashes. #Tm just overwhelmed by all the
deaths. As if I should be doing something better."
"You're too hard on yourself. You can't take responsibility for
everyone.
Besides, Hayes wasn't your patient."
d1i know. pt They drove for a while in silence. Then Shirley said, "It
is a tragedy about Hayes. He was pretty close to a genius, and he
couldn't have been more than forty-five."
"He was my age," Jason said. "He was in my class in medical school."
"I didn't know that," Shirley said. "He looked a lot older."
"Especially lately," Jason said. They passed Symphony Hall. Some affair
was just getting out, and men in black tie were emerging on the front
steps.
"What did the medical examiner have to say?" Shirley asked.
"Probably cancer. But they aren't going to do the autopsy until m '
orning."
"Autopsy? Who gave the authorization?"
"No need if the medical examiner thinks there is some question about the
death."
"But what kind of question? You said the man had a heart attack."
"I didn't say it was a heart attack. I said it was something like that.
At any rate, it's apparently protocol for them to do a postmortem on any
unexpected death. A detective actually questioned me."
"Seems like a waste of taxpayers'money," Shirley said as they turned
left on Beacon Street.
"Where are we going?" Jason asked suddenly.
"I'm taking you home with me. My guests will still be there. It will be
good for you."
"No way," Jason said. "I'm in no shape to be social."
"Are you sure? I don't want you brooding. These people will understand."
"Please," Jason said. "I'm not strongenough to argue. I just need to
sleep.
Besides, look at me, I'm a wreck."
"Okay, if you put it that way," Shirley said. She turned left on the
next block, then left again on Commonwealth Avenue, heading back to
Beacon Hill.
After a period of silence, she said, "I'm afraid Hayes's death is going
to be a big blow to GHP. We were counting on him to produce some
exciting results. The fallout is going to be especially tough for me,
since I was responsible for his being hired."
"Then take some of your own advice," Jason said. "You can't hold
yourself responsible for his medical condition."
"I know. But try telling that to the board."
"In that case I guess I should tell you. There's more bad news," Jason
said. "Apparently Hayes believed he'd made a real scientific
breakthrough.
Something extraordinary. Do you know anything about it?"
"Not a thing," Shirley said with alarm. "Did he tell you what it was?"
"Unfortunately no," Jason said. "And I wasn't sure whether to believe
him or not. He was acting rather bizarre, to say the least, claiming
someone wanted him dead."
"Do you think he was having a nervous breakdown?"
"It crossed my mind."
"The poor man. If he did make some sort of discovery, then GHP is going
to have a double loss."
"But if he had made some dramatic discovery, wouldn't you be able to
find out what it was?"
"Obviously you didn't know Dr. Hayes," Shirley said. "He was an
extraordinarily private man, personally and professionally. Half of what
he knew he carried around in his head."
They skirted the Boston Garden, then navigated the roundabout route t
o
get into Beacon Hill, a residential enclave of brick-fronted townhouses
in the center of Boston, whose one-way streets made driving a nightmare.
After crossing Charles Street, Shirley drove up Mt. Vernon Street and
turned into the cobblestoned Louisburg Square. When he'd decided to give
up suburban living and try the city, Jason had been lucky enough to find
a one-bedroom apartment overlooking the square. It was in a large
townhouse whose owner had a unit in the building, but was rarely there.
It was a perfect location for Jason, since the apartment came with a
true urban prize: a parking place.
Jason got out of the car and leaned in the open window. "Thanks for
picking me up. It meant a lot." He reached in and gave Shirley's
shoulder a squeeze.
Shirley suddenly reached out and grabbed Jason by the tie, pulling his
head down to her. She gave him a hard kiss, gunned the motor, and was
off.
Jason stood at the curb in a pool of light from the gas lamp and watched
her disappear down Pinckney Street. Turning to his door, he fumbled for
his keys. He was pleased she had come into his life, and for the first
time considered the possibility of a real relationship.
It had not been a good night. Every time Jason had closed his eyes, he'd
seen Hayes's quizzical expression just before the catastrophe and
re-experienced the awful feeling of helplessness as he watched Hayes's
lifeblood. pump out of his mouth.
The scene haunted him as he drove to work, and he remembered something
he'd forgotten to tell either Curran or Shirley. Hayes had said his
discovery was no longer a secret and it was being used. Whatever that
meant. Jason planned to call the detective when he reached GHP, but the
moment he entered he was paged to come directly to the coronary care
unit.
Brian Lennox was much worse. After a brief examination, Jason realized
there was little he could do. Even the cardiac consult he'd requested
the day before was not optimistic, though Harry Sarnoff had scheduled an
emergency coronary study for that morning. The only hope was if
immediate surgery might have something to offer.
Outside Brian's cubicle the nurse asked, "If he arrests, do you want to code him? Even his kidneys seem to be failing."
Jason hated such decisions, but said firmly that he wanted the man
resuscitated at least until they had the results from the coronary
study.
The remainder of Jason's rounds were equally as depressing. His diabetes
cases, all of whom had multisystem involvement, were doing very poorly.
Two of them-were in kidney failure and the third was threatening. The
depressing part was that they had not entered the hospital for that
reason.
The kidney failure had developed while Jason was treating them for other
problems.
Jason's two leukemia patients were also not responding to treatment as
he'd expected. Both had developed significant heart conditions even
though they had been admitted for respiratory symptoips. And his two
AIDS sufferers had made very distinct turns for the worse. The only
patients doing well were two young girls with hepatitis. The last
patient was a thirty-five-year-old man in for an evaluation of his heart
valves. He'd had rheumatic fever as a child. Thankfully he was
unchanged.
Arriving at his office, Jason had to be firm with Claudia. News of
Hayes's death had already permeated the entire GHP complex, and Claudia
was beside herself with curiosity. Jason told her that he wasn't going
to talk about it. She insisted. He ordered her out of his office. Later
he apologized and gave her an abridged version of the event. By ten-
thirty he got a call from Henry Sarnoff with depressing news. Brian
Lennox's coronary arteries were much worse but without focal blockage.
In other words, they were uniformly filling up with atherosclerosis at a
rapid rate, and there was no chance for surgery. Sarnoff said he'd never
seen such rapid progression and asked Jason's permission to write it up.
Jason said it was fine with him.
After Sarnoff's call, Jason kept himself I ' ocked in his office for a
few minutes. When he felt emotionally prepared, he called the coronary
care unit and asked for the nurse taking care of Brian Lennox. When she
came on the line, he discussed with her the results of the coronary
artery study.
Then he told her that Brian Lennox should be a no-code. Without hope,
the man's suffering had to be curtailed. She agreed. After he'd hung up,
he stared at the phone. It was moments like that that made him wonder
why he'd gone into medicine in the first place.
When the lunch break came, Jason decided to check out Hayes's autopsy
results in person. In the daylight, the morgue was not such an eerie
place just another aging, run-down, not-too-clean building. Even the
Egyptian architectural details were more comical than imposing. Yet
Jason avoided the body storage room and went directly to find Margaret
Danforth's nartow office next to the library. She was hunched over her
desk eating what looked like a Big Mac. She waved him in, smiling.
"Welcome."
"Sorty to bother you," Jason said, sitting down. Once again he marveled
how small and feminine Margaret seemed in light of her job.
"No bother," she said. "I did the post on Dr. Hayes this morning." She
leaned back in her chair, which squeaked softly. "I was a little
surprised.
It wasn't cancer.
"What was it?"
"Aneurysm. Aortic aneurysm that broke into the tracheobronchial tree.
The man never had syphilis, did he?"
Jason shook his head. "Not that I know of. I'd kinda doubt it."
"Well, it looked strange," Margaret said. "Do you mind that I continue
eating? I have another autopsy in a few minutes."
"Not at all," Jason said, wondering how she could. His own stomach did a
little flip-flop. The whole building had a slightly fishy odor. "What
looked strange?"
Margaret chewed, then swallowed. "The aorta looked kind of cheesy,
friable.
So did the trachea, for that matter. I'd never seen anything quite like
it, except in this one guy I'd posted who was one hundred and fourteen.
Can you believe it? It was written up in The Globe. He was forty-four
when the First World War started. Amazing."
"When will you have a microscopic report?"
Margaret made a gesture of embarrassment. "Two weeks , she said. "We're
not funded for adequate support personnel. Slides take quite a while."
"If you could give me some samples, I could have our path department
process them."
"We have to process them ourselves. I'm sure you under-stand."
"I don't mean for you not to do it," Jason said. "I just meant we could
too. It would save some time."
"I don't see why not." Standing up, Margaret took another large bite out
of her hamburger and motioned for Jason to follow her. They used the
stairwell and went up a floor to the autopsy room.
It was a long rectangular room with four stainless steel tables oriented
perpendicular to the long axis. The smell of formaldehyde and other
unspeakable fluids was overpowering. Two tables were occupied, and the
two others were in the process of being cleaned. Margaret, perfectly at
home in the environment, was still chewing her last bite of lunch as she
led Jason over to the sink. After scanning through a profusion of
plastic-capped specimen bottles, she separated a number from the rest.
Then, taking each in turn, she fished out the contents, placed them on a
cutting board, and sliced off a piece of each with a blade that looked
very much like a standard kitchen carving knife. Then she got new
specimen bottles, labeled them, poured in formaldehyde, and dropped in
the respective samples. When she was done, she packed them in a brown
paper bag and handed it to Jason.
It had all been done with remarkable efficiency.
Back at GHP, Jason headed to pathology, where he found Dr. Jackson
Madsen at his microscope. Dr. Madsen was a tall, gaunt man who at sixty
was still proudly running marathons. As soon as he saw Jason, he
commiserated with him about Jason's experience with Hayes.
Cook,Robin - Mortal Fear.txt Page 6