Cook,Robin - Mortal Fear.txt

by Mortal Fear (lit)

  "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.