Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness

by David Casarett

  “It’s like the village I’m from. All trees, not many buildings.” She smiled. “Not like here.”

  “And… where are you from, Khun?” He had a brittle, raspy voice that sounded as if it had seen too many cigarettes over the years.

  But at least he’d spoken.

  “From near Ban Huai Duea School,” she said quickly. “It’s on the Pai River near the border with Burma. Near Mae Hong Son.”

  “I know it,” he said quietly. “It is good country.”

  That was an odd phrase, and she wasn’t sure what he meant. “Good” as in good for farming? Or did he mean that the people there were good? Both, she thought, were true. But how did he know?

  “And you, Khun? Are you from near there?”

  For a split second he looked away from her and out the window. In that moment, she saw his face in profile and he looked… sad. Very sad. What she had thought initially was humility was also sadness.

  It wasn’t just that he doubted his importance; he doubted himself.

  Without speaking, he turned back to her and rose in a fluid motion, using only his calloused heels to propel himself off the floor. In a second his tattered bag was draped across his shoulder and he made a high wai to her, and to the temple on the mountain. Without a word, he padded across the waiting room, his bare feet flapping on the tile floor. No more than a second later, he was gone.

  Ladarat watched him hustle across the waiting room and then began to follow him. She wasn’t tracking him exactly. Yet she wanted to see where he went when he wasn’t in the waiting room. Would he take the elevator at the end of the hall? Or would he keep going to the cafeteria in the next building?

  But she was surprised when she rounded the corner. She stood at the end of the long corridor, not ready to believe what she was seeing, or not seeing. The man had disappeared. There was an elderly couple with a young woman, and a young man on crutches with a nurse at his side, practicing walking. But the man was gone.

  Where could he have disappeared to? He couldn’t have taken the elevator—there was no way he could have reached the far end of the hallway that quickly. Could he? Most certainly not.

  And the rooms along the hallway were all for doctors. Their doors were closed because they were out on rounds. Perhaps he could have slipped into an office, but why? She had not been chasing him, and he had no reason to be frightened.

  This was indeed mysterious. Ladarat supposed his disappearance should add to her sense of failure. Not only had she been unable to learn why he was here, but now she didn’t even know where he went.

  And yet, in a strange way, she felt like she had succeeded. She had determined, for instance, that he was a farmer or a laborer. He was either from around Mae Hong Son or at least had lived there once. And she knew—or thought she knew—that he was very sad.

  It was true that she wasn’t much closer to solving the mystery of the strange man in the waiting room, but she was more confident now. She had, in fact, had a conversation with the man. They had talked, which was more than anyone else had been able to do, wasn’t it? It was.

  And perhaps she was being too hard on herself. Perhaps she would have a second chance to speak with him.

  She could now see how that conversation might unfold. She would greet him, and he would greet her. She would stare out the window. And then she would say something about her home village.

  That would be all. She would simply say how lovely it was at the end of the monsoon, as the weather began to cool. How the forests were still green, and how the Siam tulips would bloom abundantly in the forest clearings. She would say something about that, and then she would be patient. Eventually, she was certain, he would talk with her.

  You couldn’t rush things like this. You couldn’t behave like an American. You had to have patience.

  Unaccountably cheerful, she stood up. She should check on Mr. Fuller, since she was here. And then she had some unfinished business in the medical records department.

  THE STRANGE EPIDEMIC OF FAIR SKIN

  But Ladarat’s cheerfulness after the encounter with the mysterious man faded almost immediately as the large automatic doors swung open to admit her to the ICU. The unit was unaccountably quiet. The doctors must be in a conference, and there were only a couple of nurses at the nurses’ station, one of whom greeted her with a wai as she approached.

  It was… Kanchana? Yes, Kanchana. Plain-looking and dependably friendly, she was a graduate of Chiang Mai University. In the lower half of the class. Yet only a few years out of nursing school, she was steady and reliable. Too bad her parents had saddled her with such a name. Kanchana meant “golden,” and surely that was an impossible name to live up to. Ladarat was grateful that her name was one of those Thai names that didn’t mean anything, so there were no lofty expectations of her.

  Yet Kanchana tried so hard. Both in her studies and in her appearance. Her skin—eeeeyyy! It was an unhealthy, unnatural white. This whitening fad among young women was mystifying.

  You want to put some chemical on your face that makes you look like you’re dying of some horrible illness? How is that appealing to a man? Do you think a man will say, “Oh yes, I want that one. The woman who is terminally ill—that is the woman for me.”

  And this whitening was a disease of sorts. It had been infecting her nursing students, more every semester. And now some young nurses like Kanchana. It was truly an epidemic.

  “You are here to see the American, Khun?” Kanchana asked.

  “Yes, Khun.” Ladarat paused. “I suppose there has been no change?”

  “No,” the girl said. She looked at a chart on the counter just to her left. “His vital signs are stable, but he is still on the ventilator, and…”

  “And he hasn’t begun to wake up?” Ladarat finished the sentence for her.

  “No, he hasn’t.” She looked around carefully, as if there could be other Americans lurking in the bandage cabinet or behind the rack of intravenous supplies. “And Dr. Jainukul is very worried. He says there is nothing we can do.”

  Hmm. That was bad. This young nurse needed to be careful about language.

  “There is always something we can do,” she told Kanchana gently. “It’s just a question of what is possible. Perhaps we cannot cure him. But we can maintain him on the ventilator for the short term. And of course we can ensure that he is not suffering.”

  Kanchana nodded uncertainly. But what Ladarat said was true. As Professor Dalrymple points out, one must never say that there was nothing that one can do. One can always do something.

  “It’s just a bad phrase to use,” she explained gently, “because it suggests there’s nothing that we can do to help.”

  “Oh, but there is much that we can do to help, Khun. And we are. We are keeping him comfortable and we have him on a breathing machine, and medicine that is controlling the swelling in his brain…” She paused. “Ah, I see. You mean we need to be sure to tell them what we can do, and what we are doing?”

  “Exactly so,” Ladarat said. “You must be honest, of course. But honesty requires telling patients and families about what you can do as well as what you can’t.”

  She left Kanchana thinking about that bit of advice. And Ladarat found herself thinking about it, too, as she walked back to the elevator. It was wise counsel, she knew, but in the wrong hands it could be a little white lie. It could be misused, for instance, to give the wrong impression of what was possible. A particular risk in Thailand, she thought, where the temptation was great to relieve and assuage and calm. If a white lie could accomplish that, well…

  Not for the first time she found herself thinking about how patients and families have hopes for results that are sometimes not realistic. Thais were not immune, of course. Especially government officials, who thought that doctors and nurses should be able to do anything. But Thais, in general, were much less susceptible to this disease of optimism than the Americans. She shook her head. The Fuller family was going to have difficulties.


  Passing through the waiting room and into the hallway that led to the elevator, a small sign caught her eye. Funny she’d never noticed it before. Suddenly she knew where the mystery man had disappeared to. And she suspected she knew where he might be hiding when he wasn’t in the waiting room.

  She’d test her hypothesis later, but for now she heaved a sigh of relief. That was one less thing she had to worry about. At least her mystery man was just a man, and not some disappearing ghost. And even better, now she knew where to find him.

  ANOTHER ASPIRING DETECTIVE

  Ahh, Khun. You are back so soon.”

  If Panit Booniliang was delighted by her untimely reappearance in his domain, he was doing an excellent job of concealing his enthusiasm. He was smiling, of course. But he looked worried.

  As indeed he should. It was safe to say that the poor man had good reason to be worried whenever Ladarat appeared. With the inspection close at hand, he didn’t want to find new instances of poor documentation. Not that it was his fault, of course. He couldn’t control what those doctors upstairs did. But still, these requests would come to him and he would be… tainted.

  “Don’t worry, Khun. I don’t need you to find more charts,” she hastened to reassure him. “I had… an idea. I wanted to ask you whether it would be possible.”

  “An idea?” Panit put down the short stack of charts he was holding. Then, thinking better of it, he picked them up again. “What sort of… idea?”

  “Well,” she said slowly, “you remember the death of the man I asked you about yesterday?”

  The medical records clerk nodded warily, and his right hand floated up and raced through his unruly hair like an animal that had escaped its cage.

  “Well, you see, I’m worried that this man’s death might not be as straightforward as it seems.”

  He looked at her curiously, and then set the charts down very carefully onto another pile. Then he paused to square off the edges with two palms.

  How much should she tell him? She would need to pique his interest, certainly. He would not be willing to help otherwise. She needed enough curiosity to entice him. Especially with the inspection coming. He would not tear his attention away from his stacks of charts unless she gave him a reason that was both interesting and compelling. So in a split second, and without planning, she decided to tell him the truth.

  “I have some evidence that there may have been… foul play involved.” She paused. “In that man’s death.”

  Now Panit was looking at her with slack-jawed amazement. But his next question surprised her.

  “So you are like… a detective?”

  This is the question you ask someone who tells you that a patient may have been murdered? You quiz them about their career and job responsibilities?

  “No, Khun. I’m hardly a detective. I am just a nurse.” Khun Tippawan had seen to that.

  “But it’s as a nurse, and as a nurse ethicist,” she clarified, “that I was asked to look into this matter.”

  “Asked? By whom?”

  But she shook her head. Some parts of this story were probably better omitted. She didn’t want to mention the good detective, and besides, she didn’t want to make this seem as though it were an official police inquiry. But then what should she say?

  “When I heard about this man’s death, you see, I was not quite honest with you.” She glanced at Panit and found, strangely enough, that he did not look particularly surprised by this admission. Emboldened, she pressed on.

  “Something struck me as familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was. Then it came to me last night: A colleague at another hospital told me of a story of a woman who had dropped her husband off in the emergency room in the same condition a year ago.”

  “When you say ‘the same condition,’ Khun Ladarat, you mean to say…”

  “I mean to say he was dead. Yes. The woman dropped off a man who was dead. They were very suspicious about this behavior, because she did not seem grief-stricken. She seemed very… matter of fact.”

  “So did they involve the police?”

  “There was no evidence, apparently. My friend looked for this woman but couldn’t find her. But when I saw this case, I thought…”

  “Our murderer is back.” He looked positively excited by the news that there was a killer in their midst. The wrinkles on his forehead danced.

  “So you want to know if there have been other instances like this at our hospital or at other hospitals? I see, I see.” Now he was rubbing his hands together.

  But she was two steps behind him.

  “Other hospitals? But how can you—”

  “Oh, I have friends. We all know each other. At least at the bigger hospitals. Public, private. Makes no difference. We all have to work together when patients are transferred, so we know each other well. In fact, we have a cricket league we play in together.”

  Who would have known?

  “I’ll ask. People don’t think that we pay attention to what’s in these charts, but I assure you, Khun, that we most certainly do. We mark the stranger cases. We’re… alert. If there’s a murderer out there, we’ll find her.”

  He seemed positively gleeful. Could it be that everyone wants to be a detective? Perhaps she was not the only aspiring detective in Sriphat Hospital. Perhaps they could form a detectives’ club. With a cricket league.

  Ladarat smiled and thanked the medical records clerk. This was good. He seemed as though he needed a distraction from the impending inspection. And this task should be enough of a distraction for him.

  A few minutes later, she stood waiting by the elevator. And waiting. And waiting.

  Not for the first time, Ladarat was struck by Thai dependence on elevators. Then she had a thought. She turned around and made her way back down the hallway, pushing open the door to the stairwell. It led down several more flights to the subbasement, she knew. And all the way up to the sixth floor. But she had only two flights to go up. She could do this.

  THE VALUE OF CHOIE IN HANDLING SURPRISING NEWS

  There was an incident,” Sisithorn whispered from behind her as Ladarat felt a tug on her left arm. She’d just emerged from yet another meeting to prepare for the inspection. That meeting had gone long and—even worse—now she had extra work to do. And now here was her assistant latched on to her elbow like a barnacle.

  “It occurred in the ICU,” she said breathlessly as she steered Ladarat down the hall. “I’ve been waiting forever.”

  For how many consecutive sentences could this girl speak in italics? Ladarat was mildly curious. Surely she couldn’t maintain these slanted syllables much longer?

  And indeed she could not. Now Sisithorn paused as if to create suspense. She looked at Ladarat, wide-eyed, her pupils the diameter of Siam tulips behind her oversize round glasses.

  But Ladarat had long ago learned that an imperturbable calm—choie—was the best way to meet any news that someone seemed to be holding back. If you express surprise or an intense need to know whatever is being concealed, that simply inflates the value of the information. Then it becomes impossible to say for certain whether that information truly was important. The best way to determine whether news is important is to assume it is not.

  “Ah, really?” was all she said.

  But Sisithorn’s enthusiasm wasn’t dampened. Still clutching Ladarat’s elbow, she steered them down the west hallway and Ladarat realized they were heading toward Kate’s room. The story would emerge in its own way, she knew, in its own time.

  Sisithorn had been coming out of the ICU, she said finally, checking on the American, when she saw a commotion in the waiting room. Kate seemed to be hysterical. She was in a wheelchair, and she was being propelled down the hallway away from the ICU by her mother-in-law.

  “She kept saying something about a ‘killer.’ But she wouldn’t explain.”

  “A killer? In this hospital? Ah, Khun. This poor girl—she’s been through a great deal. Perhaps she is… confused.”

 
; Sisithorn shook her head. “No, Khun, I don’t think so. I followed them, naturally,” she said.

  “Naturally.”

  “And I tried to talk with Kate. But it was only her mother-in-law who would tell me anything. And she said that Kate had been fine just a few seconds earlier. Her mother-in-law had been wheeling her down the hall, and Kate was chatting away. Then all of a sudden Kate just became agitated as they were proceeding down the hall about the time they entered the ICU.”

  “But Kate didn’t see anyone to prompt this outburst?”

  “The mother-in-law didn’t think so. Of course, when Kate began to cry, she said she stepped in front of the wheelchair and she saw the backs of several people they had passed in the hallway, but she couldn’t say which of them had make Kate upset.”

  “So they were about to enter the ICU? Perhaps it was a… flashback?”

  “I don’t think so, Khun. Remember you sent me to speak with her this morning? Well, I did, and we had a very long talk. Mr. and Mrs. Fuller were not there, so we spoke for more than an hour. She seemed very clear in her head. As if she were back to normal, you know?”

  Ladarat nodded. Perhaps it wasn’t a flashback. But then what was it? Since obviously this outburst wasn’t prompted by a real killer, then what was it?

  They had stopped outside Kate’s hospital room. The door was closed, but Ladarat and her assistant were whispering. Ladarat eyed the door nervously, in case it should open suddenly.

  “She also seemed very strong this morning,” Sisithorn said. “Not just strong like a woman trying to wear a brave face, but truly strong. Deep down. She told me that both of her parents died when she was very young. And that she was put… in a home with other children’s parents?”

  “Ah, foster care. It is not uncommon in the U.S.A.”

  Sisithorn shook her head. She started to speak, but it was plain that there was nothing she could think of to say. The idea of placing a child with strangers was almost impossible to understand.