Code Blues

by Melissa Yi

Kurt had one of those desk file organizers where you stick file folders in between black metal loops that keep the folders upright. The one labeled Future Grand Rounds was empty. Hadn't Stan said something about spousal abuse? Oh, well, maybe Kurt took his stuff home to work on it.

  What I really wanted was to break into his desktop computer. I took a deep breath and pushed the power button with the knuckle of my index finger. The computer hummed obediently, but instead of loading up the usual Windows crap, it jumped to a screen with the message "Command File Not Found."

  I took a programming course in high school, but this was really beyond my ken. I tried pressing Return and Escape, to no avail.

  Was it possible that Kurt used a laptop and never touched this ancient technology? Sure. But even though the bulky old-school monitor had collected brown balls of dust in its furrows, the tops of the keyboard keys and the tower's power button weren't dusty, suggesting that he did use it. Strange.

  I turned off the computer and tried more low-tech solutions, i.e. I opened his desk drawer. It got stuck a third of the way through. I jiggled it loose, peering at the blue ballpoint pens and Post-It notes.

  The phone rang.

  I jumped, banging the drawer. It got stuck again. I rattled it loose and shoved it closed.

  The phone rang three times before it got cut off mid-ring.

  My stomach slowly unrolled, and I started breathing again. Thank God for voice mail.

  Speaking of which...I stared at the phone. What if I could get into his voice messages?

  I studied the phone. Considering how primitive they kept the rest of the FMC, the sleek black Bell phones stood out with their buttons for hold and speed dial and messages.

  I reached for the receiver. It was risky, so soon after someone called. Still, my fingers circled the black plastic.

  The office's closed door rattled. The doorknob turned.

  I dropped the phone back into the cradle. My first thought was to jump out the window. But four stories later, they'd have to scrape me off the pavement.

  I dove under the desk and curled into as small a ball as possible.

  I lay on my right side, hugging my knees. My head was pressed against the back of the desk. My left arm was wedged under a fake wood drawer. I stared at the wall under the window as footsteps approached. Never had I been so conscious of my own breathing.

  The door closed. Heavy, male-sounding footsteps grew closer. I was facing the window and didn't dare turn to check the shoes. If I made a sound, I'd find out soon enough who was wearing them.

  My neck started to cramp up. My teeth clenched.

  I heard a bang and felt a whack on the desk. My eyes widened, but I made no noise.

  If this guy pulled the chair up to the desk, he'd run into me with his knees or his feet. Game over.

  A BEEP, BEEP, BEEP shrilled through the air.

  My hand flew to the pager on my waist. I was dead meat. Dead, roasted, smoked, and sliced meat.

  The man grunted. His hand moved up and I heard him clicking the buttons on his pager.

  His pager. Not mine. I couldn't even breathe a sigh of relief, but my shoulders relaxed marginally.

  He propped his butt on the desk and leaned across the desk to punch in the number. "Yeah. Callendar."

  My worst fears made flesh. I tried to scrunch into an even tighter ball.

  He heaved a long sigh. "Can this wait? I've got to—" He fell silent. "The preliminary PM? I don't—all right. Fine. Twenty minutes."

  He banged the receiver back into its cradle. He snorted under his breath. He grabbed the handle of his briefcase, muttered, "Suspicious death, my ass, Bob," and stormed out of the room.

  Chapter 12

  I didn't dare search the office any more. It sounded like Dr. Callendar had offered to meet for twenty minutes, but he could easily return in twenty seconds. I waited a few breaths, uncurled from under the desk, and beat it to the conference room, where I could legitimately sit and gather my breath and scattered wits for a moment. Then I dashed to the staircase on the opposite end of the FMC and strode down the stairs, struggling not to run any more.

  The July afternoon sun glowed in the west. The air was warm, but not oppressive. I took a deep breath. I was free. I'd made it.

  And I'd never do that again. A little risk was a fine thing after playing the good girl my whole life. But I had no taste for outright danger. I could have been arrested. I could have been expelled. I could have been strung up by Dr. Callendar if he hadn't been called away by a suspicious death.

  Suspicious death. He had to be talking about Kurt. Unless St. Joe's turned out to be a hotbed of killings as well as incest, we'd only suffered once suspicious death recently.

  I wasn't sure what Dr. Callendar meant by a PM, but Bob had to be Bob Clarkson, the FMC director. Why were he and Dr. Callendar having an after-hours rendezvous about this suspicious death? Like I said, no bureaucrat voluntarily stays late. Bob Clarkson was originally a family doctor, but he'd cut his patients loose after he'd gone into administration. I heard that he'd added his patients to the FMC pot, telling them he'd supervise them once in a while, but really dumping them on the residents.

  Could that lazy administrator really have killed anyone, even with Dr. Callendar's help?

  Now I was the one seeing conspiracies everywhere.

  I unclenched my fists. They ached. My fingernails had bitten into my palms. I rolled my shoulders out and headed for home.

  I was halfway down the block before I realized I'd left my backpack in the emerg residents' room, which meant I had no keys to unlock my apartment door.

  I was losing my mind.

  I ran back into emerg, trying not to meet anyone's eye as I swiped the giant yellow key stick from the unit coordinator's desk. Some stretcher patients goggled at me. I pretended not to notice, striding to the residents' room in the back hallway. As I shouldered my backpack and pulled the residents' door closed, I overheard a woman's voice from the staff kitchen across the hall. "Did you hear about Kurt's autopsy report?"

  I slipped back into the residents' room, leaving the door slightly ajar. I could still hear them.

  "No. Did you?"

  "Yes. The preliminary one." The woman lowered her voice. "They think he died from airway obstruction."

  "Well, I guess! Dave said they found him face-down."

  I had to strain to hear the first woman now. "But his blood tested positive for succinylcholine."

  "Succ? No way!"

  I caught my breath. Succinylcholine was what we most often used to paralyze a patient before passing a tube between his or her vocal cords. Kurt had been paralyzed.

  He'd been murdered.

  "Sylvie!" a man bellowed from the belly of the ER. I recognized the voice. It was the big male nurse who'd been working the acute side. "I need you!"

  "You'd better go," said one woman, and the other one, presumably, Sylvie called back, "I'm coming!" Her footsteps trotted away.

  I waited a decent interval before leaving the room and returning the room key. I seemed to be doing a lot sneaking around today.

  Someone had murdered St. Joseph's most popular doctor. The police would be right on it. Dr. Kurt's desk would be sealed and searched. It was a good thing I'd made it in before they came.

  I was halfway home, cutting on to Edouard Montpetit avenue, before I considered that Dr. Kurt may have committed suicide. If you want to off yourself, succ (pronounced sucks) would make darn sure of it. A doctor would know how to do it right.

  But no one thought he'd been depressed. Days before his death, Dr. Kurt was e-mailing Bob Clarkson about the FMC. The day of, he was telling us we could page him 24/7 and winking at me across the orientation room. Plus the whole Mireille-Vicki thing. He'd seemed anything but depressed.

  Also, if he offed himself, he wouldn't do it at St. Joe's. The publicity could bring the ship down.

  It could still be an accident, like the anaesthetist at Western, but the druggie anaesthetist grabbed the wrong med
ication in his hurry between cases. He didn't say, Geez, I wonder if I can paralyze myself, because that would be such a blast. I mean, what's the first thing you learn in first aid? ABC's. Airway, airway, airway. No one wants to choke on their own tongue.

  I looked up at the University of Montreal's most impressive piece of architecture, a sandstone-colored tower balanced on the mountain. Its round roof had oxidized to green and windows poked in the front, like eyes.

  My eyes fell on the women milling in front of the university. Because of the heat, many of them had twisted their hair up. I've always wanted to do my own hair but never mastered anything more than a hair clip, a ponytail, or a basic braid. So I cut my hair off.

  Only one woman had tamed her curly brown hair in a ponytail with a simple black elastic. My kind of woman.

  Then she turned her head to talk to the guy next to her, and I saw it wasn't my kind of woman at all. It was Mireille.

  I walked up on her other side. "Hi there."

  Her half-smile dissolved as soon as she recognized me. "Oh. Hello." She glanced at her friend, a guy with sandy-colored hair and freckles.

  "Hi. I'm Scott. I'm in general surgery at the Jewish."

  He still looked fresh, no dark circles under the eyes. Of course, we were only a few days in. "What year are you?"

  "First. Are you in medicine, too?"

  "Yeah, first year family med at St. Joe's. My name's Hope."

  He smiled at me. His front teeth just crooked enough to be charming. "Pleased to meet you."

  "Likewise."

  Mireille took his arm. "Well, we're on our way. Nice to see you again."

  Scott turned to me. "You want to join us? We were thinking of going to a café."

  I loved how Mireille's face turned puce, so I said, "Really? You have time for a café on gen surg?"

  He laughed. "I'm post call. Mireille was going to fill me in on all the gossip from St. Joe's."

  "Like that she and Alex used to be together?"

  Mireille's lips parted as she gave me a measured look, but Scott laughed. "Old news. I went to med school with them."

  Still, I'd gotten a double dig at Mireille. Now she knew I knew, plus I'd reminded Scott of her past if she was planning to get jiggy with it. I gave him a lingering look. "Maybe you're the one who should fill me in."

  He laughed, glanced at Mireille, and sobered. "Nah. I guess there's more serious stuff going on."

  Regret sobered me, too. I shouldn't act so bitchy with her ex-lover dead. "Yeah. I heard the preliminary autopsy report came out. I'm sorry."

  Scott raised his eyebrows. "Autopsy report." Mireille gave him a fierce look, and he backtracked. "I guess that's one of the things I'll hear about."

  I glanced at Mireille, wondering if she knew the report, too. Probably. I waved them off, and turned down Louis Colin, a small street leading to the Haute École Commerciale, a steel-pillared monstrosity that dominated the other university buildings. Today I hurried by HEC, focusing on the ultramarine-blue day care instead. The railing on one side was made out of sheet metal embossed with a skateboarder. The kids' paper suns grinned down at me with crooked smiles.

  I came home to two messages on my call answer. The so-called Zippy Moving Company's truck had broken down just outside of Montreal. There was nothing that they could or would do about it. "We are very sorry, but of course, mechanical problems are not our responsibility."

  Then whose responsibility was it?

  "Your truck will arrive tomorrow. Please call us if you have any questions."

  Yeah. Like they'd be waiting to hear an earful from me after 6 p.m. Worse and worser. I sat on my sleeping bag and massaged my aching insteps.

  The second message was a woman's muffled voice. "Hi, uh, Hope? I heard that you, um, want to talk to me? So I'm calling you back." She left a number and said, "My name is Vicki." And then she hung up.

  Victory at last! I dialed the number. It rang four times and clicked over to "The AT&T wireless customer you have dialed is not available. Please leave a message."

  Were these people allergic to turning on their cell phones?

  I left a quick message asking her to call me. Then I double-checked the time when Vicki called. Less than an hour ago. Too bad.

  Thirty minutes later, the phone rang. I grabbed it. "Hello?"

  "Hope." Alex pitched his voice seductively.

  My back jerked up, rigid. "Hello."

  He paused. "Is something wrong?"

  "Should something be wrong?" I countered.

  "Are you mad at me?"

  "I'm not mad." Pissed, betrayed, seething—okay, mad. "Is there something you wanted to tell me?"

  "Well, yeah."

  If he confessed his hot and heavy past with Mireille, maybe I'd cut him some microscopic slack.

  "Did you hear about the autopsy report?" he asked. "I was right! He was murdered!"

  "I heard that they found succ in his blood," I said coolly. "He could still have injected himself."

  "Kurt? No way! Weren't you listening to me?"

  "Too well," I answered, and my line beeped. "Sorry Alex, must go. Ta ta." I hung up. "Hello?"

  "Hope?" It was Vicki's high-pitched voice.

  Finally, things were going right. "Vicki! I'm so glad to hear from you. How are you?"

  "Terrible." She blew her nose.

  "Oh." How could I cheer her up? "I know this is a very hard time for you. Kurt was your fiancée?"

  "Yes." Rather squashed-sounding. She blew her nose again. "You wanted to talk to me?"

  "Yes." I tried to inject warmth and sympathy into my voice. "Thanks for calling me on such a difficult day. My name is Hope Sze. I'm a resident. You may not remember me, but I was in the locker room, when we, ah, found Kurt. You seemed very upset. I wanted to make sure that you were all right."

  "Well, I'm not." She sounded plugged. I wondered if she was holding a tissue to her nose as we talked. "I want you to leave me alone."

  "Excuse me?" It was the last thing I expected. She was the one who had called me. Twice!

  "Leave me alone." Click. She hung up on me!

  I banged my own phone down. I knew she was in mourning, but it wasn't like I was harassing her. I left my number with the clerk, and then she called me. If she wanted to be left alone, she should have just let it die. I winced. Bad choice of words.

  The phone rang. I picked it up. "What! I mean, hello."

  "It's Alex."

  I'd forgotten about him. I'd thought that he'd hung up after I had. "What's up?"

  "That's what I wanted to know. You brushed me off like I was a case of food poisoning."

  I laughed reluctantly. "You can't brush off food poisoning. It makes you puke."

  "I hope I'm not that bad. Did I piss you off somehow?"

  I paused. He'd lied to me. Bad news. The end. On the other hand, there was still that darn spark. No. After the desk-hiding episode, caution won. "Forget it."

  "Come on, Hope. I want to know."

  "Too bad, then." It sounded harsh, so I added cheerfully. "I'll talk to you later, okay?"

  Long pause. "Okay." Before he'd finished the word, I hung up. I had to laugh. I got the feeling Alex appreciated me more if he had to work for me. It wouldn't hurt him.

  Now I was all keyed up. I didn't want to sit around my apartment alone, brooding. Alex should be left alone to repent his sins, not me.

  I rummaged through the orientation package on my desk for the list of residents' names and numbers.

  Tori picked up on the second ring just as I pulled Henry into a marching position. Time to party, girl style.

  "Hi. It's Hope. Wanna do something?"

  She paused. "Like what?"

  "I don't know. You've got four years here on me. Any suggestions?"

  She laughed and thought a minute. "Have you been to the Jazz Festival?"

  "That sounds awesome." Then I remembered my line of credit. "Is it expensive?"

  "No, they have a lot of free shows outside."


  "Perfect."

  "Tucker and Anu and I were talking about going on the weekend. I could call and see if they want to go tonight instead."

  Tucker was way too loud. "Uh, I'm feeling low key tonight, you know?"

  She laughed. "Maybe we'd better not go to the Jazz Festival, then."

  "I'd kind of like to go. I've never been. I just don't feel like screaming over the music, in a big group. But if you want to, that's cool."

  "No, that's all right. We can always go out with them on the weekend."

  We arranged to meet at the Snowdon metro station. Tori said she'd be wearing a tangerine shirt and a glow stick around her neck.

  "I love glow sticks! Don't you?"

  She laughed. "I keep a couple. It makes it easier to meet people."

  The Monday night metro was packed, the working-late crowd mixed with the dinner dates. The black guy beside me zoned out with his headphones, his knees pointed into the aisle. I tried to relax in my orange and white plastic seat, listening to my neighbor's bass beat and the screech of the subway. I was going to see the city and have a good time without Alex.

  Two short stops later, I stepped off and met Tori on the platform. She was sitting on a bench, a blue glow stick wrapped around her neck, her legs tanned against her white jean shorts.

  "You made it." She handed me an inert green glow stick. "Here's your prize."

  I hesitated. "Do you want to save it? You know, in case you need to meet someone else?"

  She laughed. "Don't worry about it. I get them at the dollar store."

  I bent mine in half until it snapped and glowed fluorescent lime green. She helped me tie the string on the end to my left wrist. As we stepped on the next train, she said, "Why don't we get off at Place-d'Armes and walk? If we switch to the green line for Place-des-Arts, it'll take longer."

  I held up my hands. "You're the expert. I'm just happy I got the glow stick!"

  She laughed and shook her head. "Have you ever been to the Chinatown here? It's right around Place-d'Armes."

  "No way. I've been held prisoner at St. Joe's."

  "Yeah." She paused and added, "I know the feeling. I'm at the Children's for peds."

  "How's that?" I hadn't visited the Children's Hospital yet.