by Linda Barnes
“Muir send you to check up on me?”
“No.”
“I got less than a year to go and then I’m out in practice.”
“You’re not a real doctor yet?”
“Of course I’m real. I’m just not paid like I’m real yet, okay?”
“I thought this wasn’t a teaching hospital.”
“It’s private, but even private places take in a few residents. They need to. Time I’m putting in, I’m probably earning a buck an hour. System’s built on slave labor.”
I drank bad coffee and let him talk.
“Guys collecting the fees and the guys putting in the hours, they’re two different sets of people,” he complained.
“Paying your dues,” I suggested.
“Yeah, and when I’m out of here, you think I’ll be able to cash in the chips? Hell, it’ll be National Health by then. These old guys, they did a number. Milked the system so bad, the rest of us are gonna pay. If I’d done an MBA, a lousy MBA, I’d be rolling by now. Kids five years younger than me got houses and two BMWs, and I’m working my butt off.”
“You’re a specialist. Aren’t specialists well paid?”
“Oh, yeah, and now the government’s coming in to tell me what to do, how to treat a patient, how long a patient can stay in the goddamn hospital, and setting my fee wherever some clerk outa high school thinks it ought to be. It’s the damn DRGs.”
“DRGs. Is that, like, drugs?”
“DRGs. Diagnostic-related groupings. Fitting a patient into a diagnosis, and getting paid based on which grouping you plug them into, like all people only have one thing wrong with them at a time.”
He still hadn’t made much eye contact, but his voice wasn’t a monotone any longer. “Bunch of legislative lawyers,” he went on. “They hate doctors. Screwing the whole system and it’s just gonna get worse. Bureaucrats’ll take the money, and the patients’ll end up worse off than ever. It’s not doctors, it’s technology. It’s tests. It’s machines. Own the machines and the technology, you’ve got it made. Me, if I don’t invest, I’m gonna be a wage slave working for some bureaucrat doesn’t even respect what I do.”
“That bad?” I murmured sympathetically.
“And it’s not like there’s no money. You see the construction, like we’ve got to have a new wing and a new garage and a new lab and a helipad on the roof, the whole nine yards. You writing this down? I thought you were a journalist.”
“I’m doing a small story, focusing on this little girl, Rebecca Woodrow. Her mother’s name is Emily. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, that’s what she had. I understand it can be cured.”
“Yeah. Chances are damned good.”
“Rebecca died during chemotherapy treatment.”
“You know what I always say?”
“What?”
“Sleazebags never die. You get some guy in a hospital, some scumball wanted by cops in thirty states, it’s a given: he’ll make it. Sweet little kid, apple of her mama’s eye, she dies during some routine thing. Never fails.”
“This girl was the apple of Mom’s eye, all right. Only child. Wealthy folks. Pretty girl.”
“None of that counts.”
“Would any nurse here be qualified to administer chemotherapy?”
“No, no. Specially trained nurses. Nurse-practitioners.”
“Part of my story involves interviewing the last people to see this girl alive. My editor loves that kind of stuff. Human drama.”
“Glad I don’t have your job,” Peña muttered.
“So I need to interview the nurse who handled the chemo. On a little girl who died suddenly. In January.”
“January,” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Beginning of January?”
“Yeah.”
“I suppose it was Tina,” he said as if he were speaking to himself.
“Tina?” I echoed very quietly, not wanting to wake him in case he was talking in his sleep.
“Tina Sukhia. Lovely woman.” He added regretfully, “She doesn’t work here anymore.”
“The dead girl’s mother says a doctor rushed into the room at the end and placed a mask over the girl’s face.” Emily hadn’t mentioned whether or not the stranger was wearing a surgical mask, like the limp green rectangle dangling around Peña’s neck. Surely she would have noted that, a masked man carrying a mask. “Would that doctor have been an anesthesiologist?”
“Might have been. Logical thing to do,” Peña said. “First rule: Establish an airway. Somebody’s not breathing for herself, you do it for her, with a bag and a mask.”
“Do you remember—?”
“Look, lady—I forget your name—”
“Sandy. Sandra.”
“Sandra. You think I’m gonna remember what we talked about in ten minutes, you’re wrong. I’m zonked, see? I need to sleep. Some of the guys, they can take this, and I’m pretty good at taking it too. But the thing you’re talking about happened months ago. I can’t remember if I ate breakfast.”
“Aren’t you worried you’re going to make a mistake?”
“No. No, once I’m working, I’m fine. Adrenaline comes to the old rescue. I know my job. You know how people say ‘I could do that in my sleep’? Well, I can. I can do my job in my sleep. I just forget other things.”
“Like Rebecca Woodrow.”
“I don’t check on the chemo. That’s not what I do.”
“The mother says the man with the mask pushed her, shoved her out of the way.”
“That I’d remember. It definitely wasn’t me. I don’t push mothers around.”
An overhead speaker came to life, announcing “Code Thirty. Code Thirty.” Peña’s beeper emitted sharp little bleats. Then it said, quite clearly, “Code Thirty, room four-oh-two. Code Thirty. Four-oh-two.”
“I gotta go,” Peña said unnecessarily. He was already moving.
I followed, wishing my flats had rubber soles. It was hard to stay silent, but the anesthesiologist was traveling so fast he never glanced behind him.
We shoved through two sets of swinging doors, took two quick turns down featureless corridors. He pushed open a wooden door and entered full tilt.
A glance into the narrow window next to the door, five inches wide, ceiling height, stopped me cold.
The room was crammed, jammed, as crowded as a stateroom in an old Marx Brothers film. Any resemblance to comedy ended there.
I couldn’t see the occupant of the bed, only an extended arm here, a leg there. It must have been a child. The limbs were small.
A thing that looked like a tool chest on wheels, studded with drawers, half of them flung open, blocked part of my view. Plastic tubing curled from one drawer. Clear plastic bags of liquid filled another, bottles and jars a third. The top of the cart was dominated by a machine with complex dials and buttons and a computerlike screen. Paddles grew out of the top. I noticed a metal cylinder strapped to the side of the cart.
A man in a white coat held a bag and a mask near the head of the bed. A hose led from the bag to a wall-mounted spigot.
A woman wearing white slacks repeatedly slapped the back of a small hand, tried to insert an IV needle. On the other side of the bed, a second woman strapped a blood-pressure cuff to a limp arm. A man in greens, not Peña, had a hand where the child’s midsection must have been. He was speaking, but I couldn’t distinguish the words.
There must have been twelve people in the room, not counting the patient. Whatever Emily Woodrow had seen when her daughter died, it couldn’t have been this. Not unless she’d passed out after the first stranger arrived.
I was the sole idle onlooker. Everyone in the room moved with intent, carried out a given task, performed the required steps in some secret ballet.
Peña seemed to take charge. There was nothing sleepy about him as he barked orders, moving more quickly than his bulk should have allowed. A woman handed him a syringe.
Someone was sticking patches, like small round Band-Aids, to a
reas of the patient’s bare skin. Peña spoke and a woman scrambled to grab the paddles off the cart.
The resident anesthesiologist glanced up suddenly, and his eyes met mine. His mouth moved. A sharp-featured woman began a march to the door.
I turned quickly and ran. My wig felt too tight. It wasn’t until after I’d pressed the down button, after the elevator door had closed behind me, that I recalled the room’s wallpaper: blue, with white latticework and gold flowers.
If all the chemotherapy rooms were outfitted the same, then each had a single wall-mounted spigot. Oxygen, most likely. No way to make a mistake with only one source.
If oxygen was readily available in the rooms, I wondered what was kept in the metal cylinder strapped to the cart.
15
In a first-floor bathroom, I breathed deeply, washed my hands, and fluffed my fake hair until two nurses finished arguing and agreed that Isabel had one hell of a nerve dating Danny. I kept glancing at myself in the mirror. I have photo IDs—laminated official-looking badges—for both my blond and my brunette identities. Neither looks much like me, nor did the woman in the mirror.
When the nurses finally left, I hid in a stall and, with overwhelming relief, peeled off the wig, feeling my hair spring back to life. I ran my fingers over my scalp, ruffling my curls and scratching all the pesky itches, then wrapped the blond wig in crumpled tissue paper and stuffed it into my purse.
As a redhead, I returned to the mirror and unfastened the top two buttons on my blouse. Could I make it through one more interview? I placed a hand firmly over my racing heart and wondered if the child on the fourth floor was breathing yet. I exhaled enough air to fog the mirror.
One more interview. I kept my suit jacket on, just in case. My freshly released hair was wild, but a few pins and the straw hat held it down. Sandy’s lipstick clashed with my natural coloring, so I dipped a rough paper towel in warm water and scrubbed my lips till they paled.
The water felt so good that I dampened another towel in icy water and pressed it to my cheeks. My heartbeat slowed.
In about a week, with Roz’s help, I’d fake a Silver Crescent letterhead and cancel the whole shebang. Maybe my imaginary chapter would go bankrupt, their treasurer accused of embezzlement. Simply shocking.
Tina. Tina Sukhia. I should have asked Peña to spell it. A shaky lead, but my only one, given that my client showed a marked disinclination to talk. No hospital would give up information on an ex-employee. I’d probably have to transfer more of Emily Woodrow’s advance to Patsy Ronetti in order to get the necessary address. But first, outside the bathroom, I ducked dutifully into a nearby phone alcove. Never neglect the obvious, Mooney used to preach. And damned if he wasn’t right.
Tina Sukhia listed her number in the phone book. The address was on Buswell Street. The nurse-practitioner who might have administered chemotherapy to Rebecca Woodrow had given up a job conveniently close to home.
I fed a coin into the slot. Three rings and a quick pickup. “Hi.” The voice was wrong. Male.
“May I speak to Tina, please?”
“Who’s this?”
“Is Tina there?”
“She oughtta be home any minute.”
I shifted to a more official tone. “That’s perfect. I’m calling from JHHI, about Tina’s exit interview. We’re a little concerned.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“As you may know, we’re required to withhold her last week’s salary until we complete the exit-interview process.”
“Oh.”
“Hang on a minute, please,” I said, because real people expect bureaucrats to put them on hold. I counted to twenty-five, slowly, then spoke again. “I’m sorry. Where were we? Oh, yes, listen, this could work out very well. We have someone right in your neighborhood. She could be in and out in five minutes.”
“Would she bring the check?”
“Well, no. But I’ll be able to drop it in the mail as soon as our rep phones in and tells me the exit interview’s complete.”
“Okay,” the man said. “Good enough. Bye, now.”
I emerged from JHHI blinking like I’d spent the day in a darkened movie house, dazzled, disoriented, amazed by the light in the sky and the fresh air. Since I’d already hit the maximum daily rate at the garage—an astounding sum—I temporarily abandoned my car and headed up Longwood, counting crocuses. Even on heavily trafficked Brookline Avenue, a few blossoms challenged the concrete. On the less-traveled cross streets, bright patches of yellow and blue turned city lawns into gardens.
I took deep gulping breaths, gagging on exhaust fumes for my trouble. The hell with formality in the late-afternoon heat, I decided, plucking off the straw hat and shaking my hair loose. I wished I’d stripped off my panty hose in the JHHI ladies’ room. I was tired of disguises.
Buswell Street is in Boston University country. B.U. tried to buy most of the area outright a few years ago and might have succeeded if not for a vigilant neighborhood association that saw few benefits in losing more of the city’s rarest commodity—taxable property—to an insatiable juggernaut.
B.U. continues to chew away at Kenmore Square, threatening its seedy bars and pizza joints with gentrification, but a few blocks down Beacon Street no new dorms rise high. Just weathered brick four-stories, basking in faded glory.
According to two strips of linotype pasted over the doorbell of 551 Buswell, Tina Sukhia shared apartment 4D with Tony Foley. In Boston, where the O’Reillys tend to stick to the O’Days, and the Cabots to the Forbeses, Sukhia seemed an odd matchup with Foley.
I rang the bell. A metallic squawk issued from the speaker. “Tina? That you? You forget your keys?”
I hollered my real name and no further information since I don’t like yelling my business in strange vestibules. A buzzer sounded and I pushed open the heavy oak door.
The vestibule was small, paneled in dark wood. The stairs beckoned. If people are slapping down hard-earned bucks for Stairmaster machines, it must be good exercise, right? My resolve was strengthened by a quick glance at the elevator, a cell with no evidence of a state inspection certificate.
It seemed like a long climb for only four levels. The steps twisted and spiraled, three steep short flights per floor. I heard a door unlatch, and a deep voice, familiar from the phone, demanded, “Tina, that you?”
I’d beaten her home. I kept climbing. My appearance wiped the welcoming smile off Tony Foley’s face. He rearranged it and came up with a grin that managed to be both tentative and flirtatious at the same time.
“Who’re you?”
“Carlotta Carlyle. That’s what I said at the door,” I answered cheerfully, pleased to leave Sandy Everett behind.
“Speaker doesn’t work worth shit.”
“I’m here to talk to Tina.”
“Coulda saved yourself a climb. She ain’t in yet.” He was lanky and blond, with an accent out of the rural South. As he spoke, he ran a hand through greasy hair that spilled over his forehead. Twenty-five to thirty. With a shampoo and a lot of dental work, he’d be close to handsome.
“But you’re expecting her,” I said. “Soon.”
“You that exit-interview lady?”
“Right.”
He stared at me blankly for a minute, then broke into a know-it-all grin. “You’re scared she’s gonna sue you, right? She tol’ me. Anytime she leaves a place, they get all worried ’counta she’s a minority, and did she file a complaint with MCAD or some such.” He seemed pleased by the prospect, as if a lawsuit would be the punchline of a joke.
MCAD is the Massachusetts Committee Against Discrimination.
“It’s nothing like that,” I assured him.
He sucked on his ill-spaced teeth and aimed a pointing index finger at me, cocking his thumb for a trigger. “Well, is it, like, if she was laid off, she gets severance?” He seemed like he was earnestly trying to fit together pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
I was trying to figure something out too, namely this guy who
talked like a hayseed, looked like a sheet-carrying Klansman, and lived with a woman who was definitely not an Irish townie.
I blew out a sigh. I’m glad when people surprise me. Sometimes you think you’ve got it all mapped out, and then whammo.
He hadn’t invited me in and he was blocking the door to the apartment. I said, “You think I could have a glass of water?”
“Elevator busted again?”
“Didn’t look too reliable.”
He snorted. “Come on in.” He shifted a good five inches and I brushed past him.
The door opened onto a wall with a row of wooden pegs, heavy with winter jackets and bright-colored filmy scarves. From the hallway, I could see into four tiny rooms: kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bath. The place was bigger than the elevator, but not much. From the bedroom came a pungent smell of incense, smoky and floral, with a hint of something underneath.
Tony nodded me toward the kitchen.
Along one wall, a dinky two-burner range nestled next to a toy refrigerator and a half-size sink. The rest of the room was crowded with a card table, two chairs, and a stack of boxes emblazoned with the logo of a local stereo outlet.
The man rummaged in a high cupboard, found a glass, rinsed and filled it with tepid water.
“Thanks,” I said.
My nose and my memory got together: marijuana. How quaint.
“So, she’s got money comin’ from JHHI?” the man demanded while I drank.
“Are you Tina’s husband?”
“You mean, like, you shouldn’t discuss stuff with somebody ain’t family?”
“Something like that,” I replied coolly. Near the sink, peacock feathers fanned out of a purple vase. Someone in the apartment had a taste for exotic colors, and I didn’t think it was the man in the white T-shirt and khakis.
“We’re engaged. I’m Tony.” He offered the name as if anyone who’d ever encountered Tina, even on paper, would automatically recognize it. “Nothin’ wrong in tellin’ me.”
His brief nervous smile made me wonder if Tina knew about the engagement. “New equipment?” I asked, nodding at the boxes, pretending I hadn’t heard his request for information.
His face lit up. A shame about those teeth. “Reason I was hopin’ you were Tina. Wanted to show her. It’s like her weddin’ present to me. She just told me go pick it out, put it on her card.”