I had boned up on the skeletal system and was ready to take the medical board exam when Dr. Farber finally came in, followed by the nurse.
“Ms. Horowitz, nice to see you again.” He flashed me that smooth smile. “So glad you decided to come in. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Chuckle, chuckle. “Have you had any problems you want to tell me about?”
Yeah, plenty of problems, but none that I’d reveal to this joker.
“No,” I said.
“Okay, let’s get started, and we’ll have you out of here in no time. Go ahead and lie back and put your legs in the stirrups.”
I did so. I felt like a roast pig on a spit. Just turn me slowly and baste me in my own juices.
“Please scoot up here a little bit,” the doctor said. That was gynecological code for, “Shove your ass in my face.”
He shone a lamp up my crotch that was of sufficient wattage to light up a football field in the middle of the night.
“I’m putting the speculum in now. You’ll feel a slight pressure.” He inserted the shoehorn and pried me open.
“Everything looks good in there,” he said cheerfully, “We’ll do the Pap smear now.” That was code for, “We’re gonna savagely scrape some cells off your cervix.”
That done, he proceeded to inform me that he was now removing the speculum.
Now, I guess they teach these people in medical school to fully inform their female patients of every single step they’re taking, so as to avoid having patients go nutso on them or, God forbid, accuse them of sexual assault. Personally, I think I’d know the difference between an assault and an assessment, thank you very much. Just get in there, do your job, and get the hell out. Spare me the blow-by-blow account.
“Okay, now we’ll just do the manual exam, and we’re done,” he said. Now, because I follow my own advice, I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow account of that one.
At last he was done, and he and the nurse left, after informing me that I was in robust reproductive health and that they would call me with the results of the Pap smear.
I stood up to get dressed. Then that slimy goop that they use started oozing down my legs. Fan-frigging-tastic! I’d be slipping and sliding in my thong underwear for the rest of the day. The sacrifices I make for my job.
I got dressed, went down the hall and through the door to the waiting room. Good—it was full now, and the receptionist was busy handing out and collecting information forms. Just the distraction I needed for the next phase of my plan.
I paid my insurance deductible, then said to the receptionist, “Oh, can I go back and use your restroom before I leave?”
“Sure, go ahead,” she said, turning to another patient.
I went back through the door and into the women’s room. It was empty. Excellent. I went into the far stall and locked it behind me. Then I climbed up on the toilet, settling my ass on the tank and my feet on the bowl so they couldn’t be seen beneath the stall.
Then I let out a long breath. Phase B of my plan was successfully launched.
The clinic wouldn’t close till six, so I would be sitting on the pot for a while. What else was there to do in such a situation but . . . read? There had been a stack of educational literature—brochures, fact sheets and such in the waiting room, and I had stashed some of it in my back pocket for this very purpose.
I pulled the papers out and started perusing one of the brochures entitled “Infertility Causes And Treatments.” It informed me that women’s fertility begins to decline seriously in their mid-thirties and drastically in their forties. It explained that there are several reasons for this, mainly that ovulation becomes sporadic and the quality of the eggs deteriorates. The quality of the uterine lining also declines, making it difficult for a fertilized egg to implant itself.
The brochure went on to discuss several treatment options, some of which Dr. Farber had touted to me during my previous visit. They included in vitro fertilization and a number of variations of that. There were also hormonal treatments, which were used to increase the number of eggs released by the ovaries during each menstrual cycle and to improve the quality of the uterine lining.
If these methods failed, there were a couple other possibilities, both involving third parties. If the woman’s eggs could not be successfully fertilized, then egg donation could be used, where another woman’s eggs would be fertilized with the prospective father’s sperm, then implanted into the prospective mother’s uterus. On the other hand, if the woman’s eggs could be successfully fertilized but there was trouble with implantation or carrying the fetus to term, then a surrogate could be used, where the fertilized eggs could be implanted into another woman’s uterus.
The brochure went on to note that infertility could also arise from problems in the prospective father, such as low sperm count or low sperm motility. In those cases, IVF was also an option, or, failing that, sperm donation.
I suppose that at this point I should have started panicking, knowing that my childbearing days were numbered and desperate measures would soon be required if there was to be any hope of producing a junior Dirty Harry or Harriet. However, I already knew that I was a freak of nature. I’d never felt the biological clock and the need to reproduce. Frankly, I think one of me is all the world can handle.
So there I sat on the john, when suddenly the door to the restroom opened.
There was a clicking of heels on the tile floor, and a voice said, “I know what you’re up to, you lying sack of shit! You sit there high and mighty on your throne, but you are not getting away with this. I’ve flushed out your dirty little secret. You can’t hide from me. This is where you get off!”
I’d been found out!
Chapter 27
HOW HAD this happened?
But wait. The clicking of the heels continued, right into the stall next to me. Then there was the sound of a zipper and the rustling of clothes. Then tinkling in the bowl. All the while the woman kept up a monologue along the same lines.
She was talking on a cell phone! This wasn’t about me at all. News flash: I was not the center of the universe. The woman was reaming out her cheating spouse, her conniving coworker, or whomever.
I heard the sound of the toilet paper roll rolling, the toilet flushing, the zipper zipping, and the stall latch unlatching. The heels clicked over to the wall, and the wall slot slid open and shut. The heels clicked to the sink, the water was turned on and off, and a paper towel was pulled.
The tirade kept up throughout.
Amazing! The woman had managed to take a pee, provide a urine sample, flush the toilet, and wash her hands, all with a cell phone pressed to her ear. What coordination! What dexterity! What chutzpah!
I was almost sorry to see her go. Well, I didn’t literally see her, but you know what I mean. That babe had a mouth on her to rival my own. If she’d stayed longer, I might have picked up a couple useful, Dirty Harry-like, “go-screw-yourself”-type lines. Now it was back to the silence and the reading.
Having polished off the infertility information, I was just digesting the menopause material when another sound penetrated the silence. A disembodied voice said, “Please scoot up here a little bit . . . I’m putting the speculum in now . . .”
It was Farber! What was going on? Was I having some kind of posttraumatic flashback?
Oh, the sound was coming from the other side of the wall. There was an exam room right next door, and I could hear every word in there.
I sat through several more pelvic exams and a childbirth coaching session. The nurse was recommending natural childbirth.
“What? You mean absolutely no makeup?” the patient, evidently a Boca Babe, said in horror.
A little later, I heard a male voice—not Farber’s.
“I want you to know that the only reason I’m here is ’cause the wife would
n’t quit nagging me. I know one thing, this infertility problem is totally on her side. They’ve got a few meshuga nuts in her family, you know what I’m saying? Inbreeding, if you ask me. So what is the logical outcome of that, I ask you? So here I am, and I’m eager to prove my manhood so she’ll get off my back. Now, what is it you want me to do? Whatever it is, I’m ready.”
Then I heard the nurse’s voice.
“Please deposit your specimen in this jar. Here are some magazines to help you. When you’re done, seal the jar tightly and place it in that slot on the wall.”
I heard the door of the exam room close. This was followed by the sound of rustling pages. Shortly afterward, I heard a slow rhythmic movement. It gradually increased in frequency and was accompanied by grunts and groans.
Oh, my God! If there’s anything worse than hearing a couple having sex on the other side of a thin wall, it’s hearing a guy having sex with himself on the other side of a thin wall. I couldn’t take it!
I put my hands over my ears, but that didn’t help. I had to do something.
I jumped off the pot and ran to every single stall, flushing every single toilet to drown out the noise.
The goddess Isis had mercy on me. By the time the toilets stopped flushing and I had resituated myself in my stall, the guy was apparently done. I leaned back in exhaustion. I didn’t know about him, but I was ready for a nap.
I forced myself to stay awake as a few more women came and went in the restroom, and yeah, more than one made a cell call while answering nature’s call.
Finally, I heard the clinic staff leaving.
“Be sure to set the security alarm,” I heard the nurse say.
“Yeah, I will. Good night,” the receptionist answered.
A few minutes later, I heard the front door lock. Then there was silence. The clinic had closed. It was time for the final phase of my plan.
I exited the restroom and walked down the hall toward the front of the clinic. There were two doors. One led to the file room. That one was locked. The other led to the waiting room. That one was open. I entered the waiting room, then tried the door that led from there to the file room. That was locked, too.
So both doors to the file room were locked. How was I going to get in there? Contrary to popular belief based on the movies, lock-picking isn’t generally part of a P.I.’s training. And as a scam specialist, it wasn’t a skill I’d needed in the past.
I eyed the frosted-glass window that separated the waiting room from the receptionist’s area/file room. I pushed it sideways, and it slid open. Yeesss!
I could see the open-front file cabinets lining the far wall. All I had to do was crawl through the window. It was about a foot-and-a-half square. I should be able to get through there with no problem.
I dragged one of the waiting room chairs over and climbed up on it. I stuck my head through, then my shoulders. So far so good. Okay, now the tits. They were a tight squeeze, but I made it.
The rest should be okay. I happened to know that I was a perfect 36-24-36, so since the tits had made it, the ass should, too.
I grabbed the edge of the receptionist’s desk to pull myself through. I was inching along when suddenly . . . shit! I was stuck.
I couldn’t pull myself forward any farther. I tried pushing back, but didn’t budge. Damn it! I was jammed in.
Okay, so maybe I’d been in denial about the extent of my cellulite problem. My ass was obviously not a 36 anymore. But is this how I had to find out? The gods had a cruel sense of humor, that’s all I could say.
Earlier I’d felt like a roast pig, now I was a stuck pig! The first sight someone would get an eyeful of as they came in the door tomorrow morning would be my fat ass hanging there. Talk about loss of face!
I had to do something. Besides, I had a job to do here.
I desperately looked around the file room for something—anything—within grabbing distance that might help. I pulled open the drawers on the receptionist’s desk. Nothing in there but paper supplies, pens, staples. Shit! I was starting to panic now.
I noticed a little cabinet on the wall to my right. I reached with all my might. My fingertips just grazed the handle on the front cover. Just a little farther . . . I took a deep breath and made one final lunge. Yes! I grabbed the handle.
I pulled the cover open. The cabinet was full of medical supplies. Cotton balls, alcohol swabs, Q-tips and . . . a tube of K-Y gel. The same greasy goop the doctor had used on me earlier.
I grabbed the tube, unscrewed the top, then squeezed it all around my hips at the edges of the window, practically dislocating my shoulder in the process.
Okay, I’d gone from roast pig to stuck pig to greased pig. I pushed and pulled some more. I felt a little movement, then a little more. Finally, I slid right through with one big POP!
I let out a major sigh of relief. Man! This gave a whole new meaning to the term female lubrication.
All right, time to get to work. I went to the filing cabinets. The files were arranged in alphabetical order with the first two letters of the patient’s last name stuck onto the file tab in large colored block print.
I went right to the GU section. Guberman, Guggenheim, Guy, Guzman . . . no Gutierrez. I looked all through the general vicinity in case Gladys’s chart had been misfiled.
It wasn’t misfiled. It was missing.
I looked in the LO section for Eulalia Lopez, on the possibility that she’d been a patient there, too. Nothing on her, either.
Okay, maybe they had a whole different section for inactive—or should I say, dead—patients. I looked through all the cabinets. There was no such section. If they kept old files, it wasn’t in this room.
I went out the door that led from the file room to the medical areas and walked throughout the clinic. Most of the rooms were locked, and they didn’t have any sliding windows for me to get stuck in. The few rooms that were unlocked didn’t contain any files.
It looked as if I was out of luck. Now what?
I glanced at the computer on the receptionist’s desk. Maybe I could glean some information from the computer files. The machine was on, in sleep mode. I clicked the mouse, and it woke up. I clicked on the icon for the appointment calendar. Then I entered a search command for Gutierrez.
There it was!
A whole list of dates with Gladys’s name had come up on the screen. So Gladys had been in the clinic several times, not just twice as Farber had claimed. Her last visit had been about a month before her death.
Okay, Farber was definitely hiding something. What was it?
I decided to see what other appointments there were on the days that Gladys had come in. Maybe that would give me some kind of clue.
I clicked on the last date that Gladys had been in, and the day’s schedule came up on the screen. I glanced through the names. None were familiar . . . until I got to the one just before Gladys. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The name on the screen was Tricia Weinstein.
So Gladys and Tricia were both patients of the clinic, with adjacent appointments on the same day. But wait . . . they hadn’t even known each other then. Tricia hadn’t hired Gladys till a couple weeks later. What did it mean?
I looked at the schedules for the other days of Gladys’s appointments. Tricia wasn’t scheduled on any of those days.
Then I did a search for Eulalia’s name. Sure enough, she’d been a patient of the clinic. She’d only been in a couple times, though, the last one about a week before her death.
I was mystified. But this wasn’t the time or place to think things through. That required one of two things—my Hog or my Hennessy. Right now, I had to get out of here.
I closed the computer application and took a quick look around the room. Everything was in place and no one would ever know I’d been there. Of cours
e, the computer file would show the last time it was accessed, but the appointment calendar was probably the first thing the receptionist opened in the morning, so that would immediately supercede the record of my access.
I went out the door to the waiting room. I moved the chair back from under the window to its original spot.
I was just reaching for the front door when I saw it—the security alarm with its flashing red light. The alarm was set. If I opened the door, it would go off, and the security company would call the cops, who’d come swooping in.
There had to be some way to get out of this place undetected. And I knew just the person who would know how—Enrique.
I took out my cell phone, scrolled to his number, and called.
He was on the job at the Boca Beach Hilton. I apprised him of my predicament.
“So just tell me how to disarm this thing,” I said. “Do I pull some wire or what?”
I heard a sigh so dramatic I could almost see his eyes rolling back in his head.
“Harriet, Harriet, Harriet,” he said. “Did I or did I not invite you to come to the trade show with me last weekend? It’s not all about partying, you know. Like, you might actually have learned something? Girl, when it comes to security technology, you are not just in the Dark Ages, you’re in the Stone Ages!”
“Enrique,” I cut in, “get off my greasy fat ass. I don’t have time for a lecture. I need to blow this joint!”
“Okay, okay. Jeez. Touchy, touchy, All right, here’s the deal. There is no way to disable the system. You don’t just ‘pull some wire,’ as you so quaintly put it. This would have required some advance planning, some reverse engineering. Of course, some people might have asked for a little help from their friends. But some people have to do everything alone, just to prove what an independent woman they are.”
Dirty Harriet Page 15