The skinny guy side-stepped into the bedroom, his hands clasped together and nodded the way some people do when they enter a church after a long absence. Lloyd nodded back at him.
“Grab his feet. I got this end,” Lloyd said.
There was a back door to the apartment that opened onto the actual basement. A clothes washer was shaking rhythmically on a brick base with a familiar tempo: one-sixty a minute. A concrete staircase led to a door that opened onto a gravel carport. With the help of the skinny guy, Lloyd hoisted Kaz up the stairs, sat him in the front passenger seat of the faded brown Toyota Corolla and strapped him in with the flimsy seatbelt. He reclined the chair just a bit and jogged around the car, jumped into the driver’s seat and pumped the gas pedal as he turned the key in the ignition. The engine whined and coughed and finally came to life.
He ground the gears trying to shove the shifter in reverse and skidded out of the car port. The skinny guy stood there waving, holding his pants up with his free hand as Lloyd sped off down the back alley.
Traffic was light but damn if there weren’t a shit load of traffic lights. Most of them red.
“I let you down, I let you down, I let you down,” Kaz kept repeating as if he were uttering some sort of mantra.
Lloyd reached over and squeezed Kaz’s shoulder.
“Lloyd, I think I’m dying,” Kaz said.
“No you’re not,” Lloyd said. “I’m a doctor. I know when people are dying, and you’re sure as hell not dying. Tell me about that girl. The one from Nicaragua.”
“Guatemala. My sweet desert bloom.”
“Did you ask her out?” Lloyd asked.
“I did what you said. I asked her out for coffee.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said she doesn’t drink coffee,” Kaz said.
“Damn. I’m sorry.”
“She drinks herbal tea,” Kaz said. “We went out for tea.” With his eyes still closed, Kaz exposed his teeth in a broad grin. His gums were red and swollen.
Lloyd accelerated to beat a stale yellow light.
“That’s great Kaz.”
“She’s lovely, Lloyd. Too bad you didn’t meet her.”
“I will,” Lloyd said. “You’ll introduce me, right?”
“I’m dying Lloyd. I’m so sorry I let you down.”
Lloyd switched lanes and pushed on the gas pedal, released it, pumped the brake pedal twice and cut back into a space in the right lane.
“Let me hear Chopin,” Kaz said.
Lloyd spotted a CD case in the plastic console. He dumped it on his lap as he kept driving. Keeping an eye on the road ahead of him, he popped the case open, grabbed the CD and slid it into the slot on the car stereo. A moment later, the nocturne in E flat major started playing from the tinny speakers.
The traffic light ahead was yellow. Still yellow. Lloyd downshifted and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The light turned red as the nose of the car entered the intersection. But he was clear across. Right on cue, a police cruiser pulled out of an alley, its emergency lights flashing. Lloyd didn’t stop. The siren came alive.
“What’s that?” Kaz asked.
Lloyd turned up the volume of the car stereo. This would help, Lloyd thought. A police escort. No need to stop at traffic lights anymore. At the next intersection he slowed a little but kept rolling through the red light honking the horn. As cars pulled over to the side of the street, a clear path opened in the left lane. Lloyd accelerated. A second cruiser joined the chase. The more the merrier.
Lloyd slowed to take the right turn onto Third Avenue. The medical center was just a few blocks away, now. He could already make out the white tower of the main hospital standing out like a fat obelisk against the hazy blue sky.
The police sirens seemed to wail with growing urgency but Lloyd knew it could only be his imagination playing tricks on him. Perception is just as fucked up as memory is. Finally, he steered sharply into the driveway to the Emergency room, the thin tires of the Corolla squealing. He pulled the car to a stop in the ambulance bay, right in front of the automatic sliding doors.
Lloyd stepped out of the car. A loud voice said, “Stop right there and put your hands on the car!”
Lloyd turned. A barrel chested cop with a ruddy complexion held a pistol pointed at him.
“I’m a doctor. There’s a sick man in the car.”
“Put your hands on the roof of the car!”
Another cop stepped out of the second cruiser.
“Down on the ground! Now!”
They really need to get their act together, Lloyd thought, coordinate their orders.
“There’s a dying man in the car,” he said. “You gonna shoot me? Go ahead. I don’t give a damn anymore.”
Lloyd went around the front of the car and opened the passenger door. He heard one of the cops cursing with the hollow tone of defeat.
Kaz’s lips were blue. He wasn’t breathing. Lloyd unlatched the seat belt and gave him two mouth-to-mouth rescue breaths. He placed a hand on his neck and palpated the carotid. There was a thread of a pulse. The barrel chested cop stood by the car staring at Kaz, his firearm at his side pointing to the floor.
“Help me out, will ya?” Lloyd said.
The cop slipped the pistol in its holster and reached for Kaz’s legs. They carried him through the automatic doors. There was a gurney just inside the ER entrance. They heaved Kaz onto the gurney. By now Kaz’s entire face was blue. Lloyd gave him two more rescue breaths. He felt for a pulse. There was none.
Lloyd yelled, “Code Blue!” He pulled out a plastic backboard from under the gurney, slid it under Kaz’s trunk and started doing chest compressions. A Filipino nurse in loose scrubs came running, holding onto her eyeglasses. Her stethoscope flopped off her neck and crashed to the floor. As she crouched to pick it up, a tall unshaven ER attending strode past her.
He nodded at Lloyd in recognition and asked, “What’s the story?”
Lloyd said, “Full arrest. Mercury poisoning.”
The ER doc rolled his head back. “Holy Shit!” He glanced at his wristwatch and called out, “Thirteen twenty-two!” He yanked a clear plastic bag from a hook on the wall, tore it open and extracted a self-inflating bag and mask. He tossed it at the Filipino nurse who was now at the head of the bed and said, “Start bagging!” Then he put two fingers on Kaz’s neck and said, “Good compressions. We’re moving to Bay three. Let’s pump and roll!”
Lloyd stepped onto the metal undercarriage of the gurney and kept pumping the chest as the gurney rolled to the open ER bay. The barrel chested cop was providing most of the push with the ER doc steering. A voice on the PA system announced, “Code Blue, Emergency room!” with a cool detachment. How many times had Lloyd heard that call without batting an eyelash?
When they reached the medical bay, residents, nurses and therapists materialized in quick succession like clowns falling out of a car. One nurse applied monitor leads to Kaz’s chest while a resident wrapped a tourniquet around his arm and plunged an eighteen gauge Angiocath without bothering to wipe down the antecubital fossa with alcohol. A respiratory therapist prepared intubation equipment while a nurse broke the plastic seals on the medication drawers of a crash cart.
Some people claim they see beauty in the coordinated fluidity of a full code, sometimes comparing it to a sort of ballet. Lloyd didn’t. He always viewed it as a form of savagery. And as he pushed down on Kaz’s chest, he felt like a savage, ravaging the limp body of his lifeless friend.
A kid in a short white coat walked up to the ER doc and said, “Dr. Birch, can I intubate?”
“Not this time,” the attending said. “Get ready to relieve Dr. Copeland on the chest compressions. He’s getting tired.”
“I’m not tired,” Lloyd said.
“I’m running this code Dr. Copeland. Get ready to stand back at the end of this cycle. Martha,” he said, facing a somber resident with short cropped hair, “get ready to intubate.”
A few moments later
, Lloyd stopped the chest compressions. He stepped away and the medical student sprang in his place. Gradually, Lloyd was pushed to the back of the room as a current of nurses and more doctors jostled its way to the gurney. Kaz was intubated, the chest compressions resumed, meds were flushed into the IV port while another IV was inserted. Even a clinical pharmacologist appeared and a discussion of mercury toxicity began in the peanut gallery.
“We gotta get him alive first before we can even talk about chelation,” the pharmacologist told a chubby man in a long white coat.
More rounds of meds and minutes later, still more. By now Lloyd knew that the code was continuing only because the ER doctor wanted to show that everything had been done – that no one had given up. But sooner or later all brutality must come to an end. Long past the adrenaline rush of the rescuers had been spent, the ER doc said, “Stop CPR.”
He checked for a pulse. Readjusted his fingers and checked again. Then glanced at his watch, shook his head and whispered the time to a nurse holding a clipboard.
Chapter 34
Lloyd was ushered to the ER family waiting room. “The hurt locker”, the residents had named it, because of its long, narrow layout and because it was where family members were led to when it was time to hit them with gut-wrenching news. He sat alone, resting his elbows on the round wooden table, cradling his head in his hands. The whole affair seemed surreal. He had never imagined that he might be putting anyone’s life at risk by continuing his research. And now Kaz was dead.
The door opened. Lloyd expected to see the ER attending, perhaps the clinical pharmacologist. It was Erin. She shut the door and stood there oddly still, her lips pinched. She approached the table slowly and sat next to Lloyd.
“Lloyd, I have to tell you something.”
“Jesus, Erin. This isn’t the time,” Lloyd said.
“You weren’t answering your phone.”
“I was a little tied up, don’t you think?”
“Lloyd, listen… it’s your mother.”
Lloyd’s shoulders stiffened.
“What about my mother?”
“I don’t know. They started paging you overhead, over and over. Finally, I called the operator. It was your uncle. He was trying to get ahold of you but you weren’t picking up the phone. Something happened to your mom.”
Lloyd patted down his pockets, not remembering that he had left his phone in the lab.
“You can use my phone,” Erin said.
Uncle Roy didn’t answer. Lloyd tried calling again with no reply. Then Erin’s phone rang. Lloyd picked it up.
“Roy?”
“Hello Lloyd,” Uncle Roy said.
“How’s mom?”
“Lloyd, we lost her.”
“What do you mean?”
There was no reply, which said everything.
“What happened?” Lloyd asked.
“She didn’t feel well this morning. Her chest was hurting and she couldn’t catch her breath. By the time the paramedics got her to the hospital… The doctors say it was a pulmonary embolus. Apparently, this happens sometimes in people with her condition.”
Lloyd thought of the last time he saw his mother. He remembered the swollen leg, that tell-tale swollen leg. A wave of nausea engulfed him. What an idiot he was! He should have recognized the risk. He was disgusted with himself – a doctor who couldn’t even help his own mother.
“She went quickly. Peacefully,” Roy said. “Lloyd? Lloyd?”
“I have to go now,” Lloyd said.
Tears were streaming down Erin’s face. She covered her mouth with her hand.
“My mom died,” Lloyd said.
Erin buried her face in Lloyd’s shoulder and her body shuddered with sobs. Lloyd managed to swallow, and put an arm around her shoulders. The door opened. The ER attending stepped in, stopped in his tracks. Erin turned and wiped her face.
“You want me to come back later?” the doctor asked.
Lloyd shook his head.
“We have some papers that need to be signed. Do you know how to reach the next of kin?”
“I’ll sign the papers,” Lloyd said. He stood up, squeezed Erin’s shoulder and stepped away without saying a word. He followed the doctor around the corner to the nurse’s station. Dr. Lasko was standing there in his white coat, examining a paper chart.
Lloyd’s pulse quickened. The surge of nausea receded and was replaced by a throbbing rage. For an instant, as he paced towards the nurse’s station, he thought his knees would buckle. He tightened his fists and marched up to Lasko.
“You killed him, you son of bitch!” Lloyd said.
Lasko studied Lloyd with a sort of bemused surprise. “Why no, Dr. Copeland. It would seem that if anyone killed Mr. Volkov, it was you.”
“I’m going to figure out how you did it, and then I’m going to nail you!”
Lasko took half a step forward and leaned into Lloyd. “You couldn’t nail a thumb tack if you had a hammer.”
Lloyd was inches from his face. “Murderer,” he whispered.
“Are you going to assault me, Dr. Copeland? I would enjoy that very much. In front of all these witnesses… it would be such a fitting end to your sordid career.”
Lloyd felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s take a walk, Dr. Copeland.” It was Nick De Luca.
“Yes, Mr. De Luca. Have Dr. Copeland take a walk, straight out of my hospital. And make sure he doesn’t set foot in here again until the time of his hearing with the disciplinary tribunal.”
Lloyd shrugged off De Luca’s hand.
“Come on, doc,” De Luca said.
Lloyd marched out of the nurse’s station, De Luca close behind. Erin was standing outside the family room. She reached out and caressed Lloyd’s hand as he walked by and said, “I’ll come by later.”
Lloyd nodded. He couldn’t manage to get out a word.
“Don’t misunderstand, doctor, I’m only trying to help,” De Luca said.
“Oh, you’re helping alright,” Lloyd said. He turned into the hallway leading to the research tower. “I have to go to my lab.”
“As long as we’re quick about it.”
Up in the lab, Lloyd found his cell phone lying on the counter under the lab coat. He flipped it on and checked the log. There were a bunch of missed calls, most of them from Uncle Roy and Erin. He slipped the phone in a back pocket of his pants, stepped into his office and grabbed a black marker from a drawer.
“Nice painting,” De Luca said. “Lake Garda?”
“Lake Como,” Lloyd said.
“You ever been?”
“You really want to help? Then stop the chit-chat and give me a hand,” Lloyd said.
He handed De Luca some clear plastic sandwich bags and the black marker.
“What do you have in mind?” De Luca said.
“You’ll see.”
Lloyd rushed to the cages. One by one he placed the dead mice in the plastic bags as De Luca held them open for him, wincing.
“Please tell me you’re not going to take these home,” De Luca said.
Lloyd scooped some dry food pellets from a plastic tote box and poured equal portions into the aluminum receptacles clipped to the cages of the live mice. He almost felt a need to apologize to the mice. There would be no more fresh vegetables, at least not for a while. A thought crossed Lloyd’s mind: he needed to find someone to keep caring for the animals. He paused by the cage marked 4006. The little guy was scurrying on his exercise wheel again. The last surviving prion-treated mouse.
Lloyd grabbed the cage. De Luca was looking at him with raised eyebrows.
“I’m taking this guy home,” Lloyd said.
“You sure about that?”
Lloyd walked past him, set the cage on a counter. He grabbed the black marker, wrote the serial numbers of each dead mouse on the plastic bags, sealed them and placed them all in a large paper grocery bag.
“We ready now?” De Luca asked.
“We’ve got one more stop,�
� Lloyd said. “By the way, I don’t have a ride. You’re driving me home.”
Chapter 35
Lloyd made De Luca wait outside as he stepped into Kowalski’s office. There was no need for the security chief to be privy to their conversation. Even if the guy did seem sincere, to the point that Lloyd felt a pang of guilt for continuing to be rude in the face of De Luca’s civility, the man still worked for Lasko. That was clear enough.
“Mercury levels through the roof,” Kowalski said of the toxicology report on Wolfgang.
“What about the other samples?” Lloyd asked.
“Food pellets, veggies and water: not a trace. And the blood samples on the other mice – squeaky clean, pardon the pun.”
“So how did he get poisoned?”
“Are any of the other mice showing signs of illness?”
“Well, not until today,” Lloyd said.
He passed the paper bag to Kowalski who took it cautiously and peered inside. He furrowed his brow. “Please tell me you don’t want me to do autopsies on all of them.”
“Let’s just start with toxicology exams.”
Kowalski nodded. “This is very peculiar, Lloyd.”
“It’s beyond peculiar,” Lloyd said. “It’s downright suspicious.”
Lloyd wasn’t too happy to have De Luca see where he lived, but he figured that, being a private eye, De Luca would be able to find his address if he really wanted to know. Still, he was annoyed when De Luca killed the engine of his car outside the front door as if expecting to be invited inside.
“I spoke with Dr. English the other day,” De Luca said. “You know, Dr. Todd English. Had to interview him to get his version of the facts on the incident.”
Lloyd said nothing for some ten seconds. When De Luca wouldn’t stop staring at him, Lloyd finally said, “So?”
“So, you ought to talk to him.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to that twerp.”
“You really ought to talk to him.” De Luca turned the key in the ignition and the engine settled into a smooth muffled hum. “You still have my card?”
Lloyd nodded.
The Art of Forgetting Page 23