by Melissa Yi
I looked to Dr. Huot for guidance. She was smiling, of course. She said, “I know it is very upsetting, but sometimes we see these little bruises in the eyes at the time of death. Don’t worry, it doesn’t necessarily mean that his eyes were hurting him when he died.”
“I have never seen anything like it,” said Mrs. Bérubé. Her own eyes were wide and frightened, and she sought mine for guidance. “What do you think, Dr. Sze?”
“I think…” I was having trouble dragging my mind back to platitudes. What I was really thinking was, Dr. Huot is probably right. This is probably just a normal death thing that I haven’t seen yet, in my limited career. Who the hell would murder a palliative patient, anyway? The man only had days to live. There was no incentive to kill him. Between the cancer and the emphysema, he was on death row.
So why hurry it up?
“I know what that is,” said Mrs. Bérubé. “I watch CSI, Bones, and all those shows. And I have a terrible feeling about this.”
Uh oh. Was she going to start talking about fortunetelling again? Dr. Huot shook her head, but Mrs. Bérubé leaned over the bed so close to me that I could smell her breath. It smelled sickly sweet, like fake lemon drops overlying old lady breath.
I tried not to gag. I focused on her lipstick, which was frosted peach, and her lip liner, which was matte peach and wavered a little at the corners of her mouth, while she said, “I think someone killed him. And you are just the person to find out.”
I shot a glance at Dr. Huot. For the first time, her perma-grin wavered. I don’t mind parrying the “detective doctor” stuff on my off-hours, but it’s not what I want my attending doctor to think of when she’s evaluating me.
“Oh, no thanks, Madame.” I took a step backward. “I’m retired from detective work.”
She scoffed and waved her hand in the air. “I’m the age to retire. You’re the age to find out the truth! I can make it worth your while, Hope. I am now a very rich widow.”
I shook my head wordlessly. She was calling me by my first name, which she’d never done before. She was pushing me hard to investigate in front of my staff. And we were standing over the body of her husband, which was not quite cold, and which I hadn’t officially declared dead yet.
I hung the ophthalmoscope back on its hook on the wall while I considered my words carefully. “Would you like to ask for an autopsy? I think it’s unusual, in palliative care. They may ask you to assume the costs.” I glanced at Dr. Huot for confirmation. She nodded, but before she could say anything, Mrs. Bérubé said, “That’s fine. I know all about that from my shows. I still want you as my detective.”
I shook my head. “Mrs. Bérubé, I know you’re shocked and grieving.”
She grabbed my hands. Hers felt cold, but surprisingly strong. “Look at me, Hope.”
I did. Her eyes blazed in her wrinkled face. “I am not shocked. I’ve been expecting his death for a long time, and I’ve been praying for a good one. I know that something is wrong about this. His eyes look unnatural, but it’s more than that. He died so suddenly, when I was away. We were twin souls. I know that if he could have, he would have waited for me. We always promised each other we would die in each other’s arms.”
Dr. Huot murmured something that sounded like, “‘Time and tide wait for no man,’” which was probably a quote, but Mrs. Bérubé ignored her and said, “If you absolutely refuse, I will engage a private detective, but I prefer you. You knew him, I know you. I have spoken to you, I have read your palm—”
I squirmed. I really, really didn’t want Dr. Huot to hear this.
“—I know you are a fine person, a good doctor, and an excellent detective. I knew there was a bond between us from the moment we met, and I pray that you will honour that.”
At least she’d thrown in the medicine part. Dr. Huot looked a little shell-shocked herself. Only Karen was smiling slightly, like we were some weird performance art.
“I do honour that,” I said softly. “I just…I wasn’t planning on taking any more investigative cases. It’s your right to ask for an autopsy, if you want. That will show any wrongdoing. I mean, any suspicious cause of death will probably turn up.” Nothing’s one hundred percent like on TV. “If you want someone to ask questions and collect evidence, that’s what the police are for.”
Dr. Huot nodded approvingly.
I took a deep breath. “If you want, we can call the police together.”
Dr. Huot looked less certain about that, but it was the best compromise I could come up with on short notice.”
Mrs. Bérubé blew her lips out in a little raspberry. “Those jokers won’t find anything.”
“Madame, they are the professionals. I am the joker.”
“You solved two murders!”
I winced. That was technically true, but the fallout from the blogosphere had been so vicious: “Not a real detective.” “I could’ve done a better job.” “What an idiot.” “Almost got herself killed—twice!” “We’ve got a saying for that, where I come from. TSTL. Too stupid to live.” “At the wrong places at the wrong times.” I tried to pick the one with the nicest spin and told Mrs. B, “Some people think I was just lucky.”
Mrs. Bérubé smiled, showing me her teeth. “There is no such thing, my dear. The older you get, the more you realize that. There are many doctors in the world, but you have a special gift. Not only can you dispense medication and counsel people, but you can find out who has been killed and bring their killers to justice.”
I stayed silent. I’d be lying if her words didn’t call up something deep inside my chest that I’d kept tamped down. Like I said, the blogosphere had kicked my ass with a bunch of one-star reviews. Ryan and my family wanted to deport me out of Montreal. Tucker would like to keep me under 24-hour surveillance while he ran the show. The police thought I was some crazy vigilante fucked-up not-even-doctor with a death wish, and I...
Well. I didn’t want to come nose to nose with death again. But hell, yeah, not many people seemed to care, but I did nail two killers and make the world a better place. And by “nail,” I mean in a “put behind bars” kind of way and not in the carnal sense. So Mrs. Bérubé knew what kind of button to push, but I shook my head one more time.
“I might leave for Ottawa,” I said finally.
Mrs. Bérubé pressed her lips together. “When?”
I glanced at Dr. Huot, who was staring at me like I’d spontaneously sprouted a third eye and a bunch of nose hairs besides. I said, partly to her, “It’s not planned yet, so it could take months, but it could be as soon as a month or two.”
Dr. Huot nodded. I’d finish palliative care in just over two weeks, so it wouldn’t affect my palliative care rotation, which was all she had to care about.
Mrs. Bérubé’s eyes flashed. “I will pay you to find my husband’s murderer for as long as you are here. I’ll pay you a bonus if you find him in the next two weeks.”
I held up my hands. “Mrs. Bérubé, I’m not accepting any more cases.” I tried not to think of Elvis. “And I could never accept payment from a patient or his family.”
She raised her penciled-in eyebrows. “Really? Not all of your co-workers have the same kind of ethics.”
I started to ask what she meant, if she’d met the pharmaceutical guy in the emergency room, before I caught myself. I did not. Want. To. Get. Involved.
“All I’m asking is for you to try, Hope. I will talk to the police, but I want you to help, too.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bérubé. Please accept my condolences on your loss.” I started to back out of the room.
It was too hard to look in her eyes, so I turned away. I sat at the nursing station and wrote my time of death note for Mr. Bérubé, but I felt terrible.
Why did I go into medicine? Because I like to help people. When I was applying to medical school, one of the doctors at McMaster made fun of that because it’s a total cliché and, as she pointed out, “Grocery clerks help people.” So I learned to dress i
t up, to talk about research and the doctors I admired. Off the record, I won’t pretend that a secure, well-respected well-paying job didn’t appeal (my dad calls it an “iron rice bowl,” because it’s that kind of unbreakable career), but really, I just wanna do good and have fun, which can be hard to explain in the med school interview circuit. One of my med school friends sympathized, “It’s hard to explain, isn’t it? It’s really a kind of calling.”
My calling was medicine. But, at least for the moment, it was also my brand of primitive detective work.
Other doctors could just turn away from Mrs. Bérubé and Elvis, I couldn’t.
I folded my head in my hands. Part of me wanted to walk away so badly. I had sworn to myself that I would never get mixed up in murder again, and here I was, signing up for not one, but two cases simultaneously.
I was insane.
But the more I thought about it, the lizard part of my brain exulted, Yeah. I’m back, baby.
When Dr. Huot exited room 5656, I smiled at her, wondering when she’d turn her back so I could sneak in and tell Mrs. Bérubé the good news. Instead, she beckoned me into the empty staff room adjoining the nursing station.
I sat down on one of only two metal wire chairs, picking the one closest to the window. Dr. Huot dragged the other chair around to face me before she shut the door. The small, L-shaped room still smelled like microwaved popcorn, and someone had abandoned a used mug and a Chatelaine magazine on the miniature coffee table between us. I’d never been in such an enclosed space with a staff member before. This could not be good.
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked, pointing at the counter with the burbling coffee pot and microwave.
“No, thank you.” I perched on the edge of my seat, braced for the fallout.
She leaned forward, glowing at me. “Dr. Sze, I wonder if you’d consider working with Madame Bérubé.”
Work with her? Did she mean one-on-one counselling with Mrs. Bérubé? I hesitated.
She said, “I realize this is highly unorthodox, but she is grieving deeply. I think it would comfort her immensely if she could tell you her fears and know you were doing your utmost to show that no one had harmed her husband.”
Was she saying what I thought she was saying? I tried not to let my jaw fall open.
Dr. Huot’s smile widened, even though I would have sworn that was impossible. “I would expect you to continue your consultations and learn the principles of palliative care, but you have connected with the Bérubés. It seems like a shame to end your relationship now. If you took the next few days of your rotation to speak to her, and to conduct an investigation…” She shrugged lightly, the way French people do.
This was too good to be true. After so many people kicking my ass, and telling me to hang up my non-existent badge, Dr. Huot—the doctor who only seemed to have one foot on earth while she levitated toward heaven through sheer saintliness—was encouraging me to become the detective doctor on hospital time. I admitted, “I was just about to talk to Mrs. Bérubé. I couldn’t turn her down. But why are you suggesting this?”
Dr. Huot clasped her hands in her lap. “I believe that when you are given a gift, you should use it. In fact, you must use it, for the well-being of yourself and others. One of your gifts is solving mysteries, and by employing your gift, you can help yourself and Mme. Bérubé.” She paused for only a second. “Naturally, if there is any wrongdoing on this ward, I would like to know about it, so you would be helping everyone else too.”
I had to smile. So Dr. Huot wasn’t above a little self-interest. What a relief. “Thank you, Dr. Huot. Thank you so much.”
She patted my hand. Her warm, soft flesh felt comforting, like the tactile equivalent of a chocolate chip cookie. Then I rose up to talk to Mrs. Bérubé.
When I walked into room 5656, she was curled over her husband’s body.
I paused to reorient myself. She was actually sitting on the chair beside the bed, close to the window, but had thrown the top half of her body and one arm over his, so that their perpendicular bodies almost formed a cross.
I shook my head. Between Ryan and Peter the Preacher, I obviously had too much religion on the brain.
She made a few noises. I thought she might be crying, but then I realized she was murmuring on the phone tucked between her ear and her husband’s body. When she looked up and saw me, she said abruptly, in English, “I have to go. Dr. Hope is here” and snapped her two-part cell phone closed.
Tears had run down her cheeks, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away. She just looked at me.
I said, “I’m going to help you. Not for money.”
She opened her mouth and closed it again, before she closed her eyes in a little prayer. Then she said, “I knew it. Thank God, thank God. I knew it all along.”
I remembered that she considered herself psychic. But if she had ESP, why hadn’t she anticipated her husband’s death and stayed by his side?
Her lips quirked like she was reading my mind. She said, “It’s not that I can forsee everything. I don’t know who did this to George, or when, or why, but from the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you’d be crucial to us. You’re proving me right.”
“I haven’t done anything yet. I’m going to interview you.” I stopped short, thinking of how the police must have hours of interrogation training, but my only instruction was in talking to standardized patients/actors and FIFE-ing them (asking them about their Feelings, Ideas, Functions, and Expectations about their chest pain). Right now, that didn’t seem useful. I wanted to gather data, not probe how sad she was about his passing. “But I can do that another time.” Like, when we’re not literally talking over his dead body.
She squeezed George’s hand. “I don’t want to leave him now. I left him, and look what happened to him.” For the first time, her voice trembled.
“You don’t have to leave him. You can stay right here.”
“I want you to stay, too. I want you to interview me. He would want it, too.”
I glanced at Mr. Bérubé. From the little I’d seen of him, he’d would go along with whatever his wife wanted, so that was true. Mrs. B clearly didn’t mind. And me…well, I’d never hung out with the deceased, but my cousin once told me that after her dad’s mother passed away in Hong Kong, they spent three days keeping a vigil over her body. We were kids at the time, so all I remembered was that the grandmother’s body was kept in a separate, air-conditioned room, but I knew that I didn’t need to keep away from death like it was a contagious disease.
So I said, “I don’t mind talking here, if you don’t mind.” I checked around for another chair. I’d been trained to sit down if I’m giving bad news, so it seemed appropriate to take a seat now, but what with the cutbacks, Mrs. Bérubé perched in the only chair. I would not sit on the bed with her husband, so I cleared my throat and elected to stand. “Let’s start with this morning. What time did you leave the room?”
“Twenty minutes after twelve,” she said promptly. “I remember checking the clock and feeling happy that he wanted to eat something at lunchtime. His lunch tray hadn’t arrived yet, but I was glad. The smell of that steamed food could put anyone off his feed! I knew there was a Lebanese place not too far down Cȏte-des-Neiges and that they should have some dolmades. I didn’t want to be gone too long.”
I nodded and scanned the room. It looked the same as usual to me: the window opposite the doorway; the bed with its head pushed against the wall on the right; the bathroom off the left wall, across from the foot of the bed. Mrs. B sat in the stuffed chair between the bed and the window. On the wheeled bedside dresser at Mr. Bérubé’s left sat the telephone and a closed brown paper takeout bag from the Lebanese place. But the wheeled hospital tray table, the one with an adjustable height so you can use it to eat in bed or in the chair, had been pushed against the wall just to the right of the doorway. It held a still-covered lunch tray. I pointed to the hospital food. “Was that there when you came back from lunch?”
> She lifted her head to gaze at it over her husband’s body. “Yes, I suppose so. Yes, it was. I remember having to put my bag on this chair because that table isn’t usually by the door, and I walked right by it.”
“Okay.” I could check pretty easily when the lunch trays were delivered, and that would narrow our time frame considerably for a murder. I made a note on a piece of paper, using my hand to support the paper. I needed a little notebook, like the police. My ancient phone would take too long to key in. “What time did you come back?”
“Almost 1:40.” She grimaced. “The Lebanese place was further east than I remembered, and there was a line-up. I asked for a shawarma for myself, and it took so long for them to heat it up.” She swiped angrily at the tears on her face.
I leaned forward. “It couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes for the shawarma.”
She shook her head. “The line-up was terrible. And it took me over twenty minutes to walk each way. I suppose I’m not as fast on these old hips as I used to be.”
I filed that away for reference. She’d never seemed gimpy to me, but of course, I usually saw her inside the room or, on Peter’s video, at a church service, not hurrying for takeout. Even if she’d taken half an hour to walk each way, that left about twenty minutes at the Lebanese place, which was kind of long, but like she said, there was a lineup. “Okay. Now we need to prove a few things, like if your husband really was killed. We would need to have an autopsy.”
She nodded. “I know that.”
“It shouldn’t interfere with having an open casket funeral or anything like that, but they would have to gather evidence.”
“Yes. Hair samples and skin samples and DNA evidence. I know this.”
“Okay. Well, the first thing is, I don’t know if the government will pay for an autopsy. There are certain deaths where they’re mandatory—infant deaths, or suspicious deaths, or deaths under police custody—but I’m afraid Mr. Bérubé doesn’t fall into any of those categories.”
“Not even with those?” She gestured at his partially opened eyes.