by Robin Cook
“All this time, I thought four stars was adequate for you.”
“Save the sarcasm,” Laurie snapped. “A little luxury wouldn’t hurt for as hard as we work. But that’s not the issue. It’s the relationship, which seems fine for you but isn’t enough for me. That’s the bottom line.”
“I’m taking a shower,” Jack said.
Laurie gave him a crooked half-smile. “Fine. You take a shower.”
Jack nodded and started to say something, then changed his mind. He turned and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar. A moment later, Laurie heard the shower start and the sound of the shower curtain rings scraping across the shower rod.
Laurie exhaled. She was trembling from a combination of fatigue and emotional stress, but she was proud of herself for not shedding any tears. She hated when she cried in emotional situations. How she had avoided it at the moment she had no idea, but she was pleased. Tears never helped, and frequently put her at a disadvantage.
After slipping on her robe, Laurie went into the closet for her suitcase. The confrontation with Jack actually made her feel relieved. By responding just as she’d anticipated, Jack justified what she had decided to do even before he had awakened. Opening up her allotted bureau drawers, she took out her things and began packing. With the task almost complete, she heard the shower stop, and a minute later Jack appeared in the doorway, briskly toweling off his head. When he caught sight of Laurie and the suitcase, he stopped abruptly.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I think it’s perfectly clear what I’m doing,” Laurie answered.
For a minute Jack didn’t say anything, merely watching as Laurie continued her packing. “You’re carrying this too far,” he said finally. “You don’t have to leave.”
“I think I do,” Laurie responded without looking up.
“Fine!” Jack said after a beat, an edge to his voice. He ducked back through the door to finish toweling off.
When Jack came out of the bathroom, Laurie went in, carrying the day’s outfit. She made a point of closing the door, although on normal mornings, it remained open. By the time Laurie emerged, fully dressed, Jack was in the kitchen. Laurie joined him for a breakfast of cold cereal and fruit. Neither took the time to sit at the tiny vinyl dinette set. Both were polite, and the only conversation was “excuse me” or “sorry” as they danced around each other to get in and out of the refrigerator. Thanks to the narrowness of the room, it was impossible to move without touching.
By seven, they were ready to leave. Laurie squeezed her cosmetics into her suitcase and closed the lid. When she rolled it out into the living room, she saw Jack lifting his mountain bike from its wall rack.
“You’re not riding that thing to work, are you?” Laurie asked. Prior to their living together, Jack had used the bike to commute, as well as to run errands around the city. It had always terrified Laurie, who constantly worried that he was going to arrive one day at the morgue “feet first.” When they had begun to commute together, Jack had given up riding the bike, since there was no way Laurie would consent to doing the same.
“Well, it looks like I’ll be on my own coming back to my palace.”
“It’s raining, for God’s sake!”
“Rain makes it more interesting.”
“You know, Jack, since I’m being honest this morning, I think I should tell you that I find this kind of juvenile risk-taking of yours is not only inappropriate but also selfish, like you’re thumbing your nose at my feelings.”
“That’s interesting,” Jack said with a smirk. “Well, let me tell you something: Riding my bike has nothing to do with your feelings. And to be honest with you, your feeling that it does seems pretty selfish to me.”
Outside on 106th Street, Laurie walked west to Columbus Avenue to catch a cab. Jack pedaled east toward Central Park. Neither turned to wave at the other.
two
JACK HAD FORGOTTEN THE exhilaration of riding his dark purple Cannondale mountain bike, but it came back to him in a rush as he coasted down one of the hills after entering Central Park near 106th Street. Since the park was nearly deserted save for the rare jogger, Jack had let himself go, and both the city and his suppressed anxieties miraculously disappeared in the misty city-bound forest. With the wind whistling in his ears, he could remember as if it were yesterday sailing down Dead Man’s Hill in South Bend, Indiana, on his beloved red-and-gold, wide-tired Schwinn. He’d gotten the bike on his tenth birthday after having seen it advertised on the back of a comic book. Mythologized as a symbol of his happy and carefree childhood, he’d convinced his mother to save it, and it continued to gather dust back in the garage of his family’s home.
Rain was still falling, but not hard enough to dampen Jack’s experience, despite his hearing droplets splattering against the brow of his bicycle helmet. His biggest problem was trying to see through the moisture-streaked lenses of his aerodynamic bicycling sunglasses. To keep the rest of himself reasonably dry, he wore his waterproof bicycle poncho, which featured ingenious little hooks for his thumbs. When he learned forward with his hands grasping the handlebars, the poncho created a tentlike covering. For the most part, he avoided puddles, and when he couldn’t, he lifted his feet off the pedals to coast until he reached drier pavement.
At the southeast corner of Central Park, Jack entered the Midtown city streets, already clogged with morning rush-hour traffic. There had been a time when he loved to challenge the traffic, but that was when he was, in his words, a bit crazier. It was also when he was in significantly better shape. Since he hadn’t been riding much over the last few years, he didn’t have nearly the same stamina anymore. His frequent basketball playing helped, but basketball didn’t involve quite the same sustained aerobics that bicycling demanded. Yet he didn’t slow down, and by the time he coasted down the ramp into the 30th Street receiving dock at the medical examiner’s office, his quadriceps were complaining. After dismounting, he stood for a moment, leaning onto his handlebars to let his circulation catch up with the oxygen demand in his leg muscles.
When the hypoxic aching of his thighs had been mollified, Jack hefted his bike on his shoulder and started up the steps to the receiving dock. His legs were still rubbery, but he was eager to find out what was going on at the morgue. When he’d passed the front of the building, he’d seen a number of TV satellite trucks parked at the curb with their generators cranking and their antennae extended. He also had caught sight of a press of people within the reception area just beyond the front doors. Something was brewing.
Jack waved a greeting to Robert Harper through the window of the security office. The uniformed officer popped out of his chair and stuck his head around the jamb of the open door.
“Back to your old tricks, Dr. Stapleton?” Robert called out. “I haven’t seen that bike of yours for years.”
Jack waved over his shoulder as he carried his bike into the depths of the morgue’s basement. He passed the small autopsy room used for examining decomposing corpses and turned left just before the central mass of drawer-shaped refrigerated compartments where bodies were stored prior to being autopsied. He had to clear a space for his bike in the area reserved for the Potter’s Field pine coffins, used for the unidentified and unwanted dead. After stowing his coat and bicycle paraphernalia in his locker in the changing room, Jack headed for the stairs. He passed Mike Passano, the graveyard-shift mortuary tech, who was busy finishing up his paperwork in the mortuary office. Jack waved, but Mike was too engrossed to notice him.
As Jack emerged into the central corridor on the first floor, he caught another glimpse of the crowded front reception area. Even from the back of the building, he could hear the murmur of excited conversation. Something was up, and his curiosity was piqued. One of the most exciting aspects of being a medical examiner was that he never knew from one day to the next what was in store. Coming to work was stimulating, even exciting, which was a far cry from how Jack had felt in his former life as an
ophthalmologist, when each day had been comfortable but utterly predictable.
Jack’s ophthalmology career had ended abruptly in 1990, when his practice had been gobbled up by the aggressively expanding managed-care giant AmeriCare. AmeriCare’s offer to hire Jack as an employee was another slap in the face. The experience forced Jack to recognize that old-school, fee-for-service medicine based on close doctor-patient relationships, where decisions were based solely on patients’ needs, was rapidly disappearing. That epiphany led to his decision to retrain as a forensic pathologist, hopefully freeing himself from managed care, which he felt was more of a euphemism for “denial of care.” The final irony was that AmeriCare had resurfaced to haunt Jack despite his efforts to distance himself. Thanks to a low bid for its premiums, AmeriCare had recently won a competitive contract for city employees. Jack and his colleagues now had to look to AmeriCare for their own healthcare needs.
Wishing to avoid the throng of media, Jack set off on the back route to the ID office, where the morgue’s workday began. On a rotating basis, one of the more senior medical examiners arrived early to review the cases that had come in during the night, decide which ones needed to be autopsied, and make the assignments. It was Jack’s habit to get to work early as well, even if it wasn’t his turn to be the scheduler, so he could snoop through the cases and get the most challenging ones assigned to him. Jack had always wondered why other docs didn’t do the same thing until he realized that the majority of the others were more interested in avoidance. Jack’s curiosity invariably caused him to end up with the largest caseload. But he didn’t mind; work was Jack’s opiate for taming his demons. While he and Laurie had been practically living together, he’d gotten her to come in early with him, which had been no mean feat, considering how hard it was for her to get up in the morning. The thought made Jack smile. It also made him wonder if she had already arrived.
Jack suddenly stopped in his tracks. Until now, he had deliberately kept the morning’s confrontation from his mind. Thoughts of his relationship with Laurie as well as memories of horrific events of his own past flooded into his consciousness. Irritably, he wondered why she had felt compelled to end a beautiful weekend on such a downer note, especially since things had been going so well between them. In general, he almost felt content, a remarkable state of mind, considering he didn’t feel he deserved to be alive, much less happy.
A wave of anger spread through him. The last thing he needed was to be reminded of his smoldering grief and guilt about his late wife and daughters, which happened with any talk of marriage or children. The idea of commitment and the vulnerability it entailed, especially starting another family, was terrifying.
“Get a grip,” Jack murmured to himself under his breath. He closed his eyes and roughly massaged his face with both hands. Behind his irritation and frustration with Laurie, he felt the stirrings of melancholy, an unwelcome reminder of his past struggles with depression. The problem was, he truly cared for her. Things were great, except for the gnawing issue of children.
“Dr. Stapleton, are you all right?” a woman’s voice asked.
Jack peeked out through his fingers. Janice Jaeger, the petite night-shift forensic investigator, was staring up at him while pulling on her coat, on her way home and apparently exhausted. Her legendary dark circles made Jack wonder if she ever slept.
“I’m fine,” Jack said. He took his hands away from his face and shrugged self-consciously. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you standing still, especially in the middle of the corridor.”
Jack tried to think of a witty retort, but nothing came to mind. Instead, he changed the subject by lamely asking if she had had an interesting night.
“It was wild around here!” Janice said. “More so for the tour doctor and even Dr. Fontworth than me. Dr. Bingham and Dr. Washington are already here doing a post, with Fontworth assisting.”
“No kidding!” Jack said. “What kind of case?” Harold Bingham was the chief, and Calvin Washington was the deputy chief. Generally, neither appeared until well after eight in the morning, and it was rare for them to do an autopsy before the normal day began. There had to be political ramifications, which explained the media presence. Fontworth was one of Jack’s colleagues, and had been on call for the weekend. Medical examiners didn’t come in at night unless there was a problem. Pathology residents were hired as “tour doctors” to cover routine calls requiring a physician.
“It’s a gunshot wound, but it’s a police case, which is why Fontworth had to take it. As I understand it, the police had surrounded a suspect in his girlfriend’s care. When they tried to arrest him, a barrage of shots was fired. There’s the question of unreasonable force. You might find it interesting.”
Jack inwardly winced. GSW cases could be tricky with multiple shots. Although Dr. George Fontworth was Jack’s senior by eight years at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, or OCME, he was, in Jack’s opinion, perfunctory. “I think I’ll stay clear with the chief involved,” Jack said. “What’d you handle? Anything of note?”
“The usual, but there was one at the Manhattan General that stood out. A young man who’d just been operated on yesterday morning for a compound fracture after a fall while in-line skating on Saturday in Central Park.”
Jack winced anew. With his sensitivities aroused, thanks to Laurie, he had a negative response at the mere mention of the Manhattan General Hospital. Once an acclaimed academic center, it was now an AmeriCare flagship hospital after having been targeted and taken over by the cash-rich managed-care giant. Although he knew that the overall level of medicine practiced at the institution was good, such that if he took a bad flop on his bike and ended up in their trauma unit, which is where they would probably take him with the new city contract, he’d be well taken care of. At the same time it was still a managed-care establishment run by AmeriCare, and he had a visceral hatred for the company.
“What made the case stand out?” Jack asked, trying to conceal the emotion he felt. Reverting to sarcasm, he added: “Was it a diagnostic conundrum, or was there some sort of scurrilous hanky-panky involved?”
“Neither!” Janice sighed. “It was just the way the case struck me. It was just . . . rather sad.”
“Sad?” Jack questioned. He was taken aback. Janice had been working as a forensic investigator for more than twenty years and had seen death in all its inglorious permutations. “For you to say it’s sad, it’s got to be really sad. What’s the scoop in a nutshell?”
“He was only in his late twenties and had no medical history—specifically, no heart trouble. The narrative I got was that he’d rung his call button, but by the time the nurses got around to him five to ten minutes later—that’s according to the nurses—he was dead. So it must have been cardiac.”
“There was no resuscitation attempt?”
“Oh, they definitely tried to resuscitate him, but with no success whatsoever. They never even got a blip on the EKG.”
“What made it so sad? The man’s age?”
“The age was one factor, but it wasn’t the whole story. Actually, I don’t know why it bothered me so much. Maybe it has something to do with the nurses not responding quickly enough and my thinking the poor guy knew he was in trouble but couldn’t get help. We can all relate to that kind of a hospital nightmare. Or maybe it has something to do with the patient’s parents, who are very sympathetic. They came in from Westchester to go to the hospital, then came over here to stay near the body. They’re really broken up. I get the impression their son was their whole life. I think they’re still here.”
“Where? I hope they’re not stuck out there in that mob of reporters?”
“Last thing I knew, they were in the ID room, insisting on another ID even though it had already been established. To be considerate, the tour doctor told Mike to go ahead and do another set of Polaroids, but that was when I was called back to the General for another case. When I got back here, Mike happened
to mention the couple was still spaced out in the ID room, sort of emotionally adrift, while clutching the Polaroids. And, as if still hoping the whole affair was a mistake, they insisted on viewing the body itself.”
Jack felt his pulse quicken. He knew all too well the emotional devastation of losing a child. “That case can’t be what has the media people all stirred up.”
“Heavens, no. The kind of case I’m talking about never reaches the public. That’s part of the reason it’s so sad. A life wasted.”
“Is it the police case that’s brought in the media?”
“It’s what brought them originally. Bingham announced he would make a statement after the autopsy. The tour doctor told me the Spanish Harlem community is up in arms about the incident. Apparently, there were something like fifty shots fired by the police. Echoes of the Diallo case in the South Bronx some years back. But to tell you the truth, I think what the media is now mostly interested in is the Sara Cromwell case, which came in after they were already here.”
“Sara Cromwell, the syndicated psychologist in the Daily News?”
“Yeah, the advice diva, capable of telling anyone and everyone how to get his or her life back on track. She was also a TV personality, you know. She hit most of the talk shows, including Oprah. She was pretty darn famous.”
“Was it an accident? Why the fuss?”
“No accident. She was apparently brutally murdered in her Park Avenue apartment. I don’t know the details, but it was on the gory side, according to Dr. Fontworth, who had to handle that case as well. I tell you, he and the tour doctor were out all night. After Cromwell, there was a double suicide in a mansion on Eighty-fourth Street, then a nightclub homicide. After that, the tour doctor had to go out for a hit-and-run on Park Avenue and two overdoses.”