by Robin Cook
Neil couldn’t concentrate because of Jennifer. Although he’d inevitably used what he called her puerile behavior as further justification for his decision not to go to India, he slowly began to admit that he’d handled the situation miserably. First off, the real reasons were simply more selfishly motivated. He eventually admitted that the excuse he’d given her—namely, the reworking of the ER schedule—had been a transparent lie. He should have been more up-front so that there could have been, at a minimum, an honest discussion. And finally, the part that made him feel most guilty was that the excuse he gave himself—that he would have been more receptive if the death involved her mother, not her grandmother—was also a lie. He was well aware that Jennifer’s grandmother, for all intents and purposes, had been her mother.
At one point Neil called Jennifer’s cell phone, but she didn’t answer. He had no idea if it was because she noticed it was he who was calling or if she’d already departed, and there was no way to find out. He even thought, in a moment of irrationality, about running out to LAX to catch her before she did leave, but he dismissed the idea because he had no idea which airline she was taking. From having made travel arrangements to India five months ago, he knew there were multiple carriers flying from L.A. to New Delhi.
All afternoon Neil progressively chastised himself for having handled Jennifer so badly, to the point that he began to accuse himself of exhibiting the immature, selfish behavior he’d blamed on her. He had even gotten to the point of believing she’d acted entirely appropriately by walking out and not looking back. By then he had good reason to suspect that had she done otherwise, he probably would have dug in his heels and made an even bigger fool of himself.
Impulsively, Neil stood up, sending his desk chair rolling backward on its casters to collide with the door. Taking a fresh white coat from the hook behind the door, he pulled it on and went out to the central desk. He asked the first nurse he could corner if she knew whether Clarence Hodges had left. He was officially off duty the same time as Neil, but like Neil, he rarely left on time. Happily, Neil was told he was in one of the bays, sewing up a laceration. For Neil’s benefit, the nurse pointed to the appropriate curtained area.
“Wow!” Neil exclaimed when he looked over Clarence’s shoulder. Clarence was in the process of sewing a right ear back onto the side of a patient’s head. He was doing a meticulous plastic repair with what looked like hundreds of tiny sutures of gossamer-like black silk thread. Neil had recruited Clarence. He had been a classmate of Neil’s in high school. For college they had chosen rival schools, with Neil going to UCLA and Clarence to USC, but for medical school both had chosen UCLA. What made them special friends was their shared love of surfing. “That’s quite a laceration!”
Clarence leaned back and stretched. “Bobby here and his skate-board had a little argument with a tree, and I think the tree won.” Clarence picked up the edge of the drape and looked in at his patient. He was surprised to find him asleep. “My goodness, I guess I have been at this for a while.”
“Why didn’t you have one of the plastic-surgery boys come down and handle it?” Neil asked.
“Because of Bobby,” Clarence said, as he got another stitch in the claws of his needle holder. “When I suggested that, he said he was going to leave, despite his ear hanging off by a few threads of tissue. He said he’d been here so long he wasn’t going to wait. He wanted me to do it even though I told him I wasn’t a plastic surgeon. He was persistent and even stood up from the table as if he was heading for the door. So to make a long story short, that’s why I’m doing it.”
“Do you mind if I ask your opinion about something while you work?”
“Not at all. With Bobby sleeping, I could use the company. Of course, two seconds ago, I didn’t know he was sleeping.”
Neil rapidly told Jennifer’s story, which Clarence listened to without comment while he continued to reattach Bobby’s ear. “So that’s it in a nutshell,” Neil said when he’d finished.
“What do you want my opinion about? Whether I’d go to India to have a hip replacement: The answer is no.”
“That’s not the issue. The issue is how I handled Jennifer’s request. I think I did a lousy job. What’s your take?”
Clarence looked up into his friend’s eyes. “Are you serious? How else should you have handled it?”
“I could have been more honest.”
“In what regard? I mean, I can’t imagine you want to go all the hell way over to India for someone’s grandmother, do you? I mean, it’s not like you could bring her back to life or anything.”
“It’s true I’m not wild about going all the way to India at the moment,” Neil admitted.
“Well, there you go. You handled it just fine. It’s her problem the way she responded. She shouldn’t have walked away.”
“You think so?” Neil asked. He was unconvinced. After explaining the episode to Clarence, he actually felt guiltier about his behavior, not less guilty.
“Wait a minute,” Clarence said, holding up the suturing and staring back up at Neil. “I’m beginning to think there’s something you’re not telling me here. What’s your relationship with this woman? Are you sweet on her or what? Are you guys dating?”
“Sort of,” Neil admitted. “Actually, I’m not sure. It’s like she’s been holding me at arm’s length. We have been getting together a lot, and it’s wonderful. We never run out of things to talk about, and she’s been really open with me, telling me things she’s never told anyone else. I know that for a fact.”
“Have you guys ever hooked up?”
“No, but it’s not for not trying. I mean, we tried once, but it was awkward. It’s kind of strange. We can be talking about the most intimate things, and as soon as I try to move in on her, wham! This wall comes up.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“I know, but on the other hand she’s really smart, and she works and studies her butt off, and she’s terrific to be with. I’ve never been with a girl quite like her.”
“If she’s who I think she is, she’s also a piece of ass.”
“I can’t deny that. She caught my eye the first time I saw her as a first-year med student.”
“Okay,” Clarence said. “This all changes everything. What I’m hearing is you love this woman.”
“Let’s just say I’m interested, but since she’s got some baggage, there’s more that I’ve got to learn.”
“Are you thinking about chasing after her to India? Is that what I’m hearing you want my opinion on?”
“It is. The one thing I do know about her with absolute certainty is, she’s headstrong. She makes up her mind about things instantaneously and then holds on to her decision like a dog with a bone. At the moment she’s royally pissed at me, and I can understand why. She took me into her confidence, and now that she’s asked me to support her, I, in a sense, confirmed her worst fear by not doing so. If I don’t go over there I have to kiss good-bye any chance of learning anything more about her.”
“Then do it! That’s my advice. Handling the arrangements for the grandmother’s body will probably take all of a half-hour, and it’s over. Then you guys can make up. That way you won’t be burning bridges over this affair.”
“So you think I should go?”
“Absolutely. And you told me you found India fun, so you can kill two birds with one stone.”
“I told you it was interesting.”
“Interesting or fun, what’s the difference? As far as your responsibilities here are concerned, don’t worry about it.”
“I do have the next four days off.”
“See what I mean. It was meant to happen. Go! As far as your obligations here are concerned, after your four days, don’t worry about it. I owe you. I’ll cover for you, and when I can’t, I’ll see that someone else does.”
“I’ll certainly need more than four days. The travel alone takes four days.”
“Don’t worry about it. Okay? I said I’d cover. D
o you know where she’s staying?”
“I do.”
“That’s all you need. When will you leave?”
“Tomorrow, I guess,” Neil said, wondering if he’d allowed his friend to talk him into something that might end up being more complicated and more stressful than he’d anticipated.
If he only knew ...
Chapter 8
OCTOBER 16, 2007
TUESDAY, 7:45 P.M.
NEW DELHI, INDIA
By reflex Samira Patel smiled coyly at the two tall Sikh doormen at the Queen Victoria Hospital’s front entrance. She was dressed in her nurse’s uniform, just as Veena had been the night before. They did not return her flirtatiousness. But there was no doubt they recognized her. Each silently reached out and pulled open his respective door and, with a bow, allowed her to enter.
Durell had coached her for several hours that afternoon before Samira had set out on her mission, which had included what to do once she was inside the hospital. Despite her excitement, she followed the suggestions to the letter. She marched across the lobby, avoiding eye contact with anyone. Instead of the elevator, she took the stairs up to the second floor, where the library was located. After turning on the lights, she got down from the shelves several orthopedic books and spread them out on one of the tables, even opening one to the section on knee replacement, which was the procedure her patient, Herbert Benfatti, had had that morning. All this was Durell’s idea. He wanted her to have a clear, confirmable explanation for being at the hospital after hours if one of the more senior nurses questioned it.
Once the library was prepared to her liking and she’d downloaded Benfatti’s chart from the library’s workstation onto a USB storage device, she returned to the stairwell and climbed up to the fifth floor, where the OR suite was located. By now her excitement had built to the point of true anxiety, even more than she had expected, and it caused her to question why she’d been so eager to volunteer. At the same time, she knew exactly why she’d volunteered. Although Veena Chandra had been her best friend since they’d met each other in the third grade, Samira had always felt inferior. The problem was that Samira envied Veena’s beauty, which Samira knew she could not compete against, ergo her wish to compete in every other way. Samira was convinced Veena’s hair was darker and shinier than hers, and Veena’s skin more golden, her nose smaller and shapelier.
Yet despite this competitiveness, about which Veena was totally unaware, the girls had developed a keen friendship based on the shared dream of someday emigrating to America. Like their other friends at school, both had had early access to the Internet, which Samira had availed herself of much more than Veena but which had provided both girls an oculus to the West and an introduction to the idea of personal freedom. By the time they’d reached their teenage years, they’d become inseparable and shared their secrets, which for Veena included abuse by her father, something she’d never shared with anyone else for fear of bringing shame to her family. Samira’s secret, sharply contrasting with Veena’s, was that she was fascinated by pornographic websites, and consequently sex, finding it hard to think of anything else by its denial. She was dying to experience sex herself and felt like a caged animal, especially because of her strict Muslim upbringing. Ultimately, what cemented the relationship between the two young women was their willingness to cover for each other. Each would tell her parents she was sleeping at the other’s home, enabling them to go to Western-style clubs and stay out all night. Instead of embracing the traditional Indian karmic values of passivity, obedience, and acceptance of life’s difficulties based on expectations of reward in the next life, both Samira and Veena progressively wanted the rewards in this life, not the next.
Yesterday, when Samira heard that Veena had been selected as the first of the nurses to carry out the new strategy, she’d been immediately jealous. That was why she’d acted as she had, volunteering for the next task with the claim she’d do it better and without hesitation. The reason she felt so confident was that there was one arena in which she had made more progress than her friend, and that was in the degree to which she’d abandoned the old culture of India and embraced the new culture of the West. Her affair with Durell was clear evidence.
With a trembling hand, Samira pushed open the stairwell door on the fifth floor. It was relatively dark. For a few seconds, Samira merely listened. She heard no sounds except the constant omnipresent low hum of the HVAC machinery. She stepped out into the hallway and allowed the door to close behind her.
Confident she was alone, Samira walked in the direction of the operating suite while trying to keep the sound of her heels striking the composite floor to a minimum. The lighting was dim but adequate. Passing through the outer double doors, she made certain the surgical lounge was empty. She knew that it was occasionally used during the evening, and that the night-shift staff used it to take breaks and catch some TV, even though officially it was off-limits. She moved on to the double doors to the OR suite itself and cracked them. Unfortunately, the hinges complained with a screeching noise, making Samira cringe. She could feel her heart throbbing in her chest and could hear it in her ears. After pausing for a few seconds to check for any kind of response to the sound of the doors, Samira stepped into the operating suite itself. When the same screech occurred as the door closed, she cringed again. But the earlier tomblike silence immediately descended like a heavy blanket.
Samira was eager to get this portion of the task over with. She could now feel perspiration on her face despite the OR’s being over-air-conditioned. She was not fond of feeling anxious, and because of the long-term duplicitous life she’d led as a teenager with her parents, she’d felt it all too often.
Once in the OR and confident she was alone, Samira made quick work of getting the syringe full of succinylcholine. The only potential problem was that in her haste she nearly dropped the glass bottle containing the paralyzing drug. If it had broken, hitting against the hard floor, it would have been a calamity, since she would have hesitated cleaning it up. Each sliver of glass would have been the equivalent of a curare poison dart in the jungles of Peru. It wasn’t lost on her how ironic it would be if she’d end up being found dead in the OR in the morning.
It was with great relief that Samira retraced her steps back to the stairwell. With this portion of the assignment out of the way, she thought she was home free, but little did she know.
Descending two floors, she checked the time. It was a tad past eight. Her only concern at that point was Mrs. Benfatti, whom she had met that afternoon. Would she still be visiting? On the positive side, it was the night of Herbert Benfatti’s surgery, and the chances were he was still feeling the results of the anesthesia, meaning he’d probably be seriously sleepy or sleeping. The only way to find out was to check.
Opening the third-floor stairway door, Samira glanced up and down the corridor. Two nurses could be seen in the brightly lit nurses’ station, which meant the other two were either off in patient rooms or taking a break. There was no way Samira could know.
With her anxieties again mounting, she told herself it was now or never. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the hall and headed toward Mr. Benfatti’s room. All went well until she arrived at the man’s door, which was open about six inches. Eager at that point to get the whole thing over with, Samira raised her hand to knock when she found her hand poised in midair. To her utter shock, the door had been pulled away the instant Samira had expected to make contact with its surface. Reflexively, Samira let out a yelp of surprise as she was unexpectedly confronted by one of the evening nurses, whom Samira knew only by her first name. It was the remarkably obese and brusque Charu, and she completely filled the doorway.
In contrast to Samira’s reaction of surprise, Charu acted irritated that someone was in her way. She looked Samira up and down as if evaluating her and said, in not too friendly a manner, “What are you doing here? You work days.”
Charu and Samira knew each other only from nurses’ report
during the shift change when the day nurses communicated to the evening nurses each patient’s status and specific needs.
“I just wanted to check on my patient,” Samira said, her voice more hesitant than she would have preferred. “I’ve been in the library studying up on knee-replacement surgery.”
“Really?” Charu questioned, with a tone that suggested doubt.
“Really,” Samira echoed, trying to sound forceful.
Charu eyed Samira with a look of disbelief but didn’t voice it. Instead, she added, “Mrs. Benfatti is visiting.”
“Will she be leaving soon? I wanted to ask Mr. Benfatti a few questions about symptoms.”
Charu merely shrugged before pushing past Samira.
Samira watched her as she headed in the direction of the desk. Samira was in a quandary about what to do. She couldn’t hang around the floor waiting for Mrs. Benfatti to leave, yet if she returned to the library, she wouldn’t know when the wife departed. On top of that, she wondered if running into Charu meant she should abort the effort altogether. Of course, the trouble with doing that was that it might be a week before she had another American patient with some kind of history of heart trouble who would make an appropriate target. By then the benefits of competing with Veena probably wouldn’t accrue.
Samira was still debating the issue when she was surprised yet again. This time it was Mrs. Lucinda Benfatti, who was a moderately tall, heavyset woman in her mid-fifties with tightly permed hair. Having met Samira that day, she recognized her immediately. “My word, you do put in a long day.”
“Sometimes,” Samira stammered. Her mission during which she was to avoid being seen was devolving into a bad joke.
“What time do you work until?”
“It varies,” Samira lied. “But I’ll be heading home shortly. How is the patient doing? I wanted to stop by and check.”