Well, it wasn’t his problem anymore. He’d been receiving the emails for over a decade, never signed, always brief, getting more frantic and frequent as time wore on. Feeling generally suspicious of them, and not wanting to violate HIPAA policies, and because he was just busy with other matters, Andy hadn’t explored them in detail. This year their frequency had gone from every couple of months to every week, until suddenly they had just stopped. Funny, the abrupt silence seemed more ominous than the emails themselves.
Happily, they’d be Zack’s headache now. Andy was off to enjoy his retirement without the hassles of politics in medicine, and it was well-deserved. He took a last look back, then nodded to himself and closed and locked the door on this chapter of his life.
Chapter 17
The day was going by quickly, and Tobi had a vague sense she had missed something important. She couldn’t decide if it was regarding a patient’s care or something completely unrelated, and finally chalked it up to Troy’s message floating in the back of her mind. Nothing too significant then, she told herself.
At 2:45 p.m., Tobi went into the next exam room, where an older woman was in for a urinary tract infection. Mrs. Brown was sitting on the table, engrossed in her smart phone. She barely looked up when the doctor came in.
“Hi, Mrs. Brown, I’m Dr. Lister. How are you today?”
“Mmm.”
“It says here it hurts when you pee. How long has that been going on?”
“Oh, just since yesterday,” she said, without looking up.
“Do you have any fever? … Back pain?”
No answer.
“Belly pain?”
More silence.
“Mrs. Brown?”
“What?” She tore her eyes off the phone for a quick second. “No, none of that.”
Tobi nodded. “Do you have any allergies to medications?”
“Mm hmm … um, what? No, no allergies.”
Tobi shook her head. This happened so frequently, it made her wonder why people came to see her at all, when they obviously had more important things to do. The worst was when the patient was a child, and the parent wouldn’t look up from their phone to provide the medical history. She’d have to pull Mom back with a “help me out here,” but the attention was never long-lived. The parent would be back on their phone in a hot second. Luckily, Mrs. Brown’s urine was chock full of bacteria, which made the diagnosis straight forward.
She must be texting someone, Tobi thought. Good for her, I guess, at seventy-eight years old. Maybe it was a grandchild. She got up and went over to Mrs. Brown to do her exam. As Tobi came alongside her to listen to her lungs, she could not resist a surreptitious glance at her phone, but then had to cough to stifle her laughter. Mrs. Brown realized she’d just been busted and looked up sheepishly.
“You really like that Candy Crush game, don’t you?”
“Yes, doctor. My granddaughter got me hooked.”
***
Tommy Mitchell was in room two. He was a seventeen-year-old high school senior who had rolled his ankle in soccer practice. He was still wearing his white and blue soccer uniform with grass stains on it. He could not walk on his right foot at all and had to be fetched from his dad’s car with the wheelchair. Esther was in the room, gently removing the wrap his coach had applied.
“Hi, my name is Dr. Lister. Did that just happen?” She nodded at his ankle. His right ankle was easily twice the size of his left, and already turning various shades of purple.
“Hi, I’m Mr. Mitchell, Tommy’s dad.” Mr. Mitchell stepped forward and extended his hand. “Yes, he rolled it during practice today. Tomorrow is the big game. You gotta get him on his feet, doc!”
Tobi looked doubtful as she examined his ankle. “Let’s take a picture,” she said, and put the x-ray order into the EMR.
The radiographs showed three separate fractures in Tommy’s ankle. About as bad as it could get.
Tobi took a deep breath before going back in the room. Tommy and Mr. Mitchell were talking about tomorrow’s game, but they both looked up when she walked in.
“So, how do we proceed from here? He’ll do whatever it takes,” Mr. Mitchell said.
“Mr. Mitchell … Tommy … I’m afraid you won’t be able to play tomorrow. You have what we call a trimalleolar fracture. It’s broken in three places, here, here, and here.” She pointed on his ankle. “It may require surgery. You won’t be able to stand on that foot for a few weeks. I’m sorry.”
They both stared at her.
“I’m going to put you in a splint and get you on crutches, but mostly your leg needs to stay elevated and iced on and off for the next couple of days to get the swelling down. And definitely no weight bearing for now.”
More silent stares.
“Do you have an orthopedist? If not, I can recommend someone for you. I want you to be seen first thing on Monday.”
The silence seemed to snap. “No, no, no, you don’t understand,” Mr. Mitchell said. “We just need to get him through the game tomorrow. He will see the orthopedist on Monday, I promise. Unless—can he see the orthopedist now?”
“Not unless he goes to the hospital. It’s Saturday,” Tobi said, glancing at her watch, “and it’s after three o’clock on Thanksgiving weekend. There’s not much else that would be done in the hospital, anyway. He may need surgery, but it’s not an emergency, so it’s not likely to happen until Monday. Either way, an orthopedist cannot fix this overnight so that he can run on it tomorrow. It’s just not possible. I’m sorry.”
Tommy was fighting back tears. “But the scouts are coming to tomorrow’s game. I’m going to qualify for a scholarship to Duke. Can’t you just get me on the field somehow?”
“Tommy,” Tobi softened her voice, “you couldn’t even walk in here by yourself. How are you going to play well enough to be considered for a scholarship? The scouts will not see a great candidate if you get on the field tomorrow. Better for them to not see you at all than for them to watch you play poorly. And you’d do more damage to your ankle, so it would be an even longer and more complicated healing process.”
Mr. Mitchell approached to within an arm’s length of Tobi. At six feet three inches, he towered over her. “Listen, Doctor, you are going to get my son on that field tomorrow or get an orthopedist over here right now who will.”
She backed away reflexively. “I think we’re done here, sir. I suggest you call your pediatrician and see what he can do. We’ll give you a copy of the x-ray, splint his ankle, and put him on crutches. I’d appreciate it if you would sit back down.”
Mr. Mitchell didn’t move but continued to stare at her threateningly. Tobi backed out of the room and into Jorge, who was poking his head around in alarm. “I’m not going back into that room alone,” she said.
“Don’t you dare, I’m coming with you,” he said.
Tobi wanted to hug him, but she checked herself. She always tried to appear confident and in control, no matter what. It was an old habit, born of having been the person left to carry the family, beginning at the age of ten. Her mother had been hospitalized for gall bladder surgery and later for a spinal fusion, and both times, even though Tobi was the youngest, her father had expected her to be the one to do the laundry, cook the meals, and clean the house. And, of course, she was not to miss a beat on her schoolwork. Both she and Reuben had recognized early on that they should never argue with Dad; under the best of circumstances, he could fly into a rage at any moment. Tobi had learned to just keep her emotions to herself. She never cried or showed anxiety; there had been no one to listen anyway, even if she had.
She thanked Jorge and they gathered supplies, then went back in to Tommy’s room together.
Mr. Mitchell walked out when they walked in and paced the hall, on hold for the pediatrician’s answering service, while they wrapped Tommy’s ankle in an ortho-glass splint and sized the
crutches.
“I know I don’t have the grades for Duke, but that’s where my dad went, and I can’t just go to some stupid state school,” Tommy’s voice was cracking. “Besides, he’ll kill me if I don’t get in. I wasn’t even supposed to play tomorrow, but Dad talked to Coach to make sure I’m in the line-up, and then Dad’s going to talk to the scouts after the game. Even if I don’t play that well, he knows them. He makes a lot of money, my dad, he can get me in. He contributes to the school and everything. I can’t disappoint us all like this! Where else would I go, anyway?”
“Haven’t you looked at other schools?” Jorge asked.
“They all suck next to Duke.” Tommy’s voice broke completely, and he started sobbing between sentences. “I have to go to Duke, I just have to! And I can’t get in just on my grades. I study, it’s not my fault the teachers don’t give me As! It’s those Asian kids, they break the curve. It’s not normal to be that smart. But it doesn’t matter if I can get in with sports, and I’ve gotten recognition awards in soccer every year since grade school. But how am I going to do that now? The scouts aren’t coming back to Long Island again until May, and that’ll be too late.” The tears were streaming down his face now.
The pediatrician still had not gotten on the phone by the time Tommy’s ankle was splinted. His father looked into the room and glared at Tommy’s now swollen face. “We’re leaving.”
Tommy got up with the crutches and limped after him, struggling to keep up. His father didn’t even hold the door for him.
“What did he expect you to do?” Jorge nearly whispered, after they were gone, “perform surgery in the office?” They were both still holding their breath.
“More like he thought I could just wave a magic wand. It boggles my mind how ill-prepared so many kids are to face disappointment—or adults, either, for that matter. I did not appreciate the veiled threat from that father—as if I had something to do with his kid’s injury!”
“Not so veiled,” Esther walked over. Her face was white. “I thought he was going to, I don’t know, hurt you or something.”
“I was ready to push the panic button!” Patty said.
“You both heard all that?” Tobi asked.
“Well, he wasn’t exactly being quiet about it. Sounds like they set their sights too high. I wouldn’t want to be at that dinner table tonight,” Jorge said.
“It’s a travesty. We teach our kids to win,” Tobi said, “but we don’t teach them how to lose. That’s the more important lesson. That’s what develops resilience. If they can’t lose, they shouldn’t play. In my humble opinion, that is.”
“That’s so true,” Patty said. “The tough old birds in my family are the ones who went through the mill and survived. I think there was less mental illness in my grandfather’s time, and they went through the war and the Great Depression.”
“I’ve read that too. It’s not clear whether there was just less reported or there was, in fact, less. But going through hardships, especially as a community, definitely builds fortitude and purpose and puts the silly things we get upset about back into perspective,” Tobi said. “Not that we want our kids to go through war—God forbid—but to encounter a little resistance once in a while is an excellent thing.”
“My father-in-law calls them ‘first world problems,’” Jorge said. “Like when Giana couldn’t find a crib comforter with airplanes on it for little Jeremy. She was driving us crazy! Her dad lived in Africa for a year working for Doctors Without Borders, and the people he treated were a whole different level of sick. He made a real difference over there, not like seeing patients for things that will mostly get better all on their own. He says the things Americans obsess over are completely unreasonable.”
“And I bet he didn’t have to fill out mounds of paperwork or satisfy insurance companies, either. Must be incredibly fulfilling work,” Tobi said, feeling more than a smidge jealous.
“People like Tommy scare me,” Patty said. “These are the kinds of kids who could become school shooters, or commit suicide, when they just can’t cope with life.”
Jorge looked puzzled. “What does it mean that he’s always gotten ‘recognition awards’ in soccer?”
“No clue,” Tobi answered. “Seems like everyone gets a prize these days, not just first, second, and third, but right up to the guy who comes in last. It’s the same issue. We’re so worried about hurting someone’s feelings that we never ask them to buck up and improve. Look, I’m not saying there aren’t children out there who need to be treated with kid gloves, but those are special cases. We do need to teach our children to respect each other and love themselves for who they are inside. But that’s quite a different thing from giving them the message that last is as good as first, whatever you do will be commended, and that no one should ever have to be disappointed. It’s crippling. You know, parents don’t live forever, so the most important thing we can teach our children is how to live without us, as heartbreaking as that is.”
“But the parents are afraid to upset their kids,” Esther said. “Remember that boy with mono last week? His mother said she lied to the pediatrician and let him play sports anyway because it was so important to him. That’s crazy! What is wrong with people? That was her son she was talking about.”
“Like a stupid football game in high school, which no one will remember in five years, could possibly be more important than risking a ruptured spleen,” Jorge said, rolling his eyes.
Esther looked at Jorge. “We are going to miss you, Jorge.”
Tobi looked at him in alarm. “Where are you going?”
Jorge laughed. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, Dr. L. I put in for a transfer closer to Queens, but then I got recruited for Crystal Clear Radiology. It pays more, and it’s all x-ray. Giana’s parents live in Forest Hills, so we found an apartment close by. We’re moving next week.”
“Wow,” Tobi said softly. “Yeah, that makes sense. I’m really sorry to lose you.”
“Don’t worry, I’m staying on per diem, so I’ll still fill in here from time to time. Seems like every time we turn around, there’s something else we have to buy for little Jeremy!”
Tobi smiled at him sadly. “You deserve it. You’ll have help with the baby plus an easier commute and you won’t have to do three jobs at once anymore. Stay in touch.” She gave him a hug, trying not to think about what the staffing situation was going to look like in their office going forward.
Chapter 18
Troy was restless. The packing was done and he’d shipped all of Reuben’s things to a postal code on Long Island. The transit time would be a week or more, but Troy had to get back there to pick it up. He hadn’t heard from Tobi, so he’d decided to rent space in a storage unit until he figured out what to do with it all. He went into Inspector Bent’s office to ask permission to leave for the States.
“Good afternoon, I’m glad you’re here, Mr. DeJacob. I have some more questions for you,” Bent started when he saw Troy. “Come into my office. First, what brings you to me?”
“Good afternoon, Inspector. I came to ask if you found out anything about Marcus’s murder, and because I’ve shipped Reuben’s effects back to America and I’d like to return there to pick them up and distribute them. I have nothing but pain here right now, and I don’t see what further help I can be. I came to ask leave to go.”
“Hmm. Take a seat. No good leads yet on Marcus. Where were you last Tuesday night?”
“Tuesday night? I had just landed in Sydney from Los Angeles. I had to stay overnight in a hotel and I took a 7:30 a.m. flight to Cairns. When I got here Wednesday morning, I went straight to Robain’s and then to the dive shop and talked to Marcus. You can check it. Why do you ask? Marcus was alive Tuesday night.”
“Yes, but his friend Freddie was killed in Cairns Tuesday night. You say you were in Sydney until 7:30 a.m. Wednesday? I’ll need your flight information and the h
otel you stayed at.”
“Freddie was killed, too? Oh my God! Sure, I have it all on my phone.” Troy fumbled in his pocket to pull his phone out, but his fingers didn’t seem to want to work right this morning. The horror was mounting—now three people were dead! He was exhausted and as shameful as it felt, he just wanted to leave. This beautiful, once paradise was now a nightmare for him. It took a minute to pull up the confirmation emails. He handed his phone to Bent.
Bent took his phone and had Troy wait outside while he made calls. Troy felt himself sink further into depression. He hadn’t felt this bereft since he had said good-bye to Tobi. Images flooded his mind. He had urged Reuben to go to the FBI with what he’d found, but Reuben had refused, said “these people” were too powerful, and he even suspected members of the US government might be in on the scheme.
Troy let his thoughts stray. Why was Marco killed? He hadn’t thought it had anything to do with Reuben, whose death Troy had assumed was random, his heart disease having caught up with him. But now that he thought about it, didn’t Bent say it was a Russian who had offered to help find Reuben’s family? And now this guy Freddie too? Someone had assassinated them both. Reuben had used that word, “assassination,” and that was exactly how Marcus’s body had looked. Not that Troy had stayed around long to scrutinize it, but it was a memory etched into his brain: Marcus lying on the floor with half his face blown off, and another pool of blood coming from his chest. Were these murders connected to Reuben after all?
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