The Rusted Scalpel

by Timothy Browne

  Wright gave her a choice to stay at the research center or accompany him. He convinced her he needed the moral support and reassured her their visit would be short. They’d be back by morning to travel upriver and join Nick. He was positive Nick wouldn’t mind and was being well cared for and having a wonderful time with Robert and his wife. Dr. Amy was heading upriver. She would tell them of his grandmother’s injury and to expect them to be late, so Nick wouldn’t worry.

  Maggie hoped Nick wouldn’t be upset. After all, he understood broken bones better than any of them.

  Maggie had always wanted to visit Calcutta, the home of her hero, Mother Teresa. The saint worked, lived, and showed the love of the Father to the outcasts like no one else. Maggie thought how amazing it would be to visit the very streets and mission where Mother Teresa worked. She didn’t ask, however, because Wright’s grandmother was their focus.

  The trip in Wright’s sleek jet took only two hours, and it was thrilling to watch him fly it. He sounded so official when he talked with the towers in Singapore and Calcutta. But she could tell he was nervous. He admitted it was the fastest he’d ever flown the jet, just under the speed of sound, and he seemed worried about their fuel consumption.

  After they landed, a courteous man in a silver Bentley chauffeured them to the hospital. Maggie saw the power of money. Everything was so convenient—staff and other amenable people were always present. One staffer offered to carry her purse so she wasn’t burdened, but that was where she drew the line.

  They walked into Calcutta’s modern Ruby Hospital, and even there, a young woman was waiting to escort them to the post-operative area.

  “Your grandmother is quite well. Dr. Gupta, her surgeon, who owns this hospital, I might add, will meet us promptly,” the woman said in broken English.

  “How long has she been out of surgery?” Wright asked.

  The woman looked at her watch. “Fifty-three minutes.”

  Maggie smiled at the staffer. Yes, there is power with money. Maggie watched the numbers in the elevator click until it reached five. There was a loud ding, and they exited.

  “Dr. Gupta has put your grandmother in our finest suite. I hope that suits you,” the woman said, bowing and extending her hand toward the hallway. “Mr. and Mrs. Paul, may I offer you something to drink while you wait for the doctor?”

  Heat rose into Maggie’s cheeks, and she flushed with awkwardness. “I’m not…we’re not…”

  Wright came to her rescue. “This is my friend Ms. Russell, and please, I think we could use some water.” He smiled at Maggie, seeming to enjoy her blush.

  “Please forgive me.” The embarrassment transferred from Maggie to the young woman. “I’ll get the water straight away.”

  As she turned away, a portly Indian man in scrubs and a white coat strode down the corridor. “Oh good. Here is Dr. Gupta now,” the woman said and bowed out.

  Dr. Gupta appeared to be a jolly man. He was licking his lips and wiped something greasy from his chin, then without cleaning his hand on a handkerchief offered it to Wright and then to Maggie. He was as full of himself as he was of his meals. “Your grandmother was in quite capable hands, I can assure you.” He thrust out both of his hands to emphasize the point. “She is doing very well. She sustained a fracture of her hip that required us to replace it,” he said.

  “A hemi or a total?” Maggie asked, surprising the doctor.

  He bobbed his head from side to side, seemingly bothered to be questioned by a woman, and looked over the top of his glasses at her. “We prefer a total here at Ruby. We replaced both the ball and the socket, so no arthritis develops in the joint,” he said with some annoyance.

  “Dr. Gupta, this is Maggie Russell from the US. She is well aware of medical procedures.”

  “Are you a surgeon?”

  “No, I run a mission hospital in Guatemala.”

  “That’s nice.” He smiled at her as one would smile at a small child, then spoke to Wright. “Well, please, let me show you to your grandmother’s room, and then I must get back to surgery.”

  The surgeon led them down the hallway, and Wright whispered into Maggie’s ear. “More like back to his lunch…pompous ass.” He imitated the surgeon’s waddle, and Maggie choked back a snicker.

  They entered the room where two nurses attended Wright’s grandmother.

  “She had a spinal for surgery, so she is awake but groggy,” Dr. Gupta said. “Now if you would please excuse me, I am required back in the operating theater.”

  Wright ignored the man’s extended hand and went straight to his grandmother.

  “Grandmama, it’s Wright. You have given us quite a fright. How do you feel?” He held one of her hands and put his other on her forehead where a washcloth lay.

  The old woman, looking fragile and pale, opened her eyes at the sound of his voice. Even in her state of semiconsciousness, she smiled. “Mowgli, how good of you to come, my dear. Bless your heart.”

  “Grandmama, how are you doing?”

  “I will be fine, dear. I got a little off-kilter is all.” Her eyes drifted closed.

  Wright indicated to Maggie that she should come forward. Before he could introduce her, his grandmother’s eyes opened, and she turned toward Maggie, looking surprised.

  “Kumārī, my daughter. You are here. Oh, my lovely Kumārī.” Her eyes closed again.

  One of the nurses stepped forward. “She is still waking up from the pain medicine. If you would kindly give us a moment to take her vitals, you can talk with her in a moment.” She smiled with compassion.

  Wright and Maggie stepped to a corner of the room.

  “Poor thing. She has been through a lot. She is so sweet.” Maggie whispered and grinned at Wright with her newly acquired secret.

  “Yes, yes…she still calls me Mowgli. It was my nickname growing up.”

  “That’s so precious,” Maggie said. “She called me something. I think she thought I was someone else.”

  Wright grinned. “I think she thought you were my mother…Kumārī.”

  CHAPTER 26

  TRUST

  “Do you trust me?” The voice in Nick’s heart said again.

  Nick floated on his back in the cool river water. It had been a peaceful morning: breakfast, harvesting bananas with Robert for lunch, and now bath time. Maggie and Wright should be back any moment. Maybe his life had just slowed enough to listen, but God was speaking to him like never before. Perhaps this was a thin place and the water, a river of transformation. With his ears below the waterline, he heard the muffled sounds of the visible world and the people around him, but the unseen world seemed amplified in this place. The message was clear—the Holy Spirit was speaking to him.

  He decided there must be two problems causing the worry and fear that chased him all his life—either he didn’t believe in God’s promises, or he didn’t believe in general. Father, forgive me. He was growing in the former, and the latter was fading.

  Nick reached his arms behind him and pulled himself along the surface of the water, the sun warming his face. Father, what am I to do with my life now?

  “Do you trust me?” the Holy Spirit said again.

  “Yes, Father, I trust you,” Nick said aloud, still trying to believe it in his heart. “But can you make it a little clearer for me?”

  He felt Robert tapping his legs and let them sink to the bottom of the river so he could stand. He hoped it was a signal that Wright and Maggie had arrived at the longhouse. A boat was motoring around the bend of the river, but there was only one person in the vessel. Nick wiped the water from his eyes and focused. It was Dr. Amy.

  She steered to the landing area, and a young man swam to the boat and pushed it up on shore for her. She disembarked from the front.

  Nick paddled to shore and grabbed his towel from a tree branch; he wrapped it around his neck as Robert joined him. Amy did not look well. Anxiety pumped through Nick’s veins.

  “Do you trust me?” Nick heard in his heart.
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br />   He pushed the voice away and stepped toward Amy. “Everything okay?”

  “No, it’s terrible,” Amy said and looked at the ground.

  Images of tragedy filled his mind, and his heart pounded.

  “We’ve had quite a ’mare…two of the male orangutans had to be put down.”

  “And Maggie and Wright?” Nick asked fearfully.

  “Oh, they’re fine,” she said. “Wright’s grandmother has fallen and broken her hip and required surgery yesterday. They went to visit her in Calcutta,” she added nonchalantly. “They’re as good as gold.”

  “India?” Nick’s voice came out an octave higher.

  “Yes, but they should be back tonight or tomorrow, aye.”

  Nick’s heart sank. He shouldn’t have let her go, or at the least he should have gone with her. Self-condemnation rose in his heart and with it, sinister voices shouting. They fought to replace the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit.

  Robert must have sensed his angst. He put a hand on Nick’s back. “Everything will be fine.” He turned to Amy. “What males?”

  “King Louie and RT-13,” Amy said, wiping a tear from her eye. “It was awful, Robert, just awful.”

  “Oh, that’s bad,” Robert said and stepped closer to her. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know for sure. It’s the danger of working with wild animals, I suppose, but I worry about the apes having a reaction to the medication. Early in the animal trials of Welltrex, we occasionally encountered aggressive behavior at higher than therapeutic doses. But the apes have been off the medication for a few days. My gut is telling me there is something more. My fear and working hypothesis are that one or both of the apes were having withdrawal reactions from Welltrex.” She wiped her face with the back of her forearm. “If that’s true, I need to get to the longhouses that were in the clinical trials.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Robert said.

  * * *

  The first longhouse sat an hour up the Batang Ai River and another half hour along a tributary. A rain shower met them along the way, and the clouds remained low and grew thicker as the longhouse came into view. A mist hung over the structure like a shroud. Something inside Nick screamed danger.

  The longhouse was half the size of Robert’s. It was intact but dead quiet. Robert guided their boat past it, turned off the motor, and let the current carry them slowly past the village. Robert watched the longhouse and scanned the jungle. He was on high alert, bearing the same affect he did when stalking an animal.

  There was an occasional call from an animal or the bark of hornbills far in the distance.

  “There are no fires,” he whispered and gripped the handle of his machete. “They should be preparing dinner.”

  The boat drifted to the shore where five empty boats tied to the trees bumped against the mud.

  “What do you think?” Nick asked.

  “I think something is terribly wrong,” Robert whispered.

  “Do you suppose we should go back and get more men?” Amy asked loudly enough that Robert shushed her.

  A sound came from the longhouse, and Robert crouched.

  “See anything?” Nick whispered.

  Robert shook his head and stepped in front of Amy and Nick to pull the longboat onto the mud. He didn’t tie it off.

  He motioned for them to stay in the boat and turned to the looming structure.

  “Robert, wait. You can’t go in there alone,” Nick whispered, stepping out of the boat. “I’ll go with you.”

  Amy was on his heels. “I don’t think it wise to separate, aye.”

  They crept up the path, stopping every few feet to look and listen. There was that sound again. Robert’s bare feet made no noise in the dirt, but Amy’s flip-flops made plenty. Nick turned and eyed her feet.

  “Sorry,” she mouthed and slipped them off.

  Robert made it to the base of the longhouse and scanned in every direction, peering up and over the closed gate to where the animals were kept. Nick made his way silently to Robert’s side.

  The old man whispered in his ear, “The gate is closed like it was night, but there is not one animal here.”

  There was a thump overhead, and the two men ducked, fearing something was coming at them, but there was nothing. Robert pointed up to the floor of the complex. He moved to the stairs and stealthily took the first few steps.

  Nick tried to follow, but each step creaked under his weight. Crap.

  Robert made it to the top and signaled for him to continue despite the noise. By the time Nick and Amy reached the landing, Robert had his machete unsheathed. They stood on the patio and listened. The sound had stopped.

  The silence of the surrounding jungle was unnerving, but the absence of the usual, vibrant Iban community was even more ominous.

  They crept across the open patio to the side of the longhouse. There were no windows to peer into and no way to find out what was happening inside except to go through the front door. As they stepped to the entrance, Nick’s sense of smell awoke and transported him to his first day of anatomy lab with a cadaver—it was the smell of death.

  He grabbed Robert’s shoulder and pointed at his own nose. Robert nodded and grimaced. The old man’s muscles tensed as he pushed open the partially ajar front door.

  The common area was pitch black, and Nick was about to look beyond Robert when it hit him.

  * * *

  A Calcutta taxi driver laid on his horn and cut in front of the Bentley, missing the front fender by a fraction of an inch, but clipped the wheel of a rickshaw they were passing. The drivers all exchanged words and finger waves.

  Wright’s driver looked into the rearview mirror. “Forgive me, sir.” He said and bobbed his head. “Calcutta taxi drivers are crazy men.”

  Wright nodded and smiled at Maggie.

  She smiled back and said, “I’m just glad he is driving.”

  Wright looked out the side window and watched the traffic zoom past. He was thrilled with the effects of Confide. The oxytocin-packed cologne was already on the market and doing well, but he was especially fond of the version he was wearing because it was custom-made for him. His scientists had added another molecule exclusive to his bottle. They called it the “Right Stuff,” making a play on their boss’s name and the astronaut movie. Wright couldn’t smell the change it made, but the men promised it was there. When they exposed a person to the spray, the oxytocin excited all the feel-good neurons like regular Confide did. But because it contained the exclusive molecule corresponding to his natural scent, the affection of that person would be directed to Wright alone. What an advantage it gave him in business when his adversary’s brain was tricked into trusting him.

  Now it was working its magic on Maggie. He could see it in her eyes. When she came close to him, he believed he could see her almost animalistic attraction. He had not made a move on it, wanting to keep her arousal maximized until the timing was perfect.

  “Thank you for coming with me to see Grandmama.” He turned and smiled at her. “She’s all the family I have left. Thank you for understanding. I don’t feel comfortable leaving her here alone.”

  Maggie smiled at him, and he had a peculiar sensation of wanting to hold her close. He wondered if the oxytocin was affecting his own brain.

  “I certainly understand, but I hope Robert and Nick are getting along without us,” she said.

  “I’m sure they’re surviving,” Wright said. “Amy would have arrived at Robert’s longhouse this afternoon, and they’d know by now what is happening. I’m sure they’ll understand. Amy took the satellite phone…they should be checking in with us soon.”

  Wright twisted the yellow rose in his fingers and held it to his nose. “These are Grandmama’s favorite. I’m hoping it wakes her brain up.”

  “Poor thing, she’s been pretty confused,” Maggie said. “It has to be frightening for her. From my experience at the mission hospital, confusion is common for the elderly after big surgeries.”


  Wright nodded. “The brain is so complex—it has fascinated me since I was a little boy.”

  She looked at him with a sparkle in her eye. “Mowgli,” she teased.

  He chuckled with her. “That will only be fair if you share your childhood nickname.” He said, poking her in her ribs.

  Maggie looked out the window from the back of the Bentley at the towering hospital. She turned to him, zipped her lips with her fingers and tossed an imaginary key over her shoulder.

  “Please.” He pleaded with his eyes.

  “Okay, just don’t laugh at me.”

  Wright held up his hand as if taking an oath.

  “Only my dad called me this…well, sometimes my mom as well when we were fighting, and she wanted to be snarky…Princess. He calls me his Princess,” Maggie said, blushing.

  The nickname shocked Wright, and he tried to hide his emotions by turning to the window.

  Maggie touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Wright. Did I say something to upset you?”

  He looked at her, trying to decide if he should confide in her. She was touching part of his soul that few had.

  “You know how Grandmama called you by my mother’s name, Kumārī?” He paused, struggling to get the words out. “It is no wonder that you remind her of my mother with your beautiful complexion and long black hair.” He smiled at her. “Kumārī is the Bengali word for ‘princess.’ My father called my mother…Princess.”

  CHAPTER 27

  BEAST OF BURDEN

  The animal hit Nick with such force it knocked him to the ground. But it wasn’t attacking; it was escaping. The leopard took three long strides across the patio, sprang over the railing and was gone. Amy screamed, and Robert froze, then rushed to Nick’s aid.

  “Nickloss, you okay?”

  Slightly dazed, he sat up. “Man-oh-man, that scared the crap out of me.” Nick rubbed the back of his head.

  “Are you hurt?” Amy asked.

  “I don’t think so.” He felt his chest where the large cat hit him. His shirt was torn. Through the tatters he saw sizable scratches across his pecs.