Death and the Intern

by Jeremy Hanson-Finger

  “Don’t use that voice with me, Janwar Aashish Gupta.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “Anyway, that was last week. I’m trying to get him to socialize. If he has something to focus on—”

  “Wild Turkey.” Janwar’s stomach twists even saying the words. “Okay, I’m going to hang up.”

  “Son, if you ever want to talk—” Garati says, but Janwar feels his chest seize again.

  He says, “I have to go, Mom. Goodbye,” doesn’t listen to the response, and disconnects.

  By now he is at the table, and Carla is looking at him with a quizzical expression.

  “My mother just phoned to tell me about a series of sexual assaults conducted by an anaesthesiologist at Ottawa Civic. By the man whose apartment I’m staying in.”

  Carla breathes out through her teeth. “We were hoping that wouldn’t come out. I want to assure you Ellis didn’t do anything at home. You never know what goes on in hotel rooms between duvet washings. Think of it like that.”

  So Janwar had hoped to have sex with Fang in a rapist’s apartment. Jesus. In Dr. Flecktarn’s own bed, where Janwar has been sleeping.

  Trying to quell the rising tide of nausea, Janwar attempts to connect this new fact to his investigation. He fills out a mental index card with the phrase “Anaesthesia Sex Ring” and pins it to his mental bulletin board. He should get this stuff down on paper soon.

  “Did you know anything about it?” he asks.

  “Everyone in the department was as surprised as everyone else. An unconscious and paralyzed patient doesn’t make any noise. And you really can’t see what’s going on on the other side of the screen.”

  “Does anyone still talk to him?”

  “No, he’s in jail.”

  “But someone must have secured his permission for me to use his apartment.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess Llew had someone get in touch, someone from University of Ottawa housing, when we knew you were coming. Thought we’d save you from staying in a hotel.”

  “Were they friends? Llew and Ellis?”

  “They were colleagues.”

  “I have to ask, Carla, everyone talks about what hot stuff Llew is with GHB. Did he do anything that got him taken out of active service like Venolia?”

  “Venolia?”

  “The woman in Records?”

  “I didn’t know Venolia did anything to get there beyond library science. She’s been there since I first came to the hospital. And no, Llew’s done nothing like that. What’s with all the questions?”

  “So Llew did do something then?” Janwar tries to look as discreet as possible. It works or, at least, doesn’t prevent Carla from giving in after a long pause.

  “Honestly, between you and me, he got into his own supply a little. Him and Double D. That’s all. If you don’t drink at the same time, I’ve heard GHB can be a fun drug to take in small amounts. And he knew exactly what small amounts to take. But that was a long time ago.”

  “Double D?”

  “Oh.” Carla’s eyes dart up and back down. “She’s not here anymore. You wouldn’t know her.”

  “Too bad,” Janwar says.

  He takes a sip of his coffee. It tastes like lychee nuts for no discernible reason, so he mentions that to Carla.

  “Better lychee nuts than almonds,” she says. “Or, wait, no, it’s the smell of almonds that…”

  Suicide is painless… Janwar extricates himself from yet another conversation about ways to die and heads back to the OR.

  On the way, he searches “Flecktarn + Sexual Assault” on his phone and taps the “News” tab, and sure enough, Dr. Ellis Flecktarn, Ottawa Civic Hospital, double-digit despoiler.

  After another successful operation, Janwar feels as if he has gained more control over his life. Wearing a mask makes him feel more whole, somehow, like it’s keeping his face together, and he begins thinking about next steps. He has two avenues of inquiry while he waits for Venolia to fill his records request: one, the dead pool, and two, trying to get the surgeons to talk, in case they know something or saw something during the operation he didn’t. The dead pool is the simplest to explore, so he’ll start with that.

  Fang said all the doctors played in the dead pool. Wouldn’t it make sense that someone would try to fix it, the way promoters fix boxing matches? Meaning that they would try to ensure a certain patient died in order to make sure they got paid? It’s a stretch, but now that Janwar is thinking about it he can’t stop, picturing medical staff in poorly chosen civvies and big sunglasses slipping envelopes of cash into each other’s newspapers at neighbourhood cafes, doctors in the OR calculating dosages twice, once to cure and once to kill. Janwar is now unable to shake the idea that emergency patients’ survival is based more on the fluctuations of some secret market than the best efforts of talented and selfless men and women…

  Janwar decides to skip lunch and pay a visit to the intensive care unit. He’ll say he’s interested in joining the dead pool. That’ll be more likely to get results than blustering in there and trying to alpha the shit out of everyone.

  First he’ll ask who he has to talk to about the pool. He’ll find out how much money it takes to play, what the average payout is. Whether there’s ever been anything suspicious before. How they deal with debt. And if he isn’t getting any answers, he’ll bring up Diego and see what comes out.

  The ICU takes up a massive L-shaped space on the second floor. Janwar shares the elevator coming down with two gurneys and their attendant personnel and wedges himself in a corner.

  Exiting the elevator he sees a flash of blond hair in his periphery, which reminds him of Susan. The hair is not atop Susan’s scalp, however—and why would it be, in the hospital?—but atop that of a bulky, tanned, middle-aged man.

  “Hi,” Janwar says to the receptionist, a fiftyish lady who, unlike Venolia, is so comfortable at her station that she’s not merely painting and filing but actually clipping her fingernails, which shoot off into the metal garbage can next to her desk with loud pinging noises that put Janwar’s teeth on edge. Her name plate reads “Teresa Galway.”

  “Hi, Teresa? My name is Janwar Gupta. I just joined the anaesthesiology department and—”

  “The dead pool, right?” Teresa makes a second snap with the clippers to remove a stubborn thumbnail.

  “Right. How—”

  “One second, please.” She presses a button. “Paging Dr. Miroslav. Dr. Miroslav to the front desk about the dead pool.”

  “Aren’t you worried about what the patients think, mentioning the dead pool out loud?”

  Teresa scrunches up her face. “Not really.” She nods at someone behind him.

  Janwar turns. A Slavic man with a strikingly handsome face and a ridge on the top of his skull like a dinosaur, which Janwar can see only by virtue of his own height and the man’s thinning hair, stands with his hand out.

  “Anton Miroslav. You want to talk about the dead pool?”

  “Janwar Gupta. Yes. I just joined the anaesthesiology department and I’m interested in learning a little more.”

  Anton doesn’t recognize Janwar’s name, or he’s doing a good job hiding it. “Doing your due diligence.”

  “Right.”

  “Good plan. You can never be too careful, whether you’re risking your Porsche upgrade budget on a preconstruction condominium, or taking part in more traditional gambling. Like our little racket here. So what are your questions?”

  Janwar learns from Anton that the pay-in is $100 a week, the average payout is $7,000, Anton “rules the ICU with an iron fist,” and he doesn’t tolerate any funny business. Moreover, people have to pay cash to play; Anton isn’t into trying to collect money after the fact. If anyone is in hock over the dead pool, it isn’t to him.

  Anton’s phone rings.

  “One sec,” Anton says. He turns away and speaks softly but Janwar can make out the words victory and outsource partner and Georgia and agent and server cluster.

  Janwar
listens as hard as he can without obviously appearing to be listening, but he can’t make anything else out until the end, when Anton turns back to him and he hears the telltale uplift of Katerinka’s voice on the other end. “Goodbye?”

  Anton shakes his head. “IT problems. It’s good you’re looking at all the angles. But let me assure you, we run a tight ship.”

  “Do people who leave the ICU but remain in the hospital stay in the dead pool?”

  “Yes. But nobody bets on them, because once they’re out of the ICU, they’re out of the woods.”

  Diego was never in the ICU in the first place. The muggers beat him in the knees, not the head. He was admitted to the emergency room and wouldn’t have been eligible for the dead pool. Fuck.

  With that, Janwar’s dead-pool investigation bottoms out. He hasn’t found anything to firmly indicate a conspiracy. He still could’ve given Diego the wrong dose. He could have wagered wrong. This could be all in his mind. He has to sit down for a while and breathe in and out and focus on the sound of the ventilation system before he realizes he hasn’t explored the surgery connection yet. Could the surgery-anaesthesiology conflict have resulted in Diego’s death?

  When Janwar tries the surgery department, the receptionist says she’ll go see if Karan is there, but Gertie Toledo comes back instead. In comparison to the chilled-out vibe of the anaesthesiology department, the scene behind Gertie is frenetic—a couple of surgeons Janwar hasn’t met doing dishes, one washing, one drying, so fast Janwar thinks the wheels are going to come off and plates shatter at any minute. The turning on and off of the tap is accompanied by the drill of fuzzed-out punk rock, the singer yelling something about the American dream. Janwar can also hear the rolling squeal of a rowing machine moving at tremendous speed outside his line of sight.

  “He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Gertie says.

  “Can I come in and speak with you for a second instead?” Janwar says.

  “This is our rec space,” Gertie says. Her eyes sport dark circles. “No anaesthesiologists. Nothing personal. Some things happened a ways back. Heads got heated. Mistakes were made. And after that, well, rules is rules. Security set ’em. For all our protection. Though odds are against the exact same thing happening again. Anyway, Karan said he doesn’t want to talk to you. I’m sure he’s got a good reason.” She’s talking even faster than normal, her eyes darting back and forth. She swallows, licks her lips.

  “What about Victor?”

  “Victor’s not here today. If you think Victor or Karan will believe you didn’t make a mistake, drop it. Every doctor kills someone sooner or later. Take it like a man. If you fail out of med school, you weren’t meant to be one of us anyway. You’re not one of us anyway since you’re going into anaesthesiology, but you won’t get to be a doctor, is what I meant.”

  “I got that,” Janwar says. He strains to unclench his teeth.

  Skipping lunch turns out to have been a poor choice. Janwar has removed another possibility, plus Gertie’s attitude, when she’d seemed so nice in the earlier operation, suggests something is up, beyond dexedrine-dependence irritability. But he feels awful for the rest of the day in a corporeal sense. In the future he’ll have to better balance food intake with detecting.

  Now his afternoon operations are over, a couple of cakewalks. It’s four o’clock and he has to go see Venolia. He is hungry almost to the point of tears. Dr. Brank would have told him to put his own needs above those of others, but Janwar, a believer in harm reduction, doesn’t have the heart to deprive an addict of their fix any longer. Janwar will survive a few more minutes without food.

  On his way to the Records department, Janwar debates tearing up the prescription and going home, but Venolia is going to get Oxy somehow anyway, so he might as well commit.

  When the prescription and photocopies have changed hands, Janwar heads to the closest place for quick food off-campus, a submarine sandwich shop, where he braves the chemical-bread smell and orders from the bored teenager at the counter. As he finishes his foot-long, Janwar reads through his own report. Everything is as Llew said, and as he saw before—accidental death, at fault: Janwar—although Venolia did intimate that information could have been changed after the report was filed. He spreads out the photocopies along the counter by the window and tallies the number of OR deaths at which each anaesthesiologist was present, regardless of reason. Shaughnessy’s is the highest by a small margin. Victor and Karan, on first glance, weren’t present at any more OR deaths than anyone else.

  Janwar quickly becomes overwhelmed by the amount of data. Now that he sees how the data is organized, what fields are present on each printout, what options are available from drop-down lists, he knows exactly how he should have asked for it to be provided. But Venolia has gone home for the day and is probably fucked on Oxy, and he’s not sure he can get anything else out of her anyway. So he’s stuck with a stack of paper he has to analyze manually. It’s too much. He won’t be able to see a pattern until he tabulates all the data, and it will take him hours using Microsoft Excel. He might as well take the one finding he’s already come to, that Shaughnessy has a high number of OR deaths, and do some old-fashioned gumshoe work. That is, follow Shaughnessy around. Shaughnessy has gone out of his way to be mean to Janwar anyway. If anyone’s up to something, it’s probably the Irishman. And the logic behind Gupta’s wager still holds. He might as well keep digging because he’ll have a complete meltdown if he admits his guilt.

  Janwar returns to the hospital and checks the schedule in the anaesthesiology department. Shaughnessy’s next operation is done in an hour. A series of red streaks that weren’t there when he looked at the schedule first thing in the morning catch his eye. Fang’s operations have been crossed off for today and assigned to other anaesthesiologists.

  Peter is watching CBC News in the common area, sprawled on the couch, his limbs like rubber. His breathing is slow and he has a faint smile.

  Janwar sits down next to Peter. “Where’s Fang today?”

  “Nobody told you?” Peter says, even more slowly than usual.

  “No?”

  “Her car hydroplaned last night during the rain and it slid into the side of someone’s house.”

  A kick in the gut. “Is—”

  Peter increases his muscle tension enough to pull himself up into a sitting position. “She’s fine. Walked away. The people who owned the house were in the bedroom at the back, and they ran out as soon as they heard the crash, so they’re fine. The front of the house isn’t. Fine, that is. Neither is Fang’s car. Especially neither. She hit the gas line, so a few minutes after she got out, everything caught fire. The fire department got there before the fire spread, so the neighbours are fine. But seems like between home insurance and car insurance all the damage is covered.”

  “Jesus.”

  “So four ‘fines’ out of six. Not bad. Whole thing was an act of God, really. She took the day off to deal with the paperwork.”

  “So no legal issues?”

  “Doesn’t seem like it. She was driving the speed limit. If it speeds, it bleeds. Point is, she’ll be back at work tomorrow.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the expression,” Janwar says.

  With forty-five minutes to go before he has to be lurking outside OR II, Janwar is in a minivan cab going to the nearest thrift store. If he’s going to follow Shaughnessy, he’s got to have a disguise. Or, at least, he’s got to wear something other than scrubs and hide his nose. He tries to convince himself he had nothing to do with Fang’s accident. She would have been that tired anyway. He couldn’t have kept her at his apartment. And maybe sleepiness wasn’t a factor. Maybe it was an act of God.

  Janwar doesn’t really know what makes up the average man on the street’s wardrobe in Ottawa or anywhere else. It would have been much easier to be a private eye in the 1940s, when every man wore a trench coat and brimmed hat. And was white.

  Where they are now, along Carling, there are no pedestrians for Janwar
to appraise sartorially. Just car after car, bus after bus. And it’s summer. Everyone shows so much skin. Choosing a disguise would be a lot easier in the winter. Black toque, scarf, big coat—you could be anyone in a parka.

  He takes note of how the cab driver is dressed for the heat. Cab drivers never stand out. Saleh Azam, according to his registration card, is wearing a short-sleeved button-up shirt in ochre. It’s way too large for his tall and skinny frame, and open enough to reveal copious chest hair. Okay, Janwar can do that. Cheap sunglasses. Yep. Unshaven. Well, it’s almost 5 p.m. Baggy acid-washed jeans from the 1990s. Doable. Scuffed leather casual shoes. Sure. Baseball cap with a local company logo (the driver’s is grey and has the Corel logo on it). Yeah. This won’t fool anyone who looks closely, but from a distance if he dresses like Saleh he could be as close to a winter-parka-clad everyman as he could get in the summer. Janwar relaxes back into the bench seat. The Impala’s body wallows in its bagged-out suspension as the driver changes lanes.

  When Janwar and Saleh pass a road sign that reads, “Normal Speed Meets Every Need,” Saleh snorts. “Normal means average. Everyone goes at least sixty here. If they wanted people to stop speeding, they should say something else.” He steps on the accelerator, and Janwar’s seat sinks toward the rear axle.

  “They do. It’s that sign that says fifty kilometres per hour.”

  “You suggesting I slow down? Be direct, man.” Saleh stands on the brake pedal and laughs when the driver of the car behind them honks.

  “I didn’t mean to come across as a snark. You drive your own speed,” Janwar says. He remembers a handout from cognitive psych class, and the words spill out unbidden. “It takes higher-level cognition to understand why the speed limit is there, consider the risks, and then break it, than to see the sign and follow the limit. I mean, higher level not in a moral way, but in an early childhood development sort of way.” That’s not helping. He gives up, hoping Saleh won’t bother responding. He’s surprised he remembers that fact. It’s not even interesting. The class was a grade booster in first year; “Thoughts For Jocks” was how it had been known colloquially, although a lot of his classmates had been pre-med like him. Maybe one day the balance would tip enough it’d be called “Thoughts For Docs” instead.