The Angel Maker

by Ridley Pearson

  “No.”

  He touched her with his gloved hands. She rocked her head back and stared open-eyed into the harsh, sterile light. Her left leg cramped; she wanted to let go of her knee, but she didn’t dare do anything. This was all so new to her, not at all what she had imagined. Better in some ways. Worse in others. He felt removed and distant, and yet his touch was intense and knowledgeable. She wanted him to want her.

  He unfastened his belt. She grew light-headed. He took her legs and pulled them toward him, drew her to him, causing her to plant her arms and lean back, her head nearly touching the patient, her legs wrapped around him, her body half on, half off the metal table. The farther back she leaned, the easier it was to support herself, but the more contact she made with the woman behind and beneath her.

  Humming one of the operas that he played during their surgery, he penetrated her. A sharp pain. She cried out. She could tell by his reaction that he liked it, so she didn’t try to stifle the sounds that shuddered through her with each of his thrusts. He went after her with a frenzy. Her body went numb as all of her senses focused, instead of on herself, on him. His eyes closed. He smiled! He liked this!

  Then nothing. He stopped. Was it over? He withdrew and shoved her away from him, back onto the table.

  She was filled with a vague longing for something soft—muted light, a pillow, a kind word. “Was it any good?” she asked.

  “You can’t answer that yourself?”

  “It was wonderful!”

  “There, you see?” Then he said mechanically and without emotion, “Now put on a smock—there’s work to be done. She won’t stay under forever.”

  Pamela went into the adjacent storage room, cleaned herself off and changed into a smock, remaining naked underneath. The sensation thrilled her. Everything about this night thrilled her. With her clothes as they were, she would have nothing but the smock to wear for her drive home. Wild! She giggled with the thought.

  When she returned, he seemed nervous, almost frantic, not at all himself. He kept checking his watch. She joined him at the table alongside the patient and the stainless steel tray of hemostats, scalpels, and needles.

  Only then did she notice: “She’s not prepped!” She blurted this out without thinking. “She isn’t shaved.” Their eyes met then, and she saw panic in his, so foreign a sight that it was made all the more obvious, like a virtuoso missing a note, or an actor forgetting a line. He had neglected to prep her. Inconceivable! Elden Tegg? He never forgot a single detail of any operation, large or small. Had the sex been that good? She didn’t know this man. He had treated her so differently this evening, done things she had always wanted but had never dared ask for, that it was almost as if she was with someone else.

  “You’re right,” he conceded, “she’s not properly prepped.”

  Elden Tegg admit a mistake? He never made a mistake! What was happening?

  He instructed her, “Get what you need and prep her.” When she failed to respond, he commanded harshly, “Go on!”

  She didn’t like that voice. It wounded her.

  A few minutes later, as she was soaping the patient’s side and abdomen, she noticed that the surgical cloth covering the patient was damp in the center of her chest. It had been dry earlier, when Pamela had left the room. She shaved the woman, but her eyes wandered the room curiously and she spotted a surgical sponge stained with Betadyne resting on the edge of the sink. This too was new since she had been out of the room. She put the two together: The Betadyne had earlier been used to prep the epidermal for surgery, and then the patient’s chest had been washed clean of it while she was out of the room.

  A heart? Impossible! He wouldn’t do that. They had talked about that recently. A lung perhaps. “All set,” she said to him. All set? Her hands were shaking, her knees weak. Her eyes fell upon that sponge across the room. She thought about the sex, what he had done to her: Out of desire? Or had it been to distract her? To keep her attention off this patient. She glanced over at him. She felt a distance between them. If this was a scheduled harvest, why hadn’t she been notified? Who was the courier if not her?

  “All set,” he said, his eyes dancing nervously, his hands trembling slightly—hands usually as steady as the steel he held. Yes, another man entirely.

  He leaned over the patient, his dark eyes trained on her. Slowly, carefully, he lowered the blade. “Her name is Sharon,” he said to Pamela. “Thank you, Sharon.”

  This was part of his ritual—every donor had a name, every donor was thanked for the contribution about to be made. He insisted on this.

  “Thank you, Sharon,” Pamela echoed in an unsteady voice that betrayed her inner thoughts and caused Tegg to glance up at her briefly. But not for long. Only an instant. The sharp blade came in contact with the woman’s skin. The first drop of her blood seeped from the incision. Pamela lifted a sponge. There was work to do.

  As Elden Tegg began the invasive surgery for the kidney harvest, thoughts swarmed inside his head like angry bees. The problem lay in the fact that Pamela would never approve of a heart procurement—the procedure for which this woman had been prepped prior to Pamela’s intrusion. There was no predicting what she might do if she found out about it, hence the charade—the lovemaking, the distraction, the ruse that he had forgotten to prep—him!—and now an unplanned kidney harvest. Worse, Maybeck was due shortly, hopefully to inform Tegg that Wong Kei’s wife had been successfully admitted to the Vancouver hospital, and then to act as courier for both the harvested heart and the other organs once the various procedures were completed. A single kidney harvest wouldn’t interfere with any of that—this donor wouldn’t need any kidneys where she was going, that was all part of Tegg’s plan—but Pamela’s curiosity was sure to peak if she encountered Maybeck. Maybeck delivered donors, and he returned them to the streets, but this was too soon after surgery for a pickup; she would have to wonder what he was doing here this time of night. Pamela Chase was no idiot; she would figure this out in minutes. And then what?

  There was one possible excuse, he realized, and he congratulated himself for thinking of it. On rare occasions they performed a “private” harvest, selling an organ directly to a friend of Tegg’s, a transplant surgeon in Vancouver—as opposed to shipping it off to the Third World market. Patients on the low end of transplant waiting lists became desperate, and this surgeon in Vancouver—along with Tegg—was willing to do something about it. For a fee. This heart was a “private” arranged through the same man. Although Pamela had previously delivered the “privates,” there had been talk recently that perhaps Maybeck should do it, and this provided Tegg his out.

  He paid particular attention to his work, for he continued to see this woman’s body as a treasure-trove, a chalice from which to draw life itself. Several lives. One begets many: It was almost poetic! He felt a small twitch in his neck but paid it no mind—just nerves.

  He worked more quickly than usual, and Pamela did a good job of keeping up, of anticipating his every need. He wanted this finished. He wanted the kidney packed, readied for travel, and Pamela on her way before Maybeck’s arrival. If Maybeck said the wrong thing, he could screw this all up. Tegg glanced up and looked around the room to rest his eyes. The plastic walls and ceiling gave the room a strange metallic sheen, reflecting the bright light like dulled mirrors. Again, the muscles in his neck and shoulder twitched; again, he fought it off.

  “Doctor?” she asked.

  He had actually blanked out for a minute, caught up more in his thoughts than his actions. His eye rest had gone on a little too long. He returned to his work, talking as he did. “Clamping the renal artery. Renal vein.” He prepared to sever both. “Scalpel.” She slapped it into his gloved hand before he completed the first syllable. She snatched it back just as quickly, and he knew she had spotted a possible problem. It was a tangled mess in here. He wormed his fingers around the various veins and arteries, double-checking to make sure his clamps were properly placed. What had she seen that he
might have missed? Together they had successfully performed over thirty such human kidney harvests, and yet they treated each as if it were their first. He carefully followed the clamped artery to its source, confirming it was the renal artery and not the superior mesenteric, which for a moment she had obviously feared it might be. Satisfied, he reestablished his clamp and found the scalpel in his hand once again. He glanced into her eyes. Even with a mask covering most of her face, he could tell she was smiling. She enjoyed this precision teamwork as much as he. Too bad she would miss the heart.

  “Tying off,” he announced. He cut both vessels and tied them securely, testing first the vein—by carefully removing the hemostat—and then the artery. This artery carried over forty-five percent of the body’s blood to the kidney. The pressure to the suture was significant. They both studied the two closures, alert for any leakage. Pamela reached in and sponged thoroughly, Tegg’s dexterous fingers at the ready. “Looks fine,” he declared, and went about severing the lesser vessels. Pamela washed the area in a steady stream of saline and antibiotic as Tegg continued his work. Several minutes passed. “Forehead,” he warned. She mopped some perspiration from his brow. This tiny room lacked adequate ventilation, sealed in plastic as it was, and the intense heat from the light overheated it quickly.

  “You know,” she commented, “the heat is a lot more tolerable like this,” referring to her nudity under the smock.

  “I just bet it is,” he said, close to having the kidney free and clear.

  “It was nice.”

  “What we just did will carry more significance, mean more, if it is not discussed.”

  “Message received.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did.” She added, “I’ll live.”

  He glanced at her again. He didn’t like to see her angry at him like this; he had come to expect that look of reverence in her eyes. He had come to like it.

  “Here we are,” he announced, as he slowly extracted the cherished organ from the retracted incision, cradling it in his cupped hands like a newborn infant. “Saline!” he commanded.

  She presented the chilled stainless container to him. The clamped, pink organ sank down into the cool water. She added some saline to completely cover it and returned the dish to the bucket of ice where it had been waiting.

  “Let’s close,” he said, pleased with their success. The organ in that dish represented a saved human life, and it was the product of the work of his hands. No such feeling of accomplishment could ever be properly explained, he thought, still looking at it. No one, not even Pamela, could fully understand the magnitude of his happiness at such moments.

  They returned to their teamwork, four hands working as if controlled by a single brain. And maybe they were, he thought in a moment of conceit. Maybe this woman at his side was a far greater part of him than either of them understood. It had begun to feel that way of late. And why not? What was wrong with that?

  As they closed the various levels of muscle and tissue he instructed, “There’s a UNOS container in the back room.” This transplant container, one of many stolen by Maybeck from the trash bins of the University Hospital, had been intended for the heart. It was a good size for the heart, slightly smaller than the ones they normally used for the kidneys. “Make sure you triple-bag the organ—use Viospan, as always—check for leaks, don’t forget—and don’t scrimp on the ice! We received a complaint the last time!”

  “I always check the ice!” she protested. “It was the cabin temperature. It wasn’t us. There’s nothing we can do about some old pilot who insists on flying in a sauna.”

  “Just make sure.”

  “I will. You know I will.” She then inquired, “What flight am I on?”

  Tegg spoke quickly. “This is a private. Maybeck’s delivering.”

  He awaited her reaction. He didn’t dare look at her, she might see something in his eyes. To cover himself he added sternly, “We talked about this. Hmm? I think it’s better this way. You said so yourself: You don’t like delivering the privates.”

  She didn’t say anything. Just right.

  He didn’t approve of the continuous stitch, subcutaneous closure he had performed. He removed it and began again, this time in silence. “Forehead,” he warned. She caught the perspiration in time. This contact between them seemed to settle her down some. The remainder of their work went flawlessly.

  He oversaw her efforts as she packaged the organ in the Viospan. She did a splendid job of it—he could have done no better. When the small Styrofoam container with its bright orange label was sealed and ready to go, Pamela retrieved her sliced-up jeans from the floor.

  Tegg added quickly, attempting humor, “It’s a good thing Maybeck’s handling this one. After all, what would you wear?”

  She forced a smile; she wasn’t pleased with any of this. But hers was a role of obedience. Five minutes later, she was gone.

  Like most of the rooms in the small cabin, the kitchen was in disrepair from years of neglect. Maybeck entered shaking off the cold, looking like a biker with lockjaw—he had the remarkable ability to talk most of the time without showing his grotesque teeth. “We got trouble.”

  Problems? Tegg wondered. He was proud of the way he had improvised with Pamela. The only problem he could conceive of had to do with transporting Wong Kei’s wife to Vancouver. “She died?” he gasped.

  “Connie says a cop was nosing around Blood-Lines yesterday. Had that girl Chapman’s name. Knows she’s in the database.”

  The police? The room suddenly seemed to be without air.

  “Calm down,” Tegg said, though rattled himself. The guy was pacing faster than a hungry pit bull, rubbing his thumb and fingers together like he was trying to remove something sticky from them.

  The police? Now? He felt broadsided.

  Maybeck said, “We’re gonna shut it down, right? You got plans for shuttin’ it down, right? That’s what you said before.”

  Tegg found it difficult to think with Maybeck circling the table like a predator. “Sit down!” he instructed. When issued this order for a second time, Maybeck sat.

  “We are gonna shut it down, right?” Maybeck repeated.

  “We can’t shut it down,” Tegg informed him. “We have Wong Kei to think about. I took an advance payment. He’s counting on us. You know what that means as well as I do.” Tegg had his own personal agenda, his own reasons for wanting to see this heart harvest to completion, but he wasn’t going to share them with a little person like Maybeck who would never understand. Maybeck would respond better to his fear of the Chinese mafia than to Tegg’s needing to right his own past mistakes.

  “What advance?” Maybeck asked.

  Tegg decided to play to the man’s greed. “Don’t forget: You have fifty thousand dollars coming to you from this heart harvest—if there is a heart harvest. No advance for you until the job is completed.”

  Maybeck brooded. Tegg needed to settle him down. He offered, “I have some vodka.”

  “Gimme some.”

  “Not too much,” Tegg warned. “There’s still work to be done.”

  He poured him a glass, no ice. Tegg seldom drank. He put the bottle away. A thought occurred to him: If worse came to worse, he could always tell Maybeck that he was closing up shop. He could courier the organs himself, if absolutely forced to. But with possession nine-tenths of the law, he would rather have Maybeck do it.

  “No more work to do tonight,” Maybeck corrected, spinning the warm vodka in the glass as if it were cognac. “Word from up north is that the old bitch barely lived through the flight. The Chink said that the doctor says we gotta wait at least a week. He mentioned next Friday.”

  “Next Friday? But that’s insane!” Tegg protested loudly. “We’ve already abducted her. She’s lying on my table downstairs right now!” He felt dizzy.

  “Fuck her! It’s the cops I’m worried about. We gotta shut this down, Doc. We gotta do something fast!”

  “Whom do yo
u fear more, Wong Kei or the police?” Tegg let the question hang there.

  Maybeck drank half the vodka, swallowing it like water. He cringed and then coughed out an appreciative, “Ahhh.” He answered, “The Chink, hands down. Goddamn gooks’ll kill you for pocket change. I hear what you’re saying, Doc—I hear ya, all right, but I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  Tegg marveled at the incomplete mind of a little person. Most of all, little people wanted the answers decided for them. He debated several possibilities and said confidently, “I suggest the following: First, we explore the extent of their knowledge. Police muck about all the time. Doesn’t mean they’re necessarily onto something here. Hmm? Connie keeps us up to speed on everything that’s going on at BloodLines. Her time has come to perform for us—this is where she earns her bread and butter.”

  “She gives us the database updates—that’s how she earns her bread and butter.”

  “Don’t toy with me, Donald,” Tegg warned, a mixture of anger and paranoia sweeping through him. The police?

  Maybeck killed the vodka and looked around for the bottle. Tegg edged the glass away from the man using the back of his wrist—he wanted a glass with Maybeck’s fingerprints on it in case he needed it later for damage control. An ounce of prevention …

  “The point being: If the police remain interested in BloodLines, then we must know about it. You have to arrange this with Connie. No telephones, you understand, unless it’s just a signal of some sort—no discussions on the telephones! That’s imperative! Even a person like you can understand that. Hmm?” He didn’t care if he insulted the man. He was beyond caring about such things: It was the police he was concerned about now. That and a successful harvest. Maybe he could up the schedule—a week seemed an interminable time—he’d have to look into changing that.

  “If the cellular worked from out here, I’d call the man right now,” Tegg said. “But as it is, we’ll just have to wait on that.”

  He wrestled with the next thought that came into his mind because it was more something that Maybeck would think to do, not Dr. Elden Tegg; and yet it persisted, nagging at him, refusing to go away. They needed time. They needed to distance themselves from the police. There were ways to buy insurance that little people like Maybeck understood perfectly well.