Critical

by Robin Cook

  “There it is!” Angelo exclaimed suddenly. He pointed.

  “Are you sure?” Franco questioned. He looked at the building Angelo was pointing at. It was brick, in a mild state of disrepair, exactly like the buildings on either side. “How can you tell?”

  “Trust me! I can tell.”

  As Angelo climbed out of the car, Franco called after him to remind him that their visit was only a quick reconnoiter. Angelo waved over his shoulder to indicate he’d heard.

  Angelo glanced up at the top of the building. Lights were on in the fifth-floor apartment. Dr. Laurie Montgomery’s had been the apartment in the back: 5B. Angelo pulled open the outer door and stepped into the foyer. As soon as he did, he remembered his crazy partner, Tony Ruggerio, blasting away in that particular foyer at a woman who both of them thought was Laurie Montgomery but who turned out to be someone else. Partnering with Tony had been a frustrating handicap for Angelo, but he’d had no choice in the matter until the guy’s recklessness got him killed.

  Hoping for pay dirt, Angelo checked the names alongside the buzzers and mailboxes. To his great disappointment, the name for 5B was Martin Soloway.

  Having keyed himself up to such an extent, Angelo felt a momentarily paralyzing letdown. But then he remembered that he knew where she worked, and his mind-set took a rapid about-face, only to be halted by the very real possibility that after twelve years she might have switched jobs, as well as apartments. In a mood hovering between unbridled anticipation and abject despondency, Angelo returned to the car and climbed in.

  Although the retracted scarring of Angelo’s face restricted his range of facial expression, Franco had learned to interpret subtle small changes. He knew instantly that Angelo was dejected.

  “She’s no longer there?” Franco questioned.

  “No longer there,” Angelo confirmed. He then told Franco his concerns that she might have left town.

  “Hey, buck up! She’s got to be here. She wouldn’t be causing trouble if she wasn’t.”

  Although there wasn’t a lot of facial movement, Franco could tell that Angelo’s mood had changed for the better.

  17

  APRIL 4, 2007

  4:15 A.M.

  Angela had had difficulty falling asleep. She’d tried reading, but after several hours she’d given up. Instead she tried the TV, which usually put her to sleep within ten minutes, but on this occasion was no better than the book. While struggling to pay attention to the late-night talk show, her mind kept reverting to her major worries: the capital shortfall, Paul Yang’s apparent binge with a prepared 8-K sitting in his laptop a mere click away from submission to the SEC, and Dr. Laurie Montgomery’s potential of turning the MRSA problem into a public-relations disaster, either by discouraging doctors and patients to use the Angels hospitals or by alerting the SEC to a major problem, which had major financial consequences.

  Angela finally gave in and took an Ambien. She knew she’d been reverting to the crutch of using a hypnotic drug too frequently over the previous few months, but she felt it was warranted. Of all the people at Angels Healthcare, she was the only one who could be trusted to keep the IPO on track in the current crisis. To do that she needed her wits, which certainly required sleep.

  As had been the case in the recent past, the tiny, white, racetrack-shaped tablet worked its wonders, and Angela fell into a deep, albeit drugged, sleep with disturbing dreams. The worst dream was about being forced to move along a narrow ledge on a horrendously high and otherwise perfectly perpendicular cliff. Although not knowing exactly why, she had to get to the other side of the cliff or there would be a catastrophe. The ledge became progressively more and more narrow, and within sight of her goal, her foot slipped off the edge. Although she was able to grasp the edge with her hands, she was unable to haul herself back up onto the narrow ledge. Gradually, her fingers and arms tired, and she slipped off and fell into the abyss.

  Angela awoke with her heart racing, relieved to be alive. Although she could understand the origin of the theme of the dream, she wondered where the idea of being on a cliff had come from.

  Although not looking forward to the cold marble floor of the bathroom, she had no choice, so she eased out from under the covers to keep her spot as warm as possible. She tried to be quick, just as she tried to keep her mind a blank. What she was worried about was not falling back asleep. She guesstimated she’d only slept for about five hours.

  Unfortunately, Angela’s fears became a reality. Although she still felt exhausted and even drugged, to a degree she could not quiet her mind, which ignored her orders and quickly went into high gear. It was going to be a busy day. First, she wanted to reassure herself that Michael’s fifty thousand had been wired into the company’s account. Next, she wanted to hear from Bob if Paul had resurfaced and, more important, if he had filed or not.

  By four-thirty, Angela acknowledged that more sleep, no matter how necessary, was out of the question. Reluctantly, she got up, and on her way to the kitchen, she stopped at her daughter’s door. After briefly wondering if it was worth waking her, Angela pushed open the child’s door. With enough illumination spilling in from the nightlight in the hall, she could see Michelle’s familiar form, with her dark, luxurious hair pulled back from her angelic face. In the dim lighting, her flawless skin seemed to radiate supernaturally from within.

  For a moment, Angela stood there looking down at her daughter as only a parent can do. She felt a surge of love that eclipsed by a millionfold all the heartache and venom associated with Michael, the ignominy of the bankruptcy, and the anxiety of all the current problems with Angels Healthcare. It was a way for Angela to reorganize her priorities as she considered what was really important. And as she did so, she thought about the previous evening. After the fact far more than during her dinner with Chet McGovern, she’d realized she enjoyed herself in a way she’d not anticipated. Although she’d agreed to go for utilitarian purposes—namely, to find out whether Laurie Montgomery was a real threat—she’d relearned that honest conversation and general interaction with an apparently healthy man could be self-revealing. She’d never had such a frank discussion about her motivations with anyone, including herself.

  As quietly as she’d entered Michelle’s room, she left, pulling the door shut but not closed, exactly as she had found it. Michelle had always needed a bit of light as a connection to the real world cutting through the darkness of her room.

  Advancing into the kitchen, Angela quietly readied the espresso machine. Haydee’s bedroom and bath were off the kitchen, and Angela didn’t want to disturb her.

  As she waited for the light to indicate that the machine temperature and pressure were up to the proper level, Angela went back to her musing about the dinner experience with Chet McGovern. What she had admitted to him about going to medical school partly to get revenge against her father was not particularly flattering. What she failed to tell him was how much she had enjoyed medical school, particularly the clinical years, and, even more so, how much she had loved medical residency. Although most of her contemporaries had found residency training a grind, she truly thought of it as the crowning experience of her life: a perfect combination of service and learning.

  The coffeemaker light indicated that it was ready. Angela loaded one of the sealed capsules, tightened the handle into the unit, and turned it on. She grimaced at the noise in the stillness of the apartment.

  As the coffee ran into the cup, Angela reminisced about individual episodes she’d had with patients and families during her residency and during the year she’d had her private practice. They ranged from the sublimely joyous to the sublimely sad, but always uniquely human. Then she found herself comparing how she’d felt after a day of practicing medicine to how she felt after a day working at Angels Healthcare and acknowledged how fundamentally different the rewards were. With medicine, it was deeply personal; at the end of the day, she could almost always revel in the fact that she had helped at least a few people in the most direc
t way possible. With business, it was more vague and had to do with accomplishing something, even if it was difficult to define exactly what it was, although it invariably had something to do with money.

  Angela took her coffee back to her study. It was her favorite room in the apartment, with one entire wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, complete with a ladder that was attached to a track across the bookshelves’ face. Angela had loved books as a child and was proud that she’d never thrown one away.

  At the desk, Angela got out a legal pad and began writing down the problems she was currently facing and what she would try to do about them that day. When she wrote Paul’s name down, she thought about the man having an alcohol problem, which she hadn’t known about. From the standpoint of a CEO, it made her angry that the information had been kept from her, and she was surprised Bob had done so. But then, thanks to her recent reflections about her medical training, she thought about the problem from a physician’s point of view and remembered how difficult all addictions could be. Angela then wondered if the company should pay for inpatient rehab, which might be important if he was truly relapsed. She wrote the idea down. It was an issue that should be considered after the IPO.

  When Angela wrote Dr. Laurie Montgomery’s name down, she paused. There was little she could do about that problem. It was in Michael’s hands, for whatever that was worth. The previous evening, when she’d called him to tell him the disturbing news about Laurie’s apparent personality and the fact that she had voiced that she was going to solve the Angels Healthcare problem with MRSA if it killed her, he’d said that he’d do something about it immediately. Knowing him as well as she did, she had no idea whether he was telling her the truth or just placating her for the moment. With her intuition telling her loud and clear that Laurie Montgomery was the biggest threat to keeping their infection problem out of the media since the problem began, there was no time to delay. With all the trouble and effort they were going through with the cash-flow problem, it would be tragic if the IPO stumbled from the work of an overenthusiastic medical examiner.

  Angela’s eyes strayed over to her telephone and then on to the Tiffany desk clock. It was four-thirty-five in the morning, hardly the time for a personal call. Yet she was so certain of Laurie’s threat potential that she seriously debated calling. From sore experience, she knew Michael sometimes partied to such an hour, even five a.m., on numerous occasions when they were married.

  Talking herself into making the call, Angela justified it because of the importance of starting some sort of offense against Laurie and because Michael deserved it. All those times he’d stayed out to such an hour he’d return and wake her with his drunkenness, and sometimes even Michelle.

  With a certain vengeful glee Angela dialed the number. As the number rang, she fully expected his voice mail, especially since he had caller ID and she had a private line.

  To her surprise, he answered, sounding mildly intoxicated.

  “This better be important,” he said, slurring his words.

  “Michael, it’s Angela.”

  There was a pause. In the background, Angela could hear a woman’s voice with a heavy New Jersey accent complaining and demanding to know who was calling in the middle of the night.

  “Did you hear me?” Angela demanded. Now that she’d awakened him, she felt a tad guilty, but she was determined not to show it.

  “For chrissake. It’s four-thirty in the fucking morning.”

  “It’s four-thirty-five, to be exact. I’m concerned about the Dr. Laurie Montgomery issue I called you about last night.”

  “I said I’d take care of it.”

  “Have you?”

  “I told you I’d take care of it, and I did. It’s over, it’s done, so go back to sleep!”

  “How are you so sure? As I was told, she has a reputation of being very persistent.”

  “It’s not going to matter how persistent she is. My client actually knows her personally. He said he’d be happy to talk with her, and he’s confident she’ll be amenable to his position. What I gathered was that the doctor owes my client big-time.”

  Michael’s explanation didn’t make too much sense, but his assuredness did. Angela thanked him and told him to go back to sleep.

  18

  APRIL 4, 2007

  4:45 A.M.

  Laurie had been awake for a while; she didn’t know exactly how long when she finally looked at the clock. By then it was quarter to five, an hour before Jack would be getting up to shower and an hour and fifteen minutes before he would come back and drag her out of bed. That was the normal routine, and the fact that she was already awake spoke volumes about her mental state. Laurie was a night person. Along about ten o’clock, when Jack was finding it hard to hold up his eyelids, Laurie would usually get a second wind. She loved to read at night and would stay up after midnight engrossed in a novel more often than she liked to admit, always to deride herself the following morning and vow never to do it again.

  Now, as she lay there, fully awake and staring up at the dark ceiling, she knew exactly what the problem was; she was depressed. It wasn’t a major, incapacitating depression, which she’d never had but could imagine was like, but rather a nagging melancholy that she was inexorably being set up for a major disappointment. She’d always wanted a child from as early as she could remember, and she always thought of herself as a mother-in-waiting through her long medical training, which she’d blamed for not having had the time to find a spouse. Then she’d fallen in love with Jack and had to deal with his guilt over the loss of his family and whether or not he could commit to another. But that was now behind them and they were trying to have a family, but over the last year, it hadn’t happened despite temperature charts and careful monitoring of her cycles. The problem, as she saw it, was her age now that she was in her forties. Every month that went by, she was terrified that her chances of naturally conceiving had sunk, and now Jack was insisting on having an operation, which would take him out of commission for God knew how long, and not only that, he was choosing to have it at a time when he was putting himself at significant risk.

  Laurie rolled over on her side facing Jack and propped herself up on an elbow. She gazed at his profile, the picture of tranquility lying on his back with one arm casually thrown onto the pillow behind his head. She did indeed love him, but his obstinacy could drive her to distraction, as was the case with the surgery issue. For the life of her, she could not understand how he could dismiss the data and believe it was prudent to have the procedure.

  Recognizing that more sleep was not in the cards, Laurie got out of bed. With her bathrobe and slippers on, she padded into the study they had made facing out onto 106th Street. It was just becoming light. She looked down from the window onto Jack’s beloved basketball court, wishing it would suddenly disappear. Then she turned back to the partner’s desk. Her side was piled high with the MRSA case files and hospital records of the twenty-four cases, along with her uncompleted matrix. She’d hauled all the material home with the intention of working on it the previous evening, but she hadn’t done it. And now that she was awake early, she thought she would take advantage of the time, but before even sitting down, she recognized she felt the same as she had the night before. Her despondency kept telling her that her efforts were in vain. Jack was just going to do what Jack wanted.

  In the kitchen, Laurie made herself some coffee. Sitting down at the breakfast table, she began thinking about the process of in vitro fertilization and how Jack would respond to the idea. Although it would be a natural progression, they’d not discussed it. In truth, Laurie had been afraid. She knew that Jack’s agreement to have children was more to please her than something he intrinsically wanted to do.

  To Laurie’s surprise and despite being unable to fall back asleep in bed, she fell asleep at the kitchen table as evidence of how tired she was. What woke her was Jack standing in the doorway completely naked with his hands on his hips and an exaggerated expression of confusion o
n his face.

  “What the hell are you doing snoozing in the kitchen?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Laurie said, conscious of the irony.

  Jack advanced into the room and put a hand on her shoulder. “If you are still fretting about this surgery, I’ll promise you I’ll be fine.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” Laurie said sarcastically. “As if you have control. Why do you have to be so headstrong?”

  “Look who’s talking!”

  “Well, if the situation was reversed, I sure as hell wouldn’t be taking the kind of gamble you’re planning on taking.”

  “Hey!” Jack said. “We’ve been through this, remember? Let’s agree to disagree. I have to go over to the hospital this morning on the way to work for a quick pre-op blood and urine test, get the MRSA swab I told you about, and have a quick chat with the anesthesiologist. That’s why I’m up early. Why don’t you come along? Witnessing all such preparation, maybe you’ll feel better.”

  Laurie thought for a moment about the suggestion. At first she thought she didn’t want any further association with Jack’s surgical plans as a way of protest, but rethinking the issue, she didn’t want to cut off her nose to spite her face. On this visit, she’d be invited as a spouse of a patient, so she wouldn’t be blamed for making an official ME visit. Laurie couldn’t help but feel that if the MRSA cases weren’t intentional, then it had to be some sort of systems error involving all three hospitals, and if there was any chance of her guessing what such an error could be, she’d have to have opportunities to visit, which Jack was obviously affording.

  “Okay, I’ll come,” Laurie said with such sudden decisiveness that Jack was mildly taken aback.

  “Wonderful,” he said. “Let’s hit the shower and be on our way.”