Silent Treatment

by Michael Palmer

  “She was such a beautiful girl,” Harry heard her say.

  Harry waited until he was certain the DellaRosas would not be returning for any reason. Then he opened Evie’s purse again. In addition to some eye shadow, lipstick, blush, and a twenty-dollar bill, there was a gray rabbit’s-foot key chain with three keys on it. Two were door keys of some sort, fairly new. Harry checked them against the co-op keys on his own ring. No match. The third was for a mailbox. He was about to examine the two slips of paper when Ben Dunleavy swept into the room.

  Evie’s neurosurgeon was respected throughout the hospital, but he was also feared for his volatility and intolerance. The decision to delay repair of Evie’s aneurysm, although made on sound clinical grounds and decent data, had been his. Now, before he could operate on his patient, she was dead.

  “Harry,” he said.

  His handshake and tone were cooler than they should have been given the circumstances. Sidonis had obviously gotten to him.

  “You here to pronounce Evie?”

  The neurosurgeon nodded and looked down at her. With no more drama than that, it was done. Harry glanced at the wall clock. Nine-twelve A.M. and thirty-five seconds. Officially, Evie was dead.

  “Needless to say, I’m really sorry this has happened,” Dunleavy said. “It’s been years since I opted to do anything other than a delayed repair of an aneurysm like hers. Evie is my first fatality. I’ve only had two patients even rebleed before I could get them to the OR, and both of them did fine.”

  Harry could read between the lines of what the man was saying. He saw no sense in not cutting to the chase.

  “Ben, Sidonis may have been having an affair with Evie. I don’t know. But he’s wrong about what he’s accusing me of.”

  Dunleavy’s gaze was dispassionate.

  “I hope so, Harry,” he said. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

  He was gone before Harry could even respond. First the nursing staff, now Dunleavy. Even without hard evidence, there were already some unwilling to give him the benefit of the doubt. Harry felt an unpleasant tightening in his gut. There was going to be trouble.

  He sat down in the bedside chair vacated by Dorothy and took the two pieces of paper from his pocket. They were scraps, one torn from the border of a magazine page, one from a sheet of stationery. Each had a man’s name, address, phone number, date of birth, and Social Security number, written in Evie’s hand, but hastily. The first was James Stallings, forty-two years old, with an Upper East Side address. The second, a thirty-seven-year-old from Queens, was someone named Kevin Loomis.

  Harry put the slips in his wallet and the rabbit’s foot and keys in his pocket. Then he checked the purse one last time and dropped it into the wastebasket. Finally, he bent over Evie’s body and kissed her gently on the forehead.

  “I’m sorry, kid,” he whispered. “I’m sorry about everything.”

  He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand and left the room. He was nearing the elevators when, from somewhere down the hall behind him, he heard a familiar voice cry out, “Hey, will someone please get in here! Get in here and get these damn bugs off of me!”

  * * *

  “He winked at me, Sherry. I swear he did.”

  Gowned and masked, nurse Marianne Rodriguez peered down into the radiant warmer where tiny Sherman O’Banion had spent virtually every moment of his two and a half weeks on earth. The neonatal intensive care unit at New York Children’s Hospital was the finest in Manhattan, and it was currently filled to capacity—thirty newborns ranging in birth weight from just over a pound to ten. Sherman, born at twenty-five weeks, weighed one pound five ounces. His mother was a housewife, staying at home to care for two other children. His father worked the night shift on the assembly line of a factory. Considering his birth weight and other problems, Sherman was doing pretty well.

  “Don’t you wonder what some of these peanuts are going to grow up to be?” Sherry Hiller asked.

  “I’ll bet Sherm plays football. Have you seen his daddy?”

  The infant, in his pod, looked like a visitor from another planet. There were tubes, wires, and auxiliary machines all around him. He was draped in Saran Wrap to conserve his body heat. A panel of phototherapy lights shone on him to lessen jaundice. Tiny eye shields protected him from the ultraviolet rays. A ventilator controlled his respiratory rate and volume. Sensors on his abdomen and legs measured temperature, heart rate, and blood oxygen concentration. An intravenous line placed in a tiny vein on his head provided fluid and antibiotics. A tube into his stomach through his nose delivered formula.

  Marianne moved about the warmer, noting down the infant’s temperature, heart rate, and color. His oxygen levels were running a bit low, and his dusky color, lab values, and exam had indicated a significant heart defect that would probably have to be surgically corrected before long. But Marianne wasn’t all that concerned. She had been a NICU nurse for six years and had seen any number of infants worse off than Sherman O’Banion make it out of the hospital in great shape. Of course, there were others who were not so fortunate. Blindness from a number of factors, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, multiple surgical procedures, death—either sudden from cardiac arrest or prolonged from infection—and eventual learning disabilities were complications that every NICU nurse had to deal with, if not accept.

  There was a tap on the glass from the formula room. Marianne looked over. The woman bringing the specially prepared formulas up from dietary waved at her cheerily with the fingers of a rubber-gloved hand. Marianne had never seen the dietary worker before—or at least felt fairly certain she hadn’t. Per protocol, the woman wore a hair cover, mask, and surgical gown. Only her stout frame and her dark brown eyes were apparent. The chestnut eyes had a special spark to them, and Marianne had the sense that, this was a cheerful person. She motioned for her to set out the formulas on the counter. The nurses would be in to pick them up. The woman nodded her understanding, did as was requested, and left the NICU, Marianne returned to her duties, pausing to check each piece of equipment. To do her job right required almost as much mechanical aptitude as medical. But each type of apparatus was backed by a team of specially trained technicians and, in some instances, an entire department. The cost, short-term and long-range, of neonatal intensive care was astounding. Someone had once told Marianne the actual numbers, which were something like nine thousand dollars a day for difficult cases. One infant, whose mother had abandoned her in a Dumpster, had remained in the New York Children’s NICU for almost nine months before succumbing to infection. There was a memorial service for the child. Only her nurses and a few M.D.s attended. The cost of keeping her alive for those months had been over a million and a half dollars.

  “Okay, Sherm,” Marianne said, “it’s chow time.”

  “Bring Jessica’s gruel in when you come, will you?” Sherry Hiller asked.

  “Sure thing. Does anything need to be added?”

  “Nope.”

  The formulas were in labeled bottles called Grad-u-feeders—a one-day supply for each of the infants. Some of the feeders contained supplemented mother’s milk. Others were prepared from scratch. Each was sealed with a tamper-resistant seal that was essentially extrasticky cellophane tape. Marianne gloved before handling the bottles. Then, breaking the seals, she unscrewed the cover of Sherman’s bottles and inserted the glucose supplement that had been ordered by the neonatologist. Next she resealed all but one bottle, using a roll of the tamper-resistant sealer that she picked up from the counter. As usual, she wondered why the department bothered with the tape when it was so easily accessible to so many people. She checked and double-checked the labels and placed all but one of Jessica Saunders’s and Sherman O’Banion’s formula bottles in the refrigerator. Then she returned to the warmers.

  “How do you handle a hungry man?” she sang as she administered the newborn’s feeding down his tube. “The Manhandler.”

  She held the formula over the infant until it had
drained in completely.

  “Marianne, could you do Jessica for me?” Sherry asked. “Little Moonface Logan’s monitor alarm keeps going off. I think the leads are loose. I want to replace them all.”

  “Sure thing,” Marianne said again.

  Marianne was focused on delivering formula to the tiny girl when she heard the alarm from one of the nearby cardiac monitors. For half a minute, she ignored it, certain that it was coming from the loose leads on the infant they called Moonface. The alarm persisted.

  “Sher, that’s Moonface, isn’t it?” she said, without looking up.

  For a moment, there was only the continuing drone of the alarm.

  “Holy shit!” Sherry cried suddenly. “Marianne, it’s Sherman.”

  Sherman’s cardiac monitor was showing an absolutely flat line. Marianne detached the feeding bottle and hurried back to his warmer. The two-week-old’s chest rose and fell in response to his mechanical ventilation. He looked as he always did, except that his dusky color had deepened considerably. Now the oxygen saturation alarm was sounding as well. Marianne checked the leads. None loose. She slipped her stethoscope onto the infant’s chest. Nothing. Not a beat. Quickly, she sped up the ventilatory rate and began cardiac compression.

  “He’s coded, Sher,” she said with controlled urgency. “Call it for me and get Laura over here. Damn it all.”

  In less than a minute, the resuscitation of Sherman O’Banion was manned by neonatologist Laura Pressman, two pediatric residents, and two nurses. Marianne delivered meds as they were called for, but she had a sinking, ominous feeling from the very beginning. Sherman’s heart rate had gone from an acceptable 130 straight down to zero. No slowing, no irregular beats. It was the equivalent of a car decelerating from sixty to zero by hitting a brick wall. Clearly, something within the infant’s defective heart had blown—possibly a muscle band, or one of the fragile dividing walls. Continuing the external cardiac compressions, the NICU team began administering medications. Epinephrine … atropine … more epi … bicarbonate. They worked on the baby for more than half an hour. But with each passing minute, Marianne became more convinced of the hopelessness of the situation. Finally, Laura Pressman stopped her cardiac compressions. She stepped back from the radiant warmer, looked about at the staff, and shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You all did a great job.”

  Marianne Rodriguez accepted a consoling hug and a few words from Sherry Hiller. Then, battling back the tears she knew would come sooner or later, she set about disconnecting Sherman O’Banion’s tubes and wires. The radiant warmer would be wheeled away and replaced with a freshly cleaned one. And before long, another newborn would be brought in.

  Six stories below the NICU, in the subbasement, the stout dietary worker, her mask, gown, and hair cover still in place, knocked on the door of a little-used staff men’s room, waited, then slipped inside, locked the door, and turned on the light.

  The cardiac toxin she had used was so powerful that only a microscopic amount had been needed. Even if Sherman O’Banion’s formula was analyzed, which it almost certainly would not be, no one would know what to look for, and nothing would be found.

  The canvas gym bag was concealed beneath a mound of used paper towels in the tall trash basket. Ten minutes later, a man emerged from the restroom carrying the gym bag. In it were the surgical gown, hair cover, and surgical mask, as well as a pillow, a woman’s wig, and a contact lens case. The man had close-cropped brown hair and was dressed in jeans, a loose sweatshirt, and well-worn Nikes. His height, weight, and general appearance were quite unremarkable.

  CHAPTER 11

  St. Anne’s was filled to overflowing for Evie’s funeral. Outside, the day was as gray and somber as the mood within the chapel. Evelyn DellaRosa, vibrant, beauty-queen lovely, gifted as a writer and reporter, suddenly dead at age thirty-eight. There were few in attendance who weren’t reflecting on the the transience of life and the vagaries of illness and chance.

  The hundred-and-fifty-year-old white-shingled church fronted on the picturesque village green of Sharpston, the northern New Jersey town where Evie was raised and where her parents still lived. Today, Harry observed, it held a remarkable collection of people—really quite a tribute to Evie. But with each arrival, Harry felt as though he knew his wife less. In addition to relatives, a number of Harry’s friends from the hospital, and neighbors from the co-op, there were co-workers from the magazine and various artists and patrons of the arts. There were folks from the station and network where Evie had not worked in over ten years, and a number of people whom Harry did not know at all. Shortly before the service, Evie’s first husband, John Cox, now a network VP, walked in with a gorgeous young woman. As far as Harry knew, Evie hadn’t spoken to her ex since shortly after their extremely hostile divorce was finalized. Yet here he was.

  The days of mourning following Evie’s death had been marred by visits from Albert Dickinson to Harry’s neighbors in the co-op, to his co-workers at the hospital, and to Carmine and Dorothy DellaRosa. Dorothy had called Harry as soon as the policeman left, and had asked about Caspar Sidonis.

  “Dorothy, I don’t know if this man Sidonis is telling the truth or not,” Harry had said. “And frankly, I don’t care. I loved Evie, and I’m sure she loved me. Even if she was involved with this other man, which I strongly doubt, I’m sure we would have worked things out in time.”

  “Oh, my,” was all Dorothy could think of to say.

  As the service was about to commence, Harry glanced back and spotted Caspar Sidonis slipping into the last row. The sight of the man brought a strange mixture of anger and embarrassment. Cuckold was a repulsive word and an even more disgusting concept.

  “Sidonis just walked in,” he whispered to Julia Ransome, the literary agent who was Evie’s closest friend in the city.

  “Do you really care?” she asked without bothering to look back.

  Harry thought about it. Perhaps it was her nature as a literary agent, but Julia always had a way of slicing to the essence of any situation.

  “No,” he said finally. “To tell you the truth, I guess I really don’t.”

  From the moment he turned away from Evie’s body and walked out of her hospital room, Harry had been trying to sort out his feelings. He thought about moving, about just leaving his practice and taking off, perhaps starting over again in one of those eternally warm, low-crime Edens the medical classifieds were always extolling. But just as he ultimately could not trade in his patients for the Hollins/McCue pharmaceutical job, he knew he would not leave them now. Not that Albert Dickinson would let him leave anyway.

  Evie’s casket rested on a draped stand surrounded by flowers. At the center of a wreath of white roses was a blowup of the same flawless, sterile, professionally done portrait that she had allowed on Harry’s desk. There would be no burial. The day her obituary appeared in the Times, a Manhattan attorney had contacted Harry. Three weeks earlier, Evie had made out a new will amending a previous one. In it, she requested cremation and changed the beneficiary of her jewels and artwork from Harry to her parents—another sign that she anticipated the demise of their marriage. Harry was left as beneficiary on a $250,000 insurance policy they had taken out jointly some years before, but that was all. Nowhere in the will was there a mention of Caspar Sidonis.

  Harry sat in the first row, between Julia and Evie’s parents. His brother Phil, Gail, and their three children were just to Julia’s right. Doug Atwater sat directly behind him. Harry felt grateful that none of them could read his thoughts, which, at that moment, were dominated by the wish that this whole thing would just be over so that he could return home. With the help of his associate Steve Josephson, Steve’s wife, and a cleaning service, the apartment was pretty much back to normal, minus a few shattered drawers and the missing valuables. Now, all he wanted was to spend a night or two sitting in on bass with the combo at C.C.’s Cellar, and then lose himself in his practice and patients.

  The mass w
as dignified and reasonably brief. Harry had been offered the option of speaking, but had declined. The priest, who had known Evie since childhood, did his best to make sense of her death, but Harry heard only snatches of what he said. He was preoccupied with trying to make sense out of her life. His thoughts kept drifting to Evie’s IV line and to the doctor or doctor-impostor who had somehow marched onto and off of the neurosurgical unit totally unseen by any of the staff. Now, further complicating the conundrum was another riddle: three keys on a rabbit’s foot chain.

  “You okay?” Julia whispered as the priest was concluding his eulogy.

  “Not really,” he responded. “Listen, Julia, are you free for a drink tonight? There’re some things going on I’d like to talk to you about.”

  Although he and Evie had occasionally spent a social evening with Julia and her husband, he had never been alone with her. She was several years older than Evie, slim, attractive, and sharply intelligent. Her agency was one of the more successful in Manhattan. She was working on her third marriage.

  Julia considered his request. Some minutes later, during Holy Communion, she leaned over and whispered, “Nine o’clock at Ambrosia’s.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.”

  Although Phil, Julia, and Doug Atwater each offered to stay with him, Harry remained alone in the sanctuary until it had emptied.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Father Francis Moore spoke softly, but Harry was startled nonetheless.