Isolation Ward

by Joshua Spanogle

  I was feeling sufficiently guilty about my performance with her the night before—well, about the night before and a bunch of other times—that I decided to perform a mea culpa and make breakfast. There were eggs in the refrigerator, some pancake mix in the cupboard. I set to work, aware enough then to know that I had less than twenty-four hours until I was supposed to be back in Atlanta. I should really be moving, I thought. I should really get going. Yet, moving and going where, I had no idea.

  I beat the pancake mix with a fork and poured the batter into a heated pan. Orange juice went on to the table. In other circumstances, I would have taken some domestic pleasure in what I was doing. Now all I felt was hungover and confused.

  Brooke stepped out from her room, hair wet, smelling good. “What’s this?”

  “I’m apologizing for last night with food. Well, your food.” I shuffled some pancakes to her plate.

  I sat; she sat. I glanced at the wall clock. Nine a.m. If memory served me correctly—and I wasn’t entirely sure it did—Harriet’s funeral was at eleven. “Harriet Tobel’s funeral is in less than two hours.”

  “That will be hard,” she said. She really was an intuitive and kind person.

  “Would you like to come?”

  “No,” she said. Okay, scratch that; the woman was neither intuitive nor kind. “But I will if you want me to.” She added, “I hate funerals.”

  “Not me. I love them. Go to as many of them as I can.”

  “Do you want me to come with you or not?” She wasn’t making this easy.

  The dogs were milling around our feet. Brooke looked at them, then stood up from the table. She took a bag of dog food from under the counter and poured it into two small bowls.

  “I know I’m no cook,” I said. “But come on, the pancakes aren’t that bad.” Brooke smiled wanly. It is possible she was growing weary of my a.m. wit. She placed the bowls on the floor; the dogs finished inhaling their breakfast even before she sat down.

  “I can’t eat when they’re hungry. Makes me nervous.”

  I looked at the two little beasts, who were once again under the table, begging. These con artists were definitely not starved.

  “Did Jeff leave a black suit here?” Maybe I wouldn’t have to pull day four in my current threads.

  “No,” she said. “Jeff got rid of all his suits when he moved to California. He became all flip-flops, jeans, and old sweaters.”

  “Sounds like he became an idiot.”

  “That, too. But he’s tenure-track, so it doesn’t matter.”

  I could sense I was skating on thin ice there, so I skated away, which meant, at that moment, keeping my mouth shut.

  Brooke said, “You should take the dogs for a walk after breakfast.”

  “Sure.”

  “So, when are you supposed to be in Atlanta?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Tim wants me to take a red-eye.”

  “You’re not going back, are you, Nate?”

  A good question, actually. Though I kept telling myself I’d stay here until the bitter end, sacrificing career and, now, underwear and toiletries, I really wasn’t sure about it. Maybe this was the hangover talking. Maybe.

  “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER 67

  Armed with two plastic bags, two squirmy dogs, and my cell phone, I stepped outside into another impossibly sunny day. The dogs strained happily against their leashes.

  I had one unpleasant call I had to make, about a dozen other unpleasant calls I should make. As of that moment, I was committing to a life of efficiency, so screw the dozen calls.

  The woman at the medical examiner’s office directed my call to Luis Gonzales, the resident in pathology who’d done the autopsy on Gladys Thomas. He’d also done the autopsy, according to Brooke, on Harriet Tobel, as per her request. That’s why I was calling.

  Gonzales sounded rushed when he answered the phone. “Dr. McCormick, I have a double homicide coming in, so let’s make this short, okay?”

  I wanted to tell him his patients wouldn’t mind a five-minute delay for their autopsies—they wouldn’t care about a two-year delay—but instead I asked, “You performed the autopsy on Harriet Tobel?”

  “Yes. Brooke told me you were close. I’m sorry about her death.”

  “What did you find?”

  “It was an MI,” Luis Gonzales, forensic pathologist extraordinaire, said. “No doubt. The left anterior descending artery was nearly seventy percent occluded. Right and left coronaries were about fifty percent.”

  “But that wouldn’t have killed her,” I said.

  “No, it wouldn’t have killed her by itself. It does account for the nitro you saw on the bed and we found in her mouth. This lady had a lot of trouble with angina.”

  “But angina didn’t kill her. Did you find a blockage?”

  “No. We think it was vasospasm. Her heart got a bit ischemic, then bam, her arteries spasm and she goes kap—she has an MI. A large part of the left anterior ventricle was necrotic.”

  “No trauma?”

  “Nothing.” He added gratuitously, “She died of a heart attack.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Brooke told you I was suspicious about her death?”

  “Yeah. I took a long time with her, Doctor. But it was obvious. Large MI in the left ventricle.”

  My feelings at that moment were interesting. On the one hand, I was relieved; on the other, unsettled. Relieved because it looked like she really had died naturally, unsettled because I didn’t fully believe it. I asked, “You sent off a tox screen?”

  “Yes. It won’t be back for a few days.”

  “No signs of trauma?”

  “No. Look, Dr. McCormick, we covered—”

  “And I thank you for that. You checked for small trauma? Injection marks?”

  “We went over everything.”

  “What was in her stomach?”

  “Dr. McCormick . . .” I heard him sigh, then heard the shuffle of papers. “All right, the autopsy report. She’d had partially digested chicken, green beans . . .”

  “Okay, okay.” I wanted to think of other questions, but I wasn’t a pathologist, and it seemed these guys had asked all the right things. “Thanks for taking such care with this.”

  “No problem.”

  I hit End on the phone. So, I told myself, Harriet Tobel’s death—the death that occurred when she wanted to tell me something, the death that occurred suspiciously close to when she gave me the videotape—wasn’t murder. The experts said so.

  So, why didn’t I believe it?

  CHAPTER 68

  I hate funerals, especially those attended by a host of people from the darker corners of my past.

  Until I walked into the chapel, Brooke next to me, I hadn’t really thought of the social minefield I would be forced to navigate. First off, because Jeff, the ex-fiancé, had shed his old self back east, I was forced to wear what might soon be called “Nate McCormick Casual”: khakis, blue button-down, blue blazer. I’m happy to report the natives of Northern California are observant, and I caught quite a few members of the old guard looking askance. I can only assume it was my clothes and not my gargantuan CDC reputation.

  Anyway, I saw the old dean of the medical school, saw his eyes sweep the crowd. I wondered if he was still in power, and if that long look around was to note who attended the funeral and who didn’t. Only fools or cavalier faculty with tenure would think about missing the funeral of such an icon.

  Thankfully, the dean didn’t recognize me, so I could stare at him a moment and have an unpleasant memory: his steely face when he informed me that my welcome at the medical school had worn out. I conjured up a more pleasant image: my hands around his neck, his eyes bulging, his arrogant face turning blue—

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Nathaniel?”

  I turned around and was looking at the top of a man’s head, gray and black hair blown to a froth. It was Milo Shah, my old pathology professor.
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  “A terrible shame, this death,” he said, and shook his head too vigorously, as if to get the dirty word out of the way quickly. “How are you, son?”

  “Fine, all things considered.”

  “You have come back for the funeral?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  I could almost feel him gearing up for the big question. A medical student embroiled in multiple scandals lives on in many memories. People want updates. “What are you doing now?”

  I told him, and to his credit, he seemed genuinely relieved. It was as if he expected me to tell him I’d started a career directing porn. “Very good,” he said. “I’m very happy for you.”

  Brooke, sensitive to the sensitive situation, introduced herself. Dr. Shah nodded and beamed, drawing false conclusions about my romantic life. This was fine. Having an attractive woman on your arm goes a long way toward proclaiming how far you’ve come from the mess you’d made of your younger life. In some ways, it’s better than a faculty appointment.

  Dr. Shah shook both our hands and went off to intercept someone tanned and official-looking. As he left, I thought I saw the old lech give me a wink.

  “This is hard.” Brooke asked, linking her arm through mine. “I mean, the funeral, sure, but all the people from your past . . . I can see they like you. They were worried about you.” Thanks, Brooke. But maybe, just maybe, they’re cursing my good luck and waiting for whatever character flaws that took me away from California to erupt and destroy me.

  The chapel itself was the centerpiece of the campus, and sat like a crown at the head of the university’s main quad. With its red-tiled roof and light sandstone arches, the chapel smacked of Córdoba, not Silicon Valley. This mix-and-match was intentional, I think, and fit with the ostensibly multidenominational vibe of the university. Southern Spain, that cauldron of religious conquest and appropriation, has its houses of worship alternately employed by Christians, Muslims, and Jews. The university managed to entertain all three faiths—as well as Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, et al.—simultaneously. The inside of the chapel was quasi–Greek Orthodox, with short transepts and a deep apse. I wondered how Harriet Tobel, whom I never knew to speak of religion, would feel about the heavy iconography. But as they say, funerals are for the living, not the dead. And Larry Tobel thought the university’s chapel a particularly fitting place to lay his mother to rest, though I wondered about any tug-of-war between the rabbi and Larry over the appropriateness of the place.

  Across the nave, I saw Alaine Chen, pale and puffy-eyed. She hung limply on the arm of a tall white man a few years older than me. My pulse quickened, and I tried to catch her eye. But it was futile; she looked shell-shocked and blank and never turned her head toward me.

  “What?” Brooke asked.

  “Nothing.”

  She tracked where my gaze had been. “Is that—?”

  “It’s nothing, Brooke.”

  I resolved never to feel any more kindness toward Alaine.

  The ceremony was brief. The rabbi spoke with a practiced polish. Larry Tobel spoke, surprisingly eloquent and moving, with enough oratorical flare to pull the audience in but enough raw anger and grief to bring many of us to tears. I looked at Brooke sitting stoically next to me. Alaine had her face in her hands. The man she was with rubbed her shoulder possessively.

  I didn’t weep. I’d already done that.

  CHAPTER 69

  Just outside the chapel, in the sun-dappled courtyard, Alaine Chen finally looked at me. She forced what might have been a smile, but more closely resembled a grimace. She wiped at a tear, smearing a line of mascara across her cheek that stayed for a second before she got at it with her hand. Her emotion at that moment softened me, and my resolve crumbled. So I took the gesture as an invitation of sorts. “I need to talk to someone,” I said to Brooke.

  Brooke hesitated, unable, I assume, to interpret her role in that moment. Then she squeezed my elbow and stepped aside. I walked to Alaine. We embraced lightly; I kissed her cheek. Her body was limber and yielding. Her perfume smelled expensive.

  “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “All these people . . . It makes it so final.”

  “But it’s nice to see everyone come to . . . You’re right. It is final. It sucks.”

  Alaine was staring up at me. This close, I could see the mascara rubbed into her pores.

  “Yesterday . . . thanks,” she said. “Harriet thought you’re a good man, and so do I. I just wanted you to know that.”

  This was something for which I was really not prepared. Small talk, yes. Some bitching about how I wouldn’t let her rest with my Chimeragen questions, sure. But not this. “‘To serve and protect and be a comfort to those in need’—that’s my motto.” I sounded bratty and I knew it.

  “What I’m trying to say is that it might have been hard for you, considering—”

  “Not hard at all. All in a day’s work. Remember the motto.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was hurt or annoyed or confused that I seemed not to be getting it. I could, however, feel invisible tentacles slithering around me. Why was she saying these things? Why was she trying to hook me again?

  She pressed toward me. “Nathaniel, I need to tell you—”

  I stepped back; I could feel those tentacles tightening. “What?”

  “Nate—”

  “You need to tell me what, Alaine? That you think I’m wonderful and couldn’t we get together and talk about Dr. Tobel? Shoot the shit about the good old days? Weep on my shoulder again? Don’t do this to me. Stop doing this.”

  I noticed Brooke had sidled up behind me, miffed, perhaps, that I’d abandoned her in unfamiliar territory to go talk to an old girlfriend. I guess I should have been grateful that she stopped what was most likely the beginning of some embarrassing monologue. But I wasn’t. I was, actually, a little annoyed. Alaine seemed to be annoyed, too, and I saw the sweep of her eyes up and down over my companion, the flicker of a frown.

  “Alaine,” I said, “this is my friend Brooke Michaels.”

  They shook hands frostily.

  I am no saint. Because I have no illusions about it, because Alaine was freaking me out a little, I feel free to confess I took great pleasure in her pain at that moment. Not the pain about Dr. Tobel’s death, God forbid, but the jealousy I saw painted on her face. Her guard must have been down, or she never would have let me see how thrown she was by Brooke’s presence, by her athletic build and good looks. It was an illusion, for I placed the odds of Brooke and me falling into bed or, even less likely, into a relationship at something less than the odds of Harriet Tobel sitting up in her casket and asking for lunch. I mean, there was the issue of our history—Brooke’s and mine—and the unpleasant conversations of the past few days. Still, Dr. Michaels was a useful weapon in the détente that existed between Alaine and me. As I was finding out, the war between lovers never dies, just sits and waits to flare up again. Even at inopportune times, even at funerals.

  My dark pleasure, however, was short-lived; it was Dr. Chen’s turn.

  The tall fair-haired man walked up behind her, grabbed her elbow, kissed her. “This is Ian Carrington. My fiancé.” She threaded her hand through his arm. For the first time, I noticed the rock on her finger. It was the size of a quarter, and I wondered where she put it when she worked in the lab. “This is Nathaniel McCormick, an old friend. And Brooke Michaels.” She forced a smile.

  Right, the fiancé. Dr. Alaine Chen’s arsenal was larger—magnitudes larger—than mine. If only, for that moment, Brooke was my wife, was pregnant, had just won the Nobel.

  I shook Ian Carrington’s hand. His grip was firm, felt like money and power and unlimited upside. I thought I caught a whiff of Choate and Harvard, though it could have been his cologne. In any case, this guy had probably never heard of Bondo; he was probably born knowing how to pronounce “Goethe.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Nathaniel,” he said, “under the circumstances.”

  “Likewise,” I lie
d.

  Ian shook Brooke’s hand. His eyes darted to her chest, then back to her face. Oh, come on, man.

  Alaine had disengaged some time ago. Boy, this woman could really turn it off when she wanted, fly to some remote emotional island when things got too uncomfortable. It used to drive me nuts.

  But then she swung her eyes to me. She was back. “I can’t believe this, Nathaniel. I really can’t believe this. She was . . .”

  Was what, Alaine? A stepping-stone? A way station on the journey to your own lab? Like me, a place to hitch when it made sense, then cast off when it didn’t? I realized I wasn’t being forgiving, but fuck that. I refused to believe that her relationship with Dr. Tobel had been anything more than rudimentary, employer-employee, each of them using the other.

  “. . . she was the most important person in my life. Except for Ian.” The last sentence seemed almost an afterthought.

  Uncomfortable silence. Brooke jumped into the breach. “She certainly was admired and loved.”

  Alaine, Ian, and I mumbled our agreement. Noticing Ian was among the mumblers, I asked him a question to which I knew the answer. “You knew Dr. Tobel?”

  “Yes. I work—worked, forgive me, this is still so new—worked with her. And with Alaine.”

  “Ian is the CEO of Chimeragen, the company I told you about, Nate. Harriet and I—”

  “I know,” I said. “Xenografts.” I didn’t like that Alaine used Dr. Tobel’s first name all the time. Harriet.

  “It’s a great loss to us. A great loss.” Ian looked lost in thought. Perhaps I should have slapped him to bring him back. “Thank God we have Alaine to carry on the work. If you’ll excuse me . . .”

  I watched him cross the courtyard and begin to talk to a short, bullet-headed man.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “That’s Otto Falk,” Alaine said.

  “He’s shorter than his reputation suggests.”

  Alaine shook her head, disgusted with my peevishness.