Terminally Ill

by Melissa Yi

  So maybe this was just an asthma attack instead of anaphylaxis again. Maybe.

  Archer was talking to the police who’d arrived, giving them all the details about Lucia and Hugo, but he could be here any minute, ready to beat up Elvis. So I asked the Escape King point blank, “Did you sleep with Lucia today?”

  He blinked at me. “What? No way.” But then his eyes drifted off to the left, and his breath seemed to tighten for a second.

  Tucker grabbed my arm. “He never had a chance. I’ve been with him since 9 a.m., and Archer must’ve been before that. I didn’t even see Lucia until just now.”

  “Any other girls?” I asked Elvis. “Is that what you do before a show? A good luck thing? You’re going to die anyway, might as well get off beforehand?”

  Elvis waved me away. He sat up on the edge of the bed, gazing at the wall instead of my face.

  “Lucia admitted that she gave you oral sex before the first show. Hugo took a video of it. So there’s no point in denying it. I just thought you might want to know that you’re probably allergic to latex. So when you put that latex condom on, you sabotaged your own stunt. Anaphylaxis makes you itchy. Makes you feel like your throat is swelling and closing up. Makes you short of breath and wheezy. Sometimes people puke or have diarrhea. But the real problem is that you can’t breathe anymore. So if you’re having an anaphylactic reaction, and you’re chained in a coffin and thrown underwater, you May. Well. Die.”

  Elvis opened his mouth to answer, but his blood pressure monitor cuff buzzed, starting to fill up with air. He turned, stared at the cuff, and ripped it off his arm. “Get this shit off me.”

  “No. That’s your blood pressure cuff. Don’t—”

  He ripped the Velcro apart so the cuff fell on the bed. He seized the O2 sat monitor, a white plastic clip on his finger, and launched it as far as it would go. It got tangled up in his sheets, but he was already tearing the cardiac monitor clips off his chest, setting off a beeping frenzy of alarms and flatlines on the monitor.

  “It’s okay, man!” said Tucker, grabbing his arm and casting me a back off look. “Listen, don’t worry about that now. Hope’s just—”

  Elvis shook him off and balanced on his feet beside the bed. You could see his athletic strength and poise, just in the grace and curve of his spine. He said to me, in a low voice, “I really don’t fucking remember that day. I would remember that. But I know someone was out to get me. Archer told me after, the chains weren’t right, and they didn’t find no lock picks on my sleeves or in the coffin afterward. Someone stole them. I always keep them on my sleeves.”

  “But not that day,” said Archer, from the doorway.

  We turned to look at him. He looked pale around the lips, but he kept talking to Elvis in a steady voice, walking toward us, ignoring me, ignoring Tucker, and ignoring the police who’d now joined us in the room. “For that stunt, you were wearing a striped wetsuit with white cuffs. You were afraid someone might spot the lock picks on the sleeves, so you moved them to the neckline, where you could blend them in with the black stripes. Don’t you remember?”

  “No,” said Elvis. The word reverberated in the room for a long moment, but then his face crumpled, and he said, “Oh, shit. Those stripes.”

  He started to cry. Archer carefully put his arms around his brother, keeping his body at a distance, but shielding his face from the rest of us. Protecting him. Like he always did.

  Chapter 31

  By the time we got things sorted out with the police, it was almost 9 p.m. Tucker and I had made an official statement at the closest police station, but since no one had officially committed a crime except Lucia, they’d let us go relatively early.

  “That might’ve been our strangest, messiest, case ever. Kudos on figuring it out,” said Tucker, as we stood outside Poste de Quartier 20, on St. Catherine’s Street. The wind whipped our faces. It wasn’t raining yet, but the air felt heavy and humid. “You want to celebrate?”

  I had to laugh. I’d run into Tucker on this very street, not far from here, on my first summer night out in Montreal. Ste-Catherine is usually a party street, and a bunch of girls stumbled by in ultra-miniskirts, already drunk and ready to party. Still, maybe it was the string of police cars lined up around us, or the street lamps shining in our faces, or just the weight of detective work and doctordom, but I wasn’t in much of a celebratory mood. Or maybe it was just Elvis. When we’d left him at the hospital, because he was too sick to make a statement at the station, he’d kept saying, “I don’t remember.” I had to wonder if there was a voluntary component to his amnesia. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife. Well, what about your brother’s girlfriend?

  Archer had already forgiven him, but I couldn’t, quite. Whether he remembered it or not, he’d cheated his brother. He might be an ace escape artist, but not a shining example of humanity.

  Also, Ryan had just texted, I should be at your place in an hour. I’ve got a birthday surprise for you.

  “Not tonight,” I said to Tucker, but I reached for his hand and squeezed it.

  He squeezed back, harder than I expected.

  I didn’t want to let go of his warm, firm grip. I wanted to lean against his body and let him support me. I wanted to go somewhere close and private, where we could talk about the case, and he could stroke my hair and tell me I’d done everything right. And then we could do it. Finally, gloriously, explodingly. Again and again. And then we’d talk some more, maybe by candlelight, eating pizza, making fun of each other, before we crawled back to bed again.

  Before I could do anything stupid, one of the female cops opened the glass door and said, in English, “Do you kids need a ride?”

  Tucker shook his head. “I’ll take the métro.” She looked at me, so I finally tugged my hand away from Tucker and told her, “If you wouldn’t mind dropping me off at UC Hospital, I’ll pick up my car.”

  He let my hand go, but he kissed me on both cheeks and pulled me in for a final hug. He smelled clean, like soap and himself, which was so exactly what I wanted and needed. Not to mention that the way I fit against his solid body felt completely right. I breathed him in, while tears pricked my eyelids.

  He drew away first this time, and offered me a crooked smile. “Stay safe, Hope.”

  I watched him go. He didn’t have a jacket, but the cool air didn’t seem to bother him. He even held his arms out, enjoying the breeze, while other pedestrians had to step around him. A couple gave him a dirty look, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “That’s your boyfriend?” the cop asked, after a pause.

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  Normally, I’d enjoy riding in a police cruiser. This was only the second time in my life. But I barely noticed the details this time, like her talking on her radio in the front while I sat in the back with no wire cage between us. I guess maybe they save that kind of car for felons. I don’t know. I just checked my phone’s many messages, one from Ryan and several from Mrs. Bérubé.

  I had to call her and cross my fingers that she wasn’t sleeping at 9:04 p.m. Or maybe that she was sleeping, so I could just leave a message and get off the hook.

  Instead, she picked up the phone. She was crying. “Hope. Oh, Hope. Thank God I finally got a hold of you.”

  “What is it?” I said. The hairs on my neck had already perked up, despite my fatigue. I thought the officer sat up a little straighter in the front seat, too, altered by my tone.

  Mrs. Bérubé said, “I know I shouldn’t care about this. My children think I’m so foolish. But I can’t find George’s silver dollar. You know, his lucky silver dollar, the one he keeps beside his bed. I had to leave the hospital, and they won’t let me in because it’s not visiting hours, but I can’t sleep. He should be buried with his silver dollar. The funeral’s tomorrow morning. Ten a.m.”

  I rubbed my eyes and suppressed a yawn. “I’m really sorry to hear that, Mrs. Bérubé. What did you think I might be able to do for you tonight?”

  �
�Do you think you could check the room one more time? Just one last time, a second set of eyes? I’m sure they’d let you in. You’re a doctor.”

  It was my birthday tomorrow. I had Ryan waiting for me. I’d just gone above and beyond, solving Elvis’s case.

  On the other hand, I hadn’t really helped her yet, except for my botched attempt to attend Mr. Bérubé’s autopsy. And I’d have the rest of the weekend to par-tay.

  “I know I could buy another one. My daughters have told me a thousand times they’ll buy one for me. But that one was his lucky silver dollar! I won it at a spelling contest.”

  “I know. I know, I know,” I said, and found myself promising to stop by St. Joe’s one last time.

  “Trouble?” said the officer, after I hung up.

  I sighed. “I’m just going to do an elderly widow a favour. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but you know how it is.”

  “Do I ever.” Her eyes met mine briefly in the rearview mirror. I tried to remember her name. She seemed a lot more helpful than J. Rivera already, but all I recalled was that her last name was Visser, before she pulled up at the UC parking lot. “Where’s your car?”

  Twelve minutes later, I nestled my Ford Focus into a choice spot on Péloquin street. Is hospital parking ever easier to score on a Friday night.

  If I ran, I could make it up to the palliative floor and back, and buzz back to my apartment, a few minutes before Ryan’s surprise. I might even take a shower!

  I donned my white coat, which I’d thrown in the passenger seat at some point. Not only did it make me look more legit, but it had all my badges so I could pass through any locked doors. I still had to go in through the emerg, since the main doors were closed, and the elevator seemed stuck on the eighth floor, so I took the central stairs up, two at a time. Mr. B’s old room was just to the left of the stairs, not far from the nursing station. If I could just let them know I needed to take a quick look at room 5656—

  I skidded to a halt just outside the room. The pharmaceutical guy was sitting in the pink fake leather chair, next to the window, reading a tablet. His jaundiced mother lay sleeping in the bed with a vase of pink roses on the small, mobile dresser on the right side of her bed. It shook me for a second, that there were new patients in the room, and that they’d rearranged the furniture.

  “Nice to see you, Dr. Sze,” he said. He looked a hundred times better than the last time I’d seen him. He’d washed and combed his hair, for one thing, and his tie alone probably cost more than Peter the Preacher’s suit.

  “You too, Mr.—” Oh, crap. What was his name again?

  “Watson. David Watson. And this is my mother, Mary Kincaid. Did you need to check on something?”

  I wanted to ask him why he was still here, after visiting hours, but I didn’t bother. First of all, he’d probably greased a few palms, and secondly, I needed him on my good side. “I had an unusual request from the widow of the patient who used to have his room. They lost a silver dollar that has a lot of sentimental value. Did you find one when you were moving in?”

  He placed his tablet on the bedside table. “I didn’t, but I can’t say I checked too hard. Would you like to look around?”

  I hesitated, glancing at his sleeping mother. I hadn’t even stopped in at the nursing station to tell them what I was up to. But if I could get this over with and hightail it to my apartment, so much the better.

  “You won’t bother her. She’s exhausted. I was just about to leave, myself.” He folded the cover over his tablet. He opened the wide, black leather attaché case at his feet and slipped the tablet inside.

  “Okay, thanks,” I said. I busied myself checking the windowsill, behind the curtains. Then I hit the bathroom, checking behind the toilet, peeking in the shower stall, and glancing inside Mrs. Kincaid’s shower caddy stocked with organic shampoo and bath salts. I even poked the deluxe shower cap drying out on the top of the shower head.

  I saved the awkward stuff for last, like the beside table, but Mr. Watson pulled the first drawer out for me. “Don’t be shy. Maybe we missed something.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, as I peeked through her satin granny panties and thick socks. “Um, nothing so far.” I shut that drawer and rifled her flannel nightgowns in the second drawer. Then I lifted up the few items on top of that dresser, including the telephone and the vase. “Looks good.”

  He stood up so I could inspect the chair, so I stuck my hand in the crease between the back and the seat, even though the fabric was still warm from his body. Yuckeroonies. Lots of crumbs, but no silver dollar.

  I glanced at Mrs. Kincaid last. I really hated to disturb her. They made the bed every day, while Mrs. Kincaid was made comfortable in the chair. “I’ll ask the cleaning staff to check the bed thoroughly tomorrow, if that’s okay,” I said, trying to remember the skinny cleaner’s name, the soprano.

  “Sure, sure.” Mr. Watson stood and stretched. “Thanks for stopping by, Dr. Sze. She’s so much happier here than she was, even on 5 South. Doesn’t she look wonderful?”

  She looked a little more jaundiced to me, but her face had definitely relaxed in sleep. I smiled my agreement.

  Mr. Watson gazed down at her, lightly touching the bed beside her pillow. “She’s a fighter, you know, but the noise in the emergency department and on 5 South were getting her down. Here, on palliative care, in her own room, it’s like her little corner of paradise where she can get well again. I have to thank you, Dr. Sze.”

  I’d been about to make excuses and take off, but that startled me. “You do?”

  “Yes. I’d been dreading transferring her to palliative care, even though Dr. Underwood had put the application in on Tuesday. I thought it meant that she was dying. But after talking more with you, and then Dr. Huot, I realized that palliative care is really about pain control and making the patient feel better, no matter where they are in their illness course. So she can still receive chemotherapy, but if she just needs some extra TLC to turn the corner, this is the perfect place for her.”

  I nodded. I should’ve gotten a warm fuzzy, but instead, I couldn’t help picturing him and Dr. Huot getting together and making commercials about the wonders of palliative care, complete with puppies, chubby babies, and pictures of angels. By the time they made it over here, most patients had stopped chemo. On the internal medicine ward, you got more frequent medical visits, tests, drugs and vital signs checks. Here, you got more hand-holding and hands-off otherwise. But Dr. Huot would have made that clear at the family meeting I’d missed. But maybe Mr. Watson had paid for a private nurse here, too.

  He ran his hand through his hair, smiling. “Oh, I’d love for her to be at home, putting her garden to bed for the winter, and buying Christmas presents. But the most important thing is for her to heal in the best place possible, and St. Joseph’s fits the bill. I’ll be making a generous donation to the foundation, of course.”

  “Of course.” Where did all his money come from? I decided to ask. If I was a few minutes late getting to the apartment, Ryan could hang out in the lobby for a few minutes. I now lived in a hoity-toity apartment with a lobby big enough for a couch. “You’re extremely generous.”

  “When you’ve got it, share it. That’s my motto.” He dropped his left eyelid in a wink at me.

  “That’s a good motto,” I said, even though I’ve never seen a generous rich person. It’s more like, if you’ve got it, hoard it. “They must pay you well at your company. Where do you work?”

  His smile dimmed. “I’m at TaylorWexlerParr, but I’ve had to take a few days off lately.”

  “Of course,” I said again.

  “Now that she’s under the excellent care on this ward, however, I imagine I’ll be back to work in no time.”

  “Magnificent. Okay, well, I’ve got to head out.” I suddenly had to pee. Not the coolest thing, but maybe the adrenaline had worn off from the hoo ha around Elvis.

  “Me too. ‘Til next time, Dr. Sze.” He gathered his briefcase while I hurried out t
he door. The closest bathroom was down the left hallway, across from the 5 South elevators, and that way I could avoid the palliative nursing station altogether.

  It would have been so easy to take the elevators downstairs, but in the two minutes it took me to get out of the bathroom, I heard a commotion in the hallway and glanced toward 5 South. A nurse was wheeling a stretcher loaded with a patient and a portable cardiac monitor, as the RT bagged the intubated patient. They needed the elevator more than I did. So I decided to risk the stairs, crossing my fingers that Mr. Watson had already left. I’d have to pass room 5656 just before the staircase.

  When I rounded the corner, I noticed Mr. Watson closing the lid of the dirty linen cart in the hallway, across from his mother’s room. He could have been tossing in a wet towel, but I’d already personally checked the towels and facecloth hanging neatly in her bathroom.

  Mr. Watson turned to his right and pushed the stair case door open for him to descend the stairs, barely acknowledging Toni, the préposée who was returning to the nursing station, from the end of the hall.

  Hmm. The Mr. Watson I knew would never pass up a chance to schmooze.

  I glanced in room 5656, where Mrs. Kincaid lay sleeping. Then I used the foot pedal to pop open the lid of the dirty linen cart. At first, it looked like the usual tangle of white sheets. No towel. But he couldn’t have changed her bed, because she was snoozing on it.

  The cart isn’t so much a cart, as a white rectangular plastic frame with a moveable lid stamped with the words SOILED LINEN. They hang a white fabric bag in the frame, like a garbage bag, and collect the bag and its contents for the laundry. There’s no solid plastic part around it, so it’s hanging out for easy picking.

  Or kicking. I nudged the fabric bag with my knee.

  I thought I felt something in there that wasn’t just sheets.

  Call it a hunch. Maybe I’d caught a glimpse of something more than Mr. Watson just closing the lid, I don’t know. But I donned a pair of gloves, lifted the lid, and reached beyond the first tangle of sheets to spy a pillowcase tied with a knot.