“I think you just spotted the flaw in your logic.”
As they neared the exit and passed a gallery of physician portraits, Megan’s eyes went to the painted likeness of Dr. Kaczynski, a prominent geneticist who had died five years earlier. The shape of the man’s head regularly drew stares from passersby, and the hospital staff had irreverently labeled the portrait “Mr. Potato Head.” Something about it always drew her gaze.
When they stepped through the exit doors, a gust of cold air hit her in the face. Megan pulled up the lapel of her white coat and hugged herself with both arms.
It didn’t help. The thin lab coat was useless against the biting cold. Chilled air found its way up her sleeves, down her back, and into every buttonhole.
“I’ve been thinking about this since last night, when McKenna clocked Mount Vesuvius. I think all that kung fu stuff is just his way of compensating.” Chewy bobbed his head, as though pleased with his reasoning. “He’s awfully neat, too — I mean, for a regular guy. Ever notice the way he’s always straightening things up in the doctors’ room?”
They stopped at a crosswalk and waited for a stream of cars to pass.
She could sense Chewy’s stare and braved a glance in his direction.
“The short hair,” he said. “That’s a good look for you.”
The last time her hair was this short, she was eight years old. She remembered sitting on her bedroom floor and looking into the mirror that was mounted on her closet door, inspecting the damage. Her father had just cut her hair, apparently struck by a sudden urge to display his latent hairstyling skills. The result was a disaster that earned him a what-were-you-thinking rebuke from her mother. She’d give anything to have him cut her hair one more time.
Chewy turned and looked up toward a low-pitched thwacking sound. A helicopter was landing on the hospital’s helipad.
Megan used the moment to shut out his chatter and summon the image of her father’s face. The detail was gone, the vividness of his features faded. Her dad, a Boston firefighter like his father before him, had been a strong and rugged-looking man. Too strong to die in a fire. She had tried to explain that to her mother the night he didn’t come home from the firehouse. She had tried to convince her mother that the men sitting in their living room were wrong.
Just as Chewy’s feet started moving again, so did his mouth. “…so I’m guessing the world will end when some humungous asteroid hits us…”
Twelve years later, during her last year in medical school, fate served up another harsh lesson, when it became clear that her mother was losing a three-year battle with breast cancer. Her mom died just ten days later from a fulminant infection, months sooner than anyone had expected, and an hour before Megan reached her bedside.
The Callahans made a habit of leaving the world too early, and without a good-bye.
With no siblings to share her grief, Megan had begun her residency feeling very much alone in the world. Even a work schedule that knew no weekends or holidays hadn’t filled the void. The people missing from her life found their way into her thoughts with the regularity of a tidal pattern, if only to remind her that they were no longer there.
Chewy continued his conversation with the night air. “…and a lot of asteroids hang out between Mars and Jupiter. Don’t ask me why they’re not, say, floating around Pluto, but…”
It was during an especially lonely period that Luke had entered her life. His small attentions to her during an E.R. rotation had come at just the right moment, and before long he became more than just a pleasing distraction.
For the first time in many years, she had found herself hoping that a casual relationship might grow into something more. Luke’s quiet strength reminded her of her father, which was probably why — even now — she had an irksome need for his respect.
From the beginning, Luke’s hold on her was vexing, and even more so because of how closely he guarded his own emotions. It was as if Luke’s deeper thoughts and feelings lay hidden behind a sealed door.
For many months she had held onto the hope that his reserve would eventually give way to a greater openness. She’d been a fool, she realized.
“…and we’re talking huge,” Chewy thundered. “The big dino-killer? That sucker was about six miles wide. I wonder what Fred and Wilma Flintstone must have thought when they looked up and saw that thing getting ready to whonk them on the head…”
Megan and Chewy rounded the corner onto a residential avenue. Across the street was the overgrown hedge where her attacker had lain in wait. A familiar shiver in her right shoulder, at the spot where the would-be rapist had grabbed her, sent a small shudder down her arm.
The screams had woken the entire block, a homeowner later told police.
But not her screams. It was her attacker’s yelps they had heard, his reaction to having a pair of fingers locked between her clenched teeth.
She didn’t remember his shrieks, but recalled him pulling away and leaping over a fence when a nearby porch light came on.
The first few hours after the attack remained a patchwork of disjointed memories. Her first distinct memory was of Luke appearing in the doorway of an interview room at the police station. It had loosed in her a torrent of tears she’d been holding in check.
But what she remembered most was the rage in his eyes. His eyes had frightened her even then.
“…makes you wonder”—Chewy looked up at the sky—“all those cosmic chunks of iron banging around out there. It’s like a giant game of Pong…”
The rage in Luke’s eyes had continued to burn for days. When what she wanted most was to feel normal again, to feel safe again, his eyes had been a constant reminder of her trauma.
Megan was only the first of three victims, and the other two women didn’t escape the rapist’s perverse savagery. But that was where the assailant’s streak had ended. One week after his third attack, a police patrol unit apprehended him five blocks from the hospital.
It wasn’t a difficult arrest. He was tied to a tree, naked, and beaten half to death.
That was when the calm had returned to Luke’s eyes. It was only then that she had thought back to his questions about the rapist. The queries had seeped into their conversations after the second attack. Luke had done it subtly, extracting details that at the time seemed a natural part of their cathartic late night talks.
The police had questioned everyone connected to the case, including Luke. Their inquiries — likely commensurate with their concern for the letch — were perfunctory.
Megan’s weren’t. Luke never admitted that he had done it, but he didn’t deny it either. He simply would not talk about it. Apparently, he didn’t trust her to know the truth.
She chafed at the thought that he had kept his torments secret. If he’d shared his feelings, rather than erupting in a fit of vengeance, they might still be together.
He was a good man — in many ways, a very good man — but she could not abide his hidden penchant for violence. It frightened her, and his unwillingness to talk about it only widened the chasm between them.
Damn you, Luke.
Chewy was yammering about extraterrestrials when they passed between two squat palm trees that stood like guards at the courtyard entrance to their apartment building. After two and a half years, the U-shaped 1950s-style structure was beginning to close in on her.
She couldn’t wait to leave for Guatemala tomorrow.
* * *
Barnesdale hung up from his call with the Zenavax CEO, got up from his desk and started pacing. He massaged his palms in a hand-washing motion, trying to rub away the tremor as he made a track around his office.
Jesus, these people are lunatics.
They didn’t have to murder her. They had the perfect trump card.
He had given it to them. He had the original copy of Tartaglia’s employment agreement with University Children’s — signed by her — the one that supposedly had never been executed.
They could have dangled that c
ontract in front of her indefinitely. She never would have talked, not when it would have meant prosecution for what had grown into a $3 billion theft.
All they’d had to do was use their leverage. That was what he thought he had agreed to. What had the Zenavax CEO said? “I think you know what needs to be done.”
How the hell was he supposed to know that they were planning to murder the woman?
Predictably, the CEO denied having anything to do with Tartaglia’s death, but Barnesdale didn’t believe a word of it.
The man spoke of her death as if it were simply part of some karmic outcome. “It’s an escapable truth,” he had said. “Misfortune tends to follow those who make the wrong choices in life.”
The warning seemed clear: Step out of line, Henry, and…
He could barely hold it together. Those qualities he had always used as a shield — his resolute bearing, his authoritative demeanor — were starting to crack open like thin-shelled eggs.
Barnesdale seethed at the thought of Caleb and his goddamn clinic seeding the clouds that were raining terror onto his life.
He grabbed the wall, closed his eyes, and tightened his face into a knot.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
14
“There’s not gonna be any autopsy.” Ben Wilson emptied a small bottle of dried insects into the tarantula’s aquarium. “It’s cancelled.”
Luke dropped into a seat. “Why?”
“One of the M.E.’s called over here last night and told my staff to release the body to the family. No one called me, or I would’ve saved you a trip to the hospital. Looks like both of us missed an opportunity to sleep in late on Sunday morning.”
Luke glanced at a wall clock that read 6:21 A.M. “How can they do that?”
“The Coroner’s Office can do most anything they damn well please. Fact is, it’s usually the other way around. They usually hold onto bodies that no one wants ’em to keep.”
“So what happened?”
“Apparently, the family ended up making a stink about us keeping their son’s body. Well, one thing leads to another, the Guatemalan Consulate gets involved, and before ya know it we have one less cadaver in our cooler.”
“It’s gone?”
“We released it a few hours ago. Seems the family was in a hurry to get their son’s body back.”
“Why the rush?”
“Have to admit, I might feel the same way if it was my son. It usually takes a day or so to arrange things — you don’t move a cadaver around like a crate of cantaloupes — but we can do it faster, and we do from time to time, for one reason or another.”
“Like?”
“A few months ago we had to drop everything and make arrangements to ship the body of a Portuguese diplomat’s child back home.”
“We’re not talking about a diplomat’s child here. This family lives in rural Guatemala. They’re probably dirt poor. When’s the last time you did it for someone like that?”
“Luke, I just work behind a plow. I only see the mule’s hind end. If they tell me to hurry it up, I hurry it up.”
“Did the medical examiner say why the consulate was involved?”
“It’s not all that unusual in cases involving a foreign national. Last night someone from the consulate called Barnesdale when I was in that committee meeting with Henry and his gang of half-wits. He shooed all of us out the door — probably didn’t want us to see him licking the dust off some diplomat’s boots.”
“Wait a minute. Barnesdale sent you out of the room?”
“I wouldn’t read anything into that. The business of the meeting”—Ben cocked a finger and aimed it at Luke—“was done by that point, and Henry was killing time whipping his favorite piñata — your daddy.”
“Something still doesn’t sound right here. I didn’t think the coroner rolled over that easily.”
“They don’t when there’s a possibility of foul play. But look at it from their point of view. This is a Guatemalan citizen who none of us believes was murdered.” Ben picked up a tiny scissors and started scraping under his fingernails. “When there’s a foreign national involved, they generally won’t hold the body unless there’s”—Ben held up his fingers and painted quotation marks in the air—“‘some compelling public necessity.’ That’s coroner-speak for suspected homicide, child abuse, a serious public health risk…that sorta thing.”
“Who signed the death certificate?”
“Until we started this conversation, I guess I figured you had. Probably someone else from the E.R. signed it.”
Luke shook his head. “I was the only Attending there. Would the coroner release the body without a signed death certificate?”
“They sure as hell would not.”
“Do you have the death certificate here?”
“Nope. It’d be with the chart, and we’d have already sent that back to Medical Records.”
“Let me use your phone.”
Luke called Medical Records and asked one of their clerks to bring Josue Chaca’s chart to Ben’s office, all the while trying to calm his anger.
“We still don’t know why this patient died,” Luke said. “Our E.R. staff may have been exposed to a toxin, or an infection. What am I supposed to tell them?”
Ben shrugged. “We’ll know soon enough. I’ll be looking at the slides later today.”
“What slides?”
“Remember? Last night I got a section of rib from the cadaver so we could look at the bone marrow. We sent it over to Oncology Friday night so we could get some quick answers for my good friend, Dr. McKenna.”
“You still have the marrow? It didn’t go back with the body?”
“I’ve already checked. All the tissues are still here.”
“All?”
A conspiratorial smile took shape on Ben’s wide face. “Seems I also snipped a piece of lung tissue while I was getting that rib. Maybe it’ll explain what we saw on the chest X-ray.”
“That Ben Wilson’s a pretty sharp guy.”
Ben appeared to think about that for a second, then nodded.
“So we can settle the question about leukemia?” asked Luke.
“Yep, and we can look at some other possibilities if it turns out this boy didn’t die of leukemia and sepsis. We’ve already sent a piece of the lung for culture. And they’re making some slides of the lung tissue as we speak.”
“I checked the boy’s labs this morning. His amylase and lipase were sky high.”
“Hmmm,” Ben said. “So his pancreas was involved.”
“Sure looks like it.”
The phone rang.
“Wilson here.” Ben grabbed a big chunk of eyebrow and started twirling it. His eyes darted toward Luke. “Thanks.” While setting the phone down, he said, “That was Medical Records. Seems your boy’s chart is checked out to Barnesdale.”
“Barnesdale?”
“That’s what the lady said.”
“Why would he have the chart?”
Ben reached for the phone again. “While you’re thinking about that, I’m gonna see if we can get someone to look at that marrow today.”
After calling the operator and paging the on-call oncologist, Ben reached into the aquarium, uncovered the tarantula’s shallow hideaway, and grabbed Charlotte by either side of her dark brown torso. He turned the spider over, stroked its belly, then held it out toward Luke.
Luke patted himself on the stomach with both hands. “Thanks. I’ve already eaten.”
Ben’s lips curled into a smile as he rubbed the furry creature.
Five minutes later they were on the speakerphone talking to the head of Oncology, Adam Smith. “Already looked at that marrow,” Smith said. “Did it myself, yesterday afternoon. I’m on call this weekend and Henry asked me to do it. Something about the coroner wanting to release the body.”
“Well, I guess that explains why Henry has the chart,” offered Ben.
“It doesn’t explain anything. This wasn’t his p
atient,” Luke said. “Adam, what did the marrow show?”
“About thirty percent lymphoid blasts, L2 morphology, diminished erythroid cell lines.”
“Would one of you care to translate that for me?” Luke asked.
“It means the boy had A-L–L. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia,” Ben clarified.
Luke said, “That still doesn’t explain the lung findings, the chest X-ray.”
“What lung findings?” Adam asked.
“A focal bronchopulmonary pattern,” Ben said. “Something was going on in the airways. They lit up like a Christmas tree. But the lung tissue looked almost normal — certainly not enough pathology to explain respiratory failure.”
Luke jumped in: “One more question, Adam. Do you know who signed the death certificate? Was it you?”
“Henry signed it.”
“How do you know that?” Luke asked.
“When I told him about the bone marrow results, he said something about being able to sign off on the death certificate so he could return the body to the family. Sounded like the whole thing was one big headache and he wanted to be done with it.”
“Where the hell does Barnesdale come off signing a death certificate for a patient he knows nothing about?”
“Henry told me he saw the patient in the E.R.”
“He was a bystander, for Christ’s sake! He wasn’t there more than a minute or two.”
After a brief silence, Adam said, “Luke, would you pick up the phone?”
He glanced at Ben, who responded with a beats-me expression.
When Luke picked up the receiver, Adam said, “In case you didn’t know, you made the morning news. There’re two TV news crews in front of the hospital doing stories about that incident in the E.R.”
Luke closed his eyes and brought a hand to his forehead. “How bad?”
“The only good thing I can say is, they didn’t mention you by name. You were — quote—‘an unnamed hospital employee.’ It sounds like they’re still checking their facts. If the story develops legs, it’s not going to help your situation. And word has it that Barnesdale has gone ballistic over this thing. He’s acting strange, even for him.” A moment later he added, “My point is, I certainly wouldn’t make an issue of the death certificate right now.”
Stigma Page 9
