Under the Knife, page 23
As for Wu: It was a wonder she wasn’t a raving lunatic by now. Or dead.
When did I become one of the bad guys?
He was not a murderer. He was a professional.
It’s a job. Like all of the others before it. One last goddamn job.
Fine. Just a job. He had to keep reminding himself why he was doing it.
After leaving OR 10, he’d turned down the receiver in his ear, changed his clothes, stuffed his phone in his pocket, and wandered out to a small park behind Turner, on its west side, with a sweeping view of the Pacific.
He sat alone at a cement picnic table, away from the others in the park, and faced the ocean. He stared at it for a long time, thinking, then glanced at his watch. Late afternoon on the East Coast.
He dug out his phone and thumbed a number, a special one, buried under layers of software security. Real black-hat-type shit, with enough encryption to leave even the NSA guys scratching their heads should they ever stumble across the signal.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Sis.”
“Brother.” He heard surprise, mixed with affection. “It’s been a while. Are you okay, Brother? Staying out of trouble?”
“Trying, Sister. Trying.” The last time someone had mocked (to his face, at least) Sebastian for addressing his twin as Sister, and her for addressing him as Brother, had been back in seventh grade, and that kid had ended up with a shattered jaw. It had cost Sebastian a stint in Juvey, the first of several. But it’d been totally worth it.
“Well. I guess that’s an improvement over not trying.”
He smiled. “How’re the kids?” His hand tightened around the phone. “How’s Sammy?”
“Good. Real good. Straight A’s so far this semester. Again. The teacher—she’s real young, but nice. And knows her stuff. Teach for America. She says Sammy’s real smart.”
“Naturally. He takes after his uncle.”
“She says that he treats the other kids good, too. Helps them with their schoolwork. She says he could go far, but that he needs stimulation. Stimulation.” She snorted. “I’m doing my best, Brother. Not a lot of stimulation around here. Not the good kind, at least. They closed the library in our neighborhood, which wasn’t for crap, anyway. I’ve been taking the kids to the central library downtown, on weekends. When I can. Central library’s real nice.” She paused, and then added quietly, “He had a checkup at Children’s Hospital last week.”
Sebastian’s stomach clenched. “And?”
“Pretty good. I think. But they didn’t say cure. They said … remission. Yeah, remission. That’s what they called it. They told him he was a survivor. He loved that.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “Survivor.”
Survivor.
You and me both, kid.
“They never say cure, Brother,” she said. “The doctors. Why is that, do you think?”
His palms suddenly felt sweaty. “I don’t know, Sis. You know, uh, how doctors are. He, ah … there with you now?”
“No. He’s down at the Boys and Girls Club. After-school program. He’ll be back soon. The counselor always walks him home.”
Through the receiver, Sebastian heard a far-off siren, followed by what might be the nearby jangle of breaking glass, and hoarse, angry shouts in what sounded like Russian.
“Sierra?” his sister said. “Sierra. Get away from the window, baby. That’s my big girl. Mommy wants you to go to her bedroom, okay? And sit on the bed. Turn on the TV and sit on the bed. Mommy will be right there, baby.”
Sierra asked her who she was talking to. She told her.
“Hi, Uncle!” a tinny voice called from the background.
He laughed. Goddamn, it felt good. “Hi, Sierra.”
“He says hi back, baby. Now do what Mommy says. Thank you, baby.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she said curtly.
He ignored her lie. Jesus. I’ve got to get them out of that shit hole. “How’s Sierra?”
“Good. Except her parochial school raised the freakin’ tuition. Again. You believe that crap?”
“It’s the Catholic Church, Sis. They’ve been robbing people blind for thousands of years.”
She laughed. “Yeah. I suppose.”
“How much you need?”
She hesitated before saying, “There’s, um … something else.”
“What?”
“The … medical bills. Thought the problem was fixed. But when I took Sammy to his appointment, they almost didn’t let him see the doctor. I had to practically beg.”
Begging was not in his sister’s nature. He could only imagine how hard that must have been for her. “The fifty grand I sent six months ago—”
“Was a start. But those damn co-pays piled up, Brother. MRIs, chemo, surgery, hospital stays…”
He wanted to smash his phone to pieces on the cement picnic table. Mother fucker! Wasn’t goddamn Obamacare supposed to take care of this shit? He’s just a fucking kid!
He said calmly, “How much you need?”
A pause. “It’s not dirty, is it? I don’t want your money if it’s dirty. You know that.”
“No. It’s clean.” Clean enough, he thought, gazing at the horizon. Clean as he could make it. “How much?”
She told him. Shit. A hundred thousand more. That was a lot of goddamn money. Much more than he’d suspected. Plus, he knew she was lowballing him, asking for much less than what she really needed. She was a proud woman—she worked two goddamn jobs, shitty jobs with shitty pay, because it was all she could get.
He sucked his teeth. Jesus Christ. The sick kid of a single mother. Couldn’t they give her a goddamn break? He couldn’t let them end up on the street. But paying off those bills, even in part, would burn through much of what was left in his account. Most of the payment for Finney’s job—this goddamn shitty job—was on the back end. Thank Christ it was over. He needed what Finney owed him. Now.
I need that money.
He promised to transfer more than enough to her by the end of the day.
She thanked him, and said, “So. You sound okay.”
“Yeah. I’m all right.”
“Can you tell me where you are?”
“No.”
A pause. “Can you tell me when we’re going to see you again? Sammy keeps asking about his favorite uncle.”
His only uncle. His only family, besides his mother and sister. Sammy and Sierra’s dirtbag father had split years ago. Sebastian had toyed with the idea of tracking him down, so he could kill the asshole (slowly, of course), but decided the prick wasn’t worth the effort. The boy needed a father figure, something Sebastian had never had. The girl, too. “Soon, Sis. Soon. I’m finishing up a job now.”
“What kind of job?” Her voice was thick with suspicion.
“Just a job.” He added quickly, “Legit, Sis.” Legit enough.
“Don’t bullshit me, Brother.”
He sighed. He knew changing the subject wouldn’t help. She was a fucking pit bull: Once she grabbed ahold of you, no force on God’s earth would make her let go. “Look. It shouldn’t take more than a few weeks for me to set my shit straight. Then I’m coming to see you guys. And I’m staying, Sis.”
“How long?” she said after several seconds.
“Long enough for me to find the boy some goddamn proper stimulation.”
She laughed, and he knew he had her. They spoke for the next half hour, then, only as twin brother and sister could. And then, when exchanging good-byes, she said something odd—something she hadn’t said in years, not since he’d re-upped after his first combat tour.
“Just, be careful, Brother. Please. Be careful.”
She hung up.
Be careful.
His arm holding the phone went slack and dropped between his legs. He stared at the dark clouds gathering over the ocean.
Sick.
He was sick to death of this whole goddamn business. Thank Christ he was about to be done with it.
It was time to check in with Finney and get his final payment. He sighed and tapped the Fruit Punch Drunk icon on his phone. The audio in his earpiece crackled to life.
RITA
… and when Rita opened her eyes again, another Rita was lounging in the chair next to the bed, the same chair in which Chase had been sitting. She was wearing a hospital gown, just like hers, and staring at her. Her legs—muscular and firm, the legs of a runner—were crossed. Her hands were interlaced in her lap, casually, as if the two were having a chat over coffee. Just-us-girls.
“I knew, Dr. Wu,” the other Rita, the one sitting in the chair, said. She spoke with Finney’s voice, which Rita could hear only in her left ear. “I knew that you were drinking before my wife’s surgery.”
Rita stared at the other Rita in the chair, and replied, “It was all you, wasn’t it? That weird compulsion I had to operate this morning, and the bleeding. All of it. I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve destroyed my career. My life. Everything that means anything to me.”
The other Rita said, “You set yourself on this path, Dr. Wu, when you operated on my wife drunk. Besides. You fail to see the bigger picture. Your self-immolation has ensured the success of the auto-surgeon. Delores performed magnificently in front of very important people.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” Rita grumbled.
The other Rita said nothing.
“I wasn’t drunk,” Rita insisted, and propped herself up on the pillow.
“The report Dr. Montgomery alluded to suggested otherwise,” the other Rita said.
Rita said, “The report of one disgruntled nurse, who accused a lot of women at Turner of totally bogus things before he was fired. None of his complaints ever went anywhere.”
The other Rita said, “Dr. Montgomery arranged that, though, didn’t he? At least in your case?”
Rita looked away.
The other Rita said, “I’ve read the complaint. The nurse accused you of drinking before you operated on Jenny. He claimed he smelled alcohol on your breath.”
Rita pressed her lips together, and said, “That doesn’t prove anything.” It didn’t. It was in fact one of the reasons why Chase had been able to make the complaint go away.
The other Rita said, “I must admit that I, myself, didn’t smell alcohol on your breath when you spoke to us before the operation. Neither did Jenny, as far as I know.”
That was probably because, by the time she’d gone to see the Finneys in pre-op, Rita had sensed the suspicion in the sour glare of the scrub nurse that night: the creepy little guy with the scrawny arms, weasel eyes, and swatch of dark peach fuzz coating his upper lip, like a hairy caterpillar; the guy she was sure hated taking orders from a woman surgeon. According to Lisa the scrub nurse, Caterpillar Guy had put his hand on Lisa’s butt once, during an operation, and after Lisa had matter-of-factly informed him that the next time it happened, he’d draw back a stump, Caterpillar Guy had complained to the head of surgical nursing that Lisa had a hostile attitude.
So, after seeing the look on Caterpillar Guy’s face that night, she’d loaded up on two boxes worth of breath mints, and frantically scrubbed her face and hands clean of any incriminating odor. Just to be sure.
The pulse oximeter on Rita’s finger whined in a slow, steady tempo, like a truck backing up, as she remembered that ill-fated Sunday night. She’d been on call, from home, and she’d been alone. It’d been a slow night—not much going on, not a single call from the hospital for hours. She’d figured a few drinks would be okay. One glass of wine, maybe two. No big deal. So she’d pulled out some Chardonnay.
First time she’d ever had a drink on call. She’d known other doctors who drank on call routinely. She’d seen them at parties and book clubs, phone in one hand, a glass of wine or beer in the other, chatting on the phone with another doctor, or a nurse, or maybe even a patient. How might one of those docs responded if she’d asked them about boozing on the job? Probably that it was no big deal, like driving home after having a drink or two with dinner. One just had to be responsible. Discreet.
Which is what she’d told herself that night, as she’d poured herself the second glass. No big deal. Just be responsible. Right? She’d once overheard a surgery professor claim to another, only half-jokingly, that he thought he operated better with a buzz on. Sipping the Chardonnay that night, she’d wondered if that was true.
She’d never been much of a drinker: too focused on school, and cross-country, and work. And then there was Darcy. Rita had learned in med school that drug dependency was hardwired in the genes, passed from one generation to the next. Their parents hadn’t had any such problems, as far as she’d known; but after watching Darcy go down in flames, she’d worried that she and Darcy might both be carrying some recessive gene, and that she might well be destined for a similar fate if she wasn’t careful. Besides, doctors were especially susceptible to drug and alcohol problems. Statistics showed it. So, other than an occasional drink during the holidays, Rita had avoided alcohol.
Then Darcy had stayed in Portland.
The night she called to tell Rita she wasn’t coming back, Rita had been sitting at her kitchen table after getting home late from the hospital. She’d put the phone down and stared out the window into the night, then gotten up to rummage around in a cabinet in the living room. She’d pulled out the fine Cabernet a grateful patient had given her, and a dusty wineglass. She’d uncorked the wine and washed out the glass.
After the first glass, things hadn’t seemed so bad. After the second, they’d seemed downright agreeable. After all, she didn’t need Darcy. Right?
The headache she’d woken up with (After only two glasses—jeez, had I really been that much of a lightweight?), one that had plagued her through morning clinic and the two routine operations that had followed, hadn’t dissuaded her from stopping off at the Costco on the way home to pick up a case of Chardonnay. Much cheaper to buy in bulk, and she’d once read that white wine was less likely to cause morning-after headaches than red. Not true, it turned out, at least not for her—but her alcohol tolerance soon increased, which helped.
She always remained in control. She’d told herself that repeatedly, night after night. Besides, studies showed you lived longer with a daily glass of wine, right? The health benefits were scientifically proven.
One drink a night after work had become two, occasionally three. She drank alone, which the sensible part of her tried to point out was not okay. In fact, it was pretty far away from okay. But she was in control. Always. She could stop anytime; she just didn’t feel like it. And she never drank on call. Ever. That was a line she would NEVER cross.
Until that Sunday night, a few weeks after Darcy’s call, when she’d crossed it.
Spencer.
It had been all about Spencer.
Not that it was his fault. She didn’t blame him. They’d run into each other in a hallway at Turner that morning, each of them on weekend rounds. She hadn’t seen him for a few weeks. They exchanged awkward hellos; and then Spencer had just looked at her. Just for a moment. He hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t needed to. Had just gazed at her—
(Like a sad puppy I’d kicked.)
—with those big blue eyes, and walked on past. In her mind, as she went about her day, his eyes floated in front of her. Like that book she’d read in high school, The Great Gatsby, and his eyes were like that billboard near the road where the lady got hit by the car. The eyes of God, their English teacher had told them.
When she’d gotten home that night, Rita had kept seeing his eyes. She couldn’t get them out of her head. So she’d poured herself a glass. Then a second. She’d been reaching for the third when the ER called: an appendix in need of emergency removal.
She’d panicked because she’d definitely had a slight buzz on. Frantic, she’d brushed her teeth hard enough to make her gums bleed, then driven, carefully, to the hospital, well within the speed limit, hands at ten and two on the wheel the whole way. Dismissed the chief resident who would have otherwise assisted in the OR. Loaded up on enough coffee and Red Bull to keep her jacked up for a week.
I was stone-cold sober by the time I operated on her, Rita thought. Insisted to herself. It had been a rare complication that had killed her. Even if I hadn’t been drinking earlier, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Jenny Finney would still have died.
And that was that.
Was it, though?
It had been one tough case. One of the worst Rita had ever seen, the woman’s abdomen a mess: appendix ruptured, pus everywhere. Rita had to all but chisel the appendix out, so inflamed were it and the surrounding organs.
So had the drinks mattered? Slowed her reaction time during the operation, if only a little? Messed with her judgment? Dulled her perception just enough to allow her to miss the hole lurking in Jenny Finney’s intestine? The one that would leak poison into her abdomen for the next three days, before Rita diagnosed it, and rushed her back to the operating room?
By then it had been too late. After the second operation (the take-back, in surgeon-speak), Jenny Finney had lasted another week, the longest of Rita’s life, dying in the ICU, her life ebbing with each failed organ, and with each additional plastic tube inserted into her body by the ICU doctors.
An unusual complication. But not unheard of. And, as an expert panel of Rita’s surgical colleagues had determined, an unavoidable one. Had Chase had a hand in that? Rigged the composition of the committee, perhaps, and its exhaustive report? Maybe. If so, he’d never let on. In any case, they’d exonerated her completely. Jenny Finney’s death, in their official opinion, had been the worst kind of luck. Or, in the dry verbiage of the report: an unforeseen, catastrophic complication occurring within the standard of care.
And yet.
How many sleepless nights since? How many hours spent marking the headlights of passing cars that tracked across the ceiling of her darkened bedroom? Wondering what she could have done, should have done, differently. The woman had haunted her for the last year, her own personal ghost.
Rita hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since.
She considered telling Finney (or, rather, the twin version of herself sitting in the chair talking in Finney’s voice) all of this.
