As Mitt approached, he had a strange sensation he knew this woman, but from where or how he had no idea. His first thought was maybe he’d met her during the week of orientation before his residency officially started, but if that was the case, he couldn’t recall the circumstances. And then as he drew closer he felt his familiar tactile sensations, particularly on the back of his neck and along the inside of his arms. He sensed that this woman was sharing his thoughts and mirroring his, believing she was acquainted with him.
“Excuse me,” Mitt said as he came abreast of the table. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“I was hoping you would,” the woman said in a clear and relatively deep voice. She gestured to the seat opposite herself at the four-top table. Her expression was serious but welcoming, as if she had been expecting him.
As Mitt placed his tray down, he studied the woman, who was continuing to stare back at him after putting down her flatware. Confirming his initial impression, up close she looked to be in her sixties, which seemed moderately aged from his twenty-three-year-old point of view. She was a healthy-looking woman with a broad face and smooth light brown skin with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. Her hair appeared to be naturally gray, dense, and curly. Her eyes were dark and penetrating behind rather large and stylish red-rimmed glasses.
Feeling mildly uneasy under the woman’s intense scrutiny, Mitt made a point of looking down at the chair as he pulled it out from the table and sat down. He then moved himself and the chair closer to the table in a hopping and rather noisy fashion. Only then did he again raise his eyes to look up at the woman. He was mildly unnerved to see that she was continuing to stare at him rather than returning to her meal. He noticed that she, too, had chosen the roast chicken and had only just begun to eat. He also noticed that she did not have a stethoscope in the pockets of her long white coat, making him wonder what her specialty was. Yet now that he was close to her, he sensed she was not a doctor, without knowing why.
“I don’t mean to interrupt your meal,” Mitt said. He gestured toward her plate. “Please! Continue.”
“I will in a moment,” she said. “I’m glad to meet you, Dr. Fuller. I was wondering how I was going to arrange it. I was very surprised to see you here at the cafeteria in the middle of the night shift but also happy. It makes my task of getting to talk with you so much easier.”
Mildly shocked that she knew his name, he suddenly realized that he knew hers as well — Lashonda Scott — but without knowing how. “Did we meet last week during my orientation?”
“No,” Lashonda said simply. “I’m never invited to meet the new residents, medical or surgical or any other specialty for that matter. Myself and my team work behind the scenes throughout the hospital. The staff, including you residents, are only aware of our contribution when we slip up and don’t do our job or we’re busy elsewhere and you have to wait for us.”
“What is your job?” Mitt asked. He was confused by knowing her name and yet not knowing her hospital function or why she felt the need to talk with him.
“I’m the night-shift housekeeping supervisor,” Lashonda said. “My team cleans and prepares patient rooms throughout the medical center. It’s a vitally important role that’s underappreciated. You helped add to our workload very early Tuesday morning on the fifteenth floor. I saw you then, and I recognized exactly who you are when our eyes met. And knowing who you are meant that I very much needed to talk with you to ask you a particular question, which you might find shocking or bizarre or both.”
“What do you mean, you recognized who I am?” Mitt questioned, totally confused. He had absolutely no idea what Lashonda was talking about. At the same time, he had to admit that as a doctor-in-training, he’d never given the role of housekeeping much thought or appreciation. Remembering the dramatic burst aneurysm and the god-awful mess it created, he had to give credit where credit was due.
“I recognized that your name is Michael Fuller and that you are directly related to all the Fullers who have been members of the Bellevue Hospital staff going back more than a hundred years. You, like me, Dr. Fuller, bear a special burden being here, and yours is more worrisome than mine because your relatives were doctors and not support staff.”
For several disbelieving beats, Mitt stared at Lashonda with his mouth slightly ajar. She sounded more like a mental health professional than who she was. It seemed extraordinary and difficult to believe that the night-shift housekeeping supervisor not only knew him but was also aware of his legacy and on top of that wanted to talk with him. Thinking there was only one reasonable explanation, he asked: “Let me guess: Have you been talking with Dr. Harington about me, by any chance?”
“No, I haven’t been talking with Dr. Harington,” Lashonda said. “She knows a lot about Bellevue history, that is certainly true, and she and I have talked on multiple occasions about Bellevue’s past. But her source of information, other than myself, are books and articles written by medical historians. As good as such sources can be, I have a better one.”
“Oh?” Mitt questioned when Lashonda paused. “Like what exactly?”
“Family,” Lashonda said. “Similar to you, I am a direct relative of Bellevue Hospital employees who were either in housekeeping like I am, and my mother was, or in maintenance, like my father and most of my previous relatives going back seven generations. My family has been very committed to Bellevue’s cause over several hundred years, and I have to say, the relationship has been mutually supportive. My great-great-great-grandfather joined the Bellevue staff just about the same time as your relative Dr. Homer Fuller, but I know for a fact that they never got to know each other.”
My God, Mitt thought. He couldn’t believe that not only did Lashonda know he had Bellevue Hospital physician relatives, but she also knew their names. But how and why?
“I felt the need to ask you a strange question,” Lashonda continued when Mitt didn’t immediately respond about her family’s close ties to Bellevue Hospital. “But I’m afraid there has to be a ground rule. If you answer my question in the negative, you can’t then ask me why I felt obligated to ask it. If you answer yes, we will very much need to discuss the issue in more detail, particularly for your benefit. Do I have your agreement?”
“I suppose,” Mitt said without enthusiasm. With his curiosity aroused, he didn’t like having restrictions on this conversation. At the same time, he was keenly interested in hearing her question as he assumed it had something to do with his forebearers. Little did he know it was going to be much more shocking than that.
Chapter 24
Thursday, July 4, 3:40 a.m.
Lashonda briefly glanced around the immediate area to make certain that no one was paying her and Mitt any heed. Quickly confirming that to be the case, she returned her attention to Mitt, and as she did so, she adjusted her eyeglasses, leaned forward, and lowered her voice, magnifying Mitt’s burgeoning curiosity. He, too, leaned forward.
“Here’s my question,” she began. “Have you by any chance and particularly at night seen what I’ll call an ‘apparition’ of a blond eight-year-old girl who looks a bit older? She’d be outfitted in a pale old-fashioned dress and carrying what looks like a surgical instrument.”
The question so startled Mitt that his first response was to place both hands on the table palms-down as a way to support himself, as though he’d been buffeted by a shock wave. He’d wanted so much to talk to someone about his hallucinations, particularly Andrea or Madison or Dr. Van Dyke, or even Dr. Singleton, yet he’d been reluctant to do so from fear of the possible consequences. And here was someone asking him.