“Hello,” said Dotty Hirschburg, blinking against the light. Dahlia’s fingers rested cool on her throat.
“Hello,” Dahlia said.
“The light hurts my eyes. Do I have to have a shot?” She looked up anxiously at Dahlia’s face, lighted from beneath. The hand moved to her cheek.
“No. No, you don’t have to have a shot. Are you all right? Do you want anything?”
“Do you go around and see if everybody is asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you wake them up then?”
“To make sure they’re all right. You go back to sleep now.”
“It seems pretty silly to me. Waking people up to see if they’re asleep.”
“When did you move in here?”
“Today. Mr. Kabakov had this room. My mother asked for it so I can see the playground.”
“Where is Mr. Kabakov?”
“He went away.”
“Was he very sick, did they take him away covered up?”
“You mean dead? Heck no, but they shaved a place on his head. We watched the ballgame together yesterday. The lady doctor took him away. Maybe he went home.”
Dahlia hesitated in the hall. She knew she should not push it now. She should leave the hospital. She should fail. She pushed it. At the icemaker behind the nurses’ station, she spent several minutes packing a pitcher with cubes. The head nurse, all starch and spectacles and iron gray hair, was talking with a nurse’s aide in one of those listless conversations that drift on through the night with no beginning or end. At last the head nurse rose and marched down the hall in response to a call from a floor nurse.
Dahlia was at her desk in a second, flipping through the alphabetical index. No Kabakov. No Kabov. The nurse’s aide watched her. Dahlia turned to the woman.
“What happened to the patient in 327?”
“Who?”
“The man in 327.”
“I can’t keep up with them. I haven’t seen you before, have I?”
“No, I’ve been at St. Vincent’s.” This was true—she had stolen her credentials at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan during the afternoon shift change. Dahlia had to hurry this up, even if she aroused the woman’s suspicions. “If he was moved, there would be a record, right?”
“It would be downstairs locked up. If he’s not in the file, he’s not on this floor, and if he’s not on this floor he’s most likely not in this hospital.”
“The girls were saying there was such a flap when he came in.”
“There’s a flap all the time, honey. Woman doctor come in here yesterday morning about three a.m., wanting to see his X-rays. Had to go upstairs and open up radiology. They must have moved him in the daytime after I left.”
“Who was the doctor?”
“I don’t know. Nothing would do but she was going to have those X-rays.”
“Did she sign for them?”
“Up in radiology she had to sign them out, just like everybody signs them out.”
The head nurse was coming. Quickly now. “Is radiology on four?”
“Five.”
The head nurse and the aide were talking as Dahlia entered the elevator. The doors closed. She did not see the aide nod toward the elevator, did not see the head nurse’s expression change as she remembered instructions from the night before, did not see her reach for the telephone fast.
In the emergency room Policeman John Sullivan’s belt beeper sounded. “Now shut your mouth!” he said to the cursing, bloody drunk his partner was holding. Sullivan undipped his walkie-talkie and responded to the call.
“Complainant third-floor head nurse Emma Ryan reports a suspicious person, white female, blond, about five-seven, late twenties, nurse’s uniform, possibly in radiology on the fifth floor,” the precinct dispatcher told Sullivan. “Security guard will meet you at the elevators. Unit seven-one is on the way”
“Ten-four,” Sullivan said, switching off. “Jack, cuff this bastard to the bench and cover the stairs until seven-one gets here. I’m going up.”
The security guard was waiting with a bunch of keys.
“Freeze all the elevators except the first one,” Sullivan said. “Let’s go.”
Dahlia had no trouble with the lock on the radiology lab. She closed the door behind her. In a moment she made out the bulk of the X-ray table, the vertical slab of the fluoroscope. She rolled one of the heavy leaded screens in front of the frosted glass door and turned on her penlight. The small beam played over the coiled barium hose, the goggles and gloves hanging beside the fluoroscope. Faintly a siren. An ambulance? Police? Looking around quickly. This door—a darkroom. An alcove lined with big filing cabinets. Drawer opening on loud rollers—X-rays in envelopes. Here a small office, a desk, and a book. Footsteps in the hall. A circle of light on the pages. Flip, flip. Yesterday’s date. A page of signatures and case numbers. It had to be a woman’s name. Go by the time in the left column—four a.m., case number, no patient’s name, X-ray signed out to Dr. Rachel Bauman. Not signed back in.
The footsteps stopping at the door. A tinkle of keys. The first one didn’t work. Throw the wig behind the cabinet, glasses with it. Door bumping against the leaded screen. A bulky policeman and a security guard coming in.
Dahlia Iyad was standing before an illuminated X-ray viewer. A chest X-ray was clamped over the lighted screen of the viewer, ribs projecting bars of light and shadow on her uniform. The shadows of the bones moved over her face as she turned her head toward the men. The policeman’s gun was out.
“Yes, Officer?” Pretending to notice the gun for the first time. “My goodness, is something wrong?”
“Stand right there, ma‘am.” With his free hand, Sullivan fumbled for the light switch and found it. The room lit up, Dahlia seeing details of the office she had not noticed in the darkness. The policeman looked over the room with quick snaps of his head.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Examining an X-ray, obviously.”
“Is anyone else in here?”
“Not now. There was a nurse a few minutes ago.”
“Blond, about your height?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Where did she go?”
“I have no idea. What’s happening?”
“We’re finding out.”
The security guard looked in the other rooms adjoining the X-ray lab and returned, shaking his head. The policeman stared at Dahlia. Something about her did not seem quite right to him but he couldn’t identify it. He should search her and take her downstairs to the complainant. He should secure the floor. He should radio his partner. Nurses make the air white around them. He did not want to put his hands on the white uniform. He did not want to offend a nurse. He did not want to appear a fool, handcuffing a nurse.
“You’ll have to come with me for a few minutes, ma‘am. We’ll have to ask you some questions.”
She nodded. Sullivan put away his gun, but did not fasten the retaining strap. He told the security guard to check the other doors along the hall and undipped his radio from his belt.
“Six-five, six-five.”
“Yeah, John,” came the reply.
“One woman in the lab. She says the perpetrator was here and left.”
“Back and front are covered. Want I should come up? I’m at the third-floor landing now.”
“I’ll bring her down to three. Ask the complainant to stand by.”
“John, the complainant advises no one should be in the lab at this time.”
“I’ll bring her down. Stand by.”
“Who said that?” Dahlia asked hotly. “She—honestly.”
“Let’s go.” He walked behind her to the elevator, watching her, his thumb hooked in his holster. She stood by the panel of buttons in the elevator. The doors closed.