“You were interviewed by another police officer earlier today?”
George backpedaled, getting nervous. “Yes. But not because I did anything wrong. It was right after Sal’s car crash, which I’m certain you have heard about. Sal’s the neighbor whose apartment you found me in.” George nodded down toward the IDs that the officer had between his fingers. “I’m a radiology resident at L.A. University Medical Center and your colleague was trying to put together a picture of what had happened.”
“What did happen?”
“Sal — Mr. DeAngelis — apparently got confused and crashed his car and killed himself. I guess. I mean, that’s what appears to have happened. He had Alzheimer’s and multiple problems. Anyway, I wanted to try to help by getting in touch with the two sisters whom I had met some time ago, to let them know what had happened. I was looking for their contacts.”
“So you broke into a neighbor’s apartment at night to get in touch with a dead man’s sisters?” The policeman smiled sarcastically.
George opened his mouth to respond, then stopped.
“Look, I just wanted to call Mr. DeAngelis’s siblings and let them know he died today. Is that a crime?” George said.
“The way you went about it is. You couldn’t have asked the building manager to let you in?”
“Ha! I tried enlisting the super’s help but… The man has a drinking problem, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
George and the officer looked across the way to where the second officer was interviewing the super. The man was still having trouble standing. He kept leaning against the building before pulling himself up straight and crossing his arms in front of him in an attempt to appear sober.
“And I leave for work early in the morning before he gets up,” George continued. “Look, I didn’t think it would be all that big a deal. I have the exact same apartment, and I’ve gotten into mine through the sliders a number of times when I forgot my keys. I thought I’d just go in, grab the phone numbers, make the call, and that would be it.”
“And you didn’t trust the proper authorities to make those calls?”
“Listen!” George said, his voice progressively rising. “The fact of the matter is that I don’t think anyone was told about the sisters. I had mentioned it earlier today to the detective who talked to me, but I had heard through a friend that during the evening news it was stated the victim had no family. And I was told earlier that I was listed as the patient’s contact person in case of emergency. Just me! Tonight I realized someone had to try to get a hold of the sisters. I was only trying to help.” By the time George finished, he was practically yelling.
The second police officer stopped talking with the super and looked over at George. The small crowd of neighbors and passersby went quiet, too.
“Sorry,” George said to the cop. “It’s been an emotional day.”
With a look of exasperation, the officer turned George around. Without saying anything further, he unlocked the handcuffs, setting George free.
Trudging back to his apartment, George realized that he had narrowly succeeded in talking his way out of being arrested. The super’s being so obviously drunk had helped. Still, George was furious with himself. What the hell had he been thinking? Back inside his apartment, he again threw himself onto his sofa, thinking that he had to get a grip.
18
It was a busy morning for George in the ER. The department was jammed with patients and the construction crew. The heat wave just made things worse. Patients suffering from heatstroke and heat exhaustion were streaming in, and there had also been an uptick in heart attacks and respiratory problems. The high temperatures also brought out the infamous L.A. road rage. A couple of fender-benders had resulted in a shoot-out and a knife fight. Victims of both were currently being treated in the trauma rooms. The result was that George and Carlos were overwhelmed with radiology studies. Of the six possible stroke cases, they had determined that five were in fact positive, requiring immediate medical intervention. The sixth case turned out to be an ophthalmic migraine masquerading as a stroke. There had also been two head traumas. On one, the CT scan showed a subdural hematoma, requiring immediate surgery. The only good news was that George was so busy, he didn’t have time to think about Sal’s death, Tarkington’s passing, or his own near arrest. He’d been holed up in the imaging room since seven thirty, working nonstop.
Just before eleven, Carlos returned from a quick coffee break to find George surveying a new batch of radiological studies.
The first was a chest film of a driver in a recent accident whose airbag did not deploy.
“What do you see?” George asked Carlos.
“A fracture of the clavicle… and several ribs.” Carlos pointed to the fractures in turn.
“Anything else?”
“There’s a small amount of fluid in the lungs.”
George was impressed. Carlos was picking up the nuances quickly. “Good. Let’s go on to the next case.”
“I saw Dr. Hanson out there in the ER,” Carlos said as he brought up the next image. It was a pelvis.
“Really! What was he up to?” George asked. As Clayton was head of the teaching program in radiology, the residents generally liked to know when he was around, since they knew they were being evaluated on a month-to-month basis. They would alert each other when he was lurking nearby, usually by tweet or text. But George was more sensitized than usual, since Clayton had showed up in the ER only the day before.
“It seemed like he came in to talk with Debbie Waters. He just ignored me and asked Debbie if he could have a private word with her, even though she was obviously busy.”
“Is he still out there?” George asked, unsure if he should be concerned or not. Under the circumstances, his talking in private with Debbie was a tad worrisome.
Carlos shrugged. “He was when I came in here.”
George stood up, cracked the door, and looked outside. Sure enough, Clayton was leaning against the main desk, folder in hand, having a prolonged tête-à-tête with Debbie. Now, that was particularly unusual behavior in the middle of the day, especially with the level of confusion swirling around them. Vaguely, George wondered if they might be resurrecting their own rumored relationship. But if that was the case, it was even more unusual that they would do so in plain sight. The one good thing was that he couldn’t imagine that they could be talking about him for so long.
At that instant both Clayton’s and Debbie’s heads swung around and seemed to stare in George’s direction. George pulled back, alarmed that they might be able to see him spying on them. He quickly let the door close and went back to where he had been sitting.
“This is a seventy-eight-year-old woman who fell in the shower,” Carlos said, beginning where he had left off, but then changed the subject. “Hey, what’s this about Clayton Hanson liking the ladies? Is it true? It’s been tweeted around us first-year residents, particularly to warn the women.”
George laughed. He noticed it was the first time Carlos left off the “Dr.” in referring to Clayton. He was already loosening up. “I think I’ll take the Fifth on that issue,” said George, directing their attention back to the film. “Let’s get back to work. What’s your take here?”