Noah wondered how long it would take for Ava to come around, if she was going to come around. He recognized there was a chance she’d decide he wasn’t worth all the angst, preferring her social media activities as much easier and cleaner. Gloomily, his mind switched over to the letter he’d read on her computer screen. In some ways having graphic proof that she was figuratively in bed with the nutritional-supplement industry was almost equally as disturbing as being sent home. Prior to reading the letter he’d made a specific effort to ignore her involvement. Now he couldn’t. She was recommending defaming people who he felt were on the responsible side of the issue. That was serious.
26
FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, 3:50 P.M.
The melodic alarm on Noah’s smartphone went off, breaking his concentration. He was on the eighth floor of the Stanhope Pavilion in what was still called the chart room, even though charts were relics of the past. Now all the information on each patient was in their EMR stored in the central computer, so the chart room should have been called the monitor room, but tradition played a significant role at BMH and the old name stuck. Noah had been busy going over all the appropriate inpatient records in preparation for work rounds that would begin at their usual time of 5:00 P.M., but in his usual compulsive manner, he liked to be up on all the patients even before rounds began.
Noah had set his alarm to meet with Dr. Kumar, chief of Anesthesia, and he didn’t want to be late or, worse yet, forget. Noah stood up and pulled on a freshly pressed white jacket. He was nervous about the upcoming meeting. Deciding on doing it had not been easy, and he had argued the pros and cons for almost two days before making the plans.
Clicking off the monitor, Noah headed for the elevators. Dr. Kumar had scheduled the meeting in his department chair office in Administration on the third floor. Although Noah would have preferred to meet someplace on the surgical floor to keep things more casual, Dr. Kumar had insisted, and Noah had been forced to agree, so even the formal setting was adding to Noah’s unease.
The past week had not been Noah’s favorite. As a disturbing replay of the previous weekend, Noah had not heard from Ava. To avoid any repeat of the misunderstanding that had contributed to that unpleasant situation, Noah had sent her several texts, starting Sunday night. Each time he’d thrown any pretext of pride out the window and had apologized effusively for what he had done and, more or less, pleaded to get together to talk it out. Ava had responded once, late Tuesday afternoon in her signature terse style: I need a break.
Wednesday Noah had changed tactics. He texted her that he thought they should at least get together to plan the following week’s M&M Conference, but she didn’t respond. It was becoming perfectly clear what she meant by “a break” was no contact. When they had had encountered each other by chance in the OR, she’d even avoided eye contact.
In the beginning of the week Noah had struggled with a mixture of regret and remorse, but by Wednesday, when she chose not to respond to his text about the M&M, his feelings began to shift. Although he admitted he’d made a mistake violating her trust by accessing her computer, he began to sense the punishment was more than the offense warranted. The idea resurfaced that there was a disconnect with her current behavior and the intimacy he thought they had shared. Such thinking brought back Leslie’s warnings and his own concern that Ava might have been using him. It also reawakened his nagging misgivings about her training and competence. Feeling a flash of irritation over her lack of communication, he found himself wondering something he never thought he’d question: Could Dr. Mason be right about Ava?
From Noah’s perspective, the problem with such an idea was that she had been hired by one of the best anesthesia departments in the country, which meant that she’d been seriously vetted way beyond having just passed the anesthesia boards and obtained a Massachusetts medical license. At a minimum, a complete file of her training, including letters of recommendation, would have been required. It was that fact that made him overcome his reservations about approaching Dr. Kumar.
Noah pushed into the crowded elevator, which was occupied mostly by nurses leaving the hospital at the end of their shift. In contrast to the usual elevator silence, there was a lot of conversation. Noah stayed near the door, as he was only going to the third floor and not the ground floor.
As the elevator descended, Noah thought more about the past week and why it was going to go down emotionally as one of his worst. Although he had tried the same defense mechanism for his heartache that he had used over the weekend, namely by concentrating on his work, he’d had less to do because he had done so much from Thursday through Sunday. He’d also felt reluctant to stay in the on-call room again, so he’d gone back to his apartment each night. The result was comparatively too much free time on his hands to keep from mulling over the situation with Ava. And on top of that, he’d had another one of his paranoid reactions.
Although Noah couldn’t have been certain, it seemed to him that the same man in the dark suit who had followed him a couple weeks earlier reappeared and followed him again late Tuesday evening. This time Noah had taken a particularly circuitous route, going through Louisburg Square to gaze longingly up at Ava’s lighted study window. Each time he had turned a corner and glanced back the man had been there, seemingly talking on a cell phone. Noah had first noticed him in the Boston Common. When Noah had arrived back at his building on Revere Street, he’d pulled off the same maneuver of getting his door quickly locked behind him, only to see the man again walk by without so much as a glance in Noah’s direction.
Although Noah had again attributed this episode to his overwrought emotional state, he didn’t impute it to his imagination when he got upstairs to his apartment to find his door had been forced. Since it had happened five times over the past two years, most likely thanks to the woman college student who lived above him and who had a lot of after-hours fellow-student male visitors to whom she gave front door keys, he wasn’t terribly surprised or concerned, a testament to how the human mind could adapt to an inconvenience if it happened often enough. After the first four episodes, he’d complained to the landlord, who’d patched his door, but after the last he hadn’t even bothered to do that. After all, there wasn’t much to steal in his unit beyond his aged laptop. He didn’t even have a TV. Although he’d been initially thankful his computer was still on the card table on this occasion, he did become moderately concerned when he realized someone had been using it!
As a surgeon, Noah had some compulsive traits, like a lot of his colleagues. One of the traits involved how he dealt with his tools, and in his mind tools included electronics. He was very particular about the way he handled his laptop, which had caused a good deal of merciless teasing by Leslie, who thought it silly that he insisted it be lined up with the edges of the table. Frequently she’d move it just to playfully aggravate him. Tuesday night it was as if Leslie had been there.
Recognizing someone had been on his computer, Noah had immediately checked his bank account information. When that had seemed okay, he’d checked his browser’s history to find that it had been wiped clean, including what he had done the previous night. It was apparent someone had used his computer and then had covered his tracks. After checking all his documents, including his surgical case log, which thankfully didn’t include any personal patient information, Noah hadn’t known what to make of the incident and had tried not to dwell on it, although it had fanned his paranoia.