Focus. Stay in the moment.
As with most surgeries, intermittent pneumatic compression devices — think inflatable leg-squeezing machines or high-tech compression boots — are placed on the patient’s legs. This is to regulate blood flow and prevent deep vein thrombosis or again, layman’s terms, a blood clot. The Bovie pad is already stuck on Nadia’s upper thigh. Put simply, it’s a grounding pad used to channel electric currents away from the patient’s body.
Maggie would have wanted to go with the most cutting-edge method of breast augmentation — using a patient’s own fat — but Nadia didn’t have enough fat to donate, and that procedure would have been too subtle a change for what she (or Oleg) wanted. Instead, they were going with the aptly nicknamed, state-of-the-art “gummy bear” implants — solid gel breast implants known for shape retention and realistic consistency. If you slice traditional silicone breast implants in half, the material will leak out like honey. That’s not the case with the more solidified gummy bears.
Most people think they know how breast augmentation works: The surgeon makes the incision, creates a pocket behind the pectoral muscle, places the implant in the pocket, and then centers it behind the nipple. That’s all true, but for the best work, you need to strap the unconscious patient to the operating table so that at some point, you can sit them up in a Fowler position. It is really the only way to evaluate the breast shape and assess the placement. Think about it. Do you want them to look natural only when you’re lying down? Or do you care what they look like when you’re sitting or walking? Duh. To not have the patient cranked up to a seated position because of hemodynamic concerns that have pretty much been laid to rest in study after study is, in Maggie’s view, negligence.
The scrub nurse presses the operating table’s button, moving the strapped-in Nadia into an upright position. Maggie inserts the various sizers and then stands back to see which ones are most symmetrical and appropriate for Nadia’s frame. She has, as Brovski mentioned, the three sizes from which to choose. Dr. Deutsch, her mentor in this procedure, told her that when in doubt, go with the larger one because when it’s over, almost every woman he’s worked on says they wished they had gone a little bigger. Maggie keeps that in mind, but she also believes, perhaps wrongly, that Nadia is being somewhat coerced into doing this. In the end, the three hundred ccs, the smallest of the three sizes, provide the best aesthetic anyway, so Maggie goes with that.
At some point Ivan Brovski exits without a goodbye. Maggie idly wonders about that, but again this isn’t about him. It’s about the patient and the procedure.
A few minutes later, Maggie finishes up with sutures and steps back.
It’s over.
Except it most definitely is not.
The scrub nurse turns off the ESU or Electrical Surgical Unit. Then she pulls the Bovie pad off Nadia’s upper right quadricep.
And everything changes.
Maggie freezes and feels her world start to spiral.
“Doctor?”
Nadia has a tattoo on her leg. Maggie bends down for a closer look.
The tattoo is garish orange and purple. It’s a cartoonish image of a goofily smiling serpent with a halo and a silly wink.
“Doctor McCabe, are you okay?”
Maggie has seen only one tattoo like this before.
On Marc’s leg.
Maggie can’t move.
The scrub nurse says, “Doctor?”
Her eyes finally move off the tattoo and up to Nadia’s face. Nadia’s eyes are closed. It’ll be thirty to forty minutes before she’s awake and able to converse. Maggie’s gaze is drawn back to the tattoo.
There is no way this is a coincidence.
She thinks about that tattoo — how Marc regaled her with its college-spring-break origin story and how bad Marc was at handling his alcohol (which he was) and how his friends got him drunk (though it was his fault too, he’d admit) and how they stumbled down the French Quarter — and when he told the story, you could see the New Orleans night sky and feel the thick Creole humidity and touch the brick of the old buildings — and how he ended up in that small tattoo parlor and it was just a dare, no one thought Marc would go through with it, and how the artist, who was definitely drunk or stoned or worse, drew it in pen in mere seconds and that was it, it wouldn’t go any further than that, surely, just a pen drawing, and then the artist — his name was Agent or something like that — took out the needle, and ha, ha, okay it’s time to stop kidding around except no one did and it hurt like hell even with all the alcohol, and when he woke up, the area was all red and Marc thought it might be infected...
How can Nadia have that same tattoo?
“Doctor?”
She looks over at the anesthesiologist. “How long will the patient be out?” Maggie asks.
“An hour.”
Maggie nods, turns her attention back toward the scrub nurse. “Where is Doctor Brovski?”
“He left in the middle of the surgery.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Perhaps he is looking in on Mr. Ragoravich?”
Maggie doesn’t hesitate. She hurries out of the operating room and heads down the corridor. Post-op is the corner room. Maggie pulls up when she enters Oleg Ragoravich’s recovery room.
It’s empty.
That’s wrong. She looks for the attending nurse. Nope, not there either.
Where the hell is Oleg?
He should still be here. The plan was to keep him in the recovery room for the next few hours at the very least before moving him to his bedroom upstairs.
So where is he?
Doesn’t matter. Not right now. Right now, she wants to find Brovski and get her phone back. She wants to bring up the griefbot. She wants AI Marc to explain to her how the hell the twenty-four-year-old mistress of an oligarch has the exact same one-of-a-kind Serpent and Saint tattoo that he had.
This palace has workers everywhere, but suddenly Maggie can’t find one. She heads through the abandoned indoor pool area, which is dark and humid, which again reminds her of Marc’s tale about that humid New Orleans night. She still has on her scrubs. The heat from the pool is cloying. She rips off her lowered surgical mask and cap and tosses them in a bin.
When she exits by the other end of the pool, she’s back in the corridor Oleg had led her down when she arrived... wow, was that only yesterday?... when he showed her the locked Mona Lisa room.
The door to the Mona Lisa room is wide open.
Maggie half sprints toward it. When she turns the corner, she sees three identical paintings on the wall, except they are all oil paintings of wildflowers.
No Mona Lisas.
What the...?
No time to worry about it. She continues down the corridor. She passes the fake Gardner Museum pieces and notices that one, the Vermeer, is now missing.
Something is going on.
She isn’t sure what to do when she hears a bellow from above. “Doctor McCabe?”
Maggie spins. It’s Ivan Brovski.
“Where are you going?” he asks. “Why are you still in your scrubs?”
She moves back toward him and starts up the stairs. His face is set. She doesn’t like that. “I need my phone,” she says.
“You can’t have it. You were told as part of your employment there was to be no communication—”
“And I told you that I wasn’t communicating with anyone.”