But she is there.
Nadia is in the bed, her eyes in that half-closed post-op way Maggie has seen a thousand times before. Maggie feels her heart beating wildly against her chest. She slows herself down, focuses on her breathing, steps into the room. No one else is here. Where the hell is all the support staff?
When Maggie closes the door behind her, Nadia stirs. Maggie waits. Nadia starts blinking open her eyes. Maggie sees the full water glass. She grabs a straw.
“Here,” Maggie says. “Sip this.”
She places the straw between Nadia’s lips. Nadia sips.
“How do you feel?”
“Groggy,” Nadia manages.
“That’s normal.”
Maggie has automatically switched into physician mode. She checks Nadia’s vitals and stitching. All normal. Nadia starts waking up. Maggie can feel her eyes on her. It’s always interesting to see how various patients react to their doctor. Some look away. Some watch with reverence or worry or even mistrust, as though trying to read what the doctor is really thinking versus what they are willing to admit out loud.
She hears someone run down the corridor past the door. A man shouts in Russian. Maggie doesn’t understand what he’s saying, but there is panic in his tone. Time is not on Maggie’s side here. She gets that. She locks the door and sits on the edge of Nadia’s bed. More personal this way, she thinks. Less intimidating.
“I want to ask you something.”
Nadia’s eyes are blue and wide and beautiful. “Is something wrong? Did the surgery—”
“No, no, you’re fine. The surgery went perfectly.”
Nadia just looks at her and waits.
“When I was doing your surgery...” Maggie isn’t sure how to ask this. She reaches to pull back the blanket on Nadia’s leg. It’s the wrong move. Nadia jolts, cringes, holds the blanket in place.
Just dive in, Maggie tells herself.
“You have a tattoo on your upper thigh.”
There is a brief flare in those eyes now. “You saw it?”
Maggie can hear the fear in Nadia’s voice now.
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. My leg. It was covered. You were supposed to be working on my chest—”
“I saw it at the end,” Maggie says. “When the surgery was over. The nurse took off the Bovie pad.”
Nadia looks terrified.
“It’s okay,” Maggie says, trying to reassure. “I didn’t mean to...” She stops, tries again. “Could you tell me where you got it?”
Nadia closes her eyes and shakes her head no.
“Please,” Maggie says. “It’s important.”
“Why?”
Maggie needs to keep this moving. “I’ve seen the design before,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“Please, Nadia. Can you just tell me where you got it? Why do you have it?”
Nadia pulls up her legs as though trying to protect them.
“Nadia?”
“Leave me alone.”
“They’re making me leave soon.”
“What?”
“Something is going on. I can’t find Oleg. They want me to leave. Please, Nadia, I need to know about the tattoo.”
“But why?” Nadia asks — and now there seems to be a small accusation in her tone. “Have you seen that tattoo before?”
“Yes,” Maggie says.
“On other young girls?” Nadia asks. “Or boys?”
“No,” Maggie says. “On someone I loved very much.”
Nadia blinks. “I don’t understand.”
“Nadia, please tell me how you got it.”
Her voice turns stone-cold. “You know already.”
“What? No, I don’t.”
“This loved one,” Nadia says. “Did he also donate a kidney?”
“No. Why would you ask that?”
“Because,” she says, “that’s when I got mine.”
Maggie makes a face. “When you donated your kidney?”
She nods. “He put me under for the operation. When I woke up, my kidney was gone, and on my leg...” She shrugs away the end of the thought.
Maggie tries not to look horrified. “The tattoo was just on your leg?”
“Yes.”
“So they put it on while you were under?”
Nod.
“And you’d never seen it before?”
Tears push into Nadia’s eyes.
“Nadia?”
“It was his sign.”
“Whose sign?”
“I need more water.”
Maggie puts the straw between her lips. Nadia lifts her head to sip. When she’s done, her head falls back on the pillow.
“My mother told me that her grandfather used to brand camels,” Nadia says. “Always on the left side of the face. Always. So you knew what tribe it belonged to. Here, with him, it was always on the upper right thigh. Where no one in my village would see it.” Nadia winces and tries to sit up. “Who do you know who has it?”
“Like I said” — Maggie’s head is swirling — “a loved one.”
“No.”
“No?”
“That’s not good enough,” Nadia says. Her voice has more edge now, bordering on anger. “What loved one?”
Maggie’s mouth goes dry. She’s right, of course. She has every right to know. “My husband.”
“Did he donate a kidney too?”
“No. He was a surgeon.”
Nadia’s eyes lock on her. “Did he do mine?”
“No,” Maggie says too quickly.
“How can you know for sure?”
Maggie says nothing. She feels lost.
“Where is your husband now?” Nadia asks.
“He’s dead.” Maggie hears the distant monotone in her voice. Then she adds, “He was killed.”
Nadia doesn’t look surprised. “They murdered him?”
The question throws her. An odd question. Or was it? “What do you mean by ‘they’?”
“Who killed him?”
“I don’t know.”
Nadia shakes her head. Maggie feels cold inside.
“Nadia?”
“You’re lying,” Nadia says.
“What?”
“I see it in your eyes. Who killed your husband?”
Maggie isn’t sure how to answer that. “Marc was on a humanitarian mission in a war zone. The camp was overrun by men with guns and machetes. It was a slaughter. He...”
She stops.
“How did he die?”
“What?”
“You said guns. You said machetes.”
“I don’t know,” Maggie says, her voice soft. “I hope a bullet, but...” She stops. There is no reason to say more about that.
Silence.
“The surgeon,” Nadia says, her eyes steady now. “The one who took out my kidney. He was a white man. They called him the Snake. I didn’t know why. Until I saw the tattoo.” Nadia looks away. “He was not kind.”
And then Nadia says it: “Trace.”
Maggie freezes. “What?”
“There was a man there. Someone called him Trace.”
“He was the surgeon?”
Nadia shakes her head. “No. He tried to stop it.”
The door bursts open then.
It’s Ivan Brovski with CinderBlock and a nurse. They look at the bed behind Maggie. Maggie follows their gaze and sees that Nadia has her eyes closed, feigning unconsciousness. The nurse crosses the room and checks Nadia’s pulse.
Brovski grabs Maggie’s arm.
“Let go of me,” Maggie says, pulling her arm free.
Between clenched teeth, Brovski says, “What are you doing in here?”
“I told you. I wanted to check on my patient. I was waiting for her to wake up.”
“Why did you lock the door?” Before she can come up with a lie, Brovski shakes it off. “Doesn’t matter. Nadia is in good hands. Let’s go.”