"For my continuing education," Jazz said. "OB-GYN interests me, but I didn't get much exposure to it with the Marines, for obvious reasons. So I frequently go up there on my breaks. Now that I've learned a bit about the field, I'm thinking of putting in for an opening in OB-GYN."
"So it was for continuing education that took you up there tonight?"
"Is that so hard to believe? Instead of going down to the cafeteria on my lunch hour with my half of the surgical-floor team and talking about drivel, I went up to OB-GYN to learn something. I don't know what it is about this place. Whenever you make an extra effort to improve yourself, you get nothing but grief."
"I don't want to add to your burden," Roger said, struggling to keep the sarcasm from his voice. "But there seems to be a discrepancy. Ms. Lanigan told me that when she confronted you earlier, you said you wanted to borrow something."
"Is that what she said?" Jazz questioned with a scornful laugh. "Well, she's right in one sense. I did need to borrow some infusion lines, thanks to central supply not restocking us, but that was an afterthought. What I was really doing up there was sucking up information from reading nursing notes. She probably doesn't want to admit that, because she's probably worried I'm gunning for her job."
"That wouldn't be my take," Roger said. "But what do I know? Thanks for your time, Ms. Rakoczi. I'll be back in touch if I have any more questions."
Roger walked out of the utility room and rounded the nurses' station countertop. He was now feeling genuinely fatigued. The caffeine had completely worn off. A few moments earlier, he'd entertained the idea after talking again with Ms. Rakoczi of returning to the OR to see if he could find Dr. Najah. As with Rakoczi, he wanted to ask him what he had been doing on the OB-GYN floor, but now he had second thoughts. He was exhausted. It was nearly four o'clock in the morning.
Roger resolved that the first thing he would do when he got into his office later that morning was call Rosalyn and beg for Jasmine Rakoczi's St. Francis record. He didn't care about the consequences. He found himself wondering how much the general nursing shortage had to do with the fact that Jasmine Rakoczi was employed. The overwhelming chances were that she was not a serial killer. That would be too easy. But the fact that she was employed as a nurse with her attitude was a travesty as far as he was concerned, and he intended to do something about it.
Roger pressed the elevator's down button and hazarded a glance back toward the surgical nurses' station. It was only for a split second, but he thought he caught a glimpse of Jazz eyeing him from around the edge of the door to the utility room. Roger wasn't so sure, and as tired as he suddenly felt, it could have been his imagination. The woman made him uneasy. He hated the thought of being a patient under her care.
The elevator came, and he boarded. Just before the doors closed, he looked back at the utility-room doorway. For the second time, he didn't know if it was his eyes or his brain that was tricking him, because he thought he saw her again.
He took the elevator down to the basement level, where he'd never been. In contrast with the rest of the hospital it was completely utilitarian. The walls were unadorned stained concrete, and myriad exposed pipes-some insulated, some not-ran along the ceiling. The lighting fixtures were simple porcelain sockets with wire cages. Just beyond the elevators, an old sign composed of peeling paint applied directly onto the concrete wall said "autopsy amphitheater," accompanied by a large red arrow.
The route was labyrinthine, but by following the red arrows, Roger eventually arrived at a set of double leather doors with oval windows set at eye-level height. The glass was covered with a greasy film. Although Roger could tell a light was shining in the room beyond, he couldn't make out any details. He pushed through, then propped the door open with an old brass doorstop.
Inside was an old-fashioned, semicircular two-story medical amphitheater, with rows of tiny seats that rose up on tiers into the shadows. Roger guessed it had been built a hundred years ago, when anatomy and pathology were kingpins in the academic medical curriculum. There was a lot of old, scraped, and pitted dark varnished wood, and the lighting came from a single, large, hooded lamp that hung on a long cord from the ceiling. The light was centered on an antiquated metal autopsy table that occupied the center of the pit. Against the back wall was a glass-fronted cabinet with a collection of stainless-steel autopsy tools. Roger wondered when they'd last been used. Outside the medical examiners' office, few autopsies were now done, particularly in managed-care hospitals like the Manhattan General.
Standing within the pit, along with the autopsy table, there were several shrouded hospital gurneys, obviously supporting corpses. Roger started forward, not knowing which was Patricia Pruit. As he approached the first body, he questioned, as he'd done in the past, why Laurie had chosen forensic pathology as her career. It seemed so contrary to her vibrant personality. With a shrug, he grabbed the edge of the sheet and lifted.
Roger grimaced. He was looking at the remains of an individual who had been involved in some kind of accident. The man's head was horribly distorted and crushed such that one eye was completely exposed. Roger replaced the sheet. His legs felt weak. As a medical student, he'd not liked pathology, particularly forensic pathology, and this victim reminded him of that fact in an uncomfortably brutal fashion.
Roger took a few breaths before stepping over to the second gurney. He reached for the edge of the sheet, but his hand didn't make it. Instead, he was propelled forward off his feet, having been hit smack in the middle of his back with what felt like a two-by-four. He knew he was falling, and his arms reflexively flew out to cushion himself, but before he hit the tiled floor, the board hit him again, taking his breath away.
Roger collided with the floor and skidded forward on the glazed tile. His head thumped up against the wall that separated the pit from the tiers of seats. He tried to move, but blackness descended over him like a heavy, suffocating blanket.
seventeen
When laurie's alarm shattered the silence early Saturday morning, she felt about the same way she had Friday morning. Once again, she hadn't slept well, and what sleep she did get was marred by anxious dreams.
The first thing she did after getting out of bed was repeat the pregnancy test with a new kit. As a doctor, she was well aware of the necessity to repeat tests to rule out false readings. When she returned to check the results, she was aware of a definite ambivalence. But again, it was clearly positive. There could be little doubt that she was pregnant.
Adding credence to the test results was the morning nausea, which seemed a little worse than it had been the previous days, but after eating some dry raisin bran, she felt better. The accompanying right lower quadrant discomfort was another thing. Luckily, it wasn't anything like she'd experienced the prior evening on her way home from her rendezvous with Jack. Then it had been frank pain, strong enough to make her writhe. It had come on suddenly in the taxicab like severe intestinal cramps. For a few seconds, she thought she'd have to put in a call to Laura Riley, but then, as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished. As intense as it was, Laurie was convinced it was related to her digestive system. Its quality was much sharper than a menstrual cramp, which made her think it couldn't have anything to do with her being pregnant. The only confusion was that in the mornings, it appeared along with the nausea, suggesting it was related.
Laurie put her empty cereal bowl down on the countertop. Concerned about the lingering discomfort, she gingerly pressed in on her abdomen in the general area of the pain with her index finger, trying to determine if there was any pinpoint pain. There wasn't, and curiously enough, the palpation alone seemed to be beneficial. When Laurie took her hand away, the discomfort had vanished, suggesting to her once again that the problem was intestinal, perhaps gas.