Stewart saw him staring at the glass cubicle. "Yeah, it sucks," he said and gestured helplessly at the heavens with both hands. Whatever else he'd been pretending about, his voice resonated with a blend of anger and remorse that couldn't be faked. "He arrested last night. I couldn't save him."
Earl slumped against the wall of the elevator all the way up to the eighth floor. As VP, medical, he would be the one to arrange a memorial for Teddy. He tried out what he would say.
/ recall all the times we struggled side by side to restore the breath of life to the already dead…
He couldn't finish. The disgust on the man's face as he'd struggled to breathe when no one could help him overwhelmed such treacle.
Earl stopped by the nursing station in Palliative Care and asked the woman in charge, a tiny person with big Elton John glasses, if Monica Yablonsky had left him a list of all her colleagues who'd reported a patient having a near-death experience.
She hadn't.
"Then would you do it, please?" he asked.
She looked at him curiously, shrugged, and made a note of the request.
It was probably better not to deal with Monica Yablonsky anyway, he thought, pressing the button to summon the elevator back. The less he had to confront her, the better his chance to quietly discover what had transpired up here without setting off alarm bells. However much Hurst had infuriated him, what the manipulative old bastard had said about how distractions could be lethal still made sense. And this morning's headlines underlined that everyone must stay focused on the minutest detail of how to protect against the infection. Worst of all, even that might not be enough. Teddy Burns had never been able to tell the SARS control committee what slip cost him his life.
The elevator arrived.
He didn't get in, wanting a quiet place to clear his head.
The roof garden. It ought to be deserted on a day like this.
Minutes later, stepping out into the fog, he might have been on a mountain ledge. Buffalo itself lay completely obscured, and the sounds of the city came to him as if out of a gray dream. Only the potted trees defined his floating world. As he walked their perimeter, droplets of moisture in the air felt cool on his forehead.
But nothing could soothe his churning gut.
Stewart had seemed relieved those patients couldn't repeat what they'd said about their near-death experiences. And it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that, for a few seconds at least, he'd also acted genuinely surprised to hear they had ended up dead or comatose.
Which meant what?
For one, he probably hadn't really thought they were on the brink of death when he first saw them just last week.
Yet why would he not simply say so, instead of suddenly insisting they'd been at death's door, no doubt about it?
Earl looked back at the hospital. The surrounding murk had reduced it to little more than a smudge in the distance.
A real house of secrets, he thought.
But if he could persuade the nurses in Palliative Care to recount the specifics of their patients' near-death encounters, perhaps he could figure out what Stewart seemed so intent on hiding.
And he would also take a closer look at the broader workings of Palliative Care- surreptitiously, of course- as soon as he could find a way to do it. Because if Yablonsky and her crew had killed Elizabeth Matthews with an accidental overdose, he intended to make damn sure they hadn't covered up clusters of anything else.
As for whoever had pulled that numskull move on Janet last night, he'd go after that piece of work with a vengeance. Serve notice that this VP, medical would track the idiot down. Ask around if any witnesses saw somebody in the stairwell at that time. Check in particular if they noticed an aroma of chloroform off his or her clothes. Let everyone know they had a new sheriff in town. Nothing subtle about it. The person's running out on Janet had been criminal.
A rain, thin as needles, began to fall.
He remained where he stood, reluctant to reenter the oppressive confines of the building.
And let his mind fleetingly dredge up the unthinkable.
What if smashing the chloroform bottle had been deliberate?
Immediately he rebelled.
Of course not. Why the hell even think such nonsense? No one in their right mind would do that, not to Janet, not to anyone. The person would be a maniac. God, Hurst would be right to give him shit for allowing such thoughts into his head.
Definitely time to get out of here. He pulled out his cellular and dialed home.
"Hi," he said when Janet answered. "I'll be there in twenty minutes. My department gave me the day off."
She chuckled, low and throaty. "You mean they threw you out. Susanne already called to tell me so that I'd reel you in should you change your mind and try to hang around the hospital."
He liked low and throaty. "So we have the house to ourselves?"
"We have the house to ourselves."
No birds, he thought as he headed toward the door, realizing he hadn't heard a chirp the whole time he'd been outside. They must have had the sense to ground themselves for the day too.
Jane Simmons appreciated that Susanne kept her busy. Otherwise, with nothing to do, the self-interrogation started up again.
Should she return home?
Tell Thomas?
Have the baby?
Give it up?
Worse?
The questions that rampaged through her head and the choices they offered seemed so alien, she felt they must belong to some other woman, not her.
So she counted catheters, needles, oxygen masks, suturing kits, and IV packs. Then she sorted equipment trays, filled out order forms, and requisitioned what they needed. Anything not to think of herself.
And occasionally she saw patients, the ones scared and desperate enough to overcome their fear of SARS and come in.
Some of them too late.
A fifty-five-year-old math professor with a stroke arrived an hour past the time when clot-busting drugs could have cleared the blockage and saved his speech.
A forty-five-year-old policeman came in with recurrent chest pain well beyond the limit for rescuing injured cardiac muscle.
A thirty-year-old woman with abdominal pain had ignored her stomachache long enough for it to deteriorate into a perforated appendix that left her septic, in shock, and clinging to life.
Jane even abandoned her professional detachment and allowed herself to sincerely despair over these unfortunates, using the bleakness of their futures to trivialize her own misery.
And it worked. Sort of. For a half hour now and then.
At two thirty in the afternoon, there once more being a lull in the action, she hurried into a utility closet, intent on doing more inventory.
And surprised Father Jimmy going through a cupboard.
"Ah, Jane," he said, "just the person I need. Could you find me a urine cup? I'm due for my annual physical, and the doctor always wants an offering."
Startled to see him in here and not in the mood for company, she quickly found what he wanted.
"And about that other little favor I asked you?" He grabbed his earlobe. "I took the liberty of checking with Susanne. She said fine, and that it might be a good idea if we get the job done today, you having so few customers."
Not now, she thought, wanting only to be alone and lose herself in mindless tasks. "Well actually, Father, I'm supposed to be compiling a list of supplies-"
"That's something I can give you a hand with. And if I can call you Jane, will you drop the 'Father'? The name's Jimmy, Jimmy Fitzpatrick. Now what's first?"
Oh, brother! He could be so disarming, yet she still didn't want company right now. "It's not necessary-"
"Nonsense."
"Listen, why don't I do your ear-"