The intercom buzzed. A voice over the speaker said, “Is Dr. DiMatteo in there?”
“Yes she is,” said the circulating nurse.
“Could you have her break scrub and come out?”
“They’re just about to open. Can’t this wait till later?”
There was a pause. Then: “Mr. Parr needs her out of the OR.”
“Tell him we’re in surgery!” said Mark.
“He knows that. We need Dr. DiMatteo out here,” repeated the intercom. “Now.”
Mark looked at Abby. “Go ahead. I’ll have them call one of the interns to assist.”
Abby backed away from the table and nervously stripped off her gown. Something was wrong. Parr wouldn’t pull her out of surgery unless there was some kind of crisis.
Her heart was already racing as she pushed through the OR doors and walked to the front desk.
Jeremiah Parr was standing there. Beside him were two hospital security guards and the nursing supervisor. No one was smiling.
“Dr. DiMatteo,” said Parr, “could you come with us?”
Abby looked at the guards. They had fanned out to either side of her. The nursing supervisor, too, had shifted position, taking a step back.
“What’s this all about?” said Abby. “Where are we going?”
“Your locker.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s just a routine check, Doctor.”
There’s nothing routine about this. Flanked by the two guards, Abby had no choice but to follow Parr up the hall to the women’s locker room. The nursing supervisor went in first, to clear the area of personnel. Then she beckoned Parr and the others inside.
“Your locker is number seventy-two?” said Parr.
“Yes.”
“Could you open it please?”
Abby reached for the combination padlock. She made one spin of the dial, then stopped and turned to Parr. “I want to know what this is all about first.”
“It’s just a check.”
“I think I’m a little beyond the stage of high school locker inspections. What are you looking for?”
“Just open the locker.”
Abby glanced at the guards, then at the nursing supervisor. They were watching her with heightened suspicion. She thought: I can’t win this one. If I refuse to open it, they’ll think I’m hiding something. The best way to defuse this crazy situation was to cooperate.
She reached for the lock, spun the combination, and tugged it open.
Parr stepped closer. So did the guards. They were standing right beside him as she swung open the locker door.
Inside were her street clothes, her stethoscope, her purse, a flowered toilet bag for on-call nights, and the long white coat she used for attending rounds. They wanted cooperation, she’d damn well give them cooperation. She unzipped the flowered bag and held it open for everyone to see. It was a show and tell of intimate feminine toiletries. Toothbrush and tampons and Midol. One of the male guards flushed. He’d gotten his thrill for the day. She zipped up the bag and opened her purse. No surprises in there either. A wallet, checkbook, car keys, more tampons. Women and their specialized plumbing. The guards were looking uncomfortable now, and a little sheepish.
Abby was starting to enjoy this.
She put the purse back in the locker and took the white coat off the hook. The instant she did, she knew there was something different about it. It was heavier. She reached into the pocket and felt something cylindrical and smooth. A glass vial. She took it out and stared at the label.
Morphine sulfate. The vial was almost empty.
“Dr. DiMatteo,” said Parr, “please give that to me.”
She looked up at him. Slowly she shook her head. “I don’t know what it’s doing there.”
“Give me the vial.”
Too stunned to think of an alternative action, she simply handed it to him. “I don’t know how it got there,” she said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
Parr handed the vial to the nursing supervisor. Then he turned to the guards. “Please escort Dr. DiMatteo to my office.”
“This is bullshit,” said Mark. “Someone set her up and we all know it.”
“We don’t know any such thing,” said Parr.
“It’s part of the same pattern of harassment! The lawsuits. The bloody organs in her car. And now this.”
“This is entirely different, Dr. Hodell. This is a dead patient.” Parr looked at Abby. “Dr. DiMatteo, why don’t you just tell us the truth and make things easier for all of us?”
A confession was what he wanted. A clean and simple admission of guilt. Abby glanced around the table, at Parr and Susan Casado and the nursing supervisor. The only person she couldn’t look at was Mark. She was afraid to look at him, afraid to see any doubt in his eyes.
She said, “I told you, I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know how the morphine got in my locker. I don’t know how Mary Allen died.”
“You pronounced her death,” said Parr. “Two nights ago.”
“The nurses found her. She’d already expired.”
“That was the night you were on call.”
“Yes.”
“You were in the hospital all night.”
“Of course. That’s what being on call means.”
“So you were here on the very night Mrs. Allen expired of a morphine OD. And today we find this in your locker.” He set the vial on the table where it sat, center stage, on the gleaming mahogany surface. “A controlled substance. Just the fact it’s in your possession is serious enough.”
Abby stared at Parr. “You just said Mrs. Allen died of a morphine OD. How do you know that?”
“A postmortem drug level. It was sky-high.”
“She was on a therapeutic dose, titrated to comfort.”
“I have the report right here. It came back this morning. Four-tenths milligram per liter. A level of two-tenths is considered fatal.”
“Let me see that,” said Mark.
“Certainly.”
Mark scanned the lab slip. “Why would anyone order a postmortem morphine level? She was a terminal cancer patient.”
“It was ordered. That’s all you need to know.”
“I need to know a hell of a lot more.”
Parr looked at Susan Casado, who said: “There was reason to suspect this was not a natural death.”
“What reason?”
“That’s not the point of this—”
“What reason?”
Susan released a sharp breath. “One of Mrs. Allen’s relatives asked us to look into it. She received some kind of note implying the death was suspicious. We notified Dr. Wettig, of course, and he ordered an autopsy.”
Mark handed Abby the lab slip. She stared at it, recognizing the indecipherable scrawl on the line Ordering Physician. It was, indeed, the General’s signature. He’d ordered a quantitative drug screen at eleven A.M. yesterday morning. Eight hours after Mary Allen’s death.
“I had nothing to do with this,” said Abby. “I don’t know how she got all this morphine. It could be a lab error. A nursing error—”
“I can speak for my staff,” said the nursing supervisor. “We follow strict controls on narcotics administration. You all know that. There’s no nursing error here.”
“Then what you’re saying,” said Mark, “is that the patient was deliberately overdosed.”
There was a long silence. Parr said, “Yes.”
“This is ridiculous! I was with Abby that night, in the call room!”
“All night?” said Susan.
“Yes. It was her birthday, and we, uh . . .” Mark cleared his throat and glanced at Abby. We slept together was what they were both thinking. “We celebrated,” he said.
“You were together the whole time?” said Parr.
Mark hesitated. He doesn’t really know, thought Abby. He’d slept through all her phone calls, hadn’t even stirred when she’d left to pronounce Mrs. Allen at three o’clock, nor
when she’d left again to restart an IV at four. He was about to lie for her, and she knew that it wouldn’t work because Mark had no idea what she’d done that night. Parr did. He had it from the nurses. From the notes and orders she’d written, each one recorded with the time.
She said, “Mark was in the call room with me. But he slept all night.” She looked at him. We have to stick to the truth. It’s the only thing that’ll save me.
“What about you, Dr. DiMatteo?” said Parr. “Did you stay in the room?”
“I was called to the wards several times. But you know that already, don’t you?”
Parr nodded.
“You think you know everything!” said Mark. “So tell me this. Why would she do it? Why would she kill her own patient?”
“It’s no secret she has sympathies with the euthanasia movement,” said Susan Casado.
Abby stared at her. “What?”
“We’ve spoken with the nurses. On one occasion, Dr. DiMatteo was heard to say, quote”—Susan flipped through the pages of a yellow legal pad—” ‘If the morphine makes it easier, then that’s what we should give her. Even if it makes the end come sooner.’ Unquote.” Susan looked at Abby. “You did say that, didn’t you?”
“That had nothing to do with euthanasia! I was talking about pain control! About keeping a patient comfortable.”
“So you did say it?”
“Maybe I did! I don’t remember.”
“Then there was the exchange with Mrs. Allen’s niece, Brenda Hainey. It was witnessed by several nurses, as well as Mrs. Speer here.” She nodded toward the nursing supervisor. And again she glanced at her legal pad. “It was an argument. Brenda Hainey felt her aunt was getting too much morphine. And Dr. DiMatteo disagreed. To the point of using obscenities.”
It was a charge Abby couldn’t deny. She had argued with Brenda. She had used an obscenity. It was all crashing in on her now, wave after giant wave. She felt unable to breathe, unable to move, as the waves just kept slamming her down.
There was a knock and Dr. Wettig walked in and carefully shut the door behind him. He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just stood at the end of the table and looked at Abby. She waited for the next wave to crash.
“She says she knows nothing about it,” said Parr.
“I’m not surprised,” Wettig said. “You really don’t know anything about this, do you, DiMatteo?”
Abby met the General’s gaze. It had never been easy for her to look directly at those flat blue eyes. She saw too much power there, and it was power over her future. But she was looking straight at him now, determined to make him see that she had nothing to hide.
“I didn’t kill my patient,” she said. “I swear it.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Wettig reached in his lab coat pocket and produced a combination padlock. He set it down with a thud on the table.
“What’s this?” said Parr.
“It’s from Dr. DiMatteo’s locker. In the last half hour, I’ve become something of an expert on combination padlocks. I called a locksmith. He says it’s a spring-loaded model, a piece of cake to get open. One sharp blow is all it takes. And it’ll snap open. Also, there’s a code on the back. Any registered locksmith can use that code to obtain the combination.”
Parr glanced at the lock, then gave a dismissive shrug. “That doesn’t prove anything. We’re still left with a dead patient. And that.” He pointed to the vial of morphine.
“What’s wrong with you people?” said Mark. “Can’t you see what’s happening here? An anonymous note. Morphine conveniently planted in her locker. Someone’s setting her up.”
“To what purpose?” said Susan.
“To discredit her. Get her fired.”
Parr snorted. “You’re suggesting someone actually murdered a patient just to ruin Dr. DiMatteo’s career?”
Mark started to answer, then seemed to think better of it. It was an absurd theory and they all knew it.
“You have to agree, Dr. Hodell, that a conspiracy is pretty far-fetched,” said Susan.
“Not as far-fetched as what’s already happened to me,” said Abby. “Look at what Victor Voss has already done. He’s mentally unstable. He assaulted me in the SICU. Putting bloody organs in my car is something only a sick mind would think of. And then there are the lawsuits—two of them already. And that’s just the beginning.”
There was a silence. Susan glanced at Parr. “Doesn’t she know?”
“Apparently not.”
“Know what?” said Abby.
“We got a call from Hawkes, Craig and Sussman just after lunch,” said Susan. “The lawsuits against you have been dropped. Both of them.”
Abby reeled back in her chair. “I don’t understand,” she murmured. “What is he doing? What is Voss doing?”
“If Victor Voss was trying to harass you, it appears he’s stopped. This has nothing to do with Voss.”
“Then how else do we explain this?” said Mark.
“Look at the evidence.” Susan pointed to the vial.
“There are no witnesses, nothing to link that particular vial with the patient’s death.”
“Nevertheless, I think we can all draw the same conclusion.”
The silence was suffocating. Abby saw that no one was looking at her, not even Mark.
At last Wettig spoke. “What do you propose to do, Parr? Call in the police? Turn this mess into a media circus?”
Parr hesitated. “It would be premature . . .”
“You either make your accusations stick, or you withdraw them. Anything else would be unfair to Dr. DiMatteo.”
“My God, General. Let’s keep the police out of this,” said Mark.
“If you people want to call this murder, then the police should be involved,” said Wettig. “Call in a few reporters as well, put your PR people to work. They could use a little excitement. Get it all out in the open, that’s the best policy.” He looked directly at Parr. “If you’re going to call this murder.”
It was a dare.
Parr was the one to back down. He cleared his throat and said to Susan, “We can’t be absolutely certain that’s what it is.”
“You’d better be certain it’s murder,” said Wettig. “You’d better be damn certain. Before you call the police.”
“The matter’s still being looked into,” said Susan. “We have to interview a few more nurses on that ward. Find out if there’s something we’ve missed.”
“You do that,” said Wettig.
There was another pause. No one was looking at Abby. She had faded from view, the invisible woman no one wanted to acknowledge.
They all seemed startled when Abby spoke. She scarcely recognized her own voice; it sounded like a stranger’s, calm and steady. “I’d like to return to my patients now. If I may,” she said.
Wettig nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Wait,” said Parr. “She can’t go back to her duties.”
“You haven’t proved anything,” said Abby, rising from her chair. “The General’s right. Either you make the charges stick, or you withdraw them.”
“We have one charge that’s indisputable,” said Susan. “Illegal possession of a controlled substance. We don’t know how you obtained the morphine, Doctor, but the fact you had it in your locker is serious enough.” She looked at Parr. “We don’t have a choice. The potential for liability is sky-high. If something goes wrong with any of her patients, and people find out we knew about this morphine business, we’re dead.” She turned to Wettig. “So’s the reputation of your residency program, General.”
Susan’s warning had its intended effect. Liability was something they all worried about. Wettig, like every other doctor, dreaded lawyers and lawsuits. This time, he didn’t argue.
“What does this mean?” said Abby. “Am I being fired?”
Parr rose to his feet, a signal that the meeting was over, the decision now made. “Dr. DiMatteo, until further notice, you’re on suspension. You’re not to
go on the wards. You’re not to go anywhere near a patient. Do you understand?”
She understood. She understood perfectly.
14
Yakov had not dreamed of his mother in years, had scarcely thought of her in months, so he was bewildered when, on his thirteenth day at sea, he awakened with a memory of her so vivid he could almost smell her scent still lingering in the air. His last glimpse of her, as the dream faded, was her smile. A wisp of blond hair tracing her cheek. Green eyes that seemed to be looking through him, beyond him, as though he were the one who was not real, not flesh. Her face was so instantly familiar to him that he knew this must surely be his mother. Over the years he had tried hard to remember her, but her face had never quite come to him. Yakov had no photographs, no mementos. But somehow, through the years, he must have carried the memory of her face stored like a seed in the dark but fertile soil of his mind. Last night, it had finally blossomed.
He remembered her, and she was beautiful.
That afternoon, the sea turned flat as glass and the sky darkened to the same cold gray as the water. Standing on the deck, looking over the railing, Yakov could not tell where the sea ended and the sky began. They were adrift in a giant gray fishbowl. He’d heard the cook say there was bad weather ahead, that by tomorrow no one would be keeping down much more than bread and soup. Today, though, the sea was calm, the air heavy and metallic with the taste of rain. Yakov was finally able to coax Aleksei from his bunk to go exploring.
The first place Yakov took him was Hell. The engine room. They wandered for a while in the clanking darkness until Aleksei complained the smell of fuel was making him sick. Aleksei had the stomach of a baby—always puking. So Yakov took him up to the bridge, where the captain was too busy to talk to them. So was the navigator. Yakov could not even demonstrate his special status as a regular and accepted visitor.
Next they headed to the galley, but the cook was in a cranky mood and did not offer them even a slice of bread. He had a meal to prepare for the aft passengers, the people no one ever saw. They were a demanding pair, he complained, requiring far too much of his time and attention. He grumbled as he set two glasses and a wine bottle on a tray and slid it into the dumbwaiter. He pressed a button and sent it whirring upward, to their private quarters. Then he turned back to the stove, where a pan was sizzling and pots were steaming. He lifted one of the pot lids, releasing the fragrance of butter and onions. He stirred the contents with a wooden spoon.