Death Benefit
George got up from his bed where he’d flopped after Pia’s rebuff. He needed to get out of his room if only for a short interval. There was always the vending machine room on the first floor. He needed to see people, normal people, and there were usually students getting sodas or bags of chips.
As George headed toward the elevators, he tried to concentrate on how much he was loved by his family. He’d always had that to fall back on whenever he felt lonely. He knew that Pia did not have an equivalent situation, which made her behavior even more confusing. Why did she so consistently reject the love that he wanted to share with her and finally had the courage to voice? It just didn’t make sense.
George slapped the down button. Almost as if the car had been sitting there waiting for him, the elevator doors opened. Inside was Will McKinley, perhaps the only person in the world who could have made George feel even lonelier.
“George!” Will said. “What a coincidence. You heading down for a snack? Hop in!” Will took George’s arm and pulled him in. The ground-floor button had already been pressed. George lacked the strength to resist.
“What’s the matter, George? You look terrible.”
“I’m just tired. It’s been that kind of day.”
“How’s Pia? Have you seen her? She must have taken what happened to Rothman real hard.”
“She did.”
“Lesley and I tried to call her but she’s not picking up.”
“She’s not great at staying in touch with people,” George said.
The elevator reached the ground floor and Will guided George off.
“Listen, George, if there’s anything I can do to help Pia, just let me know. Really. We want her to get through this in one piece, she’s a great girl.”
George simply nodded. Will walked away toward the vending room. When he realized George wasn’t accompanying him, he turned and waved to George to follow.
“Come on! My treat.”
George sighed, wearily turned, and pressed the button once more to call the elevator. He wanted company but not Will’s company.
37.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
NEW YORK CITY
MARCH 24, 2011, 11:30 P.M.
The moment the elevator doors had closed on George, Pia had already relegated him to his proper place in her mind, well down the list of her immediate concerns. She didn’t like being abrupt with him, but she didn’t want to get into a long-drawn-out conversation either. She was exhausted from not sleeping well the previous night. Unfortunately, when she reached her floor, she had a bit of bad luck. She had run into Lesley and had had to have a conversation about Rothman and Yamamoto. Curious if Lesley had any interesting thoughts, Pia had tolerated the chat, but after ten minutes or so, when it was evident Lesley was not about to add anything significant, Pia broke it off.
Pia put the key in the lock and opened her door, walked in, and hooked the door with her right heel to slam it shut. In complete darkness, she felt the wall with her left hand to find the light switch and flicked it on. With her right hand she tossed her keys in the general direction of the desk. All Pia wanted to do was take a quick shower before going to bed. She’d been on the go all day and tomorrow wasn’t going to be any quieter with a planned visit to the OCME.
Pia walked over to the window and closed the blinds. She took off her lab coat and tossed it over the arm of her reading chair. Next she removed her sweater and laid it on top of the jacket. She opened her closet door and kicked her shoes directly inside, first the left, then the right. Next she shucked off her black skirt and then her bra and let them fall to the floor. Pia couldn’t wait to get into a hot shower. She put her hand on the bathroom door and thought it was odd that it was closed—she never closed the bathroom door, even when she was using the toilet.
Before Pia could process another thought, the door was yanked open away from her and the handle wrenched out of her hand. A tall figure materialized in the doorway and put the heel of his hand on Pia’s breastbone and pushed her hard to the ground. Pia’s head snapped back and smacked against the floor. A reflex cry rose in her throat, but it was choked off by the man, who was straddling her now with his knees on her arms, his left hand over her mouth. Pia tried to clear her head, but her ears were ringing. The man kneeling on her was wearing a balaclava, and she could see a second figure, obscured by the first. He was also hooded. Both wore hospital security uniforms.
The first man struggled to keep Pia still. He reached behind him with his right hand and the second man handed him a roll of duct tape. The first man looked back again and waved the tape.
“Cut me a piece,” he said in heavily accented English, and his colleague obliged. He freed Pia’s mouth, took the strip of tape in both hands, and clamped it down over Pia’s mouth before she could let out more than a stifled screech.
“Stop moving. We’re not going to hurt you,” the first man said. Pia wriggled once more but stopped. She was struggling to get enough oxygen through her nose and her head was throbbing where she had hit it on the floor. Her arms were getting numb where the man was kneeling on them. She looked into his eyes and nodded.
“Okay. I’m going to let you up. Don’t do anything stupid.”
The man got to his feet, digging his knees into the fleshy part of Pia’s arms as he did so. He stood back and she got up. She felt small. She was wearing only a pair of panties, and even though they were wearing balaclavas, she knew the eyes of the two men were moving up and down her body. She was going to be raped, she was certain. Pia raised her arms to rub her sore triceps and cover her breasts.
Pia thought, It’s only ten feet to the door.
Pia thought, They’re not expecting me to do anything.
Pia thought, I don’t want to be raped. Not again.
Pia looked from one man to the other and then down at the floor. She wanted them to relax, even slightly. Then she got up on her tiptoes, tapped her right foot on the floor behind her, and in one move, using her arms first for balance and then for forward thrust, she drove her right foot heel-first into the front man’s groin. He doubled over and staggered back and into his colleague, and Pia stood square at once, moved forward and reached over and hit the second man in the face twice, boxing jabs that fit the narrow space she was in. Both men were hurt but not enough. Pia got in a couple more kicks that would leave bruises, but the two men quickly regained momentum and charged her. The first man, his groin aflame, feinted a couple of times, then smashed Pia in the jaw with a right hook, knocking her unconscious.
When Pia woke up her head hurt like hell, and she couldn’t move her limbs. She understood why: She was duct-taped to her chair, her arms bound behind her and her ankles fixed together. Pia’s eyes were barely open, but she could make out one of the men coming toward her, his arm moving back and then quickly forward. She flinched, then took a face-full of cold water that the man had thrown over her using the Tupperware container she sometimes fixed oatmeal in.
“That’s what you do when I say do nothing stupid, huh?” The man’s concealed face was very close to hers. His blue eyes bored into Pia’s. She tried to speak, or at least snort.
“You are a good fighter, but we are more experienced, and there are two of us. We have respect for you because we are family men. But we know some young men who are less, what is the word? Civilized. They are, in fact, animals. If they were here now and not us, then God help you.”
The man was speaking in a whisper. The fight and the overturned furniture that resulted had prompted the upstairs neighbor to bang on her floor to ask for quiet. The men didn’t want to try the neighbor’s patience.
“I say this only once. We are here to give you a message. Stop what you are doing. Stop asking questions. Your doctor was careless and got himself and the other doctor infected, and he put the whole medical center in a compromised position. It will be dealt with quickly and quietly and everyone will move on.”
Pia was rocking back and forth in her chair, her eyes w
ide with fury. It was her rebelliousness surfacing.
“Stop rocking!”
Pia didn’t stop. The man slapped her in the face, not hard but well placed enough to make her jaw throb even more severely than it had been. Pia sat still.
“You will be watched. Not by us, by our friends. If you keep meddling, if you call the police, our other friends, the animals, will come and take you away and you will ask them to kill you after a couple of days. You will beg them. You understand?”
Pia stared at the man. He moved even closer than before and the rough material of the balaclava touched her skin. She could feel his hot breath through the damp wool. He spoke in barely a whisper.
“You understand?”
Pia waited a beat, then nodded.
“You will tell no one we were here. If you talk with anyone here, like that boy you are with, they will be killed too. If you go to the police or the medical authorities, you will be killed. It’s easy. Just stop, go about your life, and all this goes away.”
The man stood up. His colleague stepped forward and jabbed the needle of a syringe hard into Pia’s thigh. She gasped at the pain, then fell unconscious almost at once. The men tore off the duct tape binding her, leaving her skin red and swollen where it had been in contact with the tape. When they pulled the tape from her mouth it tugged at the wound on her jaw and further opened a tear in her lip. Blood trickled down her chin. The first man wiped it off with a tissue he got from a box on Pia’s dresser. He pocketed it after using it. He picked her up and laid her on the bed with her head over the side. He knew that the drug he’d given her had the tendency to cause vomiting.
The men removed their balaclavas and prepared to leave. If Pia had been conscious she would have seen at once that the face of one of the men, the leader, was marked with a cleft lip. The other man had a peculiarly and memorably pointed nose. The first man cracked the door open and, seeing an empty hall, quickly exited the room, followed by the second man. They put on their official hats and, adjusting their uniforms, made their way quickly to the stairs.
38.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
NEW YORK CITY
MARCH 25, 2011, 8:07 A.M.
Pia woke up in stages. First, when it was still night, she skimmed the surface of consciousness but quickly fell back into the darkness. Then, later, it had become light outside, and she was aware of her own breathing and a sharp pain in the back of her head and a throbbing along her jaw. Finally, she awoke and was hysterical—there were men in her room, chasing after her, she had to get away. She tried to get up, but her body wasn’t obeying her commands. She slumped back on the bed and closed her eyes.
Then she remembered. Men had been hiding in her bathroom and had attacked her. The last thing she remembered was getting jabbed with a needle. She felt her leg at that spot, and it was sore. She looked down at the puncture wound. So she had been drugged, and hit. No wonder she felt so bad. She reached down and felt between her legs: nothing; she experienced a modicum of relief.
Dazed with the fog of her drug hangover, Pia was unsure of what to do. Her mind clicked over to George. Pia remembered the conversation they’d had in front of the elevator, the confessions George made to her and the look on his face when Pia said she wasn’t thinking about those kinds of things right now. Last night she wanted George to leave her alone; now she wished he were here with her.
As the drug gradually started to wear off, the pain in Pia’s jaw intensified. She stood up. She was dizzy. She managed to get herself into the bathroom. She looked at her face in the mirror, and it was a mess. A livid red welt with a small laceration covered much of the left-hand side along the jawline. Pia’s lip was swollen and bloody, and there were red marks where the duct tape used to gag her had ripped at her skin. She remembered the fight, how she’d kicked one of the men in the groin and been smashed in the face in return. Pia leaned in and looked at her eyes. She saw that they were puffy and ringed with dark circles. She hadn’t had a normal good night’s sleep in an age. Being unconscious for hours didn’t count. Pia looked at herself again and hoped to get an answer to the question: What was she going to do now?
She washed her face with cold water and took a long, hot shower. She put on her most comfortable sweatshirt and pajama pants. She located a bottle of Advil in her travel bag and took four tablets, washing them down with two glasses of water. Then she called George on his cell phone. When he didn’t answer, she didn’t leave a message, fearing she wouldn’t be able to say anything coherent. She sent a text message instead: “Something’s happened. Please come over. Urgent. P.”
Pia lay down on the bed and waited.
George’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He hung back a little from the group doing radiology rounds and read the message. He had a coffee break coming up, and he figured he could wait until then to reply. Pia had probably found a way of indicting someone else in her conspiracy theory, and he had been enjoying being a regular medical student for the last couple of hours. George put the phone back in his pocket and caught up with his group.
George called Pia after finishing a cup of coffee in the X-ray technician lounge. It was 9:45. At first, George thought he had a bad connection because he couldn’t understand what Pia was saying. He moved out of the room with its background chatter, into a corridor, and stood by a window.
“Pia, can you hear me? You’re very faint. What is it?”
What Pia was trying to say was “Please can you come to my room?” But it didn’t sound like that at first.
“Say that again, Pia, I can’t understand you.”
Pia repeated herself.
“You want me to come?”
“Yes.”
George was confused by the sound of her voice and wondered if Pia’s state of mind had anything to do with the way their conversation had ended the previous night. It crossed George’s mind that Pia was drunk, but it sounded more like she had a mouth full of cotton.
“Okay, I’ll be right there.”
George asked one of the other students to tell the resident he’d been called away on hospital business and headed to Pia’s room. He found he was less eager to see her than usual. The previous night he’d made a decision, recognizing that he was probably barking up the wrong tree with Pia. George wasn’t confident he could follow through with his decision, but he was going to try. It was for his own peace of mind.
Fifteen minutes later George knocked on Pia’s door. When she opened it and he saw her face, all of his plans, doubts, and recriminations were washed away. He was instantly morphed back into the slavish dog he’d been for three years.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?”
Pia shook her head and pointed to her jaw. George fetched Pia’s desk chair and sat her down.
“Take your time, tell me what happened.”
“There were two men in my room. Last night,” Pia said. She spoke slowly and deliberately.
“Last night? This was last night? Why didn’t you call?”
“They drugged me. I just woke up.”
“Jesus. Who were these men? What did they do? Did they . . . ?” George hesitated, not sure he wanted to hear.
“No, they didn’t rape me, if that’s what you’re asking. They warned me to stay away from the Rothman case.”
“Jesus, Pia. Do you want to lie down?”
“No, I’m okay.”
“I’m going to call security. And then the police.”
“No! Don’t!” Pia said. She shook her head vigorously, an act that hurt a great deal. She was still dazed from the sedative, but the clouds were clearing.
“No security and no police. I have to take what they said seriously. They were waiting for me in my room. They said they’ll be watching me. I mean, they already had been watching me. You see what this means, George? It means I was right. There’s a conspiracy behind Rothman’s and Yamamoto’s deaths.”
“Wait a minute, Pia, slow down,” George said. “These two men, who were i
n your room, who obviously beat you up, they said specifically, ‘Stay away from the Rothman case’?”
“Not like that, but they said it.”
George was horrified, but his first instinct was one of skepticism.
“Did you recognize the men at all?”
“They had ski masks on. But they were dressed as hospital security. Shit, George, maybe they were hospital security, you know? That would mean the hospital is covering it up. Spaulding, the dean, Springer, all those guys . . .” Pia stood up as if she wanted to flee.
“Oh, come on, Pia. This is New York City. In America. Maybe in a movie or some Third World dictatorship they kill off their own doctors and beat up medical students, but not here. I can’t believe you could think that. Get a grip.”
“Well, someone did this!” Pia said, pointing at her face, shaking, partly with rage, partly with fear. “I know what institutions can do, George, what people can do to someone they’re supposed to be looking after. If you grew up in the system I grew up in, maybe you’d be a little more cynical. I know one thing: Everyone has their own agenda. If you’re in the way, things like this happen to you.” Pia sobbed once and her shoulders heaved.
“Okay, Pia.” George stood and reached out to Pia, and she went into his arms. He held her tightly.
“I think we should call the police. You need an ambulance as well—”
“No!” Pia pushed George away. “I need to think about what this means. If we call the police, they’ll call the administration and security here, and for all I know, they were the ones who attacked me. I need to think.” Pia grabbed both sides of her head and shook herself. “The drug, I can’t think straight.”
“Maybe we should go to my room,” George said.
“They know all about you, George. It won’t be any safer there. They won’t do anything now, I’m just sitting in my room.”
George looked around. “You think they’re watching you that closely?”