Doing Harm (42 page)

I must look pretty miserable, because Jason’s expression softens, and he sighs. “Look. I’ll admit that when you texted me earlier today, my first instinct was to lie to you, deny everything, and run screaming in the opposite direction. But the security geek in me was wondering how you knew what you knew. And, besides—you’re my friend. I didn’t want to lie.”

With a joyful shriek, Jason’s son suddenly launches himself through the open doorway and into his father’s lap. Laughing and struggling to maintain his balance in the office chair, Jason hugs him.

During this momentary, and fortuitous, distraction, Jason doesn’t notice as I reach around to the back of his computer and retrieve my portable keystroke logger from the USB port I had surreptitiously connected it to shortly after my arrival. A little guiltily, knowing that I’ll now be able to retrieve his login code to access the video files, I slip the keystroke logger into my pocket. Even though GG has already altered the videos, those files might yet come in handy.

Jason tousles his son’s hair and kisses him on top of the head before turning his attention back to me. He reaches over and places a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “But Steve. You have to understand:
We absolutely, positively never had this conversation
. You never saw this video. I’m going to come up with a legitimate reason for accessing this file, something that’ll cover my ass with the Security folks. In the meantime, I think it’s best if you and I just avoid each other completely for the next several weeks.”

*   *   *

A short time later, as I crack open a beer from my fridge and collapse on the couch, I wonder how my M.D. will look on my Starbucks job application. I should have known that it wouldn’t be that easy; that if GG was using the security cameras to track me in the SICU, she would have taken precautions to erase any and all trace of her presence on them. She clearly altered the tape.

I pull
Eye in the Sky
from my back pocket, where I’ve been carrying it all day, and flip the pages idly. Why would Luis send me to a hijacked server in Eastern Europe but not give me a way to access it? And is the server really linked to the SICU security cameras? Or to something else entirely?

I take a sip of beer and turn through the book again … then freeze at the inside of the back cover.

My heart skips—no, leaps over—a beat.

In the back cover of the book, handwritten in small, neat lettering, so small that I had missed it before, is a single sentence written in Russian. I’m a little rusty, so I have to go dig my old English-Russian translation book out of the basement before I’m able to translate the whole thing.

If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

It’s something else Luis had said to me that night on Dan’s porch. I pull out my laptop, and a quick Google search identifies the author of the quote: T. S. Eliot. It has to be a clue; another link to a compartmentalized piece of information, perhaps even the access code to the Web site.

Okay, so then, if it really is another clue, what’s the connection between T. S. Eliot and a funky science-fiction author who wrote about alternate realities? I pass the next several hours wading through the collected works of T. S. Eliot, trying to figure it out. A number of intriguing possibilities pop up.
The Waste Land. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The Hollow Men. Murder in the Cathedral.
I hunt for clues in the text, but find none. Or, maybe, I find too many—the problem is that T. S. Eliot’s work is so ambiguous, so rife with symbolism, that every line is pregnant with alternate meanings. Certainly there’s nothing pointing me in the direction of how to crack the Web site password.

The empty beer bottles pile up as quickly as do my frustration and dejection.
Hopeless. This whole fucking situation is hopeless.
I’m getting absolutely nowhere. And I feel so …
alone
right now. It would be nice to have someone to confide in. But Luis is dead. And Sally, of course, due back tomorrow afternoon from Providence with Katie and Annabelle, is out of the question. Jason has, for the time being at least, disavowed me. I can’t confide in Dan or any of the other doctors at University Hospital because they’ll just think I’m a lunatic.

I have no proof and, as far as I can tell, zero options.

Fucking hopeless.

I keep drinking.

*   *   *

I’m sitting in an exam room in clinic. Standing next to me is Mrs. Samuelson. Mr. Abernathy sits across from us, begging me to please help him with his
goddamned
prostate.

Upon hearing this, Mrs. Samuelson places her hands on her stout hips and screams at me,
Goddammit, Mr. Abernathy killed Jap bastards in the Pacific for snot-nosed little shits like you back in the Big One so why don’t you do something about his goddamned prostrate already?

Then, without waiting for an answer, she strides across the room and hands him a large red pill. It’s the size of a walnut. He shoves it in his mouth and swallows it whole.

I’m cured!
he shouts happily.
I’m finally cured.
He throws his hands up in the air.

He and Mrs. Samuelson hug, then kiss passionately, mouths open and tongues searching, before the scene changes, like a slow dissolve in a movie, and now I’m sitting in the hospital cafeteria with GG and Mrs. Samuelson and the kid who got shot in the penis and testicles. The kid is wearing a hospital gown and is busy changing his colostomy bag while eating scrambled eggs. He beams at me, and says brightly, “I still gots the bag, Doc!”

GG and Mrs. Samuelson nod agreeably. GG grins wickedly, and asks, “If you aren’t in over your head, Steve, how do you know how tall you are?”

Someone taps me roughly on the shoulder. I turn. It’s Mr. Bernard. He’s wearing a hospital gown and standing next to a big IV pole, to which he’s attached by a series of large IV tubes extending out of his neck. An endotracheal tube sticks out of his mouth.

He’s crying.

In one hand he’s holding an IV bag filled with clear fluid and labeled
POTASSIUM
; in the other, he’s holding an identical bag labeled
CEFOTETAN
. He tosses the potassium bag to GG, who catches it effortlessly in her free hand.

GG pops the cap off the nozzle, puts the nozzle to her lips, and starts sucking the clear fluid directly out of the bag. Mr. Bernard offers me the cefotetan bag. I take it with my free hand, and it explodes soundlessly the moment I touch it; but I’m surprised to discover that there’s no liquid in it, so I don’t get wet.

His hands now freed, Mr. Bernard reaches up and pulls the breathing tube out of his throat. The tube issues a nauseating slurping sound as it exits his mouth and drips thick cords of greenish yellow mucous onto the floor. Mr. Bernard points at me and opens his mouth to speak; but instead of his voice, I hear GG’s.

It’s not about the patients. It’s about you,
says Mr. Bernard with GG’s voice. Confused, I look at GG, but she’s still drinking from the IV bag.

You don’t care about making people feel better,
Mr. Bernard/GG continues.
For you, the patients are a means to an end. It’s all about you.

Mrs. Samuelson smiles kindly as the kid with the gunshot wound calmly eats his scrambled eggs with one hand and changes his colostomy bag with the other.

And then I’m awake. I try to sit up, but the room pivots wildly about me. I dully realize that I’m still drunk. The sky outside the window is dark. My head drops heavily back on the pillow, and I’m asleep again within seconds.

CHAPTER 23

Sunday, August 23

It’s really hot this morning. And humid. Especially wearing my tie and dark suit. The stench of spoiled milk—the product of a long-forgotten sippy cup abandoned underneath one of the backseats, maybe—wraps around me like a sour, stifling blanket. But I keep the windows up and the air-conditioning off. Beads of sweat gather on my nose and upper lip before leaping into space toward my lap; others slide down from my armpits, racing each other toward my hips in snaky trails running along my sides.

I find the rancid heat pleasant. It’s cleansing somehow, like being in a sauna and sweating off a bad hangover. Which is exactly what I feel like I’m doing, although by now the pounding, full-blown riot in my head I woke up with this morning has quieted to a relatively tame civil disturbance, and the ibuprofen and orange Gatorade—the only inhabitants of my otherwise empty stomach—have reached an uneasy truce as I glide through the light morning traffic toward my destination.

I’m not really sure what I’m doing. I mean, I know where I’m going. I’m just not sure exactly why I’m going there. All I’m certain of is that I woke up this morning with an urgency that cut decisively through the painful haze of my hangover, a profound sense of … unfinished business. And so now I’m driving, my errand inspired less by a coherent plan of action and more by some subconscious desire to complete a task left undone.

I wipe the sweat from my brow and sigh resignedly. I’ve decided to tell Dr. Collier everything tomorrow morning. Mr. Bernard. Mrs. Samuelson. GG. Luis. The safe deposit box. The Web site. The book. I can’t take the chance that, while I’m struggling to decipher Luis’s final cryptic messages, GG kills again.

I don’t have a shred of proof for a story that is, to say the very least, implausible, so telling Dr. Collier will pretty much mean the end of everything that’s important to me, everything I’ve spent the last thirteen years of my life working toward. But the alternative—another patient’s death on my conscience—would be even worse. Much worse. My only hope is that my self-immolation will bring down enough unwanted attention on GG’s head that she’s never able to kill again. Like a cockroach scurrying for cover from the kitchen light, she’ll have to abandon her plans for fear of being caught. Cold comfort, but it’s all I have. I think that it might be enough.

And, of course, if I’m confessing to Dr. Collier, there’s another person in my life with whom I’m going to have to come clean. For everything.

Sally.

I grip the steering wheel harder and clench my jaw.

That
I can’t even think about yet.

When I reach the funeral home, I park and join a trickle of elderly people shuffling into a modestly appointed building with a faux white colonial front decorated with fake white shutters and Roman columns with peeling paint. In the cramped lobby, an old sign with plastic white letters pushed into a black felt background directs me into a room decorated with cheap imitation wood paneling stapled to the walls and faded maroon shag carpeting. I take a seat near the back, balancing myself carefully on one of the rickety white folding chairs that are set out in neat rows. The other guests don’t so much as even glance in my direction.

The memorial service is short, simple, and to the point. The minister, an energetic-appearing, cherubic guy barely older than I, talks about pride and loss and pain, and commitment and sacrifice and redemption. I listen quietly but intently, my hands folded in my lap.

“The eternal God is thy refuge,” the minister finishes, “and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

After the service, I wait patiently in the receiving line for my turn to pay my respects to the family. When I finally reach her, I extend my hand and smile. The smile comes naturally. It feels good. It’s the first time I’ve smiled like that in weeks.

“Hi, Mrs. Abernathy. I’m Dr. Mitchell.”

Mrs. Abernathy gently wraps both of her gnarled hands, savaged by time and arthritis, around my single outstretched one. They feel soft and warm and wise. She smiles. She’s wearing yellowed dentures. She introduces me to the minister, who’s standing next to her, as
Ray’s favorite doctor.

Although I don’t know how often doctors go to their patient’s funerals, he doesn’t seem the least bit surprised to see me. He squeezes my hand, and says, “How good of you to come.”

“That was, um, a nice service,” I observe awkwardly. “I liked that last quote, about God’s being a refuge.”

“Oh, yes. Thank you.” He smiles serenely. “
The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
An oft-overlooked verse, but one of my favorites. Deuteronomy. Chapter 33, verse 27.”

“Yes, well, very … uh, comforting.”

I stroll out to the parking lot, thinking idly about the quote.
Deuteronomy.
The word conjures a happier time at the beginning of the summer, when Sally and I were celebrating in our kitchen, with me drinking that fantastic bottle of wine as we reminisced about our long-ago trip to San Francisco. When we had seen
Cats,
and Sally had reminded me that Deuteronomy was the only character I had related to in the entire show because it reminded me of T. S. Eliot’s poetry …

It hits me like a brace of cold water in the face. I stop with my hand on the car door.

T. S. Eliot
.

Cats.

I never sleep very well in the hospital. That fucking kitten in the call room always messes with my mind.

Makes you wonder what’s behind it, doesn’t it?

I suppress an idiotic urge to slap myself on the forehead. Could that be the connection? Could it really be that easy?

I jump in my car and break about twenty different traffic laws speeding to University Hospital.

*   *   *

They’ve cleaned the call room since Luis died. The bright yellow police tape draped across the door is gone. They’ve installed a brand-new bunk bed, and the bed linens, imprinted with the University Hospital logo, are crisp and clean and look like they’ve never been used even once. Which I’m sure they haven’t—the word is that all of the residents are too freaked out to use this call room anymore. The rest of the room has undergone a similar makeover: The sink has been scoured, the windows washed, and the formerly dusty walls scrubbed clean.

But the poster of the kitten hanging on the clothesline remains. I make straight for it and, planting myself in front of it, size it up. The kitten glares insolently back.