Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness (9 page)

Ladarat sighed, pushing the pile of guidelines away from her. These would wait.

“So tell me,” Sisithorn said, “about the American man. Will he survive?” She helped herself to the curry.

“It is bad luck to speculate about such things,” Ladarat told her, a little more severely than she’d intended.

She tried a couple of spoonfuls of the soup. Ahh, very good. Just spicy enough, and sour enough to make your mouth water.

“Besides,” she said more softly, “it is impossible to know such a thing so soon. Instead, the real question we should be asking right now is…”

“How to help the family,” Sisithorn said promptly.

“Exactly so. We cannot do anything more to help the man, Mr. Fuller. But we can certainly help his family.”

“But what sort of help do they need?” the girl asked. “Of course we should make them comfortable, as guests. But they are waiting, the same as us. Surely we can’t help prepare them for his death, because we don’t know if he will live or not. So what can we do?”

Sisithorn wasn’t being argumentative, Ladarat knew. She was genuinely confused. She sighed. So clever, but she couldn’t put herself in the position of other people. She couldn’t experience true compassion.

“Ah, but that is where you are wrong. They are in a strange place, with no one they know,” she explained patiently.

Sisithorn nodded uncertainly.

“Imagine… Imagine you are in… Chicago. And you are with a loved one who is very sick and in the hospital. You don’t know anybody else. And you don’t speak the language. You have no idea what is happening. What would you want? What would help you?”

“
Gang keow wan?
” She smiled.

Thinking back on her year in Chicago, and the sterile hospital cafeteria with its casseroles and meatloaf and mashed potatoes, Ladarat had to smile, too. A little
gang keow wan
would have made her year much more bearable.

“But what else?”

“Ah, I would want… someone to talk to.”

“But not just anyone, yes? You would want…”

“A friend.”

Ladarat nodded. “Exactly so. You would want a friend.”

Sisithorn thought about that for a full minute as she progressed from the curry to the soup.

“But how do we find them a friend?” she asked finally. “Much less a friend who is an American like them?”

“We don’t find them a friend, exactly. No one can do that. But we can visit often. We can help them get their questions answered. Americans, remember, want to be in control. They want information. They want people to be telling them what is going on.”

“Even if there is nothing they can do?”

“Especially then.”

“That is… strange.”

Ladarat shrugged. “Perhaps. But it is normal for them, just as it is normal for us to defer to the physician. Anyway,” she concluded, “we do what they expect. What they need. We help them get information. And slowly they will come to appreciate having us there. We still won’t be friends, but we will be helpful in that way.”

“I see,” Sisithorn said, smiling as if to say she most certainly didn’t see. But that was all right. She would take her assistant with her to see the Fullers after lunch.

They talked about other things—the other patients and issues and, of course, the inspections, until finally, triumphantly, Sisithorn unpacked the last item from the plastic bag at her elbow. Proudly, but nervously, she unwrapped her offering. She held out a small package, wrapped in a banana leaf.

Ladarat’s favorite:
kanom maprao
. A soft, fantastically rich coconut cake made with coconut milk and shaved coconut. More like custard, it was creamy and sweet with clumps of coconut that would surprise you.

“I know you like this,” Sisithorn said simply.

“Thank you, you are most kind.” She took one of the three pieces and Sisithorn took the second. That was very thoughtful. And perceptive. How had Sisithorn known that the cake was her favorite sweet? Ladarat couldn’t remember ever discussing such a thing. Yet Sisithorn must have paid attention. She must have noticed. She was indeed very good at noticing things.

Ladarat had observed that talent in the past. Like when that Frenchman last month was confused and disoriented, it was Sisithorn, and not Ladarat or even the doctors, who noticed that he got worse whenever his girlfriend came to visit. (It turned out that she’d been bringing him heroin that he’d inject into his legs.)

“I’m so glad you like them. Please, have the last one,” the girl said.

“No, thank you. You should have it.”

“No, I insist.” She wrapped it up and pushed it across the desk, smiling shyly. “Or then you should save it. It will keep.”

Ladarat agreed that it would. And she thought that it would be exactly what she’d need later in the afternoon, as she was struggling to finish reviewing all of the hospital guidelines.

“So now we’ll go see the American family. We will do our best to make sure their questions are answered.”

“And Kate and I will be… like friends,” Sisithorn added.

TOMORROW IS NOT USUALLY ANOTHER DAY

T
hat was perhaps easier said than done. Mrs. Kate Fuller was not in her room, and so they went looking for her in the ICU, where they found her with her husband’s parents in the waiting room. As it had been yesterday, the waiting room was almost empty. And the mysterious man, she noted, was nowhere to be seen.

Truth be told, Ladarat was relieved that the man had not made an appearance. She had too much on her mind, and too much to be nervous about already. Like this meeting with the Fullers. She would address the problem of the mysterious man tomorrow. Now, she needed to focus all of her attention on what was likely to be a very difficult conversation.

The Fullers had colonized the corner of the waiting room that was nearest to the double sliding doors that led to the ICU, and they had completely rearranged it. They’d brought two rows of six connected seats together in a “V” that provided them with a little private seating area, but which effectively reduced the seating available for others. It was not a crisis, as Sisithorn would say, since there were still seats available. And few people. But it was not polite. And Sisithorn looked genuinely surprised. She seemed to be on the verge of saying something as they approached the group, but Ladarat reminded her that the Americans had different customs.

“In America,” she said preemptively, “such behavior is not unusual. Americans will often rearrange the world to suit themselves.”

Sisithorn nodded uncertainly.

As they drew closer, she could see that the elder Mr. Fuller was reviewing a pile of papers that he held on his lap. He seemed to be trying to sort them, imposing some sort of order. His organizational efforts puzzled her, though. As she got close enough, she saw that they were all in Thai. Could he read Thai? She doubted it. And yet he was shuffling the papers into an order that must have made sense to him.

Sisithorn was hanging back, perhaps drawing some of the same conclusions. And presumably, she was also confused by those conclusions. But no matter. This, at least, was something they could help with.

The two women looked up as they approached and offered passable
wais
—Kate seated in her wheelchair, and Mrs. Fuller standing to greet them. Mr. Fuller barely looked up and offered them something that—charitably—might be counted as a nod.

It was Kate who explained that her father-in-law was trying to make sense of Andrew’s medical charts. She didn’t need to explain that those notes were entirely in Thai. The elder Mr. Fuller’s frustrated expression and the vigor with which he was shuffling papers made that abundantly clear.

After introductions, it was her assistant, much to Ladarat’s surprise, who broke the silence.

“Has there been any change?” Sisithorn was looking at the elder Mr. Fuller, as if she was trying to engage him as the most important person there. That was clever. Very clever. Although Ladarat would have preferred it if her assistant had allowed her to speak first. That would have been more proper.

The elder Mr. Fuller shook his head and continued shuffling papers. But then he paused, looking up and seeing them, it seemed, for the first time. That was when he turned to Sisithorn, handing her the top paper in the stack.

“Can you read this?”

Sisithorn paused for a moment, her mouth open in an “O” of surprise. Then she smiled a thin, brittle smile that was perhaps best translated as:
Yim mee lessanai
, the sort of smile that hides wicked thoughts.

Or more specifically: “I’m an assistant nurse ethicist at one of the best hospitals in Thailand and you’re asking me if I can read?”

So Ladarat interjected, before they could get off on the wrong foot. She was the one in charge, after all, and she shot Sisithorn a reproving glance.

“We’re not doctors,” she said. “So we may not be able to explain what everything means. But we could translate, if that would help?”

Mr. Fuller nodded. “They’re giving us an official summary translation later today, but I thought… well… I thought that there might be more detail here.”

So Sisithorn and Ladarat joined the three in the little “V” that the Americans had created. Mr. and Mrs. Fuller sat on one side, and Sisithorn and Ladarat on the other, with Kate in her wheelchair in the opening between them, closing the triangle. Sisithorn and Ladarat took the pile of papers between them and shuffled the pages into some semblance of chronological order. As they did, Mr. Fuller took out a yellow legal pad, and turned to a fresh page.

Oh dear. What if she said something that Khun Suphit, the director, would object to? What if she made a mistake?

“We can translate,” Ladarat offered, “but we can’t tell you what some of these things mean. Their… significance.”

Mr. Fuller nodded. “Anything would be helpful, I guess.”

She and Sisithorn put the stack of papers between them and took turns pulling sheets from the file. First one, then the other, they walked the Americans through what had happened to Andrew in the past three days.

“This,” Ladarat said carefully, “is the admission note from Sunday.” The three Americans were watching her intently, and Mr. Fuller’s hand began to write. She hoped she didn’t say anything that was wrong. She hoped even more that Sisithorn would be careful.

“This describes some of his injuries. His pelvis was broken in three places, it says. And his right femur. The CT scan says he has a hematoma—a collection of blood—in the capsule around his liver. That sometimes happens with trauma.” She scanned the rest of the report.

“There are other small things,” she concluded, “but those seem to be the main problems.”

“But what about his brain?” Mr. Fuller asked.

Ladarat looked to Sisithorn, who was holding the neurologist’s report. She looked at Ladarat nervously and Ladarat nodded. She could trust Sisithorn not to say anything that was insensitive.

“This is the neurologist’s report from yesterday,” Sisithorn said. “The neurologist is Dr. Ratana. It talks about the CT scan that they did, and his own exam. It is a summary, you understand?” The three Americans nodded.

“Dr. Ratana describes… what happened to Mr. Fuller, from the reports available.” She looked up cautiously at the ladies and especially at the elder Mr. Fuller. She seemed to decide that a review of those details would be too painful.

“He describes those events,” she repeated lamely. “And then he describes Mr. Fuller’s neurological status when he arrived here.”

“Keep in mind,” Ladarat interjected, “that these findings are a day old. They don’t include… changes”—she almost said “improvements”—“that might have happened since then.”

The Americans nodded. No doubt they’d heard some version of that before. That was yesterday, but tomorrow is another day, as they are fond of saying in the United States.

Of course, tomorrow is not really another day. Usually tomorrow is just another version of yesterday, with slightly different weather and new lottery numbers. But if you’re an American, she knew, then sunrise was a promise that anything could happen.

Sisithorn looked at her, then at the Americans. Then she began to read again, picking through the information as one might pick through
som tam
—green papaya salad—looking for the crunchiest bits of fruit while avoiding the fiery chilies.

She described the CT scan results: Skull fractured along the parietal bones, at the top of the head. Also a fracture of the orbit, around the right eye. The jaw was broken and needed to be wired in place.

And the brain. This is what the Americans would want to know about. Always so worried about brain function. Although, if you asked her, it seemed that many Americans didn’t use their brains for much of anything that was important. Still, it would be important to these three people sitting in front of her. Sisithorn seemed to know that, so her description was particularly careful.

“With respect to the brain,” she began slowly after reading the entire next paragraph to herself, “there is little visible trauma. There is some clotted blood in the anterior sulcus of the parietal lobe, consistent with a subdural hematoma. That means the blood is inside the lining that protects the brain,” she explained. “But it says that there is no other sign of injury.”