14

I thought I was in luck. The black woman, Savannah, was in sole possession of the counter. She recognized me and smiled.

“Still here?” she inquired.

“Would you know where I could find a guy named Peña? Anesthesiologist?”

Barbara, the dragon lady, came up behind me and cleared her throat to let me know she was in charge.

“Hi,” I managed pleasantly. “An anesthesiologist named Peña, would you know where I might find him?”

“Dr. Peña?” It was more a correction than a question.

“Doctor,” I agreed, perhaps with less than the proper reverence.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said disapprovingly.

The young black woman piped up with, “I saw Pablo about ten minutes ago in the lounge on the fourth floor. Drinking coffee. Big dark-skinned guy, kind of vague-looking.”

“Thanks,” I said, regretting the dragon lady’s untimely return. “Appreciate it.” I left without asking the black woman her last name. I figured she was in enough trouble, first-naming a doctor.

Pablo. Pablo Peña. On the whole, I thought his parents should have considered a different choice. On the other hand, they could have christened him Pedro, which would have been worse.

People like me, cursed with alliterative names, think about stuff like that in elevators. Sandra Everett had no such problem. I decided Everett was probably her married name. She was the kind who’d keep it for the kids’ sake. I’d never taken my ex-husband’s name, even though it would have moved me out of the alliterative ranks.

I roamed the fourth floor in search of something resembling a lounge. I couldn’t wander far; JHHI was housed in a tall building, but not a large one. I strolled past another roped-off construction area with a sign that read: PLEASE EXCUSE OUR APPEARANCE. A RENOVATED JHHI TO SERVE YOU BETTER! The pharmacy seemed to take up more than a quarter of the floor space. I wondered at its location. More convenient on the ground level, I’d have thought. But then, old buildings rarely seem designed with human needs in mind. The pharmacy looked busy and efficient. One line of customers stood at a counter to hand in prescriptions and another waited by a register to pay. A stream of white- or green-clad individuals bypassed the civilian queues and went about their business behind the counters, in a warren of rows and shelves and refrigeration units.

Hank Renzel was nowhere in sight, but then I wouldn’t expect the Chief of Pharmacy to hold down some front-desk clerical position or count out pills.

As long as I kept up a purposeful stride no one challenged my right to pass. I kept walking, not wishing to endanger my status by asking for directions.

I did a perimeter search, then picked a bisecting hallway.

Four small tables and a collection of vending machines behind a partially closed curtain made up the lounge. It was deserted except for a man who matched Savannah’s description. His hospital greens were wrinkled and stained, and a surgical mask drooped below his chin. He rested his elbows on a table, his head in his hands.

“Dr. Peña?” He wasn’t that dark. More the color of heavily creamed coffee.

He didn’t lift his head. “What?”

“Dr. Muir said I’d find you here.” Since I was planning to lie anyway, I thought I might as well start by dropping a name that would carry weight.

“Muir? What’s he want?” Peña muttered in hardly the awed tone I’d come to expect. He had no trace of an accent.

“He said you wouldn’t mind speaking with me. I won’t take much of your time.”

He finally glanced up at me and Sandy awarded him her very best smile. He reached to straighten a nonexistent tie. Pure reflex action.

“Time, I’ve got. Sit down.” He stared at his watch. “I’m on for another six.”

“Six hours?”

“Thirty down, six to go.”

“You want a cup of coffee?”

“Nah. I forget whether I’m tired or not after the first twenty-four. It’s better that way.”

Sandy giggled. I let her. Me, I never giggle.

“What did Muir send you for? See if my health insurance is paid up?”

“He said you’d give me a good quote. I can see why. You’re funny.”

“He said that?”

“Not exactly.”

“I’m surprised he knew I was on duty.”

“I got the impression he took a personal interest in the staff.”

“Look, he’s great. I’m tired. Way past tired. It’s just—”

“Just?”

“I mean, I heard so much about him. Before. I guess nobody could live up to press like that. Greatest doc in the world, you know, and all he does is worry about the building fund. What do you want to talk to me about?”

I handed over another of Sandy’s phony business cards. I don’t know why, but cards seem to inspire confidence. “I’m writing a story about a little girl who died here.”

“You’re from a newspaper? And they let you in?”

“I’m a personal friend of Dr. Muir’s,” I said. I sound much more convincing when I lie than when I tell the truth.

“Oops,” he said.

“Oh, I’d never repeat what you just said to Jerome. I mean, no one would trust me if I gossiped, would they?”

“Well, what do you wanna know? A lot of kids die.” His voice was flat and uninterested. His words about kids dying—well, he could have been talking about plants wilting or rain falling.

“The girl’s name was Rebecca Woodrow. I’m doing a feature story about her last day.”

“She spent it here? Too bad. She should have gone to the beach.”

“It was January.”

“She should have stayed home, then.”

“You remember her?”

“You want coffee?”

“If you have a cup, I’ll have one.”

He patted all his pockets and looked bewildered and vague, and I wound up buying the two plastic foam containers of brown liquid.

A uniform, even just hospital greens, makes it hard to get a fix on somebody. His watch was good, but not flashy. Probably something he needed for work, an accurate watch with a sweep second hand. He wore paper hospital slippers, so I couldn’t use his shoes to figure his financial worth or fashion flair. He was a big guy, even sitting down. Maybe six-two or six-three. Twenty pounds overweight. He had a habit of licking his lips.

“You remember Rebecca Woodrow?” I asked when I’d sipped enough coffee to regret buying it.

“It’s a big place.”

“How big?”

“Two hundred and twelve beds.”

“That’s not huge.”

“I put ’em to sleep and wake ’em up.”

“This one didn’t wake up.”

“I don’t remember names.”

“A six-year-old girl. In for chemotherapy.”

“You’re talking to the wrong person. I don’t supervise chemo. Nurses handle that.” His eyes were almost closed, his speech faintly slurred, as if he couldn’t make the effort to be more precise.

“Have you slept lately?”

“Twenty minutes here, half an hour there. I’m fine, really.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Muir send you to check up on me?”

“No.”

“I got less than a year to go and then I’m out in practice.”

“You’re not a real doctor yet?”

“Of course I’m real. I’m just not paid like I’m real yet, okay?”

“I thought this wasn’t a teaching hospital.”

“It’s private, but even private places take in a few residents. They need to. Time I’m putting in, I’m probably earning a buck an hour. System’s built on slave labor.”

I drank bad coffee and let him talk.

“Guys collecting the fees and the guys putting in the hours, they’re two different sets of people,” he complained.

“Paying your dues,” I suggested.

“Yeah, and when I’m out of here, you think I’ll be able to cash in the chips? Hell, it’ll be National Health by then. These old guys, they did a number. Milked the system so bad, the rest of us are gonna pay. If I’d done an MBA, a lousy MBA, I’d be rolling by now. Kids five years younger than me got houses and two BMWs, and I’m working my butt off.”

“You’re a specialist. Aren’t specialists well paid?”

“Oh, yeah, and now the government’s coming in to tell me what to do, how to treat a patient, how long a patient can stay in the goddamn hospital, and setting my fee wherever some clerk outa high school thinks it ought to be. It’s the damn DRGs.”

“DRGs. Is that, like, drugs?”

“DRGs. Diagnostic-related groupings. Fitting a patient into a diagnosis, and getting paid based on which grouping you plug them into, like all people only have one thing wrong with them at a time.”

He still hadn’t made much eye contact, but his voice wasn’t a monotone any longer. “Bunch of legislative lawyers,” he went on. “They hate doctors. Screwing the whole system and it’s just gonna get worse. Bureaucrats’ll take the money, and the patients’ll end up worse off than ever. It’s not doctors, it’s technology. It’s tests. It’s machines. Own the machines and the technology, you’ve got it made. Me, if I don’t invest, I’m gonna be a wage slave working for some bureaucrat doesn’t even respect what I do.”

“That bad?” I murmured sympathetically.

“And it’s not like there’s no money. You see the construction, like we’ve got to have a new wing and a new garage and a new lab and a helipad on the roof, the whole nine yards. You writing this down? I thought you were a journalist.”

“I’m doing a small story, focusing on this little girl, Rebecca Woodrow. Her mother’s name is Emily. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, that’s what she had. I understand it can be cured.”

“Yeah. Chances are damned good.”

“Rebecca died during chemotherapy treatment.”

“You know what I always say?”

“What?”

“Sleazebags never die. You get some guy in a hospital, some scumball wanted by cops in thirty states, it’s a given: he’ll make it. Sweet little kid, apple of her mama’s eye, she dies during some routine thing. Never fails.”

“This girl was the apple of Mom’s eye, all right. Only child. Wealthy folks. Pretty girl.”

“None of that counts.”

“Would any nurse here be qualified to administer chemotherapy?”

“No, no. Specially trained nurses. Nurse-practitioners.”

“Part of my story involves interviewing the last people to see this girl alive. My editor loves that kind of stuff. Human drama.”

“Glad I don’t have your job,” Peña muttered.

“So I need to interview the nurse who handled the chemo. On a little girl who died suddenly. In January.”

“January,” he repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Beginning of January?”

“Yeah.”

“I suppose it was Tina,” he said as if he were speaking to himself.

“Tina?” I echoed very quietly, not wanting to wake him in case he was talking in his sleep.

“Tina Sukhia. Lovely woman.” He added regretfully, “She doesn’t work here anymore.”

“The dead girl’s mother says a doctor rushed into the room at the end and placed a mask over the girl’s face.” Emily hadn’t mentioned whether or not the stranger was wearing a surgical mask, like the limp green rectangle dangling around Peña’s neck. Surely she would have noted that, a masked man carrying a mask. “Would that doctor have been an anesthesiologist?”

“Might have been. Logical thing to do,” Peña said. “First rule: Establish an airway. Somebody’s not breathing for herself, you do it for her, with a bag and a mask.”

“Do you remember—?”

“Look, lady—I forget your name—”

“Sandy. Sandra.”

“Sandra. You think I’m gonna remember what we talked about in ten minutes, you’re wrong. I’m zonked, see? I need to sleep. Some of the guys, they can take this, and I’m pretty good at taking it too. But the thing you’re talking about happened months ago. I can’t remember if I ate breakfast.”

“Aren’t you worried you’re going to make a mistake?”

“No. No, once I’m working, I’m fine. Adrenaline comes to the old rescue. I know my job. You know how people say ‘I could do that in my sleep’? Well, I can. I can do my job in my sleep. I just forget other things.”

“Like Rebecca Woodrow.”

“I don’t check on the chemo. That’s not what I do.”

“The mother says the man with the mask pushed her, shoved her out of the way.”

“That I’d remember. It definitely wasn’t me. I don’t push mothers around.”

An overhead speaker came to life, announcing “Code Thirty. Code Thirty.” Peña’s beeper emitted sharp little bleats. Then it said, quite clearly, “Code Thirty, room four-oh-two. Code Thirty. Four-oh-two.”

“I gotta go,” Peña said unnecessarily. He was already moving.

I followed, wishing my flats had rubber soles. It was hard to stay silent, but the anesthesiologist was traveling so fast he never glanced behind him.

We shoved through two sets of swinging doors, took two quick turns down featureless corridors. He pushed open a wooden door and entered full tilt.

A glance into the narrow window next to the door, five inches wide, ceiling height, stopped me cold.

The room was crammed, jammed, as crowded as a stateroom in an old Marx Brothers film. Any resemblance to comedy ended there.

I couldn’t see the occupant of the bed, only an extended arm here, a leg there. It must have been a child. The limbs were small.

A thing that looked like a tool chest on wheels, studded with drawers, half of them flung open, blocked part of my view. Plastic tubing curled from one drawer. Clear plastic bags of liquid filled another, bottles and jars a third. The top of the cart was dominated by a machine with complex dials and buttons and a computerlike screen. Paddles grew out of the top. I noticed a metal cylinder strapped to the side of the cart.

A man in a white coat held a bag and a mask near the head of the bed. A hose led from the bag to a wall-mounted spigot.

A woman wearing white slacks repeatedly slapped the back of a small hand, tried to insert an IV needle. On the other side of the bed, a second woman strapped a blood-pressure cuff to a limp arm. A man in greens, not Peña, had a hand where the child’s midsection must have been. He was speaking, but I couldn’t distinguish the words.

There must have been twelve people in the room, not counting the patient. Whatever Emily Woodrow had seen when her daughter died, it couldn’t have been this. Not unless she’d passed out after the first stranger arrived.

I was the sole idle onlooker. Everyone in the room moved with intent, carried out a given task, performed the required steps in some secret ballet.

Peña seemed to take charge. There was nothing sleepy about him as he barked orders, moving more quickly than his bulk should have allowed. A woman handed him a syringe.

Someone was sticking patches, like small round Band-Aids, to areas of the patient’s bare skin. Peña spoke and a woman scrambled to grab the paddles off the cart.

The resident anesthesiologist glanced up suddenly, and his eyes met mine. His mouth moved. A sharp-featured woman began a march to the door.

I turned quickly and ran. My wig felt too tight. It wasn’t until after I’d pressed the down button, after the elevator door had closed behind me, that I recalled the room’s wallpaper: blue, with white latticework and gold flowers.

If all the chemotherapy rooms were outfitted the same, then each had a single wall-mounted spigot. Oxygen, most likely. No way to make a mistake with only one source.

If oxygen was readily available in the rooms, I wondered what was kept in the metal cylinder strapped to the cart.