AN UNACCOUNTABLE ENTHUSIASM FOR DEATH

Mornings really should not be this busy or this complicated. It was only seven o’clock and already Ladarat was exhausted. Chi, however, had discovered a secret source of energy—only accessible to lazy dogs—and was leaping around the backseat of her car as if he were possessed by an energetic Phi Poang Khang, a mischievous black monkey spirit that was widely believed to haunt the forests of northern Thailand—but not usually the backseats of nurse ethicists’ cars.

Sukanya had woken her around five thirty, panicked and anxious. Apparently her grandmother had fallen and possibly broken her arm. Sukanya needed to take her to an emergency room and so couldn’t take Chi into work.

“But he has to go to work,” Sukanya had said, near tears at the thought that the deserving patients of Sriphat Hospital might have to suffer for a day without the support of this diminutive therapy dog. Personally, Ladarat thought that the patients would recover from such a loss, however devastating it might be. But Sukanya seemed to think that keeping Chi from his appointed rounds would be unprofessional, unethical, and simply wrong.

Faced with that onslaught of empathy and not yet entirely awake without having had her customary two cups of blue peaflower tea, Ladarat gave in a little more easily than she might have under better circumstances.

So that was how she found herself sitting in her car in the hospital parking lot, with a black monkey spirit in the backseat, facing a conundrum.

As she had just realized a moment ago, when she’d hurriedly collected Chi from his grateful owner, Ladarat had forgotten to pick up all of the accoutrements that went with therapy dog stewardship. She had the leash, of course, but not—most urgently—Chi’s bright yellow vest that identified him as a genuine service dog. And that presented a problem. Without the vest, Chi was just a dog, and therefore banned from the hospital grounds.

But what to do? She couldn’t leave Chi in the car. Nor could she turn around and go back, because Sukanya had no doubt already left for her grandmother’s house.

Well, then, she would just have to find another way in. And—as Sisithorn might say—she would do so surreptitiously.

Ladarat’s stray thoughts about her assistant’s intrepid investigation of the Parrot Gang were elbowed aside by Chi’s enthusiastic efforts to escape from the backseat. She managed to clip his leash onto his collar just a second before he bolted through the partly open back door, only to be drawn up short as Ladarat reined him in.

“Whoa, little man. Such enthusiasm for work is admirable, but there will still be patients to see in five minutes.”

Chi raised his snub nose and looked at her attentively for a moment, perhaps pondering the wisdom of those words, or perhaps hoping for a treat. Ladarat realized that she should take advantage of his attention, which would be short-lived once he realized that she was really not so wise, and that his treats were sitting well out of reach, on the counter of Sukanya’s kitchen.

“Let’s go.” Maybe he knew a secret way in?

Chi looked at her intently, wagging his fringed tail once, then twice.

“Go.”

Maybe not.

But then, much to her surprise, Chi spun in place and lunged against the leash, pointing his nose unerringly at a wide steel door set into the back of the hospital at a little below ground level.

“Really?”

Chi turned around just long enough to offer his most emphatic reassurance.

“Pffftt.”

Try as she might, Ladarat found she couldn’t embrace Chi’s enthusiasm for that particular door. She knew where it led, and although she didn’t consider herself squeamish—at least by Thai standards—this would not have been her entrance of choice.

But it was a good strategy, she had to admit. If any entrance were unguarded, it would be this one. At least Chi seemed to think so. Perhaps Sukanya had been stuck in the same predicament before.

Pulled along by the small ball of fur that was bounding across the gravel ahead of her, Ladarat followed obediently behind. Weaving unerringly through rows of cars, Chi navigated precisely, towing her around a large Mercedes and right up to the door. She didn’t have to read the sign to know where they were.

“Morgue.”

Ladarat liked to think she was not particularly superstitious about death. She could afford to be dismissive of some Thai superstitions, like a fear of listing the names of people who have died, or you’ll die next. That was silly. Mostly.

But walking through a morgue? That seemed to tempt fate.

Chi, however, had no such qualms. His nose was nudging the door and his fringed tail was wagging frantically.

What was that about? An enthusiasm for death? In a therapy dog?

Ladarat pulled on the heavy door, half hoping it would be locked. But it swung open easily. After only a moment’s pause, Chi wriggled his way through the gap and disappeared, pulling his leash taut behind him. Ladarat followed, albeit with markedly less enthusiasm.

Once inside the cool, tiled corridor, Ladarat held her breath. There was something about the smell of this place that was wrong. It wasn’t the smell of death, but more of an intensified hospital smell, as if all of the worst essence of medicine and disinfectant became concentrated tenfold down here.

Chi, on the other hand, was most certainly not holding his breath. Snuffling the air with an enthusiasm he usually reserved for those moments when Sukanya was nearby, he seemed obsessed and almost crazed: more like a Phi Poang Khang monkey spirit than ever.

He spun clockwise, then counterclockwise, until he pointed to an open doorway that, Ladarat knew, led to the morgue proper. Chi strained with renewed vigor in that direction. Unfortunately for him, Ladarat’s sensible, rubber-soled shoes gave her a firm grip on the tile floor that Chi lacked, so the little dog succeeded only in accomplishing that running-in-place dance characteristic of a certain American cartoon coyote whose name Ladarat couldn’t remember.

Perhaps his fascination with death smells was something that Sukanya wouldn’t want to know about, if she didn’t already. With more than a little difficulty, Ladarat succeeded in towing the enthusiastic little therapy dog backward over the tile, zigzagging around a small rug outside an office door where their battle would have become a little more even.

When would he give up?

The answer, it turned out, was when they reached the stairs leading up to the ground-floor hallway of the west wing. Momentarily confused by the change in terrain that took him by surprise—him being towed backward and all—Chi seemed to forget for a moment the goal he had been pursuing. With the abrupt and total change in priorities that is only possible in dogs, politicians, and small children, he reversed course, sped past her, and began to tow her valiantly up the stairs with just as much enthusiasm as he’d exhibited in the other direction a moment earlier.

Down a long corridor, Ladarat followed Chi up a long flight of stairs, through the back of the emergency room, and finally into the elevator hallway. Aware, presumably, that there were patients to see and support to be offered, Chi seemed to have put away childish things and was ready to get to work. He headed for the elevators with the same strength of purpose he had just displayed in the macabre search for dead people. This, Ladarat thought, was going to be an interesting day.

But that turned out not to be true. At least, so far. Busy, yes. Tiring, certainly. But after the initial excitement of Sukanya’s five thirty wake-up call, her day had been almost unnaturally sedate.

She’d followed Chi on his rounds, seeing a farmer from Isaan with gallstones, a teenager from Chiang Mai with pneumonia, and a silly American backpacker who had foolishly decided that she didn’t need to take her antimalaria pills on a trekking trip into the mountains.

It had been a relaxing morning, in a way—relaxing because there was very little to do on those visits. It was Chi who did all the work, making friends as efficiently as one of those Japanese geisha hostesses. Ladarat only had to smile, left to her own thoughts.

Those thoughts turned, inevitably, to her last stop, where Chi was leading her unerringly: to Melissa Double, the definitely crying woman. It’s true that in a morning of thinking Ladarat had achieved no firm conclusions. Yet she’d decided that she should do … something. She’d convinced herself that despite the cheerful façade, the woman, Melissa, was suffering more than she let on. All of her brave talk of books and good days notwithstanding, there was pain there, too.

So when Chi became distracted by the food sellers arrayed in lines between the hospital and the palliative care building, Ladarat regretfully reined him in. Much as she would have liked to stop for a snack of hot glooai tawt (fried miniature bananas), or maybe a light lunch of kai jiew moo ssap (fried omelet with minced pork), her sense of duty pulled her across the pavement, dragging a bereft and hungry Chi along behind her.

The nurses’ station was deserted, so Ladarat made her own way to Melissa’s door, which was wide open. Trusting Chi to do the right thing, especially since there were no distractions of food nearby, Ladarat dropped his leash and Chi charged ahead and through the door.

A prolonged laugh that echoed out into the hall was evidence that Chi had found his next patient. By the time Ladarat caught up, Chi had taken up a position at Melissa’s side, his nose buried under a pillow and tail wagging enthusiastically.

“Hello, Khun.” Melissa was smiling, but she looked more careworn and pale than she had yesterday.

Ladarat returned the greeting and a wai, taking a seat next to Melissa’s bed.

“And how are you feeling today?”

Melissa shrugged, then smiled. “I’m still here, if you know what I mean.”

Ladarat didn’t know, although she could imagine.

Melissa smiled again, but a sad smile this time, an honest approximation of the yim soo smile: smiling in the face of an unwinnable battle. It was the smile that officials used when they knew they were going to lose an election, or that criminals used when they knew they would be found guilty.

“Well … last night was … not a good night.”

“How so?”

“Ahh, well, there was more pain than usual. Or more pain than I’m used to.”

“And didn’t the nurses bring you more pain medicine?”

“Oh, they wanted to, but they couldn’t. You see, Dr. Taksin wasn’t on call last night. He’s only on call every other night. So they called this other doctor, but he wasn’t willing to give me more medication because he didn’t know me.” She laughed halfheartedly. Ladarat didn’t. “Perhaps he thought I was an addict?”

Unfortunately, that was not as silly as it sounded. Many doctors in Thailand—doctors everywhere, for that matter—were afraid to prescribe opioids, even to patients who were near the end of life. They were afraid of a patient becoming addicted, or overdosing perhaps.

Interestingly, one worry they did not have, generally speaking, was the misuse of these prescriptions by women to kill a husband. Or several. That, in fact, had been the misuse to which countless morphine prescriptions had been employed by the infamous Peaflower murderer, whom Ladarat herself had helped to catch. Perhaps someday she’d tell Melissa that story to distract her. But not now.

“Many doctors are just … cautious. But Dr. Taksin came in this morning, didn’t he?”

“Well, yes. Not so early, though. The nurses, they told me he isn’t always an early riser. So it was some time before he came to see me. Oh—”

Melissa noticed the look of surprise on Ladarat’s face. “Don’t worry, I’m fine now. He increased my dose, and now I feel much better. Nothing to worry about.”

Why was this very sick woman trying to reassure her? That wasn’t right.

As Professor Dalrymple said, we must never forget that the patient is the most important person in the room.

Nor was it right that she’d had to suffer overnight and well into the next morning, simply because no one was available to help her. That certainly did put Dr. Taksin’s problems in a new light. If his inattention was hurting patients in his care like this nice woman, well, Ladarat would feel obligated to get involved. More involved, probably, than she would find comfortable. But perhaps it wouldn’t come to that.

“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better, but really, you shouldn’t have to wait that long for pain relief.”

“But I’m all right now, aren’t I?” Melissa seemed genuinely bemused. “No harm done.”

Then, changing the subject as fast as Chi was fond of changing direction: “And what did you do last night? Did you have plans?”

The expression on Melissa’s face seemed almost plaintive. “You see, I love hearing about everyone’s lives. I won’t get a chance to see much of Chiang Mai, but the nurses here, they tell me about what they do with their time off. And … well … it helps me to imagine a life outside, if that makes sense? But I know, I shouldn’t have asked—”

“It’s all right, really.” If that would bring some comfort to this stoic woman, then of course she would do what she could.

“To tell the truth,”—Ladarat smiled—“I went to a cooking class.”

“A … cooking class? That sounds like fun. Are you … a good cook?”

Ladarat laughed. “No, it turns out that I’m a horrible cook.” She told Melissa about her mysterious yet stubborn inability to chop vegetables. Soon she had the woman laughing as she described the way her carved cucumbers looked like logs that had been gnawed by a rabid beaver.

“But that’s a skill, isn’t it? Chopping and peeling and so forth? Just because you’re not … adept at those things, that hardly means you’re hopeless. Isn’t that why you took the class?”

“Perhaps you’re right, in theory. But I was by far the worst cook in the room. And the other women—they were all women—were foreigners. How can I hope to learn how to cook Thai food when everyone else is so far ahead of me?”

Ladarat had meant that to be a rhetorical question, but Melissa didn’t seem to take it that way. Instead, she became very thoughtful.

“Not all cooking requires chopping,” she pointed out. “You may have other skills. Dr. Taksin, for instance. Maybe he’s bad at, I don’t know, surgery? But what he does, he does very well. Where would I be if he’d tried his hand at chopping … people and given up?”

Ladarat had to smile at that. To think that she might have a hidden culinary talent, perhaps lurking in her subconscious, just waiting to be discovered and nurtured.

“Perhaps I’m harboring a secret talent for … stirring soup?”

Melissa smiled, too. A yim thak thaan smile that meant: You’re welcome to your opinion, of course. But you’re wrong.

“You can laugh, but why not? Maybe the pretty dishes with elegant shapes aren’t what you’re meant for. And who needs them, anyway? So what if your … what was it? Watermelon crab soup?”

She made a wrinkled face when Ladarat nodded.

“So what if your watermelon crab soup isn’t endowed with picturesque cucumber stars floating merrily on its surface? Would that mean the end of the world?”

Ladarat had to admit that in all likelihood the presence of misshapen vegetables in a bowl of soup would not spell the end of the world as we know it. Then she told Melissa about Duanphen’s offer of a private cooking lesson.

“And maybe this Duanphen will help you find a dish that is perfect for you,” she continued. “There must be, don’t you think? In much the same way that becoming a nurse was perfect for you, and becoming a librarian was perfect for me.”

“So why did you become a librarian?” Ladarat asked, glad to switch to any subject other than her own meager culinary talents.

“I loved browsing books. Not reading them through, you know? Just bits and pieces. I’d rather get a dozen glimpses of a dozen books than read one through cover to cover. And you can’t really do that anywhere but a library, can you? That would be an expensive habit otherwise. But as a librarian it is perfect.”

Their conversation meandered on, touching on travel and work, and of course on the books they’d both read. There were more than Ladarat would have expected. But eventually Melissa grimaced once or twice when Chi moved, and her attention seemed to wander. Finally Ladarat got up to leave.

“Remember, if you have pain again, have the nurses call Dr. Taksin. Even if he’s not on call, I’m sure he’ll help.”

As they said their goodbyes, and as Melissa coaxed Chi out of the nest that he’d created, Melissa promised that she would. Ladarat was halfway down the hall when she heard an urgent voice—or two—behind her.

“Khun Ladarat! Wait!”

It was Siwinee and Sudchada, hustling behind her as she headed for the front door. She slowed down, still towed along by Chi’s enthusiasm. He’d gotten a whiff of the food stalls outside, and the smells of grilling meats had wound him up to a new and previously unprecedented level of excitement. Nevertheless, dogs and tile floors were a bad mix, and his frantically scrabbling feet were in an unwinnable battle against the combination of a leash and a smooth tile floor.

“Have you …” Sudchada looked over her shoulder. “Have you had a chance to talk to Dr. Taksin yet?”

“I have … begun to talk to him.” That was a fair statement, wasn’t it?

“You’ve begun?” Sudchada asked.

“And do you have any answers yet?” Siwinee asked.

“No … no answers yet. But Mrs. Double said that he came in late this morning. Is that … related?”

“Yes,” Siwinee said.

“No,” Sudchada said.

Well.

“It might be,” Sudchada added. “Maybe. We think he has some sort of … activities at night that may impair his ability to function. And sometimes—just sometimes, you understand?—he may arrive at work a little late.”

She looked at Siwinee for confirmation, but the younger nurse was looking over her shoulder in case Dr. Taksin was lurking somewhere behind them.

“Well, I’ll do what I can, that’s all I can promise.”

They said their goodbyes and Ladarat let herself be pulled out the door by her hungry four-footed companion. She looked at her watch: just a few minutes till one, when she was supposed to pass Chi off to Sukanya near the man with the fresh fruit cart. She’d take him past the food stalls, perhaps stopping to visit Sonthi, the tiny man who made the best kao niew moo yang in Chiang Mai. No doubt he and the other vendors would take pity on Chi, who could play the poor starving dog to perfection when it served his interests, which was pretty much all of the time. He could muster a sorrowful whimper that would melt the coldest heart.

And indeed that’s exactly what he did. In the space of no more than fifty meters, he’d amassed donations of two pork dumplings, one piece of fried lamb that the stall owner said was too small to sell, a half dozen cubes of fried eggplant, and a generous portion of grilled chicken that Chi extracted from its wooden skewer with the dexterity of a neurosurgeon. But she got her kao niew moo yang and successfully handed Chi off to Sukanya, who was both apologetic and grateful.

“How did you smuggle him into the hospital without his vest?” Sukanya asked as she slipped his vest on. Chi seemed to puff up with importance.

“Well, we found—Chi found, actually—the back door to the morgue.”

“Yes, it’s strange,” Sukanya admitted. “He has a very sensitive nose. Anything unusual or out of the ordinary just grabs his attention. You know, there was a nurse on the trauma floor who lived with her parents, and her father owned a butcher shop. Just that was enough to make him crazy whenever he saw her.”

Ladarat thought about Siwinee, and Chi’s fascination with her. She’d have to remember to ask her whether perhaps her father was a butcher. Or a mortician.

“It’s too bad,” Ladarat said gently, “that we don’t have any official funding for pet therapy. You have to do this … as a volunteer.”

Sukanya shrugged, and a happy-sad smile flitted across her pretty face, the yim yae-yae smile that says, more or less: “Oh, it could be worse.”

Thinking that things could almost always be worse, Ladarat watched Sukanya lead Chi away, trotting patiently at her side. Truth be told, Ladarat was sorry to see him go. She’d gotten used to his company.

Or not company, exactly. Chi really did his own thing, as they say. But now an afternoon of work loomed in front of her: stacks of charts to review, unless some emergency arose. But she couldn’t count on an emergency today, so she’d spend that afternoon alone in her office with the nice view.