"Becker?" said the KMT hospital's front desk clerk, a lovely woman with shiny, black hair down to her elbows, although her prominent incisors and darting eyes made me think of a rabbit misplaced behind a ward desk.
"Yes." I glanced at the time on my phone. The security guards had X-rayed our back packs and waved us through the metal detector, but Gizelda Becker still hadn't answered my latest texts.
Tucker drew a half-circle on my back in a wordless gesture that I knew meant calmamente.
I shook him off. Who wants to be calm?
The clerk frowned and clicked a few keyboard buttons before she scrolled down the screen. "Are you certain that's the name?"
"Yes, of course. Phillip Becker. KMT Hospital."
I didn't detect any Kruger Millions at KMT Hospital. The fluorescent lights flickered, and a fly landed on the desk counter in all its fuzzy black-bodied glory.
I tried not to recoil. I've occasionally seen flies buzz around Canadian hospitals. And dirty windows and peeling paint abound at St. Joe's, too. Excellent staff keep working despite pathetic surroundings. Definite step down from the Cairo International Hospital's grand foyer, though.
I attempted to smile while displaying all of my teeth. The intensive care units are closed systems. You need a code to get in. We couldn't barge into the ICU with the security guards on standby. Time to play Ms. Nice Girl. "Look. Let me call his daughter, okay? She's expecting us."
The clerk flushed. She looked young and new and very uncomfortable. "Ma'am."
I hate people calling me ma'am. I'm not married yet. I started dialling.
"Please. Ma'am!"
Her voice caught my ear. I hung up before Ms. Becker could answer.
The clerk gazed at me with large, liquid—teary?—eyes. "I'm sorry, ma'am."
"What are you talking about?"
"He's—not there."
"What?" It was my turn to verify. "Phillip Becker, 87 years old, the father of Gizelda Becker?"
"In the ICU. Yes."
I paused. Her voice shook, and I understood why she didn't want us barging into the unit. Phillip Becker had died.
Really? Why hadn't Gizelda called me?
I cursed myself for my self-centred thinking. Gizelda Becker's father had died from an IED. Her top priority wasn't alerting me or Tucker.
"Oh. Thanks for warning me."
Tucker took my hand. "Yes, it was very kind of you. We appreciate it."
We stood beside the desk, trying to figure out what to do next. A security guard, stationed by the entrance maybe fifty feet away, watched both of us.
I swallowed hard. My animosity crumbled into fatigue. "I better text her again. To let her know we're here, if she's willing to see us."
Tucker nodded and pressed his arm unobtrusively against mine as I messaged her.
I shook my head. "I want to give her our condolences, but she could be in the ICU, or on the floor, or even back in her hotel. I mean, we don't even know when he died."
"We can try to find out," said Tucker softly.
My shoulders sagged. Jet lag. Shock. Despair. Whatever you called it, it was kicking me in the teeth. "I texted her around 2 that I was coming, and she said okay. So I think he was alive then."
"Great. And it's 7:27 now, so we've got a timeline."
Crazy how Tucker felt optimistic about a 5.5 hour time gap. I shook my head. "I know you want to see the Mombergs. Maybe we should split up."
Tucker circled his arm around me, and I felt him taking in the dusty computers and dirty floors. "Let's stick together. We'll see the Mombergs later."
"Good." The word slipped out of my throat, and Tucker grinned at me even as I said, "I don't like any of this. The IED. Mr. Becker. The Mombergs. What are we even doing in Egypt?"
"We're doing an elective and travelling the world."
"Yes, but why did they invite us? We're nobodies."
"Well, one of us is famous." Tucker winked at me, using his closest eye since we were already sandwiched hip to hip, still under the guards' watchful gaze.
I sighed. You'd think no one would pay attention to a resident doctor from a country best known for hockey and Tim Hortons, but as my little brother Kevin pointed out, my side gig of crime-busting has acquired a small cult following. Kevin's reported fake Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts masquerading as me, but he can't stop memes, Pinterest boards of photos and articles, or "fan" accounts like @detectivedocterz.
"You've got hits as far away as the Middle East, Tokyo, and even one in Antarctica," Kevin told me a week ago.
"Antarctica? That one's got to be fake news."
Kevin shrugged. "Why? They're as bored as everyone else. Maybe more."
"Thanks a lot!" I started to punch his shoulder, remembered that he was cleaning up my online act for free, and stopped in mid-air.
"I'm telling you, Hope, your fans want to hear from you. You better start using social media, or everyone else is gonna do it for you."
Kevin was angling for me to hire him as a social media consultant. But he was right, my followers could have played a role in Sarquet Industries' recruitment process. Once everything calmed down, I vowed to meet Isabelle face to face and shake the truth out of her.
In the meantime, I ignored my D class Internet fame. George Takei pointed out, "Social media is like ancient Egypt: writing things on walls and worshiping cats." If my nine-year-old little brother could cover it, I wouldn't get too excited about it.
"While we're waiting for Gizelda, we could grab a bite to eat," said Tucker.
My stomach was gnawing on its own lining, but it seemed disrespectful to chow down right after Mr. Becker had died. I shook my head.
"Okay," said Tucker, "let’s buy her flowers. We can leave them in his room, even if she doesn’t want to talk to us."
"Good idea. We just need to make sure that she's still here. Otherwise, we need to figure out where she's staying."
The desk clerk helped us out by calling up to the ICU. Yes, Ms. Becker was clearing out her father's things, but still in the building.
So we swooped down to the gift shop, with me trying not to wince at the price of a slightly wilted bouquet of yellow roses.
"The money will go to the hospital," said Tucker. He added under his breath, gazing at the dirty tile floor, "They need it."
In the elevator up to the third floor ICU, Tucker watched me check my phone and come up empty. "Don’t worry about it. Like I said, we'll leave the roses at the nursing station if we have to. What's the worst that can happen? We'll brighten their day."
He waved the flowers at me until I laughed and took them, cradling them in my arms like a baby.
Soon we faced the frosted, locked ICU doors. Tucker hit the speaker on the right and spoke to the nurse about Ms. Becker.
"Oh," piped a female nurse, "she's meeting a friend in our waiting area. The code is 27379 if you want to come in and say hello."
Tucker plugged in the numbers in the keypad on the wall. The doors slid open automatically.
I glanced to the left and saw a water cooler outside the public bathrooms. Good news, since you can't drink the tap water in Egypt, and it was stressing me out to buy bottled water and dispose of single use plastics.
"Here's the waiting room." Tucker pointed to an alcove to our right with chairs lined along three sides.
The room was small but freshly painted, with a bookshelf on the left wall and a TV mounted in the corner. Even though night had fallen, I appreciated how the windows let the street light in to help illuminate a print of irises on the right wall.
No sign of Ms. Becker, though. I frowned at the silent phone in my free hand.
I turned to Tucker. "Do you think we just missed her?"
"It’s possible," he said slowly, right before the women's bathroom door opposite us swung open.
Out stepped a bespectacled man in a suit with short-cropped curly black hair, olive skin, and a slightly bulbous nose. A guy coming out of the woman's bathroom would've startled me enough in a Muslim country, but I recognized the woman following on his heels, a senior citizen with a chignon of greying brown hair.
My mouth fell open. "Ms. Becker?"