ANOTHER ASPIRING DETECTIVE

Ahh, Khun. You are back so soon.”

If Panit Booniliang was delighted by her untimely reappearance in his domain, he was doing an excellent job of concealing his enthusiasm. He was smiling, of course. But he looked worried.

As indeed he should. It was safe to say that the poor man had good reason to be worried whenever Ladarat appeared. With the inspection close at hand, he didn’t want to find new instances of poor documentation. Not that it was his fault, of course. He couldn’t control what those doctors upstairs did. But still, these requests would come to him and he would be… tainted.

“Don’t worry, Khun. I don’t need you to find more charts,” she hastened to reassure him. “I had… an idea. I wanted to ask you whether it would be possible.”

“An idea?” Panit put down the short stack of charts he was holding. Then, thinking better of it, he picked them up again. “What sort of… idea?”

“Well,” she said slowly, “you remember the death of the man I asked you about yesterday?”

The medical records clerk nodded warily, and his right hand floated up and raced through his unruly hair like an animal that had escaped its cage.

“Well, you see, I’m worried that this man’s death might not be as straightforward as it seems.”

He looked at her curiously, and then set the charts down very carefully onto another pile. Then he paused to square off the edges with two palms.

How much should she tell him? She would need to pique his interest, certainly. He would not be willing to help otherwise. She needed enough curiosity to entice him. Especially with the inspection coming. He would not tear his attention away from his stacks of charts unless she gave him a reason that was both interesting and compelling. So in a split second, and without planning, she decided to tell him the truth.

“I have some evidence that there may have been… foul play involved.” She paused. “In that man’s death.”

Now Panit was looking at her with slack-jawed amazement. But his next question surprised her.

“So you are like… a detective?”

This is the question you ask someone who tells you that a patient may have been murdered? You quiz them about their career and job responsibilities?

“No, Khun. I’m hardly a detective. I am just a nurse.” Khun Tippawan had seen to that.

“But it’s as a nurse, and as a nurse ethicist,” she clarified, “that I was asked to look into this matter.”

“Asked? By whom?”

But she shook her head. Some parts of this story were probably better omitted. She didn’t want to mention the good detective, and besides, she didn’t want to make this seem as though it were an official police inquiry. But then what should she say?

“When I heard about this man’s death, you see, I was not quite honest with you.” She glanced at Panit and found, strangely enough, that he did not look particularly surprised by this admission. Emboldened, she pressed on.

“Something struck me as familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was. Then it came to me last night: A colleague at another hospital told me of a story of a woman who had dropped her husband off in the emergency room in the same condition a year ago.”

“When you say ‘the same condition,’ Khun Ladarat, you mean to say…”

“I mean to say he was dead. Yes. The woman dropped off a man who was dead. They were very suspicious about this behavior, because she did not seem grief-stricken. She seemed very… matter of fact.”

“So did they involve the police?”

“There was no evidence, apparently. My friend looked for this woman but couldn’t find her. But when I saw this case, I thought…”

“Our murderer is back.” He looked positively excited by the news that there was a killer in their midst. The wrinkles on his forehead danced.

“So you want to know if there have been other instances like this at our hospital or at other hospitals? I see, I see.” Now he was rubbing his hands together.

But she was two steps behind him.

“Other hospitals? But how can you—”

“Oh, I have friends. We all know each other. At least at the bigger hospitals. Public, private. Makes no difference. We all have to work together when patients are transferred, so we know each other well. In fact, we have a cricket league we play in together.”

Who would have known?

“I’ll ask. People don’t think that we pay attention to what’s in these charts, but I assure you, Khun, that we most certainly do. We mark the stranger cases. We’re… alert. If there’s a murderer out there, we’ll find her.”

He seemed positively gleeful. Could it be that everyone wants to be a detective? Perhaps she was not the only aspiring detective in Sriphat Hospital. Perhaps they could form a detectives’ club. With a cricket league.

Ladarat smiled and thanked the medical records clerk. This was good. He seemed as though he needed a distraction from the impending inspection. And this task should be enough of a distraction for him.

A few minutes later, she stood waiting by the elevator. And waiting. And waiting.

Not for the first time, Ladarat was struck by Thai dependence on elevators. Then she had a thought. She turned around and made her way back down the hallway, pushing open the door to the stairwell. It led down several more flights to the subbasement, she knew. And all the way up to the sixth floor. But she had only two flights to go up. She could do this.