Point of Balance (7 page)

8

When I got to the hospital the morning after, my mind was racing.

Soon after I received White's terrifying text, I had fallen asleep. I was pooped. Discovering they had bugged my house with microphones and God knows what else sent shivers down my spine. But after a thirty-six-hour shift and all the emotional rushes that followed, I was too worn down to do a thing about it.

I was painfully aware when I woke up. As I showered and got dressed, I felt my privacy had been invaded; I felt a pair of dark and dirty eyes spying on me from every corner. I was never much into spy movies or TV shows, but Rachel used to love them. I tried to remember what I had learned from watching
Homeland
and
Person of Interest
,
although I'd had only half my mind on them, with the other half buried in a novel or the
Journal of Neurosurgery
. All I remembered seemed like kids' stuff or hackneyed.

I understood all too well why White had sent the text right when he did. He wanted to make it obvious he was eavesdropping on my every whisper. But that morning I had to go to work. He had made it abundantly clear I was to keep to my regular routine and do nothing at all to draw attention to myself. I was sure he had tapped my home phone and cell. But would he have tapped the hospital phones too? I kind of doubted that. An attendant told me once there
were more than nine hundred lines in the building. White couldn't possibly tap them all. Unless he had hacked into the exchange and screened calls to particular numbers, such as 911 or the FBI. Damn, I didn't even know whether such a thing was possible.

At that very moment my cell rang. The caller ID was blank.

It was him.

“Good morning, Dave. You'd better get a move on, there's bumper-to-bumper traffic on Sixteenth.”

“Thanks for the traffic update,” I said in a tone which belied my words.

“Stop looking at that lamp. There's no camera there.” I jumped back from it and turned my head every which way.

“Neither is there one on that picture, nor that wall, Dave. Or maybe there is. That's none of your business. You will not search for cameras or bugs. Should you find one by chance, you will leave it be. We don't want to lose touch, do we?”

“Guess not,” I mumbled, swallowing my humiliation.

“Now you have to call Julia's school and tell them she's sick and won't be back until Monday. Go on, I'm waiting.”

I obeyed, using the landline. When I picked up my cell again, White was humming a tune I couldn't make out.

“Good job, Dave. Just one more thing. You'll be spending a lot of time in a huge building full of telephones, computers and all kinds of other items that are perilous for your daughter. You will be tempted to use them to cry for help. Don't be. You may not think so, but I am watching. Continually. In more ways than you can comprehend.”

The message chimes sounded. I pulled the phone away from my ear. A text had now landed with a photo. When I opened it I saw my daughter imprisoned in that filthy pit. She had her eyes shut and her arms were wrapped around her knees, her head resting on them. She was trying to sleep.

“If you don't play ball, Dave, this will be the last picture you see of her. Don't forget.”

He hung up without giving me a chance to reply. I looked at the photo for a second longer, but it evaporated in the blink of an eye.

I looked for it like crazy in my inbox and the photo gallery, but it had been deleted from both. That shithead had total control over my phone, a point he made in a text I got that very moment.

TIME FOR WORK.

Cussing again, I got into my car and tried to think.

A half hour later, as I went down to the changing room, my mind was boiling over.

I tried to weigh all my options, but some things I had worked out. First, White was full of it. He couldn't watch me every second, the less so in as big a place as that. Second, I had to get in touch with someone. Third, if I, or whoever I got in touch with, took one wrong step, Julia was dead.

Because I had seen his face, they would likely kill me too. Although if I lost Julia, I cared little what they might do to me.

I went to my locker, but instead of grabbing my own white coat and scrub set, I walked to the storeroom and took out some of the worn gear that smelled of cheap bleach, which the residents wear.

All of us surgeons are alpha personality types. Men and women in this job all fight to be top dog, the best there is. We spend our whole day in pissing contests and the same goes for how we dress in surgery. Believe it or not, they make overpriced monogrammed scrubs and caps in the most outrageous colors imaginable. That's how we set ourselves apart from the residents, nurses, staff physicians and others. We're on top, and we like to rub it in.

I didn't have to operate that day, but I did need to be sure I was carrying no gadget White could have bugged. I completely stripped off, then put on some scrubs and a white coat that was generic and unlabeled. I didn't take my stethoscope or anything else that was mine.

The last decision to make was whether or not to take my cell and pager.

Fortunately I was late, so there was almost nobody in the chang
ing room, but for a while I froze solid, just staring at those gizmos like a man possessed. I was never apart from them and got into a flap whenever the batteries were flat or the charger light showed red. But at that moment those objects were evil itself to me.

To leave the cell in my locker meant losing contact with White. I knew he had meddled with it somehow, and I needed to be rid of it. But to break off might rile him and he could harm Julia in some way by taking it out on her.

And not only that. Right now that little four-ounce device was my one link to my daughter. I put it in my pocket and closed my locker door.

The metallic clang echoed around the deserted changing room as I made my way out.

Unfortunately, I was getting nowhere and the work was piling up. I had skipped breakfast, although stress and nerves had taken hold of my guts and I couldn't have eaten a thing.

Nonetheless, I couldn't let any of my feelings show. White had made that very clear: I had to smile. His weren't the only eyes that would be on me over the next few days.

I got into the elevator and ran into someone from admin, a great big, chipper guy I got along well with. Straight off I could see in his eyes the first signs of rejection everyone has had since Rachel's suicide.

“How the hell are you, Mike?”

“Well, doc, fighting off the anorexia, as you can see,” he said, patting his massive belly.

I laughed. “Seems you got that bitch under control.”

Mike laughed with me, surprised to see me joking again.

“Be seeing you,” I said as I walked out.

“Bet you'll see me first,” he quipped, and kept on laughing even after the elevator doors were shut.

I took a couple of steps away from the elevator and had to stop for a second. The lights, the bustle, the phones ringing, the chairs and gurneys wheeling along the passageway, the nurses gossiping in
the corner, the chief resident herding the kids from room to room, the smell of disinfectant. All the hustle around me, everything that went to make up the chaos I called home, was alien to me now.

I felt far removed, light-years away from all those jerks who didn't get what I was going through. If they found out Julia had been kidnapped, they'd merely mutter, “Oh my God, how terrible,” shake their heads and go home to kiss their family and think it could never happen to them. It was exactly what they did when Rachel died. At most they would avoid me for a few months, a normal reaction in case my bad luck rubbed off on them. We hospital folk are very superstitious, and surgeons more than anyone.

A nurse ambled past me and said hello with a big smile, which I returned by ordering my face muscles to move.

The chasm between that woman's carefree happiness and my torment made me despair.

I got a grip on myself and went to the nurses' station.

“What's up?”

“They called from Stockholm, something about a Nobel Prize they want to give you,” said Sandra, who was head of the day shift.

“Tell them I'll pass. They'd give it to anyone these days.”

Sandra laughed. She was also surprised I had joked back. I felt a bit guilty. There has always been a covert class war between doctors and nurses. They believe they do all the work, while we take all the credit and give all the orders. We . . . Well, we can be quite despicable. I had always tried to avoid that attitude, but I realized that with my bad mood in the last few months, that good intention had receded and I had made everyone's life around me a misery.

Although anxiety was now back in the driver's seat.

“I'm off to my consulting room to prepare my rounds. I'm running really late.”

“Doctor, wait. We need to talk.” She rooted around under the counter and placed between us the folder with the surgery schedule in it for the next few days.

I tilted toward her and did a double take when I saw the name
Sandra had underlined. A name I did not need to raise too many questions.

“It's to do with R. Wade. We have his medical records and billing details. His file is all in order, except for his Social Security number. I ran a check on it and got an error message. And the phone number they gave us always goes to voice mail.”

Small wonder nobody answered. R. Wade, male, born August 4, 1961, in Des Moines, Iowa, did not exist. The Secret Service had provided the phone and Social Security number. The operating theater was booked up for the whole of Friday morning, and the other one on that floor had a software review lined up which would never take place. No more than three people in the whole building knew the patient's identity: the hospital manager, my boss and me. I had sweated blood over that, in a place where there are no secrets. But that was nothing compared to the fun and games we would have in the next forty-eight hours.

At all costs we had to avoid anyone knowing who would be operated on there. Because if one single person found out, she would eventually tell her husband, who would blab to his best buddy, who would tell his wife and tweet it . . . The operation could be canceled or rescheduled, which would mean curtains for Julia.

“Sure, they must have gotten a digit wrong,” I said, trying to make light of it. “Fill in the admission date with the one you've got, and we'll change it later.”

“But, doctor, this is very irregular. And if the HMO gets to hear of it . . .”

“Believe me, Sandra, this patient does not have cash-flow problems.”

She looked at me, surprised, but said nothing. We were suddenly aware of how close we were to each other and I backed off. She clutched at her hair, embarrassed, and backed off, too.

“I'm afraid I have to get this straight, doctor. You've been on this case from the start, haven't you? Couldn't you—”

I didn't have the patience or the energy to deal with this situation properly.

“Well, if it's so important, take it up with Meyer—the hospital manager. He was the one who recommended him, damn it!”

She turned around, discomforted. Spooky
Dave was back.

I ran off and locked myself in my consulting room, and felt bad that I had treated her that way, but I needed to be alone for a few minutes to relax.

I collapsed into my chair. That sort of overreaction would not help to keep the Patient's identity secret. The morning couldn't have gotten off to a worse start, and it would get miles worse yet.

9

I couldn't skulk in my cave for too long. I had to go see my patients. I wasn't down to be with the residents that day—thank God for small mercies—but I couldn't shirk the rounds. I had already reached a decision: I would seek out a cell phone and wangle a way to call the one person in the world who could help me.

The problem was whether she'd be up for it.

At about ten thirty, an hour later than usual, I had mustered enough presence of mind to emerge. At noon I had an unavoidable appointment, so I couldn't delay matters another minute.

I began with Mr. Melanson, a retired lawyer on his fifth wife. His aneurysm must have been because of her, a blonde whose body ought to have scored on the Richter scale. If being hot were against the law, that woman would have had a SWAT team on her tail constantly. For now, a pair of residents, an attendant and another patient's husband were buzzing around her by the coffee machine.

“Good morning, Roger.”

“What's she up to?” he blurted at me. He looked strangely younger with the post-op bandage covering up his bald pate.

“She's hitting on a bunch of juvenile delinquents by the coffee machine.”

“Damn, and with me stuck here. When the hell are you going to let me go?”

Not five days ago, Melanson had been in my operating theater, with an aneurysm in the Sylvian fissure which literally blew up in my face when I tried to close it off. That old bruiser's blood had spattered my mask, glasses and apron while I cursed and went through hell to perform an arterial bypass and save his life. Had I not operated in time, that skinny, lively old man with mischievous eyes would now be a plant pot, taking his meals through a straw and dumping them in a diaper.

“That aneurysm was about to kill you. Hit the brakes a little. What's the hurry?”

While I checked his readings, I stole a sideways glance at his bedside table. I needed to get hold of a cell without anyone knowing. I would have to borrow one temporarily. And Melanson's was nowhere to be seen.

“I feel like finding me a new Mrs. Melanson, doc. That one's past her sell-by date.”

“That'll be number six! Haven't you had enough?”

“Number seven, really. There was a two-day fling in Vegas that was never on record. Well, as long as they keep signing the watertight prenups, then bring 'em on.”

I couldn't help laughing out loud.

“I see you're in fine fettle, Roger. So barring surprises we'll discharge you the day after tomorrow. But only if you promise to put off the search for a month or two.”

“I promise,” he said, then crossed his heart. “But make no mistake, if she finds me, I'm not accountable.”

I came across the soon-to-be ex–Mrs. Melanson in the doorway. She simply mumbled a “Hi” while she eyed her phone to check out the gossip on Facebook. I must have flashed her bedroom eyes because she got the wrong idea about where my look was aimed and gave her neckline a snide tug.

I shook my head as I stepped into the passageway.

The next three on my list were very simple cases whom I would discharge that same week. But relatives and friends accompanied them all, and there was no chance to purloin a cell phone. Under my breath I cursed the jobless rate, which was giving people all that time on their hands, as I turned the corner and entered the Warton Memorial suite.

They had remodeled the specialist neurosurgery wing in 2010 thanks to an endowment from Josephine Warton, an agoraphobic and very reclusive multimillionaire, whose sole purpose had been to keep herself apart from the other millionaires when she had treatment for her epileptic fits. In practice the unit comprised a single room with a reception area furnished in execrable taste, and a small nurses' station that was nearly always deserted: a super-exclusive area in an exclusive hospital.

It would have a very eminent occupant on Friday. Ironically, that morning a patient with an entirely different background was recovering in the Warton Memorial suite: poor Jamaal Carter.

Medical Director Wong had given the order to accommodate him there to keep him and his sidekicks, a motley group of teenagers with no particular academic inclinations, away from the paying patients.

They were gangbangers, in other words.

There were four of them, lounging on sofas in the lobby, with their feet up on a cheesy pink marble table with a brass stand. Behind them, a portrait of Warton—whose will had stipulated that the rich bitch should always preside over the room—frowned in stark disapproval. That prim old biddy, a close devotee of Ayn Rand, would have turned in her grave to see us treat Jamaal Carter pro bono in her suite. I wasn't freaking out though. The hospital had cleared $128 million the year before. We could afford it. Respecting the codicil in that witch's bequest was not a priority for me. All the staff were slaves to her, as it were, so every time I saw that portrait I felt like driving to the cemetery, breaking into the Warton vault and cracking her skull with her own tibia.

Three of the four gangbangers got up when I strode in and began to talk all at once.

“It's about time a doctor came to see Jamaal. What kind of joint you all running here, dude?”

“Hey, doc. If there's any problem with the green, you let me know, right?”

“Tell Jamaal we're right here. That cop there won't let us past.”

The speaker pointed to a well-worn officer who lolled in a chair behind a copy of the
Post
while he guarded the entrance to the Warton suite. Seeing the lawman there made my stomach turn. Every ounce of me wanted to run over, grab him by the uniform and beg for his help. I was fighting against that feeling when I got a text:

THINK CAREFULLY.

I bunched my fists inside my coat pockets and tried to hear myself think above the gang's chatter. How could White know what was happening? He could not possibly have planted cameras or bugs there. The Secret Service had discreetly screened the place the week before, and would do so again the day after.

That confirmed what I had suspected since the night before: the son of a bitch was using my cell mike to spy on me. As long as I had it on me, he could hear everything that was said around me. And he had probably wired the camera, too. That put a wrench in the works.

On the spur of the moment, I stared at one of those kids, the one who had hadn't moved when I came in.

“What's up with you, pal?”

He looked wasted, was boring holes in the marble with his eyes, and his lower lip trembled.

“Ain't nothing wrong with T-Bone, doc,” one of them butted in. “You get in there and take care of Jamaal.”

I guessed the kid was off his head on crack—how wrong I could be—and went into the suite, painfully aware the clock was ticking and I hadn't gotten what I needed. I greeted the cop, who grunted as I went past. He didn't raise his eyes from the sports page.

I had allotted four minutes but they turned into twenty owing to Mama Carter, the most persistently grateful human being I've ever met.

“Good morning,” I said on my way in. “I'm Dr. Evans.”

“Is that you!” shouted a lady in the visitor's chair at the bedside. “Did you mend my little boy? Hallelujah! The Lord guided your hands to save Jamaal, praised be sweet Jesus.”

She ran over and began to kiss my hands, making me feel terribly uncomfortable. She must have been five feet tall and weighed one hundred eighty, and she had a face as sweet as pie. She was the perfect grandmother, apart from the slobbering kisses.

“Pray with me, give the good Lord thanks for granting you this gift to heal,” she insisted.

I have often come up against this attitude. Lots of patients thank Jesus for saving them on the operating table and get lawyered up when things go wrong. We doctors could live without the thanks if the suits were also addressed to Jesus.

“I will, Mrs. . . .”

“I'm Mama Carter. Jamaal's grandmother. My daughter's dead. She's sitting at Jesus's right hand, and every night she has corn bread and pork chops with him. That was her favorite food and the girl was truly a saint. Now she watches over us all and has sent you to heal my little boy.”

I succeeded in walking around her and to Jamaal's bed. Dressed in no more than hospital PJs, he looked much smaller and slighter. He had angled his childlike face toward the window, like a dove gaping at unattainable freedom. He turned to face me as I approached. He had one foot cuffed to the bed frame, which jingled faintly. His grandmother hurried to cover him with a sheet. The futility of that move tore my heart out.

“How you doing, kid?”

He contemplated me with his big brown eyes and shrugged. His face crumpled in pain.

“You shouldn't move your arms. You know you had a bullet in your back?”

“Yes, the nurses told me, and the cops that came by this morning. I don't remember a lot about last night, but I remember you, talking to me. You remove the bullet?”

“Look hard at my finger and follow it with your eyes. Attaboy. Your toes . . . Good. Yes, it was me who operated on you. You came within a hair of spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair. You should think hard about that before you hang out with those guys out there.”

“They're my blood brothers,” he said, bristling. That would have sounded real tough, except that he let out a squeak.

“Um, well, I don't see how they've shed much blood.”

“Jamaal wants to thank you. Don't you, Jamaal?” Mama Carter jumped in.

The kid nodded and looked away.

“They'll transfer him to MedStar tomorrow,” I told the old lady.

“Can't he stay here?”

“I'm afraid not, ma'am. We need the room.”

Mrs. Carter would surely have gone into shock had she known who they wanted the bed for.

“I like it here,” she said, pointing at the mahogany paneling on the walls and the Tiffany lamps. “I have some of my pension saved up. Couldn't you—”

Some screams spared me the hassle of breaking the bad news to Mrs. Carter that a single night in the Warton Memorial Suite cost $27,500. The door burst open and the cop popped his head in, looking flustered.

“Doctor, you'd better come here. Something's terribly wrong.”

I ran across to the door. Three of the gangbangers surrounded the fourth, the kid who didn't stand up when I came in. He was sprawled on the floor, fighting for breath.

“Get back, get back for Chrissakes!”

His pulse was so weak I could hardly find it. That kid's life hung by a thread.
Damn
, I thought.
Just what I need right now.

“You,” I said, and pointed at the cop. “Go to that door and holler ‘Code Blue' as loud as you can.”

“I have to stay on guard—”

“Haul your ass, for Pete's sake! That kid's going nowhere.”

I gave him no choice and wheeled around to tend to the kid.

I saw he had blood on his hands. I opened his coat to uncover a baseball shirt that was completely wet through.

“What's up with him?” I yelled as I pulled his clothing aside.

“Er . . . He was okay. T-Bone was—”

“Your friend's gonna die, pal. You'd better wise up.”

Underneath his shirt, a dressing hurriedly made from clothes torn into strips and duct tape had turned into an unmitigated disaster. That mess couldn't have stanched a scratch from a blackberry bush. I squeezed as hard as I could to try to buy the kid some vital seconds.

“Was it a gunshot?”

“He . . . got poked up,” a voice behind me stammered.

“What?”

“A stab wound,” the cop explained.

“We didn't say nothing, to keep him out of trouble. We thought he'd make it!”

The Code Blue team showed up just then, dragging a resus trolley with one hell of a ruckus and shoving the gangbangers out of the way. They were three, two men and a woman, the toughest mofos in the hospital. Our best resuscitation team, used to laughing in the face of death. They had steely arms and an iron will. To see them kneel beside me was a massive relief.

“Stab wound to the thoracic cavity, entry only. Pulse below minimum. Been losing blood for hours.”

“Fucking prick. Monica, the epinephrine!”

I was about to step back and leave T-Bone in better hands than mine when, between a muddle of knees, I glimpsed a cell phone on the carpet. I slipped it into my coat pocket.

I turned around to see whether anybody had noticed what I'd just done, but they all seemed to have their hands full. The cop looked on, aghast, and radioed for backup, obviously to question the other gang members, now that they had abruptly become witnesses to attempted homicide and who knew what else. Loyalty contended with prudence, then the latter won out and they brazenly headed off down the hospital corridor, followed by the old cop. I was taking no bets on who would reach the elevator first.

I spied the clock on the cell. It was 11:53.

I hardly had time. I ran down to the changing room while I hurriedly wiped away the bloodstains I still had on my fingers with a piece of gauze I'd grabbed from the resus trolley and got undressed.

I left my cell and pager in the locker and stepped into the shower with the gangbanger's phone. It was a prepaid model and must have been a couple of years old. I silently prayed it had enough balance for a call.

I held my breath and dialed the person who held my daughter's one hope in her hands.