Public Anatomy Page 19

  Liza’s turn.

  She stepped up on the standing stool, but her foot slipped on the viscous secretions. She kicked the stool aside and climbed on the bed, straddling the man’s abdomen in some perverse medical-erotic pose, her elbows locked in front as she delivered the final compressions. Eli tried not to stare. He knew the man was dying, or was already dead, and that his thoughts should be focused on the loss of life, not Liza’s rhythmic movements.

  The chief resident told everyone to stop. They had been running the code for almost a half hour, with no response to heroic maneuvers. He pronounced the man dead. Eli still remembered the time of death—3:36 a.m. And he remembered the image of Liza, in the straddle position, breathing hard as she climbed off the body. Memorable events, both, but the night would become yet more memorable.

  Eli wandered out of the patient’s room, looking back to see the floor cluttered with syringes, IV tubing, and strips of EKG paper. The patient lay motionless, naked, and newly dead. He died surrounded by a room full of people, but he died alone. His family would receive a call from a tired intern, much like Eli, who’d been assigned the man’s care but who actually knew nothing about the patient beyond what was written on the check-out list for his call night.

  Eli passed the nurse’s desk and opened the door to a linen closet. Inside, he leaned against the door, and felt the need to let it go. Someone needed to mourn the soul in room 203. But he was needed back on the ward. He had already missed at least two pages on his beeper during the code, and he was behind on the admission reports from the emergency room and on the post-op checks that were overdue.

  Behind a cart of linens, Eli found a folded pile of fresh scrubs. He pulled off his scrub top, soiled with bile and vegetable matter. He let his bottoms fall to the floor, stepped out of them.

  Then someone opened the door.

  Expecting to see a nurse, Eli ducked behind the cart. Then he heard someone crying.

  Liza.

  She had slid down the back of the closed door and sat on the floor, knees to her chest, sobbing.

  Eli remained completely still, hidden by the linen cart. Maybe she would leave without seeing him.

  He waited.

  She stopped crying.

  Then she stood and pulled off her top. She threw it down on the floor in disgust. She kicked the garment away and groaned, beating her thighs with her fists. Her top tumbled past the linen cart and landed beside Eli. He picked it up, smelled it. Rank with vomit. But with a lingering smell of Liza.

  He peeked around the cart. She had pulled off her pants and stood in her underwear, searching the pile of scrubs. White lace-trimmed bikini panties had inched up her gluteal fold during intense attempts to save a man’s life.

  Eli stepped from behind the cart.

  Liza turned quickly, her breath caught in a wordless gasp. She glanced below his waist, then met his eyes. She stepped past him and reached for a pair of fresh scrubs, fumbling with the stack, searching for the correct size. Eli reached to help, the back of his hand errantly brushing the full cup of her bra.

  The kiss was full-mouthed, forceful, and angry, a product of tired bodies pumped full of adrenaline during the code. Neither sought nor willed it to happen, a fact that allowed both of them to rationalize, even forget, or try to forget, that it had ever happened.

  They dropped to their knees in the center of the tiny room on the cold concrete floor. She pulled away from his intimate kiss and drew him into her, groping, vying for submission, to gain a competitive edge where competition was foreign. The scent of clean linen swirled and mixed with the smell of vomit and the sweat radiating from their skin. Any effort to be gentle gave way to revenge for countless nights of no sleep and disease and death that had been driven into them, again and again, until the minutes escaped the capture of time and they reclaimed their lives, however brief, together.

  When it was over, they dressed quickly, relieved that no one had entered during those forbidden moments. Liza left the closet first. Eli remained another minute or two, trying to process the convergence of death and urgent intimacy. He saw Liza later during their shared night of call. Another code. Chest compressions. CPR. Another death.

  But only their gaze met—once.

  Daylight finally rescued them, and since that night, they had pushed through life as though their intimacy never happened.

  Until now.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Eli made a special effort to visit Henry within a couple of days after their annual pilgrimage to Elmwood Cemetery. Each year, after visiting their mother’s grave, Henry seemed to withdraw more than usual after returning to Green Hills State Home. Eli had no idea whether his visit to his brother would help, but he felt obligated to check.

  He found Henry in his room sitting on the floor, the controls of his favorite video game in hand, his tattered John Deere cap pulled low, close to his eyes. He watched his brother manipulate the control box, a bulky antiquated piece from the early nineties. Eli wondered how Henry would react to the fancy headsets and Wii-type virtual games of today. He would probably hate them, he decided.

  Eli listened to the rapid clicks and smooth dexterity of his brother’s fingers. Henry was quite skilled at this game. Why couldn’t he translate this skill into something more productive? A job, maybe?

  There had been failed attempts at jobs. When Henry finished school, as a high school senior functioning as a third grader, their mother arranged a part-time job for him at a grocery store, opening boxes for the stock boys to shelve. He lasted three days, let go when he was found in a supply closet with six open boxes of Cap’n Crunch, crunching away.

  Watching Henry push the buttons on the control box, Eli was mesmerized by the rapid movements of his brother’s thumb and index finger. It was all about the motivation. If he wanted to accomplish a task, like winning this game, Henry could do it. Take away the motivation, and he preferred to stare at the wall.

  As Eli observed his brother manipulating the box, he remembered the robotic surgery demonstration at the Renaissance workshop. How the young technician, who was not a doctor, demonstrated the hand controls, adeptly, just as Henry was doing now. The video game generation.

  You can teach a monkey to operate, Eli had heard his mentors say. But they can’t take care of patients.

  Eli reviewed the error that had occurred at the robotic workshop. The mannequin’s gallbladder ripped to hell. What would the monkey do then? He thought about the young man called upon by the company’s president to demonstrate their prized instrument. A salaried technician with tattoos on his arm. Did he have any idea of the consequence of that errant move for an actual patient?

  Was that what happened to Liza French? One false but very deadly move?

  Eli removed Henry’s cap, kissed him on the top of his head, and put the cap back. He left the room and glanced back at Henry, but his brother did not look up.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Cate’s brother showed up unexpected to the free clinic. She knew his visit was calculated for a time when she would be most distracted with her patients. Although his life appeared to have little purpose, drifting from job to job, everything he did was calculated.

  “How are you?” Cate wished she hadn’t asked him this. His smile annoyed her. That cocky, all-knowing smile.

  “Well,” he said. “Very well.”

  “Look, I’ve got to get back to my patients.”

  “Always your patients, right Cate?”

  She knew her patient care would not appease him. “And I’ve got my career to think about.”

  “Your career?” He confronted her, face-to-face. “How dare you call it your career. Without me, you would’ve never even made it into medical school. This is the way it’s always been, hasn’t it. All about Cate, Cate, Cate, until she needs better scores on her MCAT and then its big brother to the rescue.”

  Cate remained silent. She knew better than to stop him when he needed to vent. Even though she hated to admit it, everyt
hing he said was true.

  “Do you know what kind of trouble I’d been in if I got caught taking that test for you?

  “We’d both been in trouble.”

  “No, you would have denied that you even knew me, I’m sure.”

  Then his rage seemed to abate and Cate feared what he would say next.

  “You never even had the guts to tell our mother that the scores were mine.”

  Cate saw the strain on his face, the way he squinted to hide tears that came whenever he spoke of their mother.

  “It’s you and me together on this, Cate. We owe it to our mother.”

  Cate wanted to escape and bury herself in her patients. But her brother always had the last word.

  “And you definitely owe me.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Eli drove slowly down Adams Street in the heart of Victorian Village. At dusk, the street lights were beginning to flicker. Exterior lights illuminated the historic homes. Liza’s house was a dark silhouette against a fading northern sky. No porch lights, no windows glowing. Even the gas flame by the walkway had been extinguished.

  He parked at the curb and waited for a man clutching a brown paper bag to swagger by before opening the door of his car. He approached the house, expecting no response to his knock. But a few seconds later, the door cracked open and Layla stuck her head out.

  “She’s not here, doctor.”

  “I need to talk to her. Tell Liza to come out.”

  “You not hearing me, are you? She left, out of town. One of those medical conventions.”

  “Where?”

  “I just keep her house, Eli. I’m not her secretary.”

  “I think she’s in trouble. Big trouble.”

  Layla laughed. “She’s always in trouble, doctor. Always looking for the edge.”

  “Yeah? Well, she may fall off this time.” Eli walked away, heard the door close behind him. He got in his car. The sky was darker now. But when he looked back at the house, he thought he saw movement behind the curtains in the uppermost window.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  SurgCast.

  What an innovation.

  Log on at home or work or the library, and watch controlled, sterile violence.

  The reality of surgery is all there. The knife, the incision, the blood. It couldn’t be more real unless smoke from the cauterized tissue was blown in through the computer’s speakers, unless the abdominal organs were projected on a 3-D tactile instrument so the viewer could feel the slippery layer of blood. Maybe next year.

  But cutting on the human body does not produce as predictable a result as most reality shows do. Through a technological glitch, the customary fifteen-second delay did not occur and SurgCast broadcast the death of a patient to thousands of viewers. The video made it to a popular Internet site before being yanked due to its graphic nature.

  Eli was convinced the answer to the murders lay hidden within the events of that fatal operation, even though the names of the operative personnel did not match the names of the victims.

  Liza supposedly had left town and wasn’t available for questions. What an odd time to attend a surgical conference. Her absence in the midst of the murders and ongoing investigation was a little too convenient.

  If tapes had been made of the operation, Eli thought, that would be better than anyone’s recollection of events in the operating room.

  Eli looked up the number of SurgCast, listed as a Boston area code. He imagined the woman who answered to be sitting at a reception desk with a bank of blinking phone lines. When Eli identified himself as a physician from Gates Memorial Hospital, he was immediately put on hold. Another female voice answered, identified herself as the company’s legal representative. Eli suspected that SurgCast was well prepared for this call. To even the playing field, he decided his advantage lay in posing as a representative of the hospital’s legal office.

  “Hi. This is Tom Barnes. I represent Gates Memorial Hospital.”

  After this fabricated introduction, Eli requested the transcription of the audio recording made during the operation. “To facilitate our internal investigation,” he added. He assumed the video recording would not be available.

  “We’ve already discussed this,” the attorney told him. “The videotapes are sequestered and can—” She stopped. She obviously had not anticipated a request for the written transcript.

  Eli didn’t give her time to deflect the request. “We need to compare the transcript with the transcribed operative report.” He was on a roll, still not used to how easily the lies were coming. “We discussed that, remember? The video recording is sequestered, but disclosure of the transcripts was approved by your company’s president.”

  “Yes, I … I know,” she stammered, as though she had been left out of the loop. This made her eager to help. “Do you need both transcripts?”

  “Both?”

  “You know, the latest transcript and the one from the incident six months ago.”

  The first operative death.

  “Yes, both transcripts, of course.”

  “Okay, I’ll fax them to the hospital’s legal office.”

  “Great,” Eli said. “But let me give you a different fax number.”

  “A different fax?”

  “I’m working out of my second office today.” From a piece of scrap paper in his wallet, he gave her Meg’s fax number in the morgue.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Moonlight reflected off the river, transforming the muddy water into a broad silver lake. As Eli traveled along the shore road to his apartment, he saw a single light from a boat far upstream. The river served as Eli’s muse. Throughout medical school and even now, his best critical thinking could be accomplished by simply staring at the rippled brown waves as they pushed incessantly toward the Gulf.

  It was close to midnight, no one on the road, and even the mighty Mississippi had not helped him figure out what Liza French was up to. Maybe she was just sickened by the events of the past few days and needed to get away or hide out at home. Maybe she was running. Either way, Eli felt the investigation into the death of her patient was strangled by her absence. Maybe she could release the chokehold—if he could find her.

  The road to his apartment ran straight, with only a few dips and curves that Eli took instinctively while he continued to stare at the river. His new living arrangement was nothing like the luxury of his bungalow in Harbor Town where he lived a few weeks ago. His apartment building sat near the edge of a small bluff. Willow trees engulfed the bank that slid down into the muddy water. For all practical purposes, it was modest-rent housing with a view of the river, aptly named Riverview Apartments. Just before turning into the complex, he was startled by the sudden appearance of a man in the middle of the road.

  Eli braked to a stop. Facing the river, in a tan-colored raincoat, the man did not move. Eli recognized him and immediately rolled down his window.

  “Professor Salyer?”

  As though expecting Eli to arrive at that moment, the old man said, “Hypnotic, isn’t it?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Twain said the Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise.” Salyer turned to face Eli. “Damn son of a bitch was right.”

  Eli got out and stood between Salyer and the river. There was no car parked nearby, nothing, as though Salyer had materialized from air.

  “How did you get here?”

  A smile crossed Salyer’s face. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming home tonight.”

  He had a particular knack of answering questions off sequence.

  “How long have you been standing here?”

  “Had one of my grad students drive me.” He motioned to the apartment building. “I didn’t know which one of those cubbyholes was yours.”

  Eli cupped a hand under Salyer’s elbow and turned him toward his car. “Get in. I’ll show you.”

  With a firm grip, Salyer grabbe
d Eli’s wrists. “I’ve come to tell you how the next victim will die.”

  During the short ride to Eli’s apartment, Salyer said nothing more about the murders. Instead, he told of the three people who had stopped driving along the river, each one asking if they could help him. Salyer seemed surprised they were willing to talk to a total stranger at night.

  Especially an old man dressed like a flasher, Eli thought.

  Salyer had asked each of them to direct him to the home of Dr. Eli Branch, surgeon at the medical center, son of a medical school professor. He emphasized that not one of them had any idea whom he was talking about.

  “That’s because I’ve rented here for only a couple of weeks.” Eli turned into his driveway. “I don’t even know my next door neighbor.”

  They entered the sparsely furnished one-bedroom apartment.

  “I understand,” Salyer said. “I’ve lived in Oxford for almost ten years and barely know my neighbors. They’ve brought over casseroles and cakes, invited me to church I don’t know how many times.” Salyer shook his head. “I don’t need any of that.” He sank deep into Eli’s couch.

  Eli knocked around in the kitchen. He wanted to offer his former professor a drink but found only one can of beer in the fridge and a warm bottle of Chardonnay one of his patients had given him. He offered both to Salyer.

  “Not to worry,” Salyer said. He reached into his pocket and produced a bottle of George Dickel. “Grab a couple of glasses.”

  Eli returned with the smallest water glasses he owned. Salyer poured and offered a toast. “To life on the Mississippi.”