Code Blues (17 page)

Well, screw that.

I'd still consider B&E into Dr. Kurt's
office, but not for Alex.

Even though I never really knew Dr. Kurt
alive, I still respected him and wanted him to be at peace. This
sounds gross, but I remember when my dissection partner said he
wouldn't be donating his body to medical school. "Look at them," he
said, pointing at the cadavers around the room. "They're not at
peace."

Dr. Kurt's mottled face and glassy eyes
popped into my head. He wasn't at peace, either. I hadn't been able
to bring him back to life. But maybe I could make sure he hadn't
died in vain.

Chapter 11

When I hit the ER, my mind was not on work,
but on escaping the walk-in side ASAP.

It was almost like a clinic. I picked up the
chart for a middle-aged guy who said his knee hurt. I did a full
exam, stressing all his knee ligaments. Then I reported to Dr.
Trigiani, a female physician who bustled around the ER in real
clothes. Not greens. A full-length, stretchy black skirt, a white
cotton shirt, even a chunky bead necklace.

I always wore scrubs. The emerg is a messy
place. Blood, vomit, plaster casts. Of course, most of the time,
the grossest thing you had to worry about was a stray sneeze, but I
wasn't willing to risk that ten percent spew factor while nearly
all my wardrobe remained in another province.

Dr. Trigiani listened to my presentation,
her head cocked to one side. "Okay. Did you check his hip and
ankle?"

Oops. I turned red.

She laughed. "It's a good rule of thumb.
Always check the joint above and the joint below. Are you sure
there's no history of trauma?"

"He says no."

She checked the triage nurse's note. "'Knee
pain x 1 month. O trauma.' Okay. We'll X-ray him, and it'll
probably be negative."

By 4:30, I'd seen a few other patients, but
I kept checking. No films for my knee man.

"Yeah. X-ray's really backed up," said Dr.
Trigiani. "It's been like that all day."

I might end up here past five, just to
babysit this guy's knee. I didn't want to enter the FMC too late.
It might look suspicious if I pretended to need a chart at 7 p.m. I
darted around the corner to check the film counter again.

Dr. Trigiani laughed at me. "It's okay. Go
see another patient."

I smiled weakly. It took me thirty to sixty
minutes with each patient. At this rate, I was going to stay past
five anyway.

Luckily, it was a 26-year-old guy with ear
pain. I'd seen some kids before with middle ear infections, called
otitis media. The trick was to pull on the pinna, the outer ear, to
straighten the external ear canal and have a good look at the ear
drum. Like I'd been trained, I checked his good ear first. No
problem. I pulled on his tender ear.

"Ow!" He yanked his head away and glared at
me.

"Sorry." I hadn't even managed to insert the
otoscope. "I have to take a good look."

"Well, be careful."

I don't think anyone is more gentle than I
am, but I tried even more gingerly.

"OW!"

This time, I got a glimpse inside. His
external ear canal, which normally looks like a tunnel of skin,
looked like it was covered in weeping wax. I could hardly make out
the ear drum.

I went on to check his mouth, feel the few
lymph nodes in his neck, and listen to his chest and heart. Then I
wrote up his chart, my ear cocked for Dr. Trigiani. It was 4:48

She came around the corner, holding a large
brown envelope. "Guess what I found!"

She popped the films on to the light box.
"What do you see?"

I surveyed them. "It looks normal."

"Name the bones."

"Femur." I pointed to the big thigh bone,
tracing its lines. "Tibia. Fibula. And of course, patella."

"You wouldn't believe it, but some students
don't remember." I let the student reference pass, although I hoped
she knew I was a resident. I'd introduced myself as an R1. She went
on, "What would you look for in osteoarthritis?"

"Narrowing of the joint space. Sclerosis.
Bony spurs." I tried to remember the last one and couldn't.

"That's pretty good." She pulled the films
down and wrote "0" and signed her name on the front of the
envelope. "How's your guy's ear?"

"I think he has otitis externa."

"Has he been swimming?"

"Yeah, but it was last week. I think that's
what it is, though." I described my findings. She waved her hands,
her brown eyes snapping. "Sounds good to me. Let's write him a
script. Then you're outta here. You're off at five, right?"

"Right." Wow. A doctor who didn't want me to
stay late to prove myself. I liked her more and more. But I was
still glad to clock out of there.

It was twenty past when I crept up the
stairs of the FMC. I felt like a burglar. I avoided touching the
wooden banister, as if they could date my fingerprints. I noticed
the door on each landing had a large pane of glass and windows on
either side. Anyone could see me passing. I ducked my head and
tiptoed even more quietly.

Just past the third floor, I heard a door
open on the fourth. "Yeah, it's hard to say," said a guy's
voice.

Someone was entering the stairwell! I
hurried back down to the third floor and pushed open the door,
turning left, down one corner of the U. I had to get away from the
windows on the landing.

I was almost at the end of the hall before I
realized I had even less excuse to be on the administrative
floor.

Fortunately, all the room
doors were closed and presumably locked. No good bureaucrat would
stay past 4 p.m. I took deep breaths. I was not doing anything
wrong. I was a resident here.
Just lost,
sir. Just needed to pee, ma'am. Sorry to bother you.

I heard footsteps clatter down the stairs
and fade to a distant echo.

My heart thrummed like a rabbit's, but I
forced myself to count to twenty before I inched back to the
stairwell.

It looked and sounded deserted. Fine. I took
a deep breath. One more floor. I could do this.

On the fourth floor, the secretary's door
was closed and locked.

I tried to glide past the conference room,
which was free and clear except for some charts on the table. The
wind picked up and blew the blinds. They banged back against the
window.

I flinched, caught myself,
and carried on down the hallway.
Nothing
to see, Dr. Callendar. I just took a wrong turn on the way out of
the conference room
...

I pulled on a pair of non-latex gloves I'd
swiped from the emerg and reached for the doorknob of Dr. Kurt's
office. It turned easily in my hand.

I pulled the door closed behind me and
scouted the tiny office. If I'd laid down on the worn grey carpet
and stretched my arms above my head, I probably could have touched
a wall with my fingers and the opposite wall with my toes.

Bookshelves stuffed with books, journals,
and manila folders lined the walls on either side of his desk, He'd
sat with his back to the window, facing the door.

His chair was an adjustable secretarial
model, in ultramarine-blue fabric lining. The seat was slightly
compressed, but otherwise it looked quite new. The man cared about
his back and his posterior.

I needed more clues. Where to start?

The desk was most obvious. There was a
square of space along the edge I hadn't noticed before. I tried to
recall what had been in it when Stan and I came in, since every
surface had been covered in paper.

Patient charts. All the patient charts were
gone.

Was it possible a patient had killed him and
tried to hide the evidence?

It sounded ridiculous, but I had to keep an
open mind. The charts were the only obvious things missing.

Maybe the police took them. But they should
have sealed off the room if they'd searched it. They must still be
treating it like a suspicious death, not homicide.

I sifted through the remaining
papers, trying to touch as little as possible. I saw numerous
journals like the CMAJ and the Parkhurst Review. Some photocopied
articles on renal colic, child vaccinations, and the new
hypertensive guidelines. A printed e-mail from
[email protected] to dr-kurt, dated June
27
^th
.

Hi Kurt,

I appreciate your suggestions. We all want
to make the FMC a better place. Why don't you make an appointment
with my secretary to talk about them?

Bob

I almost smiled. It sounded like Bob
Clarkson. But why had Kurt bothered to print the message out? It
sounded pretty innocuous.

I found a bunch of articles on crystal meth,
GHB, heroin and physician addiction in a stack labeled "Grand
Rounds." Alex had mentioned Kurt's presentation. Not too useful for
me right now, but I kept searching the piles, hoping for something
more incriminating.

Kurt had one of those desk file organizers
where you stick file folders in between black metal loops that keep
the folders upright. The one labeled Future Grand Rounds was empty.
Hadn't Stan said something about spousal abuse? Oh, well, maybe
Kurt took his stuff home to work on it.

What I really wanted was to break into his
desktop computer. I took a deep breath and pushed the power button
with the knuckle of my index finger. The computer hummed
obediently, but instead of loading up the usual Windows crap, it
jumped to a screen with the message "Command File Not Found."

I took a programming course in high school,
but this was really beyond my ken. I tried pressing Return and
Escape, to no avail.

Was it possible that Kurt used a laptop and
never touched this ancient technology? Sure. But even though the
bulky old-school monitor had collected brown balls of dust in its
furrows, the tops of the keyboard keys and the tower's power button
weren't dusty, suggesting that he did use it. Strange.

I turned off the computer and tried more
low-tech solutions, i.e. I opened his desk drawer. It got stuck a
third of the way through. I jiggled it loose, peering at the blue
ballpoint pens and Post-It notes.

The phone rang.

I jumped, banging the drawer. It got stuck
again. I rattled it loose and shoved it closed.

The phone rang three times before it got cut
off mid-ring.

My stomach slowly unrolled, and I started
breathing again. Thank God for voice mail.

Speaking of which...I stared at the phone.
What if I could get into his voice messages?

I studied the phone. Considering how
primitive they kept the rest of the FMC, the sleek black Bell
phones stood out with their buttons for hold and speed dial and
messages.

I reached for the receiver. It was risky, so
soon after someone called. Still, my fingers circled the black
plastic.

The office's closed door rattled. The
doorknob turned.

I dropped the phone back into the cradle. My
first thought was to jump out the window. But four stories later,
they'd have to scrape me off the pavement.

I dove under the desk and curled into as
small a ball as possible.

I lay on my right side, hugging my knees. My
head was pressed against the back of the desk. My left arm was
wedged under a fake wood drawer. I stared at the wall under the
window as footsteps approached. Never had I been so conscious of my
own breathing.

The door closed. Heavy, male-sounding
footsteps grew closer. I was facing the window and didn't dare turn
to check the shoes. If I made a sound, I'd find out soon enough who
was wearing them.

My neck started to cramp up. My teeth
clenched.

I heard a bang and felt a whack on the desk.
My eyes widened, but I made no noise.

If this guy pulled the chair up to the desk,
he'd run into me with his knees or his feet. Game over.

A BEEP, BEEP, BEEP shrilled through the
air.

My hand flew to the pager on my waist. I was
dead meat. Dead, roasted, smoked, and sliced meat.

The man grunted. His hand moved up and I
heard him clicking the buttons on his pager.

His pager. Not mine. I couldn't even breathe
a sigh of relief, but my shoulders relaxed marginally.

He propped his butt on the desk and leaned
across the desk to punch in the number. "Yeah. Callendar."

My worst fears made flesh. I tried to
scrunch into an even tighter ball.

He heaved a long sigh. "Can this wait? I've
got to—" He fell silent. "The preliminary PM? I don't—all right.
Fine. Twenty minutes."

He banged the receiver back into its cradle.
He snorted under his breath. He grabbed the handle of his
briefcase, muttered, "Suspicious death, my ass, Bob," and stormed
out of the room.

Chapter 12

I didn't dare search the office any more. It
sounded like Dr. Callendar had offered to meet for twenty minutes,
but he could easily return in twenty seconds. I waited a few
breaths, uncurled from under the desk, and beat it to the
conference room, where I could legitimately sit and gather my
breath and scattered wits for a moment. Then I dashed to the
staircase on the opposite end of the FMC and strode down the
stairs, struggling not to run any more.

The July afternoon sun glowed in the west.
The air was warm, but not oppressive. I took a deep breath. I was
free. I'd made it.

And I'd never do that again. A little risk
was a fine thing after playing the good girl my whole life. But I
had no taste for outright danger. I could have been arrested. I
could have been expelled. I could have been strung up by Dr.
Callendar if he hadn't been called away by a suspicious death.

Suspicious death. He had to be talking about
Kurt. Unless St. Joe's turned out to be a hotbed of killings as
well as incest, we'd only suffered once suspicious death
recently.