Code Blues (18 page)

I wasn't sure what Dr. Callendar meant by a
PM, but Bob had to be Bob Clarkson, the FMC director. Why were he
and Dr. Callendar having an after-hours rendezvous about this
suspicious death? Like I said, no bureaucrat voluntarily stays
late. Bob Clarkson was originally a family doctor, but he'd cut his
patients loose after he'd gone into administration. I heard that
he'd added his patients to the FMC pot, telling them he'd supervise
them once in a while, but really dumping them on the residents.

Could that lazy administrator really have
killed anyone, even with Dr. Callendar's help?

Now I was the one seeing conspiracies
everywhere.

I unclenched my fists. They ached. My
fingernails had bitten into my palms. I rolled my shoulders out and
headed for home.

I was halfway down the block before I
realized I'd left my backpack in the emerg residents' room, which
meant I had no keys to unlock my apartment door.

I was losing my mind.

I ran back into emerg, trying not to meet
anyone's eye as I swiped the giant yellow key stick from the unit
coordinator's desk. Some stretcher patients goggled at me. I
pretended not to notice, striding to the residents' room in the
back hallway. As I shouldered my backpack and pulled the residents'
door closed, I overheard a woman's voice from the staff kitchen
across the hall. "Did you hear about Kurt's autopsy report?"

I slipped back into the residents' room,
leaving the door slightly ajar. I could still hear them.

"No. Did you?"

"Yes. The preliminary one." The woman
lowered her voice. "They think he died from airway
obstruction."

"Well, I guess! Dave said they found him
face-down."

I had to strain to hear the first woman now.
"But his blood tested positive for succinylcholine."

"Succ? No way!"

I caught my breath. Succinylcholine was what
we most often used to paralyze a patient before passing a tube
between his or her vocal cords. Kurt had been paralyzed.

He'd been
murdered
.

"Sylvie!" a man bellowed from the belly of
the ER. I recognized the voice. It was the big male nurse who'd
been working the acute side. "I need you!"

"You'd better go," said one woman, and the
other one, presumably, Sylvie called back, "I'm coming!" Her
footsteps trotted away.

I waited a decent interval before leaving
the room and returning the room key. I seemed to be doing a lot
sneaking around today.

Someone had murdered St. Joseph's most
popular doctor. The police would be right on it. Dr. Kurt's desk
would be sealed and searched. It was a good thing I'd made it in
before they came.

I was halfway home,
cutting on to
Edouard Montpetit
avenue, before I considered that Dr. Kurt may
have committed suicide. If you want to off yourself, succ
(pronounced sucks) would make darn sure of it. A doctor would know
how to do it right.

But no one thought he'd been depressed. Days
before his death, Dr. Kurt was e-mailing Bob Clarkson about the
FMC. The day of, he was telling us we could page him 24/7 and
winking at me across the orientation room. Plus the whole
Mireille-Vicki thing. He'd seemed anything but depressed.

Also, if he offed himself, he wouldn't do it
at St. Joe's. The publicity could bring the ship down.

It could still be an accident, like the
anaesthetist at Western, but the druggie anaesthetist grabbed the
wrong medication in his hurry between cases. He didn't say, Geez, I
wonder if I can paralyze myself, because that would be such a
blast. I mean, what's the first thing you learn in first aid?
ABC's. Airway, airway, airway. No one wants to choke on their own
tongue.

I looked up at the University of Montreal's
most impressive piece of architecture, a sandstone-colored tower
balanced on the mountain. Its round roof had oxidized to green and
windows poked in the front, like eyes.

My eyes fell on the women milling in front
of the university. Because of the heat, many of them had twisted
their hair up. I've always wanted to do my own hair but never
mastered anything more than a hair clip, a ponytail, or a basic
braid. So I cut my hair off.

Only one woman had tamed her curly brown
hair in a ponytail with a simple black elastic. My kind of
woman.

Then she turned her head to talk to the guy
next to her, and I saw it wasn't my kind of woman at all. It was
Mireille.

I walked up on her other side. "Hi
there."

Her half-smile dissolved as soon as she
recognized me. "Oh. Hello." She glanced at her friend, a guy with
sandy-colored hair and freckles.

"Hi. I'm Scott. I'm in general surgery at
the Jewish."

He still looked fresh, no dark circles under
the eyes. Of course, we were only a few days in. "What year are
you?"

"First. Are you in medicine, too?"

"Yeah, first year family med at St. Joe's.
My name's Hope."

He smiled at me. His front teeth just
crooked enough to be charming. "Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise."

Mireille took his arm. "Well, we're on our
way. Nice to see you again."

Scott turned to me. "You want to join us? We
were thinking of going to a café."

I loved how Mireille's face turned puce, so
I said, "Really? You have time for a café on gen surg?"

He laughed. "I'm post call. Mireille was
going to fill me in on all the gossip from St. Joe's."

"Like that she and Alex used to be
together?"

Mireille's lips parted as she gave me a
measured look, but Scott laughed. "Old news. I went to med school
with them."

Still, I'd gotten a double dig at Mireille.
Now she knew I knew, plus I'd reminded Scott of her past if she was
planning to get jiggy with it. I gave him a lingering look. "Maybe
you're the one who should fill me in."

He laughed, glanced at Mireille, and
sobered. "Nah. I guess there's more serious stuff going on."

Regret sobered me, too. I shouldn't act so
bitchy with her ex-lover dead. "Yeah. I heard the preliminary
autopsy report came out. I'm sorry."

Scott raised his eyebrows. "Autopsy report."
Mireille gave him a fierce look, and he backtracked. "I guess
that's one of the things I'll hear about."

I glanced at Mireille,
wondering if she knew the report, too. Probably. I waved them off,
and turned down Louis Colin, a small street leading to the
Haute École Commerciale
,
a steel-pillared monstrosity that dominated the other university
buildings. Today I hurried by HEC, focusing on the ultramarine-blue
day care instead. The railing on one side was made out of sheet
metal embossed with a skateboarder. The kids' paper suns grinned
down at me with crooked smiles.

I came home to two messages on my call
answer. The so-called Zippy Moving Company's truck had broken down
just outside of Montreal. There was nothing that they could or
would do about it. "We are very sorry, but of course, mechanical
problems are not our responsibility."

Then whose responsibility was it?

"Your truck will arrive tomorrow. Please
call us if you have any questions."

Yeah. Like they'd be waiting to hear an
earful from me after 6 p.m. Worse and worser. I sat on my sleeping
bag and massaged my aching insteps.

The second message was a woman's muffled
voice. "Hi, uh, Hope? I heard that you, um, want to talk to me? So
I'm calling you back." She left a number and said, "My name is
Vicki." And then she hung up.

Victory at last! I dialed the number. It
rang four times and clicked over to "The AT&T wireless customer
you have dialed is not available. Please leave a message."

Were these people allergic to turning on
their cell phones?

I left a quick message asking her to call
me. Then I double-checked the time when Vicki called. Less than an
hour ago. Too bad.

Thirty minutes later, the phone rang. I
grabbed it. "Hello?"

"Hope." Alex pitched his voice
seductively.

My back jerked up, rigid. "Hello."

He paused. "Is something wrong?"

"Should something be wrong?" I
countered.

"Are you mad at me?"

"I'm not mad." Pissed, betrayed,
seething—okay, mad. "Is there something you wanted to tell me?"

"Well, yeah."

If he confessed his hot and heavy past with
Mireille, maybe I'd cut him some microscopic slack.

"Did you hear about the autopsy report?" he
asked. "I was right! He was murdered!"

"I heard that they found succ in his blood,"
I said coolly. "He could still have injected himself."

"Kurt? No way! Weren't you listening to
me?"

"Too well," I answered, and my line beeped.
"Sorry Alex, must go. Ta ta." I hung up. "Hello?"

"Hope?" It was Vicki's high-pitched
voice.

Finally, things were going right. "Vicki!
I'm so glad to hear from you. How are you?"

"Terrible." She blew her nose.

"Oh." How could I cheer her up? "I know this
is a very hard time for you. Kurt was your fiancée?"

"Yes." Rather squashed-sounding. She blew
her nose again. "You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes." I tried to inject warmth and sympathy
into my voice. "Thanks for calling me on such a difficult day. My
name is Hope Sze. I'm a resident. You may not remember me, but I
was in the locker room, when we, ah, found Kurt. You seemed very
upset. I wanted to make sure that you were all right."

"Well, I'm not." She sounded plugged. I
wondered if she was holding a tissue to her nose as we talked. "I
want you to leave me alone."

"Excuse me?" It was the last thing I
expected. She was the one who had called me. Twice!

"Leave me alone." Click. She hung up on
me!

I banged my own phone down. I knew she was
in mourning, but it wasn't like I was harassing her. I left my
number with the clerk, and then she called me. If she wanted to be
left alone, she should have just let it die. I winced. Bad choice
of words.

The phone rang. I picked it up. "What! I
mean, hello."

"It's Alex."

I'd forgotten about him. I'd thought that
he'd hung up after I had. "What's up?"

"That's what I wanted to know. You brushed
me off like I was a case of food poisoning."

I laughed reluctantly. "You can't brush off
food poisoning. It makes you puke."

"I hope I'm not that bad. Did I piss you off
somehow?"

I paused. He'd lied to me. Bad news. The
end. On the other hand, there was still that darn spark. No. After
the desk-hiding episode, caution won. "Forget it."

"Come on, Hope. I want to know."

"Too bad, then." It sounded harsh, so I
added cheerfully. "I'll talk to you later, okay?"

Long pause. "Okay." Before he'd finished the
word, I hung up. I had to laugh. I got the feeling Alex appreciated
me more if he had to work for me. It wouldn't hurt him.

Now I was all keyed up. I didn't want to sit
around my apartment alone, brooding. Alex should be left alone to
repent his sins, not me.

I rummaged through the orientation package
on my desk for the list of residents' names and numbers.

Tori picked up on the second ring just as I
pulled Henry into a marching position. Time to party, girl
style.

"Hi. It's Hope. Wanna do something?"

She paused. "Like what?"

"I don't know. You've got four years here on
me. Any suggestions?"

She laughed and thought a minute. "Have you
been to the Jazz Festival?"

"That sounds awesome." Then I remembered my
line of credit. "Is it expensive?"

"No, they have a lot of free shows
outside."

"Perfect."

"Tucker and Anu and I were talking about
going on the weekend. I could call and see if they want to go
tonight instead."

Tucker was way too loud. "Uh, I'm feeling
low key tonight, you know?"

She laughed. "Maybe we'd better not go to
the Jazz Festival, then."

"I'd kind of like to go. I've never been. I
just don't feel like screaming over the music, in a big group. But
if you want to, that's cool."

"No, that's all right. We can always go out
with them on the weekend."

We arranged to meet at the Snowdon metro
station. Tori said she'd be wearing a tangerine shirt and a glow
stick around her neck.

"I love glow sticks! Don't you?"

She laughed. "I keep a couple. It makes it
easier to meet people."

The Monday night metro was packed, the
working-late crowd mixed with the dinner dates. The black guy
beside me zoned out with his headphones, his knees pointed into the
aisle. I tried to relax in my orange and white plastic seat,
listening to my neighbor's bass beat and the screech of the subway.
I was going to see the city and have a good time without Alex.

Two short stops later, I stepped off and met
Tori on the platform. She was sitting on a bench, a blue glow stick
wrapped around her neck, her legs tanned against her white jean
shorts.

"You made it." She handed me an inert green
glow stick. "Here's your prize."

I hesitated. "Do you want to save it? You
know, in case you need to meet someone else?"

She laughed. "Don't worry about it. I get
them at the dollar store."

I bent mine in half until
it snapped and glowed fluorescent lime green. She helped me tie the
string on the end to my left wrist. As we stepped on the next
train, she said, "Why don't we get off at
Place-d'Armes
and walk? If we switch
to the green line for
Place-des-Arts
, it'll take
longer."

I held up my hands. "You're the expert. I'm
just happy I got the glow stick!"

She laughed and shook her
head. "Have you ever been to the Chinatown here? It's right
around
Place-d'Armes
."