Code Blues (21 page)

He exhaled, extending his head and surveying
the night sky. "The golden rule."

"Not just for Christians anymore."

"Sounds good to me," Tori said in a low
voice.

I flashed her a smile and waited for
Alex.

His shoulders sagged. "Yeah. You're right."
He looked at me levelly, no flirting now, straight up. "Sorry."

I nodded.

"I'm an asshole.
Odey-oh
," he
added.

Hey. That was an obscure song reference. I
liked it. "Okay. Just go forth and asshole no more."

He choked on a laugh. "I'll do my best.
Seriously."

I'd had enough
mea culpa
. I turned to
include Tori in the conversation. Her eyes gleamed with approval. I
gave her a small smile. "Now that we've solved that mystery—" I
tilted my head. "Well, actually, I still don't know why Mireille
ended up with Kurt. But the bigger question is, why did Kurt end up
engaged to Vicki?"

Alex shrugged and grinned a little. "I think
Kurt didn't trust Mireille completely after she lied about me. Too
bad, so sad."

In the distance, the band started up again,
the brass wailing another tune. The crowd cheered and clapped.

Tori waited for the noise to subside a
little before she put in, "It's not against the law for a staff
member to date a student. But it's not approved of, either. It
probably would have been all right if Mireille had gone into
surgery, as she'd planned. But at the last minute, she ranked
family medicine first and asked to be at St. Joe's."

Alex snorted. "Yeah. She had to get
greedy."

I remembered running into her on the street
with the surgery guy from the Jewish. I looked from Alex to Tori.
"Mireille wanted to be a surgeon?"

Alex raised his eyebrows. "General surgery,
no less."

Arguably the most draining kind of surgery.
Gen surg used to cover everything from thyroid to basic ortho,
C-sections, and bowel CA, but now, with subspecialization and turf
wars, they've largely been confined to "breast and bowel," as I'd
heard one resident sum it up.

Bowel includes the appendix, and when I was
on call for gen surg, almost every single night, we'd go to the OR
for at least one appy, plus they'd have to cover any trauma. No
other surgical consultants had to come in every night. Generalists
also tend not to get paid as well as specialists. Of course
surgeons usually do well, but everyone envies the ophthalmologists
who tend to work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and make a killing on
cataract or laser surgery. To be a general surgeon, you have to
love the work.

Mireille must have loved the work. Instead,
she chose her boyfriend, only to have him toss her away.

If what they were saying was true, Mireille
hadn't just lost a boyfriend. She'd lost her career. And at this
stage in our lives, that's everything. If it were me, I'd be
questioning my choices, seething at Kurt and Vicki, and most of
all, flagellating myself while trying to put on a happy face for
family medicine. I asked, "Can she switch to gen surg?"

Alex half-laughed. Tori said, "I think she
may try to. But she could lose the year."

Losing a year was bad. Doing family medicine
against her will was arguably worse. It didn't excuse her rudeness
to me, but it helped explain why she was already pissed before I
started poking around.

And yet, when I pictured her in my mind, I
couldn't forget her powerful shoulders and arms. She could have
dragged Kurt in the locker room. She had good reason to hate Kurt,
the best motive I'd uncovered so far. Mireille was definitely a
candidate.

Too bad. I wanted it to be Dr. Callendar.
The whole two birds, one stone thing.

I tried to work out the
timing. We applied to residency last fall. Alex implied he and
Mireille had broken up before the New Year. I think we submitted
our rank lists—the list of programs we'd accept, in descending
order of preference—in February, a month before the match. We got
our match results on March 15
^th
, telling us which residency
program and which city we'd been matched to.

So her romance with Kurt must have lasted
until at least Valentine's Day, or else she would have changed her
rank list. Sometime between February and July first, he had broken
up with her and proposed to Vicki. Five months. Fast work. I found
myself not liking him as much.

I had to verify my calculations. "When were
Mireille and Kurt dating?"

Alex snorted. "October to April. As far as I
know." He looked at my half-empty water bottle. "Are you going to
finish that?"

I handed it to him. "And when were you and
Mireille together?"

He took a long swig. "On and off, until
December. For a year."

A year. That was pretty serious. It also
didn't seem to go with his previous timeline.

Alex waved his hand. "More off than on. We
hardly saw each other. We were finishing clerkship and applying for
residency."

Tori's eyebrows quirked, but she said
nothing.

I tried to shove aside my own
disappointment. "If you guys were together for that long, and you
both did family medicine at St. Joseph's, Kurt must have known that
you were together, just the way you acted around each other."

Alex recapped the water bottle and handed it
back to me. "Uh uh. At McGill, we rotate through the hospitals
starting in second year, as an introduction, and then again in
clerkship. Mireille and I were both here in second year, but in
different groups. Then she came back in clerkship, but I was at the
Jewish. Kurt never saw us together."

Tori said, "So how did he find out you'd
been dating?"

Alex suppressed a burp. "ESP."

We both wrinkled our noses. He said,
"Sorry."

Tori repeated, "If he never saw you
together, how did he find out you'd been dating?"

"Maybe Mireille told him."

Not likely. It wasn't in her own best
interest. She wasn't about to say, "Guess who I used to do, right
before you?" Or, even worse, at the same time as I was doing
you?

Alex grimaced. "Oh, all
right. I told him off for dating a student. He figured out the
rest." He spread his arms. "But that goes way back. When Mireille
told me they were getting engaged, I said
Mazel tov
. What's it to
me?"

Was he Jewish? No, I thought he was, if
anything, a Mennonite. Maybe Mireille was Jewish. Oh, who cared. I
was getting distracted from the important stuff.

Tori stepped in. "I never heard they were
engaged."

Alex smiled wolfishly. A lot of teeth. "No,
you wouldn't have. Because soon after she told me that, he dumped
her and took up with Vicki. Tit for tat." He cackled.

Despite how much he protested, Alex didn't
seem over Mireille. Even wanting to nail her as a killer meant he
wanted to nail her in one form or other.

Tori said, "She must have been hurt."

Alex bobbed his head up and down in cheerful
agreement. "That's why she may have killed him."

"No, Alex," Tori said. "That's a terrible
thing to say."

Alex held his hands, palm up. "The truth
hurts."

His definition of truth was pretty lax. Not
attractive. Also, if he expected me to root the dirt out on
Mireille just so he wouldn't look petty while she took the fall,
he'd have to try a lot harder than hair-washing. I took a step
back. "I have to go."

Alex stepped forward, his arm raised and
ready to loop around my shoulders. "Aw, no. Not yet. The night's
still young, Hope."

I made a show of checking my watch. "Not
young enough. Thanks for the hairdressing. See you. Coming,
Tori?"

She said, "Yes. It's been a long day. 'Bye,
Alex."

I felt a sour triumph. I wouldn't play his
fool.

On the other hand, I probably wouldn't get
to play with him at all. I should have felt liberated.

Alex said, "All right.
I'll go listen to some jazz. 'Bye, ladies." He kissed Tori's cheeks
fast, and then drew me close. His breath was heavily sautéed in
alcohol, but his twin kisses were warm and tender against my skin.
He stared deep into my eyes. "
Auf
wiedersehen
."

My heart thumped twice. It
sounded so poignant when he said it. I knew enough German to
translate it as "until we see each other again." It meant the same
as the more predictable French "
au
revoir
," but on his lips, the German
somehow carried more intimacy.

Or maybe I was reading too much into it, as
usual. Didn't Mennonites speak German?

I spread disinterest over my face and turned
to Tori. "Subway calling?"

She nodded.

I glanced over my shoulder, at Alex. He
waved and began weaving back through the crowd, but he turned once
to give me a regretful grin before his lanky figure cut into the
night crowd.

My stomach squiggled again.

Tori shook her head.

"What?" I said.

She quirked her eyebrows until I rubbed the
pavement with my sandal, pretending to polish a piece of gum off
the sole. I said to the asphalt, "I know what I'm doing."

I felt, more than saw, her shake her head,
but she dropped it. "You still have time to catch the blue line.
The last train is around 11:15."

My jaw dropped.

She laughed. "Did you not see the signs in
the station?"

I shook my head. I'm usually
people-watching, or staring at the map, making sure I'm heading the
right way. "Well, that sucks! How am I supposed to go out at night
then?"

"Taxi. Or, depending exactly where you are,
you could walk from the orange line. You have a lot to learn
about—Montreal." The slight pause made it clear the city wasn't all
that she had in mind, but I wasn't ready to talk about Alex. I was
embarrassed by my strong reaction to him. Zing is good, but he was
someone who could carve his way into my heart, leave footprints on
my brain, and inscribe his initials in my small intestines. If I
let him.

Part of me wanted to jump
into free fall. The other part, the careful part, the doctor part,
the Tori part, whispered,
he is dangerous.
Run away and stock up on garlic and crucifixes.

But whenever I was with Alex in the flesh,
the first part won.

I honestly think I'm somewhat screwed up
from being good so long. The most hazardous thing I've ever done
was to get drunk and kiss a stranger when I was sixteen. But it was
never perilous. I was tipsy, but I knew exactly what I was doing
and how far I was willing to go. The guy was toasted enough to be
harmless. When I decided I'd had enough, I took a cab home.
Granted, it was 4 a.m. and he was a decade older than me, but it's
the wildest thing I've ever done in my life. And that was ten years
ago.

So it wasn't just Alex.
The tiger in me was sick of being caged in white coats and the
Dean's Honour List. It wanted blood. It wanted sweat. It wanted
sex. It wanted
life
.

So Alex seemed like a good start.

We walked to the metro in silence. How could
I explain all this to Tori? She seemed grounded, which was good,
and not a gossip, which was also good, but she was very, very
controlled. She looked before she leaped. She was quiet.
Reflective. Self-contained. Plus, I just met her. How do you say,
"You know, I really want to fuck that guy. You should admire my
self-restraint" to the ultimate good girl?

Maybe it had something to do with her
background. She was my first friend who'd been born in Japan. Their
culture is all about honor and respect.

I'm not sure what you'd say about Chinese
culture nowadays. Respect is a big part of it, but so is food. To
distract myself, I asked, "How come your name's Tori, anyway? Is it
like Tori Amos?"

She said, "Tori is a Japanese name. It means
'bird.'"

I wondered if Tori Amos knew that. Probably
not.

By the time we were riding the escalator
down to the bowels of the metro, I couldn't stand it any more. I'd
lasted about five minutes. "So. You knew Alex and Mireille when
they were going out?"

"Yes." Her eyes fixed on the brick wall,
like she was reading the ads. As if.

"Were they really serious?"

"They were discreet at the hospital."

I chewed my lower lip. "What does that
mean?"

She sighed. Her eyes were almost black in
the flickering fluorescent light. "He's not over her."

It stung twice as hard because I'd gotten
the same feeling. I concentrated on stepping off the grooved
escalator step on to the metal mat at the bottom. "How do you
know?"

She just looked at me.

I sighed. "Okay, dumb question." Not as dumb
as me, though. I'd been broadcasting my interest, and Tori could
read me like a billboard. I dug through my change purse for my
metro ticket, avoiding her eyes. The metal gate beeped, and I
pushed the turnstile extra hard. She ran her metro pass through and
followed me without a word.

While she pressed the button for a transfer,
I said to her back, "Okay, you warned me."

She turned around and handed me the
transfer, a flimsy strip of newsprint stamped with the station
name. "In case you get lost and need to take the bus."

I shook my head in irritation. "I'm not that
much of an idiot."

"Please," she said quietly. "Just in
case."

I took it with bad grace. She obviously
thought I was a doughhead.

"We all get lost
sometimes," she said evenly. "It's understandable." Then she turned
toward the
Côte-Vertu
orange line.

I ran up to her. "You mean, you and
Alex—"

She broke up laughing. "No. Absolutely
not."