Code Blues (5 page)

I poked my index finger against his mottled
flank, indenting the cool skin. As I pulled back, the flesh slowly
rebounded, but still didn't change color.

Dr. Dupuis voice was loud and sudden in my
ear. "Let him go."

I recoiled, wiping my finger against my
scrub pants, but he was talking to the black woman who still had
her fingers on his throat. "He's too far gone, and this may end up
being a crime scene."

Crime scene?

Dr. Dupuis's voice shook only a little when
he said, "It's Kurt."

She nodded, dropping her eyes. She withdrew
her hand from his throat and crossed her arms, hugging herself
tightly.

Dr. Dupuis stood. "He was one of the doctors
here," he said, his head averted.

Oh, my God. I scanned the face again. The
moustache. Was this the guy whose speech I'd interrupted?

Slowly, I reprogrammed the brown eyes, the
broad forehead, the slightly hooked nose, and the moustache in my
mind. Yes. It was him. I closed my eyes.

I heard Dr. Dupuis's steps thumping around
the room. He called, "Did you see anything? Evidence of foul
play?"

It sounded like something out of a movie.
Maybe it was. I doubt Dr. Dupuis had ever found a colleague dead in
the men's change room before, but he didn't let it faze him. He
lifted the white plastic lid of the soiled linen cart by the door.
"Look for needles," he said, peering inside. "Anything to do with
drugs."

I glanced at the black woman. She lifted one
shoulder in a shrug.

I said, "But wasn't he diabetic? Maybe he'll
have his own needles."

"Even so," Dr. Dupuis replied, his mouth a
grim line.

"You think we should search his
pockets?"

Before he could answer, the door burst open.
"Where's the—" Two nurses manhandled a scarlet crash cart into the
room. "My God!" exclaimed the plump, blond one.

The black woman said, "It's not a code now.
Dr. Dupuis already called it."

While she explained, I checked Dr. Radshaw's
pockets. His wallet was still in his right pocket. I didn't open
it. I found an Accucheck, the machine to check the glucose for
diabetics, along with a few test strips, in his left pants pocket.
Nothing in his shirt, and he wasn't wearing a jacket.

I hit the bathroom for evidence. Something
was bugging me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Dr. Dupuis was
already in the bathroom, nudging a pile of clothes under the sinks
with the toe of his running shoe. The room smelled of urine, mold,
and I didn't want to know what else.

I held my breath and flung open the door of
the first toilet stall. The last customer hadn't flushed, and the
toilet was balled up with paper and worse, but the floor was clear.
I slammed the door and opened the next one.

An empty white toilet bowl ringed with rust,
the black toilet seat pointing toward the sky. Dr. Dupuis
materialized over my right shoulder, banging open the stall door.
"Don't touch anything!"

"I didn't." I didn't see any needles or drug
baggies. I backed out slowly while he yanked back a beige shower
curtain in the stall at the end of the room.

"Dave!" The plump, blond nurse appeared in
the doorway, looking tearful. "It's Kurt—"

"I know," said Dr. Dupuis. "I know."

Behind her, I heard a flurry of voices
arguing in the main room. Dr. Dupuis pushed past me. I hurried on
his heels.

A freckled woman in glasses and a white coat
barked orders, her brown flats parked inches away from Dr.
Radshaw's hair.

A man in greens tried to fit the mask of an
ambu bag over Dr. Radshaw's open, rigid mouth.

The black resident started CPR.

A nurse knelt beside Dr. Radshaw's arm while
two more nurses, plus the blond nurse, yelled at her to stop.

Two men in black uniform gawked from Dr.
Radshaw's feet.

And then a very thin woman in purple scrubs,
standing by the main door, fisted her hands and started to
scream.

Chapter 4

"Vicki!" called the woman in glasses, the
doctor who was running the belated code, but I could barely hear
her above the scream. It rose and filled the tiny room, until I
struggled not to cover my ears.

Everyone else froze and fell silent, except
Dr. Dupuis, who grabbed the screaming woman by the arm and jerked
her toward the door. "Get her out of here," he snapped at the
guards in black uniform, and then, to the blonde nurse, "Give her
some Ativan. One milligram sublingual to start." The nurse rushed
out of the room.

The other resident stopped doing CPR. She
stood, wincing as she straightened her legs after kneeling on the
floor, and backed away from the body. The resp tech lifted his head
from his ambu bag. And the two staff doctors started arguing,
literally, over Dr. Radshaw's dead body.

Dr. Dupuis said, "I already called the time
of death. And this is a coroner's case. Any suspicious death in the
hospital—"

"Did you make any effort to resuscitate him
at all?"

"Courtney, he was dead."

Her eyes slitted in
contempt. "You didn't even
try
. Did you check his
glucose?"

"He. Was. Dead. You know that as well as I
do." Dr. Dupuis turned to the rest of the group. "We're all upset.
We all knew Kurt and want to give him our best effort. But it's too
late. We can't bring him back."

After a few seconds, the group backed away
from the body, including the resp tech, who stood and let the ambu
bag dangle in his hands.

Dr. Dupuis released his breath. "The people
who were first on scene need to stay here—" His eyes flicked at me,
and passed on through the crowd. "—and we'll probably all need to
make statements to the police and the coroner. Please don't move
anything if you can help it."

The other resident's low voice rang through
the room. "You think he was murdered?"

The crowd's murmur stopped. We all held our
breath, waiting for Dr. Dupuis's answer.

He ran a hand through his hair. His blond
bangs were dark and spiky with sweat. It was sweltering in this
locker room stuffed full of people. And was I imagining it, or
behind the sweat and deodorant and hairspray, was there the faint,
sickly stench of death?

Sweat prickled in my armpits.

At last, Dr. Dupuis said, "I don't know. It
could have been an accident with his insulin. But we have to treat
it like a worst case—"

The door burst open. Two men in black,
bulletproof vests, baby blue shirts, and dark navy pants shouldered
their way into the room. They wore guns and walkie-talkies on their
belts.

The police.

I
never wanted to meet the
Sûreté de
Québec
. The only time they make the
national news is when they shoot young black men for no defensible
reason. When I got my match results, that I'd be doing family
medicine in Montreal, one unbidden thought was,
I hope they don't shoot me
. They
didn't regularly mow down young Asian women, but I figured, once
unbalanced, always unbalanced. And here they were.

A stocky, sandy-haired
officer pushed his way to Dr. Radshaw. The white badge on his arm
said Police. I wasn't sure if that was the same thing as the
Sûreté.
"Who is in
charge here?" His English was good, laced with a moderate French
accent

Dr. Dupuis said, "I am."

"You were the one who found the body?"

Everyone tensed. It was the first time
someone had called Dr. Radshaw a body out loud.

"No. That was Jade." Dr. Dupuis pointed to
the other resident, who was standing by the bathroom doorway, her
arms crossed over her chest. "Dr. Jade Watterson, one of our
second-year residents."

The officer looked from
Dr. Dupuis to Jade Watterson, and exchanged a look with his
brown-haired colleague. "I have to talk to you. Both of you." He
turned back to Dr. Dupuis. "I'll start with you." He raised his
voice. "In the meantime, nobody touch
nothing
. You understand?" He
repeated it in French.

His colleague, the brown-haired guy, ushered
us all out of the room. "Let's go. Into the hall. No one leave
until I say so." He turned to the woman doctor who'd started
running the code. "Who are you? What's your name? Did you go in the
room? Did you move anything?"

He scribbled things into his notebook. It
seemed like anyone who hadn't entered the room or touched Kurt was
free to go after he took down their name. The officer spoke on his
radio, but too low for me to hear anything.

I made my way over to Jade's side. I had so
many questions, I wasn't sure where to start, but I had to strike
before they took her out of the room. "You were the one who found
him?" Now that I thought about it, it was kind of weird that she
stumbled into a men's change room and happened to find Dr.
Radshaw.

She shook her head. "Maintenance did. I
heard the code, same as you. But I got here before you and Dr.
Dupuis, because I was on the second floor. ICU."

No wonder the pockets of her white coat
bulged with notes. "At least you were prepared for it, I guess. I
mean, if you were doing ICU." What a stupid thing to say.

She looked at me out of the corner of her
eyes. "You're never prepared. Never."

"Yeah. I guess." I shifted my weight from
foot to foot. "Anyway, I'm Hope Sze."

She shook my hand. "Jade Watterson."

We smiled a little at each other. I rotated
my shoulders, which I belatedly realized were stiff with tension.
"Who was the woman in purple? You know. The screamer."

She shuddered and bent toward my ear. "Dr.
Radshaw's girlfriend."

He had a girlfriend. Jesus. "But what was
she doing here?"

She glanced uneasily at the people milling
around the room. The other staff doctor was talking to the resp
tech. Jade said, "She's a nurse in obstetrics."

Good Lord. She happened to be working when
they found her boyfriend's body. And she came to see. I struggled
to get my mind around that, while the brown-haired officer
positioned himself beside Jade. "We have some questions for
you."

She gulped and left with him, sketching a
goodbye in the air.

I heard a sob from one of the nurses. I
turned. She had her hands pressed to her face, and she was shaking
her head. A second nurse wrapped her arms around her. The ICU
doctor, Courtney, spoke softly. She, too, had tears in her
eyes.

I had liked Dr. Radshaw, from my brief
contact with him yesterday. I was sorry he was dead. But my sorrow
was nothing, nothing compared to what these people were feeling.
They had lost a colleague, a friend, and a lover.

In mystery books, it's usually someone
unpleasant who gets offed. That way, there are maximum suspects.
But today, we had lost one of the good guys.

When I got matched to St. Joe's, I didn't
think much about it. Like I said, I never even toured the place.
But I was starting to realize that it wasn't just a hospital. For
these people, it was a second family. And I was like a girlfriend
who'd been invited to Thanksgiving, only to stumble upon tragedy.
Theoretically, I belonged, but I didn't, really. Not yet. Not this
way.

More officers arrived. One of them stood in
front of the door, guarding it. Two more started quizzing people
and letting them go.

The sandy-haired officer returned and asked
me to come with him. Dr. Dupuis joined the tight circle around Dr.
Radshaw, and I followed the officer into a conference room at the
T-junction of the hallway I'd first encountered.

It felt unreal. Here I was, sitting at a
blue plastic chair and a fake wood-grain desk, as if I were going
to take notes on cervical dysplasia, but instead a police officer
was interviewing me about a potential homicide. He pulled out a
bunch of forms and a navy notebook. "What's your full name."

"Hope Sze."

He wrinkled his nose. Not
a very
québécois
name, I guess. I had to spell both names out for him. And my
address and home phone number, which was also surreal, since I'd
only moved in yesterday. It was like a variation on a nursery
rhyme. First comes parking ticket, then comes murder. Then
comes—what? Not the baby in the baby carriage. I was on the pill,
thanks.

The officer's voice pulled
me back. His eyelashes were dark blond, with darker roots. "What
did you see, when you came in the room." He had a flat way of
talking. His question ended with a downward flick. It sounded
almost like a German command. You will speak. Now.
Schnell
.

I did my best to describe the man lying on
his back, on the floor, Dr. Dupuis crouched over his head, the
resident, Jade, checking his carotid pulse—

His thin lips pressed together. "What does
that mean."

I stared at him. Didn't they do first aid as
part of their training? "Well, when we want to check if someone's
heart is beating, we have to check the pulse. So she was checking
the pulse in his neck. The carotid artery."

The corners of his mouth turned down. "Are
you certain she was checking his pulse?"

I raised my eyebrows. "It sure looked like
it."

"If you do not know for certain, I
prefer..." He shifted in his chair. It creaked. "I prefer
no...interpretation. You are to describe exactly what you see. If
you see a woman with her hand on his neck, you say that. Do you
understand me."

"Of course." What a lame brain. For a
second, I was worried they'd try to pin in on Jade. But no. That
was just paranoia. Just because they shot black guys didn't mean
they'd frame anyone black. Right?

I went on to describe the scene as best I
could, with "no interpretation." Sunlight fell in the conference
room, across my legs. I was getting baked in my stiff, green,
poly-cotton blend scrubs. I angled my legs out of the way of the
sunshine.