Patient (19 page)

Chapter 26

IT TOOK NEARLY TWENTY MINUTES FOR THE nurses to clean up room 2. They removed all the tubes and lines from Rolf Hermann’s body and untaped his eyelids. Jessie offered to help, but was shooed away. Instead, she sat behind the counter of the nurses’ station filling out the death certificate—the one piece of paperwork that would be necessary to remove the Count’s body from the hospital.

Please print in black pen only.

Cause of Death: Cardiac Arrest

Due To: Cardiogenic Shock

Due To: Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease

Co-existing Condition: Subfrontal Meningioma

A few properly placed words and poof, Gilbride’s wish had been granted. A surgical calamity would go into the books as a coronary. And unless the family demanded the certificate, no one would be the wiser. Difficult though Orlis was, Jessie did not think that idea would occur to her. Deservedly or not, Gilbride was off the hook.

The pen is mightier than the scalpel.

Jessie smiled at the thought as she block printed in the final pieces of demographic data. She looked up just as Orlis Hermann and Rolf’s daughter came down the hall and entered his room. A minute or so later, they emerged and approached her.

“So,” Orlis said with chilling matter-of-factness, “my husband is dead.”

“We’re all very sorry,” Jessie replied, standing.

“Your Dr. Gilbride didn’t seem all that remorseful when he spoke to us just now.”

“I assure you, he was. He kept everyone in there doing the resuscitation long after most doctors would have stopped.”

“What do we do now?”

“If you were local, I would say all you needed to do was call a funeral home. Coming from another country, I’m not sure. If you don’t mind waiting in your room out there on the floor, I’ll speak to the nursing supervisor. She knows all the rules. I assume you’re planning to take the Count back to Germany.”

“We are.”

“I’m sure that complicates things somewhat, but I think the first step is still calling a funeral home. There’s paperwork that needs to be done here as well. Dr. Gilbride has quite a caseload, so I’ve offered to do it for him. But there may be some delay—a few hours, perhaps.”

Jessie was rambling deliberately, hoping that Orlis would agree to stay around the hospital, as Alex needed her to.

“I don’t mind,” Orlis said. “I need to get my husband’s things together anyway.”

“Will the Count’s sons be in to see him?”

“No. They are off on business right now. They should be back shortly, but there is no need to keep Count Hermann’s body up here until they arrive. Although they were very close to their father, they are not sentimental in that way.”

“Fine. I’ll take care of everything, and I’ll be in to see you as soon as I have information.”

“Do that. ... Dr. Copeland?”

“Yes.”

“Your chief killed my husband. You do know that.”

A knot of tension materialized in Jessie’s chest. Whether or not Alex was right about Orlis Hermann being Arlette Malloche, the woman
was
absolutely chilling. Jessie chose her words carefully. She had no desire to defend Carl Gilbride, but this was hardly the situation in which to allow principle and emotion to get in the way of common sense. Even if Orlis Hermann was nothing more than the Count’s distraught wife, she was still a potential litigant against Gilbride, EMMC, and probably Jessie as well. If she was, as Alex believed, a murderer capable of extreme vengeance, then there was no reason to provide her with any more justification for violence than she already had.

“What I know, Mrs. Hermann,” she said, “is that your husband had a large brain tumor that was unfortunately situated in a spot that was technically very difficult to reach. The more difficult the location of such a tumor, the more likely there will be complications. We really are sorry.”

“Tell me something honestly, Dr. Copeland. Would this have happened if you had done the surgery?”

The question caught Jessie by surprise. In all her dealings with Orlis Hermann, she never once felt the woman had the least interest in what she could or could not do in the operating room. A myriad of responses to the question flashed through her head—none of them truthful.

“I hope you will understand that I cannot possibly answer that question,” she said finally. “I’ve had my share of surgical triumphs just as Dr. Gilbride has, but I’ve had some surgical tragedies as well.”

For a few moments, Orlis Hermann stood there silently, her eyes locked on Jessie’s. Then, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

“We will be waiting in our room for word from you,” she said.

She took her stepdaughter by the arm and led her away. Moments later, Alex appeared at Jessie’s side.

“What’d she say?”

“She’ll be waiting to hear from me about what to do with the body.”

“Time frame?”

“I told her it could be a few hours before I have any information.”

“Great. Nice going. If worse comes to worst, the body will just be missing, and she’ll have to wait around until it’s found.”

“Unless that makes her suspicious and she takes off.”

“I have that possibility covered, I think. She’s being watched.”

Jessie looked at him queerly.

“Watched by whom?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you soon.”

“Oh, I just love secrets,” she said with unbridled sarcasm.

“I gave my word.”

“As long as
I
can count on your word, too. You know, Alex, as hard a woman as Orlis is, and as many awful things as you think she and her husband have done, I believe she’s feeling a deep and genuine hurt over what’s happened to him. And you know what? So am I.”

“In that case, maybe I should bring out those photographs again,” Alex replied. “I have no sympathy for that woman or her husband. I only hope he somehow knew he was dying when that artery started bleeding into his brain. I can’t tell you what a joy it will be, to be the one shoving Claude Malloche’s body into a hearse.”

“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Bishop.”

“Amen.”

“Pardon me for saying it, but would your brother have endorsed this five-year vendetta of yours?”

“My brother’s dead. The choices I’ve made are mine. But the answer to your question is yes. We were both recruited by the agency right after college: We both knew what we were getting into. We both felt like patriots serving our country, and we both hated our country’s enemies. If Malloche had any credo at all, it was an absolute loathing for America and Americans. If he had killed me, Andy would have hunted him to the ends of the earth.”

Jessie sighed.

“In that case, we should get moving.”

“Do you have a plan?” he asked.

“Yes, but it’s complicated, so pay attention.”

“Ready.”

“Okay. First, I give you this paper. Second, you change into your undertaker suit. You got this so far?”

“Go on.”

“Next, you come and haul off the body.”

“That’s it?”

“I checked. It’s essentially self-serve. You stop at the pathology department desk, show them the death certificate, and sign a log. After that, no one cares. It’s yet an other example of the cardinal rule of moving about a hospital: If you look like you know what you’re doing, as far as anyone is concerned, you know what you’re doing.”

“I’ve noticed that, playing hospital guard.”

“People’s first option is always the one that isn’t going to cause them any extra work. I’m going to put that principle to the test right now.”

“How?”

“Just to make sure everything’s in place when you make your appearance as Digger O’Dell, the friendly undertaker, I’m going to tell the nurses I need a break from this floor and from Carl, and offer to spare someone the job of accompanying the security guard when he wheels the body down to the morgue. I don’t think it would be wise for you to play the guard and Digger, but if you hurry, I’ll still be down there waiting when you drive up in your hearse.”

Alex looked about to ensure no one was watching, then took her hand in his and held it for several seconds.

“I’ll meet you in the morgue,” he said.

He had disappeared around the corner before Jessie realized that she hadn’t even thought about pulling away from him.

JESSIE ASSISTED Two nurses in transferring Rolf Hermann’s body to a gurney. Then she and the guard, a paunchy man named Seth, who seemed to pale at the sight of the Count’s corpse, headed off for the morgue.
Five hundred murders
. It was hard enough for her to accept that any man could be responsible for such horror, let alone that it was the one lying beneath the sheet. Cunning, thorough, brilliant, paranoid, meticulous. Those were just some of the adjectives Alex had used to describe Claude Malloche. Now, it seemed, the monster’s headstone might read:

“Here lies a man who made only one mistake in life. He chose the wrong surgeon.”

The morgue was in the basement of the main hospital. It consisted of an unlocked room, adjacent to the autopsy suite, with twelve stainless steel refrigerated boxes built into the wall for body storage. Formaldehyde fumes hung heavy in the air. There was no one around, so Jessie left Seth waiting with the gurney and walked through the autopsy room and across a corridor to the pathology office, where an indifferent secretary slid a black loose-leaf notebook across her desk to log the body in.

“I think the funeral home is on its way over,” Jessie said, paving the way for Alex’s imminent arrival.

The woman mumbled, “Yeah, okay.”

No problem here
, Jessie was thinking.

She returned to the morgue, where Seth had posted himself in the hallway outside the door.

No problem here either.

“Listen,” Jessie said, “I just spoke to the funeral parlor, and they’re sending someone over right away. Why don’t you go on back to work. I’ll stay here until they arrive.

“You sure?”

“It’s fine. I’m sure.”

Jessie watched until the grateful guard had headed down the passageway to the elevators. Then she reentered the morgue and lifted the sheet from Rolf Hermann’s gray, mottled face. Gradually, the stagnant blood in his capillaries would be drawn by gravity into the dependent tissues, and his complexion would assume the pallor of death. From her first encounter with a dead body in anatomy, corpses had not particularly affected her—even the ones whose demise was grisly. Hermann was no exception. Perhaps it was the ability to detach that had made her so successful as a surgical student, then later as a resident. Whatever the reason, looking down at the body now only made her wonder about Claude Malloche—and about the man who had hunted him for so long.

Five years
, she was thinking. Alex Bishop had given up five years of his life for this. Hermann’s eyes were open a slit. Jessie peered at them, wondering about all they had seen during their life, and what had driven the man behind them.

“Jessie?”

The woman’s voice, from behind her, brought her heart rocketing to her throat. She whirled, pulling the sheet back into place over Hermann’s face in the same motion. Nursing supervisor Catherine Purcell stood, arms folded, just inside the door.

“Oh, hi,” Jessie managed. “You startled me.”

“I can see that. Sorry. Is there a problem?”

“No, not really. I was just wondering about the guy. I did his admission workup for Carl, but I never really got to talk with him. Because of the language barrier and his wife’s bossiness, almost everything went through her.”

Jessie’s mind was racing. Alex would be here anytime. Catherine Purcell was one of the sharpest people in the hospital, and his looks were striking. It was reasonable to think she might recognize him.

“The nurses in the unit told me you had walked the Count down here,” Catherine said.

“They were busy, and I just wanted to get off the floor for a while. Weren’t you on last evening?”

“Betty Hollister’s got the flu. I told her I’d cover. You need help loading him into the cooler?”

“No. .. ah ... the funeral home called the floor before we left and said they’d be right over. I didn’t see any sense in moving him around any more than necessary. Have you heard something about Emily? Is that why you’re here?”

She worked her way toward the door.

“No. I heard she’s still missing. I have no idea what could have happened.”

“I’m really worried.”

“In that case, I’m worried, too. But I came down to find you because I’m worried about someone else—Carl. I think he’s losing it.”

“You mean like going crazy?”

“I mean exactly that.”

“Catherine, could we maybe leave here to talk about it? The fumes are starting to make me queasy. The funeral guy knows to stop at the path office. I left the death certificate there.”

“Certainly.”

Nicely done
, Jessie was thinking to herself as they reached the bank of elevators. The doors parted and Catherine stepped into the car at the moment the doors to the next car opened and Alex emerged, dressed in an ill-fitting black suit and pushing a narrow stretcher. There was only a moment for their eyes to meet, but in that moment, Alex saw inside the elevator, assessed the situation, and looked down.

“He’s in the morgue,” Jessie said. “The pathology office has the certificate.”

“Thank you,” Alex said.

“I could swear I’ve seen that man someplace before,” Catherine commented as the elevator doors glided shut.

Jessie’s pulse leveled off at two hundred or so and began to slow.

“I imagine this isn’t his first trip here,” she said hopefully.

“No, I suppose not.”

“About Carl?”

“Oh, yes. You remember I told you last night how he was absolutely certain Laura Pearson and another nurse were laughing at him, and threatened to have her fired?”