Past Lives (11 page)

Two days later, Macandrew was in the scrub room after completing a long operation when a nurse relayed the information that Saul Klinsman wanted to see him. He dried himself quickly and slipped on some fresh surgical greens before hurrying up to Klinsman's office. Carl Lessing was sitting there. Neither he nor Klinsman were smiling.

'What's wrong?'

'You're not going to like this, Mac,' said Klinsman.

'Like what?'

Lessing was looking embarrassed. He said, 'Christ, Mac, I'm sorry, I don't know exactly how it happened and when I find the guy responsible I'm going to cut off his . . .'

'What's happened? What's going on?' asked Macandrew. He sensed big trouble and looked to Klinsman for answers.

Klinsman responded by looking to Lessing.

Lessing said, 'The plain fact of the matter is that we can't provide the Mao Clinic with tumour tissue taken from Jane Francini.

'Why the hell not?'

‘
We no longer have it. Someone chucked it.'

Macandrew looked at Klinsman as if pleading to be told that this couldn't be true. No reassurance was forthcoming.

Macandrew found it almost impossible to speak for a few moments then he said, Christ, I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’

'One of the technicians discarded the Francini tumour by mistake. I’m sorry Mac.’

Macandrew rubbed his forehead nervously. 'Can't you recover it?' he asked.

Lessing shook his head and said, 'It had already gone to the incinerator before we realised what had happened.'

'Jesus!' said Macandrew, sinking down into a chair. 'So we can’t prove that Jane Francini ever had a malignant tumour?'

'That’s about it,' agreed Klinsman.

Macandrew sank down into a chair. ‘Francini is going to be more convinced than ever that I butchered his wife.'

'Christ, I just don’t know what to say,' said Lessing.

Macandrew just shook his head. 'What a fucking mess,' he whispered.

Klinsman put his elbows on his desk and leaned forward. He said, 'In the final analysis Mac, what Francini thinks, doesn't matter. It's facts that matter. We all know that Jane Francini's condition was caused by a malignant brain tumour and that's the important thing. You are a good surgeon, one of the best and you did your best for the Francini woman. Nothing that happened subsequently was your fault. It's a real bummer about the Mayo not being able to rubber stamp our pathology report but shit happens and we just have to accept that and get on with it . . . whatever they throw at us now.'

Macandrew felt sick. He nodded absently and got up. 'If you'll excuse me,' he said and left the room.

With every step along the corridor, Macandrew wanted to slam his fist into the wall. The pain would be a welcome relief from what was going on inside his head. Tony Francini was going to go through the rest of his life believing that he had brain-damaged his wife and then colluded with the path lab in a cover up of his mistake. The story would do the rounds. Lots of families had tales to tell about incompetent medical practitioners and how they had blighted the life of one of their own. These stories were handed down through the generations. He himself was now going to feature in that list. 'Fuck!' he raged as the elevator descended. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

He was finding the thought unbearable. The theatre nurse, Lucy Long, was waiting to get in as Macandrew stepped out of the elevator.

'Hi Mac. How's it going?' she asked.

Macandrew looked at her as if she was an alien from a different planet. He couldn’t say anything.

'Excuse me,' murmured the nurse under her breath.

Macandrew sat alone in his apartment for nearly an hour without doing anything other than stare out at the sky. He could not believe that fate had been so cruel, or maybe it wasn't fate, he reasoned. What kind of half-assed operation was Lessing running down there in the path lab anyway?

It didn't help his state of mind to realise he was doing exactly what Tony Francini had been doing, looking for someone to blame! In his heart he knew well that Carl Lessing was an excellent pathologist and that his lab was extremely well run and normally 100 percent reliable. He also knew that Saul Klinsman had been right to point out that these things happened. It just didn't help to believe any of that right now.

A knock came to his door a little after seven thirty and Macandrew opened it to find Mort Jackson, his landlord, standing there.

'You haven't forgotten have you?' asked Jackson.

'Forgotten?' repeated Macandrew.

'You were coming down this evening to look at the slides Ginny and I took up in Michigan.'

Macandrew had completely forgotten but even in his current mental state, he didn't want to hurt Mort's feelings. If only he had remembered earlier he might have been able to come up with a plausible excuse for postponing it. As it was, he had to insist that he hadn't forgotten and would be down in a few minutes.

'I'll have Ginny pour a glass of her elder flower for you,' said Mort as he disappeared back down the stairs.

'Jesus,' whispered Macandrew under his breath. It was going to take a lot more than Ginny's home-made wine to take the edge off reality this evening. He poured himself a large whisky and threw it down his throat before going downstairs to be welcomed by Mort and Ginny.

Ginny was everyone's idea of what a grandmother should look like. She was plump, smiling and had a magnificent head of pure white hair. She had prepared a large plate of sandwiches and handed Macandrew a glass of wine as he sat down. Mort was about the same height as Ginny but he was thin and stooped and had a complexion the colour of leather from a lifetime spent on the open air as a lineman for the phone company. He held his left arm at an awkward angle, the legacy of an accident at work - the one which had ultimately forced him to retire.

Macandrew did his best to make light conversation while Mort set up the projector. It was easy to feed Ginny the right questions. She loved talking about her family. The lights finally went down and the slides faithfully recorded the Jacksons' visit to their daughter up in Michigan. Macandrew did his best to concentrate on what appeared on the screen rather than what was in his head but he was fighting a losing battle. The Francini case was winning.

He was almost relieved when his pager went off and gave him an excuse to leave the room although this was almost immediately replaced by concern as he ran upstairs. His pager shouldn't have gone off. He wasn't on call this evening and he'd had a fair bit to drink. He wasn't drunk but he certainly wasn’t fit for surgery.

'Dr Klinsman for you,' said the hospital operator.

'Mac? I've just had Kurt Weber on the phone. Carl Lessing called him about the missing tissue and he felt obliged to advise Francini’s attorney of the situation.'

'And?'

'Kirschbaum asked if he would be willing to stand up in court and testify that Jane Francini's condition could have been caused by surgical malpractice.'

'And?' asked Macandrew, feeling as if he was pulling the pin from a grenade a second time.

'Weber told him that he hated the idea but, in the circumstances, he’d have to say it was theoretically possible,' said Klinsman. 'Weber just wanted us to know that it’s nothing personal and he doesn’t believe for a moment that that’s what happened.’

‘
Nice of him.’

‘
He really doesn’t have much choice in the matter,’ said Klinsman.

'Right,' said Macandrew.

‘
Weber says he’ll point that out if he gets the chance.’

'Thanks for letting me know.'

'Least I could do,' replied Klinsman.

Macandrew put the phone down and went downstairs to rejoin the Jacksons. He would sit through the remainder of their holiday slides on autopilot.

'Everything all right Mac?' asked Ginny as he slipped back into the room.

'Just fine, Ginny. Sorry about that.'

'This is us up at Mill Glade,' announced Mort as the next slide came up. 'That's Charlotte's friend, Sandy with us there and that's her dog, Rupert.'

'Rufus,' corrected Ginny.

'Sorry, Rufus,' conceded Mort.

'And this is us up near Jansen Creek: real pretty country up there.'

'Looks it,' agreed Macandrew, suddenly realising that a comment was called for.

'More wine, Mac?' asked Ginny in a whisper.

'Please,' replied Macandrew.

Ginny moved across the room to the table in front of the window; she did it in a crouch to avoid the projector beam but totally without success as her shadow filled the screen.

'This was a Saskwatch we saw while we were up there' joked Mort, winking at Macandrew when he saw that Ginny didn't realise she was the butt of the joke.

'And this is us with Clint, Daisy and Charlotte on the day we went down to the county fair . . .'

CRASH! The front window of the room exploded in a million shards of glass and Ginny reeled backwards with blood streaming down her face to fall on the floor. The glass of wine she had been pouring for Macandrew flew from her grasp and splashed across the screen.

'What the . . . ' exclaimed Mort. 'Ginny! Ginny!'

Macandrew beat him in the race to get to Ginny and was already assessing the damage. 'Get me a clean towel Mort,' he said. 'Quick as you can.'

‘
Is she gonna be all right?' asked Mort as he handed over the cloth and hovered over Macandrew and the unconscious Ginny.

Macandrew cleared the blood away from Ginny's face and stemmed the flow from the major cuts. Something had come through the window and hit Ginny on the forehead, something heavy. It had knocked her out but she would be all right. He said so to Mort.

'Thank God,' exclaimed Mort. 'What the hell was it?'

Mort started hunting round the room as the hollow in Macandrew's stomach started to grow.

'Jesus H Christ!' exclaimed Mort. He had found something and was picking it up gingerly to avoid the broken glass. 'What do you make of this?' he asked.

Macandrew saw what Mort was holding: it was a butcher's cleaver.

'It was a message Mort,' he said in a dazed monotone, 'for me.'

'The crazy bastard,' said Saul Klinsman when Macandrew told him what had happened. 'How is Mrs Jackson?'

'She's got a real sore head and quite a few cuts, one that required stitching, but she'll be OK.'

'You called the cops?' asked Klinsman.

'No, I didn't,' confessed Macandrew. 'I persuaded the Jacksons not to either.'

Klinsman looked shocked. 'Why not?'

'I'm not absolutely sure myself,' said Macandrew. 'It was obvious that the cleaver was meant for me and we both know where it came from. I got to thinking that Francini had probably gone out and gotten hammered after what Weber had told him about the missing tumour tissue. It must have been eating away at him and he had to make his point somehow. It was probably something he did on the spur of the moment. He got my address from somewhere - not realising that I shared the place with the Jacksons - and came over to vent his anger. I'm counting on this being a one-off thing.'

'That's charitable of you,' said Klinsman.

'Not entirely,' confessed Macandrew. 'If I am to be perfectly honest I worked out that if I or the Jacksons had called the police and Francini was arrested, he would have enjoyed his day in court, telling the world exactly why he did it.'

'Do you think he was bright enough to have planned it that way?'

'I wasn’t betting against it.'

A week passed without further incident then Carl Lessing phoned. 'I've been a bit of an idiot,' confessed Lessing.

'How so?'

'I still have the slides.'

'The slides?' repeated Macandrew, unaware of what Lessing was getting at.

'Mrs Francini's slides! The microscope preps that were made for diagnosis! The Mayo could use
them
for verification of a malignant tumour!'

'Are you serious?' exclaimed Macandrew. 'Would that be good enough?'

'Sure,' said Lessing. 'I just wish I had thought of it sooner. 'The two slides I used for the actual diagnosis were discarded but
four
were made up by the technicians from the microtome sections. I still have the unused two.'

‘
But surely Francini could argue that the slides weren’t prepared from Jane’s tumour material?’

‘
I asked the guys down at forensics about that. They assure me that DNA fingerprinting will be possible from the material on the slides. We just have to get a cell sample from Jane Francini for comparison and it can be shown conclusively that the tumour tissue came from her - as indeed it did.’

'Hallelujah,' said Macandrew.

'I’m sorry Mac, I should have thought of this earlier,' said Lessing. ‘I’ll get straight on to the Mayo.’

Macandrew felt better than he had done for ages - in fact, since the day of the Francini operation. The phone rang and his good humour showed in his voice. ‘You sound happy,’ said Karen Bliss.