More reports sat in her in-box, a stack of transcribed dictations
needing
her review and signature. In cold storage, yet another new acquaintance waited
for
her: Camille Maginnes, whose autopsy was scheduled for nine o’clock the
next
morning, when both Rizzoli and Frost could attend. Even as Maura flipped through
reports, jotting corrections in the margins, her mind was still on Camille. The
chill
she’d felt in the chapel that morning had not left her, and she kept her
sweater
on as she worked at her desk, bundled against the memory of that visit.
She rose from her chair to feel whether her wool slacks, which
she’d
left hanging over the radiator, were now dry. Close enough, she thought, and
quickly
untied her waist drawstring and slipped out of the scrub pants she’d worn
all
afternoon.
Sinking back into her chair, she just sat for a moment, eyeing one
of the floral prints on her wall. To counteract the grimness of her job, she had
decorated her office with reminders of life, not death. A potted ficus thrived
in
the corner of the room, the happy recipient of constant fussing and attention by
both Maura and Louise. On the wall were framed images of flowers: a bouquet of
white
peonies and blue irises. Another with a vase of centifolia roses, the blossoms
so
lush with petals that the stems drooped. When the stack of files grew too tall
on
her desk, when the weight of death seemed overwhelming, she would look up at
those
prints and think of her garden, and of the smell of rich soil and the bright
green
of spring grass. She would think of things growing, not dying. Not decaying.
But on this December day, spring had never seemed so distant.
Freezing
rain was tapping against the window, and she dreaded the drive home. She
wondered
if the city had salted the roads yet, or if it would still be an ice rink out
there,
cars sliding like hockey pucks.
“Dr. Isles?” said Louise over the intercom.
“Yes?”
“There’s a Dr. Banks on the phone for you. He’s on
line
one.”
Maura went very still. “Is it . . . Dr. Victor Banks?”
she
asked softly.
“Yes. He said he’s with the charity One Earth
International.”
Maura said nothing, her gaze fixed on the phone, her hands frozen
on
the desk. She was scarcely aware of the sleet hitting the window. She heard only
the pounding of her own heart.
“Dr. Isles?”
“Is he calling long distance?”
“No. He left a message earlier. He’s staying at the
Colonnade
Hotel.”
Maura swallowed. “I can’t take his call right now.”
“It’s the second time he’s called. He said he knows
you.”
Yes. He certainly does.
“When did he call before?” Maura asked.
“This afternoon, while you were still at the scene. I did
leave
his message on your desk.”
Maura found three pink
while you were out
memos, which were
hidden
beneath a stack of folders. There it was.
Dr. Victor Banks. Called at 12:45
P
.
M
.
She stared at the name, her stomach churning. Why now? She
wondered. After all these months, why do you suddenly call me? What makes you
think
you can step back into my life?
“What should I tell him?” asked Louise.
Maura took a deep breath. “Tell him I’ll call
back.”
When
I’m goddamn ready.
She crumpled the slip and threw it into the rubbish can. Moments
later,
unable to focus on her paperwork, she rose and pulled on her coat.
Louise looked surprised to see her emerge from her office, already
bundled up for the weather. Maura was usually the last to leave, and almost
never
out the door before five-thirty. It was barely five now, and Louise was just
shutting
down her computer for the night.
“I’m going to get a head start on the traffic,”
said
Maura.
“I think it’s too late for that. Have you seen the
weather?
They’ve already closed most city offices for the day.”
“When was that?”
“At four o’clock.”
“Why are you still here? You should have gone home.”
“My husband’s coming to get me. My car’s in the
shop,
remember?”
Maura winced. Yes, Louise had told her about the car that morning,
but of course she’d forgotten. As usual, her mind had been so focused on
the
dead, she had not paid enough attention to the voices of the living. She watched
Louise wrap a scarf around her neck and pull on her coat and thought: I
don’t
spend enough time listening. I don’t take the time to acquaint myself with
people
while they’re alive. Even after a year of working in this office, she knew
little
about her secretary’s personal life. She’d never met Louise’s
husband,
and knew only that his name was Vernon. She could not recall where he worked, or
what he did for a living, partly because Louise seldom shared personal
information
about her life. Is that my fault? Maura wondered. Does she sense that I’m
not
a willing listener, that I’m more comfortable with my scalpels and
Dictaphone
than I am with the feelings of people around me?
Together, they walked down the hall, toward the exit leading to
the
staff parking lot. No small talk, just two parallel travelers, headed toward the
same destination.
Louise’s husband was waiting in his car, its windshield
wipers
swinging furiously against the falling sleet. Maura gave a goodbye wave as
Louise
and her husband drove off, and got a puzzled look from Vernon, who probably
wondered
who that woman was, waving as though she knew them.
As though she really knew anyone.
She crossed the parking lot, slipping on the glazed blacktop, her
head
bent under stinging pellets of sleet. She had one more stop to make. One more
duty
to execute before her day was over.
She drove to St. Francis Hospital to check on the status of Sister
Ursula.
Although she had not worked in a hospital ward since her
internship
years ago, the memories of her final rotation in the intensive care unit
remained
vividly unpleasant. She remembered moments of panic, the struggle to think
through
the fog of sleep deprivation. She remembered a night when three patients had
died
on her shift, and everything had gone wrong at once. She could not walk into an
ICU
now without feeling haunted by the shadow of old responsibilities and old
failures.
The surgical intensive care unit at St. Francis had a central
nursing
station surrounded by twelve patient cubicles. Maura stopped at the ward
clerk’s
desk to show her identification.
“I’m Dr. Isles, from the Medical Examiner’s office.
May I see the chart for your patient, Sister Ursula Rowland?”
The ward clerk eyed her with a puzzled look. “But the patient
hasn’t expired.”
“Detective Rizzoli asked me to check on her condition.”
“Oh. The chart’s in that slot over there. Number
ten.”
Maura crossed to the row of cubbyholes and pulled out the aluminum
cover containing Bed #10’s hospital chart. She opened it to the preliminary
operative report. It was a handwritten summary, scrawled by the neurosurgeon
immediately
after surgery:
“Large subdural hematoma identified and drained. Open right
parietal
comminuted skull fracture debrided, elevated. Dural tear closed. Full operative
report
dictated. James Yuen, M.D.”
She turned to the nurses’ notes, and skimmed the
patient’s
progress since surgery. The intracranial pressures were holding steady, with the
help of intravenous Mannitol and Lasix, as well as forced hyperventilation. It
appeared
that everything that could be done was being done; now it was a waiting game, to
see how much neurological damage would result.
Carrying the chart, she crossed the unit to Cubicle #10. The
policeman
sitting outside the doorway gave her a nod of recognition. “Hey, Dr.
Isles.”
“How is the patient doing?” she asked.
“About the same, I guess. I don’t think she’s woken
up yet.”
Maura looked at the closed curtains. “Who’s in there
with
her?”
“The doctors.”
She knocked on the doorframe, and stepped through the curtain. Two
men were standing by the bed. One was a tall Asian man with a darkly piercing
gaze
and a thick mane of silver hair. The neurosurgeon, she thought, seeing his name
tag:
Dr.
Yuen.
The man who stood beside him was younger—in his thirties, with
robust
shoulders filling out his white coat. His long blond hair had been pulled back
into
a neat ponytail. Fabio as M.D., thought Maura, regarding the man’s tanned
face
and deep-set gray eyes.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” she said. “I’m
Dr.
Isles, from the Medical Examiner’s office.”
“The M.E.’s office?” said Dr. Yuen, looking
baffled.
“Isn’t this visit a little premature?”
“The lead detective asked me to check in on your patient.
There
is another victim, you know.”
“Yes, we’ve heard.”
“I’ll be doing that postmortem tomorrow. I wanted to
compare
the pattern of injuries between these two victims.”
“I don’t think there’s much you’ll be able to
see
here. Not now, after surgery. You’ll learn more by looking at her admission
X rays and head scans.”
She gazed down at the patient, and could not disagree with him.
Ursula’s
head was encased in bandages, her injuries by now altered, repaired by the
surgeon’s
hand. Deeply comatose, she was breathing with the aid of a ventilator. Unlike
the
slender Camille, Ursula was a woman of large proportions, big-boned and solid,
with
the plain, round face of a farmer’s wife. IV lines coiled over meaty arms.
On
her left wrist was a Medic Alert bracelet, engraved with “Allergic to
Penicillin.”
An ugly scar tracked, thick and white, over the right elbow—the aftermath
of
an old injury, badly sutured. A souvenir from her work abroad? Maura wondered.
“I’ve done what I could in the O.R.,” said Yuen.
“Now
let’s hope Dr. Sutcliffe here can head off any medical complications.”
She looked at the ponytailed physician, who gave her a nod, a
smile.
“I’m Matthew Sutcliffe, her internist,” he said. “She
hasn’t
been in to see me for several months. I didn’t even know she was admitted
to
the hospital until a little while ago.”
“Do you have her nephew’s phone number?” Yuen asked
him. “When he called me, I forgot to get it from him. He said he’d be
talking
to you.”
Sutcliffe nodded. “I have it. It’ll be easier if
I’m
the one who stays in touch with the family. I’ll let them know her
status.”
“What is her status?” asked Maura.
“I’d say she’s medically stable,” said
Sutcliffe.
“And neurologically?” She looked at Yuen.
He shook his head. “It’s too early to say. Things went
well
in the O.R., but as I was just telling Dr. Sutcliffe here, even if she regains
consciousness—and
she very well may not—it’s likely she won’t remember any details
of
the attack. Retrograde amnesia is common in head injuries.” He glanced down
as his beeper went off. “Excuse me, but I need to get this call. Dr.
Sutcliffe
can fill you in on her medical history.” In just two quick strides, he was
out
the door.
Sutcliffe held out his stethoscope to Maura. “You can examine
her, if you’d like.”
She took the stethoscope and moved to the bedside. For a moment
she
just watched Ursula’s chest rise and fall. Seldom did she examine the
living;
she had to pause to call back her clinical skills, acutely aware that Dr.
Sutcliffe
was a witness to just how out of practice she felt when examining a body whose
heart
was still beating. She had worked so long with the dead that she now felt clumsy
with the living. Sutcliffe stood at the head of the bed, an imposing presence
with
his broad shoulders and intent gaze. He watched as she shone a penlight into the
patient’s eyes, as she palpated the neck, her fingers sliding across the
warm
skin. So different from the chill of refrigerated flesh.
She paused. “There’s no carotid pulse on the right
side.”
“What?”
“There’s a strong pulse on the left, but not the
right.”
She reached for the chart and opened it to the O.R. notes. “Oh. The
anesthesiologist
mentions it here. ‘Absent right common carotid artery noted. Most likely a
normal
anatomical variation.’ ”
He frowned, his tanned face flushing. “I’d forgotten
about
that.”
“So it’s an old finding? The lack of a pulse on this
side?”
He nodded. “Congenital.”
Maura slipped the stethoscope onto her ears and lifted the
hospital
gown, exposing Ursula’s large breasts. The skin was still pale and youthful
despite her sixty-eight years. Decades of protection beneath a nun’s habit
had
spared her from the sun’s aging rays. Pressing the diaphragm of the
stethoscope
to Ursula’s chest, she heard a steady, vigorous heartbeat. A
survivor’s
heart, pumping on, undefeated.
A nurse poked her head into the cubicle. “Dr. Sutcliffe?
X-ray
called to say that the portable chest film’s ready, if you want to go down
and
see it.”
“Thanks.” He looked at Maura. “We can look at the
skull
films too, if you’d like.”
They shared the elevator with six young candy stripers,
fresh-faced
and glossy-haired, giggling among themselves as they shot admiring glances at
Dr.
Sutcliffe. Attractive though he was, he seemed oblivious to their attention, his
solemn gaze focused instead on the changing floor numbers. The glamour of a
white
coat, thought Maura, remembering her own teenage years working as a volunteer in
St. Luke’s Hospital in San Francisco. The doctors had seemed untouchable to
her. Unassailable. Now that she herself was a doctor, she knew only too well
that
the white coat would not protect her from making mistakes. It would not make her
infallible.
