“Well, I hope something positive comes out of this journey,” Neil said. He gave Jennifer’s wrist one last squeeze. “And keep me informed. Call me anytime: morning, noon, or night. I’m so sorry about your grandmother.” He picked up the pen as a signal he had to get back to work.
“I have a couple of requests,” Jennifer said, maintaining her seat.
“Sure. What’s on your mind?”
“Would you consider coming with me? I think I need you. I mean, I’m going to be completely out of my element. Except for a trip to Colombia when I was nine, I’ve never been out of the country, much less to some exotic place like India. Since you were just there, you already have a visa. I can’t tell you how much more comfortable I’d feel. I know it is asking a lot, but I feel so provincial; even going to New Jersey used to make me anxious. I’m kidding, but I’m not a traveler by any stretch of the imagination. And I know that one of the benefits of emergency-room medicine is that you can take time off, especially since you covered for Clarence a couple of weeks ago, and he owes you.”
With a sigh, Neil shook his head. The last thing he wanted to do was wing off to India, even if he could get time off. In truth, it had been part of his initial motivation for the specialty, and he’d specifically set up a twenty- four-hours on, twenty-four-hours off schedule for himself so that when his workweek started seven a.m. Monday it was essentially over seven a.m. Thursday, unless he wanted overtime. The four remaining days of the week were available for his true love, surfing. At that very moment he was looking forward to a surfing meet over the weekend in San Diego. It was also true that his friend, colleague, and fellow surfer Clarence Hodges did owe him for a Hawaiian trip he’d made. But all that didn’t matter. Neil did not want to go to India because of a dead grandmother. If it had been Jennifer’s mother who had passed away maybe, but not her grandmother.
“I can’t,” Neil said, after a pause, as if he’d given the idea true consideration. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go. Not now, anyway. If you can wait a week, maybe, but it’s not a good time.” He spread his hands awkwardly in the air over the schedule he was working on as if it was the problem.
Jennifer was taken aback and disappointed. She’d given a lot of thought about whether to ask him or not and if she truly needed him. What had tipped the balance was the realistic question in her mind whether she could actually handle the situation once she got to India. What was clear to her was that after the initial shock of learning about Maria’s death, she’d marshaled significant defenses, including all the rushing around, making the plans to take the trip, and what psychiatrists called “blocking.” So far things had worked reasonably well and she was functioning. But as close as her grandmother had been to her, she feared there would be problems when the reality of the loss set in. She truly feared she could get to India and be an emotional train wreck.
Jennifer stared daggers at Neil. Surprise and disappointment had instantly metamorphosed into anger. Jennifer had been so confident that if she asked him directly and admitted she needed him, which she felt she had done, he would surely acquiesce as a direct spin-off of the confidences they shared. The fact that he was turning her down so promptly and with a flimsy, ridiculous explanation, something she never would have done had the situation been reversed, could mean only that their relationship was not what she thought it was. In short, like men in general, in her mind he was demonstrating he couldn’t be counted on.
Jennifer stood abruptly and without saying anything walked out of the tiny office and back into the crowded emergency room. She could hear Neil call her name, but she didn’t stop or respond. It tormented her that she knew now that it had been a mistake to confide in him. As for asking to borrow some cash, at this point she wouldn’t even consider it.
Chapter 6
OCTOBER 16, 2007
TUESDAY 6:30 A.M.
NEW DELHI, INDIA
Cal Morgan was a deep sleeper and needed a powerful alarm to wake up. What he employed was a clock radio with a CD player, and the CD he used was martial music. At three-quarter volume the player was capable of vibrating the night table enough to move itself and other objects on its crowded surface. Even Petra in the neighboring master suite could hear it as if it were in her room. So when it sounded, Cal made an effort to turn it off the moment he became adequately conscious. Even so, he occasionally fell back into deep sleep.
But that was not going to happen this morning. He was much too keyed up about the previous night’s activities for more sleep. He stared up at the high ceiling and thought about what had transpired the evening before.
What bothered him was how close Veena’s suicide attempt had come to bringing his whole project down. If he hadn’t gone in to check on her when he did, she would have died, and there was little doubt that her death would have resulted in an inquest, and an inquest would have been a disaster. It would certainly have closed Nurses International, and in the process, at the very least, slowed his progress toward his ultimate goal of becoming truly wealthy as the CEO of SuperiorCare Hospital Corporation.
Cal hadn’t been interested in healthcare initially, and he still wasn’t interested in taking care of patients or nurses, for that matter. He just liked the money involved, two trillion per year in the United States alone, and the field’s record of sustained growth. Back when he was in high school, advertising had been his first career choice, and he had gone through UCLA and the Rhode Island School of Design in preparation. But briefly working in the field caused him to recognize its limitations, especially financially. Giving up on advertising, but not its principles of deception, he sailed through Harvard Business School, where he was introduced to the mind-boggling money involved in healthcare. When he finished business school he sought and got an entry-level job at the SuperiorCare Hospital Corporation, which was one of the biggest players in the field. The company owned hospitals, feeder clinics, and healthcare plans in almost every state and major city in the United States.
To best utilize his creative bent, Cal entered the company via the public relations department, where he saw the best opportunity to make a name for himself and thereby attract the attention of the company’s officers. On his first day he boasted he would lead the company in ten years, and after two it appeared as if his prophecy might have merit. Along with a striking woman five years his senior and an inch taller than his six feet named Petra Danderoff, who’d been part of PR when he joined, he found himself co-running the entire department thanks to a series of extremely successful ad campaigns the two had contrived that had nearly doubled the enrollment in several of the company’s healthcare plans.
Some people had been surprised at his meteoric rise, but not Cal. He was accustomed to success from an early age, partly as a self-fulfilling prophecy of the confidence and competitiveness that was part of his genetic makeup, and which had been honed to an obsession by his equally competitive father. From early childhood he’d wanted to win at everything, especially in competition with his two older brothers. From board games like Monopoly to school grades, from athletics to the presents he gave his parents at Christmas, Cal insisted on being number one with a kind of single-mindedness few could match. And success only reinforced his appetite for more success, to the extent that over the years he lost all vestiges of the need for moral principles. In his mind cheating, which he didn’t refer to as such, and ignoring ethics, which he considered mere limitations for the faint of heart, were simply tools to advance one’s agenda.
SuperiorCare Hospital Corporation officers were not aware of these details of Cal’s background and personality. But they were very aware of his contributions to the company and were eager to reward him, particularly the CEO, Raymond Housman. By coincidence this recognition had materialized more or less at the same time a mounting financial problem had been brought to the CEO’s attention by his CFO, Clyde English. To their collective horror, accounting had determined that the company had lost, in 2006, about twenty-seven million dollars from its bottom line because India’s growing medical tourism industry had caused a disturbing number of American patients to shun SuperiorCare hospitals and wing off to the Asian subcontinent for their surgeries.
Linking the two issues, Raymond Housman had invited Cal to a secret meeting in his office. He’d explained the medical tourism issue and the need to somehow turn it around. He’d then offered Cal an unparalleled
