whose facades were almost completely covered by signs in both Hindi and English, stood the starkly modern five- story Queen Victoria Hospital. In sharp contrast to its neighbors, it was constructed of amber-mirrored glass and green marble. Named after the beloved nineteenth-century British monarch to appeal to the modern medical tourist as well as the rapidly expanding Indian upper middle class, the hospital was a beacon of modernity thrust into the center of India’s timelessness. Also in contrast to its neighboring plethora of small businesses, which were, for the most part, still open, busy, and casting harsh blue-white fluorescent light into the street, the hospital looked bedded down for the night, with little of its soft, interior illumination penetrating the tinted glass.
Except for two tall, traditionally costumed Sikh doormen standing at either side of the entrance, the hospital could have been closed. Inside the day was clearly winding down. As a tertiary hospital with no real emergency department, the Queen Victoria handled only scheduled elective surgery, not emergencies. The soiled dinner dishes had long since been picked up, washed, and hidden away in their cupboards, and most of the visitors were gone. Nurses were handing out evening medications, dealing with drains and dressings from the day’s surgeries, or sitting within bright cones of light at nurses’ stations to finish up their computerized charting duties.
After a hectic day involving thirty-seven major surgeries, it was a relaxed and quiet time for everyone, including the one hundred and seventeen patients: everyone, that is, except Veena Chandra. While her father was trudging out of the rank, loathsome landfill, Veena was struggling in the half-light of an anesthesia room in the empty operating-room suite, where the only light was filtering in from the dimmed central corridor. Veena was attempting with trembling fingers to stick the needle of a 10cc syringe into the rubber top of a vial of succinylcholine, a rapidly paralyzing drug related to the curare of Amazonian poison dart fame. Normally, she could fill such a syringe with ease. Veena was a nurse, having graduated from the famous public hospital the All India Institute of Health Sciences almost three months ago. Following graduation she’d been hired by an American firm called Nurses International, which had, in turn, hired her out to the Queen Victoria Hospital after providing her with some specialized training.
Not wishing to stick herself with the needle, which could prove deadly, Veena lowered her arms for a moment and tried to relax. She was a ball of nerves. She truly didn’t know if she was going to be able to do what she’d been tasked with and had agreed to do. It seemed incredible that she’d been talked into it. She was supposed to fill the syringe, take it down to Maria Hernandez’s room, where the woman was hoped to be sleeping off the anesthesia from the hip-replacement surgery she’d had that morning, inject it into her IV, and then beat a rapid retreat, all without being seen by anyone. Veena knew that not being seen by anyone on a nearly full hospital floor was highly unlikely, which was why she was still dressed in her traditional white nursing uniform she’d had on all day. The hope was that if someone did see her, they wouldn’t think it odd she was in the hospital even though she worked days, not evenings.
To help her calm down, Veena closed her eyes, and the moment she did so she was instantly transported back four months to the last time her father threatened her. They were at home, his parents in the living room, her mom at the hospital, and her sisters out indulging in Saturday-afternoon activities with friends. Totally unexpectedly, he had cornered her in the bathroom. While the television blared in the next room, he began shouting, then cursing at her. He was very clever in how he hit her, never leaving a mark on her face. His rage was unexpectedly volcanic, and it was all Veena could do not to cry out. Since it hadn’t happened for more than a year, Veena had assumed that the problem was over. But now she knew for sure it would never be over. The only way to escape her father’s clutches was for her to leave India. Yet she feared for her sisters. She knew he was unable to control his urges. If she left, he would undoubtedly single out one of her sisters and start anew, and that she could not abide.
The sudden crash of metal against the composite floor brought Veena back to the present, her heart skipping a beat. Feverishly, she stashed the vial and syringe in a drawer packed with IV needles. Suddenly, the bright lights came on in the main corridor of the OR. With her pulse pounding, Veena went to the small wired-glass window and glanced out. Within the darkened anesthesia room, she was confident she would not be visible. To the right she saw that the main doors to the outer hall were momentarily propped open. A second later two members of the janitorial crew appeared, wearing hospital scrubs. Both men carried mops. They picked up the empty buckets they’d dropped moments before and started down the corridor, passing within feet of Veena.
Relieved to a degree that it was only a cleaning crew, Veena turned back into the room and retrieved the vial and syringe. She was now more nervous than she’d been just moments earlier. The unexpected arrival of the janitors reminded her how easy it would be for her to be caught in the OR, and if she was caught, how hard it would be to come up with an explanation of what she was doing there. With her trembling even worse, she persisted and managed to guide the needle into the vial. Exerting negative pressure, she filled the syringe to the level she’d predetermined. She wanted a good dose, but not too big.
Veena’s short, unpleasant reverie had reminded her with painful clarity why she had to do what she’d been tasked with. She’d agreed to put to sleep an aged American woman with a history of heart problems in return for a guarantee from her employer that her mother and her sisters would be protected into the foreseeable future from her abusing father. It had been a difficult choice for Veena, made impulsively with the idea that it would be the only opportunity she would have to obtain any kind of freedom, not only for herself but also for eleven of her friends, who had all joined Nurses International at the same time.
Putting away the vial and throwing away the packaging from the syringe, Veena walked toward the door. If she was going to go through with the plan, she had to concentrate and be careful. Above all, she had to try to avoid being seen, especially near her victim’s room. If she happened to be confronted in any other part of the hospital, she would explain that she’d returned that evening to use the library facility to study Maria Hernandez’s condition.
Veena cracked the door and slowly eased it open to get her head out to see up and down the corridor. Presently, several of the cleaning people could be seen chatting and mopping. As they had started at the very end and were working toward the doors, their backs were conveniently turned in Veena’s direction. Stepping into the corridor, Veena let the door close gently before silently heading out of the OR area. Just before she let the main entrance doors swing shut, she glanced back at the cleaning crew. She felt palpable relief. They were oblivious to her presence.
Forgoing the elevator lest she not only run into someone but be forced to converse, Veena used the stairwell to descend to the fourth floor. There she again cracked the door before gazing the length of the dimmed corridor in both directions. No one was in view, even at the nurses’ station, which was by contrast an oasis of bright light in the center of the floor. Apparently, the nurses were out in the rooms attending to their charges. Veena hoped no one would be in Maria Hernandez’s room, which was in the opposite direction. From where she was in the stairwell, it was on the right, three doors down. All she could hear were muted sounds from multiple TVs and distant beeping from the nearby monitors.
To gather her resolve, Veena let the door slip shut while she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the concrete block of the stairwell. Step by step, she went over what she was about to do to avoid any possible errors, thinking back to how she had reached this unimaginable point in her life. Everything had fallen into place this afternoon, as she returned to the bungalow after work. She and the other eleven nurses hired by Nurses International were required to live at what sounded like a small cabin in American English but was in reality an enormous British Raj-era mansion. They lived there in luxury along with the Nurses International four-person administration. Yet coming through the front door she had felt her pulse quicken and her muscles tense just like she always did. Veena had to be constantly on guard.
As an acculturated Hindu woman, Veena recognized she had a powerful inclination to bow to male authority. When she joined Nurses International, mainly for their promised help in her goal of emigrating to America, she naturally treated Cal Morgan, the head of the organization, as she was expected to treat her own father. Unfortunately, this natural response was not without problems. As a typical thirty-two-year-old American male, Cal interpreted Veena’s culturally motivated attention and respect as a come-on, which created numerous episodes of misunderstanding. The situation was difficult for both of them and persisted because of a continued lack of communication. Veena feared compromising her chances of Nurses International giving her her freedom by helping her emigrate, and Cal feared losing her because she was their best employee and the leader among the others.
That afternoon, like all workday afternoons, once inside the mansion and despite the tension between them, Veena sought out Cal in the paneled library, which he had commandeered as his office. At the end of each shift the nurses were required to report to one of the four principals of the firm, President Cal Morgan, Vice President Petra
