“Is there another one tonight?” Veena asked apprehensively. “Don’t you think we should let things slide for a few days or a week, or at least until Jennifer Hernandez leaves?”
“It’s hard to stop with the success we’re seeing,” Cal said. “Last night in the States, all three networks picked up on CNN’s lead and ran segments about Asian medical tourism with the theme it might not be as safe as assumed. It was powerful.”
“It’s true,” Durell said. “The message is hitting home in a big way. Santana has heard from her CNN contact that they are already getting reports of medical tourism cancellations. You can’t argue with success, as my daddy always used to say.”
“What hospital is going to be involved tonight?” Veena asked, in the same serious tone. She was not trying to hide her opposition to another case so soon after the first two, especially since it had been she who had started the program.
“The Aesculapian Medical Center,” Cal said. “Raj called today to say that his patient David Lucas, who’s in his forties, was a terrific candidate. He’d had abdominal surgery to control obesity this morning. Cardiac-wise, he couldn’t be better. He had a stent inserted three years ago, so he’s known to have obstructive disease.”
“We’ve also made it easier,” Durell said. “We took Samira’s excellent suggestion about the succinylcholine. We now have our very own supply, so there will not be any dangerous sneaking around the ORs.”
“That’s right,” Cal said. “We got it today. Those are the kinds of suggestions we need to make this plan better and safer. I think we should pay bonuses for them to encourage such constructive thinking.”
“Then I think Samira should get a bonus,” Durell said, giving Samira a congratulatory squeeze.
“And Veena a bonus for breaking the ice,” Cal said. He gave Veena an equivalent hug, and the shapeliness and firmness of her body beneath her nurse’s uniform instantly turned him on.
“Does this mean you don’t plan on doing anything about Jennifer Hernandez?” Veena asked. She immediately pulled away from Cal. She was surprised Cal and Durell weren’t as concerned as she was about Jennifer’s interest in looking into her grandmother’s death. “I made the effort to find out where she was staying, thinking you’d want to know.”
“Where is she staying?”
“At the Amal Palace.”
“Is she now! What a coincidence, since that’s where we all stayed when we interviewed you women for Nurses International.”
“Cal, I’m being serious.”
“So am I. But I’m not going to have anything to do with that woman, not as one of the principals of Nurses International. Whereas you could without arousing any suspicion. If you are so concerned, why don’t you come up with a reason to meet her again and find out the source of her suspicions. I’m sure you’d find Durell is right, that it’s her own paranoia, and it will be a relief for you and for us to know there isn’t some clue we’re missing.”
“I couldn’t,” Veena said, with a shake of her head as if shivering off a touch of nausea.
“Why not?”
“Even just thinking of her gives me flashes of her grandmother’s face, contorting as she was dying, and even worse, I hear the grandmother thanking me all over again.”
“Then by all means don’t meet with her,” Cal said, with an edge to his voice. “I’m just trying to suggest how you can deal with your anxieties.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this at all,” Veena said suddenly.
“Now, let’s not go off the deep end. Remember, you don’t have to ‘do’ any more patients. You’re done. You were to start the ball rolling, that’s all. You’re in a supporting role now.”
“I mean, maybe none of us should be doing this.”
“It’s not your role to decide,” Cal stated. “Just consider it your dharmic duty to support the others. And remember, this activity has freed you from your father, and it is going to bring you and your colleagues, including Samira here, to a completely new freedom in America.”
Veena stood for a moment, nodding as if agreeing, then turned and left the room without saying anything additional.
“Is she going to be alright?” Durell asked, looking back at the others after watching Veena silently exit.
“She’s going to be fine,” Samira said. “It’s just going to take a while. She suffers more than the rest of us. Her problem is that she hasn’t had nearly the Westernizing Internet experience we’ve had, and as such she’s still way more an acculturated Indian than we are. As an example, when she finally started talking to me today after being mad at me for revealing her deep, dark secret to you guys, one of the first comments she made was not to rejoice at finally being free at last of her father and able to follow her dreams but that her family had been shamed.”
“I think I’m beginning to understand,” Cal said. “What worries me, though, is the suicide thing. Is there any chance she’ll try that again?”
“No! Definitely not! She did it because she felt she was expected to do it in the context of her religion and her family, but you saved her. So that’s that. It wasn’t to be her karma to die, even if she had thought it was. No, she won’t try it again.”
“Let me ask you something else,” Cal said. “Since you’re her best friend, does she ever talk about sex?”
Samira laughed hollowly. “Sex? Are you joking? No, she never talks about sex. She hates sex. Well, let me amend that. I know she wants to have kids one day. But sex for sex’s sake, no deal. Not like other people I know.” Samira winked at Durell, who snickered behind a closed fist.
“Thanks,” Cal said. “I should have asked you these questions weeks ago.”
Chapter 19
OCTOBER 17, 2007
WEDNESDAY, 6:15 A.M.
NEW YORK, USA
Before ever opening his eyes, Dr. Jack Stapleton heard a sound that was foreign to his ears. It was a distant hushed roar, the likes of which he found hard to describe. For a moment he tried to think what could be making it. Since their 106th Street Manhattan brownstone, which was actually brick, had been renovated only two years ago, he thought it could have been a sound that was normal to the newly configured house but that he’d just never appreciated. Yet on further thought it was too loud for that. Trying harder to characterize it, he suddenly thought of a waterfall.
Jack’s eyes blinked open. Sweeping his hand under the covers on his wife’s side of the bed and not encountering her sleeping form, he knew what the sound was: It was the shower. Laurie was already up, an unheard-of phenomenon. Laurie was a dyed-in-the-wool night owl and often had to be dragged kicking and screaming from her bed in order for her to get to the OCME, also known as the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, at some reasonable time. As for himself, Jack liked to arrive early, before everyone else, to give him the opportunity to cherry-pick the good cases.
Mystified, Jack tossed back the covers, and completely naked, which was the way he liked to sleep, he padded into the steamy bathroom. Laurie was practically invisible within the shower stall. Jack cracked the door.
“Hey in there,” Jack called out over the sound of the water.
With suds in her hair, Laurie leaned out of the spray. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” she said. “It’s about time you woke up. It’s going to be a busy day.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The India trip!” Laurie said. She leaned her head back into the torrent and vigorously rinsed her hair.
Jack leaped back to avoid being splashed and let the shower door close. It all came back to him in a rush.
