the time it takes CNN to do whatever authentication they are going to do, write the story, and then schedule it. We’re talking about a lot of time. In fact, I’d probably guess more like two hours.”
“I see her point,” Jack said. “Did this happen with the other two deaths as well?”
“Exactly the same with the second one, Benfatti. The earliest I had it being on TV in New York was eleven a.m., which is eight-thirty p.m. in India. The time on the death certificate is ten-thirty-one p.m. Again, that’s two hours’ difference. It almost seems like someone is reporting these deaths to CNN before they even happened. On top of that, consider the similar time frames. Could that be a coincidence, or something else?”
“What about the third death?” Laurie asked.
“The third death was somewhat different than the other two, and the reason why was, the victim wasn’t discovered essentially cold and blue like the first two. But in other ways the same, including the time frame. The third patient was discovered still alive by his surgeon, and a full resuscitation was attempted that unfortunately was not successful. I happened to catch the CNN segment a little after nine p.m., and the anchors reported that the death had been sometime earlier. This afternoon I talked to the wife. The death certificate has nine-thirty-one p.m.”
“It does seem as if someone has been tipping off CNN way before anyone else seems to even know about the deaths, especially on the first two cases,” Jack said. “Now, that’s odd.”
“All three of us—myself, Lucinda Benfatti, and Rita Lucas—learned of our loved ones’ death from CNN after the network had known about it long enough to make it into a story and schedule it to be on the air and seemingly before the hospital knew about it. If it hadn’t been for this very strange timeline situation, I might have already had my granny’s body treated. But as it is, I cannot help but think these deaths are not natural. They’re purposeful. Someone is doing this and then is very eager to proclaim it around the world.”
When Jennifer stopped speaking, no one spoke for several minutes.
“I’m afraid to have to agree with Jennifer,” Laurie said, breaking the silence. “It’s starting to sound to me like an Indian version of an angel of death. We’ve had a few of those in the U.S.: healthcare workers who go on a murdering spree. This has to be an inside job. But usually the victims have some consistent association with one another. From what you’ve said, that doesn’t appear to be the case here.”
“That’s right,” Jennifer said. “They range in age from Granny at sixty-four down to David Lucas, who was in his forties. Although two were at the same hospital, the third was at another institution. Two were orthopedic procedures, the third was obesity surgery. The only constant is that they are all Americans.”
“It does seem that the time of death is approximately the same,” Laurie added. “And presumably the mechanism, with slight individual variations.”
“Is there any relationship between the two hospitals?” Jack asked.
“They are both the same kind of hospital,” Jennifer said. “There are essentially two types of hospitals in India: the run-down public hospitals and these new, impressively equipped private hospitals that are being built for the medical tourism industry and secondarily for the newly emergent Indian middle class.”
“How big is the Indian medical tourism movement?” Jack asked.
“It’s going to be very big,” Jennifer said. “The little I’ve been able to look into it has suggested some people think it might eventually challenge information technology for foreign exchange. By 2010 it’s supposed to produce two-point-two billion. It was growing somewhere around thirty percent per year last time accurate figures had been obtained. It’s interesting to speculate if these recent deaths will impact such an impressive growth. There have been a number of cancellations reported.”
“Maybe that’s why there’s such eagerness on the part of the powers that be to sweep these cases under the proverbial rug,” Jack suggested.
“Jack asked if there was any relationship between the two hospitals,” Laurie said. “You didn’t quite answer the question.”
“Sorry,” Jennifer said. “I got sidetracked. Yes. I found out on the Internet that they both belong to the same sizable holding company. There are big profits to be made in Indian healthcare, especially with the government providing strong incentives, like various kinds of tax breaks. Big business is becoming more and more involved as a consequence of the high profits yet high start-up costs.”
“Jennifer,” Jack said, “when you started to tell us about the timeline discrepancy, you said that it was the main source of your suspicion the deaths weren’t natural. That suggests there were other sources. What were they?”
“Well, first it was that they were pushing me too hard to make a decision about cremation or embalming right from the word go. Since I’m aware that autopsies either can’t be done or are significantly less useful after either procedure, their dogged persistence eventually raised a red flag. Next was the pat and all-too-convenient diagnosis of heart attack after I’d just had Granny evaluated by the UCLA Medical Center, and she’d been given a blue-ribbon report, especially in relation to her heart.”
“They didn’t do any angiography or anything like that, did they?” Jack asked.
“No angiography, but they gave her a stress test.”
“Anything else that has made you suspicious?” Jack asked.
“The cyanosis that was reported on both Granny and Benfatti when they were found.”
“This is interesting,” Laurie said, nodding her head.
“Not the third patient?” Jack asked.
“Him, too,” Jennifer said. “I asked Rita Lucas, the wife, to ask. There was cyanosis, but it was only when they first found him, and he was still alive but in extremis. When they started resuscitation, the cyanosis cleared rapidly, giving them a false impression that the resuscitation was going to be more effective than it was.”
“How long did the resuscitation go on?”
“I don’t know exactly, but my impression was not that long. The patient started getting rigor mortis while they were still trying to revive him.”
“Rigor mortis?” Laurie questioned. She looked at Jack. Both were surprised. Normally rigor mortis didn’t set in for hours.
“The wife said that the surgeon told her that so she wouldn’t think they’d stopped too soon. She said he attributed it to the hyperthermia.”
“What hyperthermia?” Jack asked.
“It was a very difficult resuscitation attempt. The patient’s temperature shot up sky-high, and so did his potassium. They tried to treat both without much result.”
“Good grief,” Jack said. “What a nightmare.”
“So it turns out that all three had generalized cyanosis, which didn’t make a lot a sense to me with the diagnosis of a generic heart attack.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me, either,” Neil said, speaking up for the first time. “That’s got to be a respiratory problem more than a cardiac problem.”
“Or a right-to-left shunt,” Laurie said.
“Or a poisoning,” Jack said. “It’s not going to be a right-to-left shunt: not with three patients. One, maybe. But not three. I think we’re looking at a toxicology problem here.”
“I agree,” Laurie said. “And I thought I was coming merely to be supportive.”
“You are being supportive,” Jennifer added.
Jack looked at Laurie. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Laurie responded. “It means there definitely needs to be an autopsy.”
“They are not going to do one,” Jennifer interjected. “I’m telling you. And let me tell you something else, which is what I was talking to Mrs. Benfatti about. This afternoon I got a call from my favorite case manager, Kashmira Varini, and she had a new offer that she and the hospital administration thought would entice me to give cremation a green light. She said that the hospital CEO pulled some strings and had gotten permission for Granny, along with Benfatti and Lucas, to be taken to Varanasi to be cremated and her ashes placed in the Ganges.”
“Why Varanasi?” Jack asked.
“I looked it up in my guidebook,” Jennifer said. “It is interesting. It’s the holiest Hindu city; it’s also the oldest. It’s been occupied for over three thousand years. If you are cremated there, you get extra karma for your next life. When I didn’t jump up and down and agree instantly to the Varanasi offer, she then threatened me just like she threatened Mrs. Benfatti. She said the hospital intends to seek a magistrate’s writ to deal with Granny’s body as they see fit and have the writ in hand by noon tomorrow.”
