Joy. Who was Joy?
She opened the flap and took out the enclosed card. Only then did she notice that something was written on the back of the card. She flipped it over.
Some doctors always tell the truth, it said.
And beneath that was a phone number.
Abby was home alone when Nina Voss called at 5 p.m.
'Is this Dr. DiMatteo?' said a soft voice. 'The one who always tells the truth?'
'Mrs Voss?You got my flowers.'
'Yes, thank you. And I got your rather odd note.'
'I've tried every other way to contact you. Letters. Phone calls.' 'I've been home over a week.'
'But you haven't been available.'
There was a pause. Then a quiet, 'I see.'
She has no idea how isolated she's been, thought Abby. No idea how her husband has cut her off from the outside.
'Is anyone else listening to this?' asked Abby.
'I'm alone in my room. What is this all about?'
'I have to see you, Mrs Voss. And it has to be without your husband's knowledge. Can you arrange it?'
'First tell me why.'
'It's not an easy thing to say over the phone.'
'I won't meet with you until you tell me.'
Abby hesitated. 'It's about your heart. The one you got at Bayside.' 'Yes?'
'No one seems to know whose heart it was. Or where it came from.' She paused. And asked quietly: 'Do you know, Mrs Voss?'
The silence that followed was broken only by the sound of Nina's breathing, rapid and irregular. 'MrsVoss?'
'I have to go.'
'Wait. When can! see you?'
'Tomorrow.'
'How? Where?'
There was another pause. Just before the line went dead, Nina said: 'I'll find a way.'
The rain beat a relentless tattoo on the striped awning over Abby's head. For forty minutes now she had been standing in front of Cellucci's Grocery, shivering beneath the narrow overhang of canvas. A succession of delivery trucks had pulled up to unload, the men wheeling in dollies and carton boxes. Snapple and Frito-Lay and Winston Cigarettes. Little Debbie had a snack for you.
At four-twenty the rain began coming down harder, swirling with the wind. Gusts of it angled under the awning, splattering her shoes. Her feet were freezing. An hour had passed; Nina Voss was not going to show up.
Abby flinched as a Progresso Foods truck suddenly roared away from the kerb, spewing exhaust. When she looked up again, she saw that a black limousine had stopped across the street. The driver's window rolled down a few inches and a man called: 'Dr. DiMatteo? Come into the car.'
She hesitated. The windows were too darkly tinted for Abby to see inside, but she could make out the silhouette of a single rear-seat passenger.
'We haven't much time,' urged the driver.
She crossed the street, head bent under the beating rain, and opened the rear door. Blinking water from her eyes, she focused on the backseat passenger. What she saw dismayed her.
In the gloom of the car, Nina Voss looked pale and shrunken. Her skin was a powdery white. 'Please get in, Doctor,' said Nina.
Abby slid in beside her and shut the door. The limousine pulled away from the kerb and glided noiselessly into the stream of traffic.
Nina was so completely bundled up in a black coat and scarf that her face seemed to be floating, bodyless, in the cat's shadows. This was not the picture of a recovering transplant patient. Abby remembered Josh O' Day's ruddy face, remembered his liveliness, his laughter.
Nina Voss looked like a talking corpse.
'I'm sorry we're late,' said Nina. 'We had a problem, leaving the house.'
'Does your husband know you're meeting me?'
'No.' Nina sat back, her face almost swallowed up in all that black wool. 'I've learned, over the years, that one doesn't tell Victor certain things. The real secret of a happy marriage, Dr. DiMatteo, is silence.'
'That hardly sounds like a happy marriage.'
'It is. Strangely enough.' Nina smiled and looked out the window. The watery light cast distorted shadows on her face. 'Men have to be protected from so many things. Most of all from themselves. That's why they need us, you know. The funny thing is, they'll never admit it. They think they're taking care of us. And all the time, we know the truth.' She turned to Abby, and her smile faded.
'Now I need to know. What has Victor done?'
'I was hoping you could tell me.'
'You said it had to do with my heart.' Nina touched her hand to her chest. In the gloom of the car, her gesture seemed almost religious. Father, Son, Holy Ghost. 'What do you know about it?'
'! know your heart didn't come through normal channels. Almost all transplant organs are matched to recipients through a central registry. Yours wasn't. According to the organ bank, you never got a heart at all.'
Nina's hand, still resting on her chest, had squeezed into a tense white ball. 'Then where did this one come from?'
'I don't know. Do you?'
The corpselike face stared at her in silence. 'I think your husband knows,' said Abby. 'How would he?'
'He bought it.'
'People can't just buy hearts.'
'With enough money, people can buy anything.'
Nina said nothing. By her silence, she admitted her acceptance of that fundamental truth. Money can buy anything.
The limousine turned onto Embankment Road. They were driving west along the Charles River. Its surface was grey and stippled by falling rain.
Nina asked, 'How did you learn about this?'
'Lately I seem to have a lot of free time on my hands. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you find yourself suddenly unemployed. In just the last few days, I've found out a lot of things. Not just about your transplant, but about others as well. And the more I learn, Mrs Voss, the more scared I get.'
'Why come to me about this? Why not go to the authorities?'
'Haven't you heard? I have a new nickname these days. Dr. Hemlock. They're saying I kill my patients with kindness. None of it's true, of course, but people are always ready to believe the worst.' Wearily Abby gazed out at the river. 'I have no job. No credibility. And no proof.'
'What do you have?'
Abby looked at her. 'I know the truth.'
The limousine dipped through a puddle. The spray of water drummed the underside of the car. They had veered away from the river and the road to the Back Bay Fens now curved ahead of them.
'At 10 p.m. on the night of your transplant,' said Abby, 'Bayside Hospital got a call that a donor had been found in Burlington, Vermont. Three hours later, the heart was delivered to our OR. The harvest was supposedly done at Wilcox Memorial Hospital, by a surgeon named Timothy Nicholls. Your transplant was performed, and there was nothing out of the ordinary about it. In so many ways, it was like every other transplant done at Bayside.' She paused. 'With one major difference. No one knows where your donor heart came from.'
'You said it came from Burlington.'
'I said it supposedly did. But Dr. Nicholls has vanished. He may be hiding. Or he may be dead. And Wilcox Memorial denies any knowledge of a harvest on that night.'
