Monday, November 19, 8:30 A.M.
New York City
The rhythmic electricity in the streets of Manhattan never changed for Earl. Even in old thirties movies Fred Astaire could be dancing along Times Square, and in the background there would be the purring motors, strident horns, thousands of teeming footsteps and bobbing heads, all syncopated to the buzz of chattering voices and leaving little doubt where Busby Berkeley or Gershwin got their inspiration. These days, he figured, those same rhythms spawned the beat to hip-hop, but the sound remained the same, and it washed over him as he walked down Second Avenue toward New York City Hospital.
Standing in the building’s shadow, waiting for the red to change at the intersection of Thirty-third, he closed his eyes. The familiar cacophony carried him back in time, to the point he imagined he would open his eyes again to find Kelly, Melanie, Tommy, and Jack at his side, impatiently waiting at that same stoplight, fretting about morning rounds.
He blinked and was alone. The two who were dearest to him in those days were dead – Jack, his closest friend, who’d sacrificed his life for him, and Kelly. Tommy had parlayed his B-student vexations into the stuff of a grade-A whine-ass, and Melanie, always a coquette, had apparently become the female counterpart to a roué.
The light changed, and he started across, huddled in his raincoat as wind and drizzle gusted up Thirty-third from the East River.
The cement-and-glass structure where he’d been forged into a doctor loomed over him, its upper stories lost in fog. For an instant it reclaimed the hold it used to exert on his nerve, jacking up his heartbeat and giving the acid in his stomach a stir before it just as quickly became simply another hospital, no different from the hundreds he’d visited in various official capacities throughout his long career.
Still, when the sliding doors opened to receive him, and hospital smells assaulted his nose, he felt caught in the crosscurrents of then and now.
Security was as meticulous as in his own St. Paul’s, the officers checking photo ID, scanning him down for metal, even having him remove his shoes. “No stinky feet,” he murmured, smiling to himself and missing Janet after his night alone in the hotel.
His grin must have made him look suspicious because a frowning guard gave him another extra thorough once-over with his wand before sending him through. But they did have his visitor’s badge waiting. Mark had obviously been on the job as far as greasing the administrative wheels.
He set out for medical records, pushing through the rush of white-coated students, interns, and residents, all scurrying after the flapping white coats of their appointed staff person and engaged in the constant banter of questions and answers that had been the method of choice for teaching medicine since the days of Socrates.
“What’s the differential of a solitary swollen red joint?” demanded an elegant gray-haired woman leading her pack into the outpatient’s department.
“Traumatic, inflammatory, septic,” a blond young man with the shortest clinical jacket in the group snapped back at her.
“Very good. Now what’s the most likely diagnosis in the inflammatory category?”
“Which joint?” demanded a woman with red hair pulled back in a ponytail.
The staff woman’s eyes arched in a show of approval. “Good question. The case we’re about to see involves a knee.”
“Gout,” the redhead said without hesitation.
The group disappeared through a swinging door.
Earl passed a treatment room off ER where another youthful trainee, this one masked and gloved, frowned mightily as he wielded a suture and hemostat over a child’s lacerated cheek. Pulling the knotted thread tight, he reached for scissors on a sterile tray, fumbled them, and they fell to the floor. Glancing around, he quickly retrieved them and brought them back into his sterile field.
It’s not my turf, Earl tried to tell himself, then thought, What the bloody hell! “Excuse me,” he said, sticking his head in the door before contaminated steel touched flesh. “Get a new set and change your gloves!”
The young man went crimson behind the white mask, even his ears turning scarlet. “Yes, sir!” he said.
Earl watched him comply, then added, “You pull that again in this lifetime, I’ll personally bounce you from the program.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned back into the corridor, but not so quickly that he missed the who-was-that-mean-ass frown appear on the would-be doctor’s brow.
Memory led him the rest of the way through the labyrinth of elevators, stairwells, and hallways to the lower levels where, in the bottom layer, like a sediment of secrets, a low-ceilinged subbasement the size of a city block held a half century’s worth of clinical files.
“A tomb,” Kelly had once called it, striking a dramatic pose, “where the fates of a million souls are stored.”
The place gave him the creeps. There had been perks, however, to their working down here on chart audits, usually at night and often alone. Earl smiled, recalling how they had sometimes put the maze created by rows and rows of shelves loaded with charts to good use, quietly engaging in a few secrets of their own.
A plump, gray-haired receptionist greeted him at the front desk. “Ah yes, Dr. Garnet, Dr. Roper had us prepare what you have clearance to review.” Bifocals dangled from around her neck on a gold chain and a pin depicting Snoopy holding a paw to his mouth, the bubble caption reading SHHH!, decorated her collar. “Here is the woman’s chart; it’s still active. As you’ll see, she’s had a ton of visits over the years, and is now a patient in our geriatric wing. Been here three months. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to talk with her. She had another stroke thirteen days ago.”
“A stroke?”
“Bessie McDonald’s her name. Tragically she’s in a coma. We got permission from her family for you to look at her charts, provided you promise to inform them what it’s all about, especially if you find anything. I’ve attached her son’s phone number to the front cover. He lives in California.”
A coma. Terrific! “Certainly I’ll notify them-”
“When I called, both he and his wife were overcome with curiosity about why you’d be interested in her case.”
“Well, thank you for your trouble-”
“Oh, no trouble at all. When our CEO tells me to do what I can in helping out a coroner, I don’t spare any effort.” She popped her glasses onto the tip of her nose, looked at him over the top of the frames, and gave him a knowing wink. “Especially when it has to do with a twenty-seven-year-old murder case.”
Jesus, so much for keeping his purpose here confidential. “Look, I don’t know who you heard that from-”
“Oh, come now, Dr. Garnet, I can put two and two together. Dr. Roper’s the coroner investigating Kelly McShane’s death, and the attending physician for the specific admission you wanted to check was Dr. Chaz Braden. What else could it be about, though I can’t imagine what the link might be…” She trailed off, clearly hoping he’d fill her in on the details.
“You don’t tell that to anyone else, understand?” Earl said instead, astounded someone so chatty could be chief guardian in an area bound by law to be a hub of confidentiality.
Her eyes opened wide with astonishment. “That’s the last thing you need to worry about.” She spoke with the you-can-trust-me sincerity of someone who actually believed her own lies. “Now as for the deceased man, his chart is in the microfilm library. It’s at the far end of the main hall-”