Her mind was on the last-minute details she needed to finish before leaving for her trip. She had to get a key to her neighbor, a surgical nurse here at the Klinikum, so she could water the plants. She also needed to clean a week’s worth of leftovers out of her refrigerator. Then there was tomorrow’s trip to the town of Ismaning for her grandfather, and then on Monday it was time to leave for Greenland.
“Dr. Klein, just the person I wanted to see.” Dr. Heinz Seecht had been waiting in ambush outside the women’s changing room. “I was afraid you had already left.”
Damn. Anika had been avoiding Seecht for weeks. She knew what he wanted to talk to her about, and she was hoping to delay it until after the Greenland expedition. If she could, she’d put off this conversation indefinitely. Seecht was about to box her into a decision she still wasn’t ready to make.
“I was just leaving. My shift’s been over for a while.” A moment ago, she had been hyped up on adrenaline, but now she felt nothing but exhaustion. She crossed her arms over her small breasts.
“Yes, I just spoke with Petr. You lost the patient.” It was said with condescension, as if the kid’s death had been her fault.
Her body stiffened. “We did everything we could.”
“I’m sure you did,” Seecht said absently. “Petr’s a good doctor.”
By force of will, Anika remained silent. She and Seecht had been at odds since she first came to the hospital. He was nearly sixty and believed that only men made good doctors. His was an extreme form of sexism that was pervasive in Germany. However, now was not the time to lash out.
“I wish to be blunt with you, Anika,” Seecht said as though he’d been any different with her in the past. “Your performance is not up to the Klinikum’s standards and hasn’t been since you first arrived.”
Anika hadn’t suspected he’d take this tack and she was thrown off for a moment. She quickly recovered. Rather than let him complete his thought, she went on the attack. “It isn’t my skills as a doctor that are substandard,” she stated. “Every review places me near the top of all the trauma teams. I have been honored by the medical boards and I have been singled out by the mayor when his daughter came in with a ruptured appendix. I am more current on new techniques than anyone on your staff, and I did a year of ER work in Los Angeles before coming here. I saw more trauma in a weekend there than doctors here see in a month. So please tell me, in what way am I not meeting your standards, Dr. Seecht?”
She took a deep breath.
“I don’t question your surgical abilities.”
You’re goddamned right you won’t, Anika wanted to shout.
A pair of technicians approached from down the hallway, and Seecht touched Anika on the elbow to lead her away. She resented the touch. He wouldn’t have done it to a male doctor. He wouldn’t even have done it to a male janitor.
He continued when they were alone again. “There is more to being on my staff than skills. I demand dedication from my people, and that is something you lack. In your year and a half here, you have taken leaves of absence totaling six months. I encourage doctors to have interests outside their field, but not when it interferes with their work. Your little adventures have become such an interference, I’m afraid.”
“My little adventures,” Anika snapped acidly, “have given me the research material for two published papers on the chemistry of stress.”
Seecht was not impressed. “You were not hired to be a research doctor. And even if you were, you didn’t need to go on a four-week climbing expedition to the Himalayas to gather that information and you know it. The papers you write are just your excuse, your cover story.”
He spoke as though on a telephone, looking at a spot over her head so he didn’t see the aggressive flare in her eyes. It was at times like this she hated being just over five feet tall. In a confrontation, being short gave others a perceived advantage. Seecht needed only glance over her head and he completely isolated her from the conversation.
Anika wanted to deny his accusation, but she would never outright lie to Seecht. He was right. Writing papers was her way of legitimizing the fact that she wanted to go away to climb mountains or trek through jungles.
Seecht finally looked her in the eye. “I wanted to catch you before you left for the Arctic or wherever it is you’re heading and let you know that you have a decision to make. You will be gone for three weeks, and when you get back you will find that my patience has run out. There will be no more trips or expeditions or anything else. You will work every shift I assign to you without complaint or you will find yourself without a job. Do I make myself clear?”
She had long known that she had a decision to make, one that would doubtlessly affect the rest of her life. She didn’t need this misogynist to point it out to her.
“Do you understand, Dr. Klein?” Seecht repeated more forcefully.
“I understand.” No matter how bitter the words, she wouldn’t turn away from him as she said it.
His voice softened. “You have the makings of a fine doctor, like your father. Don’t throw it away because you want to go play in the mountains. It is time you grew up and faced the responsibilities of your profession.”
To anyone overhearing the conversation it would have sounded as though Seecht was being understanding. In fact, evoking her father was an attempt to cut her as deeply as possible. Anyone who knew her understood how much her memories of her father meant to her. And how it was his footsteps as a doctor she now followed.
Without another word, Seecht retreated down the hall, leaving Anika amid a storm of emotions. Being fired wasn’t what bothered her. With her credentials she could work anywhere in Germany or the rest of the world for that matter. It was the decision that upset her. Did she want to stay in medicine and honor her long-dead father or would she leave to pursue her own interests?
With an angry shake, Anika cleared her head, refusing to allow this to dampen her enthusiasm for the upcoming Greenland expedition. Although three weeks at a remote Arctic research station were far from the toughest challenge she’d faced, she felt the old stirrings of excitement already pushing aside Seecht’s ultimatum. Something told her that the answer to her dilemma was waiting on the Arctic wastes and she was eager to see what it would be.
NEW YORK CITY
Having traveled to some of the worst hellholes on earth, Philip Mercer still had difficulty recalling a smell worse than a New York garbage truck in the summer. It was a rank odor that hit like a nuclear blast. The lumbering vehicles were making their pickups as he walked along Amsterdam Avenue, a steady stream of wet offal drizzling from their gaping tail-gates. On one level, the scientist in him was morbidly curious to know exactly what had been discarded that could be so putrid, but his interest wasn’t nearly strong enough to overcome the stench. Had he known the gauntlet he’d have to walk, he would have had the airport taxi drop him at his destination rather than embarking on this random stroll from Midtown.
Mercer abandoned Amsterdam, crossed Columbus, and began walking northward along the much better smelling Central Park West. The morning sun beat against the sidewalks and he shed his suit jacket, tucking it into the crook of his elbow. Doormen in uniforms paid him little heed as he passed their buildings, monoliths of granite and limestone containing some of the most expensive apartments in the world. Brass handrails and awning supports gleamed like gold.
Between 79th Street and 81st stood the massive American Museum of Natural History, his favorite spot in the city. If he had time later, he would come back to see the new Rose Center for Earth and Space. He paused, as he always did, to study the statue of Theodore Roosevelt at the museum’s Central Park West entrance. Flanking the statue were two walls chiseled with one-word descriptions of arguably America’s most dynamic president.