Authors: Michael Palmer
The teen slipped the card into the pocket of her jeans, then finally accepted the discharge and Harry’s efforts by giving him a hug.
The second patient, an elderly man, had been transferred back to Harry from a cardiologist following an uneventful three-day stay in the CCU. He was a toothless old gent who had been pleasantly confused for as long as Harry had been his doctor, now fifteen or so years. With social services and the visiting nurses teaming up on his case, there was a good chance he’d be back in his own place within the week. He patted Harry on the back, called him Dr. Carson, and told him to keep trying and he would be a very good doctor some day.
Harry smiled sadly at the thought of how typical, how: utterly humdrum normal, rounds like today’s once were. Now, as he moved through the hospital, he was aware of the stares, and the pointed fingers, and the whispers.
That’s the man. The doctor who killed his wife. I can’t believe they let him just walk around the hospital like this
.…
He took the elevator to the fifth floor of the Alexander Building. The car was the very same one in which he had ridden down with Mel Wetstone. That time, Evie’s killer had been one of the crowd packed in with them. This time, he was alone.
The final patient he had to see was in Alexander 505—a thirty-three-year-old architect named Andy Barlow. Barlow had been HIV-positive for two years and was now battling
Pneumocystis carinii
pneumonia, the first indication that he had developed full-blown AIDS. During those two symptom-free years, Barlow had continued work at his job with a midtown firm, volunteered countless hours at a hospice for the homeless and disenfranchised, and led the campaign for expanded needle exchange and improved local services for AIDS patients.
Another legitimate hero
, Harry thought as he entered the room.
Andy Barlow, oxygen prongs in place, did not look as good as Harry would have wished. His color was sallow and somewhat dusky, his lips more purplish than they should have been. He sat propped up at an eighty-degree angle, quietly working to get air into his lungs. Still, he managed a smile.
“Hey, Doc,” he said, the words punctuated with coughs.
“Hi, yourself.”
Harry pulled up a chair and sat, flipping through the pages in Barlow’s chart. The reports—blood count, oxygen levels, chemistries, chest film—actually looked better than the patient did. They were reason to be at least a little encouraged.
“What’s the news?” Barlow asked.
“Well, the returns from these key upstate precincts say we’re winning,” Harry said.
“Tell that to my lungs.”
“That bad?”
“Actually not,” Andy said, and paused for breath. “My breathing’s a bit easier and I’m not coughing nearly as much.” He coughed again several times and then laughed at himself. “As usual, the man speaketh too soon.”
Harry examined his throat, chest, heart, and abdomen.
“Not bad,” he said, now genuinely encouraged. “How’s your head?”
Andy shrugged. “I think being HIV-positive for a couple of years has helped a bit in getting ready for this, but I’m still pissed and … and a little frightened.”
“Me, too,” Harry said.
“I know. And I appreciate your saying it.”
Andy Barlow wasn’t the first patient with AIDS Harry had cared for, or even the tenth. Healthy habits, exercise, preventive medications, and aggressive treatment of infections had made a significant contribution to the quality and quantity of each of their lives. But a number of them had already died. This lung infection marked Barlow’s first step
on a new road. The questions of whether and when he would develop the full-blown disease had been answered. Now, physician and patient had to reorder their priorities and their expectations. Harry feigned another chest exam until he was fairly certain his own emotions were under control.
“You know,” Andy said, “don’t take this personally, but I don’t think I fear dying as much as I fear being sick all the time. I’ve spent so much time in hospitals with my friends, I just dread becoming one of them.”
“I understand. Well, I promise you I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of here pronto and to keep you out. And as far as getting sick over and over goes, I know nothing I say can take away that worry. Just try to focus on the truth that today is what you have—it’s all that any of us have. The only thing you can do is try to live it to the fullest.”
“Keep reminding me.”
“I will if you want me to. Now listen. I really do think the IV Bactrim has turned the tide. Your film’s a little better, and so’s your blood count.”
“Good, because I’m one of the principle designers of the renovations on the Claridge Performing Arts Center, and I want to be at the opening production on the twenty-first.”
“Ten days? Hey, no problem, mon. With my stethoscope tied behind my back, even.”
“Guaranteed?”
“You have my word.”
Andy, an IV in his right hand, reached out and grasped Harry’s right hand with his left.
Harry squeezed his hand, then turned quickly and left the room. This was a situation he would never get used to or inured to. And in truth, he never wanted to be.
He returned to the nurse’s station and wrote some orders for intensified respiratory therapy on Andy Barlow. Nearby, two nurses were chatting with the unit secretary. He had known each of them cordially for some time, in one case many years. Now, none of the three broke from their
conversation to acknowledge him. He flagged the new orders and set the three-ring notebook chart on the secretary’s desk.
“Just a few new orders,” he said.
“Thank you, Doctor,” the woman replied without looking over. “I’ll take care of it.”
Harry gave momentary thought to forcing a confrontation with the group—a plea against being judged prematurely. He decided against it. Constitutional guarantees notwithstanding, he knew that in many minds he was guilty until proven otherwise. As long as his situation remained unresolved, there would be coolness and distance and silence. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
He trotted down to the first floor and out of the hospital. The morning was cloudless and warm, and with twenty minutes before his first office patient he could actually walk slowly enough to appreciate it. He wondered how Maura was doing. By the time he had left for work, the reality of her situation had begun to sink in for her. She seemed irritable—deflated and distracted. And although she didn’t say so, Harry sensed she was thinking about how much easier everything would be with a drink. They had decided that she would return to her apartment with a friend of hers, pack some things, and move into Harry’s place for a few days. Meanwhile, she could decide about calling her brother. When she did move back to her own place, Harry offered to hire a security guard.
“Until when?” she asked.
Harry didn’t try arguing with her on that point. Especially since she was right. If someone, particularly a professional, wanted badly enough to kill her, she would have to go into the deepest hiding, or else sooner or later she would be dead. It was that simple.
There was one person seated in the waiting room of Harry’s office when he arrived, a man he had never seen before. His face, hollow-eyed and gaunt, spoke of hard times. His black, graying hair was close-cut, and there was nervous tension about him that Harry could almost feel. He had on faded jeans, worn sneakers, and a navy blue windbreaker
with a Yankees logo on one breast. Harry nodded a greeting before heading into Mary Tobin’s cubicle. The man responded with a thin smile.
“Who’s our friend?” Harry whispered, studying the appointment book, which showed a number of cancellations and no name written in this time slot.
“His name is Walter Concepcion. He’s unemployed and has no insurance.”
“What else is new.”
“He’s been having headaches.”
“Who referred him?”
“Believe it or not, he says he read about you in the papers.”
“Doctor suspected of murdering his wife—what better recommendation could any patient want?”
“Well,” Mary said, “you’ve never turned any patient away that I could remember, so I took the liberty of having him fill out a registration sheet and questionnaire.”
“Fine. It doesn’t exactly look like we’re going to get buried in an avalanche of appointments.”
“Oh, we’ll be all right. Tell me, though. How’re you doing?”
Aside from almost getting Maura killed last night, witnessing a murder, and having almost no idea what in the hell is going on, not bad. Not bad at all
“I go to bed confused, I wake up confused,” he said instead.
“That doesn’t make you any different from the rest of us,” Mary said, smiling. “You just hang in there an’ the answers will come.”
She looked as strained and tired as he had ever seen her. Yet here she was with anxious callers to assuage, cancellations to accept without comment, reporters to fend off, and she was concerned with how
he
was doing. Harry added her to his list of heroes.
He picked up the clipboard with the health questionnaire his new patient had filled out. Walter Concepcion was forty-five, with no phone, a next-of-kin—his brother in Los Angeles, and an address in Spanish Harlem. As Mary had
warned, he had no health insurance. But he did list an occupation—
private investigator
. Harry introduced himself and motioned the man to follow him to his office.
“I was a licensed PI,” Concepcion explained in response to Harry’s question. “But I got in a little trouble a few years back and they pulled my ticket.” His New York accent, without a hint of Latino, suggested he was U.S. born. “Next March I’m eligible to get it back. I still do some jobs for people, but under the table, if you know what I mean.”
The tension Harry had sensed in the waiting room was physically apparent in an intermittent tic of the muscles on the right side of Concepcion’s face, and in his fingers, which seemed to be in almost constant motion.
“The trouble you got into,” Harry said. “Drugs?”
Without hesitation, Concepcion nodded. “Cocaine. Crack, actually. I thought I could handle it.”
“No one can.”
“You got that right. I been clean for almost three years now, though. No drugs, no booze, no wine. Nothing. Not that I deserve a medal or anything, but I’ve gotten my act back together.”
“That
is
a big accomplishment,” Harry said. “There’s no need to put it down.” He liked the man’s directness. Concepcion’s eyes, though deeply sunken, were bright and intelligent, and made steady, level contact with Harry’s.
“Well, Mr. Concepcion, I have about twenty minutes before my next patient is due,” Harry said. “Headaches are among the hardest symptoms to diagnose correctly, but I’ll do my best. You may have to come back another time or two.”
“That’s okay with me, Doc, as long as I can stretch out my payments. I’m not broke, but I do have to balance who gets what, if you know what I mean.”
“No problem,” Harry said. “Why don’t you go on down to room two on the left. I’ll take a brief history and examine you there.”
Concepcion rose and left the room just as Harry’s private line began ringing.
The private line, direct to the back office, enabled Harry to make calls without tying up an office line. It also ensured that emergency calls from the hospital wouldn’t encounter a busy signal.
“Dr. Corbett,” he said, flipping through a small stack of mail, mostly junk, that Mary had left on his desk.
“I am very upset with you, Doctor,” the familiar, slightly accented voice said. “Very upset,”
Harry tensed. Even if he could somehow alert Mary, there was no extension to this line at the front desk.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“The man you trapped and killed so mercilessly last night meant a great deal to me.”
The words were spoken without emotion.
“Listen, I didn’t trap anyone. Your goons tried to kill us. I’m not sorry someone saved our lives. But I have no idea who did it.”
“I think you’re lying, Dr. Corbett. I blame myself for not considering that you might have arranged to have yourself followed. But I think you’ll see that it was an unfortunate, foolish thing for you to do. Very unfortunate and very foolish.”
“Who are you? Why are you doing this? Why did you kill Evie?”
“You have become a great inconvenience to me, Dr. Corbett,” the soft voice went on. “And I intend to do something about it. It would make things much easier for any number of people if you would just find some clever, painless way to take your own life.”
“Go to hell.”
“Dead or in prison for life. I am afraid those are now the only options available to you. If you don’t wish to kill yourself now, I promise you will before Ì am through. The man you arranged to have gunned down last night was a close associate of mine. He will be avenged.”
Harry wanted to slam the receiver down. Instead, he sat transfixed, trying desperately to find words that would make a difference.
“Why can’t you just leave us alone? I have no idea who you are, and neither does Maura Hughes. She doesn’t remember one thing from her time in the hospital. Nothing.”
“Ah, would that I could believe that. Now, then, we come back to the dual issue of your punishment and your suicide—both of which I consider essential. To show you how serious I am about this, I have chosen that young gentleman you were speaking to not so long ago. Barlow is it?”
“You bastard! Don’t you touch him!”
“A nice enough fellow, it seems, but most unfortunate in having you for his physician.”
“No!”
“Consider your options, Dr. Corbett. IV morphine is totally painless. Any number of sleeping pills would do the trick for you as well. So would carbon monoxide. Falling from a great height would provide a wonderful rush I would think, and would only hurt for a moment. A bullet upward through the palate would probably hurt even less.”
“Please,” Harry begged. “Please give me/time. Give me time to decide.”
“Oh, you have all the time you want.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“But I’m afraid Mr. Barlow has no time at all. Good day, Doctor.”