The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast #3)(57)

Then Smithback was gone, his shouts cut off by the elevator doors.





EIGHT




NOBODY WOULD TELL NORA ANYTHING.IT WAS MORE THAN AN HOUR before the doctor could see her. At last he showed up in the lounge, very young: a tired, hunted look in his face and a two-day growth of beard.

“Dr. Kelly?” he asked the room while looking at his clipboard.

She rose and their eyes met. “How is he?”

A wintry smile broke on the doctor’s face. “He’s going to be fine.” He looked at her curiously. “Dr. Kelly, are you a medical—?”

“Archaeologist.”

“Oh. And your relationship to the patient?”

“A friend. Can I see him? What happened?”

“He was stabbed last night.”

“My God.”

“Missed his heart by less than an inch. He was very lucky.”

“How is he?”

“He’s in…” the doctor paused. The faint smile returned. “Excellent spirits. An odd fellow, Mr. Pendergast. He insisted on a local anesthetic for the operation—highly unusual, unheard of actually, but he refused to sign the consent forms otherwise. Then he demanded a mirror. We had to bring one up from obstetrics. I’ve never had quite such a, er, demanding patient. I thought for a moment I had a surgeon on my operating table. They make the worst patients, you know.”

“What did he want a mirror for?”

“He insisted on watching. His vitals were dropping and he was losing blood, but he absolutely insisted on getting a view of the wound from various angles before he would allow us to operate. Very odd. What kind of profession is Mr. Pendergast in?”

“FBI.”

The smile evaporated. “I see. Well, that explains quite a bit. We put him in a shared room at first—no private ones were available—but then we quickly had to make one available for him. Moved out a state senator to get it.”

“Why? Did Pendergast complain?”

“No… he didn’t.” The doctor hesitated a moment. “He began watching the video of an autopsy. Very graphic. His roommate naturally objected. But it was really just as well. Because an hour ago, the things started to arrive.” He shrugged. “He refused to eat hospital food, insisted on ordering in from Balducci’s. Refused an IV drip. Refused painkillers—no OxyContin, not even Vicodin or Tylenol Number 3. He must be in dreadful pain, but doesn’t show it. With these new patient-rights guidelines, my hands are tied.”

“It sounds just like him.”

“The bright side is that the most difficult patients usually make the fastest recovery. I just feel sorry for the nurses.” The doctor glanced at his watch. “You might as well head over there now. Room 1501.”

As Nora approached the room, she noticed a faint odor in the air: something out of place among the aromas of stale food and rubbing alcohol. Something exotic, fragrant. A shrill voice echoed out of the open door. She paused in the doorway and gave a little knock.

The floor of the room was stacked high with old books, and a riot of maps and papers lay across them. Tall sticks of sandalwood incense were propped inside silver cups, sending up slender coils of smoke. That accounts for the smell, Nora thought. A nurse was standing near the bed, clutching a plastic pill box in one hand and a syringe in the other. Pendergast lay on the bed in a black silk dressing gown. The overhead television showed a splayed body, grotesque and bloody, being worked on by no fewer than three doctors. One of the doctors was in the middle of lifting a wobbly brain out of the skull. She looked away. On the bedside table was a dish of drawn butter and the remains of coldwater lobster tails.

“Mr. Pendergast, I insist you take this injection,” the nurse was saying. “You’ve just undergone a serious operation. You must have your sleep.”

Pendergast withdrew his arms from behind his head, picked up a dusty volume lying atop the sheets, and began leafing through it nonchalantly. “Nurse, I have no intention of taking that. I shall sleep when I’m ready.” Pendergast blew dust from the book’s spine and turned the page.

“I’m going to call the doctor. This is completely unacceptable. And this filth is highly unsanitary.” She waved her hand through the clouds of dust.

Pendergast nodded, leafed over another page.

The nurse stormed past Nora on her way out.

Pendergast glanced at her and smiled. “Ah, Dr. Kelly. Please come in and make yourself comfortable.”

Nora took a seat in a chair at the foot of the bed. “Are you all right?”

He nodded.

“What happened?”

“I was careless.”

“But who did it? Where? When?”

“Outside my residence,” said Pendergast. He held up the remote and turned off the video, then laid the book aside. “A man in black, with a cane, wearing a derby hat. He tried to chloroform me. I held my breath and pretended to faint; then broke away. But he was extraordinarily strong and swift, and I underestimated him. He stabbed me, then escaped.”

“You could have been killed!”

“That was the intention.”

“The doctor said it missed your heart by an inch.”

“Yes. When I realized he was going to stab me, I directed his hand to a nonvital place. A useful trick, by the way, if you ever find yourself in a similar position.”