Under the Knife(19)

She turned off the faucet, dried her face with a paper towel from a wall dispenser, and ambled to a row of lockers in the adjacent room.

“Follow her, please, Dr. Wu,” the voice (Finney, might as well call him Finney) said.

“Why?” Rita said to Finney.

“Trauma call,” Lucy replied, opening her locker and peeling off her scrubs.

Rita trailed her into the locker room’s main area. Lucy’s locker was a few rows over from hers. Rita’s locker door remained ajar; her cell and eyeglasses were still lying on the bench, next to some personal belongings Lucy had removed from her locker and was rooting through.

“Um … Bad night?” She picked up her glasses and put them on.

Lucy nodded. “Yeah. A couple of MVAs. And a GSW to the abdomen. A guy was showing off his semiautomatic pistol to his buddy, and it went off by accident. Supposedly. Hit his buddy twice in the belly. One of the bullets tore the ileocecal junction to all hell. Yours?”

Lucy had picked the empty water bottle off of the ground, the one Rita had knocked over earlier, and was frowning at the soggy spot on the carpet near her foot. Rita nodded. Without comment, Lucy handed her the bottle, which Rita tossed into a nearby recycling bin.

“Up all night sewing bowel. The resident I was working with sucks,” Lucy said. “Worthless. Practically had to hold him by the hand all damn night.” She kicked her dirty scrubs into a pile on the floor and grunted. “They’re gonna have to burn these.”

“Take your notebook out of your locker,” Finney said.

“What?” said Rita.

“They’re going to have to burn these,” Lucy said, raising her voice and increasing her enunciation. “My scrubs. God knows what I got on them last night.”

“That notebook you keep in your locker,” Finney said. “Take it out.”

Rita reached in and retrieved her notebook. It was the kind students and scientists use to record scientific observations and data, with a black-and-white-checkered pattern across the front, its pages filled with hand-drawn sketches and personal notes Rita kept on all of the surgeries she performed.

“Open it.”

Rita complied. Tucked inside the pages of the notebook was a sealed envelope.

This isn’t mine. I didn’t put this here.

“Look inside the envelope.”

She broke the seal and opened it. A four-inch-by-six-inch color photograph slipped out and onto the floor. She bent over and picked it up.

It was her.

Jenny Finney.

Rita would never forget that face. How could she? Near the end, in the SICU, it had been distorted beyond recognition, swollen by pounds of retained body fluid and hidden beneath the harsh plastic of a breathing tube.

But in this picture it was brimming with health and life: round, freckled, friendly, and stamped with laugh lines. She was dressed in tan shorts and a white polo shirt, sitting with her legs crossed on a green lawn, eyes pointed somewhere off to the right of the photographer. She was laughing, revealing mildly crooked front teeth, and reaching up with a slender, freckled hand to push wayward strands of long red hair behind her ear.

Lucy, having donned a pair of jeans and a light grey T-shirt that read IF I AGREED WITH YOU, WE WOULD BOTH BE WRONG in bold black lettering, glanced over Rita’s shoulder at the picture. “Friend of yours?”

“No. Not really. Former patient.”

“Huh. Nice, uh, smile.” Lucy grunted and turned away, slipped into a pair of flip-flops, and placed her personal items back into her locker.

“Yes,” Finney said flatly. “It was. There, Dr. Wu. Tangible evidence of my existence. Confirmed by an objective third party. Do you believe in me now?”

“Yes,” Rita whispered, staring at the picture.

“God, what a night.” Lucy hadn’t heard her. She was buckling the belt of her jeans. “All I can think about is a long, hot shower, a big pancake breakfast, and bed.” She finished and closed her locker. “Can’t wait to get home. Hey.” Her face brightened, and she favored Rita with a rare smile. “Good luck today, by the way, with that auto-surgeon thing.”

She slapped Rita on the shoulder, apparently unconcerned whether Rita’s haggard appearance signaled problems that might impede her surgical skills.

(Hell, a moment ago she said I look like hell)

“Thanks, Lucy.”

“I’d stay and watch but—you know.” She shrugged. “I’m totally beat.”

“No worries.”

They faced each other in awkward silence until Lucy shrugged again. “Well. See ya.”

“Bye, Lucy.”

Lucy tossed her soiled scrubs in a nearby laundry bin and exited.

Rita was, once again, alone in the locker room.

But not really.

“Do you remember her? The woman in the picture?” Finney asked.

“Your wife,” Rita answered in a hushed voice. “Jenny. I operated on her last year. I—I took out your wife’s ruptured appendix.”

“Yes,” Finney said. A pause. “And then she died.”

“Yes,” Rita whispered.

“She died terribly.”

A second, longer pause.

And then he said, “Because of you, Dr. Wu. She died because of you.”