Under the Knife(33)

In a tinny squawk projecting from her phone, which Rita was holding a foot away from her head, Darcy said, “Hello? Rita? Did you hear me? Are you still there? Hello! Can you hear me?”

So many different people at once; so many different voices to process at the same time.

It’s enough to drive me crazy.

Rita brought the phone back up to her ear. “Ree, I have to go.”

“That would be advisable,” Finney said. “Dr. Montgomery is going to require your full attention.”

Shut up, she spat at Finney in her mind. Just shut up and let me think.

“What? But, Rita—” Darcy began.

Rita covered her mouth with her hand, and said, “Darcy. I really have to go. I swear to God I’ll call you back.” She hung up and faced her boss, who was now standing in front of her, his arms folded.

“Hi, Chase.”

“Good morning, Rita.”

Chase Montgomery was a handsome man, in his early fifties, who had the contradictory magnetism peculiar to a certain species of fit, middle-age, Southern California white male: the lush dark hairline and strapping physique of a man fifteen years his junior but the sunbaked, crumpled face of one fifteen years his senior. Raised in Orange County, south of Los Angeles, he had a nut-brown face that was creased by years in Southern California’s year-round sun. The crinkled implosion of exposed skin, and the excision of a few basal cell skin carcinomas, had failed to deter him from a hatless, SPF-free existence. He squinted a lot, even indoors, as if in perpetual bright sunshine. An avid cyclist, he was known to traverse hundreds of miles of blacktop in the steep hills outside San Diego each weekend on his high-performance bike.

Montgomery’s elegant grey suit today appeared to have been poured over him, so well was it cut: stylish, but not in-your-face stylish; the same for his white dress shirt and blue-silk tie. She noticed he was wearing foundation this morning, in anticipation of the cameras, no doubt. Chase was a pro, after all—public relations and image control came as easily to him as breathing to others.

He smiled, which coaxed his wrinkles, despite the foundation, into deep chasms that radiated from the corners of his eyes and mouth and revealed his perfect, bleached-white teeth. Yes, his news-anchor smile. His press-conference smile. His everybody’swatching-so-I-have-to-look-good-for-the-cameras-and-the-whole-world smile.

She knew that smile too well and knew that she was in big trouble.

“Could we chat for a second, Rita?”

“Uh—sure.”

He had already taken her with gentle but unmistakable firmness by the arm and steered her toward a small, unoccupied alcove carved into a nearby wall. As they traversed the bit of corridor leading to the alcove, he offered cheerful good mornings to several passing staff with the smoothness of a politician working the rope line at a campaign rally. His brilliant smile never once faltered, and the staff members grinned, glowing in the warmth of his attention.

But Rita wasn’t fooled. She knew better. Chase wielded his interpersonal skills with the same ruthlessness and precision with which he handled a scalpel. Both talents had driven his meteoric rise.

The alcove functioned as an ad hoc storage space. A large portable fluoroscopy machine—a thick, metallic contraption the size of a large refrigerator and configured in the shape of the letter C (the descriptive but uninspired name for which was a C-arm)—guarded the entrance, providing just enough room on one side to allow passage into the enclosed space.

“In here, please,” he said pleasantly. They squeezed through the opening single file: Rita first, followed by Chase, who, broad-shouldered and north of six feet by a few inches, stooped to fit into the space. It was darker and warmer than in the hallway. Boxes of equipment were stacked floor to ceiling, but there was room to move around.

The moment they were out of sight from the hallway, hidden behind the metallic bulk of the C-arm, Montgomery’s lips smashed together to form a pale, slender line. He squinted at her from the shadows, his politician’s smile gone.

“He looks upset,” Finney observed.

“Let’s talk,” Montgomery said in a fierce sotto voce. “Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on here, Rita?”

“Chase, let me—”

He held up a hand. Chase always posed rhetorical questions when he was pissed off.

“First of all,” he said. “You look awful. Absolutely awful. And the stories I’m hearing, Rita! Am I to understand that two nurses found you this morning in OR 10? Without, uh, without any—” A pained expression crossed his face, and for moment, he looked as uncomfortable as she’d ever seen him.

“Clothes,” she finished. She spoke quickly so as to get a word in edgewise before he could cut her off again. “Yes, Chase. I wasn’t wearing any clothes. But I can explain.”

He extended his hand, palm up, and squinted. “By all means. Please.”

She launched into the sleepwalking story she’d used earlier, this time injecting a few additional details (I haven’t been sleeping well lately … anxious I guess about the auto surgeon … I think it finally caught up with me last night … happens when you take an Ambien) in an attempt to bolster its authenticity.

Montgomery listened, squinting.

“Sleepwalking naked. I’m not sure it sounds any more convincing than when I heard it the first time, Dr. Wu,” Finney said, without a trace of sarcasm. Which made him sound sarcastic anyway.