Under the Knife(76)
I need that money.
He promised to transfer more than enough to her by the end of the day.
She thanked him, and said, “So. You sound okay.”
“Yeah. I’m all right.”
“Can you tell me where you are?”
“No.”
A pause. “Can you tell me when we’re going to see you again? Sammy keeps asking about his favorite uncle.”
His only uncle. His only family, besides his mother and sister. Sammy and Sierra’s dirtbag father had split years ago. Sebastian had toyed with the idea of tracking him down, so he could kill the asshole (slowly, of course), but decided the prick wasn’t worth the effort. The boy needed a father figure, something Sebastian had never had. The girl, too. “Soon, Sis. Soon. I’m finishing up a job now.”
“What kind of job?” Her voice was thick with suspicion.
“Just a job.” He added quickly, “Legit, Sis.” Legit enough.
“Don’t bullshit me, Brother.”
He sighed. He knew changing the subject wouldn’t help. She was a fucking pit bull: Once she grabbed ahold of you, no force on God’s earth would make her let go. “Look. It shouldn’t take more than a few weeks for me to set my shit straight. Then I’m coming to see you guys. And I’m staying, Sis.”
“How long?” she said after several seconds.
“Long enough for me to find the boy some goddamn proper stimulation.”
She laughed, and he knew he had her. They spoke for the next half hour, then, only as twin brother and sister could. And then, when exchanging good-byes, she said something odd—something she hadn’t said in years, not since he’d re-upped after his first combat tour.
“Just, be careful, Brother. Please. Be careful.”
She hung up.
Be careful.
His arm holding the phone went slack and dropped between his legs. He stared at the dark clouds gathering over the ocean.
Sick.
He was sick to death of this whole goddamn business. Thank Christ he was about to be done with it.
It was time to check in with Finney and get his final payment. He sighed and tapped the Fruit Punch Drunk icon on his phone. The audio in his earpiece crackled to life.
RITA
… and when Rita opened her eyes again, another Rita was lounging in the chair next to the bed, the same chair in which Chase had been sitting. She was wearing a hospital gown, just like hers, and staring at her. Her legs—muscular and firm, the legs of a runner—were crossed. Her hands were interlaced in her lap, casually, as if the two were having a chat over coffee. Just-us-girls.
“I knew, Dr. Wu,” the other Rita, the one sitting in the chair, said. She spoke with Finney’s voice, which Rita could hear only in her left ear. “I knew that you were drinking before my wife’s surgery.”
Rita stared at the other Rita in the chair, and replied, “It was all you, wasn’t it? That weird compulsion I had to operate this morning, and the bleeding. All of it. I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve destroyed my career. My life. Everything that means anything to me.”
The other Rita said, “You set yourself on this path, Dr. Wu, when you operated on my wife drunk. Besides. You fail to see the bigger picture. Your self-immolation has ensured the success of the auto-surgeon. Delores performed magnificently in front of very important people.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” Rita grumbled.
The other Rita said nothing.
“I wasn’t drunk,” Rita insisted, and propped herself up on the pillow.
“The report Dr. Montgomery alluded to suggested otherwise,” the other Rita said.
Rita said, “The report of one disgruntled nurse, who accused a lot of women at Turner of totally bogus things before he was fired. None of his complaints ever went anywhere.”
The other Rita said, “Dr. Montgomery arranged that, though, didn’t he? At least in your case?”
Rita looked away.
The other Rita said, “I’ve read the complaint. The nurse accused you of drinking before you operated on Jenny. He claimed he smelled alcohol on your breath.”
Rita pressed her lips together, and said, “That doesn’t prove anything.” It didn’t. It was in fact one of the reasons why Chase had been able to make the complaint go away.
The other Rita said, “I must admit that I, myself, didn’t smell alcohol on your breath when you spoke to us before the operation. Neither did Jenny, as far as I know.”
That was probably because, by the time she’d gone to see the Finneys in pre-op, Rita had sensed the suspicion in the sour glare of the scrub nurse that night: the creepy little guy with the scrawny arms, weasel eyes, and swatch of dark peach fuzz coating his upper lip, like a hairy caterpillar; the guy she was sure hated taking orders from a woman surgeon. According to Lisa the scrub nurse, Caterpillar Guy had put his hand on Lisa’s butt once, during an operation, and after Lisa had matter-of-factly informed him that the next time it happened, he’d draw back a stump, Caterpillar Guy had complained to the head of surgical nursing that Lisa had a hostile attitude.
So, after seeing the look on Caterpillar Guy’s face that night, she’d loaded up on two boxes worth of breath mints, and frantically scrubbed her face and hands clean of any incriminating odor. Just to be sure.