Bad Doctor

35

Willow pauses, then hands me her gun, then starts to cry.

“Cameron’s dead?” I say. “ Shit! What happened?”

Willow’s crying escalates. She tries to speak, but can’t. I use the time to remove the bullets from her gun and drop them in my pocket. She falls to the couch and buries her face in one of my designer pillows. I feel terrible for Cameron but I’m also wondering if Willow’s getting tears and snot all over my pillow.

I might be crazy, but I trust Willow. She could have killed me just now, or had Bobby kill me at the park, or when we arrived at Maggie’s farm. She probably saved my life when Bobby tried to shoot me the second time, by taking his knees out from under him.

Willow had plenty of reasons to kill me, and plenty of opportunities, and chose not to.

When she finishes crying herself out she says, “You should’ve stayed at the hospital. You would’ve protected her.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Her eyes are closed and she’s swaying slightly from side to side, but not at all similar to the way she’d strip for a man. As she grieves quietly in my living room, it all comes down to this in my mind: her best friend is dead because of me.

I choose this moment to offer her my guest room for the night and she accepts. Perhaps she’ll kill me in my sleep. Do I care?

Not really.

Am I afraid she’ll rob me?

No.

Like Willow said, everything in my penthouse, other than the wooden stool, was put here by decorators. People who don’t know me, who expected me to accept their vision of what belongs here, instead of mine. If she somehow manages to steal my stuff I’ll simply replace it with something I like. It might not be proper, or elegant, but it’ll reflect who I am.

Of course, it would help if I knew who I am.

Willow explains what motivated her to come to New York City.

After I dropped her off at the park, after I tried to hug her and she slapped me, she drove to her place to pick up some of her things. The police were there, searching the place, treating it like a crime scene. They wouldn’t allow her to touch or remove anything. The landlord was there as well, madder than a hornet. They got into a shouting match, and he evicted her. She drove back to Dayton, entered Cameron’s hospital room, and found an empty bed, freshly made. At first she thought they’d taken her friend somewhere to run tests, so she sat in the big chair in Cameron’s room. After an hour, she went to the nurse’s station and learned Cameron had been moved to intensive care. They said she caught a serious infection. Hours later, to Willow’s horror, Cameron was dead.

Two hours pass and we’re still talking about Cameron.

We order Chinese and eat it.

She says, “Is that possible? Can someone go into the hospital for one thing and die from something else within hours?”

“Hospitals are the eighth leading cause of death.”

“Hospitals? How?”

“They’re a breeding ground for bacteria-resistant germs and viruses we call superbugs. It’s a catch-22.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You’re so smart I sometimes forget how young you are. Catch-22 is an old expression that means you’re screwed either way. Hospitals are one of the most sterile places on earth. Housekeepers constantly clean and scrub and wipe down surfaces with chemicals and cleaning agents. But the strongest, most-deadly viruses develop a resistance to the chemicals. They become invincible.”

“The super bugs?”

I nod.

“They told Cameron she was healthy enough to leave the next day. How could she die a few hours later?”

“Lots of ways.”

“Name one.”

“Maybe there’s a colony of super bugs on the door knob of the bathroom across the hall from Cameron’s room, and a colony of different super bugs on her bedrail. If a lazy housekeeper wipes the restroom doorknob with an antibacterial wipe and fails to throw the towel away, then uses the same towel to wipe down Cameron’s bedrails, he’s combined the two. Within minutes they mutate into something so deadly, when Cameron touches the bedrail, then her nose or eyes, the bug gets into her bloodstream.”

“What are the chances of that?”

“Higher than you might think. Or maybe a nurse or orderly forgot to wash their hands as they went from one room to the next, and transferred MRSA to Cameron through direct contact.”

“What’s MRSA?”

“Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus.”

She frowns. “That sounds like something you just made up.”

“That’s why we use initials.”

“Is it common?”

“It’s in the noses or on the skin of one percent of all Americans.”

“Are you saying one percent of all people can kill the rest of us?”

“No. MRSA isn’t deadly unless you’re very young, old, ill, or in a hospital, recovering from a surgery. In that case, anything you touch-a toilet seat, a door handle, a tray-can kill you.”

“You think that’s what killed Cameron?”

“It’s one possibility. VRE’s another.”

“What’s that?” she asks, eyeing me carefully to see if I might make up another series of incomprehensible words.

“Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus.”

She frowns.

“Vancomycin is our antibiotic of last resort. It’s used to fight bacteria that are already resistant to penicillin and other antibiotics. VRE is a mutant strain, one that can transmit the resistance genes to other, more dangerous bacteria, like staph and strep. It’s been found on hospital equipment, doorknobs, bedrails, and even on the hands of hospital personnel who wash their hands for less than five full seconds.”

“That’s why you told Cameron not to eat anything at the hospital.”

“That’s right. Did she?”

“The nurse said if she didn’t eat they wouldn’t release her.”

“Typical!” I say, trying to control my anger. “Did you happen to get this nurse’s name?”

“No.”

“Pity.”

“But I’d recognize her if I saw her again.”

“Good.”

“Why’s that good?”

“Maybe someday we’ll see her again.”

“I doubt that. She’s in Dayton.”

“You never know,” I say.