Death Benefit

38.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER NEW YORK CITY MARCH 25, 2011, 8:07 A.M.

Pia woke up in stages. First, when it was still night, she skimmed the surface of consciousness but quickly fell back into the darkness. Then, later, it had become light outside, and she was aware of her own breathing and a sharp pain in the back of her head and a throbbing along her jaw. Finally, she awoke and was hysterical-there were men in her room, chasing after her, she had to get away. She tried to get up, but her body wasn’t obeying her commands. She slumped back on the bed and closed her eyes.

Then she remembered. Men had been hiding in her bathroom and had attacked her. The last thing she remembered was getting jabbed with a needle. She felt her leg at that spot, and it was sore. She looked down at the puncture wound. So she had been drugged, and hit. No wonder she felt so bad. She reached down and felt between her legs: nothing; she experienced a modicum of relief.

Dazed with the fog of her drug hangover, Pia was unsure of what to do. Her mind clicked over to George. Pia remembered the conversation they’d had in front of the elevator, the confessions George made to her and the look on his face when Pia said she wasn’t thinking about those kinds of things right now. Last night she wanted George to leave her alone; now she wished he were here with her.

As the drug gradually started to wear off, the pain in Pia’s jaw intensified. She stood up. She was dizzy. She managed to get herself into the bathroom. She looked at her face in the mirror, and it was a mess. A livid red welt with a small laceration covered much of the left-hand side along the jawline. Pia’s lip was swollen and bloody, and there were red marks where the duct tape used to gag her had ripped at her skin. She remembered the fight, how she’d kicked one of the men in the groin and been smashed in the face in return. Pia leaned in and looked at her eyes. She saw that they were puffy and ringed with dark circles. She hadn’t had a normal good night’s sleep in an age. Being unconscious for hours didn’t count. Pia looked at herself again and hoped to get an answer to the question: What was she going to do now?

She washed her face with cold water and took a long, hot shower. She put on her most comfortable sweatshirt and pajama pants. She located a bottle of Advil in her travel bag and took four tablets, washing them down with two glasses of water. Then she called George on his cell phone. When he didn’t answer, she didn’t leave a message, fearing she wouldn’t be able to say anything coherent. She sent a text message instead: “Something’s happened. Please come over. Urgent. P.”

Pia lay down on the bed and waited.

George’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He hung back a little from the group doing radiology rounds and read the message. He had a coffee break coming up, and he figured he could wait until then to reply. Pia had probably found a way of indicting someone else in her conspiracy theory, and he had been enjoying being a regular medical student for the last couple of hours. George put the phone back in his pocket and caught up with his group.

George called Pia after finishing a cup of coffee in the X-ray technician lounge. It was 9:45. At first, George thought he had a bad connection because he couldn’t understand what Pia was saying. He moved out of the room with its background chatter, into a corridor, and stood by a window.

“Pia, can you hear me? You’re very faint. What is it?”

What Pia was trying to say was “Please can you come to my room?” But it didn’t sound like that at first.

“Say that again, Pia, I can’t understand you.”

Pia repeated herself.

“You want me to come?”

“Yes.”

George was confused by the sound of her voice and wondered if Pia’s state of mind had anything to do with the way their conversation had ended the previous night. It crossed George’s mind that Pia was drunk, but it sounded more like she had a mouth full of cotton.

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

George asked one of the other students to tell the resident he’d been called away on hospital business and headed to Pia’s room. He found he was less eager to see her than usual. The previous night he’d made a decision, recognizing that he was probably barking up the wrong tree with Pia. George wasn’t confident he could follow through with his decision, but he was going to try. It was for his own peace of mind.

Fifteen minutes later George knocked on Pia’s door. When she opened it and he saw her face, all of his plans, doubts, and recriminations were washed away. He was instantly morphed back into the slavish dog he’d been for three years.

“Oh my God, what happened to you?”

Pia shook her head and pointed to her jaw. George fetched Pia’s desk chair and sat her down.

“Take your time, tell me what happened.”

“There were two men in my room. Last night,” Pia said. She spoke slowly and deliberately.

“Last night? This was last night? Why didn’t you call?”

“They drugged me. I just woke up.”

“Jesus. Who were these men? What did they do? Did they . . . ?” George hesitated, not sure he wanted to hear.

“No, they didn’t rape me, if that’s what you’re asking. They warned me to stay away from the Rothman case.”

“Jesus, Pia. Do you want to lie down?”

“No, I’m okay.”

“I’m going to call security. And then the police.”

“No! Don’t!” Pia said. She shook her head vigorously, an act that hurt a great deal. She was still dazed from the sedative, but the clouds were clearing.

“No security and no police. I have to take what they said seriously. They were waiting for me in my room. They said they’ll be watching me. I mean, they already had been watching me. You see what this means, George? It means I was right. There’s a conspiracy behind Rothman’s and Yamamoto’s deaths.”

“Wait a minute, Pia, slow down,” George said. “These two men, who were in your room, who obviously beat you up, they said specifically, ‘Stay away from the Rothman case’?”

“Not like that, but they said it.”

George was horrified, but his first instinct was one of skepticism.

“Did you recognize the men at all?”

“They had ski masks on. But they were dressed as hospital security. Shit, George, maybe they were hospital security, you know? That would mean the hospital is covering it up. Spaulding, the dean, Springer, all those guys . . .” Pia stood up as if she wanted to flee.

“Oh, come on, Pia. This is New York City. In America. Maybe in a movie or some Third World dictatorship they kill off their own doctors and beat up medical students, but not here. I can’t believe you could think that. Get a grip.”

“Well, someone did this!” Pia said, pointing at her face, shaking, partly with rage, partly with fear. “I know what institutions can do, George, what people can do to someone they’re supposed to be looking after. If you grew up in the system I grew up in, maybe you’d be a little more cynical. I know one thing: Everyone has their own agenda. If you’re in the way, things like this happen to you.” Pia sobbed once and her shoulders heaved.

“Okay, Pia.” George stood and reached out to Pia, and she went into his arms. He held her tightly.

“I think we should call the police. You need an ambulance as well-”

“No!” Pia pushed George away. “I need to think about what this means. If we call the police, they’ll call the administration and security here, and for all I know, they were the ones who attacked me. I need to think.” Pia grabbed both sides of her head and shook herself. “The drug, I can’t think straight.”

“Maybe we should go to my room,” George said.

“They know all about you, George. It won’t be any safer there. They won’t do anything now, I’m just sitting in my room.”

George looked around. “You think they’re watching you that closely?”

“Well, think about it. Every time we moved, we got caught. It happened twice in the lab.”

“One time it didn’t.”

“But we didn’t find anything important then, remember? And we were allowed to go through the morgue just fine because there wasn’t anything there to find.”

“I’m having a hard time believing all these people are in on a conspiracy. Bourse, Springer . . . Dr. De Silva, who was treating Rothman. Why, Pia? What are they conspiring about? And there’s no proof the deaths were anything other than accidents.”

“Let me remind you again. You have no idea how much people hated Rothman. I saw it every day I was in his lab. No one liked him-he was rude, disrespectful, mean. And they were all jealous of him, how he got special treatment from the hospital, how he got a Nobel and might well get another. He had a lot of enemies, all sorts of reasons, including people in his own lab.”

“Okay, but you don’t kill someone because you don’t like them. It’s too much, it’s so theatrical!”

“Well, how do you explain this?” Pia gestured to herself. “I was attacked,” she yelled. “I was ordered to stay away. Now I’m sure Rothman was killed. His death wasn’t accidental, it was deliberate. The only thing I’m not sure of is why they didn’t kill me too last night rather than just warn me. They must be more afraid of how people would react to my disappearing than afraid that I wouldn’t respond to the warning. As they said, if I keep quiet, all this goes away. If I disappear, they talk to you and find out what I was thinking.”

George felt a sudden chill. If Pia was right, he might be next in line for a visit. But how could she be right? It was so far-fetched. George needed some time to think too.

“Can I get you some ice for your face? I’ll just be down the hall.”

“Sure, thanks.”

George went to the ice machine at the end of Pia’s corridor, but it was out of order. He could go down to the cafeteria where he knew ice was always available, but that meant leaving Pia on her own in her room for a few minutes. George walked back to her door and opened it, startling Pia.

“Shit, George, can’t you knock?” she said.

“Sorry. The ice machine’s out. I’m going downstairs to get some. I’ll be right back.”