Genesis

Chapter 39

May 11th

4:10 P.M.

By four o’clock, Carl had finished his last scheduled meeting of the day. Appropriately enough, it involved the first meeting of the Pathology Residency Program Acceptance Committee. The matching results for the NYU Pathology program were released on the third Friday of March of each year, as were all residency matching results for all US academic programs in all specialties. Getting to that point represented the culmination of a lot of work by the committee, who had to review all the applications, interview the prospective residents, and put together the list in the order of preference.

As head of the department, Carl had a seat on the committee. Since the death of one of the program’s third-year residents, Dr. Aria Nichols, was already common knowledge, he had taken the opportunity to speak up about the inappropriateness of her original acceptance. The point he wanted to make was that the committee needed to place as much emphasis on the personality of applicants as they did on medical school grades and graduate medical exams to avoid the kind of problems a resident like Aria Nichols created.

After the meeting, Carl made it a point not to go directly back to his office. Instead he’d taken the opportunity to walk over to the corner of First Avenue and 34th Street and enter the Kimmel Pavilion. A short time before, he’d used his access to the medical center’s database to check on Laurie Montgomery’s room assignment to make sure it hadn’t changed. It hadn’t. It was still listed to be 838 in the Kimmel Pavilion.

As always, particularly in the late afternoon, the Kimmel lobby was full. Carl was counting on that being the case, as he wanted to blend in with the crowd although not completely. He was, as usual, in his professorial doctor outfit with a long white coat. Dressed in such a fashion, and with his medical center ID in plain sight, he wasn’t bothered by any of the uniformed or plainclothed security personnel. Even the elevator was completely full as he rode up to the eighth floor, and he was pleased when at least a half dozen or so people got out along with him. As far as he was concerned, the more the merrier.

Passing the eighth-floor central desk with several ward clerks busily manning the phones, he continued down the long hallway. As he passed patient rooms on both the right and the left, he saw many obvious visitors. He also saw many nurses, nurses’ aides, and orderlies. It was a busy time for them as well since they were the evening shift, having just come on duty at three P.M. and needing to familiarize themselves with the status of all the patients.

Without so much as altering his stride, he walked all the way down to room 838 and stood for a moment in the doorway. He didn’t go inside because he didn’t need to. He could see all he needed from where he was. The most important observation was that the patient was indeed Laurie Montgomery. He’d reviewed what she looked like with all the PR the OCME put out, which included multiple pictures of the chief medical examiner. The second crucial observation was that she indeed did have an intravenous line in place, and since she’d just had major surgery, Carl knew it would remain in place for at least twenty-four hours post-surgery. From his experience, that was typical. Without it he couldn’t do what he needed to do.

Since there was no one else in the room but the patient, which he didn’t expect, he felt a little disappointed that he hadn’t brought the syringe already loaded with the deadly potassium chloride that was waiting in his desk. Had he brought it with him, and used it, it would have meant that the mildly stressful task would already be over. As good as that sounded, he still thought it was best to wait until 3:30 A.M., during the graveyard shift. He smiled at the appropriateness of that name given to the eleven P.M. to seven A.M. tour, and he knew why. It was in the early-morning hours that the vast majority of hospital deaths occurred, for reasons both known and unknown. Of course, the biggest benefit for him was how easy it was going to be to just disappear in the middle of an attempted resuscitation, whereas at that moment there were people and potential witnesses all around.

“Excuse me, Doctor,” a nurse said as she materialized out of nowhere and squeezed past Carl, carrying some kind of medication for Laurie. He watched her go into the room and begin a conversation, and he smiled. The nurse’s sudden appearance was a corroboration of why he needed to wait until 3:30 A.M. to do what he needed to do. The chances of a nurse or nurse’s aide suddenly appearing at the exact inopportune time were almost nonexistent. “I’ll be back,” Carl mumbled to himself using an Austrian accent, recalling the famous line in the Terminator movie. As he walked away, he had to suppress a smile. By this time tomorrow the nightmare would be over, as there weren’t any more dominoes that could possibly tip over and implicate him.