The 5th Horseman

Chapter 35

DR. GARZA WAS INSIDE his stark, windowless office when Yuki knocked on the open door. She almost hesitated as he looked up at her, his face hard, showing his instant resentment at her intrusion. What a dick, Yuki thought.

But she pushed on, taking the chair across the desk from him, coming right to the point.

“I don’t understand why my mother died,” she said. “What happened to her?”

Garza plucked at his watchband.

“I’m sure Dr. Pierce told you, Ms. Castellano. Your mother had a stroke,” he said. “You understand? A thrombus, a blood clot, went to her brain, preventing blood flow. We put her on anticoagulants, but we couldn’t save her.”

The doctor flattened his hands on the desk in front of him, a gesture that signified “That’s it. End of story.”

“I understand what a stroke is, Dr. Garza. What I don’t understand is why she was chirpy at dinner and dead by midnight. She was inside a hospital! And you people didn’t save her. Something about that stinks, Doctor.”

“Please take your tone down a few notches, if you don’t mind,” Garza said. “Bodies aren’t machines, Ms. Castellano. And doctors aren’t miracle workers. Believe me, we did our best.”

Garza reached out and covered Yuki’s hands with his. “It’s a shock, I know. I’m sorry,” he said.

It was an oddly intimate gesture that startled Yuki, and repelled her. She jerked her hands away instinctively, and the doctor retracted his.

“By the way,” said Garza, turning cold again, “you’ll need to speak to Nurse Nuñez on your way out. Your mother has to be transferred to a funeral home within twenty-four hours. I’m afraid we can’t keep her here longer than that.”

Yuki stood up abruptly, knocking over the chair as she got to her feet.

“This isn’t over. I’m a lawyer,” Yuki said. “I’m going to look into this thoroughly. I’m going to find out what actually happened to my mom. Don’t move her until I say so, understand? And by the way, Dr. Garza, you have the bedside manner of an eel.”

Yuki turned toward the door, stumbling over the upturned chair, her feet catching the legs, pitching her forward.

She stopped her fall by grabbing at the wall, snapping off the light switch with the flat of her hand as she clumsily regained her balance, plunging Dr. Garza’s office into blackness.

She didn’t stop to say a word, or even to turn the light back on.

Feeling wobbly, Yuki negotiated the doorway, the hallway, the stairwell. And from there, she ran out to the street.

The air outside was heavy and damp, and suddenly she felt faint. Yuki sat down on the sidewalk under a large sycamore tree and stared at the people going to work as if it were a normal day.

She thought about the last time she’d seen her funny, feisty mom. Keiko had been eating ice cream in bed, dispensing her crazy old-world advice with the conviction of a judge.

And she remembered most how much they’d always laughed.

Now, all of that was over.

And it just shouldn’t be.

“Mom,” Yuki said now. “It wasn’t a dignified exit, I know, but I left that bastard sitting in the dark.”

She laughed to herself, thinking how much her mother would have enjoyed that scene.

Yuki-eh, why you never act like lady?

Then the pain swamped her.

Yuki drew her legs up and hugged them to her chest. With the solid old tree against her back, she put her head on her knees and wept for her mother. She sobbed like a child, one who would never be the same again.