The Blue Zone

CHAPTER SEVENTY

One good thing was happening amid everything else. Greg agreed to the job up at New York-Presbyterian.

The Morgan Stanley Center was one of the best pediatric orthopedic programs in the city. It also meant they could stay in the city. Greg joked that he’d probably have to be on call every other weekend for a year and, as low resident, work every Christmas and Thanksgiving-probably Haitian Pride Day as well-but the position came with a real doctor’s salary-over a hundred and twenty grand, plus a forty-thousand-dollar signing bonus. And an office overlooking the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge.

Friday night Kate took him out for a celebratory dinner at Spice Market with a bunch of his friends from the ER.

The following morning they borrowed a friend’s van and moved all of Greg’s old medical texts and other belongings that had been crammed into boxes in the apartment up to his office. They parked on Fort Washington Avenue and wheeled everything up through the Harkness Pavilion to Pediatric Orthopedics on the seventh floor.

Greg’s office was cramped-not much larger than a Formica-topped desk with two fabric chairs and a bookshelf-but it had that impressive view. And it was a real thrill to see his name in bold letters on the door: DR. GREG HERRERA.

“So”-Greg kicked open the door, exposing the Hudson, his arm wrapped around a carton of books-“what do you think?”

“I’m thinking I want dibs on the new space all this stuff frees up in the apartment.” Kate, who was carrying a desk lamp, grinned.

“Knew you were proud of me, hon.” He winked.

Greg unloaded his boxes. Kate started hanging his medical diplomas on the wall.

“How about this?” She picked up an old photograph they had taken on a holiday in Acapulco, where, a little blotto and bleary-eyed from margaritas in the middle of the day, they had posed at the table in the local Carlos’n Charlie’s with a live chimpanzee. The chimp was a shill, of course. Cost them fifty dollars. He was probably the only one in the place who wasn’t drunk.

Kate held it up next to the diplomas.

“Nah.” Greg shook his head. “Not very Hippocratic. Maybe I should wait until I’m made a full partner somewhere.”

“Yeah, I was thinking that, too.” Kate nodded, placing it back on the desk. “However, there is something this seems like a good time to give you…”

She bent down and took out a gift-wrapped box from one of the cartons. “To my own Dr. Kovac.” Kate smiled. They always joked about the likable Croatian doctor on ER. Kate thought Greg had the same moppy hair, sleepy eyes, and unique accent.

“I didn’t want you to feel left out on your first day of work.”

Greg pulled off the ribbon. What he saw inside made him laugh.

It was an old black leather doctor’s bag. Circa 1940. Complete with an antique-looking stethoscope and reflex hammer.

“Like it?”

“Love it, pooch. It’s just that…” Greg scratched his head as if stumped. “I’m not sure I even know what these old things do.”

“I got it on eBay,” Kate said. “I just didn’t want you to feel left out, technologically speaking.”

“I’ll be sure and bring it on rounds.” He took out the stethoscope and placed it against Kate’s T-shirt, over her heart. “Say ah.”

“Ah…” Kate said, giggling.

Greg maneuvered it seductively across her chest. “That’s ah… Again, please.”

“You just make sure the only one you ever use that on is me,” she said, teasing. “Seriously, though…” Kate draped her arms around his neck and edged her leg between his. “I couldn’t have held together these past weeks without you. I’m really proud of you, Greg. I know I’ve been crazy, but I’m not crazy when I say this: You’re going to make a great doctor.”

It was one of the first tender moments they’d had in a long time. Kate realized how much she missed it. She gave him a kiss.

“You do know I already am a doctor.” He shrugged with a sheepish smile.

“I know,” she said, resting her head against his, “but don’t break the spell.”

They continued to unpack Greg’s belongings. Some photos and mementos, including a painted wooden block she had given him with the word PERSEVERANCE, in bold, block letters on it. A ton of old medical tomes. Greg lifted himself up onto the counter, feeding the books into the shelves as Kate handed them up, two or three at a time. Most were old clothbound texts from medical school. “Largely unread,” Greg admitted. Some were even older than that. A couple of dust-covered textbooks on philosophy from undergraduate days. A few he’d carried with him when he moved here. In Spanish.

“Why the hell are you even displaying these old things?” Kate asked.

“Why all doctors display them. Makes us look smart.”

Kate stood up, trying to hand him three more. “Then here, Einstein-”

Suddenly one fell out of her grasp, knocking against her shoulder as it tumbled to the floor.

“You okay?” Greg asked.

“Yeah.” Kate knelt down. It was an old copy of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. In his native Spanish. Greg must’ve brought it with him from Mexico. It had probably sat at the bottom of this old box for years.

“Hey, check this out.”

The flap was open. There was a name scrawled on the inside cover in faded ink.

Kate went cold.

There was this instant-this time-stopping freeze-where Kate saw her life on one side, a life she knew was now left behind-and something else on the other, something she didn’t want to see. And no matter how hard she wanted to keep it from happening, the moment wouldn’t stop.

She read what was there.

“Kate!”

It was as if the oxygen had been sucked out of her lungs. Or like the horror of a plane suddenly accelerating into a steep dive-something chilling and life-changing that was way beyond belief, yet real.

Gregorio Concerga, the name read in a familiar, right-leaning script.

Not Herrera. Kate knew the name immediately. Concerga-he had been one of Mercado’s henchmen. Her eyes ran down the page and saw something else.

La Escuela Nacional , Carmenes, 1989.

Kate looked up. At Greg. His face was ashen.

Then it was like she was on that plane-as the whole thing started to blow apart.