The Hound of Justice Page 4

  “At least one,” I replied. “We don’t want to limit our options, after all.”

  Hernandez eyed me with faint suspicion—perhaps I’d overdone the bland and cooperative—but all she said was, “I have every confidence in you, Dr. Watson.”

  ***

  I took my leave and retreated to my luxurious—my undeservedly luxurious—office. Undeserved was another trigger word, which I could recognize, but which I had not yet learned to ignore. Later, I told myself. Later I would review all the lessons Faith Bellaume had taught me. Later I would practice my drills with fingers and hands, which might not translate directly to surgery, but which were nonetheless necessary.

  I spread the sheaf of papers from Hernandez across my desk. This conference—this conference launched and supported by Georgetown University—had collected all kinds of prominent speakers over the past four years. Surgeons from all over the Federal U.S. and the rest of the world would scrabble for even ten minutes on the schedule. It was only when I read the list of attendees that my heart took a sudden and uncomfortable leap.

  Angela Gray, MD, PhD. Specialty: Orthopedic surgery. Proposed topic: Research into physical therapy for children younger than six.

  My stomach twisted into a knot. Oh god, no. It was bad enough to face the rest of my peers with my uncertain status here at Georgetown. I could not, just could not, face Angela again.

  My workstation pinged softly. I rubbed my forehead and sighed. When it pinged a second time, I tapped the ID pad to unlock the workstation.

  My schedule for the day materialized in the center of my screen. Morning rounds, and the block of time I marked “Private” for Faith Bellaume, had already passed into the grayed-out zone of recent history. My OT session was outlined in yellow, meaning tentative. For that, I clicked Confirm.

  The OT appointment scrolled up, to be replaced by my weekly one-on-one with Anna Chong, one of the two surgical interns I now mentored. Or at least, mentoring her was my goal. Chong liked to argue—my god, she loved to argue. It must have been part of her DNA. Whatever advice I gave, she challenged me, and our sessions left me exhausted. Had I been that arrogant? Likely, yes. Make that definitely yes.

  Saúl Martínez would have known how to handle this brilliant young woman. He’d have challenged her right back, then listened hard to what she had to say, until the argument turned into a conversation.

  As if on cue, my workstation chimed with an incoming message. From Chong? I tapped the virtual mouse and a new pop-up appeared center screen. Dr. Watson, could we move our one-on-one to tomorrow? I would like to observe Dr. Carter’s surgery this afternoon.

  I slapped the keyboard. The message winked out.

  Dammit. Such a reasonable request, and yet I felt betrayed. By Carter, who had shamed me the day before. And by Chong, who clearly wanted a genuine working surgeon as her mentor.

  Welcome to the pity party, I thought. Why don’t we all eat some worms?

  Right. Enough of that. It was eleven thirty A.M. Time enough to get started on that abstract. I tapped Chong’s message again and told her that tomorrow would be fine, and we could discuss Carter’s techniques, if she liked. Then I turned my attention to possible topics for that conference.

  ***

  Five topics considered; all five discarded by noon. I toyed with the idea that Hernandez intended to break my spirit with this task, but that was too egotistical, even for me.

  I broke for a late lunch with residents Letova and Pascal. Someone had left the cafeteria video monitors tuned into a newscast channel. Images of earnest pundits alternated with video clips showing Richard Speiker and other leaders of the Brotherhood.

  . . . We will not be silenced. We will not surrender. The fate of our culture is at stake . . .

  Words that recalled the terrible years under Trump and his enablers. When the news pundits told us to give hate a platform or else we would endanger free speech. Finally, Pascal marched over to the video controls, and in spite of protests from a group of orderlies, she switched the box off.

  “Damn them all to hell,” she muttered when she returned to our table. “And by ‘them,’ I mean those bastards in the Confederacy.”

  She picked at her salad, scowling at the croutons. She and Letova worked the day shift this week, but both had been summoned to emergency duty last night. Nina Letova in particular had that exhausted grieving look of someone who had lost a patient.

  “I hate them,” she said in a low voice. “Bloody murderers. There were children yesterday . . .”

  She rubbed the back of her hand over her eyes. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m fine. Or I will be. You know how it goes.”

  “That I do,” I said softly.

  Fifty people dead. Two hundred more injured, most of them still in critical condition. Sara Holmes had said the terrorists failed, but for once, the official newsfeeds and underground squirts agreed. Terror was terror, whether you hit your original target or not.

  ***

  One P.M., with Sydney. She gave me a new exercise involving a touch-sensitive board, which measured the pressure of my fingertips against its surface. My goal, she told me, was to aim for the lightest touch the surface could measure. I managed it just once.

  Three P.M., I spent the time for Anna Chong’s one-on-one reviewing more topics, with intervals dedicated to hating Allison Carter.

  Four P.M., Veterans Advisory Committee. One of the duties I had where I felt truly useful, what with my experience in the service. Maybe all that time in the VA Medical Center counted for something.

  Five P.M., afternoon rounds.

  Seven P.M., done for the day. I shut down my workstation and keyed the lock for privacy. I’d made little progress toward a suitable topic for that damned medical conference. Pascal had promised to help me brainstorm later in the week.

  Outside the day was cool and raw. In less than three months, we’d see cherry blossoms over the Mall. Right now, I was grateful for my down coat and insulated gloves, both of them gifts from Sara Holmes.

  I was getting better at accepting gifts these days. Maybe that counted as progress too.

  A cab slowed down as I approached the curb. I waved it on. A walk would do me good. It came back to me that I still needed to return that damned book.

  Quite a bit had changed on Thirty-Fourth Street since the day before. Most of the windows were boarded over. The traffic lights around here blinked yellow, and the street itself was cratered and cracked. They had cleared away the broken glass, at least, and I didn’t see any signs of blood.

  No, that would be the next street over. Where you saw the dead and dying.

  Rainbow Books was warm and quiet. A few customers browsed the shelves. Adanna Jones sat behind the register, counting out change to an elderly black man. I waited until he had exited the store before I approached the counter.

  She glanced up and smiled. “May I help you?”

  “I came to return a book,” I said awkwardly, holding out the novel. “I didn’t mean to take this without paying—”

  Now she recognized me.

  “Oh, I remember you. You went charging straight into danger.”

  She accepted the book and glanced at its cover. Her gaze flicked up to mine as she assessed me, this reader in her shop. “Not a book you would care for,” she said. She hesitated, then went on, “I saw you tending to the wounded. You’re a doctor?”

  I hesitated, not sure what to call myself these days.

  Trigger words, whispered Faith’s voice in my memory.

  “I’m a surgeon,” I said. “Or I will be again.” I lifted my left arm and twisted my hand around so that the mesh glittered in the bright lights of the shop. Adanna Jones did not even flinch at the sight of Lazarus, nor did she offer me any obvious pity.

  “You were in the war,” she said.

  I nodded. “Alton, Illinois. Though I didn’t expect to see combat.”

  “Neither did my brother,” Adanna said. “He was a company clerk, behind the lines at Jonesboro. He di
ed when the enemy overran their post.”

  Another death I could blame on Nadine Adler, whose drugs had turned ordinary soldiers into killing machines, for both the Confederacy and the Federal States.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She shrugged. “So am I. I miss him every day. You’ve lost a few friends yourself, I can tell.”

  I wanted to tell her about Saúl, about my parents, but I was all too aware of the presence of other customers. Besides, this woman was not my therapist.

  “I should go,” I said. “I promised my chief medical officer I would write a paper, only I seem to have run out of ideas.”

  “Ah, what you need is inspiration. I believe I have the book for you.”

  She disappeared into the back of the store. Moments later, she returned with a small slim book in hand. “Try this one,” she said. “No, I don’t want your money. Consider this a gift, in honor of your service.”

  Poetry, by Rumi, said the cover.

  Well, there were worse sources of inspiration.

  I tucked the book into my pocket and headed back out.

  ***

  Apartment 2B at 2809 Q Street NW was empty, which surprised me. Sara had texted me earlier, saying she would be home for dinner, and please to let her know if I planned any further adventures.

  A slow cooker with a bubbling stew of chicken and peppers and beans waited on the kitchen counter. Next to it was a plate holding a freshly baked loaf of bread. No note, but Sara’s absence and this dinner told me everything I needed to know. Sara had cooked, then had been called away unexpectedly. Perhaps her exile had ended early.

  I spooned out a bowl of stew and carried it and my new book into the living room, with its grand view of DC. Twilight had fallen. The skies were a murky starless gray. The Washington and Lincoln Monuments were like two strokes of light amidst the gathering dark, but even as I watched, the lights of the city winked into life.

  I propped my feet on the table and balanced the bowl in my lap. Savored the first bite of stew, then opened the book of poetry Adanna Jones had given me. A Call for Seekers of Truth, said the dedication page. Hmmm. That could prove interesting . . .

  3

  Ten days had passed since “The Bloody Inauguration,” as the newsfeeds dubbed it. The squirts had even blunter, bloodier names. Melodramatic, both of them, but this time I agreed. I’d been right in the middle of things. I’d seen the bodies like shredded rag dolls.

  One of the victims of the bombing lay in a hospital bed, connected to an IV and at least two different monitors. Athena Washington, fifty-four years old. Her husband and grandson had been killed immediately. Her daughter had survived the bombing, only to die before the ambulance reached the hospital.

  Morning surgical rounds had begun half an hour ago. Dr. Teresa Navarette was the chief resident in charge. The intern making the presentation was fumbling with her notes, and generally making a hash of things. Any moment now, I expected Navarette to intervene with a question guaranteed to set this poor young woman at ease. She was good that way.

  “Yassin.”

  Allison Carter shouldered her way through the crowd of interns and residents. She cast a brief glance at me in my shiny clean scrubs, an even briefer glance at my shiny new device.

  “What is your analysis?” she said to the intern.

  Yassin stuttered. I can’t say I blamed her. An impatient Carter could be intimidating.

  “Dr. Carter.”

  That was Navarette, attempting to rescue her intern.

  She and Carter exchanged smiles. Two sharks circling about their prey. Carter outranked her, but I suspected Navarette could match her point for point.

  “My apologies,” Carter said. “However, I didn’t want a good lesson to get lost in protocol.”

  Oh snap. Snap and cut.

  Navarette pressed her lips together. She hardly ever got angry, but today was a close one. I tamped down the urge to intervene. That would only make things worse. Two attending surgeons arguing in front of the interns, even if one was a senior member of the staff, and one not yet cleared for duty.

  Carter favored me with a brief glance—a dare? A check to see what I thought?—then smiled. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to make the presentation.”

  Navarette nodded stiffly. Yassin vanished into the background. Grateful? Unhappy? I couldn’t tell.

  “Athena Washington,” Carter rapped out. “Her immediate family all died in the explosion or shortly thereafter. Ms. Washington herself nearly bled out from secondary injuries from the blast. She owes her rescue to those on the scene who kept pressure on the wound until our emergency crews arrived. Her condition has stabilized, but we are monitoring her closely in case of any sudden changes in blood pressure or possible infection.”

  She paused to survey the interns and residents. Her gaze passed over me as though I were a ghost.

  “It’s something we need to watch out for,” Carter went on. “Factors outside the purely medical condition. Dr. Watson over there will confirm what I say. She’s seen more than any of us in the war. And this was an act of war.”

  Twenty gazes swiveled around to me.

  “It’s true,” I said. “My old friend Saúl Martínez always said that surgery was just the beginning. If we weren’t careful, we lost our patients to despair.”

  Or to drink, or drugs, but let us not mention those here in Georgetown’s pristine corridors.

  But Carter was watching me, her expression encouraging. “I agree with your old friend,” she said. “Do you have any other observations you’d like to share?”

  Oh, so we’re no longer a gimp with an attitude?

  I put my irritation in my pocket, however. All the interns were watching me expectantly, and quite a few of the residents.

  “Dr. Carter is right to say we should monitor this patient closely,” I said carefully. “I’d also recommend grief counseling, as soon as possible. Emotional distress is as tricky as infection. It might only become obvious days or weeks later. Especially with someone who has lost all her family.”

  “Which is the course you chose for yourself,” Carter said. “Or you might have succumbed to despair any time this past year, Dr. Watson. Am I right?”

  A direct hit, that. Had she aimed it with malice? No, simply a pointed lesson. Whatever her motive, I was down with pointed lessons.

  “Correct,” I said. “Although, if I might quote my friend Saúl again, I’m too damned stubborn to give up.”

  The interns laughed quietly. The residents needed another moment before they did the same.

  Carter went on to give the vital statistics for Athena Washington. Higher-than-usual blood pressure, but nothing outside the normal range, and typical for her age and weight. A nail propelled by the blast had penetrated her liver, but the injuries were not life-threatening, and the organ was regenerating at the expected rate.

  And what about her family? I thought. Has she been left alone, the one survivor?

  As if she had read my thoughts, Carter immediately turned toward me. “You have a question, Dr. Watson?”

  Protocol dictated that the chief resident ask the questions, but we’d already abandoned protocol when Carter wrested the surgical rounds away from Navarette.

  I shook my head. “Not at this time, Dr. Carter.”

  Carter’s gaze lingered on me a moment longer before she nodded toward Navarette. “My apologies for disrupting your rounds, Dr. Navarette. Dr. Watson, thank you for your suggestions. Please, carry on.”

  ***

  Anna Chong sat opposite me in my tiny sleek office. We’d had our one-on-one the day before, but Anna had texted me in the middle of the night, asking for a second meeting—at my convenience, of course. An exquisitely worded text that nevertheless implied an undercurrent of panic.

  I’d read her records, back in December, after I accepted Georgetown’s offer. Her parents had emigrated to the U.S. during Barack Obama’s first term. Her brothers had studied at an exclusive private high sc
hool, where only the best were admitted. Her sister had graduated from Cornell last year, and Anna herself had entered medical school a year earlier than usual, where she outperformed all her classmates. She spoke English, French, Mandarin, and Cantonese fluently. She would have an offer of residency wherever she liked.

  And yet, here we were.

  “You aren’t happy,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Happy doesn’t matter.”

  That was not the answer I expected.

  “I owe fifty thousand dollars in student loans,” I began.

  Chong regarded me with disdain. Her mother was a senior diplomat. Her father was a managing partner at one of Wall Street’s top investment firms. She had no money worries.

  “But money isn’t the only debt we carry,” I went on.

  She flinched. That was a hit. A palpable hit.

  “We have other obligations,” I said.

  The mask slipped back into place and she adjusted herself in the chair. No problems here, said her attitude. I wasn’t fooled any longer. Anna Chong might have come from a far different background than mine, but I could read the clues.

  “You have obligations to your family,” I said flatly. “We all do. None of them outweigh our debt to our patients. So, tell me. What has distracted you this past week that you asked no questions today during surgical rounds?”

  Another flinch. “I didn’t have any questions.”

  Right. And dogs don’t howl at the moon.

  “So, no questions,” I said. “What about Dr. Carter’s analysis of Athena Washington?”

  Anna shrugged. “It was a good one. I agree with your recommendation about counseling.”

  She had listened to that much at least. Good.

  “As your adviser, I have an assignment for you,” I said. “Write a ten-page paper about a surgeon’s obligations to their patients, and how that outweighs any obligations to their parents.”

  That produced a startled reaction. “I—what do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I said, future doctor Chong. If your parents are yammering at you to finish your studies, and your residency, as quickly as you completed your undergraduate program, then they might be valuing their expectations over the good of your patients. Think about it, Chong. We can talk next week.”