The Surgeon r-1 Page 12

  Chief Complaint: Sexual assault

  History of Present Illness: 29-year-old white female, believes she was sexually assaulted. Last night while having drinks at the Gramercy Pub, she felt dizzy and remembers walking to the bathroom. She has no memory of any events that followed….

  “She woke up at home, in her own bed,” said Sarah. “She didn’t remember how she got home. Didn’t remember getting undressed. She certainly didn’t remember tearing her own blouse. But there she was, stripped of her clothes. Her thighs were caked with what she thought was semen. One eye was swollen, and she had bruises on both wrists. She figured out pretty quick what had happened. And she had the same reaction other rape victims have. She thought: ‘It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have been so careless.’ But that’s how it is with women.” She looked directly at Moore. “We blame ourselves for everything, even when it’s the man who does the fucking.”

  In the face of such anger, there was nothing he could say. He looked down at the chart and read the physical exam.

  Patient is a disheveled, withdrawn female who speaks in a monotone. She is unaccompanied, and has walked to the clinic from her home….

  “She kept talking about her car keys,” said Sarah. “She was battered, one eye was swollen shut, and all she could focus on was the fact she’d lost her car keys and she needed to find them or she couldn’t drive to work. It took me awhile to get her to break out of that repeating loop and talk to me. This is a woman who’d never had anything really bad happen to her. She was educated, independent. A sales rep for Lawrence Scientific Supplies. She deals with people every day. And here she was, practically paralyzed. Obsessed with finding her stupid car keys. Finally we opened her purse and searched through all the pockets, and the keys were there. Only after we found them could she focus on me, and tell me what happened.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She went into the Gramercy Pub around nine o’clock to meet a girlfriend. The friend never showed, so Nina hung around for a while. Had a martini, talked to a few guys. Look, I’ve been there, and every night it’s a busy place. A woman would feel safe.” She added, on a bitter note: “As if there is any safe place.”

  “Did she remember the man who took her home?” asked Rizzoli. “That’s what we really need to know.”

  Sarah looked at her. “It’s all about the criminal, isn’t it? That’s all those two cops from Sex Crimes wanted to hear about. The perp gets the attention.”

  Moore could feel the room heating up with Rizzoli’s temper. He said, quickly: “The detectives said she was unable to provide a description.”

  “I was in the room when they interviewed her. She asked me to stay, so I heard the whole story twice. They kept after her about what he looked like, and she just couldn’t tell them. She honestly could not remember anything about him.”

  Moore turned to the next page in the chart. “You saw her a second time, in July. Only a week ago.”

  “She came back for a follow-up blood test. It takes six weeks after exposure for an HIV test to become positive. That’s the ultimate atrocity. First to be raped, and then to find out your attacker has given you a fatal disease. It’s six weeks of agony for these women, waiting to find out if they’ll get AIDS. Wondering if the enemy is inside you, multiplying in your blood. When they come for their follow-up test, I have to give them a pep talk. And swear that I’ll call them the instant I get the results back.”

  “You don’t analyze the tests here?”

  “No. It all gets sent out to Interpath Labs.”

  Moore turned to the last page of the chart and saw the sheet of results. HIV screen: Negative. VDRL (syphilis): Negative. The page was tissue-thin, a sheet from a printed carbon form. The most important news of our lives, he thought, so often arrives on such flimsy paper. Telegrams. Exam scores. Blood tests.

  He closed the chart and laid it on the desk. “When you saw Nina the second time, the day she came in for the follow-up blood test, how did she strike you?”

  “Are you asking me if she was still traumatized?”

  “I have no doubt she was.”

  His quiet answer seemed to puncture Sarah’s swelling bubble of rage. She sat back, as though, without anger, she had lost some vital fuel. For a moment she considered his question. “When I saw Nina the second time, she was like one of the walking dead.”

  “How so?”

  “She sat in that chair where Detective Rizzoli is now, and I felt as if I could almost see straight through her. As if she was transparent. She hadn’t been to work since the rape. I think it was hard for her to face people, especially men. She was paralyzed by all these strange phobias. Afraid to drink tap water, or anything that hadn’t been sealed. It had to be in an unopened bottle or can, something that couldn’t be poisoned or drugged. She was afraid that men could look at her and see she’d been violated. She was convinced her rapist had left sperm on her bedsheets and clothes, and she was spending hours every day washing things over and over. Whoever Nina Peyton used to be, that woman was dead. What I saw in her place was a ghost.” Sarah’s voice had trailed off, and she sat very still, staring toward Rizzoli, seeing another woman in that chair. A succession of women, different faces, different ghosts, a parade of the damaged.

  “Did she say anything about being stalked? About the attacker reappearing in her life?”

  “A rapist never disappears from your life. For as long as you live, you’re always his property.” Sarah paused. And added, bitterly: “Maybe he just came to claim what was his.”

  Nine

  It was not virgins the Vikings sacrificed, but harlots.

  In the year of our lord 922, the Arab diplomat ibn Fadlan witnessed just such a sacrifice among the people he called the Rus. He described them as tall and blond, men of perfect physique who traveled from Sweden, down the Russian rivers, to the southern markets of Kazaria and the Caliphate, where they traded amber and furs for the silk and silver of Byzantium. It was on that trade route, in a place called Bulgar, at the bend of the Volga, that a dead Viking man of great importance was prepared for his final journey to Valhalla.

  Ibn Fadlan witnessed the funeral.

  The dead man’s boat was hauled ashore and placed on posts of birch wood. A pavilion was built on the deck, and in this pavilion was a couch covered in Greek brocade. The corpse, which had been buried ten days, was then disinterred.

  To ibn Fadlan’s surprise, the blackened flesh did not smell.

  The newly dug-up corpse was then adorned in fine clothes: trousers and stockings, boots and a tunic, and a caftan of brocade with gold buttons. They placed him on the mattress inside the pavilion, and propped him up with cushions in a sitting position. Around him they placed bread and meat and onions, intoxicating drink, and sweet-smelling plants. They slew a dog and two horses, a rooster and a hen, and all these, too, they placed inside the pavilion, to serve his needs in Valhalla.

  Last, they brought a slave girl.

  For the ten days that the dead man had lain buried in the ground, the girl had been given over to whoredom. Dazed with drink, she was brought from tent to tent to service every man in the encampment. She lay with legs spread beneath a succession of sweating, grunting men, her well-used body a communal vessel into which the seed of all the tribesmen was spilled. In this way was she defiled, her flesh corrupted, her body made ready for sacrifice.

  On the tenth day, she was brought to the ship, accompanied by an old woman whom they called the Angel of Death. The girl removed her bracelets and finger rings. She drank deeply to intoxicate herself. Then she was brought into the pavilion, where the dead man sat.

  There, upon the brocade-draped mattress, she was defiled yet again. Six times, by six men, her body passed among them like shared meat. And when it was done, when the men were sated, the girl was stretched out at the side of her dead master. Two men held her feet, two men held her hands, and the Angel of Death looped a cord around the girl’s neck. While the men pulled the cord taut, the Ange
l raised her broad-bladed dagger and plunged it into the girl’s chest.

  Again and again the blade came down, spilling blood the way a grunting man spills seed, the dagger reenacting the ravishment that came before, sharp metal piercing soft flesh.

  A brutal rutting that delivered, with its final thrust, the rapture of death.

  * * *

  “She required massive transfusions of blood and fresh frozen plasma,” said Catherine. “Her pressure’s stabilized, but she’s still unconscious and on a ventilator. You’ll just have to be patient, Detective. And hope she wakes up.”

  Catherine and Detective Darren Crowe stood outside Nina Peyton’s SICU cubicle and watched three lines trace across the cardiac monitor. Crowe had been waiting by the O.R. door when the patient was wheeled out, had stuck right beside her in the Recovery Room and later during the transfer to SICU. His role was more than merely protective; he was eager to take the patient’s statement, and for the last few hours he had made a nuisance of himself, demanding frequent progress reports and hovering outside the cubicle.

  Now, once again, he repeated the question he’d been asking all morning: “Is she going to live?”

  “All I can tell you is that her vital signs are stable.”

  “When can I talk to her?”

  Catherine gave a tired sigh. “You don’t seem to understand how critical she was. She lost more than a third of her blood volume before she even got here. Her brain may have been deprived of crucial circulation. When and if she does regain consciousness, there’s a chance she won’t remember anything.”

  Crowe looked through the glass partition. “Then she’s useless to us.”

  Catherine stared at him with mounting dislike. Not once had he expressed concern for Nina Peyton, except as a witness, as someone he could use. Not once, all morning, had he referred to her by name. He’d called her the victim or the witness. What he saw, looking into the cubicle, wasn’t a woman at all but simply a means to an end.

  “When will she be moved from ICU?” he asked.

  “It’s too early to ask that question.”

  “Could she be transferred to a private room? If we keep the door closed, limit the personnel, then no one has to know she can’t talk.”

  Catherine knew exactly where this was going. “I won’t have my patient used as bait. She needs to stay here for round-the-clock observation. You see those lines on the monitor? That’s the EKG, the central venous pressure, and the arterial pressure. I need to stay on top of every change in her status. This unit is the only place to do it.”

  “How many women could we save if we stop him now? Have you thought about that? Of all people, Dr. Cordell, you know what these women have gone through.”

  She went rigid with anger. He had struck a blow at her most vulnerable spot. What Andrew Capra had done to her was so personal, so intimate, that she could not speak of the loss, even with her own father. Detective Crowe had ripped open that wound.

  “She may be the only way to catch him,” said Crowe.

  “This is the best you can come up with? Use a comatose woman as bait? Endanger other patients in this hospital by inviting a killer to show up here?”

  “What makes you think he isn’t already here?” Crowe said, and he walked away.

  Already here. Catherine could not help but glance around the unit. She saw nurses bustling between patients. A group of resident surgeons gathered near the bank of monitors. A phlebotomist carrying her tray of blood tubes and syringes. How many people walked in and out of this hospital every day? How many of them did she truly know as people? No one. That much Andrew Capra had taught her: that she could never really know what lurked in a person’s heart.

  The ward clerk said, “Dr. Cordell, telephone call.”

  Catherine crossed to the nurses’ station and picked up the phone.

  It was Moore. “I hear you pulled her through.”

  “Yes, she’s still alive,” Catherine answered bluntly. “And no, she’s not talking yet.”

  A pause. “I take it this is a bad time to call.”

  She sank into a chair. “I’m sorry. I just spoke to Detective Crowe, and I am not in a good mood.”

  “He seems to have that effect on women.”

  They both laughed, tired laughs that melted any hostility between them.

  “How are you holding up, Catherine?”

  “We had some hairy moments, but I think I’ve got her stablilized.”

  “No, I mean you. Are you okay?”

  It was more than just a polite inquiry; she heard real concern in his voice, and she did not know what to say. She knew only that it felt good to be cared about. That his words had brought a flush to her cheeks.

  “You won’t go home, right?” he said. “Until your locks are changed.”

  “It makes me so angry. He’s taken away the one place I felt safe.”

  “We’ll make it safe again. I’ll see about getting a locksmith over there.”

  “On a Saturday? You’re a miracle worker.”

  “No. I just have a great Rolodex.”

  She leaned back, the tension easing from her shoulders. All around her, the SICU hummed with activity, yet her attention was focused completely on the man whose voice now soothed her, reassured her.

  “And how are you?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid my day’s just beginning.” A pause as he turned to answer someone’s question, something about which evidence to bag. Other voices were talking in the background. She imagined him in Nina Peyton’s bedroom, the evidence of horror all around him. Yet his voice was quiet and unruffled.

  “You’ll call me the instant she wakes up?” said Moore.

  “Detective Crowe’s hanging around here like a vulture. I’m sure he’ll know it before I do.”

  “Do you think she will wake up?”

  “Honest answer?” said Catherine. “I don’t know. I keep saying that to Detective Crowe, and he doesn’t accept it, either.”

  “Dr. Cordell?” It was Nina Peyton’s nurse, calling from the cubicle. The tone of her voice instantly alarmed Catherine.

  “What is it?”

  “You’ve got to come look at this.”

  “Is something wrong?” Moore said over the phone.

  “Hang on. Let me check.” She set down the receiver and went into the cubicle.

  “I was cleaning her off with a washcloth,” the nurse said. “They brought her down from the O.R. with blood still caked all over her. When I turned her on her side, I saw it. It’s behind her left thigh.”

  “Show me.”

  The nurse grasped the patient’s shoulder and hip and rolled her onto her side. “There,” she said softly.

  Fear skewered Catherine to the spot. She stared at the cheery message that had been written in black felt-tip ink on Nina Peyton’s skin.

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY. DO YOU LIKE MY GIFT?

  Moore found her in the hospital cafeteria. She was seated at a corner table, her back to the wall, assuming the position of one who knows she is threatened and wants to see any attack coming. She was still wearing surgeon’s scrubs, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail, exposing her strikingly angular features, the unadorned face, the glittering eyes. She had to be nearly as exhausted as he was, but fear had heightened her alertness, and she was like a feral cat, watching his every move as he approached the table. A half-empty cup of coffee sat in front of her. How many refills had she had? he wondered, and saw that she trembled as she reached for the cup. Not the steady hand of a surgeon, but the hand of a frightened woman.

  He sat down across from her. “There’ll be a patrol car parked outside your building all night. Did you get your new keys?”

  She nodded. “The locksmith dropped them off. He told me he put in the Rolls-Royce of dead bolts.”

  “You’ll be fine, Catherine.”

  She looked down at her coffee. “That message was meant for me.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “It was my birthday
yesterday. He knew. And he knew I was scheduled to be on call.”

  “If he’s the one who wrote it.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. You know it was him.”

  After a pause, Moore nodded.

  They sat without speaking for a moment. It was already late afernoon, and most of the tables were empty. Behind the counter, cafeteria workers cleared away the serving pans, and steam rose in wispy columns. A lone cashier cracked open a fresh package of coins, and they clattered into the register drawer.

  “What about my office?” she said.

  “He left no fingerprints.”

  “So you have nothing on him.”

  “We have nothing,” he admitted.

  “He moves in and out of my life like air. No one sees him. No one knows what he looks like. I could put bars on all my windows, and I’ll still be afraid to fall asleep.”

  “You don’t have to go home. I’ll bring you to a hotel.”

  “It doesn’t matter where I hide. He’ll know where I am. For some reason, he’s chosen me. He’s told me I’m next.”

  “I don’t think so. It would be an incredibly stupid move on his part, warning his next victim. The Surgeon is not stupid.”

  “Why did he contact me? Why write me notes on…” She swallowed.

  “It could be a challenge to us. A way of taunting the police.”

  “Then the bastard should have written to you!” Her voice rang out so loudly that a nurse pouring a cup of coffee turned and stared at her.

  Flushing, Catherine rose to her feet. She’d embarrassed herself by that outburst, and she was silent as they walked out of the hospital. He wanted to take her hand, but he thought she would only pull away, interpreting it as a condescending gesture. Above all, he did not want her to think him condescending. More than any woman he’d ever met, she commanded his respect.

  Sitting in his car, she said quietly: “I lost it in there. I’m sorry.”

  “Under the circumstances, anyone would have.”

  “Not you.”