AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I mean…” Dragging her bottom lip between her teeth, she nods. “Homicide cops. Dead bodies are your job. Why are you asking me questions?”
“Because we don’t have medical degrees,” Fletch answers. “A dude is dead. He’s mid-thirties. Healthy in every way.”
“Well, not anymore,” she counters. “He’s dead.”
“Prior to death,” I continue with a shake of my head, “he was healthy as a horse. No issues. We’re pulling his records and we’ll look at those, but the M.E. says he was in the prime of his life and had many, many years left in him.”
“But now he’s dead?”
“Yes. But here’s the kicker. His heart is missing.” I watch her face. Her reactions. Her hands. “The kill was pain-free, the surgery clean. Killer took his heart and, we suspect, boxed it up, kept it safe, and eventually gave it to someone else.”
“Black-market transplant?” she breathes. “Are you sure?”
“Everything’s pointing that way so far,” Fletch murmurs. “Surgery was clean, Nick. Like, professional-level.”
“A doctor,” she concludes. “You’re looking for a doctor, so you figured you’d come here and see what you see.”
“We wanna know if you’ve heard any whispers,” I tell her. “Anything being discussed in the breakroom. Is there a certain doctor particularly upset about a patient in heart failure, or a family member who needs a heart or they’ll die?”
“First of all,” she grits out, her voice low, “there’s no such thing as a breakroom here, or if there is, I can’t say I’ve ever stopped working long enough to discover it. Second, everyone gets upset about their patients dying. All of my colleagues. Even me. If we’ve spent time with that patient, doing all we can to keep them alive, but their bodies simply can’t fight hard enough, that hurts us all.”
“We’re looking for specifics, Nick. We need to know who would cross the line and end one life to save another.”
She shakes her head and takes a step back. Then another. She looks me up and down before turning away to continue descending the stairs. “I don’t know a single person who would. We want to save them all,” she speaks over her shoulder. “It sucks when we lose one. And sure, there are some we feel more than others. But killing one to save another isn’t the answer.”
“Not a single soul?” I grab her wrist again just as she reaches the door for the first floor. Spinning her back, I find it fascinating how, just like Minka, Nicki closes ranks and pulls up her walls.
Doctors are proud, I suppose. And they put a lot of stock in the vow they made to cause no harm.
“You can’t think of a single doctor you’ve met, from medical school to Copeland Memorial, who wouldn’t dabble in the gray area if it means saving someone important?”
“It’s not that simple, Arch.” She shakes my hand loose and groans when the speakers call her name once more. “I mean, sure. The data’s out there. Statistics provesomedoctors are freakin’ crazy and have stepped over the line in the past. But I’m telling you with complete certainty, I can’t pull a single name out that would fit that profile. And even if I could, it would be damn near impossible to cover that surgery up.
“To transplant a heart,” she murmurs, “to get it into the patient… you need a surgeon, nurses, an anesthetist. You need an operating room, a bypass machine, someone to handle the organ, and someone else to watch the recipient’s vitals. You need a lot of freaking hands, Archer. And any one of those people could lose their nerve and narc on whoever organized it all. It’s too many cooks in the kitchen to hope to keep the secret.”
“It’s done every single day,” Fletch grumbles. “We know it is, otherwise, there wouldn’t be a price on the organs in the first place.”
“It can be done.” Lifting her hands, she drops them again so she shrugs. “But you’re not looking for just one surgeon—you’re looking for an entire squad of medical professionals. Where is your patient now? When was surgery?”
“In the last thirty-six hours,” I answer. “Can’t be much more than that. How long does surgery take?”
“Typically?” She abuses her bottom lip and drags it between her teeth. “Standard, uncomplicated, planned surgery could be around six to eight hours. But sneaky surgery, with a stolen organ that may or may not have been harvested appropriately in the first place? Could be anything from six hours till eternity. It’s possible the patient didn’t survive, and the heart was tossed in the trash. There are a million outcomes here, guys. I honestly have no clue which way to point you.”
“How about toward the ICU?” When the speakers call for Doctor Cleary again, I step around the woman and open the stairwell door. “Show us where patients would go after that type of surgery. And who is the chief of surgery? Who is your boss?”
“You don’t want my boss.” Nicki makes her way through the door and turns right. “For this case, you want head of cardiothoracic. That’s Doctor Gale.”
“Male or female?”
“Male. Samuel Gale. He’s twelve years in and brilliant in his work.” Then she points toward the end of the hall. “First floor is ICU.”
“You’re being called to the first floor,” Fletch ponders. “You work ICU often?”
“I work wherever my patients are. ORs are,” she pokes a thumb over her shoulder, “back that way. Doctor Gale’s in surgery today; he went in a few hours ago, so you might get lucky and catch him in the next hour or so.”
“And yesterday?” I ask. “Where was Doctor Gale yesterday?”
“In OR-three,” she sighs. “From five in the morning until damn near five in the evening. And before you ask, he’ll have about twelve other colleagues vouching they were with him the entire day. You can talk to him, Detectives, but I think you’ll get similar answers I’ve given you. That type of surgery is impossible unless you’re searching for an entire team, a medical facility, and after-care nurses. The patient will require close monitoring for days after surgery. Possibly weeks, and that’s assuming they don’t develop an infection, or their bodies don’t reject the organ.”
