Michael Palmer - Natural Causes

"Matt, I can't stop thinking about Andrew. Please don't move yet."

Matt turned his head so that once again their lips were touching.

"If you insist," he whispered.

At five-thirty, the hazy light of the new day began to brighten the theater. Huddled on the rusting metal catwalk above the empty stage, Sarah and Matt had moved enough to keep their limbs from paralysis. But they had not broken their embrace, nor had they spoken. One or possibly both of them had slept for a time, though neither of them was sure. Matt worked his hands up to the sides of her face and kissed her gently on the eyes.

"You've been incredibly brave," he said. "I did a very stupid thing trying to play Green Beret with that bastard."

"Are they really gone?"

Matt sat up slowly and carefully, and peered between the rails of the catwalk.

"I can't vouch for the lobby, but the theater is empty. I think we should wait until nine or ten before we leave, though. The more people out there, the better chance we have of making it home. Although frankly, if I were Tommy Sze-to, I'd already be on my way to someplace far, far away from here."

"Poor Andrew. He really was trying to help me."

"Maybe he did it in time to reclaim his place in heaven," Matt said. "Considering how he ended up, I guess you'd have to say it was a pretty damn noble act. I only wish he had been able to learn who bankrolled Sze-to in the first place. Any ideas?"

"None," Sarah said. "No idea who, and no idea why. Except now we know one important thing."

"Namely, that someone is willing to go to any length to ensure that you look guilty of causing those DIC cases."

"That's not absolute proof that Tian-Wen and I are innocent. But it seems like someone thinks so. When we get out of here, we can begin to focus on who that might be. But the first thing I'm going to do is go and speak with Claire Truscott."

"I thought you said Andrew had left her."

"He's still the father of their child. I intend to help Claire out in any way I can-now and in the future."

Matt glanced at his watch.

"Two hours," he said. "Maybe two and a half. I think we ought to stay up here and keep pretty quiet."

"I agree."

She smiled and kissed him lightly. He slipped his hand up beneath the back of her blouse and rubbed her back.

"You know," he said, "this isn't exactly the under-the-sheet situation with you I had been fantasizing about."

"And here I thought this whole night was an elaborate setup just because you knew that my tastes run to the unusual and the exotic."

"Promise you won't turn me over to the bar association?"

"If you promise not to drop me as a client."

She kissed him again, this time more searchingly. Her tongue explored his mouth. Then she reached down, loosened his trousers, and gently caressed him.

"You were pretty macho last night, Cat," she whispered. "Did that coward hurt you?"

"I don't remember," he said, looking at her wide-eyed. "A little maybe. God, what you're doing right now is really helping. I mean really helping."

Again she smiled at him. The horror of the night just passed had largely given way to thoughts of the future and of the man whose gentle eyes were fixed on hers.

"That's just the beginning," she whispered. "I'm a doctor, remember. When I think it's clinically appropriate, I'm going to kiss it and make it all better."

October 9

Scalpel… sponge, please… scope ready, please… How're you doing, Kristen? Are you feeling any of this?… Excellent, that's excellent… Do you still want to watch this procedure on the monitor?… All right then. Here we go…"

The young woman on the operating table, a mother of three, had begged for local rather than general anesthesia. Although general was the norm, Sarah had agreed. She had done her first tubal ligation by laparoscopy late in her first year of residency. That procedure had gone without a hitch, as had the twenty or twenty-five she had done since then, three of them utilizing a local anesthetic with heavy sedation. She was a damn good surgeon. Technically and clinically one of the best, if not the best, her training program had ever had. Why then had her life in the hospital become such hell?

"Okay, Kristen. What you're looking at are your in-sides. There's a small but very powerful light at the tip of this laparoscope. Right next to the light source is a fiber optic pickup that can take light and actually make it bend around corners. The fiber optics carry the images back to this eyepiece and also to the television monitor. As of this moment, your left ovary-that little pink thing in the middle of the screen-is a star! Amazing, huh?"

Fiber optics. Sarah found herself momentarily wondering about the scientist responsible for the remarkable, revolutionary discovery. Worldwide communications forever changed. The frontiers of surgery pushed farther back perhaps than with any other single discovery since anesthesia. Had life rewarded the inventor? Was he rich? Was he at peace? Or had controversy, illness, or the machinations of others made things hard for him?

Sarah had inserted a bipolar cautery instrument through a small incision just over Kristen's pubis. Now, watching through the laparoscope, she guided the tips of the cautery unit around the narrow fallopian tube. Next she traced along the tube from where it entered the uterus to its fimbriated tip-the fringed end next to the ovary.

"Okay, Kristen, your tube's completely freed up. I'm going to grasp it with the little pincher on the cautery unit and burn it closed. If you still want to watch, you might actually see the fat cells in the tissue sizzle and pop. Then, just to be sure there are no little surprise tax deductions in your future, I'm going to repeat the procedure in a second spot as well, a bit closer to your uterus. The burns we're going to make will deaden the sensory nerves along with the tubal tissue, so there won't be much pain from that area after we're all done-if there's any pain at all…"

We're going to make… after we're all done… The phrases, used reflexively, now sounded as awkward as Sarah was feeling. She glanced over at the nurses. They used to love working with her; they'd talk and joke with her during cases. Now, whether they intended it or not, there was distance.

She and Matt had reported Andrew's murder to the police. But the one detective assigned to the case had failed to find Andrew's body or any evidence at all of foul play. He couldn't locate Tommy Sze-to or even turn up a witness willing to corroborate any part of their story. The malpractice case against her was proceeding along and, fueled by her unsubstantiated account of the night in Chinatown, was still receiving a goodly amount of media attention. There were any number of rumors circulating around the hospital grapevine. One of them had Andrew leaving his wife for Sarah, and then leaving for Australia when Sarah jilted him for another man. Another had Sarah killing Andrew after a lovers' quarrel and then making up the Chinese gang tale in case his body was ever found. It was terribly frustrating to know that without concrete proof of some sort, she was powerless to convince any doubter of the truth.

In the press, the publicity about Sarah and the Medical Center of Boston had ranged from disruptive to brutal. A nasty letter from the president of the Chinatown Neighborhood Association had been published in the Globe, calling her allegations about tongs and violence damaging to his community. In various publications and broadcasts, her motives had been questioned, as well as her morality, and even her sanity. Worst of all, nothing had changed. Absolutely nothing.

Desperate to clear Sarah's name, and his own suddenly shaky reputation, Matt had hired a private detective. After nearly three weeks and more than $2,000, the man had come up with essentially no more information than that Tommy Sze-to was no longer in Boston and possibly no longer in the country. Nobody in Chinatown to whom he spoke knew anything about Dr. Andrew Truscott.