Robin Cook - Death Benefit

“What the hell did you think you were doing? You two have made me cash in more favors than I actually own, stopping Mr. Winston from having you arrested. I want you to convince me I did the right thing.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Bourse,” George said. He took one look at Pia’s defiant face and decided he should speak for the both of them.

“ We’re very sorry.”

“So what in God’s name were you doing there? In a lab that was sealed and potentially contaminated.”

“The only part that might have been contaminated was the biosafety unit,” Pia said, interrupting George, who’d started to respond. “We took the necessary precautions. I wanted to look for myself. I just can’t understand how Dr. Rothman managed to get infected, knowing him as I do.”

“So you weren’t picking up your stuff as you told Mr. Winston. And what, you’re suddenly epidemiologists? We had a team of actual epidemiologists check out the lab today both from here and from the CDC. They combed the place, including the biosafety unit.”

“What did they find?”

“Nothing, but that’s not the point.”

“I’ve been working in there on and off for over three years. I wanted to check it out. If something was different, I might have been able to see it, probably better than strangers from Atlanta.”

Some of Bourse’s vinegar lost its acid. She realized that Pia had a point. Still, it didn’t justify what these two otherwise gifted students had done, something totally foolish and out of character. After a pause she asked, “Well, what did you find?”

“Nothing, but we were interrupted. Do you have a report from the epidemiologists?”

“Certainly not from the CDC. Not yet. But I spoke to the head of our own team. Apparently nothing was found amiss.”

Dr. Bourse knew that Dr. Rothman was closer to this student than to anyone in the whole medical community. She knew quite a bit about Pia, more than she guessed Pia surmised. Bourse had had access to all the deliberations of the admissions committee, which she had pored over in great detail. Up until the call from Winston, she’d had high hopes for her, hopes she wanted to maintain. For Pia, Bourse’s intent was to try to keep the damage from the evening’s escapade and poor judgment to a minimum. Such was the burden of being dean of students. Earlier that evening Bourse had had to deal with an even more difficult issue: A third-year student had been caught stealing prescription drugs from the medical floors. Bourse turned her attention to the second delinquent. At least he met her eye, which she couldn’t get from Pia. “So what’s your excuse?” she asked George, with a certain resignation in her voice.

“No excuses. I was helping my friend,” he said as evenly as he could.

Dr. Bourse studied George. He too was a top student, more liked in general than Pia, who could be considered standoffish. Bourse was well aware of George’s apparent infatuation with Pia, so she took his excuse at face value. Once again she marveled at how such an apparently accomplished young man like George could be reduced to such a lovelorn teenager that he’d risk his future like this. If Bourse had allowed Winston to have him arrested, it could have affected his becoming a doctor.

“All right,” Bourse said. She took a deep breath and regarded the ceiling for a moment to clear her head. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to go back to your rooms and stay there. You won’t fraternize with anyone or talk about this episode with anyone. You’ll monitor your temperatures and take your antibiotics as directed. George, I’ll make sure you get some. And I’ll see both of you in my office at seven tomorrow morning. We’ll discuss your elective then, Ms. Grazdani. Mr. Wilson, tomorrow you will return to Radiology. Both of you will also say a prayer for me and thank the Lord that I’m in a benevolent mood. I’ll now go and square this away with Mr. Winston. If I can.”

With the dean out of the room, George let out a deep sigh and sat back in his chair. “Oh my God, I thought we were dead. If the police aren’t involved, it’s just an internal thing. It won’t be on our records. It’ll be like this never happened.” George looked at Pia, who didn’t respond. Her face was a blank, her mind clearly still back at the lab.

“You can’t let this drop?” George questioned.

“Of course I can’t let it drop,” Pia shot back. “Something had to have happened. Something out of the ordinary.”

“What about one of the technicians messing up, either by accident or design? I mean, Rothman was like a bull in the proverbial china shop. I imagine there are a lot of people who aren’t crying tonight about what happened to him.”

Pia shook her head. “There were people in the lab who found him unpleasant. But the same people admired him greatly. I can’t imagine anyone in the lab being involved in any underhanded way.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Pia said. Her mind was swirling. Her first concern was whether or not Rothman would pull through. At the same time she was reconsidering the two possibilities for what had happened: Rothman contaminated himself by accident, or he did it deliberately. But then, another idea started to take shape in her mind. She realized there was a third possibility she hadn’t yet considered.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER NEW YORK CITY MARCH 24, 2011, 5:05 A.M.

Although it was only a little after five in the morning, Pia finally quit trying to go back to sleep and got out of bed. The previous night she’d returned to her dorm room from the security office exhausted mentally and physically. Before she and George went to their respective rooms, he gave her the turkey sandwich that he’d saved. It was flattened to a degree but still recognizably a sandwich. Once back in her room, she’d eaten a corner of it, then threw the rest in the trash and went to bed, hoping to get some rest. She’d not slept well, but at least she couldn’t remember her dreams.

Pia showered quickly and dressed. She understood how essential it was to her future that Rothman pull through. Despite the hour, she knew she had to go over to the hospital to check and make sure he was okay. Her hope was that the new antibiotic had worked wonders and was controlling his infection. In that case, she further hoped that his delirium had cleared up and she could have a word with him. She wanted to ask him if he had any idea what had happened in the biosafety lab the previous morning.

Emerging from the dorm onto Haven Avenue, Pia felt conspicuously lonely. It was morning although not yet light. She felt like the only person in the world as she made her way over to the hospital. Once inside, it was different as the hospital never slept. Quickly she made her way up to the infectious disease wing.

When she got to the ward she was perplexed. She felt she must have gotten turned around because the room she thought was Rothman’s was being disinfected in preparation for its next inhabitant. But no, this was his room. So Rothman had been moved, perhaps because he was showing signs of improvement following the new course of treatment. Pia didn’t allow herself to think that anything else could be the case. She checked Yamamoto’s room. His room was also being cleaned. He’d been moved as well.

Pia turned around and went back to the nurses’ station to find out where Dr. Rothman and Dr. Yamamoto had been sent. The station was humming, even at that time of the morning, in preparation for the shift change at seven.

“Excuse me,” Pia said to one of the night nurses standing at the counter filling out one of the millions of forms they were required to do. “I’m looking for Dr. Rothman and Dr. Yamamoto.” Suddenly Pia felt nauseous and an overwhelming sense of panic rose within her. They weren’t moved because they got better .