Michael Palmer - The Last Surgeon

Finally, with the nurse, Kate, off to her home in the suburbs, and the shades pulled, Nick and Junie sat at the fold-out table and listened with empathy and quiet astonishment to the sad story of the death of Belle Coates, and her odd connection to the medical director of the Helping Hands Mobile Medical Unit through an almost forgotten nickname.

“You say your sister had actually written in M.D. and Dr. and Ph.D. next to Nick Fury’s name on the covers of these comics?”

“She seemed to be trying out every form of doctor.”

“Like she heard it rather than read it.”

“I wish I had the issues to show you,” she said, “but they were destroyed when my apartment burned down a few days ago.”

“Your sister was murdered and then your apartment burned down? Do you think the two are connected?”

“How can I not, Nick, except the arson people didn’t find anything.”

“Well, unless you’re incredibly unlucky, it seems suspicious to me,” Nick said, wishing he could come up with something, anything, to help the woman. “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly, “I have a friend, a detective with the D.C. police. He is incredibly well connected. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he knew the arson people in Arlington, or at least here. Can I put you in touch with him?”

“That would be great. I have the number of one of the insurance inspectors who looked at my place. Maybe I can get a copy of his report over to your friend.”

“I’ll get a hold of Don first thing in the morning,” Nick said, feeling his knees beginning to go to Jell-O from the woman’s eyes.

In the end, it seemed obvious that Belle Coates had come across a reference to the name Umberto Vasquez had given to his friend a million miles and a hundred thousand years ago-not just come across the name, but had been impressed enough by what she had heard to go out and buy more than forty different copies of the comic book.

Dr. Nick Fury.

At one o’clock, Junie encouraged them to keep talking and wandered off to lie down in the aft examining room.

“Even before our parents died, Belle and I were reasonably close,” Jillian said, “but there was a fairly wide difference in our ages, and I really didn’t know all that much about her and what she was into. By the time of the accident, I had already been married for like a year and divorced, and was out there in the big, wide Washington world making up for the time I lost by getting married so young. The truth is, I was living on the edge a great deal, partying, always first in line for anything that would provide a rush, and chasing my passion for photography to some pretty dangerous places.”

“Then suddenly you were the parent of a teenage girl.”

“It sounds like that would be the case, and that’s what I expected when I somewhat reluctantly agreed to stay home with Belle. But that’s hardly what happened. Belle was the most centered, spiritual person I had ever met. Yoga, flute, painting, athletics, gardening, cooking. Whatever there was to experience, she wanted to try it. She didn’t care if she ever became the best at anything, except maybe nursing, but she wanted to know things, to feel them in her own way, not necessarily to master them. And she was without a doubt the best listener I ever knew.”

“She sounds pretty incredible.”

“She was. Even at fourteen it was like being around some sort of advanced life-form. In the end, before she chose nursing and moved into the dorms in D.C., she was the one who was teaching me how to live-I mean really live. Not loud or big, but softly and passionately, with a delight in the details of things and of people.”

Jillian’s eyes filled, then overflowed. She made no attempt to wipe aside her tears, nor was she at all embarrassed by them.

“I never tried to stop the tears when I used to cry over Sarah,” Nick said. “I felt they might be, I don’t know, cleansing. Then the PTSD took hold and all of a sudden I wasn’t crying anymore. I just stopped.”

“I don’t think that’s good.”

“I guess. As devastated and grief-stricken as I was, I don’t think I even felt sad.”

“Just empty.”

“That’s right. I can’t believe you said that. Just empty. It’s an almost indescribable feeling. Umberto used to say that as long as I could cry, there was hope. More than anyone else, including my therapist, he was upset when I stopped. At some point he also told me that he hadn’t cried a single time since his discharge from the hospital after the explosion. He went from being the best soldier I’ve ever known-a man who ran back instead of running away, and risked his life to keep me from being blown to bits-to being an aimless alcoholic. He didn’t have any physical wounds like I did, so they refused to consider his PTSD reason enough for a Purple Heart.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks, I can tell you are, and that really means something to me.”

“Then he disappeared.”

“Then he disappeared,” Nick echoed, shrugging helplessly.

“Listen, Nick,” she said. “I want to help you find Umberto. Meeting you, and thinking about the strangeness of all those comic books Belle wrote on, makes me believe there has to be a connection. Somehow or other, her path and Umberto’s had to have crossed. And if getting through to this Manny Ferris will move you closer to finding Umberto, then I want to help you with that as well. I’ve got ten years as a psych nurse that says I can help there.”

“I’d love the help,” Nick said, wondering if he should have delivered the words more forcefully.

“You told me that Manny Ferris had an almost violent reaction to one of the photographs of Umberto.”

“Not almost violent. He went berserk. It was nothing special-just a photo of me and Umberto standing by the RV. There was at least one other of Umberto and me. But Ferris took one look at that picture, heaved a jar at me, and bolted.”

“Do you think I could see the photos?”

Nick retrieved the envelope from one of the drawers in the galley and passed it across. Now, instead of her eyes, he became fixated on her hands-smooth, pale skin, nails not too long, with a clear coating except for the ends, which were quarter moons of white polish. He studied the movement of her long, delicate fingers as she went from photo to photo.

“Umberto has a very kind face,” she said.

He would love yours , Nick thought.

“That’s the photo,” he said, “the one that set Ferris off.”

Jillian appraised it with the concentration of one used to examining art.

“I self-published a book of my photos of the great buildings and monuments of D.C. Gave it to friends for Christmas. The shots of the Lincoln were my favorites.”

“I’d love to see it.”

“You may get your chance,” she said, this time lighting up the galley with her smile. “I wonder…”

“What?”

“Maybe it wasn’t the clinic or you or Umberto that upset Ferris so. Maybe it was the setting-the Lincoln itself.”

“How could we ever prove that?”

“Well, how about we do a little photo shoot of our own. Interested?”

Nick paced along the crowded walkway in front of the Lincoln Memorial waiting for Jillian to arrive. The afternoon sky was crisp and bright, with only a few passing clouds to block out the three o’clock sun. If Jillian’s analysis of the photograph was accurate, it was around this time, four years ago, that Junie snapped the picture of Nick and Umberto that sent Manny Ferris running for the exit door.

It was after three that morning before Jillian had left the RV. By then, Junie was asleep in the back examining room, and Nick was entangled in a mesh of bewildering feelings surrounding the intense, engaging new arrival in his life. It was Jillian who came up with the idea to take photographs from every conceivable angle around the Lincoln Memorial, then observe Manny’s reaction to each. Maybe there was something to her theory that it wasn’t who was in the picture that so upset the Marine, but what.