Robin Cook - Foreign Body

Cal opened the meeting with Veena’s suicide attempt to be certain everyone was well informed. He had Santana relate what she had learned that morning when talking with Veena, particularly about Veena insisting she would not try it again and why. Cal admitted the episode had frightened him to the point he believed they needed a rapid exit strategy in place in case it was needed. “If she had succeeded in killing herself,” Cal continued, “there would have been an investigation and an inquest, and any sort of investigation would have spelled big trouble for Nurses International.”

“What exactly do you mean by exit strategy?” Petra questioned.

“Exactly what the phrase implies,” Cal said. “I’m not talking about something philosophical here. I’m talking literally. In a worst-case scenario, such that if we have to get out of India at a moment’s notice, all the details should be prearranged. There shouldn’t be any need for improvisation, for there might not be time.”

Petra and Santana nodded in agreement. Durell merely raised his eyebrows questioningly. “By land, sea, or air?” he asked.

“I’m open to suggestions,” Cal responded. He looked at each in turn, settling on Petra, who was a stickler for this kind of detail.

“By air would be too difficult,” she said. “Passport control at Gandhi International is too experienced. We’d have to pay off too many people, since we wouldn’t know what time of day it might end up being. If we were trying to secretly escape, it would have to be by land.”

“I agree,” Durell said. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands working at each other. “I think we should plan to go northeast with a car or SUV that we buy expressly for this purpose and keep it gassed, packed with necessities, and ready to go. We could plan to cross the border into Nepal at a place we decide beforehand that is the best, although there really isn’t a lot of choice. And finally, we should also put in the car an appropriate amount of cash for bribes. That’s key.”

“You mean buy a vehicle, prepare it, and then keep it out of sight?” Cal asked.

“Exactly,” Durell responded. “Start it up once in a while but put it into that big garage on the grounds and leave it there.”

Cal shrugged. He looked at each woman in turn to sense their reactions. No one spoke. Cal turned back to Durell. “Can I put you in charge of arranging what you are suggesting?”

“No problem,” Durell said.

“Now let’s turn to our new strategy. Have we gotten any feedback at all?”

“We most certainly have,” Santana said. “I heard back from my contact at CNN in only a couple of hours. They had gone ahead and put the story on the air right after they got it just as I’d hoped. The response was terrific and apparently much more than they had expected, with a flood of e-mail from the word go. It was more than they’ve had on any story other than presidential primary politics for a week. They are dying for more.”

Sitting back, Cal let a slight smile spread across his face. What he was hearing was the first good news their collective efforts had generated for the whole project.

“When I woke up this morning, there was another message from Rosalyn Beekman, my CNN contact. She said that all three networks’ news shows expropriated the story to put together pieces on medical tourism in general. At the end of all three segments, the anchors left the question of the safety of surgery in India very much in question.”

“Terrific,” Cal exclaimed, lightly punching the surface of the table with his fist several times for emphasis. “It’s music to my ears. It also brings up the question of when we should do it again. If CNN is, as Santana says, dying for more material, it seems to me we shouldn’t deny them.”

“I agree,” Durell said. “No question. If the fish are biting, it’s time to fish. And I have to tell you guys, Samira is ready. It hurt her feelings that Veena had been selected to be the first over her. She says she has a patient with some kind of heart history having surgery this morning who would be perfect.”

Cal gave a quick chuckle. “And I was worried we’d have trouble getting the nurses to cooperate, and here they are spontaneously volunteering.”

Turning from Durell, Cal glanced at Petra and Santana in turn. “What about you women? What are your thoughts about doing another? Last night when I found Veena had ODed, I never guessed I’d be asking whether we should do another tonight, but here I am.”

“Rosalyn was emphatic about wanting more material,” Santana said, looking across at Petra. “Since we know the news will be guaranteed to go right on the air, I’d have to vote yes.”

“What’s the chance Samira will have an overreaction like Veena?” Petra asked, staring back at Santana. “We don’t want another suicide attempt.”

“Certainly not Samira,” Durell said. He was emphatic. “She might be Veena’s age, her roommate, and her best friend, but personality-wise, they are two completely different people, which in some respects might be why they are tight, or at least used to be tight. Yesterday afternoon before Veena left to do her thing, she reamed Samira out for sharing her family secrets.”

“Do you agree, Santana?” Petra asked.

“I do,” Santana said. “Samira is very competitive, but she’s not a leader. More important, she’s more self-centered, and not so bottled up.”

“Then I’ll agree to it,” Petra said.

“What about the event being in the same hospital two days in a row?” Durell asked. “Does anybody see that as a problem?”

“That’s a good question,” Petra said.

All eyes switched to Cal. He shrugged. “I don’t think it matters. I was assured it would not be discoverable for a bunch of reasons. Second of all, the hospital authorities and their business backers are going to want to bury these deaths ASAP, excuse the pun, to avoid negative publicity as much as possible. India doesn’t have a medical examiner system, but even if by some astronomically thin chance someone suspected foul play, and for another astronomically thin chance even thought of succinylcholine, the drug would be long gone and any residuals, or whatever they call it, would be explained away as coming from the anesthesia they’d had from surgery.”

“Actually,” Santana said, “two deaths in two days is an even bigger story. I think it helps our cause.”

Nodding his head in agreement, Cal looked at both Petra and Durell. Both nodded. “Wonderful,” Cal said with a smile, placing both hands on the table. “It’s wonderful to have unanimity. Let’s make it happen.” Then, looking at Durell, he added, “Then you’ll give Samira the good news when she returns from work.”

“It will be my pleasure,” Durell responded.

October 15, 2007

Monday, 7:54 p.m.

Los Angeles, USA

(Simultaneous with the Time the Nurses International Morning Meeting Is Breaking Up)

Neil McCulgan put down his pen to rub his eyes. The schedule he’d been working on was still unfinished. The software company whose program was supposed to do the schedule had recently changed hands, and without the original CEO’s keeping everything under control, the software was getting things mixed up, ergo the need for Neil to painstakingly redo it by hand. He looked at his watch. It was already close to eight and he was supposed to have been off at seven, and he was exhausted.

The fact that he’d not managed to get the schedule completed was based on two things. The first was a major pileup on the 405 freeway causing several deaths and a number of very serious injuries, all of whom had begun to arrive in their respective ambulances less than a half-hour after Jennifer Hernandez had childishly stalked out of his office. All that took a number of hours to handle, meaning separating the dead from the living, stabilizing the most seriously injured and sending them up to the OR, and finally dealing appropriately with the less severely hurt by setting and casting broken bones and suturing lacerations.