Robin Cook - Foreign Body

Mr. Benfatti responded by reaching for the nurses’ call button clasped to the edge of his pillow, but Samira was able to yank it out of reach with the hand holding the syringe. Almost immediately, she felt the resistance she’d had against her hand cupped over the man’s mouth melt away. Taking her hand away, Samira noticed a kind of wriggling under the man’s skin, as if suddenly his face had been infiltrated by worms. At the same time, his arms and even his free leg began to briefly and uncontrollably jerk. The next second, the twitching stopped. In its place was a darkening of his skin that was particularly apparent due to the white light from the TV. It had started slowly, then picked up speed until all of Mr. Benfatti’s exposed skin was an ominous dark purple.

Although Samira had purposely avoided looking into the man’s eyes while he’d gone through his rapid death throes, she did now. The lids were only half open and the pupils blank. Backing up toward the door, Samira collided with a chair and grabbed it to keep it from falling over. The last thing she wanted was for someone to appear, questioning a crashing noise. Taking one last look at Benfatti from the doorway, Samira was momentarily hypnotized by the fact that the man’s leg was still rhythmically being mechanically flexed and extended as if he were still alive.

Turning around, Samira fled from the room but then forced herself to slow to a walk by sheer will to keep from attracting attention. Maintaining her eye on the nurses’ station, where she could see all four nurses, Samira made her way to the stairwell. Only when she was inside did she allow herself to breathe, surprised that she’d been holding her breath. She’d been totally unaware.

After picking up the books and turning out the light in the library, Samira descended to the lobby floor. She appreciated that the lobby was empty and appreciated even more that the doormen had gone off duty. Out on the street Samira caught an auto rickshaw, and as they pulled away, she glanced back at the Queen Victoria Hospital. It looked dark, shadowy, and, most important, quiet.

During the ride home, Samira felt progressively better at what she had accomplished, and the fear, anxiety, and indecision she had experienced rapidly faded into the background. As the auto rickshaw reached the bungalow’s driveway, it seemed to her that such problems were mere blips on the radar screen.

“I have to leave you here,” the driver said in Hindi, as he pulled to a halt.

“I don’t want to get out here. Take me up to the door!”

The driver’s eyes nervously flashed in the darkness as he looked back at Samira. He was clearly afraid. “But the owner of such a house will be angry, and he might call the police and the police will demand money.”

“I live here,” Samira snapped, followed by choice Internet-learned expletives. “If you don’t take me, you won’t be paid.”

“I chose not to be paid. The police will demand ten times as much.”

With a few more appropriate words, Samira climbed from the three-wheeled scooter, and without looking back started hiking down the drive. In the background she heard a burst of equivalent profanity before the auto rickshaw noisily powered off into the night. As she walked, Samira mulled over how she was going to describe her experience taking care of the American. It didn’t take her but a moment to decide to leave out the minor concerns and concentrate on the success: Mr. Benfatti had been taken care of. That was the important thing. She surely wasn’t going to complain like Veena had.

Entering the house, she found everyone, all four officers and all eleven other nurses, in the formal living room watching an old DVD called Animal House. The moment she walked into the room, Cal paused the movie. Everyone looked at her expectantly.

“Well?” Cal questioned. Samira was enjoying teasing the group. She’d taken an apple and sat down as if to watch the movie without providing a report.

“Well what?” Samira questioned, extending the ploy.

“Don’t make us beg!” Durell threatened.

“Oh, you must mean what happened to Mr. Benfatti.”

“Samira,” Durell playfully warned.

“Everything went fine, exactly as you all suggested it would, but then again, I didn’t expect anything different.”

“You weren’t scared?” Raj asked. “Veena said she was scared.” Raj was the only male nurse. Despite his bodybuilder appearance, his voice was soft, almost feminine.

“Not in the slightest,” Samira said, although while she spoke she remembered how she’d felt when Benfatti was gripping her arm hard enough to hinder the blood flow.

“Raj has volunteered for tomorrow night,” Cal explained. “He’s got a perfect patient scheduled for surgery in the morning.”

Samira turned to him. He was a handsome man. In the evenings he wore his tie shirts a size too small to emphasize his impressive physique. “Don’t worry. You’ll do fine,” Samira assured him. “The succinylcholine works literally in seconds.”

“Veena said her patient’s face twitched all over the place,” Raj commented with a concerned expression. “She said it was horrid.”

“There were some fasciculations, but they were over practically before they began.”

“Veena said her patient turned purple.”

“That did happen, but you shouldn’t be standing around admiring your handiwork.”

Some of the nurses laughed. Cal, Petra, and Santana stayed serious.

“What about Benfatti’s computerized medical record?” Santana asked. Since Samira hadn’t yet mentioned it, Santana was afraid she’d forgotten. She needed the history to make the story more personal for TV.

By leaning back against the couch and straightening her body out, Samira was able to reach into her pocket and pull out the USB storage device, similar to the one Veena had provided Cal with the evening before. She then flipped it in Santana’s direction.

Santana snatched the storage device out of the air like a hockey goalie, hefted it as if she could tell whether or not it contained the data, then stood up. “I want to get this story filed with CNN. I’ve already given them a teaser about it, and they are waiting anxiously. My contact assures me it’s going right out on the air.” While the people who had been sitting next to her on the couch raised their legs, Santana worked her way from behind the coffee table and started for her office.

“I do have one suggestion,” Samira offered after Santana had departed. “I think we should get our own succinylcholine. Sneaking into the OR is the weakest link in the plan. It’s the only place in the hospital where we don’t belong, and if any of us were to be discovered, there would be no way for us to explain.”

“How easy would it be for us to get the drug?” Durell asked.

“With money, it’s easy to get any drug in India,” Samira said.

“It sounds like a no-brainer to me,” Petra said to Cal.

Cal nodded in agreement and looked over at Durell. “See what you can do!”

“No problem,” Durell said.

Cal couldn’t have been more pleased. The new strategy was working, and everyone was on board, even offering suggestions. He couldn’t help thinking that starting the scheme with Veena had been brilliant, despite the suicide scare. Just a few days before, he’d been afraid to talk with Raymond Housman, but now Cal couldn’t wait. Nurses International was beginning to pay off, which he couldn’t have been more pleased about, even if it wasn’t in the way he’d expected. But who cared, Cal thought. It was the results that counted, not the method.

“Hey, who wants to see more of the movie?” Cal called out, waving the remote above his head.