Robin Cook - Foreign Body

As it was well past midnight, the bar crowd had thinned. There was some kind of live music, but the group was on a break. Jennifer and Neil found a table as far from the music as possible, around a bend and away from the main seating area. A waitress appeared as soon as they sat down. They ordered a round of King-fishers for everyone and settled back into overstuffed chairs.

“This is the first time I’ve felt relaxed all day,” Jennifer said. “I even may be a little hungry.”

“I like your friends,” Neil said. He thought briefly about confessing how he had mistakenly shared Jennifer’s secret with Laurie, but then chickened out. After the stress of the day, he was afraid of what it might do to her mental state. The problem was, he didn’t want it coming from anyone other than him if she were to be told, but he felt he could trust Laurie. Neil was confident he’d never do anything to make Laurie feel she had to tell.

“I don’t know Jack very well, but since Laurie thinks he’s terrific, he must be.”

The waitress brought the beers.

“Do you have any prepared finger food?” Jennifer asked.

“We do, and I can bring you a nice selection.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jennifer had a large platter of exotic appetizers, and a few minutes after that Laurie and Jack joined them. Jack took a few sips and sat back. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve all teased me enough about the scary episode. Let’s hear it.”

“Let me tell it,” Laurie said. “Then, if I have something wrong or a misconception, you can correct me. I want to be sure I understand exactly what happened.”

Jennifer and Neil both motioned for her to go ahead.

Laurie then told the Old Delhi bazaar episode, requiring only a few explanations and corrections from Jennifer and Neil. When Laurie finished, she looked at the young couple for any final additions.

“That’s it,” Jennifer said, nodding. “Well done.”

“And you didn’t go to the police?” Jack asked.

Jennifer nodded. “Neil, who’s been here before, to a medical meeting, pretty much talked me out of it.”

“The local police are often corrupt,” Neil explained. “And besides, something I did not mention to you today, Jennifer, and another reason I didn’t want you going back to talk to the police, is that I think they are somehow actively involved.”

“How so?” Jennifer asked. She was taken aback by the idea.

“I can’t imagine it was by chance the plainclothes policeman was behind you. It’s too much of a coincidence. My sense is that he was either following you or following the victim. If I had to guess, I’d put my money on you.”

“Really?” Jennifer intoned. “If that were the case, then I’d be willing to bet the policeman was following us when we were leaving.”

“Who knows. The point is that the police might not be innocent bystanders in all this, which isn’t reassuring, since, as I said, corruption is not unknown.”

“Well,” Jack said. “A threat to Jennifer’s life certainly does change the complexion of her granny’s case and what we are going to have to do.”

“You think the threat is related?” Laurie asked.

“You have to assume so,” Jack said, “and, as Neil says, a threat that involves possibly corrupt police is very disturbing.”

“Let me tell you the main thing that has made me suspicious about this whole situation,” Jennifer said. “This threat, or whatever it was today, is just the icing on the cake. What really caught my attention, not only with Granny but with the other two deaths as well, is the disconnect between the time of the victims’ deaths as reported on their death certificates and the time that the death was a centerpiece of a CNN segment about medical tourism. Take Granny! I saw the piece on television at approximately seven-forty-five in the morning in L.A., which is about eight-fifteen the same night here in India. When I got to see the death certificate, I found out it said she died at ten-thirty-five, two hours and twenty minutes later.”

“The death certificate is just the time a doctor declares the person dead,” Laurie said. “It doesn’t aspire to be the actual time the person died.”

“I understand that,” Jennifer said. “But think about it. It’s a two-hour, twenty-minute separation, but you have to add to that the time for someone to put the story together, call CNN, and report it. Also, you have to add the time it takes CNN to do whatever authentication they are going to do, write the story, and then schedule it. We’re talking about a lot of time. In fact, I’d probably guess more like two hours.”

“I see her point,” Jack said. “Did this happen with the other two deaths as well?”

“Exactly the same with the second one, Benfatti. The earliest I had it being on TV in New York was eleven a.m., which is eight-thirty p.m. in India. The time on the death certificate is ten-thirty-one p.m. Again, that’s two hours’ difference. It almost seems like someone is reporting these deaths to CNN before they even happened. On top of that, consider the similar time frames. Could that be a coincidence, or something else?”

“What about the third death?” Laurie asked.

“The third death was somewhat different than the other two, and the reason why was, the victim wasn’t discovered essentially cold and blue like the first two. But in other ways the same, including the time frame. The third patient was discovered still alive by his surgeon, and a full resuscitation was attempted that unfortunately was not successful. I happened to catch the CNN segment a little after nine p.m., and the anchors reported that the death had been sometime earlier. This afternoon I talked to the wife. The death certificate has nine-thirty-one p.m.”

“It does seem as if someone has been tipping off CNN way before anyone else seems to even know about the deaths, especially on the first two cases,” Jack said. “Now, that’s odd.”

“All three of us — myself, Lucinda Benfatti, and Rita Lucas — learned of our loved ones’ death from CNN after the network had known about it long enough to make it into a story and schedule it to be on the air and seemingly before the hospital knew about it. If it hadn’t been for this very strange timeline situation, I might have already had my granny’s body treated. But as it is, I cannot help but think these deaths are not natural. They’re purposeful. Someone is doing this and then is very eager to proclaim it around the world.”

When Jennifer stopped speaking, no one spoke for several minutes.

“I’m afraid to have to agree with Jennifer,” Laurie said, breaking the silence. “It’s starting to sound to me like an Indian version of an angel of death. We’ve had a few of those in the U.S.: healthcare workers who go on a murdering spree. This has to be an inside job. But usually the victims have some consistent association with one another. From what you’ve said, that doesn’t appear to be the case here.”

“That’s right,” Jennifer said. “They range in age from Granny at sixty-four down to David Lucas, who was in his forties. Although two were at the same hospital, the third was at another institution. Two were orthopedic procedures, the third was obesity surgery. The only constant is that they are all Americans.”

“It does seem that the time of death is approximately the same,” Laurie added. “And presumably the mechanism, with slight individual variations.”

“Is there any relationship between the two hospitals?” Jack asked.

“They are both the same kind of hospital,” Jennifer said. “There are essentially two types of hospitals in India: the run-down public hospitals and these new, impressively equipped private hospitals that are being built for the medical tourism industry and secondarily for the newly emergent Indian middle class.”