Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness (14 page)

But she was surprised when she rounded the corner. She stood at the end of the long corridor, not ready to believe what she was seeing, or not seeing. The man had disappeared. There was an elderly couple with a young woman, and a young man on crutches with a nurse at his side, practicing walking. But the man was gone.

Where could he have disappeared to? He couldn’t have taken the elevator—there was no way he could have reached the far end of the hallway that quickly. Could he? Most certainly not.

And the rooms along the hallway were all for doctors. Their doors were closed because they were out on rounds. Perhaps he could have slipped into an office, but why? She had not been chasing him, and he had no reason to be frightened.

This was indeed mysterious. Ladarat supposed his disappearance should add to her sense of failure. Not only had she been unable to learn why he was here, but now she didn’t even know where he went.

And yet, in a strange way, she felt like she had succeeded. She had determined, for instance, that he was a farmer or a laborer. He was either from around Mae Hong Son or at least had lived there once. And she knew—or thought she knew—that he was very sad.

It was true that she wasn’t much closer to solving the mystery of the strange man in the waiting room, but she was more confident now. She had, in fact, had a conversation with the man. They had talked, which was more than anyone else had been able to do, wasn’t it? It was.

And perhaps she was being too hard on herself. Perhaps she would have a second chance to speak with him.

She could now see how that conversation might unfold. She would greet him, and he would greet her. She would stare out the window. And then she would say something about her home village.

That would be all. She would simply say how lovely it was at the end of the monsoon, as the weather began to cool. How the forests were still green, and how the Siam tulips would bloom abundantly in the forest clearings. She would say something about that, and then she would be patient. Eventually, she was certain, he would talk with her.

You couldn’t rush things like this. You couldn’t behave like an American. You had to have patience.

Unaccountably cheerful, she stood up. She should check on Mr. Fuller, since she was here. And then she had some unfinished business in the medical records department.

THE STRANGE EPIDEMIC OF FAIR SKIN

B
ut Ladarat’s cheerfulness after the encounter with the mysterious man faded almost immediately as the large automatic doors swung open to admit her to the ICU. The unit was unaccountably quiet. The doctors must be in a conference, and there were only a couple of nurses at the nurses’ station, one of whom greeted her with a
wai
as she approached.

It was… Kanchana? Yes, Kanchana. Plain-looking and dependably friendly, she was a graduate of Chiang Mai University. In the lower half of the class. Yet only a few years out of nursing school, she was steady and reliable. Too bad her parents had saddled her with such a name.
Kanchana
meant “golden,” and surely that was an impossible name to live up to. Ladarat was grateful that her name was one of those Thai names that didn’t mean anything, so there were no lofty expectations of her.

Yet Kanchana tried so hard. Both in her studies and in her appearance. Her skin—eeeeyyy! It was an unhealthy, unnatural white. This whitening fad among young women was mystifying.

You want to put some chemical on your face that makes you look like you’re dying of some horrible illness? How is that appealing to a man? Do you think a man will say, “Oh yes, I want that one. The woman who is terminally ill—that is the woman for me.”

And this whitening
was
a disease of sorts. It had been infecting her nursing students, more every semester. And now some young nurses like Kanchana. It was truly an epidemic.

“You are here to see the American, Khun?” Kanchana asked.

“Yes, Khun.” Ladarat paused. “I suppose there has been no change?”

“No,” the girl said. She looked at a chart on the counter just to her left. “His vital signs are stable, but he is still on the ventilator, and…”

“And he hasn’t begun to wake up?” Ladarat finished the sentence for her.

“No, he hasn’t.” She looked around carefully, as if there could be other Americans lurking in the bandage cabinet or behind the rack of intravenous supplies. “And Dr. Jainukul is very worried. He says there is nothing we can do.”

Hmm. That was bad. This young nurse needed to be careful about language.

“There is always
something
we can do,” she told Kanchana gently. “It’s just a question of what is possible. Perhaps we cannot cure him. But we can maintain him on the ventilator for the short term. And of course we can ensure that he is not suffering.”

Kanchana nodded uncertainly. But what Ladarat said was true. As Professor Dalrymple points out, one must never say that there was nothing that one can do. One can always do something.

“It’s just a bad phrase to use,” she explained gently, “because it suggests there’s nothing that we can do to help.”

“Oh, but there is much that we can do to help, Khun. And we are. We are keeping him comfortable and we have him on a breathing machine, and medicine that is controlling the swelling in his brain…” She paused. “Ah, I see. You mean we need to be sure to tell them what we can do, and what we
are
doing?”

“Exactly so,” Ladarat said. “You must be honest, of course. But honesty requires telling patients and families about what you can do as well as what you can’t.”

She left Kanchana thinking about that bit of advice. And Ladarat found herself thinking about it, too, as she walked back to the elevator. It was wise counsel, she knew, but in the wrong hands it could be a little white lie. It could be misused, for instance, to give the wrong impression of what was possible. A particular risk in Thailand, she thought, where the temptation was great to relieve and assuage and calm. If a white lie could accomplish that, well…

Not for the first time she found herself thinking about how patients and families have hopes for results that are sometimes not realistic. Thais were not immune, of course. Especially government officials, who thought that doctors and nurses should be able to do anything. But Thais, in general, were much less susceptible to this disease of optimism than the Americans. She shook her head. The Fuller family was going to have difficulties.

Passing through the waiting room and into the hallway that led to the elevator, a small sign caught her eye. Funny she’d never noticed it before. Suddenly she knew where the mystery man had disappeared to. And she suspected she knew where he might be hiding when he wasn’t in the waiting room.

She’d test her hypothesis later, but for now she heaved a sigh of relief. That was one less thing she had to worry about. At least her mystery man was just a man, and not some disappearing ghost. And even better, now she knew where to find him.

ANOTHER ASPIRING DETECTIVE

A
hh, Khun. You are back so soon.”

If Panit Booniliang was delighted by her untimely reappearance in his domain, he was doing an excellent job of concealing his enthusiasm. He was smiling, of course. But he looked worried.

As indeed he should. It was safe to say that the poor man had good reason to be worried whenever Ladarat appeared. With the inspection close at hand, he didn’t want to find new instances of poor documentation. Not that it was his fault, of course. He couldn’t control what those doctors upstairs did. But still, these requests would come to him and he would be… tainted.

“Don’t worry, Khun. I don’t need you to find more charts,” she hastened to reassure him. “I had… an idea. I wanted to ask you whether it would be possible.”

“An idea?” Panit put down the short stack of charts he was holding. Then, thinking better of it, he picked them up again. “What sort of… idea?”

“Well,” she said slowly, “you remember the death of the man I asked you about yesterday?”

The medical records clerk nodded warily, and his right hand floated up and raced through his unruly hair like an animal that had escaped its cage.

“Well, you see, I’m worried that this man’s death might not be as straightforward as it seems.”

He looked at her curiously, and then set the charts down very carefully onto another pile. Then he paused to square off the edges with two palms.

How much should she tell him? She would need to pique his interest, certainly. He would not be willing to help otherwise. She needed enough curiosity to entice him. Especially with the inspection coming. He would not tear his attention away from his stacks of charts unless she gave him a reason that was both interesting and compelling. So in a split second, and without planning, she decided to tell him the truth.

“I have some evidence that there may have been… foul play involved.” She paused. “In that man’s death.”

Now Panit was looking at her with slack-jawed amazement. But his next question surprised her.

“So you are like… a detective?”

This is the question you ask someone who tells you that a patient may have been murdered? You quiz them about their career and job responsibilities?

“No, Khun. I’m hardly a detective. I am just a nurse.” Khun Tippawan had seen to that.

“But it’s as a nurse, and as a nurse ethicist,” she clarified, “that I was asked to look into this matter.”

“Asked? By whom?”

But she shook her head. Some parts of this story were probably better omitted. She didn’t want to mention the good detective, and besides, she didn’t want to make this seem as though it were an official police inquiry. But then what should she say?

“When I heard about this man’s death, you see, I was not quite honest with you.” She glanced at Panit and found, strangely enough, that he did not look particularly surprised by this admission. Emboldened, she pressed on.

“Something struck me as familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was. Then it came to me last night: A colleague at another hospital told me of a story of a woman who had dropped her husband off in the emergency room in the same condition a year ago.”

“When you say ‘the same condition,’ Khun Ladarat, you mean to say…”

“I mean to say he was dead. Yes. The woman dropped off a man who was dead. They were very suspicious about this behavior, because she did not seem grief-stricken. She seemed very… matter of fact.”

“So did they involve the police?”

“There was no evidence, apparently. My friend looked for this woman but couldn’t find her. But when I saw this case, I thought…”

“Our murderer is back.” He looked positively excited by the news that there was a killer in their midst. The wrinkles on his forehead danced.

“So you want to know if there have been other instances like this at our hospital or at other hospitals? I see, I see.” Now he was rubbing his hands together.

But she was two steps behind him.

“Other hospitals? But how can you—”

“Oh, I have friends. We all know each other. At least at the bigger hospitals. Public, private. Makes no difference. We all have to work together when patients are transferred, so we know each other well. In fact, we have a cricket league we play in together.”

Who would have known?

“I’ll ask. People don’t think that we pay attention to what’s in these charts, but I assure you, Khun, that we most certainly do. We mark the stranger cases. We’re… alert. If there’s a murderer out there, we’ll find her.”

He seemed positively gleeful. Could it be that everyone wants to be a detective? Perhaps she was not the only aspiring detective in Sriphat Hospital. Perhaps they could form a detectives’ club. With a cricket league.

Ladarat smiled and thanked the medical records clerk. This was good. He seemed as though he needed a distraction from the impending inspection. And this task should be enough of a distraction for him.

A few minutes later, she stood waiting by the elevator. And waiting. And waiting.

Not for the first time, Ladarat was struck by Thai dependence on elevators. Then she had a thought. She turned around and made her way back down the hallway, pushing open the door to the stairwell. It led down several more flights to the subbasement, she knew. And all the way up to the sixth floor. But she had only two flights to go up. She could do this.