Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness (18 page)

“But why don’t you know how the patient is doing? Surely the doctors have told you something?”

In that moment, the man looked terribly, terribly sad. Of course he was sad. To visit someone with the commitment that he’d shown. Here day after day. But unable to find out how a patient was faring… well, that would be awful.

“Ah,” the man said. “But I cannot ask. I don’t have the words. I am a simple man.” He shrugged. “I will wait. I will find out.”

“But perhaps… perhaps I could ask for you?”

The man seemed to be considering that offer for a moment. His gaze left her face and skipped around the room as if he were looking for an answer along the far wall, or in the food basket a young woman was unpacking over by the window. Perhaps he found it, because a second later he turned to her and got to his feet in a flowing, graceful movement that reminded her once again of a forest animal.

“No, Khun. Please don’t trouble. I… I don’t even know the man’s name.” He offered her a deep
wai
, which she returned, puzzled. A second later he was hurrying across the waiting room, stepping gingerly around families without losing speed. Again she had this image in her head of a wild animal moving through the forest, sidestepping obstacles with ease that would stop humans in their tracks. It was a strange combination of grace and purpose, she thought, as he disappeared.

Much more slowly, she followed, avoiding the curious looks of the families around her. She doubted that they had overheard the conversation, but they must have been puzzled by the well-dressed city woman talking with the rough-looking man.

She wasn’t disheartened to see that the hall was empty when she reached it. Instead, she smiled to herself. She hadn’t really expected to see his retreating back.

Why not? Because she was a detective, of course.

But what now? What would a detective do?

She stood there for a moment at the waiting room entrance, thinking. A detective, she decided, would look for witnesses.

Turning back to the waiting room, she caught sight of a face that looked familiar, on the far side of the waiting room. It took her a second glimpse of his profile as he was staring down at his mobile phone. Then she recognized the man in the elevator. The man in the stairs. The man with the wife in obstetrics.

But… if his wife was in the obstetrics unit, what was he doing up here on the sixth floor? Before she could ponder that out-of-place fact, the man snapped his phone shut and looked up at her. His eyes widened in surprise and he hustled around the corner and disappeared.

Why were people running away from her? This seemed to be a strange epidemic. This running from the ethicist.

Where was she? Yes. Witnesses.

Ladarat caught the eye of the young woman who had been unpacking sticky rice and fried vegetables from a basket. Now she held a small child on her lap. She was alone, which was not good. So perhaps that meant her husband was in the ICU?

She smiled at Ladarat and seemed to want to talk. Whether she was the best witness wasn’t the issue, Ladarat reminded herself. What was important was that she might have something to offer. One never knows.

So she greeted the woman and asked if she was well.

The woman smiled. A
yim soo
smile, which meant “as well as can be expected.” But she didn’t seem to want to talk about her troubles, and instead asked about the man in the corner.

“Do you know him, Khun?”

Ladarat shook her head. “I met him yesterday—we spoke briefly. I know nothing about him, but he seems… sad.”

And in that moment, she thought his sadness seemed out of proportion to his trouble in getting information. Not out of proportion, really. It’s just that it was a different sort of sadness. But maybe that was just her imagination.

“Do you know him, Khun?”

The woman shook her head. “No, we’ve never spoken. But he’s been here for several days, I think. I just arrived two days ago and he was there. And he is here at the strangest hours. Often early in the morning and late at night. I heard one of the other women here saying they thought perhaps he lives in the hospital.”

“Do you think any of the other families here knows him? Have you seen him talking to anyone?”

“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “Never. He never talks to anyone. What’s even stranger,” she whispered, “is that he’s always in that corner. Always the same place. Never on a chair, but always on the floor.”

“You don’t know anything about who he might be visiting?”

“No, I don’t know.” Then she was thoughtful for a moment. “But he’s been here longer than most of us.” She gestured at the other families in the room. “So whoever he’s visiting has been here for a long time. Though I’ve never seen him go in back.” She pointed at the doors to the ICU. “All of us go back and forth and visit for at least an hour a day, but I’ve never seen him go back there.”

Ladarat thanked the woman, wishing her the best of luck with her troubles. For a moment the woman looked surprised.

“Ah,” she said. “Thank you, but what will happen will happen. It is out of our hands.”

THE
JAI DEE
DETECTIVE

I
t was fortunate indeed that Ladarat came to the ICU bearing good news. Some good news, at least. Because as soon as she walked through the door, she found herself in trouble.

“Khun Ladarat,” the head nurse said, scolding. “Where is your white coat? And your name badge? Where is your name badge?” The head nurse was a sharp-featured, rough-tongued bossy woman even in the best of circumstances, and the impending inspection had made her particularly irascible today.

So Ladarat apologized profusely, trying to catch the attention of Dr. Jainukul, who seemed to be finishing a phone call at the nurses’ station. As the head nurse calmed down, she deigned at least to tell Ladarat that the American was unchanged. Then, as soon as the director hung up the phone, she stalked off to berate some other hapless employee.

The director, at least, was pleased with the news she shared.

“So at least now we know that he is waiting for one of our patients,” he said, sitting down next to Ladarat. The director pulled a stack of charts over to him and began to glance through them, signing the first three without even looking. “Of course we suspected that, but this is good to know for certain.”

“But there is one fact I don’t understand,” Ladarat said. And she told him what the man had said about not knowing the patient’s name.

That caused the director to pause in mid-signature. He even put down his pen. Dr. Jainukul looked surprised at first. Then his eyes widened in confusion.

“How could this man be waiting for a patient whose name he doesn’t know?” He thought about that for a moment. “Perhaps… perhaps you misunderstood him?”

She shook her head. “No, Khun. He was very clear about that. He did not know the patient’s name.”

Dr. Jainukul was still shaking his head, so she was reluctant to give him any more information that would confuse his day. But he had asked her to be a detective, and so she needed to tell him everything she’d learned.

“There is one other thing,” she said. “You see, I think he may be sleeping here in the hospital.”

“He is sleeping in the hospital? But that is very bad. The inspectors will not like that at all if they find him. How do you know this?”

“I don’t, know for certain,” she admitted. “But…”

In truth, she wasn’t sure how much she should tell him. Now her hypothesis sounded like fiction. And the steps she’d taken to find out seemed ridiculous. Still, it was something the director needed to know, wasn’t it?

“Well, yesterday we were talking and he disappeared suddenly. I followed him out to the hallway and he disappeared. I knew he couldn’t have reached the elevator at the end of the hallway in time, so I reasoned that he must have taken the stairs.”

Dr. Jainukul was starting to smile, just a little. Though she couldn’t tell yet whether that smile would be at her expense. But she’d already begun, and it was too late to stop now.

“So later I took the stairs myself. As you know, Khun, we Thais don’t like to take the stairs.”

The director was nodding agreement. “I never take the stairs, it is true. Although perhaps I would lose a few kilos if I did more often.” He smiled and began signing charts again. “But what does this have to do with our mysterious man?”

“Well, I took the stairs all the way down to the basement. I thought that the stairs, and particularly the stairs at the lowest floor, would be unlikely to get much use. It would be a perfect place to hide.”

Now the director was grinning. “Of course. What better place to hide in a country of lazy people than in the stairwell?” He paused. “So you found him there?”

“Not exactly. But I did find a space under the last flight of stairs in the basement where the wax was worn. As if someone had been sleeping there,” she concluded.

“But why has no one discovered him? And why… why was there this place where the wax was worn? Surely the cleaning staff polishes that floor every night.”

It had taken Ladarat a little while to work that out, too, and she was impressed that the director had arrived at that question so quickly. But at least she had an answer.

“You see, all of the cleaning staff are preparing for the inspection. They began the least-trafficked areas two weeks ago and there haven’t been any cleaning staff down there since then, except to sweep up quickly. So you see, no one would find him. And no one would polish the floor after he’d slept on it.”

Dr. Jainukul was nodding, impressed. “So we should send hospital security to find him and remove him?” The director glanced at her stealthily between signatures.

Was he suggesting this course of action? Or was he asking her advice?

He would be tempted to evict the man, certainly. Doing so would solve this problem for him. But she could also tell that the director was a gentle man, with a good heart. He didn’t want to lose face with the inspectors. But neither did he want to hurt this man. Especially now that Ladarat had determined that he was here for a patient. She smiled her uncertainty and waited for the director to come to the right decision. Most people, she knew, came to the right ethical decision on their own.

And when it became obvious that Ladarat wasn’t going to agree, he shrugged. “So we can’t ask security to remove him. No, that would be wrong. But then what can we do? We can’t have the inspectors find him, can we? To have them see him in our waiting room would cause us to lose face, but if they were to find him sleeping in a stairwell…” He shuddered.

“I think that is very unlikely, Khun. He is a country man. Someone used to rising very early. I’m guessing that he is awake and gone by four thirty or five at the latest.” She smiled. “Even the most aggressive inspector will not be searching the hospital basement at five
A.M
.”

The director smiled, too, and she knew that she had won.

“So what should we do?” he asked. “You are the ethicist. What is the right course of action?”

What indeed? She wasn’t sure. But she knew they couldn’t remove the man.

“Perhaps if you were to give him information about the patient he’s waiting for, that would allow him to spend less time here?”

“Yes, but we don’t know which patient.”

“Well, he’s been here for several days…”

The director was nodding. “Yes, I see. So he must be waiting for a patient who has been here for several days.” He paused. “But you know there are thirty-two patients in the ICU right now, and more than half have been here for several days.”

Then Ladarat thought of something else. The man had said “he,” hadn’t he? She was sure of it. She offered this information to the director, who scratched his chin thoughtfully.

“Well, that might help. But as you know, Khun, we get many accident victims, and most are male. Men seem to be much more stupid when it comes to traveling fast on motorcycles. There are only”—he thought for a second—“six women here now. But that will help. Even if we can narrow the possibilities down to a dozen patients, I can begin speaking with our nurses to see if anyone has talked with the man.”

He put the last chart on the pile and smiled. “Now these are all ready for our inspection.”

They said their good-byes, and just as she was leaving, the director stopped her and thanked her for her efforts. “You are truly a
jai dee
.” A good-hearted person.

A week ago, Ladarat would have thought that was the highest compliment anyone might pay her, and she thanked the director for his kindness. But then he surprised her by offering a compliment that pleased her even more.

“And… you are a very good detective.”

The warm glow of Director Jainukul’s compliment carried her the rest of her long day. There was the meeting to review the credentials of their credentialing staff, for instance. Because, of course, those responsible for assessing the merits of physicians needed to demonstrate their own merits. And there was a committee meeting to agree on policies for the use of opioids like morphine, which were necessary for pain, but which could be abused. And, of course, there were policies to review. And more policies. So much work, in fact, that Ladarat had not even availed herself of the food sellers in front of the hospital. One of their most loyal customers, she let them down today, snacking instead on a small portion of mango and sticky rice from the hospital cafeteria.