Snapshot (10 page)

I finished writing, reinserted paper into envelope, shifted my weight, and smiled, self-importantly and pointedly, at Barbara, the receptionist. She returned my stare blankly and I wondered if she'd bothered to inform Muir of my arrival.

The exotic black woman fetched noontime sandwiches for herself and her colleague. She didn't ask if I was hungry.

By one o'clock I was starving, but I didn't want to give up my seat, my silent battle of wills with the receptionist.

One o'clock ticked slowly into two o'clock. I removed my straw hat; the wig was making my scalp sweat. Waiting-room magazines revealed that seafood was potentially hazardous, while beef would definitely kill you—provided the ozone layer held out for another twenty years. Sexual harassment was moving out of the office and into the courtroom, and three out of four movies featured slice-and-dice killers.

I started getting the waiting-room willies. Anytime I'm stuck in a room smelling of antiseptic, I flash back to my father's death. It wasn't like I saw him every day; he and my mom had long since separated. But viewing him so shrunken, so different from his larger-than-life cop self, so diminished by tubes and drains and cotton hospital johnnies … The memory still makes me want to snatch cigarettes out of the mouths of teenagers.

The couple disappeared down the hallway shortly after the mom with eight-year-old departed. I waited. More patients were called. More arrived to occupy their vacant chairs.

I kept an eye on my receptionist. Carlotta Carlyle was steaming under the collar, but that was unimportant. How would Sandra Everett handle the situation?

Sandra, I decided, had two kids, was recently divorced. Determined to make a career in journalism, her old college major, she was genuinely puzzled that there weren't more opportunities out there for ladies who'd taken ten years off to raise the kids. The kind of woman who prefaced her sentences with “Well, I'm not a feminist, but—” Maybe a touch of the South in her background. A woman taught to value niceness over just about anything else.

A woman who might use her volunteer work to gather quotes from the wives of community leaders, but who'd never
ever
print anything scandalous.

I fingered my synthetic blond curls. Time for a reminder, I thought. A gentle reminder.

I waited until the black woman was handling the desk alone.

“Has Dr. Muir given you any idea when I might have a few minutes?” I asked.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I just don't know.”

“Could you give him a buzz and find out?”

“Not if I want to keep my job.”

“Like that?”

“Like that.” She gave me a rueful grin that changed as she looked over my shoulder. She bent immediately to her work and I assumed my dragon lady had returned. Instead I heard a man's voice.

“Savannah,” he said to the black woman, “you guarding the desk all by yourself? Think you can manage that?”

SAVANNAH
was printed plain as day on her badge. But it was evident from his tone that he knew her.

“Barbara will be right back,” she said with a faint edge to her voice.

“You ought to do fine,” he said coolly. “Ring Jerome and tell him I'll be in his office.”

“He's, uh, tied up, Dr. Renzel,” Savannah said.

“Where's Barbara?”

“Oh, Dr. Renzel. I didn't see you come in!” The middle-aged receptionist rushed up, smiling and ineffectually patting her hairdo.

“Hey,” the doctor said, his deep voice warming with her arrival, “you look great. I see they've got you breaking in another one. You ought to earn extra as chief trainer.”

Barbara's plain round face turned blotchy with pleasure. She chuckled while Savannah stretched her lips in a meaningless parody of a smile.

“I'll be waiting in his honor's office. You let him know, okay, Barbara?”

“Well, he is with a patient.” She smiled indulgently, negating any reproof.

“What else is new? I've got five minutes.” With a broad wink, the man sailed through. Fortyish, medium height, a narrow bony face with knife-blade cheekbones. Thick glasses. He didn't quite live up to his pleasing baritone.

Barbara immediately pressed a button on her phone console.

“While Dr. Muir's on the line,” I urged, “please remind him that I'm waiting.”

She mentioned only Dr. Renzel, not Sandra Everett, before hanging up.

I glanced at the black woman. She lifted her lovely eyebrows in a weary gesture of resignation. Savannah what? I wondered. A dissatisfied employee can be an information gold mine.

My scalp itched under my wig. “Where's the ladies' room?” I inquired.

Barbara began a complicated string of instructions that would have taken me downstairs through the lobby and halfway to the Himalayas.

“There must be one for the patients,” I murmured softly when her phone rang, commanding her attention. “I'll only be a minute.”

She didn't see me dodge down the narrow opening into which Renzel and the patients had disappeared. The corridor opened into a chamber decorated with gilt-framed diplomas. The name
Muir
appeared on no less than four. I studied his degrees, reading the parts that weren't in Latin. Harvard. Johns Hopkins. Yale. University of Michigan. Not exactly offshore diploma mills.

I figured Sandra Everett had a fifteen-minute head start before the reception witch came hunting, and the searching-for-a-bathroom ploy is as tried and true as any, so I moseyed down the door-lined hallway.

It irked me that this Dr. Renzel had crashed the secretarial barricades so easily. Maybe I should have posed as a doctor. Sure. Easy. I'd just need to cram for eight years to carry off the impersonation.

There was an open doorway five feet down the corridor. I stepped quickly inside and shut the door behind me.

It was a small examining room, a cot against one wall, a wooden step stool leading up to it. The walls were painted, not papered. No trace of the blue-and-white lattice design Emily Woodrow had described. A scale dominated one corner. A blood-pressure cuff was secured to the wall over the cot. No trace of an oxygen mask.

I wondered where the chemotherapy rooms were located, whether they were equipped, like operating rooms, with wall outlets for oxygen and air. Were oxygen masks wall-mounted as well? I twisted the doorknob slowly, peered out into the empty corridor, and began a search for floral wallpaper. Hospitals rarely paper individual rooms; possibly all the chemo rooms were similarly decorated.

The examining-room doors featured small ledges on which to balance patients' file folders. Rooms without ledges seemed to be offices. None bore so much as a stenciled name or number.

I passed a metal canister labeled
MEDICAL WASTE
in bright red letters. It had a domed top, a
WARNING!
label on each of its four sides. A nearby philodendron plant needed watering. A flushing sound came from behind a wooden door marked
W.C.

A woman passed and nodded. A child cried and a male voice murmured soothingly.

I heard voices issuing from a room with no door ledge. One was the mellow baritone of Dr. Renzel. I assumed the lower, gruffer voice belonged to Jerome Muir.

Sandra Everett discovered that her panty hose were slipping. She bent to straighten them. I took advantage of her strategic location to eavesdrop.

At first it sounded like Renzel was reciting letters. I shifted closer and got sentences. “One Florida place has been taken over three times in six months. Started with Humana and then went to SurgiCare and then CritiCare. Drove the billing department nuts.”

I heard footsteps and swiveled to find the dragon lady in hot pursuit.

“Mrs. Everett,” she said firmly, “the restrooms in this area are reserved for patients only. You'll have to go back to the lobby.”

Right outside Muir's door seemed as good a place as any to dig in my heels. I made sure my voice was loud enough to penetrate wood.

“Really,” I said. “Have you any idea how the ladies of the Silver Crescent might react if I can't make our presentation to Dr. Muir personally? Today? How can we print up the invitations? How can we set the level of contributions? I understand that he's a busy man, but good news is not to be ignored. He is certainly not the only medical man worthy of this honor—”

I could have continued, but I didn't have to. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges.

12

Dr. Renzel appeared, staring at me quizzically. “I was just leaving, Barbara,” he said. “Hope I haven't made a hash of your schedule.”

“What seems to be the problem?” I heard a gruff voice demand from within.

I sidestepped both Barbara and Renzel, stuck my foot in the door.

“A minute of your time, Dr. Muir,” I said.

The gruffness was age, I realized. Much older than his lobby portrait, he sat in a high-backed leather throne behind a slab of mahogany and inclined his head a fraction of an inch in my direction. I felt almost as if I'd been granted a blessing. His crisp white shirt and red speckled bow tie were hardly clerical garb, but I was vividly reminded of an old priest my father, a much-lapsed Catholic, had revered. Jerome Muir's hair had turned beautifully white, without a trace of yellow; his moustache and bushy sideburns were elegant.

“The lady from that charity,” Barbara murmured in a low voice, as if she thought I might be hard of hearing. “I'm still checking on her. The newspaper …”

The number on my
Suffolk News
business card is hooked into the Green & White Cab Company's fancy phone system, courtesy of Sam Gianelli. It's not just an unlisted number; it's unpublished and pretty close to untraceable. Sam's picked up a few tricks from his mobster dad over the years. The efficient Barbara would have reached an answering machine: “All lines are currently busy. Please hold.”

“Checking!” I echoed indignantly. “Surely, Dr. Muir, you've heard of the Silver Crescent. We're currently seeking affiliation with the Eastern Star.”

“Barbara, perhaps I'd better handle this directly.” Muir's broad face was slightly florid and crisscrossed with a fine web of lines. His piercing blue eyes rarely blinked. He focused his full attention on me, and it seemed like a gift seldom bestowed, something the speaker needed to earn.

Renzel's casual, “Can I stay?” made it sound as if there were going to be a movie screening, with popcorn and Coke.

I said, “The membership gave me very specific instructions. They wanted me to do it just so.”

Renzel said good-naturedly, “Don't let me stop you.”

Barbara turned on her sensible heel and departed without a word.

“You've upset her,” Renzel said. I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or Muir. Talking about me or Barbara.

“Oh, Jerome, I almost forgot,” Renzel went on. “Have you decided on the Portugal conference?”

While the two doctors debated the merits of meeting with colleagues in Lisbon, I inspected the office. Matching bookcases lined two walls. A marble-topped table held an ornate Chinese vase. A collection of creamy, spiraled shells filled two shelves of the right-hand bookcase. A full-rigged frigate in a bottle sailed another. Two oil paintings looked like the real thing, but who knows, what with Polaroid reproductions? Muir had covered the wall behind his desk with framed photographs. Student groups from college days, gowned graduation photos, Muir standing beside a man in flowing Arabian robes, Muir smiling while he clapped a well-known congressman on the back.

A power wall.

In most of the photos he wore a polka-dot bow tie. As he apparently did in real life.

“I'll consider it,” Muir said firmly. “Decision by Wednesday. Now, young lady, please sit down.” Muir nodded me into a plush blue chair. “I do hope Barbara hasn't made your life difficult. She's extremely protective of my time.”

I sat.

“I'm sorry if we seem to have behaved rudely,” he continued, “but we were under the impression that you were a reporter. We have strict procedures—”

He'd shifted to the royal
we
, but it didn't seem ludicrous. Didn't even seem inappropriate.

“I'm not here on a story.” I withdrew the envelope from my handbag, unfolded my precious sheet of paper. “May I read?”

“Please.” Muir carefully stifled a yawn so that only the edges of his nostrils fluttered. I wished I'd spent more time gazing at the painting in the lobby. He must have been incredibly handsome.

My speech was brief, but I spluttered a little and made several mistakes, to make it seem as if I hadn't just written it in the waiting room, as if I were nervous at being in the presence of JHHI's Chief of Staff and CEO.

To my surprise, I was nervous. If I'd known Muir was going to be like this, I thought, I'd have taken more time composing my speech.

“Whereas the ladies of the North Shore Chapter of the Silver Crescent,” I intoned, “select each year a person of good character and great achievement, and whereas Dr. Jerome Muir has been duly nominated and considered for this honor, we, the undersigned, hereby name him Silver Crescent Man of the Year with all the honors and benefits traditionally accorded thereunto.”

And Mumbo Jumbo, Alakazam, I silently added.

“Charitable donations, bequests, and volunteerism,” Muir said after a long pause, “are the life-blood of the community hospital. On behalf of this institution, and myself, I thank you.” Another benediction conferred.

“The presentation copy got delayed at the printers,” I offered apologetically. “But we were afraid to wait any longer. The membership has asked me to formally congratulate you on your impressive contributions to the medical well-being of New England, and to request that you honor them by appearing as this year's Silver Crescent Lecturer at our November twenty-fifth banquet. We feel that Thanksgiving is the true start of the giving season, and if you'd like us to direct our fund-raising toward a specific hospital project, we could certainly accommodate any request.”