without maps, without compass, only instinct and passion to guide him. Nesha. His name was like the sound water made splashing over stones. Her head swam with his heat, with the tautness of his body arched against hers, the firm round muscles of his shoulders and thighs. His lips searched her breasts, her belly. She felt his bewilderment become hunger and she rejoiced in her victory over death. Hers as well as his. She rejoiced in the fever of her skin that burned where his hand touched. They made love in the hazy dark, the light of the street lamp splitting the night.
chapter thirty
Saturday, April 7, 1979
Why is it so cold? Isn’t it spring? Why am I shivering under the cover, a duvet filled with enough silky down to clothe a flock of geese? Rebecca opened one eye and became disoriented. There was no duvet, there were no bedclothes, indeed there was no bed. She was lying stark naked under the afghan she usually kept folded on the den sofa. A thin light filtered into the room. Dawn. The highlights of last night played out before her eyes: Nesha’s muscular body, his mouth sweetly pressing.... She craned her neck, still squinting from the light, to peer up at the other side of the sectional. Empty. Flown the coop. A one-nighter. He seemed more reliable than that. She looked over at the coffee table. There was a note.
Her arm reached out through the cold air. “Sorry to run. Call you later.” He must’ve taken down her number from one of her phones.
She wrapped the afghan around herself and started upstairs. No, check the front door first. He couldn’t have locked the deadbolt without a key. She hobbled down the hall to the door and clicked the deadbolt down. How long had he been gone? One hour? Two? The killer had missed his chance. Eyes screwed up against the incipient light, she hiked upstairs to bed and set her alarm for 8:45. Every new sound roused her as she drifted in a shallow sleep. The alarm woke her with a start. Exhausted, but awake. She had scheduled two hours of patients this morning, starting at ten.
After quickly showering, she pulled on a pair of beige linen trousers and a loose cotton sweater. She scrunched up her damp hair in her fingers, squeezing the curls into place. A bit of foundation on her skin, a bit of mascara, her cotton spring jacket, and she was out the door.
She drove down Avenue Road until it became Queen’s Park, then all the way down to College Street. Traffic was light Saturday morning and allowed her the opportunity of mentally reliving last night’s lovemaking. She was ashamed she had enjoyed it so much. Sorry to run. Call you later. Maybe Nesha hadn’t felt the same.
She parked in the back lot beside Iris’ Buick, the only car there since Lila Arons didn’t work on Saturdays. She unlocked the back door of the building and stepped in. Approaching the staircase that led to her office she knew something was wrong — the door was ajar. She stopped cold half way up, listening for every sound. Iris never left the door open. What if he were up there? She listened. Nothing but the sound of her own heart. Iris. Rebecca ran the rest of the way until a few steps before the top, when her eyes were level with the office floor. All she could see was Iris’ blonde head on the carpet.
“Oh, God,” Rebecca whispered. Iris’ large legs stretched out below her skirt, which bunched around her thighs. She lay face down on the grey carpet.
“Oh, God,” Rebecca murmured at the blood on the coiffed blonde hair. Please be alright, she thought, her stomach lurching in her mouth. She thought of David, who had died despite her; she thought of her medical degree on the wall, a blind piece of parchment that guaranteed nothing, especially not the safety of loved ones.
Do something, she screamed at her paralyzed body. What was the order? Think! Breathing, Bleeding, Brain, Bladder, Bone. It would all come back automatically if she could only lose the panic. She knew what to do; she just had to do it. She forced herself to move, almost watched from a distance as that other Rebecca rolled Iris gently onto her side and listened for her breathing. She brought her face close to Iris’ and watched her chest: slight but steady movement. Rebecca smiled. Okay, she thought. Okay. The pulse at her neck was weak but rapid. She lifted Iris’ eyelids: her pupils responded to light. Good. Iris’ hands were cold. She was in shock.
She ran to a small cabinet for gauze and pads. Crouching over Iris she applied pressure to the back of her head with a pad, wrapping long pieces of gauze around to keep it tight. That was when she noticed the wooden stool lying on its side behind her. It was kept in one of the examining rooms for her to sit on when she spoke to patients. It could have landed a crushing blow. Taking a closer look at one side, she could see blood on the wooden seat. She ran to one of the examining rooms for a blood pressure cuff and a scalpel.
“Sorry, Iris,” she murmured under her breath and carefully pushed the scalpel through the sleeve of Iris’ tailored jacket. She tore off the heavier fabric, then the silk of the blouse. Wrapping the blood pressure cuff around Iris’ upper arm, she listened for her pulse through the stethoscope. Too low. She found a blanket to cover her with, then called 911. It would probably take them ten minutes to respond to the call.
Meanwhile she went to her emergency supplies and found a prepackaged intravenous preparation that would combat shock. Pumping a dextrose solution through her constricted blood vessels would increase volume, keep the network going. It was so simple, yet so essential. Such a little thing. She found Iris’ vein and injected the syringe into her arm. Since she had no IV stand, Rebecca had to hold the bag of liquid above Iris until the paramedics came.
What had he wanted, she thought, looking around. There were files on the counter; had Iris taken those out? Or was he already here, looking for whatever, when Iris arrived? It was Goldie’s file, she thought with a start. Goldie had told her about a man who had followed her. No names had been mentioned, but he didn’t know that. He was looking for Rebecca’s notes to see if Goldie had given him away. How could he know that she hadn’t put Goldie’s file back after Wanless had returned it? It was still in her house.
She sat down on the floor and brought her face close to Iris’. The larger woman’s breathing was shallow and irregular, her colour grey. Rebecca knew that the brain could survive interruption of its blood supply for only a few minutes. A neuron, once destroyed, was lost forever. How much damage had there been? Was Iris going to be Iris when she awoke? If she awoke?
She stroked Iris’ exposed arm softly with her free hand. “Hold on, Iris,” she whispered in her ear. “Hold on.”
Rebecca rode in the ambulance with Iris. Once she had explained to the paramedic her treatment thus far, there was nothing further to say and they rode the rest of the way in silence. She hoped none of her patients had arrived with emergencies that morning. She had taped a note to her office door announcing that all appointments were cancelled.
Toronto General was the hospital of choice for trauma, though it didn’t look the part. Small dingy windows poked out of a dun-coloured brick facade that rambled along a city block. Compared to the modern Mount Sinai Hospital across the street, where she had admitting privileges, it might have been mistaken on the outside for a nineteenth-century factory. The surgical resident on call looked barely old enough to shave. None of the surgeons were available and the resident — he had to be over twenty-one, didn’t he? — assured her that he had handled head trauma in the O.R. and he would do everything he could for Iris. What he was more worried about was the extra bulk she was carrying.
“I don’t have to tell you that overweight patients are more at risk under the knife. How old is she? Fifty-one, fifty-two? Her heart should be okay. And this anaesthetist knows his business.”
The chairs in the surgical waiting room were dark green vinyl but roomy and not uncomfortable. Rebecca sat down in the empty room, suddenly numb. More at risk under the knife. She had always found surgical specialists cold. Maybe they had
