“No.”
“Former patient?”
I shook my head.
“Well, this is the registration area for patients,” she said, taking back the clipboard and holding it against her chest. “I can’t help you.”
A few people had stopped turning the pages of magazines or watching the game show playing on a large TV and were now staring our way. “Look,” I said, moving closer and lowering my voice. “This is a really private matter. Do you know how I can get in touch with Dr. Barrow?”
She sighed, clearly annoyed that I wasn’t just going to go away. “You could try his secretary maybe, but you probably still got to have an appointment. Down the hall, third door on the right.”
I was halfway out the door when I stopped and went back to her desk. She gave me an irritated look, like I was a fly she thought she’d managed to swat away.
“Can you validate this?” I asked, holding out my parking ticket.
*
Dr. Barrow’s personal assistant was a twentysomething woman with jet-black hair dyed blue at the tips wearing a tight black dress with horizontal stripes of cobalt blue. Behind her was an enormous whiteboard yearly calendar with a neon rainbow of different-colored lines crossed through various weeks each month. Between all the bright colors and the way she stared—head cocked to one side, sharp eyes focused and unblinking—she reminded me of an exotic bird.
“Dr. Barrow’s not here on Wednesdays,” she said. “They should have told you that—sorry.” She shifted that sharp gaze from me to her terminal, reaching for her mouse. “He’ll be in tomorrow and we have a cancellation at three and he might have one slot open in two weeks. Why does your child need an appointment?”
“It’s not for my child. This isn’t medical—it’s a personal matter. Is there another way I could get in touch with him? A phone number?”
She looked at me again. “I’m not authorized to give out his phone number. Are you a friend of Dr. Barrow’s?”
Had I imagined the emphasis on “friend”? My face flushed as though there were something between us. “Not exactly. I was a friend of Dr. Viktor Lysenko. I met Dr. Barrow at Dr. Lysenko’s funeral.”
“I thought you looked familiar. I was at the funeral, too.” She leaned forward, her face becoming greedy and conspiratorial. “It’s a shame about Dr. Lysenko, isn’t it? He really loved that car, you know? I mean, not to blame the victim or anything, but when you love something you’ve got to let it go. That’s like karma, you know?”
“Did you know Dr. Lysenko?”
She nodded. “I’ve been the assistant here for going on eight years, so, yeah, I knew him. I know all the surgeons.”
“Did you know his first wife, Janice?”
“No, I don’t get to see the spouses much.” The disappointment I felt lifted as she added, “Pretty bad luck, though, you know? First she dies young, then he dies.”
“Dr. Barrow mentioned that. He said she died of cancer?”
The woman nodded. “Breast. Or was it ovarian? I don’t remember—one of those female cancers.”
“I heard that she died from a fall.”
“Who told you that? No, it was cancer and it took her fast—like six months fast. Oh, wait a minute—I think she did fall toward the end, I remember something about that ’cause Dr. Lysenko had to cancel a few patients that day. She was so weak from all the treatments they tried, that’s why she fell, but that was like a few weeks before she died.”
A part of me had held out hope that Dr. Barrow had been confused and it was another doctor’s spouse who’d had cancer, but another, more rational part of me had known it was true. I’d known it since I saw that photo. Heather had lied to us, but why? I struggled to hide my dismay, but the young woman didn’t seem to notice.
“I’ll tell you what, he got himself a hot second wife, didn’t he? She could be a model.”
“She was one,” I said distractedly, gazing blankly at the calendar behind her. She saw me staring and said, “This is how I keep track of them all. Each doc’s got a different color, so I know when they’re not in this office. Dr. Lysenko’s color was that bright blue,” she said, pointing. “He liked that. Said it was one of the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Now I guess someone else will get that color. I’ve got to erase him, but it seemed too soon, you know?”
It was odd to think of a life reflected in colored lines. Viktor’s blue was visible in virtually every month, stripes of various lengths that suddenly stopped all together a month ago. Here was a life and now it was over, wiped out with the swipe of an eraser. Had his patients mourned for him?
“I was like totally shocked when I saw her,” the secretary said, pulling my attention back.
“Who?”
“Wife number two.” She hesitated, glancing around, before continuing in a furtive voice. “I’d heard that he was seeing someone else. As in an a-ffair.” She whispered the word, giving it an extra syllable like she was spelling it out for me. The look on my face must have surprised her, because she quickly said, “But hey, that was just a rumor, and I might have got it wrong. Anyhoo, when I saw his wife, I was like no way is he cheating on that, because it’s not like she was one of those women who totally lets herself go after marriage.”
“So it’s okay to cheat on your spouse if she’s let herself go?” The words slipped out without thinking.
She drew back, eyes flitting around again to see if anyone else had heard me. “No, I mean, of course not, I didn’t say that.” Her voice was huffy and she ran a hand through her hair as if I’d ruffled her feathers.
*
My chest started pounding as I struggled to find my way through the corridors and back to the parking garage. I paused, pressing one hand against a cool tile wall and rubbing my chest with the other hand, convinced I was about to have a heart attack. Various people in lab coats and scrubs passed by, some giving me sideways glances and a wide berth, but only one actually stopped. A short Indian man who looked far too young to be a doctor asked me in a pleasant singsong voice if I was okay. “Do you need to be sitting down somewhere?”
My heart rate had slowed a fraction by that point and I realized it was probably a panic attack. I used to have them all the time when I was young. I shook my head, feeling ashamed, and pushed off the wall, thanking him over my shoulder as I trotted down the hall. My phone buzzed; it was Sarah, but I didn’t answer. I saw that I had multiple missed calls, but I couldn’t talk to anyone, not right now. The worst of the panic had subsided, but it was still there, an internal jitter keeping time with the questions beating against my brain. Had Heather really lied? She had to know that Viktor’s first wife died from cancer, didn’t she?
Only once I was out of the hospital and in my car did I pull out my phone to listen to Sarah’s voice mail. It made me jump. She was practically shouting, her voice high and hysterical. And slurred. “Where are you? Did you see the news? It’s been on the news all morning—they found the gun!”
chapter thirty-one
SARAH