“No.”
“Are you hearing any strange sounds?”
“Sounds? No. Why?”
So Finney’s not talking to her. Why is that?
Rita stared at the floor and quickly processed this. She saw no other option but to keep Darcy in the dark until she could figure out what to do next.
Problem was: She hadn’t the faintest idea.
Except that I have to operate on Mrs. Sanchez.
“No reason. I’m sure it’s nothing,” Rita said.
Besides, what would she tell Darcy? That the bitter, vengeful husband of a former—
(and dead, don’t forget dead, she’s dead because of ME)
—patient had apparently snuck into her house last night and done some kind of bizarre surgery on her head while she slept? Trying to explain that to Darcy would be no less likely to land her in the psych ward than trying to explain it to Chase.
“You’ve been through a lot, kiddo,” Rita said. “You’re probably having some, uh, withdrawal symptoms, or something. Delayed withdrawal symptoms.” Rita well knew there was no such thing as “delayed” withdrawal from the substances Darcy used to take.
“You think?” Darcy said brightly.
Rita tightened her grip on the phone. “Absolutely, kiddo.”
“Oh, Dr. Wu. Such lies,” Finney breathed. “Are you as disingenuous with your patients as with your family?”
Bastard, she shot back at him in her mind.
Darcy said, “Okay. That makes me feel better.”
“Good.”
Wish it made me feel better.
A brief silence, then: “Hey, uh … Ree?”
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Did you come home last night?”
“Um.” Rita tightened her towel around her body and glanced back toward her locker. The nurse was almost done changing into her scrubs, her head turned the other way. “Why do you ask?”
“When I woke up this morning, your bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in.”
Rita sighed and pressed a hand to her forehead. “No, Darcy. I didn’t. I … was working late and fell asleep at the hospital.”
“Oh. The big operation today?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s it going?”
“We’ll be starting soon.”
I need to operate on Mrs. Sanchez this morning.
“Oh. Well. You should probably go then, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Because I need to operate on Mrs. Sanchez.
“What time will you be home?”
Something inside Rita felt like it was dying. Home, and everything that went with it, seemed so remote now that it might as well be on the far side of the moon. “Don’t know yet,” she said mechanically. “Late, probably.”
“Okay.” Darcy yawned. “I’m going back to bed. Call me when you’re on your way and I’ll throw something together for dinner. Okay?”
They were chatting as if today were like any other day, and God, what Rita wouldn’t give for that to be so.
“Okay.” She could barely push the word out of her mouth.
“Good luck, okay? Love you, Ree.”
“Love you too, kiddo.”
As Rita hung up and leaned against a nearby wall, a horrible thought seized hold of her.
She would never speak to Darcy again.
“Your sister has had some bad times. Hasn’t she, Dr. Wu?”
Leaning there, Rita supposed that, in a morning filled with the most disturbing things imaginable, the realization that Finney could not only listen in on a private conversation with her kid sister but had somehow rigged Darcy’s head with the same thing he’d implanted in Rita could crush whatever was left of her. Stamp out her will completely.
But it had the opposite effect. What had been simmering anger became hatred. She balled her hands into fists. She was a doctor, had taken an oath to protect human life, but in that moment, she wanted to hurt Finney, hurt him badly, in all the ways possible for one person to hurt another.
“What have you done to my sister?” she growled.
No answer.
“Coward. You’re a coward. Hiding behind your microphone.”
No answer.
She staggered back to her locker as if in a dream (nightmare). The nurse with the locker next to hers had finished and was gone. Rita loosened her towel and began to change into fresh underwear (she always kept at least one extra pair for call nights) and scrubs. She was careful to leave her glasses facing away from her, toward the back of the locker.
Finney said, in barely more than a whisper: “What do you know about cowardice, Dr. Wu? Pilots go down with their planes. Captains go down with their ships. But surgeons get to walk away from their disasters. Just like you walked away from Jenny.”