I had written that sentence.
Four years earlier, in a conference room on the twelfth floor, I had written it myself, under the name C. M. Bishop.
My husband had signed the acknowledgment page without reading it.
I should tell you what I did next, because it surprised me.
I didn’t throw the tablet.
I didn’t call Marcus, or my mother, or Sarah.
I made a cup of tea, I carried it to the window, and I did what I do for a living.
I opened the project calendar for Lifeline.
The unit had sealed at six o’clock that very morning, three hours and forty-six minutes after I walked into the emergency room.
The team’s lead surg*on was scheduled to speak at 9:00 a.m., for the international delegation, on the first day of the largest transplant initiative in the state’s history.
If I had gone to emergency surg*ry at three that morning, the husband of the patient could not have walked into a sealed unit.
Marcus would have had to stay.
Dr. Raymond Voss, his rival, would have taken the podium.
He had not wanted a wife in the operating room.
He had wanted his podium.
I stood at the window for a very long time.
The lake was black, the city was gold, and somewhere beneath all that light, a man who had once promised in a church to love me in sickness and in health was sleeping soundly.
I did not cry.
I had done that already, at the curb.
What I felt was colder, and cleaner, and a great deal more useful.
It was the feeling of a case file closing around a single, exact fact.
At 9:41 that night, my phone buzzed with a forwarded message from Sarah.
It had come to her office through the contact form.
It was short.
This is Dr. Ian Castellano. I was the attending on the night Clara Hayes was admitted. I know she has seen the audit trail. I would like to tell her what was said on the phone. Please. I haven’t slept in six weeks.
See more on the next page
I read it standing at the window, with the tea going cold in my hand.
Then I typed one word to Sarah.
Yes.
Chapter 3: What Dr. Castellano Said
We met in Sarah’s conference room at eight the next morning.
