“When are you going to have it?” she asked. Robert’s statement sounded definitive.
Robert smiled. “I told you, but you wouldn’t believe that I was going to get it over with. I’m being admitted tomorrow. What about yours?”
Cassi shook her head. “It’s not definite yet.”
“You chicken,” accused Robert with an air of superiority, “Why don’t you schedule yours for the day after tomorrow, too, so we can visit together in the recovery room.”
Cassi didn’t want to tell Robert about her difficulties talking the matter over with Thomas. Reluctantly her eyes went back to the corpse.
“How old?” asked Cassi, motioning toward Jeoffry Washington.
“Twenty-eight,” said Robert.
“God, that’s young,” said Cassi. “And it’s only been two weeks since the last case.”
“That’s a fact,” said Robert.
“You know, the more I think about it, the more disturbing these cases are.”
“Why do you think I’ve persisted?” said Robert.
“With the number you have now and the apparent increase in frequency, it’s getting harder and harder to ascribe the deaths to chance.”
“I agree,” said Robert. “Ever since the last, I’ve had the nagging suspicion that these deaths are more closely related than we suspect. The only trouble with that idea is that it suggests a specific agent, and as your husband pointed out, the deaths are physiologically different. The facts don’t fit the theory.”
Cassi walked around the table to Jeoffry’s right side. “Does this look swollen to you?” she said, reaching out and running her hand up the body’s forearm.
Robert bent down to look. “I don’t know. Where?”
Cassi pointed. “Was the patient on IV?”
“I think so,” said Robert. “I think he was on antibiotics for phlebitis.”
Cassi picked up Jeoffry’s left arm and looked at the IV site. It was red and puffy. “Just for interest’s sake, how about getting some sections of the vein where the IV was?”
“Anything if it will get you to come up and visit.”
Cassi replaced Jeoffry’s arm as carefully as if it were still sensate. “Do you happen to know if all the SSD cases were on IVs?” asked Cassi.
“I don’t know, but I can find out,” said Robert. “I have an idea what you’re thinking, and I don’t like it.”
“The other suggestion I have,” said Cassi, “is to collate the supposed physiological mechanisms of death and see if there is any pattern. You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” said Robert. “I can probably do that today. And I’ll get the sections of the vein, but you have to promise to come up and look at them. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” said Cassi.
As Cassi pressed the elevator button in the corridor outside the pathology department, she was aware she was dreading her upcoming session with Maureen Kavenaugh. Without doubt, Maureen’s depression exacerbated Cassi’s own. The fact that Cassi had reason to be depressed, as Joan had pointed out, did not make the symptoms easier to live with.
Dreading the meeting with Maureen bothered Cassi because it forced her to admit that as a psychiatrist she was going to have to deal with her own value judgments. In other areas of medicine, if you were forced together with a patient you disliked, you concentrated on the pathology and cut the personal contact to a minimum. In psychiatry that was not possible.
Happily, when she entered her office, Maureen still was nowhere to be seen.
Cassi knew she was going to have difficulty concentrating on what Maureen had to say because Robert’s decision to have his surgery brought up the issue of her own. She knew Robert was right. After a moment’s indecision, she dialed Thomas’s office.
Unfortunately, he was still in surgery.
“I don’t know when he will be out,” said Doris. “But I know it will be late because he called me and told me to cancel his afternoon office hours.”
Cassi thanked her and hung up. Blankly she stared at her Monet print.
Joan’s comment about the “impaired physician” disrupting his appointment schedule flashed into her mind. Then she dismissed the thought. Thomas had obviously canceled his office hours because he was stuck in surgery.
A knock interrupted her thoughts. Maureen’s listless face appeared in the doorway.