Terminally Ill Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter Zero: Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Bonus: Code Blues Excerpt

  Notorious D.O.C. Excerpt

  TERMINALLY ILL

  the third Hope Sze novel

  by Melissa Yi

  Dedicated to Dean Gunnarson, the escape artist who survived.

  “Nobody wants to see a man die, but everyone wants to be there when it happens.”

  —Harry Houdini

  Copyright Melissa Yuan-Innes, 2013

  Published by Olo Books

  In association with Windtree Press

  eBook cover design by Scarlett Rugers Design

  www.scarlettrugers.com

  Prologue

  His breath whistled inside the coffin.

  He heard the crowd cheering, although the plywood walls surrounding him dampened their yells. He could hear and feel the rumble of the crane lifting him and the coffin into the air.

  He started to undo the chains on his wrists. Usually, those were the easiest.

  He slid his wrists inward to gain a little slack, then twisted them to pop his wrists free.

  The chains tightened on his wrists instead.

  Meanwhile, the crane lowered his coffin into the St. Lawrence River.

  Water splashed, and then he could hear the abnormal silence of the water surrounding the coffin.

  He bent his wrists again.

  The chains tightened once more.

  Step two. He reached for the lock pick pinned on his left sleeve to jimmy the padlock on the chains. He always placed the pick on the inside cuff, where it would blend into his costume and he’d be able to reach for it blindly.

  The pick was missing.

  He reached for the pin secured to his right shirt sleeve, groping the fabric of his wetsuit to make sure he would not mistake the metal lock pick for a seam.

  Nothing.

  His heart hammered faster than usual, and his hard, hot breath seemed to fill the coffin. The wood underneath his body felt cold and damp, like water was already seeping inside.

  He refused to panic. He could escape the chains. He always had and always would. They had built fail-safes into his act, including a fake chain with a middle cuff that made it easier to undo.

  Using his fingertips, he skimmed blindly along the chain on his chest, only to realize that someone had removed the trick middle link.

  He was handcuffed, chained, and nailed inside a coffin. In a river.

  With no escape.

  On Hallowe'en.

  Chapter 1

  Harry Houdini almost died in Montreal, on Hallowe'en, in 1926, at 1:23 p.m.

  I swear I had nothing to do with it.

  The magician named Harry Houdini was notoriously hard to restrain, let alone kill. Plus, he died over 80 years ago, and I don’t exactly own a time travel machine.

  My name is Hope Sze. I'm a resident physician, which means I’ve finished medical school and I’m bumping my way through what used to be called an internship year. That means I'm supposed to give life, not take it. And just because I’m doing my palliative care rotation this month doesn’t mean everyone around me has to die.

  But somehow, a lot of them do. Or come awfully close.

  I’m getting ahead of myself. Possibly, I’m just losing my mind. Ever since I moved to Montreal and became the “detective doctor” who accidentally tracked down two killers, I’ve had to stop pretty regularly to ask myself, Hope, are you cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?

  This time, the saga started un-magically, on the day before Hallowe’en, in the bowels—I mean the emergency department—of St. Joseph’s Hospital, a community hospital tucked in the Côte-des-Neiges sector of Montreal, Canada.

  Dr. Huot had assigned me the palliative care consultations in the ER, since she knew I wanted to finish family med and specialize in emergency medicine when I was finally, officially, The Doctor.

  I glanced at the consultation note that Dr. Callendar had scribbled out the previous evening. His handwriting was so terrible, almost all I could make out was that the patient was 67 years old, which was quite youthful for my service, and that she was supposed to be in Hallway 19. I turned sideways to squeeze through a few areas where the stretchers were two abreast, but I ended up squinting at Hallway 27-30 instead. I swear, so many patients are crammed in the lobbies, it should be like a hotel where they have plaques marking Hallway 1-5 left, Hallway 6-20 right.

  “I could lend you my GPS,” said a forty-something white man who pretended to hand me his shiny, black phone. He smiled like he meant it, making his eyes crinkle. “I’ve got St. Joe’s on here. Maybe there’s an app for finding your patients.”

  I laughed. “That would come in handy.” We’ve got sheets of paper tacked to the wall denoting “Hallway 8B” and stuff like that, but I still get disoriented in all the beige corridors clogged by stretchers. A few of the administrators occasionally give up their offices for isolating patients with contagious diseases like MRSA and VRE, which just adds to the chaos.

  The man held out his hand and said, “Hi. I’m David Watson.”

  “Hi. I’m Hope Sze,” I said automatically, forgetting to add “Doctor” in front of that. Well, my name badge said it for me, and if I left my title out, maybe he’d assume I was a nurse and let me chase down Madeline Campeau, my 67-year-old with metastatic ovarian cancer. Although I have to admit, I took his hand, partly to be polite, and partly because I’d rather greet someone who smelled subtly of cologne instead of used diapers.

  He shook my hand firmly but not too hard. “Now, you folks are great down here. No complaints.” Mr. Watson’s grin widened, and he leaned forward like we were best buds.

  I let go of his hand. “Thanks,” I said, even though he was buttering me up like the ocean’s last lobster. We folks were doing our best in the midst of a never-ending hurricane. I suppose in some books that’s great, even heroic, but the average health care patient will never see it that way. That goes double for a family member. I waited for the “but.”

  It came. Mr. Watson added smoothly, “But I know my mother, Mary Kincaid, would feel even better on the ward, in her own bed.”

  I nodded. Studies show that patients can seem completely demented in the emergency department—confused and unsure of the date or time of day, or the opposite, dramatically agitated and hallucinating—a shift that’s mainly caused by a change in environment. Get them returned to their own homes, and they’re back to playing cards at 10 a.m. and eating mushy beans at noon, no longer imagining that Great Aunt Helen is riding an elephant into the room.

  I tried to smile comfortingly at his mother, who was lying on the stretcher, between her son and the wall. I could see the resemblance to her son, especially the blue eyes, and someone had taken the time to paint her nails coral pink. Her blanket and blue hospital gown had dipped, revealing her jutting col
larbones and ribs. Her sunken cheeks, and especially her eyes, had a yellow cast. So she was jaundiced and admitted to internal medicine. It didn’t take a detective doctor to deduce that she had probably had pancreatic cancer. My heart throbbed with pity. “I wish I could help, Mr. Watson. But if she’s already been admitted, she’ll be up on the floor as soon as there’s a bed.”

  “That’s the problem, you see. There aren’t any beds. That’s what they keep telling me.” He took his mother’s manicured hand in his, very gently.

  “They’re right,” I answered. In order to contain health care costs, governments and administrators look at the number of beds in each hospital. Each bed and each room needs a nurse, needs to be cleaned, etc.—so they just close beds, sometimes entire wards, sometimes hospitals. Nursing home beds are expensive. Better close them down, too. And what about psych wards? Ah, those crazies just need to go back to their families and they’ll feel a lot better. Shut down that hospital stat.

  Voilà! Costs contained. But of course, people keep getting sick. Cancer, car accidents, psychosis, old age and other pesky things like that. So people keep coming to the emergency room, the one place in the health care system that never shuts its doors.

  Then patients are too sick to go home, but there’s no room at the inn. So what happens?

  They’re “admitted,” but really, they’re just clogging up the stretchers and hallways of the emergency department with nowhere to go.

  “I really want her to get a room,” Mr. Watson said, patting his mother’s hand and smiling at me.

  “I wish I could help you,” I said, smiling back, because that was about all I could do. I glanced at the consult sheet in my hand. I had to get moving, or I’d never make it back to the palliative care ward. On cue, my pager beeped.

  I checked. The floor wanted me.

  Mr. Watson said, “I can see you’re a busy woman. Thanks for taking the time.” He held out his hand.

  I shook it, even though I don’t usually shake hands twice within five minutes. This time, I felt something rasp against my palm.

  I jumped back, stifling a yell before I realized he’d placed something in my hand. I extended my fingers, frowning, and found myself $20 richer.

  “I can’t accept this,” I said, handing the bill back to him. Sure, after four years of $17,000 med school tuition per year, I paused for a millisecond, but my first instinct was Nein. (I’d picked up a few words in German from someone named Tucker.)

  Mr. Watson held both his palms up in the air and refused to accept it, while he flashed his white teeth at me. “It doesn’t matter if you can’t do anything for my mother. I know how hard you work. You deserve a little something. Get yourself a coffee.”

  I shook my head. “I could lose my license over this.” I didn’t know that for sure, but I wouldn’t want a run-in with the College of Physicians and Surgeons over twenty bucks. I shoved the twenty at Mr. Watson’s chest. “Thank you for the sympathy, though. What I do suggest is that you write to your Member of Parliament and tell them about your mother.” I was parroting what a urology resident once said. It put the onus back on the patient to do something besides complain about our wait times. Although I have to admit, Mr. Watson wasn’t just complaining, he was literally putting his money where his mouth was.

  Mr. Watson kept his palms up in surrender mode, shaking his head at the bill. “Already been there, done that. I phoned my M.P., called him, and e-mailed him. No reply. My mother’s been here for over 24 hours.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear that.” I placed the bill on his mother’s stretcher. She watched us with wide eyes, still silent. My pager went off again: DUPLICATE. As I moved away, I said, “What’s your mother’s diagnosis?”

  “She’s got pancreatic cancer.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. That’s often a death sentence because it’s the kind of cancer that gets picked up late.

  “She’s hanging in there. The doctors only gave her three months, and she’s still with us at six.”

  “Wow,” I said, suitably appreciative. “Well, good luck, Ms. Kincaid and Mr. Watson.”

  He nodded. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Dr. Sze.” He pronounced my name pretty much right, kind of like Tse, which made the pleasure all mine.

  “Likewise,” I said, waving at him. His mother’s mouth opened in a silent O, but she still hadn’t said a word.

  Since we were just outside the ER’s swinging doors, I hurried back to the nursing station to answer the floor’s page. One of the palliative care patients had fallen and Dr. Huot wanted to speak to me.

  While I waited on hold, Roxanne, one of my favourite ER nurses, pushed her charts aside to make room for me on the desk. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with thin, multicoloured stripes under her pink scrubs, a sign that the weather was turning colder. “I saw you in the hall. You met David Watson?”

  “Yep. Is Mary Kincaid one of your patients?” In Quebec, the default is for women to keep their last names after marriage. It makes it easier for the government to track you. But it means that all these little old ladies who come into the emerg, who have been calling themselves Mrs. Married Name for decades, are bamboozled when you refer to them as Mrs. Maiden Name. So I call them Mrs. Married Name and just use Maiden Name on the paperwork.

  Roxanne grinned, stretching out her arms into a V for Victory. “Not today, but she was yesterday. David was in then, too. He works for a big pharmaceutical company, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.” The automatic doors flew open again, to let a patient in, and I glanced at Mr. Watson. He was now talking to Andrea, one of my other favourite ER nurses. Andrea shook her head and pointed at the door with her clipboard, but Mr. Watson kept talking.

  Meanwhile, the phone came alive in my ear again when a nurse from the palliative care ward said, “Sorry, we can’t find Dr. Huot, but she did say she wants to meet you on the floor at 1 p.m.”

  “That’s fine, thanks. I have to page her after my consults anyway.” I hung up and picked up my consult sheet.

  Roxanne smirked at me. “Did David give you money?”

  “He tried.” I felt weird thinking of him as David instead of Mr. Watson, he was probably almost as old as both of us put together. I paused. “He gave you some, too?”

  “Fifty dollars.”

  “Fifty? He only gave me a twenty.” I didn’t know if I should be shocked or offended.

  “I know. I could see the green from here.” Her brown eyes laughed at me. “But he had no idea who you were, so I guess he’s just trying everyone.”

  “Did you take it?”

  She shook her head. “We’re not supposed to take money from patients. But some people did.”

  I was trying to wrap my head around the scale of this. “Some people. How many people did he offer?”

  “Let’s just say…all of them.”

  My head spun. Was that what we were coming to? Canada was supposed to have a public health care system, where we were all treated equally, but in reality, did bribery win? Maybe not, since Mrs. Kincaid was still lying in the hallway. “Who took the money?”

  “Aw, I’m not going to tattle on them. You can use your detective skills there.”

  “No, thanks!” I said. Everyone wanted to tease me about detective-ing, no matter how much I insisted that a) I’d never earned that title, b) whatever sleuthing I’d done, I was now retired, or c) tried to laugh along with them.

  But if they were going to ask me about it, maybe I should ask a few questions about Mr. Watson, take a peek at Ms. Kincaid’s chart...

  No. I caught myself. If I were going to hang up my magnifying glass for good, I couldn’t start nosing around about bribes. I’d cut the curiosity right out of my brain. Cold Turkeys R Us. Just like an addict nipping my addiction in the bud. Ooh, that could be a bad marijuana joke.

  This was getting complicated. I said, “Can you just point me toward Hallway 19?”

  “Yeah. Go through the doors and take a right, not a le
ft.” She sifted through the mass of clipboards on the desk and shoved one at my midsection. “You want to take a look at her chart first?”

  I glanced at the nursing notes for Madeleine Campeau and read, awaiting CT abdo, physio. Fentanyl patch? Exactly what I needed to know. “You’re a genius.”

  “I know.” Her laugh cackled through the air, and I was smiling when I left the nursing station and took a hard right with the chart in my hand.

  The woman in Hallway 19, abutting the waiting room, was asleep despite the fluorescent lights shining in her face and the blare of the nearby TV.

  “It’s about time,” sniffed her family member, a grey-haired woman who wore a small fur hat, which seemed a little odd for the end of October while in the throes of global warming.

  My cheap-o cell phone buzzed. I ignored it, but later, when I was writing up my consult, I checked the screen and found a message from Tucker: Residents’ lounge! 12:30.

  My heart double-thumped in my chest, even though I told it to be quiet. By the time I reviewed my two consults with Dr. Huot and squeezed in ten minutes on the elliptical trainer in the hospital’s mini gym, it was 12:29, and I was running up the stairs to the residents’ lounge on the second floor, wondering if this was a joke.

  Dr. John Tucker usually avoids the lounge’s blasting TV, abandoned trays of half-eaten pasta, and the yahoos known as our colleagues. But when I punched the code in the resident lounge’s door and flung it open, Tucker called from the TV corner, “Hey, Hope. You made it just in time!”

  “Shh!” said Sébastien, one of the second-year family medicine residents, who was sitting on the edge of one couch, leaning so close to the TV that it looked like he wanted to meld with it.

  Tucker rose to meet me. He squeezed my arm and pointed at the screen. His hand lingered on my triceps.

  I tried not to notice the warmth of his fingers, even though I felt like his fingerprints marked me through my shirt sleeve and white coat. I didn’t want to push him away, but I didn’t want to draw back either. So I just turned toward the almighty TV, along with everyone else.

  An escape artist named Elvis was going to get himself chained up, nailed into a coffin, have them wrap more chains around the coffin, and drop him into the St. Lawrence River, just south of Montreal.