Chapter Five #4
Maggie tunes him out. Men and cars. She has zero interest. She has also had enough with the estate tour.
She wants to get to work and start prepping for the surgery.
Oleg shows her the key is in the ignition.
When he jumps in and says, “We can take it for a quick spin. Just open the sliding doors and we can vroom around the property,” Maggie cuts him off: “You were going to show me the medical facilities, remember?”
Oleg’s hand drops off the ignition key. “Ah yes, I do prattle on, don’t I?”
Maggie chooses not to answer. Oleg slides back out of the car.
“Shall we?”
He exits the vast showroom through the same door where they entered.
He takes her back through the glass walkway, past the firewood, and turns left at the foyer when they are back in the main house.
When Ragoravich opens another door—she gets this is all to impress, but it’s still difficult not to be floored—there is an Olympic-size indoor pool.
Only one person is in the giant pool right now, someone who knows how to swim, slicing through the water with barely a ripple.
“Nadia!” Oleg calls out.
The swimmer—Maggie can only really see the bathing cap and the arms doing a picture-perfect crawl—does not slow down.
“Nadia!”
Still nothing as she glides through the water with a smooth stroke that is almost hypnotic to watch.
“Nadia,” Oleg says to Maggie, “is your other patient.”
“I’ll need to examine her before the surgery. You too.”
Oleg does the head tilt again. “We’ll see.”
“No, we won’t see. I’m not performing surgery without examinations and consultations.”
Oleg just smiles.
“What?” she says.
“Please, Doctor McCabe, can we stop the posturing? You are here. You are being well paid. I understand that there are certain protocols. I am paying a great premium to avoid some of them. Like when you flew here on my private plane. Did you have to arrive at the airport two hours early? No. Did you have to go through a metal detector or wait for your boarding group to be called? No.”
“This isn’t the same thing,” she says.
“But it is, my dear.”
“I won’t do it then.”
He doesn’t bother replying anymore. He grabs a towel and waits for Nadia to reach the edge of the pool.
When she does, he calls out her name again.
This time she hears and stops. He barks something at her in Russian.
She nods and makes her way to the ladder.
When Nadia gets out, it almost seems like she’s moving in movie slow motion.
Nadia reaches up, pulls off her swimming cap, and shakes out her long black hair as though she were appearing in a shampoo commercial.
Oleg hands her a towel. She takes it and then she turns and looks at Maggie.
Nadia is, no way around it, gorgeous.
Blue-aqua eyes that sparkle off her sun-kissed skin, raven-black hair, the lithe and long body of a swimmer. She also looks, Maggie can’t help but notice, young. Very young. Oleg appears to be around sixty. Maggie pegs Nadia somewhere in her early to mid-twenties.
Does it surprise her that a billionaire oligarch has a young…
girlfriend, bae, boo—what other bizarre terms had Porkchop used?
It does not.
When Oleg puts his arm around Nadia’s back, Maggie cringes for her.
Keeping his hand on her lower back, Oleg leads Nadia to where Maggie is standing.
In the pool, Nadia was poetry in motion.
On land, with Oleg touching her, Nadia’s movements are more tentative and awkward—gangly even in a way that reminds Maggie of her teenage nephew.
When they stop in front of Maggie, Oleg doesn’t introduce Nadia. He just says, “She’s too skinny, no?”
“No,” Maggie says.
Maggie steps toward Nadia and puts out her hand. Nadia looks toward Oleg as though seeking permission to respond. Oleg nods that it’s okay and Nadia hesitantly sticks out her hand for a quick shake.
“I’m Doctor McCabe. You can call me Maggie.”
Maggie locks her gaze onto the blue-aqua eyes, but Nadia quickly turns back to Oleg.
Oleg says, “She doesn’t speak a word of English. But she’s too skinny. I like a woman with a bountiful bosom.” He gestures this with both hands in a hopefully exaggerated way. “You understand?”
“Oh, I understand,” Maggie says. “Do you understand that I’m not performing any surgery on Nadia without her permission?”
“Permission?” Oleg repeats with a laugh.
He starts waving his hand theatrically. “Of course! You must have her”—he laughs again—“‘permission.’ I wouldn’t dream of having Nadia do anything against her will.
” Oleg rips off some Russian in Nadia’s direction.
Nadia listens obediently. When he finishes, Nadia nods at him.
Oleg says something else in Russian, a bit more animated now, and points at Maggie.
Nadia turns so that her entire body faces Maggie. Their eyes meet again.
Nadia nods at Maggie and says, “Okay.”
Oleg spreads his hands. “See?”
“See what?” Maggie says. “What was that?”
“You wanted Nadia’s permission. I asked her if she wanted you to give her bigger boobs—oh, and maybe a rounder ass. It’s too flat right now. Nadia is saying okay, that’s what she wants.”
“What she wants,” Maggie says, “or what you want?”
Oleg looks perplexed for a moment. “Why does there have to be a difference? She wants, I want—why can’t we all get what we want?
Don’t make life a zero-sum game, Doctor McCabe.
That’s how you create losers. The world is a series of negotiations—and the best negotiations are when both sides win.
We’ve made a deal, Nadia and me. She gets, I get.
Same as you and me, no?” Oleg grins again.
“Come, I want to show you your operating room.”
He steps toward the exit. Maggie stays where she is. He waits a moment. Nadia tightens the towel around her as though she wants to hide. For a few moments, the three of them stand there in silence. Oleg breaks it.
“Fine,” Oleg says with a melodramatic sigh. “My personal physician is expected in an hour. He can tell you everything you need to know about my medical history.”
“And Nadia?”
“What? I told you what she needs.” He arches an eyebrow and gestures at Nadia as though she were an appliance on a game show. “And come on, you can see she’s very healthy, no?”
Maggie crosses her arms. “I’ll need to examine her. Alone.”
“But Nadia doesn’t even speak English.” Then Oleg stops and raises his hands in mock surrender.
“Fine.” He barks some more Russian at Nadia.
Nadia nods and scurries away. “I’ll show you your operating theater.
Then you can”—he makes quote marks with his fingers—“‘examine’ Nadia—alone—before my physician arrives. Okay?”
Maggie is about to accept, but Oleg sees no need to wait. He is already on the move. She follows him into a corridor with tile flooring. Their footsteps echo. When they reach the end, Oleg opens a door and steps aside.
“Your operating theater,” he says with a deep bow.
She enters, blinks, looks again.
Oleg is enjoying her reaction. “I trust you find it satisfactory?”
Maggie swallows and manages to say, “It seems fine.”
“Oh, it seems more than ‘fine,’” Oleg replies.
“It is an exact reproduction of the operating room you used at Johns Hopkins. Our people measured yours, took videos and pictures, asked your former staff for details. You’ll find every instrument and machine in the exact places, though, not to boast, our equipment is more up-to-date. ”
He isn’t exaggerating. It feels as though she were back in Baltimore. She wants to ask about the how and why, because she had just agreed to take this job, what, thirteen, fourteen hours ago?
How had Oleg built this so fast?
Answer: He couldn’t have.
Had he already known—or at least, assumed—that she’d agree to come?
That seems more likely. Dr. Barlow came down from New York City to Johns Hopkins for the award ceremony.
He had to have known by then, at the very least, that he would be asking Maggie to go to Russia to do this surgery.
Taking it a step further, it seems unlikely that Barlow didn’t first consider Maggie for this surgery at least a few days before he came to campus.
It probably took some time and thought on his part.
Backing up even further for a moment: Ivan Brovski—or maybe Oleg Ragoravich himself—would have approached Barlow.
Maybe they offered the job to Barlow first, but Barlow wouldn’t need the money.
Or maybe Barlow didn’t want to go at his age or with his reputation.
Whatever. They would have then discussed with Barlow who would be a good candidate for the job.
Somewhere along the way, it would occur to Barlow that the perfect person—someone who desperately needed money, who would be discreet, who had the necessary skills, who would not worry about career repercussions—would be Maggie McCabe.
And continuing to follow this road, someone like Oleg Ragoravich or Ivan Brovski wouldn’t just accept Barlow’s recommendation without doing due diligence.
They’d run a thorough background check. They’d have learned about her schooling, her surgical expertise, her finances, her malpractice suit, her work with WorldCures, her now-tattered (though once-pristine) reputation.
All of that, even with the power and money behind Oleg Ragoravich, would take time.
Time enough to build an operating room.
And if she had said no? Well, so what? The operating room would be at the ready for the next potential doctor.
They could then quickly redesign, if need be, to suit the next candidate.
Who knows? Perhaps Maggie wasn’t their first choice.
Perhaps this wasn’t the first time they’d done surgeries out of Oleg’s compound.
Perhaps this room was originally bigger or smaller or the anesthesia cart was placed on the left instead of the right or was painted cool blue instead of the muted green Maggie preferred.
Or perhaps they knew she would say yes.
It all feels very surreal.
There are three men in the operating room. They all come toward her.
“Your two nurses per your request,” Oleg says. “And your anesthesiologist.”
Oleg’s watch buzzes. He squints at the screen and frowns. “I must leave you now. Nadia should be in the other room waiting for you by now. Then my doctor will be here. I’m sure you’ll then need to rest before tonight’s ball.”
“Ball?”
“Yes. A massive one, here at the palace. Five hundred people. I expect you to be there.”
“I thought you were a…” She stops.
“Private?” Oleg finished for her.
She was going to say “recluse” but close enough. “Yes.”
“I am. Very.”
She doesn’t ask the obvious “Then why a ball?” follow-up because it’s already unspoken and he’s choosing not to reply. She instead stays in her lane: “As your physician, I want to warn you that if you want to have surgery tomorrow—”
“I know, I know.” He holds up his hand. “‘Nil per os’—Latin for ‘nothing by mouth.’ So nothing to eat or drink after midnight.” His watch buzzes again.
Oleg heads toward the door. “We can talk more tonight at the ball. But now? I promised you could examine Nadia alone. She is waiting for you in the room across the hall.”