Chapter Ten #2
She thinks about that tattoo—how Marc regaled her with its college-spring-break origin story and how bad Marc was at handling his alcohol (which he was) and how his friends got him drunk (though it was his fault too, he’d admit) and how they stumbled down the French Quarter—and when he told the story, you could see the New Orleans night sky and feel the thick Creole humidity and touch the brick of the old buildings—and how he ended up in that small tattoo parlor and it was just a dare, no one thought Marc would go through with it, and how the artist, who was definitely drunk or stoned or worse, drew it in pen in mere seconds and that was it, it wouldn’t go any further than that, surely, just a pen drawing, and then the artist—his name was Agent or something like that—took out the needle, and ha, ha, okay it’s time to stop kidding around except no one did and it hurt like hell even with all the alcohol, and when he woke up, the area was all red and Marc thought it might be infected…
How can Nadia have that same tattoo?
“Doctor?”
She looks over at the anesthesiologist. “How long will the patient be out?” Maggie asks.
“An hour.”
Maggie nods, turns her attention back toward the scrub nurse. “Where is Doctor Brovski?”
“He left in the middle of the surgery.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Perhaps he is looking in on Mr. Ragoravich?”
Maggie doesn’t hesitate. She hurries out of the operating room and heads down the corridor. Post-op is the corner room. Maggie pulls up when she enters Oleg Ragoravich’s recovery room.
It’s empty.
That’s wrong. She looks for the attending nurse. Nope, not there either.
Where the hell is Oleg?
He should still be here. The plan was to keep him in the recovery room for the next few hours at the very least before moving him to his bedroom upstairs.
So where is he?
Doesn’t matter. Not right now. Right now, she wants to find Brovski and get her phone back. She wants to bring up the griefbot. She wants AI Marc to explain to her how the hell the twenty-four-year-old mistress of an oligarch has the exact same one-of-a-kind Serpent and Saint tattoo that he had.
This palace has workers everywhere, but suddenly Maggie can’t find one.
She heads through the abandoned indoor pool area, which is dark and humid, which again reminds her of Marc’s tale about that humid New Orleans night.
She still has on her scrubs. The heat from the pool is cloying.
She rips off her lowered surgical mask and cap and tosses them in a bin.
When she exits by the other end of the pool, she’s back in the corridor Oleg had led her down when she arrived… wow, was that only yesterday?… when he showed her the locked Mona Lisa room.
The door to the Mona Lisa room is wide open.
Maggie half sprints toward it. When she turns the corner, she sees three identical paintings on the wall, except they are all oil paintings of wildflowers.
No Mona Lisas.
What the…?
No time to worry about it. She continues down the corridor. She passes the fake Gardner Museum pieces and notices that one, the Vermeer, is now missing.
Something is going on.
She isn’t sure what to do when she hears a bellow from above. “Doctor McCabe?”
Maggie spins. It’s Ivan Brovski.
“Where are you going?” he asks. “Why are you still in your scrubs?”
She moves back toward him and starts up the stairs. His face is set. She doesn’t like that. “I need my phone,” she says.
“You can’t have it. You were told as part of your employment there was to be no communication—”
“And I told you that I wasn’t communicating with anyone.”
Ivan Brovski stares her down. “Then why do you want it back so badly?”
“That’s not your concern.”
His voice becomes soft. “It’s not really him, you know.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“It’s an unhealthy crutch. You don’t need it.”
“What I really don’t need,” Maggie replies, “is mental health tips from an oligarch’s lackey. Give me my phone, please.”
Another man—Maggie recognizes him as one of the guards from last night—runs up to Brovski.
The man is big, with a giant rectangular head.
It’s as if someone just dropped a cinder block between his shoulders.
He looks Maggie over with disgust, as though she’d dropped out of the back of a dog’s behind, and whispers something in Brovski’s ear.
Brovski’s eyes close in what appears to be exhaustion.
Then Brovski barks what sounds like an order in Russian.
CinderBlock nods—tricky when you have no neck—and hurries over to another big man in another ill-fitting black suit.
“What’s going on?” Maggie asks.
“It’s time for you to leave, Doctor McCabe.”
“Wait, what?”
“The helicopter will be here within the hour.”
“I just finished the surgeries.”
“An hour should give you time to shower and change.”
“I told you up front. I need to stay with the patients—”
“No, you don’t. I’m here. We have staff. The surgeries went spectacularly. As I mentioned before, you are as gifted as your reputation. We will let Doctor Barlow know how pleased we were with your services. If you’ll excuse me—”
“I want my phone.”
“You’ll get it when you depart.”
Maggie is confused. Why the sudden rush? Why the change in demeanor? Maggie isn’t big on vibes, but the whole vibe here has taken an unexpected turn for the worse.
“Oleg Ragoravich isn’t in his room,” Maggie says.
“That’s not your concern.”
She looks down by the front door. Two more men in ill-fitting black suits rush outside.
“Tell me about Nadia.”
Brovski looks annoyed by the question. “What?”
“Where is she originally from?”
“I have no idea.”
“Come on, Ivan. You know everything about me.”
“Because you’re a physician hired for discretion and ability. So yes, of course, we vetted you.”
“And you don’t vet the boss’s mistress?”
“Exactly. He said not to, so we didn’t.”
More black-suited men rushing back and forth.
“I have to go,” he says.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing. Shower, get changed. I’ll bring your phone to your room. Then you can leave.”
He rushes off then. Maggie isn’t sure what to do. That garish tattoo—
on Marc’s leg, on Nadia’s leg—keeps strobing through her mind. She can’t stop it. Part of her wants to follow Brovski and demand her phone, but it’s pretty clear that he’s not going to give in on that yet.
So what next?
Stay calm. Think. Plan.
Okay, since Nadia is still unconscious, Maggie decides the best move forward is to shower quickly and change. If they are serious about her leaving—and they seem to be—is that really such a bad thing? Brovski was right—these surgeries are, in the end, fairly routine.
The staff seem competent in handling the post-op, and if something goes wrong, they should be able to handle it.
So why shouldn’t she head back to the United States as soon as possible?
Because she needs to know about that damned tattoo first.
One step at a time, she tells herself. Do your job. Shower, change, hurry back to the medical wing, find Oleg Ragoravich—they probably moved him to his bedroom already—check on him, make sure he’s okay, and by then, Nadia should be waking up.
She hurries to her room, turns on the faucets, and steps under the spray.
Funny thing: Even the shower gives her a nostalgic pang.
That had been part of her old surgical ritual—the post-op shower—and she missed this feeling, the light exhaustion, the satisfaction of accomplishment, the clearing of the mind, the gentle cusp between her professional life and whatever awaited her (Marc) when she was done.
Okay, yeah, it’s just a shower, but even the tiny remnants of blood and tissue, the workday spiraling down the drain, had been her own sort of purification ceremony.
The shower is also a good place, perhaps the best place, to think, so Maggie tries to come up with a rational reason that Nadia has the same tattoo as Marc.
She can’t think of a single one.
She needs more information. Simple as that. Ask Nadia when she wakes up. Ask the griefbot when she gets it back. Ask both.
Deep breaths.
She changes into loungewear and heads to the door. When she opens it, CinderBlock is standing there like a second door. She tries to move past him, but he blocks her.
“Please move out of my way.”
“You stay,” he says with a thick Russian accent.
“I need to check on my patients.”
“Stay.”
His eyes are on hers, and she doesn’t like what she sees. It isn’t anger or hatred or even determination in them. It’s more… nothing. Lifeless. Like she’s staring into the eyes of a filing cabinet.
She has a few options here, none of them good, but she tries the simplest. She channels the backyard touch football games of her youth.
She loved them, especially on Thanksgiving.
Her mother, a huge New York Jets fan, would play quarterback.
Mom would imitate her NFL quarterbacks, shouting out nonsense.
Maggie has always been quick as opposed to fast. That made her dangerous in the game.
So, odd as it sounds, right now, with CinderBlock looming over her, Maggie fakes left like a running back.
Cinder shifts his body to follow. Maggie pushes off her left foot and explodes past him on the right.
She doesn’t know whether she can run faster than him.
She doubts it. But she has now put him in an uncomfortable position.
The only way to stop her is to use physical force.
That’s a big step up from blocking her path.
CinderBlock would have to sprint after her now—perhaps grab or even tackle her.
And she might resist. That would be forcing him to take this to a different level.
Maggie is hoping that he doesn’t want to go there.
When he hesitates, Maggie keeps moving. “I’ll be right back, I promise,” she calls out, glancing behind her. “I just need to make sure my patient is okay.”