Present day
Seattle
Tiny claws inched along the veranda railing outside Peter Barshman's bedroom window.
Click, click, click-click-click.
With a groan, Peter rolled over and wrapped the pillow around his head. All he wanted was a few more minutes of sleep. No, he wanted to stay in bed all day.
Click, click, click-clickâ
The claws ceased their clicking, and Peter clenched his teeth in anticipation.
Tick.
The sound was barely audible through his pillow, but it might as well have been the clang of a gong. Another birdseed tapped against the veranda, then another.
Tick, tick, tick-tick-tick.
Peter could see it clearly in his mind's eye, that damned squirrel dangling upside down from the bird feeder like a bat, its jowls stuffed with sunflower seeds. How the bloated beast even managed to jump that high defied all laws of physics. The thing was possessed.
Tick-tick-tick, tick, tick.
Peter sat bolt upright and hurled his pillow at the window, leaping up and ripping back the curtains. The bird feeder swayed wildly beneath the eaves, but the damned squirrel was gone, vanished in the faint light of dawn.
Peter felt suddenly lightheaded, so he sat on the edge of the bed and groped the nightstand for his phone. There were no texts, no missed calls, just a little banner across the top reminding him of why he wanted to stay in bed all dayâMeet with Dad 5:15 p.m. He had not seen his father in seven months, not since the funeral.
Showered and dressed, Peter grabbed a bagel and hopped on his bike for the ride to work. The sun rose big and orange, its weird light settling on the city like rust. The air was warm and hazy, spiced with the smoke of a hundred wildfires still burning up and down the Pacific coast. Seattle had not seen a drop of rain since August, and none was expected before October. People were beginning to talk about an Indian summer, whatever that meant.
Pedaling along the surface streets, Peter Barshman pondered his squirrel conundrum. All summer he had fantasized about killing the evil creature. He had even bought an air rifle at the sporting goods store. But every time he peered down the barrel at those twitching whiskers and glossy black eyes, he just could not bring himself to pull the trigger. It had occurred to him more than once that he might rid himself of the squirrel simply by removing the birdfeeder (the birds could be just as annoying), but it had been a gift from a good friend would notice its absence.
As he coasted past the old Jewish cemetery with its high, wrought-iron fence, a sudden pothole jarred the answer loose, along with half his bagel. He chided himself for not thinking of it sooner. It was so obvious: Leave the bird feeder up, but let it go empty. No more squirrel, no more birds, and no hurt feelings.
He followed the backstreets of central Seattle to King County Hospital, perched on a hill overlooking the harbor. Already late for work, he took a shortcut through the emergency room. It was eerily quiet, but the aftermath of battle still lingered in the air, that pungent blend of alcohol, urine, and blood.
Blood. Just the thought of it made him feel faint. Blood. It reminded him of why he had abandoned his dream of becoming a nurse or a doctor, saving the world and all that. It reminded him of why he had become a physical therapist instead.
On the sixth-floor general medicine ward, Peter changed into powder-blue scrubs, logged onto a workstation, and ran his list of patients for the day. They were all routine casesâpneumonia, stroke, pancreatitisâthings that knocked people on their butts hard enough that they needed physical help getting back up.
Then there was Mr. John C. Lundquist, a forty-seven-year-old molecular-biology lab tech found by co-workers jabbering nonsense in a broom closet. His doctors down in Oregon had decided to ship him up to Seattle for expert consultation. Who that expert was, Peter did not know. But whatever afflicted poor Mr. Lundquist, it was certainly bad, one of those unpronounceable maladies that lurked deep in the appendices of medical textbooks.
Peter knocked on the door to Mr. Lundquist's room, and getting no response, he stepped inside. The man lay spread-eagle on the bed, face up, his thin, lily-white frame completely naked except for a tangled sheet at his groin. Soft blue restraints bound him wrist and ankle to the bed. Dark stubble shaded his jaw, and his greasy brown hair was licked this way and that like frosting on a cake.
Peter heard several people talking, approaching from down the hall, and he peeked out for a look. It was the medical team. Leading the way was Dr. R.K. Brisling, infectious-diseases specialist. He was an older white man, mid-to-late sixties, average height, pudgy around the middle. He walked with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his white coat, balding head bowed under a halo of gray hair that might have once been blonde.
Two medical students trailed him like pilot fish, snapping at the words Dr. Brisling seemed to toss over his shoulder. One was a young man Peter had never seen before. Med students often were quite young, but this one was positively boyish, pretty too, like a K-pop star. He had an annoying bounced to his step.
As they filed into the room, Peter reached out and tapped the second medical student's shoulder.
"Hey!" said Peter.
"Shit!" Anna put her hand to her chest. Then she shot Peter a smoldering glare and shook her head: not now. Tucking her short blond hair behind her hear, she turned away and took up position at the food of Mr. Lundquist's bed.
Peter shut the door and leaned back against it, watching. Anna Jankowsky looked tired, he decided, exhausted. She seemed paler than usual, and she had not bothered to iron her white coat, or put in her contact lenses. Instead, she wore an old pair of glasses held together with white medical tape.
Dr. Brisling assumed the position of honor at the patient's right. He leaned close, his wire-rimmed glasses slipping down his bulbous nose. Then he introduced himself to the patient with an accent Peter could not quite place. It was arid and insipid, Midwestern perhaps.
The patient's head lolled toward the doctor's voice, lips parting against thick strands of saliva. What came out of his mouth was utter nonsense. "Unca minam datchenhat?" he said as if asking the time of day. "Wizened more in frankincense?"
Dr. Brisling winced at Lundquist's breath. Adjusting his glasses, he asked the man to give him a thumbs-up sign. Surprisingly, Lundquist complied, his left wrist jerking against the blue fabric restraint.
Now, Brisling turned to the boyish med student and said, "Student Number One, this man's speech demonstrates neologism and word salad, two distinct language-processing defects. Yet language comprehension is intact, because he can follow verbal commands. So tell me: where is this man's brain lesion?"
Student Number One rifled through some papers he was holding and muttered something unintelligible. Then he stared at his shoes. Better to say nothing, Peter knew, than to guess. It was the academic equivalent of playing possum.
Brisling arched his reddish eyebrows and knocked at an imaginary door. "Hello? Anyone home?" With an exasperated huff, he turned to Anna. "Student Number Two, I'll make this easier for you. In which hemisphere is this man's brain lesion?"
Anna bit her lower lip, a sure sign of doubt.
"Come on. There're only two of them, right and left."
"Left," she said, far too quickly. It had to be a guess.
Brisling locked his blue eyes onto Anna like a lion staring down a limping wildebeest. "Ah, I see. There's a ninety percent chance he's right-handed, thus left-brain dominant. Is that what you were guessing?"
She nodded.
"Wrong, Number Two, wrong! Did you even examine this patient?"
She swallowed hard. "We did. We asked him if he was right- or left-handed, but he couldn't tell us."
Brisling leaned over Mr. Lundquist and took his left hand. "Just look at the muscles of his forearm. They're much bigger than the right side. The same for his thumbnails. And these calluses here." He released Lundquist's hand and stood straight. "Christ, anyone with a brain can see this man is left-handed, ergo right-brain dominant." He glowered at Anna. "Is it true you're considering a career in pathology?"
She nodded again. Anna had just finished a month-long rotation on the pathology service and loved every minute of it, especially every minute she got to sleep in her own bed.
"Good," said Brisling, suddenly massaging his lower back. "Best you stay away from living patients."
Anna looked stunned.
Peter opened his mouth to protest but checked himself. Physical therapists were known to challenge doctors every now and then, but none of them still worked at King County. There were of course formal channels for lodging complaints against assholes like Brisling, but that rarely went anywhere and took forever. Peter wanted to do something right now. He wanted to punch the bastard in the face.
Anna's hazel eyes began to well behind her glasses, and she turned away.
Brisling craned his neck and held up his finger. "I wasn't finished yet."
Peter's knuckles cracked at his sides. "Lay off her!"
Silence took the room. Anna shot Peter a sudden look, torn between resentment and fear. Student Number One retreated behind an IV pole. Even Mr. Lundquist seemed to sense imminent disaster.
Brisling turned slowly toward Peter, head tilted with befuddled amusement, finger still raised midgesture. He lowered it and sighed. "And who the hell are you?"
"I'mâI'm Mr. Lundquist's physical therapist."
"I meant your name."
"Peter."
The doctor squinted through his glasses at Peter's ID badge. "And your last name?"
"Barshman." He could always find work at another hospital.
Brisling frowned. "What kind of name is Barshman?"
"It's . . . Irish."
"Never heard it before." Brisling's frown soured into a grimace. Loosening his tie, he took a tiny brown vial from his coat pocket, tapped a pill into his palm, and popped it into to his mouth. Nitroglycerine tablets. The man had coronary artery disease. Then he lowered his balding head and marched out of the room.
Peter followed the team down the hall to a physician workroom. Dr. Brisling sat at a workstation, Anna a few paces back. Student Number One mumbled something about needing to go to the bathroom and dashed out. Peter slipped inside and sat at a station on the far side of the room, pretending to log on.
Brisling called up Mr. Lundquist's brain MRI scan and scrolled through the cross-sectional images. It looked like a gray walnut in the half shell. But the entire right side looked rotten, riddled with white spots.
Peter rolled over on his chair. "Is that cancer?" he said, hoping to draw the doctor's attention away from Anna.
Brisling swiveled around. "What are you still doing here?"
There was no sense backing down now. The damage was already done. "Um . . . well . . . he's my patient too."
Brisling conceded the point with a curled lip and a little nod. "No, it's not cancer." He turned to Anna. "What do you think it is? I assume you reviewed his MRI scan already."
"We did," she said with a little sniffle.
"And?"
"It . . . looked like a demyelinating disease to us."
"Very good. But which demyelinating disease?"
"MS?"
Brisling turned away and spoke the computer monitor. "That's a better guess than last time, but still wrong. No, this is something much rarer than MS. In fact, I haven't seen a case of it in years."
"What is it?" said Peter.
Brisling's answer came slow and deliberate, reverent even. "Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy."
Anna gasped. "PML? That's a hundred percent fatal. There's no cure."
"That's what I told those morons down in Oregon, but they insisted on shipping him up here anyways. I suppose that's what you get for publishing a few papers on the subject. People think you're a goddamned expert, or worse, a miracle worker."
Anna's expression seemed to waver between fear and fascination. "But PML only affects people with AIDS or weakened immune systems. Mr. Lundquist doesn't have AIDS. His immune system is completely normal."
"And that's the only reason I accepted his transfer."
"So why did he get PML?" There was an odd quaver to her voice.
Brisling stood, turned around, and rubbed his lower back again. "That's what you and I are going to find out. But we have other patients to see, and miles to go before we sleep. Lead the way, Number Two. Lead the way."
Late that afternoon, Peter found Anna sitting alone in a break room. She was staring blankly at the far wall, glasses folded up at her elbow, hands cupped around an open water bottle.
Peter sat next to her. "You okay?"
She looked at him with bloodshot eyes. "Huh? Oh, just tired. I haven't been sleeping very well."
"I can imagine. That Brisling's a total prick."
A smirk tugged the corner of her mouth, and she touched his hand. "Thanks."
Peter had to chuckle. "For a second there, I thought he was going to rip my head off."
"Nah. You have nothing to worry about."
"Why's that?"
"Because you have a Y chromosome, that's why."
"Ah."
"He's even worse with the female interns."
"Hard to imagine. Jesus, is he married?"
"I don't think so." A pause. "Someone said his wife died when he was at the CDC."
"Oh." A pause. "Brisling was at the CDC?"
"Back in the eighties, something to do with the discovery of HIV."
"Wow. How did he end up here?"
"I don't know."
"He's still a prick."
Anna sipped from her water bottle, and Peter took the opportunity to admire her straight, freckled nose. And for the millionth time, he wondered why they had never dated.
He yawned then stretched. "So, I hear you're seeing somebody."
She puffed her cheeks and let out a long trailing breath. "It's nothing."
"I hear he looks just like me except five years younger." A little ribbing always cheered her up.
"Four years actually, and he does look like you, a lot actually. Same eyes and complexion." She cocked her head. "Same curly hair too, kind of Mediterranean."
"Who knew Irish Catholics were so exotic."
"I think he's half Jewish."
"I don't care if he's half centaur. What I want to know is if he's used the Boy Hatch yet."
She scoffed.
Anyone eavesdropping would have gotten the wrong impression. The Boy Hatch was a small ventilation window above Anna's bathroom sink. She liked to boast that her myriad lovers used it for hasty exits.
"Fine. Don't tell. What ever happened to Larry? I liked him."
Anna smirked for real this time. "Lawrence was sweet."
Peter cocked an eyebrow, and they shared a welcome laugh. When it ended, Anna suggested they get a bite to eat.
Peter checked his phone. "Shit. I'm supposed to meet my dad downstairs in fifteen minutes."
"I thought you two weren't talking."
"Trust me. This wasn't my idea. He's been emailing me for weeks, wanting to meet. Now he's saying he has something important to tell me."
Anna's face went slack.
"What's wrong?"
She bit her lower lip and looked away.
"Wait. Do you know something?"
She said nothing.
"You do, don't you?"
She turned back, head tilted, eyebrows arched sympathetically. "It might not be anything."
"What might not be anything?"
"It's . . . it's just that I saw your dad a few days ago at this charity event at the university. A bunch of us med students were there . . ."
"And?"
"And . . . well . . . he was talking to a woman, a younger woman. They were standing really close, whispering to each other."
"Ah Jesus. Is that what he wants to tell me, that he's found someone new? It's only been seven months."
She tried to touch his hand again, but he pulled away. "I bet she's half his age."
"Peter . . ."
He got up to leave. "Nothing ever changes."
______________
Author's note:
Thank you for reading Chapter 1!
What do you think of the characters of Peter, Dr. Brisling and Anna? Is Brisling is a total bastard or what? Do you think there's a reason he acts the way he does?
And poor Mr. Lundquist...
All comments and questions welcome!
Photo credit: TIA International Photography, https://www.flickr.com/people/12744878@N02/