Before Jack could even respond Ted was out the door and it began to close. Jack straight-armed the door and ran after Ted. In his usual hyper fashion, Ted was moving at a rapid clip.
Catching up to the man with some effort, Jack reached out, grabbed his left arm just above the elbow, and pulled him to a stop.
To Jack’s shock, Ted responded by angrily yanking his arm from Jack’s grasp. “Don’t you dare lay a hand on me,” he snarled.
Taken aback by this unexpected response in light of Ted’s overly cordial behavior from their very first interaction, Jack raised his hands in a kind of surrender. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I don’t like to be manhandled,” Ted snapped as he smoothed the sleeve of his white doctor’s coat. Without waiting for a response from Jack, he recommenced walking quickly to the elevators, where he hit the call button multiple times.
Jack caught up to him a second time. “I have more questions I need to ask,” he said. His voice had an edge. He was both confused and put off by Ted’s surprising behavior, but mostly the latter.
“It will have to be another time,” Ted said. His eyes rose to see which elevator was going to arrive first.
“I visited the Bannons,” Jack said. “It was their son who was the donor for Carol Stewart’s heart. I got the impression that they might have been paid. Do you know anything about that?”
“Absolutely not,” Ted said. He moved down to the second elevator, as the lights indicated it was on its way. “My role was with the recipient, as you already know. Like all centers, we keep a sharp separation between the recipient interests and those of the donor, to avoid even the appearance of unethical behavior.”
The elevator arrived and the doors opened. Ted quickly boarded.
“How do you explain that Carol and the donor heart she was given matched with their CODIS profiles?” Jack asked. “We ran the test twice.”
“I haven’t a clue,” Ted said. He hit the button for the second floor. The doors began to close.
Jack grabbed the edge of the elevator door and stopped it from closing. “How did it happen that Dr. Wei Zhao is the executor of Carol Stewart’s estate?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Ted said. “Let go of the door or I will call security!”
Reluctantly, Jack let go of the elevator door. It responded by opening. “I need answers to these questions,” he said. “I’m not going to give up until I get them.”
“You’re asking the wrong person,” Ted said. “Ask Dr. Zhao. Maybe he can help you.”
A moment later, Jack was staring at the blank, closed elevator doors. He felt a building rage compounded by the frustration of not understanding the sudden attitude change of Dr. Ted Markham. One minute he’d been warm and welcoming, the next cold and distant. Jack hadn’t been as surprised by Stephen’s sudden personality change. He’d never seemed particularly sincere to Jack.
As he walked back to the morgue locker room, Jack tried to remember what exactly he had said when both doctors suddenly morphed from being interested observers to wanting to leave. It had happened right after he’d posed the question of whether or not some evidence of rejection phenomena was expected to be seen with heart transplants. Jack had done only one other heart transplant autopsy prior to Carol Stewart. It had been way back during his training in Chicago, but he distinctly remembered seeing some signs of inflammation both in the pericardium and in the heart itself. And he remembered that case had been described as a fairly good match.
As Jack pulled on his chambray shirt and began to knot his knit tie, the required concentration calmed him down a degree. “What a day,” hecomplained out loud. Intuitively he knew anger and acting out wouldn’t help him get through the next five or six hours, as it never did. Instead he tried to think of what his options were. They seemed limited. He could go back to the city and try to participate in some way with the identification of the virus, but the moment he thought of the idea, he dismissed it. Bioinformatics was something he knew close to nothing about. When he thought about going home, he dismissed it out of hand. There was no way he would be willing to sit around and make small talk with Sheldon and Dorothy Montgomery. Of course, he could try to relate to Emma, but that might make him more depressed than he already was. He could spend some time with JJ, but JJ didn’t get home from school until after 4:30.
Hooking an index finger under the tab of his bomber jacket, Jack slung it over his shoulder and walked out of the morgue locker room. As frustrating as his visit seemed to be becoming, he thought he wouldn’t leave Dover Valley Hospital just yet. Going through his mind was Ted’s suggestion. Maybe he should be directing his questions to Wei Zhao. The problem was how to do it. With the level of security the man insisted on, it wasn’t as if Jack could walk up and ring his doorbell. Yesterday, it clearly had been Ted and Stephen who had gotten him the invite to the man’s house. Maybe that could work again, and with Stephen in surgery, it left Ted.
Returning to the elevators, Jack took one up to the second floor. His destination was Ted’s office, which he knew the exact location of, thanks to the man’s hospitality yesterday. Jack didn’t know what he was going to say after the unflattering brushoff the man had given him at the elevator, but he trusted something would come to mind. He was convinced one of his strengths was the ability to wing it in any given situation.
Walking through the Zhao Heart Center, Jack could see that Ted had not been exaggerating. The clinic was crowded with patients waiting to be seen. Jack passed the check-in counter, heading for Ted’s private office. Jack thought it would be far more successful to talk with Ted’ssecretary, who had gotten Jack’s coffee the day before, than with one of the clinic clerks.
As Jack neared his destination, he could see that Ted’s office door was closed. He didn’t know if that was a good sign or bad, as to whether Ted was there or down the hall seeing patients in the examination cubicles. Hoping to at least find out, he approached the secretary, who was typing on her monitor. She looked up when Jack made his presence known. Instantly, he could tell that she recognized him, but she made an effort to conceal it by merely asking if she could help him.
“I need to talk to the doctor,” Jack said in a compelling tone.
“I will see if he’s available. Who should I say is calling?”
“Dr. Denton Cooley,” Jack said, coming up on the spur of the moment with the name of one of the most famous cardiac surgeons in America. He thought it was a name Ted would respond to in a positive fashion even though Cooley had recently passed away. Whether the secretary remembered Jack’s real name, which he had given the day before, he couldn’t tell. Without another word she disappeared inside the inner office.
Jack mentally ticked off the seconds she was gone from force of habit. He was glad he did. When she emerged just over ten seconds later she said, “I’m sorry, but he is not available. He has just stepped out.”
“Interesting,” Jack said, content to fall back on the same comment yet again. “Obviously you were just speaking with him, as it surely wouldn’t have taken you so long to see he was not there. That means he’s counting on me just going away. Please go back and tell him that I am not leaving until I talk with him, and I will be waiting right over there.” Jack pointed to a modern couch off to the side. He then proceeded to walk to it and sit down. Placing his jacket next to him, he smiled back at the secretary.
For a moment the woman stood frozen in place, neither sitting back down at her desk nor returning inside the inner office. She had a confused and embarrassed look on her face, presumably from being caughtin a flat-out lie. Eventually, she recovered, and she disappeared back into the inner sanctum for another ten seconds.
Picking up a magazine on hospital administration, as it was the only choice, Jack absently flipped through it. It was mostly advertisements. When the secretary reemerged, she made it a point to not even look at Jack, but rather went to her desk and recommenced her transcription efforts.
