Dead Certain

along with Leo when he met me late at night.
    “That’s sweet of you,” I said, “but you need Mona to keep an eye on Angel and the kids while you’re out watching over me. Besides, from what I heard, this guy follows little old ladies home from the grocery store during the day. I’m like Dracula, I only come out when it’s dark.”
    “I just worry about you is all, two women living alone in this kind of neighborhood...,” Leo said as he slid into the driver’s seat.
    “You’d better watch yourself, Leo,” I chided him sternly. “You’re starting to sound like my father.”
    We both laughed, and I turned to make my way up the wide stone steps that led to the front door of my building. I waved at Leo to signal that I was all right and then climbed another six steps to the internal door to the first floor. As I turned the key in the next lock it occurred to me that if she lived for a thousand years, my mother was never going to meet someone like Leo, much less get to know him well enough to learn the name of his dog. And yet it was people like Leo—petty criminal, family man, and worrier about my safety—who were precisely the type who passed through the doors of Prescott Memorial Hospital every day.
     
    As I made my way across the dimly lit first-floor landing I was greeted by the strains of Vivaldi coming from the living room. My roommate, Claudia, was not just home, but awake—a remarkable occurrence, especially given the relatively early hour. In the middle of a fellowship in trauma surgery, my roommate lived a life stripped down to work and sleep. One of only three doctors assigned full-time to what was arguably one of the busiest trauma units in the city, she not only spent every third night on twenty-four-hour call at the hospital, but was charged with supervising the follow-up care for every trauma patient admitted to the hospital during her shift. The irony of the fact that the hospital in question was Prescott Memorial was hardly lost on me.
    I would have loved to tell her about the proposed sale of the hospital, if only to hear what she had to say about it, but I felt reluctant to raise the subject. Claudia had enough to worry about without having to keep my secrets. Surgery is a prickly meritocracy, a separate world filled with competitive people whose egos are as vast as their sense of entitlement. Like every other trauma fellow in her program, Claudia had hoped to be assigned to Prescott Memorial. It was considered far and away the best rotation, not just for the famous surgeons who left their prestigious practices to take their turn on trauma call, but for the high volume of patients—especially victims of person-to-person violence.
    But Claudia had been equally determined to earn a spot on her own, without our friendship coming into play, and once she’d been chosen for the Prescott Memorial team, she was, if anything, even more anxious that her association with my family remain a secret. Having battled whispers about pulled strings and family connections my whole life, I understood her fears and respected her wishes.
    And yet, as much as she had sought it, Claudia’s rotation through Prescott Memorial had so far not been a happy one. They say that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but the stress was clearly taking its toll. Because the senior attending surgeons were all on staff at other hospitals, the burden of providing the bulk of care fell to Claudia and the two other trauma fellows. In addition, they were charged with supervising the work of a half a dozen interns and residents who were assigned to the service.
    I set the box of Prescott Memorial files on the floor of the vestibule before following the sound of violins and the smell of pizza into the living room. I found Claudia in her favorite spot, an elaborately tufted cabbage-rose chintz armchair that was a hand-me-down from my mother. It was the most comfortable seat in the whole place. The rest of the apartment was furnished with a weird hodgepodge of pieces, castoffs from both our families and furniture we’d picked up over the years at the odd garage sale. The overall effect was less of a home than a resting place—somewhere where two women who conducted their lives elsewhere dropped in to sleep and change clothes.
    “Did you leave any for me?” I inquired hopefully as I kicked off my shoes beside Claudia’s bloodstained sneakers. By way of an answer my roommate lifted the lid of the Edwardo’s