“I’m joking. Seriously, there’s nothing more you can do. You’ve talked to the doctor in charge of Rothman and Yamamoto’s care and now you can’t go back into the lab. You have to let it go and let the authorities do their work. You can be sure there’s an investigation going on. So you should drop it. Yes?”

Pia wasn’t hearing George’s plea at all.

“Pia, are you listening to me?”

Far from dropping it, Pia was now wondering whether Spaulding was hiding something. Yet what could she do? And what was she going to do with the rest of her life? Without her mentor and his program, was research still a possibility? Becoming a physician had seemed to offer safety in her life, something she coveted. But Rothman had made her realize that her discomfort with patients, with other people in general, might not bode well for such a career. She was at a crossroads in her life and had no answers. Thinking about it made her anxious.

Pia let out a sigh and George asked her what was up. Pia ignored the question. She suddenly knew that her preoccupation with finding out what had happened to Rothman was allowing her to avoid thinking about her career and the decisions she was facing. It was her first line of defense. The future could wait. Pia stopped walking and pulled George to a stop just outside the dorm.

“I’m not giving this up. I’ve got to find out why this tragedy happened. There are too many questions. Every time I stop and think, there are more questions; more people acting strangely. The infectious disease people insisted on using a fifty-year-old antibiotic and the patients died within hours despite being diagnosed and treated. And no one, I mean no one, liked Rothman. All his colleagues were jealous of him having a Lasker and a Nobel and possibly being in line for another. Okay, Spaulding was mad that I was in the storage facility, which he has always been weirdly proprietary about, and he knew I’d been in his desk since I was holding the logbook. But he was acting bizarre, like the lab was now his. The moron is only a fucking technician. He’s not a researcher. And what about the fact that I, a mere medical student, was the one to pick up the peritonitis? Maybe if they had gotten him to surgery sooner, he would still be alive.”

“What do you want me to say?” George asked. He tried to look Pia in the eye but she avoided it.

“Does it really sound like I’m paranoid? Don’t answer. Whatever, I’m not finished looking into all this as there doesn’t seem to be anyone else doing it.”