Yet despite this competitiveness, about which Veena was totally unaware, the girls had developed a keen friendship based on the shared dream of someday emigrating to America. Like their other friends at school, both had had early access to the Internet, which Samira had availed herself of much more than Veena but which had provided both girls an oculus to the West and an introduction to the idea of personal freedom. By the time they’d reached their teenage years, they’d become inseparable and shared their secrets, which for Veena included abuse by her father, something she’d never shared with anyone else for fear of bringing shame to her family. Samira’s secret, sharply contrasting with Veena’s, was that she was fascinated by pornographic websites, and consequently sex, finding it hard to think of anything else by its denial. She was dying to experience sex herself and felt like a caged animal, especially because of her strict Muslim upbringing. Ultimately, what cemented the relationship between the two young women was their willingness to cover for each other. Each would tell her parents she was sleeping at the other’s home, enabling them to go to Western-style clubs and stay out all night. Instead of embracing the traditional Indian karmic values of passivity, obedience, and acceptance of life’s difficulties based on expectations of reward in the next life, both Samira and Veena progressively wanted the rewards in this life, not the next.

Yesterday, when Samira heard that Veena had been selected as the first of the nurses to carry out the new strategy, she’d been immediately jealous. That was why she’d acted as she had, volunteering for the next task with the claim she’d do it better and without hesitation. The reason she felt so confident was that there was one arena in which she had made more progress than her friend, and that was in the degree to which she’d abandoned the old culture of India and embraced the new culture of the West. Her affair with Durell was clear evidence.

With a trembling hand, Samira pushed open the stairwell door on the fifth floor. It was relatively dark. For a few seconds, Samira merely listened. She heard no sounds except the constant omnipresent low hum of the HVAC machinery. She stepped out into the hallway and allowed the door to close behind her.

Confident she was alone, Samira walked in the direction of the operating suite while trying to keep the sound of her heels striking the composite floor to a minimum. The lighting was dim but adequate. Passing through the outer double doors, she made certain the surgical lounge was empty. She knew that it was occasionally used during the evening, and that the night-shift staff used it to take breaks and catch some TV, even though officially it was off-limits. She moved on to the double doors to the OR suite itself and cracked them. Unfortunately, the hinges complained with a screeching noise, making Samira cringe. She could feel her heart throbbing in her chest and could hear it in her ears. After pausing for a few seconds to check for any kind of response to the sound of the doors, Samira stepped into the operating suite itself. When the same screech occurred as the door closed, she cringed again. But the earlier tomblike silence immediately descended like a heavy blanket.