After a hectic day involving thirty-seven major surgeries, it was a relaxed and quiet time for everyone, including the one hundred and seventeen patients: everyone, that is, except Veena Chandra. While her father was trudging out of the rank, loathsome landfill, Veena was struggling in the half-light of an anesthesia room in the empty operating-room suite, where the only light was filtering in from the dimmed central corridor. Veena was attempting with trembling fingers to stick the needle of a 10cc syringe into the rubber top of a vial of succinylcholine, a rapidly paralyzing drug related to the curare of Amazonian poison dart fame. Normally, she could fill such a syringe with ease. Veena was a nurse, having graduated from the famous public hospital the All India Institute of Health Sciences almost three months ago. Following graduation she’d been hired by an American firm called Nurses International, which had, in turn, hired her out to the Queen Victoria Hospital after providing her with some specialized training.

Not wishing to stick herself with the needle, which could prove deadly, Veena lowered her arms for a moment and tried to relax. She was a ball of nerves. She truly didn’t know if she was going to be able to do what she’d been tasked with and had agreed to do. It seemed incredible that she’d been talked into it. She was supposed to fill the syringe, take it down to Maria Hernandez’s room, where the woman was hoped to be sleeping off the anesthesia from the hip-replacement surgery she’d had that morning, inject it into her IV, and then beat a rapid retreat, all without being seen by anyone. Veena knew that not being seen by anyone on a nearly full hospital floor was highly unlikely, which was why she was still dressed in her traditional white nursing uniform she’d had on all day. The hope was that if someone did see her, they wouldn’t think it odd she was in the hospital even though she worked days, not evenings.

To help her calm down, Veena closed her eyes, and the moment she did so she was instantly transported back four months to the last time her father threatened her. They were at home, his parents in the living room, her mom at the hospital, and her sisters out indulging in Saturday-afternoon activities with friends. Totally unexpectedly, he had cornered her in the bathroom. While the television blared in the next room, he began shouting, then cursing at her. He was very clever in how he hit her, never leaving a mark on her face. His rage was unexpectedly volcanic, and it was all Veena could do not to cry out. Since it hadn’t happened for more than a year, Veena had assumed that the problem was over. But now she knew for sure it would never be over. The only way to escape her father’s clutches was for her to leave India. Yet she feared for her sisters. She knew he was unable to control his urges. If she left, he would undoubtedly single out one of her sisters and start anew, and that she could not abide.