He returned to the private room and received a very favorable update from the amazed nurse.

“She’s doing wonderfully—even spoke to me a moment ago! Such spirit!”

“Thank you for your help, Miss Wiles,” Kusum said. “I don’t think we’ll be requiring your services any longer.”

“But—”

“Have no fear: You shall be paid for the entire eight-hour shift.” He went to the windowsill, took her purse and handed it to her. “You’ve done a wonderful job. Thank you.”

Ignoring her confused protests, he guided her out the door and into the hall. As soon as he was sure she would not be returning out of some misguided sense of duty to her patient, he went to the bedside phone and dialed hospital information.

“I’d like to know the room number of a patient,” he said when the operator picked up. “His name is Ronald Daniels. He was just admitted through the emergency room.”

There was a pause, then: “Ronald Daniels is in 547C, North Wing.”

Kusum hung up and leaned back in the chair. How to go about this? He had seen where the doctors’ lounge was located. Perhaps he could find a set of whites or a scrub suit in there. Dressed in those and without his turban, he would be able to move about the hospital more freely.

As he considered his options, he pulled a tiny glass vial from his pocket and removed the stopper. He sniffed the familiar herbal odor of the green liquid within, then resealed it.

Mr. Ronald Daniels was in pain. He had suffered for his transgression. But not enough. No, not nearly enough.

21

“HELP ME!”

Ron had just been drifting off into sleep. Goddamn that old bastard! Every time he started to fall asleep, the old fart yelled.

Just my luck to get stuck in a ward with three geezers. He elbowed the call button. Where’s that fucking nurse? He needed a shot.

The pain was a living thing, grinding Ron’s hands in its teeth and gnawing his arms all the way up to the shoulders. All he wanted to do was sleep. But the pain kept him awake. The pain and the oldest of his three ancient roommates, the one over by the window, the one the nurses called Tommy. Every so often, in between his foghorn snores, he’d let out a yell that would rattle the windows.

Ron hit the call button again with his elbow. Because both his arms were resting in slings suspended from an overhead bar, the nurses had fastened the button to one of the side rails. He had asked them repeatedly for another pain shot, but they kept giving him the same old line over and over: “Sorry, Mr. Daniels, but the doctor left orders for a shot every four hours and no more. You’ll have to wait.”

Mr. Daniels. He could almost smile at that. His real name was Ronald Daniel Symes. Ron to his friends. He’d given the receptionist a phony name, a phony address, and told them his Blue Cross/Blue Shield card was at home in his wallet. And when they’d wanted to send him home he’d told them how he lived alone and had no one to feed him or even help him open his apartment door. They’d bought it all. So now he had a place to stay, three meals a day, air conditioning, and when it was all over, he’d skip out and they could take their bill and shove it.