Saint Francis Hospital
Chicago

Dr. Claire Antonelli stared at the image of Markus Schroder’s liver. On the desk in front of her were various other images and test documents. She had gone over all of them more than twice. The man behind her was seeing them for the first time and even he was quiet. In fact, Claire found it unsettling how quiet Dr. Jackson Miles had become.

She glanced back at him. His deep-creased face was a perpetual frown. She remembered him once calling his wrinkles “well-deserved life lines.” He had those life lines for as long as Claire had known him, even back when he shepherded her through a tough residency, taking her under his wing when her all-male class made it clear that she was their outcast. Dr. Jackson Miles told her then that if he could become the first black chief of surgery then she could certainly overcome the discrimination she was dealing with.

“The liver’s enlarged,” she said, obviously only as a prompt.

“But otherwise doesn’t look unusual.” He didn’t take his eyes off the image, studying it as if it was a puzzle. “What about typhoid or malaria?”

“I’ve had him on antibiotics with no effects. Not even a break in fever.”

“E. coli or salmonella?”

“Not according to the blood tests,” Claire said and released a sigh. These were questions she had already asked herself. Confirming or dismissing them out loud to her onetime mentor didn’t make this any easier. “I thought perhaps a liver abscess or a gallbladder attack but the ultrasound doesn’t seem to agree.”

“Might not show it.”

Claire watched Jackson Miles rub his jaw with a huge hand that always surprised her in surgery when it was able to delicately work through the smallest incisions.

“I’ve sent off for more extensive blood tests, but I’m not sure I can wait. He’s becoming more and more unresponsive. I’m concerned he’ll slip into a coma.”

“Any chance he was exposed to something?”

“According to his wife even contracting malaria or typhoid is a stretch. At first I considered E. coli or anthrax. There was that farmer last year, remember who contracted anthrax somehow from his own cattle? Vera, Markus’s wife, told me they make periodic visits to Indiana. A family business she still owns, though someone else runs it for her. She said she hangs on to it for sentimental reasons.” Claire stopped herself when she realized it sounded like she was rambling. Too much. It was too much information. She didn’t need to go over everything out loud. “Markus works in Chicago as an accountant for a law firm.”

“Anyone else at the law firm sick?”

“I’ve already thought of that, as well.” Claire ran her fingers through her hair, trying to settle herself. She was operating on little sleep and cold pizza. The adrenaline high from seeing a healthy and happy Baby Haney had worn off. “There’s someone out on maternity leave,” she told him. “Another with a broken leg. No one with flulike symptoms.”

“Do you think the wife would agree to exploratory surgery?”

“What are you thinking?”

“There may be something latched onto the liver or kidneys that’s not showing up in the ultrasound.”

“You’ll do the surgery?” she asked and made sure it didn’t sound like a student asking her mentor for a favor.

“Get the wife’s approval.” He nodded. “We’ll both scrub up and take a look-see.”

He made it sound so matter-of-fact that Claire could almost believe it’d be that easy. Then he patted her arm with his gentle bear paw of a hand, and smiled down at her.

“We’ll do our best,” he said, detecting her apprehension, her skepticism. “That’s all we can do.”

Claire hoped Markus and Vera Schroder would see it that way.