بخش 01 - فصل 14

14

Eight PM.

When her doorbell rings, Ruth Scapelli is watching some stupid reality program which is just an excuse to show young men and women running around in their small clothes. Instead of going directly to the door, she slipper-scuffs into the kitchen and turns on the monitor for the security cam mounted on the porch. She lives in a safe neighborhood, but it doesn’t pay to take chances; one of her late mother’s favorite sayings was scum travels.

She is surprised and uneasy when she recognizes the man at her door. He’s wearing a tweed overcoat, obviously expensive, and a trilby with a feather in the band. Beneath the hat, his perfectly barbered silver hair flows dramatically along his temples. In one hand is a slim briefcase. It’s Dr. Felix Babineau, chief of the Neurology Department and head honcho at the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic.

The doorbell chimes again and she hurries to let him in, thinking He can’t know about what I did this afternoon because the door was shut and no one saw me go in. Relax. It’s something else. Perhaps a union matter.

But he has never discussed union matters with her before, although she’s been an officer of Nurses United for the last five years. Dr. Babineau might not even know her if he passed her on the street unless she was wearing her nurse’s uniform. That makes her remember what she’s wearing now, an old housecoat and even older slippers (with bunny faces on them!), but it’s too late to do anything about that. At least her hair isn’t up in rollers.

He should have called, she thinks, but the thought that follows is disquieting: Maybe he wanted to catch me by surprise.

“Good evening, Dr. Babineau. Come in out of the cold. I’m sorry to be greeting you in my housecoat, but I wasn’t expecting company.”

He comes in and just stands there in the hall. She has to step around him to close the door. Seen up close instead of on the monitor, she thinks that perhaps they’re even in the department of sartorial disarray. She’s in her housecoat and slippers, true, but his cheeks are speckled with gray stubble. Dr. Babineau (no one would dream of calling him Dr. Felix) may be quite the fashion plate—witness the cashmere scarf fluffed up around his throat—but tonight he needs a shave, and quite badly. Also, there are purple pouches under his eyes.

“Let me take your coat,” she says.

He puts his briefcase between his shoes, unbuttons the overcoat, and hands it to her, along with the luxy scarf. He still hasn’t said a single word. The lasagna she ate for supper, quite delicious at the time, seems to be sinking, and pulling the pit of her stomach down with it.

“Would you like—”

“Come into the living room,” he says, and walks past her as if he owns the place. Ruth Scapelli scurries after.

Babineau takes the remote control from the arm of her easy chair, points it at the television, and hits mute. The young men and women continue to run around, but they do so unaccompanied by the mindless patter of the announcer. Scapelli is no longer just uneasy; now she’s afraid. For her job, yes, the position she has worked so hard to attain, but also for herself. There’s a look in his eyes that is really no look at all, only a kind of vacancy.

“Could I get you something? A soft drink or a cup of—”

“Listen to me, Nurse Scapelli. And very closely, if you want to keep your position.”

“I . . . I . . .”

“Nor would it end with losing your job.” Babineau puts his briefcase on the seat of her easy chair and undoes the cunning gold clasps. They make little thudding sounds as they fly up. “You committed an act of assault on a mentally deficient patient today, what might be construed a sexual assault, and followed it with what the law calls criminal threatening.”

“I . . . I never . . .”

She can barely hear herself. She thinks she might faint if she doesn’t sit down, but his briefcase is in her favorite chair. She makes her way across the living room to the sofa, barking her shin on the coffee table en route, almost hard enough to tip it over. She feels a thin trickle of blood sliding down to her ankle, but doesn’t look at it. If she does that, she will faint.

“You twisted Mr. Hartsfield’s nipple. Then you threatened to do the same to his testes.”

“He made an obscene gesture to me!” Scapelli bursts out. “Showed me his middle finger!”

“I will see that you never work in the nursing profession again,” he says, looking into the depths of his briefcase as she half-swoons onto the sofa. His initials are monogrammed on the side of the case. In gold, of course. He drives a new BMW, and that haircut probably cost fifty dollars. Maybe more. He’s an overbearing, domineering boss, and now he’s threatening to ruin her life over one small mistake. One small error in judgment.

She wouldn’t mind if the floor opened up and swallowed her, but her vision is perversely clear. She seems to see every filament on the feather poking out of his hatband, every scarlet thread in his bloodshot eyes, every ugly gray speck of stubble on his cheeks and chin. His hair would be that same rat fur color, she thinks, if he didn’t dye it.

“I . . .” Tears begin to come—hot tears running down her cold cheeks. “I . . . please, Dr. Babineau.” She doesn’t know how he knows, and it doesn’t matter. The fact is, he does. “I’ll never do it again. Please. Please.”

Dr. Babineau doesn’t bother to answer.