Heart Stopper (11 page)
“I’m going to take a walk. I need to clear my head.” Priya said as she got up from the table.
“You don’t know the area, would you like me to come with you?” Reyna asked.
Priya looked at the forest lining the road leading from the front of the house down to the lake. The road was a dark pause before the
brightness
in the distance. She hesitated, not sure if she could relax with Reyna beside her, but the thought of walking through the gloom alone didn’t appeal. She accepted the offer.
Reyna had gotten out of the chair and was standing waiting for her. They walked on the light stone driveway, the crunching of their feet magnified in the quiet that enveloped them as they entered the avenue of trees. In the distance ahead of them, the lake glowed vivid through the shadow frame. They emerged from the forest and stepped off the road onto a small path that wound around the lake. Priya stopped and stared at the interwoven layers of blues and whites and greens.
“Don’t you find beauty sometimes to be so painful? I look at this amazing view and it almost hurts,” Priya said.
“Yes, sometimes beauty can affect us in unexpected ways.” Reyna was looking at the mountains on the far shore, but her eyes focused closer as she spoke and Priya felt her breath catch as she met Reyna’s gaze. They were standing a few feet apart and Reyna moved nearer. Priya stood, fixed to the spot, unable to look away. Reyna rested her fingers under Priya’s chin and ran her thumb gently over Priya’s lower lip. Priya could see the faint black and blonde striations in the dark gold of Reyna’s eyes. She saw
helplessness
struggling with desire. From the little she knew of Reyna, weakness wasn’t characteristic, but Priya was struggling too.
“I haven’t been able to look at you without remembering that kiss. And you didn’t even know what you were doing at the time.” Reyna’s voice was husky.
Priya could hear the rustle of leaves and the gentle splash of the water beside her, the sounds dulled by the thud of her blood pulsing loud in her ears. She stared at Reyna’s lips and heard a gasp as Reyna lowered her head and replaced her thumb with her lips. She could hear moaning, but she didn’t know which one of them it was coming from. She hadn’t let a woman kiss her since Valerie. When she had slept with a woman in the last few months she’d been the one in control, never losing control, never feeling this overwhelming weakness, her legs trembling so she rested against Reyna, not just resting, pushing, straining to melt into Reyna’s warmth. She had her hands in Reyna’s hair, the thick strands worked loose from their restraint wrapping themselves around her fingers in bonds of brown silk.
They were falling, lying on a bank of grass, the water licking at the shore by their feet, Reyna beneath her, around her, on top of her. And then a cold breath of air on her skin as Reyna rolled away. Priya opened her eyes in a daze. Reyna was sitting on the ground, knees drawn up to her body, arms tight around her knees, visibly struggling for control.
Reyna spoke; her voice muffled through her arms, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Priya got up. Her movements felt heavy, slow, feeling the weight of a shame that swept through her.
She’d done it again
. Lost control. What she’d sworn never to let happen to her again. Her eyes filled and she swiped the tears away before they fell. She walked by Reyna and then half jogged half ran back through the trees. The light had almost completely faded and it was difficult to see the track, but she was glad for the shadows as she headed for the house.
She took a shower in the small bathroom; drowning in scalding water pushed through at high pressure by a pump she could hear working from the cupboard. She tried to wash away, rub away, burn away the feeling of shame, but it tingled in every pore, the fine hairs on her body standing up straight, muscles aching from the pounding heat of the water outside and the restless quivering inside. She held her head back and let the water run over her face, over her lips, trying to erase, but remembering instead the softness, the pressure, the fit. Between their lips, the perfect match, the unexplored that felt familiar, and so right.
A while later, as Priya lay huddled in the bed, she heard Reyna’s footsteps in the hallway and pulled the cover tighter around her. The footsteps stopped at her door and she heard a gentle tap. She didn’t respond and a long pause later Reyna walked away down the hall and she heard the opening and closing of a door.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The instructions had arrived as usual in the diplomatic pouch. But this time, there was a problem. The diplomat’s meeting with the politician was still to go ahead as planned. Actually, that was out of anyone's control. No matter what problems the man in his dark suit encountered, the meeting would go ahead. As it had every year since they had been allowed to set up in this country. Meet, shake hands, smile, go in to a private office and talk about their two nations, come out, smile and shake hands for the camera. But this year, their meeting fell on the day before the hand he shook would sign in a small change to the economic structure of this country. The ripples would spread in a slow outward movement that would eventually trickle onto his shores. The effects would be those of a tsunami.
They had 11 days left to stop it.
The problem was, there was a problem with the device. And they had no contingency plan.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The drive back to Barna was tense. They had not spoken, both getting up early and meeting
in the living room. Priya had struggled to sleep and she was feeling the drain of the travel and the nights of broken sleep. Priya could not decipher if Reyna was feeling anything, the only visible effects were tightness around her lips and eyes. Priya had brought her work clothes and she sat stiff in the car hiding in the lines of her formal attire. She had stuffed the jeans and crumpled top she had worn the previous evening into her bag, shoving out of sight what Reyna had touched.
Reyna pulled into the driveway of Priya’s house and opened her mouth to speak, but Priya thanked her for the lift and hurried into the house. She attempted to do it with a modicum of dignity and was gratified to hear the wheels screech as Reyna pulled out onto the road and drove away.
Priya added the envelope of papers she had taken from Catherine’s house to her briefcase with her notes and made it to the clinic on time despite the heavy traffic. The clinic car park was full; everybody seemed to be at work today. In the building, the air felt heavy and subdued with an undercurrent of electricity. Reyna was somewhere in the clinic and Priya didn’t want to see her so she hurried to her office.
Tara was already sitting at her desk. She said, “This is getting to be a habit. You don’t look good.”
“And Good Morning to you too.” Priya dropped the briefcase onto her desk. The papers were crammed in, stretching the leather. Priya saw her glance at the briefcase.
“Is everything ok?” Tara asked. She was looking fresh and there was a hint of pink in her cheeks.
Priya sat down at her desk and leaned back in the chair.
No, everything was not okay
.
“Yes, I’m just a bit jet-lagged still,” Priya said. She looked closely at Tara, the new top, a glint in her light green eyes. “You, on the other hand, are looking interesting. What have you been up to?”
Tara laughed. “You’ll never guess?”
“Hmm… let me see, Aidan…?”
“You are good! How did you know?”
“I’ve had my eye on you two for the last while. By the way, he was looking for you when you were off on Monday; I forgot to tell you yesterday. So, how, when? I want details.”
“Well, he’s been giving me the eye for the last month, and then the night of my birthday, we got together. But with what happened after that, we didn’t do anything until yesterday evening.”
“I’m happy for ye. But I have to warn you, you might be the target for an assassination attempt.” Priya laughed at Tara’s puzzled look. “Jacintha will be out to get you.”
Tara frowned. “I don’t think it’s Jacintha I’ve to worry about. I think he’s been seeing someone on the sly for the last few years and he says now there’s nothing going on with anyone, but I’m not so sure. I never thought I’d end up with someone’s toy boy.”
“Toy boy?”
“Just my impression. You know how he wasn’t doing too well in London and then next thing he gets this job through Gerry and, I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t afford the BMW and the clothes, and that watch on my salary and he only started here in February.”
“Maybe it’s all on credit.”
“Yeah, like anyone would give that kind of credit anymore. With this recession and the credit crunch. Even with his job.” Tara shook her head. “Anyway, as long as it’s over.” She looked at Priya and said in a lower voice, “So, what’s happening with…?” She pointed towards the open door.
“Nothing. Why would there be anything? I’d better get to this stuff, I’ve loads to do.” Priya started taking papers out of her briefcase.
∞
Before she left for New York, Priya had cleared her appointment book for the rest of the week. She now had a lot more information to get through. She laid out the papers into the same piles as the evening before with the additional pile for her notes on the Mark II controller. Laid out in front of her was the summarized history of the work carried out by the two Daniel Fairers. From patent to development, trials and results. She wondered whether despite Reyna’s focus on the studies, that Reyna felt Daniel’s death was not an accident, that it had something to do with what lay in front of her. And suddenly Priya was scared. Because if that was true, and if she had been followed, then she was in danger.
She tried to control the curl of acid panic in her stomach. Reyna must be wrong. This was Galway, a quiet city in a quiet country. Besides, Daniel had had a heart attack. She shivered. She had managed to spook herself to the point of imagining crazy things. She just needed to go through all the material and convince Reyna, and Catherine, that nothing was out of the ordinary. Perhaps Daniel had meant to do some writing and needed reference material. But then, why had he been so worried and distracted over the past month or so? Priya’s mind was going around in possibilities. She decided the best thing to do was to calm down and study the information. This approach had always worked for her before.
She started with the top sheet from papers covering the trials of the Pacemaker Mark I. She made notes as she went along. Tara went in and out, covering appointments, glancing over at Priya, attempting conversation. Priya nodded and mumbled an occasional answer until Tara gave up after the first hour and they worked in silence for the rest of the day.
It was late afternoon and Priya was in the middle of the stack of papers on the pacemaker trials when she found a pink Post-It note stuck between two of the typed sheets of paper. The note had what she recognized as Daniel’s writing on it. His handwriting had actually been very neat, an almost formal penmanship, but the note seemed scrawled.
It read, “Check Priya re Liam (? Tara).”
Liam? Liam Whelan? Jacintha’s son and Tara’s patient. What did Daniel need to check with her about Tara’s patient? Daniel had talked to Tara after Liam’s heart attack in the clinic because the incident had happened there. But James had carried out the permanent pacemaker implantation to replace the temporary pacemaker used for the immediate period after the attack.
“Tara? You talked to Daniel about Liam’s heart attack, didn’t you? What did he say about it?”
Tara looked up in surprise. “He went through what happened at the time and got me to type out my account of what happened. And then a while back, I think in March, yes, in March, I had done Liam’s check and then just after Paddy’s Day when I was barely able to think he asked me to write out a more detailed description of what happened. I assume it was just for the record. I wrote it out by hand at home, didn’t get a chance to type it up, he said it would be fine. Said nothing much about it after that. Why?”
“Just wondering.” Priya got up and fetched Jacintha’s file. “Could I look through Liam’s file if you don’t mind?”
Tara rooted around in her filing cabinet and handed a slim folder to Priya.
Priya looked through the folder. It was a typical medical record for a patient at the clinic though it didn’t have details on the usual investigations that would have been carried out on a patient presenting to the clinic in the normal way. The attack had happened at the clinic; Liam was kept alive with CPR and hooked up to diagnostic equipment within minutes, and fitted very soon after with a temporary pacemaker. Priya couldn’t find any handwritten description in Liam’s folder. She continued her perusal of Liam’s paperwork. She noted that they had not implanted a Fairer Pacemaker, but had used one of the other models instead. Which meant Tara would have had to use the specific controller for that pacemaker.
Tara left a few minutes later and Priya realized it was late. And then she remembered that she hadn’t checked Jacintha’s battery power readings in detail. She looked for the printouts at the back of Jacintha’s folder. The printout for each check had a line entry for the different parameters. Priya highlighted the entries for the Remaining Battery Power.
Post-Implant Check June 10 2010
Remaining Battery Power 100 (N)
July 12 2010
Remaining Battery Power
100 (N)
Remaining Battery Power
100 (N)
September 13 2010
Remaining Battery Power
100 (N)
Dec 13 2010
Rem Batt
100 (N)
March 14 2011
Remaining Battery Power
95.83 (N)
July 11 2011
Remaining Battery Power
90.28 (LOW)
Priya couldn’t believe she had forgotten to check Jacintha’s file for the battery readings. She knew it had only been a little more than a week, and the week had been eventful, but this was un-professional. And the figures were surprising. The lithium battery in the Pacemaker I was not meant to be utilized. It was there as a back-up.
She looked back at the readings. December’s entry stood out as different from the rest. The printout was a shade darker and the date and entry shorter. Tara had taken that reading when Priya was away.
∞
The clinic was emptying; Priya could hear the goodbyes and the footsteps, the occasional laugh, as the rest of the staff left. She had not seen Reyna and she wondered which poor staff member had been on the list for Reyna’s interrogation that day. Priya looked at the pages of notes she had taken. She had made it through most of the papers on the results of the trials. There was a large chunk of information covering the transmissions between the Mark I pacemaker and controller, figures showing graphs of frequencies, code. Her head was full of Kilohertz, Packets, and C++ code. And capital letters; acronyms seemed to take the place of every third word. If there was something there, she hadn’t seen it. Or it was staring her in the face and she didn’t know its significance.
She closed her eyes and tried to form a picture from the information scattered in her mind. She needed to explain in non-technical language to Reyna and Catherine what she had gathered from reading the very technical papers. She was in the middle of an image that encompassed an implanted pacemaker chatting to a controller, both of which seem to have morphed into herself and Reyna, when a quiet voice startled her.
“Sleeping on the job?”
Priya kept her eyes closed. Just once, she would like to be at an advantage. Just once in this battle with this infuriating woman. But no, after a day spent looking at figures until her eyes hurt, she just had to have them closed when Reyna came in.
“Are the papers that interesting?” Reyna wasn’t going away.
Priya opened her eyes. She raised her head up to the highest she could manage without straining every muscle in her neck. “I was imaging the data,” she said.
“Is that what the Irish are calling ‘sleeping’ these days?” There was a laugh straining to get out in Reyna’s voice.
“No, it’s what this Irish Indian does to solve problems. Problems raised by visiting Americans, I might add.”
“So, have you come up with the solution?” Reyna’s tone turned serious.
“It would help if I knew exactly what the problem was. Daniel was worried. He texted you to say he needn’t have been worried. Then he died of a heart attack brought on by the unnecessary worry. It could be as simple as that. Have you considered that?” She was tired and getting crankier by the minute.
Reyna slumped down into the chair beside Priya’s desk. She looked tired.
“I have been looking through the financial side, studying the funding, investment, royalties. I wasn’t involved so I need to see how it was set up.” She tapped the desk with her fingers. “I have always believed in that saying ‘follow the money’. It all comes down to money in the end, doesn’t it?”
“That’s a very mercenary way of thinking.”
“But I’ve found it to be so true. Anyway, I’ve collected whatever information I can from the computer and I need to go through that as well as all the paper financial records. However, if there is something untoward it’s not going to be obvious.”
Priya got up from her chair and started gathering her papers.
She said, “I’m going to take these home and continue working on them there. One has to take advantage of any sunny day in Ireland.”
Reyna asked, and there was a shy note in her voice, “Have you eaten anything today?”
“No. I’m not hungry.” Priya had finished packing her briefcase and she looked at the door.
Reyna shrugged and got up. She walked out of the office and Priya heard her go into one of the other offices and close the door with a short sharp click.
Priya felt bad as she drove home, she wasn’t usually so rude.
But the woman deserved it
. By the time Priya had changed into a pair of old shorts and T-shirt and was stretched out on the deck surrounded by papers she had managed to convince herself.
∞
The doorbell rang and it was a sound Priya was so unused to that she jerked, spilling water from her glass onto some of the research material. She was cursing and wiping the papers with a dishcloth when the bell rang again. She gathered everything into a pile, weighted it down with her glass and rushed to the front door.