Heart Stopper (16 page)

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Priya woke up on the couch, her spine fixed in pain. She groaned as she tried to crawl off without moving her back too much. Her neck was stiff too and she knelt on all fours beside the couch trying to work her muscles loose. The empty bottle was lying on the floor and it felt sticky as she picked it up as she got to her feet. Her head hurt; the light from outside made it worse.

She checked her phone, it was late morning already. She had slept for hours. The last few weeks had caught up with her. It was now two weeks to the day that she had woken up with a dead man. She wondered for how long more she would measure her days from that moment. Like she had done from the morning she’d found out about Kathy, and then the moment the machine was switched off. Anniversaries of death. After a lifetime with no close experience of death, they were now sudden and intimate friends; she had the mental photographs to prove their relationship.

She wouldn’t look into the mirror as she cleaned her face. This time she remembered. Every detail. The strength and movement of Reyna’s cheek against her palm, the softness of her earlobe as Priya’s finger brushed against it, the scent of the hollow at the base of Reyna’s throat. She remembered most of all the feeling of coming home as she laid her face against that scent.

She raised her eyes to look into the mirror. So, the long search for home ended with a woman who was married, emotionally unavailable, and in Valerie’s clutches. And Priya would never play that game. At least she could look herself in the eyes on that count.

∞

Priya sat on her cliff at the end of the field behind her house, legs dangling, feet bumping off the eroded earth wall. She watched the seagulls argue on the beach as they chased the glint of the afternoon sun. The participants in the debate changed often, some joining in from the air, others leaving to go for a bob on the waves. She had observed them for years and she thought she could recognize some of the regulars.

She’d cleaned up and taken a taxi in to the clinic to collect her car. It had looked lost and blue in the empty car park.

She heard a voice calling her name and turned to see Catherine walking down the path that led by the house and down beside her field. There was a break in the low loose-stone wall and Catherine edged through it and picked her way through the boulders.

Priya’s immediate feeling was that of a child about to be scolded, but Catherine smiled at her with her usual warmth.

“May I join you?”

Priya nodded.

Catherine slipped off her shoes and settled down beside Priya. She refused Priya’s offer of a drink and they sat for a few minutes absorbing.

Catherine took both of Priya’s hands in hers.

Priya looked down at their hands and said, “I’ve noticed in the last while that people have held my hand when I wasn’t feeling okay.” She looked back up and smiled. “Do people see me as a child or something? Though I probably come across as one. Is it the height thing? Little Priya. My dad is tall, I got this from my mum, she was exactly 5 feet tall. My dad and I used to use her to measure the height of the badminton net when we played back there.”

Catherine laughed. “You
are
little, my dear. But you certainly don’t come across like a child.” Her face turned serious. “In fact, you come across as a beautiful, confident, powerful, young woman. But you just see the child.”

“Powerful?” Priya snorted. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, Priya. I’m not.” Catherine turned to look at the sea and the blue reflections deepened the color of her eyes. “You know, we all have the same power, it is just that some people know it and use it and others don’t and give it away. I used to be like you. My father was a powerful man; he wanted things for me, for his family. All for the right reasons, of course. When my mom died, I was 17 and he was only 39. He didn’t realize what it would do to me, he was devastated and he withdrew, but he couldn’t see that losing a mother is as difficult as losing your wife. Maybe more. Because when she’s gone, it feels like that one person in this whole lonely world that is there for you, isn’t anymore. And I don’t mean it was a perfect relationship or anything, we fought a lot, but I just knew, I just felt it, right here.” Catherine took one of her hands and touched her chest.

Priya’s eyes filled and she rubbed them with rough fingers.

Catherine’s voice was gentle. “It is okay to cry. I wish I’d done that instead of lashing out. But then, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have had Daniel if I hadn’t rebelled and hung around with Leo. I was only 17 when I met Leo and he was 30. I can’t look back now and regret my mistakes because each one left me with something good too. I was young. I made mistakes. I’m still making them. Every day. Along with a few good decisions. You have so many bruises, Priya. And they are not all inflicted by other people. Stop beating yourself up.”

Priya whispered, “There are things I’ve said and done that I can’t forgive.”

“So you’ve made mistakes. Did you mean to hurt anyone?”

“No. I can’t stand hurting anyone.”

“Except yourself. I guess that doesn’t count.” Catherine smiled as Priya shot her a look.

Priya said, “I seem to have gone through life with no direction, or letting other people and their needs be the signposts for me.” She sighed. “But anything else means figuring out what I want and that always seemed selfish.”

“It is not selfish, Priya, It is essential. I have been trying to tell Rain that.” Priya stiffened and Catherine said in a softer voice, “You see yourself as this powerless person when it comes to women like Valerie and Rain. Yes, Rain told me about Valerie and about Kathy.”

“Did she tell you Valerie ‘had’ Kathy too? No, she couldn’t have, she didn’t know. Like I didn’t know.” Priya’s voice was rushed and angry. “How could someone do that? I’ve been paralyzed by guilt ever since I cheated on Kathy with Valerie. Then Kathy killed herself and I thought it was over me. Can you imagine what kind of guilt came with that? I tried not to feel anything for Valerie after that, but somehow she got to me. That night, on my birthday, I tried so hard to ignore her. I didn’t know about her and Kathy then, I was such a fool. Valerie played with me, she flirted with Daniel. I don’t know why I reacted. She had that effect on me. I mean, how could I have flirted with Daniel, a
guy
, to stop her? She had that kind of power.” Priya shook her head. “It wasn’t a game. Her games affected too many people in such awful ways. I don’t want to be powerful if that’s what it causes.”

They sat in silence for a minute.

Catherine said, “You know that saying, with power comes responsibility? Well, handing away power doesn’t lessen responsibility. It is not a game, but it is an interaction. And if you hand all the power to the other person, you’re giving up your responsibility for yourself. The difference between a Valerie and you is that when someone hands you their power you don’t abuse it, in fact, you seem to take on all the responsibility for them. Valerie just takes on all the power.”

“And Reyna…?”

 
“Reyna is not like Valerie. Not one bit. But she has lost her power. For the moment.” Catherine smiled, “She was such a cool kid, shy, but so naturally cool. She didn’t have to try; people were just drawn to her. I guess that was Leo coming through in them, Daniel was like that too, but he knew it. Rain was the kind of kid that would hear you talk about something you liked and she’d remember and get that for you on your next birthday. She liked to find out what would make other people happy. There were a load of kids in the commune, but I think she was the leader, not in a loud kind of way, it would just seem to default to her.”

Priya said, “She still has that.”

“Yes. But she doesn’t trust it.” Catherine’s hand was tugging at the grass beside them. “She had her share of relationships; she was considered quite a catch I gather, but none of them really serious. And then she met Simone.” The name hissed out.

“Her wife?”

“Yes. They got together about a year before Leo died. Simone was a sous-chef in a French restaurant in San Francisco. Rain had just finished college and was working at helping a start-up, a dot com thing. I think the relationship wasn’t that serious at first, not for Simone anyway, and then Leo died, and he left money to Rain.” She sighed. “Next thing, Simone wants to get married. And I think Rain was quite isolated from her friends by this stage. Simone had a way of doing that. And I had just moved to Ireland. Rain had withdrawn from me because I made the mistake of telling her what I thought of Simone. So they got married and I wasn’t invited. And Rain set up a restaurant for Simone. I’m afraid I didn’t handle it too well, Rain was such a responsible person with money and she did this without thinking. She said she wanted to make Simone’s dreams come true.”

Catherine’s fist clutched a handful of grass, slender roots dripping dry earth into the open grave.

“But Rain didn’t have any background in restaurants, did she?”

Catherine shook her head. “She could usually do anything she put her mind to. And she did. She learnt everything she could, she used to work as a waitress there as well as manage it, while that, that… woman lorded it as the chef. The restaurant was actually quite good. But a month after they opened, Simone had an affair with a waiter there. A really young guy, only nineteen, twenty or something like that. Practically flaunted it in front of Rain’s face. And when Rain confronted her Simone got violent.”

“I can’t see Rain, sorry, Reyna, putting up with that.” Priya asked, “What happened, did she kick Simone out?”

“That’s what I couldn’t understand. How a strong woman like Reyna could let someone control her like that. No, she didn’t kick Simone out. Simone created havoc in the restaurant. She would scream and shout and threaten Rain, sometimes in front of customers. And I think when there were no customers, she would hit Rain.” Priya’s mouth dropped open. “Yes, Priya, I thought that too, but it turns out it happens between women as well. I didn’t know about this, one waitress saw something once, but she didn’t want to get involved. The bitch said to me later she didn’t want to take sides. Sorry for my language, but if you see someone being physically threatening to another person who won’t defend herself, at least
say
something.”

“But you just said it. Why didn’t Reyna defend herself?”

“She finally told me two years ago. When she moved to New York. She was embarrassed when it was happening. She didn’t want to get physical; she couldn’t believe it was happening. Everyone seemed to think it was just a tempestuous relationship and that they were both involved.” Catherine sighed again, a deep breath out. “I understood then why she didn’t walk away at the time.”

Catherine stopped and was silent.

Priya leant forward. “Why?”

Catherine shook her head. “I’ve already told you more than Rain wants anyone to know. I know I shouldn’t have, I’m not allowed to talk about her life, but I just couldn’t bear to see you both tearing yourselves apart.”

Catherine looked at the torn grass in her hand and laid it down beside the dug up soil. Her fingers ran over the dirt and she smoothed the rift as she talked. “I’ve just lost my son, this time it is final. I am so grateful for the last few years when he let me back in to his life. And I think that time was cut short. I don’t know why it was you that I asked but I had a strong feeling if anyone could work it out you could. And now you are in danger too it seems.” She straightened up. “Whether he was killed or not, Daniel wanted us to know and to do something. Something he couldn’t do for some reason. I am as angry as you are about your suspension, but a part of me agrees with Reyna too. We have two days to figure it out. And then Reyna is going to go in and shut everything down at the Research Company. She is going to get a worldwide product advisory issued and all checks are going to be stopped until we can be certain the deaths and the heart attack have nothing to do with the equipment.”

“Does she have the power to do that?”

“We don’t know. But the better the case we have, the more chance she has with TechMed Devices.” Catherine glanced back at the house and smiled. “She’s in the car, looking through her papers. Any chance we can release her and all go in?”

“She’s been sitting there all this time?” Priya asked. She grimaced and said, “I guess I wasn’t too subtle when I kicked her out yesterday.”

Catherine got to her feet and held out a hand. Priya took it and pulled herself up.

Catherine said, “I don’t think Valerie is Reyna’s type.”

Priya turned and walked towards the house. “I didn’t think she was mine. Or Kathy’s,” she said, over her shoulder.

Reyna’s face was tinged with red and a sheen of moisture was layered over the wary expression on it as she looked at Priya through the open window of the car.

Priya said, “You’re not my boss for the moment so I can say, you look silly using a Merc as an office. You can come in; I’m not going to bite.” She turned to hide her smile at Reyna’s face and added, “Not yet, anyway.”

She could hear Reyna start to gather up the papers draped over every available surface of the interior of the rental car. Priya turned back. “Do you need a hand?”

She took Reyna’s snort as a ‘No’ and grinned as she went back into the house.

∞

Priya and Catherine were sitting at the kitchen table as Reyna carried in a cardboard box and dumped it down on the table.

Reyna said, “Most of the important financials and the stuff I took from your office.”

Priya said, “I was just going to go through the basics of pacemakers and the industry that you and I went through already.”

She went through it again in detail for Catherine and drew out pictures on an A4 notepad to illustrate.

Priya said with an apologetic tone in her voice, “My study in the field was very focused. And I didn’t get to see the whole picture at any stage. I had some…distractions when I was finishing my PhD.”

Reyna said, “You said before that you were in the second year of your PhD when you met Valerie. So all this happened with Valerie in that year, and you still finished the PhD, what, a year or two later?”

Priya nodded. “About a year and a half.” She saw the confusion in Reyna’s eyes and said, “Yes, my personal life had just been blown apart, but in our family that was not allowed to come before finishing what you started especially when it comes to education.”

Reyna said, “But your seven year relationship had just come to an end, Kathy had committed suicide...”

Priya saw Catherine glance a warning at Reyna, but Reyna was still looking at Priya in puzzlement.

Priya closed her eyes. She said, “Yes, I had to deal with a lot of stuff. And I did. I closed off for a month and then my dad came to see me and I had to get up and finish the PhD.”

Priya opened her eyes. Catherine had a look of understanding in her eyes, but Reyna looked angry.

Priya said, “Reyna, considering my background, I am a screw-up. My parents were highly educated, driven, professionals. And they were Indian. And I was their only child. The fact that I wasn’t a doctor like them, or, since I’d half-heartedly followed the route and done Science, the fact that I
 
hadn’t won the Nobel Prize in Science by the time I was 30 was a huge disappointment. Especially, as they saw it, for someone with so much potential.” She laughed. “When I switched to IT, my dad comforted himself by asking me to contact Bill Gates to see if I could get ‘in’ there on the whole Microsoft thing.”

Reyna smiled reluctantly as Catherine laughed.

Priya continued, “I know it seems harsh, but they were just trying to do the best for me, and trying to get me to do the best for myself. You see, I had one of the highest points you can get, in the Leaving Cert, and I could have walked on to any course. I guess I had a mini-rebellion and stuck a finger onto the list of course options, of course, these only included everything to the rational side, and it landed on Science, so that’s what I did. And I was let loose in college; my parents had left by then. I spent those years attempting to tear up every stereotype of a quiet Indian girl. I’m afraid to say I did a good job of that.”

“Even then, you got so many degrees, didn’t that make them happy?” Reyna asked.

“Yup, I guess. Then the job and marriage thing came up so they had something else for me to pursue. God, this is sounding bad, but it wasn’t. I just wandered around after the IT postgrad, couldn’t settle at anything. I was happy with Kathy, she was a graphic artist, and I got into painting and started doing an Art therapy course, which of course I didn’t mention to my parents. And then the PhD came up. And Valerie… I told you she knows how to get to someone. Well, with me it was the ‘you’re just so intelligent’ route. And because she’s really smart and Gerry is too, I respected her opinion, She just knew exactly what to say and I fell for it. Jeez, it was like manna from Hell. So when I knew it was just an act on her part, I think I stopped feeling intelligent, in fact, I stopped feeling human. I guess a robot version of me finished the PhD and reported to work at the clinic when it opened.”

Turning away, Priya said, “Daniel connected the deaths and the heart attack suffered by the technicians.”

Catherine put a hand on Reyna’s and Reyna closed her mouth.

Catherine said, “Is it possible that someone knew about the incidents before Daniel. That someone found out that the Controller I could possibly have caused the deaths of those women and the other heart attack and covered it up?”

Now Reyna was up and pacing.

Priya nodded. “Let’s follow the logic. The people who could have connected the incidents in any meaningful way were Daniel and the researchers at the company, the staff at the clinic, and the unit in TechMed that dealt directly with the product. It could be anyone of them that covered up the connection.”

Reyna stopped and turned to Priya with a shocked expression on her face. “You think
Daniel
could have been a part of it?”

“How can we rule it out?”

Catherine said, “I can’t believe that of Daniel. He was too dedicated to his work, to healing people. All his life he wanted to make a difference and he worked really hard to get where he was.”

Priya said gently, “He had the most to lose then, didn’t he? If this came out, there would be product recalls, investigations, charges possibly.”

Reyna cut in. “But Daniel was killed!”

Priya said, “We don’t know that for sure. What if he found this stuff and covered it up, then died of a heart attack.”

Reyna and Catherine were staring at her. Their faces reflected her confusion.

Priya said, “What do we have beyond a feeling that would point to Daniel’s death being anything but a heart attack? The fact that he was worried and had discovered that technicians had died while using his equipment. That could still point to a heart attack brought on by worry. The feeling that Catherine had that there was a woman in his bed with him. Well, maybe that was because I was in the apartment that morning. The voice I heard when I ran from the apartment.” Priya realized she had forgotten to tell them about her new hypothesis for that. “I actually meant to say the other day, but it is possible what I heard was the recorded voice saying ‘Lift opening’.” She couldn’t meet their eyes. She hurried on. “And the autopsy showed no other cause of death.”

Then Catherine said, “I know this is from his mother, but I am convinced Daniel would not have been a part of a cover-up.”

Reyna nodded.

Priya remembered something. “Daniel must have received the medical records from John Landon, the guy who had the heart attack. He sent those weeks ago from Seattle. I can understand it taking a while, but they should have arrived before Daniel died.” She gestured at the mass of papers and files. “They are definitely not in there. This means either Daniel had them at the clinic, or he sent them to someone else, or he had them at home. I don’t think he’d have kept them at the clinic.”

Reyna said firmly, “There was a cover-up. And we know without a doubt that it wasn’t Daniel that covered up the deaths and heart attack at the time they happened. He didn’t know about the problem until this year. What we don’t know is what convinced him that there wasn’t a problem the night he died. Don’t you think it is too much of a coincidence that he texts me to say that and then he dies. Just after finding out about the problem? And what happened to the medical records?”

Priya said, “So, someone else knew about the deaths, covered them up, and either convinced Daniel to send the text or sent it themselves from his phone to put you off...? And then killed Daniel. That leaves us though with the unlikely situation that Daniel was killed in such a way that it appeared beyond a shadow of a doubt to have been a heart attack.”

Catherine was firm. “Then that is what happened. And we have to figure out how it could have happened.”

Priya looked doubtful. “I need to try and get an overall picture of this. The note Daniel left…” She searched through the box, and held out the Post-It and then started searching through the rest of the stack. “I need to look through Tara’s description of Liam’s attack.”

Reyna sat back at the table.

Priya found the handwritten sheets. Liam had had his heart attack in December while Priya had been away with her mother in India. Tara had described in detail what had happened that afternoon almost a year ago, December 13th. Priya tried not to let her mind wander to that date, only three days before the machine was silenced, but of course it ran there. Priya read the account out loud, her voice growing stronger after the first few sentences.

The appointment had started out as a routine six-month check on Jacintha’s pacemaker at 2.15 on the afternoon of the 13th of December 2010. Liam was present as usual, sitting beside his mother. Tara described in detail the setting up of the Controller, of placing the wand over Jacintha’s chest, of hearing the beep.

Priya continued reading. The trolley was placed as usual beside Jacintha. The controller had started the communication by sending the auto-identification sequence; the device implanted in Jacintha had in turn sent the response detailing its serial and model numbers. The controller had then sent an interrogation command that elicited Jacintha’s name and diagnosis. So far, everything was routine.

Tara wrote how she finished the first part of the check and had started the programmer test, when there had been a knock on the door, and she had gone to answer it. She couldn’t remember if she had left the wand on Jacintha’s chest. Laura, one of the nurses, had needed the file for one of Tara’s patients. Tara had left the room for a moment. She’d been standing outside the door to the room when she had heard Jacintha scream Liam’s name. She had immediately entered the room to find Liam sliding down to the floor from what seemed like a slumped position over Jacintha’s chest. He fell first against the trolley which rolled away from Jacintha and then onto the floor. Tara had raised the alarm and performed CPR. Liam’s condition had necessitated a temporary pacemaker, as the ECG showed no spontaneous electrical activity. The printout of the results was stapled to the back of the handwritten sheet.

Priya said, “Strange that she described the way Liam fell.”

Priya searched out the official typed sheet that Tara had submitted after the incident. “See, she doesn’t go into those details in her official report. This is what I saw when I came back. Liam wasn’t my patient, but I checked to see what had happened. Liam seemed to have been leaning over Jacintha. And John Landon, the technician in Seattle, described leaning over the patient as well.”

 
Priya stopped. She was looking at the printout of the results.

“What?” Catherine leant forward.

Priya said, “The printout for the check that Tara did is different. Older type, the Controller I or the Controller II before 2008. I don’t use either of them for routine checks in the clinic. They are there for my research work with the company. I only use it to communicate with pulse generators, not the implanted ones, just to test the coding.”

Reyna asked, “Does Tara know that?”

Priya tried to think. Tara knew the Controller I had been replaced. But the clinical room Priya used for her patient checks was also the room where she carried out the tests on the controller. They had not had time to sort out anything when Priya finally left to go to her mother. It was not a dangerous piece of equipment. The Controller I looked slightly different from the Controller II. The two versions of the Controller II looked very similar and were on identical trolleys.

Priya said, “It is possible that Tara used the Controller II without the software patch... She had only joined the clinic a short while before that. She wouldn’t have known much about the research work.”

Reyna asked, “Why would that be dangerous? I thought the Controller II had passed the clinical trials and had been used successfully before it was replaced?”

Priya was up and pacing around the room. “It wouldn’t have had to go through clinical trials. There still shouldn’t have been any problems. It does the same thing. I need to see what the software patch does.”

Catherine said, “So, Daniel asked Tara to write the description out. And then wanted to check something with you after he read it? Maybe the fact that the wrong Controller II was used by mistake?”

Priya said, “Could be. He got the description in March, why didn’t he ask me anytime in the last few months. Unless he only wrote the note recently.” She sat back down amidst the folders. “So what changed? He would have known that Tara used the wrong Controller II since March.”

Reyna said, “According to what Daniel found out, the problems were when the Controller I was used. So Daniel did those searches because he found out that Liam’s attack happened when the wrong Controller II was used.”

Priya said, “But both Controllers would have been used so many times in so many clinics over the years. Why on those particular occasions did they cause fatal or near-fatal heart attacks? So far the similarities are that the people who had heart attacks were leaning over the patient and the Controller I or the Controller II without the software patch were being used.”