The Architect of Revenge: A September 11th Novel (9 page)

“No he didn’t!” Merrimac answered in an unusually loud voice. “The other residents said he was
condemning
the terrorists. But that makes no difference, Dr. Morgan.” He was getting testier and it showed. “You almost strangled that kid.”

Merrimac glared. “You’re a damn doctor!” His forehead blood vessels bulged.

“They killed Cay…”

“I know how much you loved Cay, but that house officer didn’t kill her! You know that! Attacking an innocent man is your approach to anger management? Are you crazy?” Merrimac’s hands moved in underscored synchrony with his words.

“Why did I believe you?” Merrimac said, finally catching his breath. “Should have gone with my gut, insisted you get help weeks ago. But oh no! Damn surgeons and their egos! They can control everything!”

He continued through clenched teeth. “God almighty! Do you have any idea how bad this is? We’ve invested a fortune in you and this transplant program! I frigging know the chairman of the board is going to call me and ask why we have a bigoted lunatic on staff! How will this affect the hospital? Worse yet, the program we’re trying to build!”

Merrimac’s hands shot in the air. “What about our patients? Christ almighty!” With a final sway of his arm, Ross Merrimac motioned him toward the door. “Unlike the way you treated that kid, you get a fair hearing! We’ll notify you about the date. Now…get the hell out of my face!”

To sever contact, he grabbed a surgery journal, opened it to a dog-eared page and started reading.

Escorted to his office by hospital security guards, Morgan collected whatever he could, packed it in his briefcase, surrendered his identification badge, and changed into street clothes. They flanked him to his BMW.

During the two weeks before his hearing, Morgan became a vagrant entombed in his own home. Eating little, sleeping less, and infrequently shaving, he moved aimlessly from room to room, snatching restless catnaps and doing little else. Cocooned in his misery, there was no escape.

“You were stupid for jumping that kid…” he said. Flushing the toilet, he’d argued the point with himself for days. “Nah…fuckin’ prick deserved it.”

His words suddenly softened. “Cay…You would’ve scolded me, I know.” He thought the worst. “Been ashamed…I’m sorry.”

Childlike, he started crying into the carpet where he lay haunted without pity.

Their jog through Grant Park had taken them a mile out in the lake at the end of Navy Pier. A leisurely stroll back gave them time to let their conversation drift.

“Why ‘Cay’?”
he asked. Morgan had been curious many times.

“Daddy called me that since I was little.”
She laughed, her face glowing even without makeup.
“Who knows why fathers do what they do?”
A shrug suggested acceptance.
“It just stuck.”

“You said not everyone’s allowed to use it.”

A sudden breeze swayed her ponytail.
“My nickname’s very personal to me,”
she replied, begging the next question.

“So when you called me from the airport, and I called you Cay…you didn’t correct me. Why?”

Caroline stopped and smiled at him, then said the words that would stay in his heart forever.
“I only let people I love call me that.”

Morgan couldn’t believe it. She had loved him from the beginning.

“Come on,”
she said,
“let’s go get cleaned up. Saturday’s a-wasting.”

With shampooed hair tucked under a towel and her bathrobe open in the immodest style he loved, she gathered their running clothes and headed for the washing machine. He went toward her.

“Cay…”
he stammered,
“Caroline…I love you. Will you marry me?”

An overt sigh followed.

“You’re going to need to work on your timing, Dr. Morgan.”
Nonplussed, Caroline loaded the clothes in the washer.
“Every girl dreams about this moment…and you realize, of course…”
She measured the soap and softener in exact detail and started the cycle.
“You’ve just asked me to marry you while I’m doing your laundry? Regardless…”
Her eyes twinkled above a smile and she threw her arms around him.
“My answer is…yes!”

“Then we need to go shopping,”
he said.

The Michigan Avenue jewelry stores consumed them that afternoon. When the salesperson handed Caroline a loupe and a large diamond, she became restrained and asked for a minute alone with Morgan.

“Wes,”
she told him,
“no big diamonds.”

“I can afford them,”
he replied.

“No,”
she said firmly.
“I’m not your second wife…”

“Oh, Cay,” Morgan wept into the carpet. “You never knew I bought the ring! You never knew I was coming to surprise you...”

How he loved the secret planning! Even though they had spent the entire weekend making love at his townhouse, Caroline never had an inkling what he was up to.

His phone rang. He listened through the answering machine.

“Dr. Morgan,” the unemotional woman said, “this is a reminder that your disciplinary hearing is at one p.m. this afternoon. Please be prompt. Thank you. Goodbye.”

She hung up.

“I have nothing left,” came his exhausted whisper after the click. Finally fulfilled by Caroline’s presence in his life, his world had become perfect—until it was destroyed.

“Nothing…”

He was on his knees.

“Oh, Cay…”

The anger had beaten him. Exhausted, his mind, body, and soul were ruined.

“I can’t do anything...”

He fell to the floor, weeping into his forearm.

“Oh god, Morgan…you’re so fucking weak!”

The tears soaked his skin.

“A spineless jellyfish!”

He rolled onto his back, sucking mucus from his nose to the back of his throat.

“Fuck,” he uttered, trying to swallow the tenacious slime. “Fuck…”

He started coughing. Propping up his head and neck against the side of the sofa, his vision wandered tiredly around the room.

On the shelf beside the fireplace were his surgical textbooks. Every chapter covered a problem in the human body and the ways to operate on it—an instruction manual without wasted words.

“Split the muscle in the direction of...”

“Insert the trocar through....”

“Close the wound by…”

In time a surgeon would learn every page. Someday the instructions would flow to the hands and fingers unmarred by hesitancy or self-doubt.

“Get up!”

His inner voice began speaking, commanding him to reality. Physicians heard this voice throughout their careers. Whether lying in bed, driving, working—anywhere—it would surface without warning and persist without mercy, besieging its owner until it forced atonement for a mistake or oversight.

“Get the fuck up!”

Morgan heard the silent command intensify, overwhelming him with the same severity as it had when one of his babies died.

He cleared the back of his throat and swallowed the glob.

Morgan walked to look out the back window. The building’s garage light pried open the gloom, revealing calm pools of rainwater, the thermometer barely above freezing.

“I’m going running,” he said.

Unused for months, he put on his track suit and shoes. The pants were so large he had to tighten the waistband. The jacket’s sleeves slid beyond his wrists. He stepped outside and pulled the door shut. Lumbering several hundred years toward the lakefront path, his muscles ached from the sudden jolt of exercise—a cruel reminder of his months of idleness. He halted at a stone and masonry ledge in the park where molasses-thick muck oozed through the cracks. As the damp mist invaded his bones, Morgan stared beyond the mud to the brown grass where the winter before Caroline had laid down in the soft snow and flapped her arms and legs to make angels. At her urging and without protest, he had joined her to do the same.

He could still hear her laughing.

Morgan continued south, his moist breaths dissipating the quicker he ran. He didn’t realize he had been sprinting until he looked up and saw the closed drapes of Cay’s vacant condominium. He slowed, coming as close to the building as he could. Craning his neck he saw the checkerboard of windows climb to the sky until they converged at a vanishing point, then he looked toward the lake.

His soggy track suit provided no shield from the winter morning, but he wasn’t cold. His muscles ached, but he didn’t feel them. The anger and pain were gone. There was only clarity.

“You fucking bastard,” he said coolly. “Time to fix this. You’re history.”

The stone faces around the giant ellipsoid table offered epitaphs to the absurdity of the hearing. They thought they knew the outcome, but Morgan had already reached the verdict.

With unctuous authority, each of them in sequence described, discussed, and commented while also watching for the adulating nods of their peers. Occasionally they would look at Morgan’s fixed gaze, his motionless hands and fingers entwined.

Over his bifocals the senior medical officer said, “Dr. Morgan, what happened was inexcusable, even considering your personal circumstances. Your behavior has generated legal problems for the hospital.” He glared, waiting for an apology. Bristling when none came, his eyes rolled, “Dr. Morgan, are you listening?”