The Surgeon: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel: With Bonus Content

under “doctor’s name” I type: “C. Cordell.” On the screen appear all the lab tests she has ordered in the last twenty-four hours. I see that she has been in the hospital since 10:00 P.M. It is now 5:30 A.M. , and a Friday. She faces a whole clinic day ahead of her.
    My workday is now coming to an end.
    When I step out of the building, it is 7:00 A.M. , and the morning sunlight slices straight into my eyes. Already the day is warm. I walk to the medical center parking garage, take the elevator to the fifth level, and head along the row of cars to stall # 541, where her car is parked. It is a lemon-yellow Mercedes, this year’s model. She keeps it sparkling clean.
    I take the key ring from my pocket, the ring I have been guarding for two weeks now, and slip one of the keys into her trunk lock.
    The trunk pops open.
    I glance inside and spot the trunk release lever, an excellent safety feature to prevent children from being accidentally locked inside.
    Another car growls up the garage ramp. I quickly close the Mercedes trunk and walk away.
     
    For ten brutal years, the Trojan War waged on. The virgin blood of Iphigenia that was spilled upon the altar at Aulis had sped the thousand Greek ships on a fair wind toward Troy, but a swift victory did not await the Greeks, for on Olympus the gods were divided. On Troy’s side stood Aphrodite and Ares, Apollo and Artemis. On the Greek side stood Hera and Athena and Poseidon. Victory fluttered from one side to the other and back again, as fickle as the breezes. Heroes slew and were slain, and the poet Virgil says the earth streamed with blood.
    In the end, it was not force but cunning that brought Troy to her knees. On the dawn of Troy’s last day, her soldiers awakened to the sight of a great wooden horse, abandoned at her scaean gates.
    When I think of the Trojan Horse, I am puzzled by the foolishness of Troy’s soldiers. As they wheeled the behemoth into the city, how could they not know the enemy was burrowed within? Why did they bring it within the city walls? Why did they spend that night in revels, clouding their minds in drunken celebration of victory? I like to think I would have known better.
    Perhaps it was their impregnable walls that lulled them into complacency. Once the gates are closed, and the barricades are tight, how can the enemy attack? He is shut out, beyond those walls.
    No one stops to consider the possibility that the enemy is inside the gates. That he is right there, beside you.
    I am thinking of the wooden horse as I stir cream and sugar into my coffee.
    I pick up the telephone.
    “Surgery office; this is Helen,” the receptionist answers.
    “Could I see Dr. Cordell this afternoon?” I ask.
    “Is it an emergency?”
    “Not really. I’ve got this soft lump on my back. It doesn’t hurt, but I want her to look at it.”
    “I could fit you into her schedule in about two weeks.”
    “Can’t I see her this afternoon? After her last appointment?”
    “I’m sorry, Mr.—what is your name, please?”
    “Mr. Troy.”
    “Mr. Troy. But Dr. Cordell’s booked until five o’clock, and she’s going right home after that. Two weeks is the best I can do.”
    “Never mind then. I’ll try another doctor.”
    I hang up. I know now that sometime after five o’clock, she will walk out of her office. She is tired; surely she will drive straight home.
    It is now 9:00 A.M. This will be a day of waiting, of anticipation.
    For ten bloody years, the Greeks laid siege to Troy. For ten years, they persevered, flinging themselves against the enemy’s walls, as their fortunes rose and fell with the favor of the gods.
    I have waited only two years to claim my prize.
    It has been long enough.

     

twenty-one
    T he secretary in the Emory University Medical School Office of Student Affairs was a Doris Day lookalike, a sunny blonde who’d matured into a gracious southern matron. Winnie Bliss kept a coffeepot brewing by the students’ mail slots and a crystal bowl of butterscotch candies on her desk, and Moore could imagine how a stressed-out medical student might find this room a welcome retreat. Winnie had worked in this office for twenty years, and since she had no children of her own, she’d focused her maternal impulses on the students who visited this office every day to pick up their mail. She fed them cookies, passed along tips about apartment vacancies, counseled them through bad love affairs and failing test scores. And every year, at