Free Point of Balance by J.G. Jurado Page A

didn’t have to operate that day, but I did need to be sure I was carrying no gadget White could have bugged. I completely stripped off, then put on some scrubs and a white coat that was generic and unlabeled. I didn’t take my stethoscope or anything else that was mine.
    The last decision to make was whether or not to take my cell and pager.
    Fortunately I was late, so there was almost nobody in the changing room, but for a while I froze solid, just staring at those gizmos like a man possessed. I was never apart from them and got into a flap whenever the batteries were flat or the charger light showed red. But at that moment those objects were evil itself to me.
    To leave the cell in my locker meant losing contact with White. I knew he had meddled with it somehow, and I needed to be rid of it. But to break off might rile him and he could harm Julia in some way by taking it out on her.
    And not only that. Right now that little four-ounce device was my one link to my daughter. I put it in my pocket and closed my locker door.
    The metallic clang echoed around the deserted changing room as I made my way out.
    Unfortunately, I was getting nowhere and the work was piling up. I had skipped breakfast, although stress and nerves had taken hold of my guts and I couldn’t have eaten a thing.
    Nonetheless, I couldn’t let any of my feelings show. White had made that very clear: I had to smile. His weren’t the only eyes that would be on me over the next few days.
    I got into the elevator and ran into someone from admin, a great big, chipper guy I got along well with. Straight off I could see in his eyes the first signs of rejection everyone has had since Rachel’s suicide.
    â€œHow the hell are you, Mike?”
    â€œWell, doc, fighting off the anorexia, as you can see,” he said, patting his massive belly.
    I laughed. “Seems you got that bitch under control.”
    Mike laughed with me, surprised to see me joking again.
    â€œBe seeing you,” I said as I walked out.
    â€œBet you’ll see me first,” he quipped, and kept on laughing even after the elevator doors were shut.
    I took a couple of steps away from the elevator and had to stop for a second. The lights, the bustle, the phones ringing, the chairs and gurneys wheeling along the passageway, the nurses gossiping inthe corner, the chief resident herding the kids from room to room, the smell of disinfectant. All the hustle around me, everything that went to make up the chaos I called home, was alien to me now.
    I felt far removed, light-years away from all those jerks who didn’t get what I was going through. If they found out Julia had been kidnapped, they’d merely mutter, “Oh my God, how terrible,” shake their heads and go home to kiss their family and think it could never happen to them. It was exactly what they did when Rachel died. At most they would avoid me for a few months, a normal reaction in case my bad luck rubbed off on them. We hospital folk are very superstitious, and surgeons more than anyone.
    A nurse ambled past me and said hello with a big smile, which I returned by ordering my face muscles to move.
    The chasm between that woman’s carefree happiness and my torment made me despair.
    I got a grip on myself and went to the nurses’ station.
    â€œWhat’s up?”
    â€œThey called from Stockholm, something about a Nobel Prize they want to give you,” said Sandra, who was head of the day shift.
    â€œTell them I’ll pass. They’d give it to anyone these days.”
    Sandra laughed. She was also surprised I had joked back. I felt a bit guilty. There has always been a covert class war between doctors and nurses. They believe they do all the work, while we take all the credit and give all the orders. We . . . Well, we can be quite despicable. I had always tried to avoid that attitude, but I realized that with my bad mood in the last few months, that good intention had