Mo tempered her flipping stomach by trying to focus on the First Lady instead of on the monitor. She’d waited outside the operating room dozens, probably hundreds, of times, and knew well the labyrinth of back halls of Dr. Ryan’s home hospital, Johns Hopkins. The Secret Service even had a small office there next to Dr. Ryan’s. But Mo had never watched her work. Her focus was so intense as to be almost Zen-like. Ryan and her partner were playing with some high-powered lasers in the middle of one of the most fragile and important parts of the human body. The eye didn’t offer a great deal of real estate to work in to begin with, and these guys were shooting lasers through the pupil. Watching the steady hands, the total concentration, gave Richardson an entirely new level of respect for her boss.
An hour into the procedure, Dr. Ryan, unrecognizable in her surgical cap and mask, glanced over her shoulder and gave Mo a thumbs-up. Mo looked up at the agents in the viewing window and repeated the gesture. She and Dr. Ryan had agreed on the prearranged signal when the surgeons were roughly twenty minutes away from finishing up. The agents returned the thumbs-up to show that they understood the message and would pass it on.
“And there you go, Adam Yao, CIA dude,” Mo whispered under her breath. “Less than half an hour. Let’s see what you got.”
She couldn’t help but wish she was outside in the waiting area during this part of the op. She’d been around Tsai for only a few moments when the general had arrived. That was plenty long to see he was a vile human being. Mo shook her head, queasy from the images on the monitor. Still, she wasn’t sure anyone deserved what this guy was getting.
Tsai was sweating profusely when Adam Yao brought a tray of donuts into the waiting area. Mrs. Song sat to the general’s right, his hand clutched in hers, leaning against him for emotional support. All her customary stoicism had been leached away by the stress of her granddaughter’s illness and the long hours of travel.
“How much longer?” Mrs. Song asked in accented English.
“I’m not sure,” Yao said. “Maybe an hour. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific.”
“What could be taking so long?” the exhausted woman asked. “If it goes longer, do you think that means they are able to save her sight?”
“The surgeons will explain everything after—” Yao said.
“Why are there two?” Tsai asked, gulping back a burp. Yao could hear his rumbling gut from ten feet away.
“Two?” Yao scratched his head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Why two surgeons?” Tsai asked. “There is a limited space for four large American hands around a child’s eyeball. Surely one would be enough.”
The general huffed in disgust, blading away in his chair. Mrs. Song buried her head more deeply into her husband’s shoulder.
Tsai chuckled. “Too many cooks—” An extra-large burp worked up from his belly, as if to punish him. He pushed the glasses up on his nose and stared at his feet.
Yao shrugged. “That’s way above my pay grade, sir. I’m not even a nurse. I’m just an orderly. I help with things like — Hey, you don’t look so good.”
Tsai swayed in his chair like he was about to topple forward. Yao reached out to touch the man’s arm, but he jerked away.
“I am fine!” Tsai snapped. His twisted grimace said otherwise. The thunder in his gut grew louder. His eyes suddenly crossed. The glasses slid down again as his face twisted in pain. “The restroom!” he demanded, cradling his protesting belly.
A morphine derivative based on a medication used to treat Parkinson’s stimulated the chemoreceptor trigger zone, or CTZ, in Tsai’s brain, causing it to send signals to the stomach saying it was time to expel all of its contents. A lot of signals. At the same time, a powerful chemical laxative was sending the exact same message to Tsai’s lower GI. The effects were fast, relatively benign, and extremely dramatic. Knowing full well what was about to happen, Yao steered the rumbling man quickly across the hall.
They almost made it.
In the end, a disgusted General Song ordered his aide to retrieve Tsai’s suitcase from the rental car so he could change out of his soiled clothing — keeping both men occupied and out of the picture.
The First Lady waited in recovery with Niu while Dr. Berryhill went to the waiting area to talk to the Songs. Nurses and orderlies scrambled back and forth in the hallway, buzzing about something she didn’t quite follow. One of the Chinese visitors had gotten ill. She didn’t have time to think about that. The girl’s grandfather would be in at any moment. But she didn’t even devote too much brain time to that. Her patient was right here in front of her. She was what was important.
