“Okay.” He was looking businesslike, totally focused, and I was grateful to him for taking me seriously. “Are there any other patients, apart from your sister, whom you know about?”
“Kasia Lewski and Hattie Sim. Tess met them at the CF clinic.”
“Would you write them down?”
He waited while I fumbled in my bag and wrote down their names, then gently took the piece of paper from me. “Now can I ask why you want to know?”
“Because whoever he is wore a mask. When he gave the injections, when he delivered the babies.”
There was a pause and I sensed that any urgency he’d shared with me was dissipated.
“It’s not that unusual for medical staff to wear masks, especially in obstetrics,” he said. “Childbirth is a messy business, lots of body fluids around; medical staff wear protective gear as a matter of course.”
He must have seen the disbelief on my face, or my disappointment.
“It really is pretty routine, at least in this hospital,” he continued. “We have the highest percentage of patients with HIV outside Johannesburg. We’re tested regularly to avoid infecting our patients, but the same isn’t true the other way around. So we simply don’t know when a woman comes through our doors whether or not she’s ill or a carrier.”
“But what about giving the gene? Giving the injections?” I asked. “That procedure doesn’t have fluids around, does it? So why wear a mask then?”
“Maybe whoever it was has just got into the habit of being cautious.”
I had once found his ability to see the best in people endearing, reminding me of you, but now that same trait made me furious.
“You’d rather find an innocent explanation than think that someone murdered my sister and hid his identity with a mask?”
“Bee—”
“But I don’t have the luxury of choosing. The ugly violent option is the only one open to me.” I took a step away from him. “Do you wear a mask?”
“Often I do, yes. It might seem overly cautious but—”
I interrupted. “Was it you?”
“What?”
He was staring at me and I couldn’t meet his eye. “You think I killed her?” he asked. He sounded appalled and hurt.
I was wrong about conflict with words being trivial.
“I’m sorry.” I made myself meet his eye. “Someone murdered her. I don’t know who it is. Just that it
He took hold of my hand and I realized I was shaking.
His fingers stroked my palm, gently; too softly at first for me to believe that this was really a gesture of attraction. But as he continued, I knew, hardly believing it, that there was no mistake.
I took my hand away from his. His face looked disappointed, but his voice sounded kind. “I’m not a very good bet, am I?”
Still astonished, and more than flattered, I went to the door.
Why did I leave that room, with its possibilities? Because even if I could ignore the morality of his being married—not insurmountable, I realized—I knew it wouldn’t be long-term or secure or anything else I wanted and needed. It would be a moment of passion, nothing more, and afterward a heavy emotional debt would be exacted from me. Or maybe it was simply him calling me Bee. A name that only you used. A name that made me remember who I had been for so many years. A name that didn’t do this.
So I closed the door behind me and stayed wobbling but still upright on my narrow moral tightrope. Not because I was highly principled. But because I again chose safety rather than risk short-term happiness.
On the road a little way from the hospital I waited for a night bus. I remembered how strong his arms had felt when he’d hugged me that time, and the gentleness of his fingers as he’d stroked my palm. I imagined his arms around me now and the warmth of him, but I was alone in the dark and the cold, regretting now my decision to leave, regretting that I was a person who would always, predictably, leave.
I turned to go back, even started walking a few steps, when I thought I heard someone, just a few feet away. There were two unlit alleys leading off the road, or maybe he was crouching behind a parked car. Preoccupied before, I hadn’t noticed that there were virtually no cars on the road, and no one on the pavements. I was alone with whoever was watching me.
I saw a black cab, without a light on, and stuck out my hand, praying he would stop for me, which he did, chastising me for being on my own in the middle of the night. I spent money I no longer had on him driving me all the way home. He waited until I was safely inside the flat before driving off.
