Death Benefit Read Free

spine. Even at this time of the morning, the place was busy. The more purposeful people in the varying-length white coats making their way along 168th Street were the doctors, students, and staff of the hospitals and research facilities. The patients and their relatives who were arriving were more hesitant, trying to figure out where they needed to be and clearly apprehensive of why they were there and what the day might bring.
    George turned up the collar of his jacket against the sharp wind that came off the Hudson River and was funneled into 168th Street by the curve of Haven Avenue. Tomorrow, it would be March, the month in which any day the temperature might be in the sixties or it could snow. At that moment it wasn’t particularly cold, but the wind was a reminder that winter still had some kick.
    George and Pia were heading for different buildings to start their fourth-year month of elective. Fourth year of medical school was a series of monthlong rotations in various specialties, which included an elective period where the individual students could choose something of their particular interest. That month Pia was to do research, as she’d done during her month of elective in her third year. George was to work in radiology, as he too had done the previous year. These choices were particularly apropos since three weeks earlier, George, Pia, and the rest of the class of 2011 had learned the results of the residency matching program. Both Pia and George had been awarded positions there at Columbia University Medical Center, thanks to their superb academic records and strong faculty recommendations: Pia in internal medicine and George in radiology. By special dispensation, Pia would also be starting a concurrent Ph.D. program in molecular genetics, which would allow her to continue her lab work while fulfilling her requirements as a medical resident.
    Awaiting Pia that morning at the William Black Medical Research Building was the noted molecular geneticist Dr. Tobias Rothman, winner of both a Nobel Prize and a Lasker Award. In addition to being known for his accomplishments, Dr. Rothman was even better known around the medical center for being a difficult person to work with, thanks to his renowned total lack of social graces. Rothman did not suffer fools. In fact Rothman did not suffer anyone except his long-term research assistant, Dr. Junichi Yamamoto. Originally Rothman’s reputation had made George nervous for Pia when she started her third-year elective in the man’s lab, but his concern had been tempered by his personal knowledge that she herself was a handful. From direct experience he knew that she could be counted on to hold her own in most any situation. As it had turned out, to everyone’s surprise, even Pia’s, she had gotten along famously with the famed and feared researcher. In fact it had been Rothman’s suggestion that Pia do a Ph.D. program at Columbia with her practical work taking place in his lab. Until Pia had come along, Rothman had never mentored anyone. For a while it had been a major point of gossip in the entire medical center as people wildly hypothesized what on earth was going on between the exotically attractive medical student and the universally disliked but respected curmudgeon who was the center’s major research celebrity.
    “Pia! Wait up!” George called out. In her typically self-absorbed fashion, Pia had gotten ahead of George in the crowd. Dodging the phalanxes of medical students in their white coats who were all converging on the Black building, George scuttled ahead to catch Pia just before she entered the building. He pulled her aside. Pia looked up at George with her big brown eyes wide open, as if surprised to see George, whom she was supposed to be walking with.
    “Do you want to have lunch? It’s the first day, so they might go easy on us. I know for me it’s probably going to get crazy after today.”
    “I don’t know, George. Rothman’s . . . Rothman’s,