This won’t take long. I’m fine.” Masha beckoned impatiently.
“Can I check your blood pressure, please, ah, Masha?” said Yao, bravely mumbling her name as he went to strap the cuff around her upper arm.
“Let’s take that jacket off first.” Finn sounded amused. “You’re a busy lady, Masha.”
“I actually really do need her sign-off on these,” said the young guy to the PA in a low voice.
Yao thought, I actually really do need to check your boss’s vital signs right now, motherfucker.
Finn helped Masha out of her jacket and put it over the back of her chair in a courtly way.
“Let’s see those documents, Ryan.” Masha adjusted the buttons on her cream silk shirt.
“I just need signatures on the top two pages.” The guy held out the folder.
“Are you kidding me?” The PA lifted both hands incredulously.
“Mate, you need to come back another time,” said Finn, with a definite edge to his barbecue voice.
The guy stepped back, but Masha clicked her fingers at him for the folder, and he instantly jumped forward and handed it over. He obviously considered Masha scarier than Finn, which was saying something, because Finn was a big, strong guy.
“This will take fourteen seconds at the most,” she said to Finn. Her voice thickened on the word “most” so that it sounded like “mosht.”
Yao, the blood-pressure cuff still in his hand, made eye contact with Finn.
Masha’s head lolled to one side, as though she’d just nodded off. The manila folder slipped from her fingers.
“Masha?” Finn spoke in a loud, commanding voice.
She slumped forward, arms akimbo, like a puppet.
“Just like that!” screeched the PA with satisfaction. “That’s exactly what she did before!”
“Jesus!” The purple-shirt guy retreated. “Jesus. Sorry! I’ll just …”
“Okay, Masha, let’s get you onto the floor,” said Finn.
Finn lifted her under the armpits and Yao took her legs, grunting with the effort. She was a very tall woman, Yao realized; much taller than him. At least six feet and a dead weight. Together he and Finn laid her on her side on the gray carpet. Finn folded her jacket into a pillow and put it behind her head.
Masha’s left arm rose stiff and zombielike above her head. Her hands curled into spastic fists. She continued to breathe in jerky gasps as her body postured.
She was having a seizure.
Seizures were disquieting to watch but Yao knew you just had to wait them out. There was nothing around Masha’s neck that Yao could loosen. He scanned the space around her, and saw nowhere she could bang her head.
“Is this what happened earlier?” Finn looked up at the assistant.
“No. No, before she just sort of fainted.” The wide-eyed PA watched with appalled fascination.
“Does she have a history of seizures?” asked Finn.
“I don’t think so. I don’t know.” As she spoke, the PA was shuffling back toward the door of the office, where a crowd of other corporate types had now gathered. Someone held up a mobile phone, filming, as if their boss’s seizure were a rock concert.
“Start compressions.” Finn’s eyes were flat and smooth like stones.
There was a moment—no more than a second, but still a moment—in which Yao did nothing as his brain scrambled to process what had just happened. He would remember that moment of frozen incomprehension forever. He knew that a cardiac arrest could present with seizure-like symptoms and yet he’d still missed it because his brain had been so utterly, erroneously convinced of one reality: This patient is having a seizure. If Finn hadn’t been there, Yao may have sat back on his haunches and observed a woman in cardiac arrest without acting, like an airline pilot flying a jet into the ground because he is overly reliant on his faulty instruments. Yao’s finest instrument was his brain, and on this day it was faulty.
They shocked her twice but were unable to establish a consistent heart rhythm. Masha Dmitrichenko was in full cardiac arrest as they carried her out of the corner office to which she would never return.
2
Ten years later
Frances
On a hot, cloudless January day, Frances Welty, the formerly bestselling romantic novelist, drove alone through scrubby bushland six hours northwest of her Sydney home.
The black ribbon of highway unrolled hypnotically ahead of her as the air-conditioning vents roared arctic air full blast at her face. The sky was a giant deep blue dome surrounding her tiny solitary car. There was far too much sky for her liking.
She smiled because she reminded herself of one of those peevish TripAdvisor reviewers: So I called reception and