Gone Before Goodbye, page 10
Again the grin. “It didn’t. Until now. But I assure you it’s been tested.”
“Who built the scaffolding?”
“We did,” he says. “Via AI on our MB Reps 3D printer.”
Maggie sits back. “Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“You have an MB Reps 3D printer?”
“That surprises you?”
They sell, Maggie knows, for nearly a quarter million dollars. “Not really, no. But like I said, I never heard of this before. What’s the scaffolding made of?”
“It’s a patented biocompatible polyethylene.”
Maggie nods. That’s a common and proven material for implanted medical devices. Trace and Marc had done their work with that too. “And it’s a full nose scaffold?”
“Yes.”
“And you know I’ve never done that procedure before, right?”
“Truth?” Ivan leans in conspiratorially with the same grin. “I’m not sure anyone has. Do you think that’s a problem?”
She looks at the chart, considers the procedure, visualizes herself doing it. Her pulse picks up pace. She can’t help feeling excited at the prospect. “Not really, no.”
“It’s why we picked you.”
“Pardon?”
He settles back. “We didn’t think it would be an issue for you.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Doctor Barlow, mostly. He says you’re a bit of a risk-taker.” Ivan quickly waves both hands in front of his face as though clearing away his own words. “No, no, not like that. He meant like a maverick. You understand the best way to improve medical care is to push boundaries, no?”
When she doesn’t reply, he adds, “Anyway, Doctor Barlow thought you’d relish this challenge.”
The truth is, Dr. Barlow was correct. Maggie had read tons over the years on building and creating custom implants via AI and 3D printing—Marc and Trace had been working on something similar with the THUMPR7—but the technology still felt like years in the future. A nose scaffold is not a heart or a liver—but it’s a pretty exciting step.
You have to walk before you can run.
“In most ways,” Ivan continues, “it works like any other facial implant.”
“Except,” Maggie says, studying the images, “it will more radically change the way Oleg’s nose appears.”
“Yes.”
“Most people want a smaller nose.”
“Oleg Ragoravich does not. Click Photo B.”
She does. The image—grainy black-and-white again, which is strange—is of a nose that would politely be called “prominent.” The vast majority of people go through plastic surgery to improve their aesthetics. This is fairly obvious. Some want to look like a favorite celebrity, but between this new nose, the chin implant, and the eye work via the blepharoplasty, Oleg Ragoravich clearly did not want that.
He wants to look like someone else.
Or at least, not like himself.
“We figure the three procedures should take you between three and four hours,” Ivan continues. “Would you agree?”
She would. Probably three, but it pays to have extra time with the nose scaffold. She’d want to inject some fat and stem cells into the area, just to make sure the device wasn’t rejected.
“Which brings us to Nadia,” he says, tapping the screen. “Assuming we begin Mr. Ragoravich’s procedures promptly at ten a.m., we will have Nadia prepped and ready for a two p.m. start. Does that work for you?”
“It does. I assume we are using silicone for the breast augmentation?”
He nods. “We can choose either round three hundred ccs, three fifty ccs, or four hundred cc implants, all on standby.”
The four hundreds would be too big, but keeping three sizes ready for an operation was standard. Silicone was back in—saline was out. In the nineties, there were headlines about silicone leaks causing cancer and lupus, but after extensive studies, they found no link between silicone breast implants and an increased risk of breast cancer.
“What kind of incision are you going with?” Ivan asks her.
“I prefer the inframammary,” she says. “Assuming that’s okay with Nadia.”
He nods. There are three types of incision used in breast augmentation: inframammary (under the breast), periareolar (around the edge of the areola, a sort of half-smile incision), and transaxillary (in the armpit). The inframammary is most common. The periareolar sometimes affects sensation, and the transaxillary is used only for saline and makes positioning difficult.
Maggie starts clicking through the pages, seeing if anything sticks out. “Can I keep these medical files to review in full?”
“Of course. That tablet is yours.” Ivan checks his watch. “The gala ball is in a few hours,” he says, putting his hands on the sides of his chair as though ready to push himself up. “So if there’s nothing else—”
“Hold up a second,” Maggie says. Ivan waits. She clicks back, then forward. She reads the history again. “It says here Nadia only has one kidney.”
“Yes. She donated the other, what, six, seven years ago.”
“To whom?”
“Her brother.”
“Do you know what he had?”
“The brother?” He looks up as though trying to remember. “Nephrotic syndrome, I think. We ran a urine test and bloodwork on Nadia, of course. She has no signs of it.”
Maggie mulls that over. Something isn’t adding up. “Where is Nadia from?”
“Originally? I have no idea.”
“How did she meet Oleg Ragoravich in the first place?”
“In a club in Dubai. What difference does it make?”
“Having only one kidney could be an issue.”
“Could be, but it’s not. Nadia has been medically cleared. She’s in excellent health. As for the rest of your questions, Oleg Ragoravich is a private man.”
“Which reminds me,” Maggie says. “If he’s so private, why is he throwing a huge party tonight?”
“It’s a ball, not a party.”
“What’s the difference?” Maggie asks. Then, thinking better of it, she adds, “I’d rather not go.”
“You should. For one thing, you’re expected. For another, you will want to see the difference between a party and a ball with your own eyes.”
“Would it be a cliché to say I have nothing to wear?”
“It would be,” Ivan says, rising from his seat, “if that were true. But come on, my dear, you must know by now that we are prepared.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Maggie stares out her bedroom window and watches the guests arrive. A long tent-like walkway has been put out between the helicopter landing pad and the front door. The snow, which was still falling, is strategically gone, though she has seen no one shovel it away. She’d asked Ivan Brovski how they cleared it away.
“Heat coils under the ground,” he told her.
But of course.
Other guests are pulling up in big black cars, either stretch limos or oversize SUVs. The men wear tuxedos. The women wear formal gowns.
Maggie’s bedroom is, no surprise, larger than most apartments. Ivan had shown her the way to her room. The first thing he’d done when they arrived was open her walk-in closet with, she estimated, somewhere between thirty and forty outfits.
“All in your size and style,” Ivan informed her, “including…”
He gestured to the three formal gowns suitable for, well, a ball.
Maggie shook her head. “I’m not even surprised anymore.”
“I assume you like them.”
She did. Very much. She pulls out a navy blue dress nearly identical to the one she’d worn at Johns Hopkins a few days ago. Same shoes in her size too. “Weird,” she says. “I have this same outfit at home.” Then it dawns on her: “But you already knew that.”
Ivan shrugs. “Not me, personally. But yes, artificial intelligence made the selections—a new software program that scours the internet for all your photos and videos, sees what you wear to various events, and creates a wardrobe based on what it believes is your taste.”
“Terrific.”
But there is no way they could have done all this in, what, twelve hours?
Someone has been watching her.
For how long?
“There are a few nice diamond pieces on the bureau. Tasteful, I’m told. Feel free to borrow them.”
“Okay.”
“How about if I stop by at eight? We can go to the ball together.”
She nods. He leaves. Maggie remembers what Nadia said about bugs and cameras. Not much she can do about it, she supposes. The room is fully stocked with a potpourri of dream products—Chanel perfume, Christian Dior makeup, every top-of-the-line skin product imaginable, all touting promises of youth via peptides and collagens. She takes a shower, letting the hot water steam up the room just in case of cameras, throws on a robe, lies in bed. She closes her eyes. No time for a nap. Instead, Maggie starts visualizing and even acting out the surgery. Her father had told her about Colonel George Hall, a Vietnam War combat pilot who spent over seven years in the notorious Hanoi Hilton prison. To maintain his sanity in the face of starvation and torture, Colonel Hall imagined himself playing golf in his tiny cell. He would feel the sun on his face, smell the green grass, take each swing with care. He would see the ball go up in the air, watch it land on the fairways and greens of his favorite courses. Supposedly he did this every day and actually improved his game just through this visualization. Maggie didn’t know if that last part was exaggeration or myth, but that didn’t matter. She got it. She lies back now, closes her eyes, raises her hands into the air, and uses the scalpel to make the first incision. In her mind’s eye, she goes through the entire operation—
her own virtual world of surgery. She does this a lot—or used to when she was licensed. It is her way of both meditating and preparing.
At eight p.m., there is a knock on the door. Maggie opens it. Ivan’s eyes widen when he sees her all dressed up. He swallows back whatever comment he was about to make about her appearance, and says, “You chose the navy.”
“Yep.”
“It suits you.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you ready?”
Ivan looks stiff and uncomfortable in his tuxedo, the bow tie wrapped tourniquet-like around his neck. The house is oddly silent when they leave the bedroom. It’s not until they leave the wing that she starts to hear voices, occasional laughter, string music. They stay on the third floor and enter the ballroom from a balcony above it. The ballroom is polished white marble with gold leaf. It is huge, the approximate size of a college basketball arena. Relief carvings of baby angels, a look Maggie never understood, line the ceiling’s perimeter. There are probably three, maybe four hundred people mingling below. As she heads down the stairs, Maggie notices what appear to be food stations, a worldwide tour de cuisine on steroids. She wanders around and, for a moment, lets herself be a guest. She tries the abalone with liver and uni dipping sauce from Sushi Yoshitake, a three-star Michelin restaurant in Tokyo’s Ginza district. Lung King Heen, another three-star Michelin restaurant in Hong Kong’s Four Seasons Hotel, offers a scallop and prawn dumpling. Talula’s from Asbury Park provides pizza slices with Calabrian soppressata and local honey. Fromagerie Cantin, the renowned Parisian cheese shop, offers Aisy Cendré, a semisoft cow’s milk cheese buried in oak ashes for a month.
A voice interrupts her midbite. “I know it’s a cliché, what with being here in Russia, but you have to try the caviar.”
The voice has a decidedly haughty American prep school accent to it. Maggie turns. The handsome man offers her a boyish aw-shucks grin. His tuxedo looks sculpted on, graceful, draping exactly where it should be and fitted where it shouldn’t. The midnight-black fabric seems to absorb light more than reflect it. No need for a flashy tie or patterned cummerbund when you’re seemingly fitted by a deity, just the shine of onyx studs against the pure white of his starched shirt.
He looks soft, pampered, privileged.
As the man and his polished shoes glide toward her, Maggie notices a moistness in his blue eyes, perhaps from drink.
“I’m Charles Lockwood,” he says with a crooked grin, sticking out the unblemished, manicured hand.
She hesitates, not sure whether she should give her name. He picks up on it.
“And you’re Doctor Maggie McCabe,” he says for her.
His stubble is curated and on point. His black hair is long and wavy, the kind of unruly and ungroomed that often requires too much product. It all works in its own way, she presumes. Charles Lockwood cuts a striking figure, which is clearly the intended effect.
“Have we met?”
“No, but I knew your husband a bit. I’m terribly sorry.”
“How did you—?”
“I dabble”—Lockwood lifts a manicured hand and shakes his fingers—“in cardiothoracic surgery too.”
“No one ‘dabbles’”—she imitates his finger gestures—“in cardiothoracic surgery.”
“Fair enough. I don’t say this with false modesty, but next to your husband? Yes, I dabble. Marc seemed a good man, maybe even a great man, I don’t know. But he was the greatest surgeon I’d ever seen.”
Maggie feels her throat start to close. She pushes on. “So what brings you to Russia, Doctor Lockwood?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Yeah, but I asked first.”
“Probably the same reason you’re here,” he says.
“Hey, Charles, there you are!”
Two giggling women, both young and blonde and straight out of an influencer’s social media page, call out to him in Russian and approach on either side. One takes one arm. One takes the other. Both look at him adoringly. Charles replies to them in Russian. Both women pout, let their grips slip, and sulk away.
Charles turns back to Maggie and gives her a what-are-you-gonna-do shrug of the shoulders, palms up.
“Yeah, I don’t think we’re here for the same thing,” Maggie says.
He chuckles. “Sorry about that,” he says.
“Don’t let me keep you from your friends.”
“They’ll be around later.”
“I bet. You speak Russian?”
“I dabble.”
“Dabbling seems to be your modus operandi.”
Charles Lockwood gives her what he is sure must be the most winning smile. “I spend a lot of time here. I enjoy the lifestyle.”
“That lifestyle being?”
“A tad hedonistic. Nothing wrong with fun, Doctor McCabe, is there?”
She tries not to frown. “None at all.”
“Perhaps you and I can get together during your visit.”
“Yeah, no, I don’t think so.”
“Come now, Doctor McCabe, there is always time for a little fun along with our fundraising. Where are you staying?”
She ignores his question. “What’s that about fundraising?”
His expression says he knows that she’s dodging. “That’s not why you’re here?”
“No, are you?”
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
“For?”
“A medical startup specializing in cutting-edge longevity treatments.”
Again with the cutting edge, Maggie thinks.
Lockwood peers over her head. “Have you met our host?”
“Yes.”
Charles Lockwood makes a face to indicate he’s impressed. “Have you seen Mr. Ragoravich at the party?”
“It’s a ball, not a party.”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind.” Maggie’s eyes scan the ballroom. “No, not yet.”
“I’m hoping to meet Oleg Ragoravich tonight.” Charles Lockwood turns his attention back to her. “Your turn.”
“Turn?”
“Why are you here, Doctor McCabe?”
“Maggie.”
“Why are you here, Maggie?”
“I can’t really talk about it,” she says.
“Why not?”
She shuts him down with a face.
“Oh, my bad. I won’t push.” He throws up his hands in mock surrender. Again, Charles Lockwood probably thinks it’s a charming move on his part, and maybe for others, it is. Maggie hates this kind of faux charisma, the playboy blend of privilege and drink and good genes and people around you telling you that you are God’s gift.
Then Lockwood says, “Is Trace Packer here too?”
Maggie doesn’t bother hiding her surprise. “You know Trace?”
“Let’s just say we partied a few times together in our day.”
“I bet.”
“Trace knows how to party.” He looks around. “I figured you’re both here to fundraise.”
“Our charity closed down.”
“I’m aware,” Charles Lockwood says.
“You seem aware of a lot of things.”
“I like to be in the know.”
“Do you know where Trace is?”
“No, why would I?” When Maggie doesn’t reply, he asks, “So are you here to, what, thank your old benefactor?”
“I told you I can’t talk about it,” Maggie says. Then, realizing what he said: “What benefactor?”
“Are you serious?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
Charles Lockwood moves a little closer. “Aren’t you one of the founders of WorldCures Alliance?”
“Yes.”
“And who was your biggest donor?”
“The Kasselton Foundation.”
“Operated by?”
“I don’t know. I mean, the financial stuff was more Trace’s area of expertise. I met a few board members—”
“Oleg Ragoravich,” Charles Lockwood says.
She almost takes a step back.
“You really didn’t know?” Charles seems amused now. “The Kasselton Foundation is funded by none other than our host.”
Maggie just stands there and tries not to look surprised. She isn’t sure what to say and doesn’t want to make the mistake of saying more. She doesn’t know Charles Lockwood. She doesn’t get what’s going on or why he’s here or if she should believe him. In her peripheral vision, she spots Nadia making her way toward them, wearing a shimmery silver gown. The crowd parts Red Sea–like as she strides with runway grace toward them. All heads turn and follow.
