Standing completely still and silent was something he did quite often, and was exceptionally good at, but the more he watched her the more he found himself wanting to break his silence at every turn. Alice was smart. Probably smarter than anyone he’d ever met. And, all he wanted as he stood there gnawing on the inside of his cheek, was to pick her brain. To banter and allow her thoughts to color his own, despite the things he might find. She was an emissary of Chang who’d admitted her guilt with little probing on his part, but there was no denying that the man in question had obviously chosen her for her superior intellect. It was true that she potentially had information that he could use, information that would surely only incriminate her, but that thought excited him more than he’d like to admit. 

    Henri stood at the bedside of an elderly patient Dr. Morgan had referred to as Gladys McCray. Though her head was heavily bandaged, wisps of curling silver hair sprouted in every direction. She was dressed in a floral night gown, her wrinkled, liver spot covered hands flexing against her stark white sheets. Gladys was every bit the typical little old lady who smiled brightly up at them as she spoke. He’d followed Alice into her room not fifteen minutes ago, watching in absolute astonishment as the doctors demeanor changed from scowling over his presence to sunny and cheerful. It happened time and time again. For every patient they visited, she transformed from a grumpy Neurologist into an angel who positively glowed. Henri didn’t know much about her yet, and he was quite sure she was in league with his worst enemy, but the woman’s bedside manner was something he’d never question.

    “You’re doing much better, Mrs. McCray, and your most recent MRI came back as clean as a whistle. You’ll be be back up to no good with your boy-toy of the week in no time,” she quipped, drawing a belly laugh from the woman who sat perched on the side of her mechanical bed. 

    “No such thing. I’m much too old for boy-toys,” she said, turning her head to smile up at Alice who returned the gesture with a cheeky grin of her own. 

    “Right, my bad. At your age, you’re probably still milking sugar daddies for every cent their worth. Don’t worry, I totally understand. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” Alice lifted her tablet, more than likely double checking the MRI images she’d previously mentioned. Gladys chuckled. 

    “You really are a darling, Dr. Morgan. Making an old woman feel young again.”

    “Old woman? Oh, please. When I’m finished with you, you’ll be twenty again,” she said with a wink before grabbing her chart off a nearby table, fishing out the MRI scans and attaching them to a backlit white board at the far side of the room. The images lit up clearly, displaying a black and white depiction of her brain. In the center of her right Temporal Lobe–the area just in front of the ear–was obvious evidence of a recent surgery. Visibly, the tissue was still healing, but something didn’t quite look right. “Anyway, despite the risks, your surgery was a major success. Your surgeon managed to completely remove the tumor that was interfering with your episodic memory. With it gone, we can focus on medicating you for your dementia and slowing the progression of the disease.”

    “That means I won’t forget things so often?” she asked.     “That’s correct. Your memory will most certainly improve.”

    “What about the scarring?” Henri asked, drawing the attention of the women in the room. The look Dr. Morgan gave him at that moment by right should have left him reduced to a puddle on the linoleum.

    “Excuse me?” she asked as Gladys craned her neck to look back at him. His eyes went from the old woman to the images on the board. 

    “Although the tumor is gone, there are already signs of scar tissue forming in the area,” he pointed to the Temporal Lobe and the extremely slight disfiguration of gray matter around the site of the operation, “which can’t really be helped. You could schedule another operation in six or so months to have it removed, but the risk of cranial bleeding would be about ninety percent. And with percentages that high, her chances of survival are pretty slim.” 

    “Is that…true?” Gladys asked, her voice rising in panic. Dr. Morgan was quick to reassure her.

    “To a certain extent. But we’re focusing on the positives right now, Mrs. McCray. You just survived an operation that has a high mortality rate for anyone, but especially for someone who’s almost eighty-six years old. There are always risks with any operation, but I have full faith in the abilities of the surgeons at Fairview. If they couldn’t do their jobs, neither of us would be here right now,” she said, her eyes rising to meet his. There was fire in their depths that he didn’t really understand. He’d told t