She comes on a Wednesday afternoon, which is a bad afternoon — he has three post-ops to check and a departmental budget meeting he cannot avoid and a resident who has made an error in judgment that Gideon needs to address before the error becomes a pattern.
The woman from the press is a problem he does not have time for.
"Dr. Vale?" His assistant, Thomas, is apologetic in the way of someone who knows this is not ideal and is also not willing to take the heat for sending her away. "Philadelphia Ledger. She's doing a piece on the pharmaceutical overdose crisis. Public health angle. She asked specifically for you."
"She can ask for a statement in writing."
"She's been waiting forty minutes."
Gideon is quiet for a moment. Forty minutes is either persistence or stubbornness or both, and he has some small, involuntary respect for all three.
"Four minutes," he says. "Send her in."
She comes in and immediately he adjusts his assessment. Not because she is striking — she is not, not in the conventional sense — but because she has the quality of someone who is paying full attention to everything in a room simultaneously. She is medium height, dark-eyed, wearing clothes that look like she forgot to buy new ones a few years ago and stopped minding. She has a gap between her front teeth that she does not seem self-conscious about.
She looks at him the way Donahue looks at him, which is to say: she is reading him.
He gives her nothing to read.
"Deborah Roseline," she says, extending her hand. "Thank you for making time."
"I have four minutes."
She does not react to that. "Then I'll be quick. I'm looking at the fentanyl supply chain — specifically the pharmaceutical-adjacent manufacturing that's been moving product through the healthcare distribution system. I wanted to understand what you're seeing at the emergency end. How does this manifest in your OR?"
It is a good question. A specific, intelligent question. He answers it precisely and without elaboration for three and a half minutes. He gives her useful information. He gives her nothing else.
When he finishes, she looks at him. "Thank you. That's actually more useful than anything I've gotten from the health department."
"The health department has to manage optics. I don't."
"Right." She is writing something on a notepad, but her eyes have not left him, which means she is not actually writing anything, which means the notepad is a prop. "Can I call you if I have follow-up questions?"
"My office can take a message."
"Sure." She clicks her pen. "It was nice to meet you, Dr. Vale."
He walks her to the door. He watches her go down the corridor toward the elevator.
She is not yet at the elevator when she does it — she takes the press badge hanging from her lanyard and writes something on the back of it. She doesn't look at him. She just writes.
He goes back to his post-op checks.
He does not think about it for the rest of the afternoon.
But it is there. Somewhere at the edge of things, where he keeps what he cannot yet categorize