“Mpfh.” The monologuing drug lord finally shut up.
After a minute, Carter turned to me. “Nurse Riggs, please prepare the EKG.”
I turned to the man with our supplies and grabbed the portable EKG before stepping up next to Carter and handing him a fresh pack of electrodes to place on the man’s chest while I untangled the wires of the machine.
When he was all hooked up, Santiago threw himself deeper into his stack of pillows and sighed dramatically. “This is it. This is the moment we shall all look back on. Mark the time, Eduardo!” he called to no one in particular. “For this is the hour when Rome fell! When the great Gustavo Santiago was no more. I can feel it here. Right here in the center of myself.”
He tapped his sternum harder than a man with a fatal heart condition should have been able to. In fact, after working for a while with Carter in Gelada, I’d picked up a thing or two about cardiac patients. This man wasn’t one of them.
Not only was he not a heart patient, he also didn’t seem much like an evil mastermind. If this was the same Gustavo Santiago that helped run the cartel, US intelligence needed serious help determining true threats. Surely, this man wasn’t one of them.
Unsurprisingly, a few minutes later, Carter nodded at the EKG results with a relieved expression and opened his mouth to give Santiago the good news.
Before he could, I grabbed his elbow. “Shouldn’t we confer first?” I asked with a fake smile. “Second opinion and all that.”
His brows furrowed. “Who’s giving the second opinion? You?”
I tried my hardest to send him psychic messages. It must have worked because his eyes suddenly widened, and he nodded again. “Yes, yes, of course. Let us confer. We can’t be too careful.” He turned back to Santiago. “One moment, please, sir.”
Santiago inclined his head regally.
Carter took a step back with me and leaned in to whisper in my ear. “The man needs an antacid. And possibly a therapist.”
“Babe, if you tell him that, he’s going to get rid of us the way he did that other doctor who tried telling him he was fine.”
I hadn’t meant to let the endearment slip, but when Carter’s cheeks turned pink to match his ears, I realized it was worth it.
“But… you don’t mean you want me to…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Lie to a patient?”
Lord save me from doctors with integrity.
“He’s not a patient, Carter,” I reasoned. “He kidnapped us, remember? And when he says the doctor was tossed off the side of the mountain, that’s not a euphemism. If this is the Santiago connected to the cartel, he means literally tossed. With complementary bullet holes, I bet. Listen to me. You have to stall for time. This test was inconclusive, and you need twenty-four hours to run some bloodwork. Understand?”
I could see the proposal of medical deception didn’t sit well with him, so I tried another tack. “You’re not misdiagnosing him. You’re only taking extra time to be sure of the diagnosis. Anyone would understand that in a serious cardiac case.”
“But this isn’t a ser—”
“I must know of what you discuss!” Santiago boomed, scaring Carter into making an eep sound. “It is as I feared, is it not? How much time do I have to get my affairs in order? Wait. No! You are an American heart specialist. Surely you can fix it. Surely you have the skills to make this better, buy me more time with my beloved Yelitza.”
A gasp came from a woman in the room—he’d gotten a name right, it seemed—and another began fluttering over her in reassurance.
“And my beloved Evalin! Of course.” He cleared his throat and looked back at Carter. “I have too many mistresses to always keep straight. But they each and every one of them mean the most to me of all of them.”
Carter opened his mouth, presumably to lecture the man on the definition of superlatives, but he thought better of it.
Good man. The best.
Santiago continued. This time he waved his arm around again, nearly ripping off some of the EKG leads. “I cannot leave them all alone. I must get better. You must heal me from this devastating condition.” He side-eyed Carter. “What is this devastating condition, exactly?”
Carter clenched his jaw, and his ears pinked again. “I need more time. The test wasn’t exactly conclusive. I’d like to draw some blood and perform some lab tests overnight if possible. I would… I wouldn’t want to get the diagnosis wrong with someone of your… important… standing.”
Santiago’s narrowed eyes widened. “Yes. Yes, of course. Of course you would not. I am very important. You see this right away. It is necessary to get it right.”
He looked at me and the others in the room. “I like this Dr. Carter. He and his manservant—” Jesus, I was demoted to manservant again. “—are to be given the finest suite in the compound. Make sure he has all the necessary supplies for his medical lab. Also…” He seemed to be searching for a particular person and finally settled his eyes on the tallest, beefiest, and most good-looking of all his guards. He snapped his fingers at him. “Deo. Give the man your blood. He needs it for a test.”