Timmie sneaked another look at her chart. "I'll let you know."
Right after she figured out who'd benefit the most.
* * *
The first thing she did was find out who benefited the least. The next day, when she should have been calling trash-hauling places, she walked over to the hospital on the pretense of checking schedules. Then, when Angie McFadden left at exactly 11:45 for lunch, like she did every day of her supervisorial life, Timmie sneaked into her office and booted up her computer.
It took Timmie a full five minutes to pull down the hospital Morbidity and Mortality records, and another minute to print them out, all the while keeping a weather eye out for interruptions.
She needn't have worried. She had no more than hit the Print button when she heard a code called in trauma room one. Since the day-shift nurses tended to be the most placable, least aggressive of the staff, it was a sure bet they'd all be bunched up trying to figure out Dopamine doses for the foreseeable future.
So Timmie scanned numbers, names, and dates as they appeared on the serrated paper that unfolded from the machine and blessed the technology gods for the ability to collate information as it was gathered. Only a year's worth of names. Any more than that she'd have to pull from the county registrar's office. But what she found in Angie's computer was probably enough.
The numbers for the hospital were going up, most notably in the last four months. The good news was that none of them looked particularly confusing. A cancer here, a heart failure there. An auto accident with a three-for-one special. The ages tended to skew high, but that was to be expected. After all, it kind of went with the territory. You counts your birthdays, you takes your chances.
The important thing was that Timmie couldn't spot any discrepancies in the Restcrest dismissals. The numbers weren't in the least disproportionate to the rest of the hospital, maybe even a little lower. It meant that Murphy was going to be frustrated in his crusade against Alex. Those deaths were on somebody else's head, just as Timmie had known all along.
Timmie did notice that she was seeing "emergency department" on the dismissal unit line more frequently, but she didn't think that meant anything. Patients who died in the ER never saw more of the hospital than the morgue. They wouldn't have had any contact with the rest of the hospital, where the problems were alleged to have happened. And if the care was that shaky in the ER, Timmie would have picked up on it.
She did notice one other thing. The coroner didn't seem at all interested in the cases that should have been his. In the state of Missouri a coroner had jurisdiction on any patient who died within twenty-four hours of admission to a hospital, any patient who died after an invasive procedure, and any patient who'd been in law enforcement. And yet Timmie couldn't seem to find a "hold for coroner" anywhere.
But that was just the first pass. She'd take more time with it later, when she couldn't be caught. She was also going to make that appointment to have lunch in St. Charles with Conrad. Maybe he'd find that lack of coroner involvement more telling than she did. In the meantime, she let the printer do the work for her. And, while she was waiting, since there wasn't anything else going on...
It was probably illegal. It was certainly going to be boring. It could get Timmie tossed on her scrub-clad butt faster than slapping a rich drunk. It didn't matter. Armed with the password Angie had so thoughtfully taped to her corkboard, where she wouldn't forget it, Timmie checked the supervisor's E-mail.
Most of it involved territorial disputes. Housekeeping wasn't keeping Angie's trash empty enough. Central supply had misplaced another set of plastic instruments. Outpatient kept trying to use her rooms when they were full. Predictable, uninteresting.
Not so the notice from Paul Landry.
Due to certain negative attention paid to the medical center in recent weeks, it has been deemed inadvisable to promote our newest policies to the public. No changes will be made in the timetable, which so far has been effective, but to prevent further problems and possible costly misunderstandings about what might seem like negative results, please refrain from discussing the matter with anyone until further notice. Any questions are to be directed to Mary Jane Arlington, my office.
"Well, well."
What policies, Timmie wondered? What results? Could she actually be this lucky to find something incriminating pointing right in the direction of an increased death rate from a bad policy? Could that undue publicity just mean Murphy snooping around, or could it be a corporate reference to the shooting?
The only changes Timmie had heard about so far had been the focus on increasing trauma response and the integration of Restcrest into the hospital system.
And why would that cause problems? Just to be sure, though, she printed out the page with the memo on it to add to the M and M list.
Timmie also tried her best to work her way back into Angie's menu to see if she had a file of policy changes, but nothing showed up. She was so engrossed in her hunt that she almost missed the page that would have sent her straight to the bread lines.
"...to the ER stat. Angie McFadden to the ER stat."
Timmie started to attention as if Angie had walked through the door herself. She had to get out of her office. The chain of command was inviolate in Angie's small world. Whatever they needed, they'd get from her here. And the only thing worse to her than ignoring the chain of command would be invading her privacy.
Timmie had just enough time to shove the printout under her jacket and flip off the computer midfunction. Then she slipped down the back hall as Angie lumbered up the front.
"We just got that CVP monitor," the supervisor was protesting to one of the day docs, who was hot on her heels. "Nobody knows how to use it."
"I do!" the doctor was yelling. "Now break it out!"
Timmie took a peek in trauma room one to find about six people in the process of scrambling out of the way of an arc of bright red blood that had pretty much soaked a portable X-ray unit. Two or three people were evidently trying to corral a pumping artery while everyone else played code team.
"Anybody ever see the movie Giant?" somebody was asking as they ducked again, like kids running through a sprinkler. "Don't you feel like James Dean when the well comes in?"
"Better cap this well fast," another voice suggested laconically, "or James isn't gonna have anything left to celebrate."
"Can't celebrate much without kidneys anyway," somebody else said.
A loose dialysis shunt, Timmie guessed. The permanent line must have accidentally been pulled free from the artery during the code. Standing beyond the bottom end of the cart, all Timmie could see besides scurrying staff were shriveled, yellow legs. Horny nails. Calloused, bunioned feet, one still dangling a fuzzy pink mule. They were coding an old lady with no kidneys. Made perfect sense.
"Do you think they'd like some help?" a soft baritone asked behind her.
Timmie almost dropped her papers in surprise. Alex had sneaked up on her. Well, not sneaked. He'd probably walked like a regular person, but when a body is holding illicitly obtained information that could endanger her employment, any arrival is a surprise.
"I don't know that it's going to make any difference," Timmie said with a quick smile.