“Did you treat him at all for depression? Was he taking any antidepressants?”
“Not diagnosed nor prescribed by me.”
George nodded. That must have been iDoc. “How about prostate cancer?”
Schwarz glanced at Sal’s chart. “Well, it seems that he did have prostate cancer. Here’s a positive biopsy report that was recently sent to me, but I didn’t order it and I never saw him for it.” Schwarz held up the paper. “The damn thing was just sent to me from your medical center, since I am the GP of record. The fact of the matter is that I hadn’t seen the patient for the last couple of months since he became part of the iDoc beta test. The last time I saw him was to put in a reservoir for iDoc. Amalgamated Healthcare paid me a whopping forty bucks.”
“So Mr. DeAngelis definitely had an implanted reservoir.”
“As I said, I put it in myself. It was mostly for his diabetes, as I recall.”
George nodded. “How long was the reservoir supposed to last?”
“In Mr. DeAngelis’s case, at a minimum two years.” Schwarz stared down at Sal’s file. “God! I hate health insurance companies. They never want to pay, and make you jump through hoops to get reimbursed. I’ve put in a bunch of those reservoirs for Amalgamated. They gave me a short course on how to do the procedure — they want them all in at the same spot on the lower left abdomen off to the side in the belly fat — but once I did the implant, like with DeAngelis, I lost the patients. As I said, once DeAngelis had the reservoir, I never saw him again. The good news was that he also didn’t call me anymore. That was a relief, to tell you the goddamn truth. I put in hours talking on the phone to my patients and do you know how much I get paid for my time? Nothing! I hate talking on the phone. Amalgamated is a bitch of a company. They actually offered me a job, but I told them where to stick it. Goddamn leeches.”
“How deep did you embed DeAngelis’s reservoir?” George asked cautiously. “Was it just under the skin or deeper?”
The man was getting agitated. “Are you taking care of DeAngelis now? You aren’t from Amalgamated, are you?” he said accusingly.
“No way,” George exclaimed. “I’m at L.A. University Medical Center.”
Schwarz eyed him, eyes narrowing. “Why all these questions?”
“I’m interested in the case.”
“Interested?” Schwarz asked, raising his voice. “‘Interested’ does not denote a doctor-patient relationship. Are you treating him or not?”
“I’m actually a resident radiologist at the medical center and—”
“Are you family?” Schwarz said, his voice rising.
“No, I’m an acquaintance. We were neighbors. As I said, I’m a radiologist and—”
Schwarz’s face went dark. He slammed Sal’s folder shut. “You deceived me in order to obtain confidential patient information. That’s a violation of HIPAA!”
“The man is dead!” George said. “I’m trying—”
“That doesn’t make things any better, young man! Your chief of radiology is going to hear about this! Now you have to leave!” He pointed toward the door.
George knew he’d hit a brick wall and raised his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’m out of here. Thank you for your time.”
He exited through the waiting room, avoiding the open stares and stunned expressions of the seated patients. It was apparent they had overheard the exchange.
32
George headed for the back entrance to the emergency department, stopping into the laundry to pick up a white coat. He was fretting over Schwarz’s threat to call the chief of radiology. With George’s previous HIPAA violation involving Kasey’s records, he knew that such a call could cause serious trouble. The possibility of getting Schwarz riled up had never even occurred to him. He tried to put the thought out of his mind but couldn’t. Instead he tried to think of ways to lessen the impact if the chief approached him, but nothing promising came to mind. Luckily he had other things to think about, and reasoned that nothing was going to happen until after the Fourth of July weekend no matter what. He was determined to reassure himself that Kasey’s, Sal’s, and Laney’s deaths — as well as Tarkington’s and Wong’s — were coincidences and not the result of some sort of conspiracy or wireless hacking.
George heard the uproar in the ER even before he entered the public reception area. As he expected, the place was packed. With the heat wave still gripping the city, he anticipated it would be busy, especially with holiday traffic and injuries associated with celebrating the Fourth, such as burns and eye injuries from fireworks.
He spotted Debbie Waters and made a beeline for her. She was again holding court at the front desk, but this time she caught sight of him immediately.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she said in her commander-in-chief persona. “You’re not on call, are you? You should be at the goddamn beach.”
“Maybe later,” George said. “Got some errands to get out of the way.”
“Like what?” Debbie demanded. “I hope to hell you aren’t still agonizing over the deaths you were upset about.”
“Well, they are still on my mind. But the reason I’m here is to talk with Warren Knox. Is he in today?”
“He is, but he is acting senior resident. Why do you want to see him? The man is very, very busy.”
“I won’t need much of his time. I just have a couple of questions about the DeAngelis case.”
“What kind of questions?”
George leaned over the counter so he could not be overheard. There were a lot of people about and he did not want anyone listening in. “I want to ask him about those so-called self-inflicted wounds. I have a theory about them, which doesn’t have anything to do with suicidal ideation, that is if the wounds are where I suspect they might be.”
Debbie frowned. “You’ve got to get off this bandwagon, I’m telling you!”
“I can’t. I’m convinced that DeAngelis was not suicidal.” George looked around the area. “So where can I find Knox?”
“Trauma Room Eight.” Her response was flat. She went back to barking out orders to several orderlies who had arrived with gurneys, acting as if they didn’t know what to do.
“Okay, thanks,” George replied. She didn’t look at him, much less acknowledge his thank-you. George shrugged. It was as if she were irritated.
George made his way down to Trauma Room 8, where he found an ER team just finishing preparations to send a bicyclist up to the OR. He had been hit by a bus and sustained massive trauma.
It wasn’t hard to figure out who Knox was because he was in charge. Like most of the residents, the man was dressed in blood-spattered scrubs. He looked weary and in sore need of a shave, as if he had been up all night. George waited to speak with him while he finished up with the ER paperwork.
When George explained why he wanted to talk, Knox waved for George to follow him. He said he had to hustle to the next case but that George could tag along. He led George toward Trauma Room 6, where a homeless man who had been hit by a train was going to lose both legs just below the knee. The patient needed to be stabilized before he, too, would be sent up to surgery.
“It’s about Sal DeAngelis,” George said. “You remember him, right?”
“I’ll be remembering him for a long time. What’s your question?”