When Michael got back out to the elevator lobby, he was moderately surprised that Lynn was already there. He thought he had changed quickly and had expected to have to wait. He handed her his room key and said: “Would you mind making the bed and cleaning the bathroom while you are in there?”
“Fat chance, you male chauvinist,” Lynn said as she snatched the key. “I’m going to e-mail the photo of Ashanti’s record to myself and that’s it. Another request! Would you e-mail me the photos you took of Carl’s and Morrison’s records? Then I’ll have all three. By comparing them, maybe I’ll be able to find something unexpected.”
“I think the first thing you need to do is get some sleep.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Meanwhile do the e-mails.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Michael said, saluting.
21
Tuesday, April 7, 10:15 A.M.
Benton Rhodes slammed the door to his private office with such force that some of his framed diplomas on the walls tilted, requiring him to walk around and straighten them. He imagined that the concussive sound had probably jolted the Anesthesia Department secretary sitting at her desk just outside. She had been listening to dictation and typing on her monitor when he had walked by, and hadn’t seen him. Yet if he’d startled her, he didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty. When he was enraged, he often took it out on anybody and anything. The idea that he’d scared the secretary actually calmed him to a degree.
He was still dressed in scrubs, even though he had left the OR and descended to the admin area, where most of the department heads had their formal offices. But before he had left the floor, he’d ducked into the locker room to get his phone. Sitting down at his desk, he pulled it out of his pocket and went into his contacts. Then he paused. He didn’t know whom to call first about this latest stupid screwup.
For the life of him, Benton couldn’t understand how people could be so smart in some things and so stupid in others, which was why he had yelled at Sandra Wykoff. As dedicated an anesthesiologist as she was, he couldn’t comprehend how she could have misinterpreted the instructions from Bob Hartley, the hospital counsel, about not discussing the Vandermeer case with anyone. The lawyer couldn’t have been any clearer. Not discussing it with anyone meant no one, period. Especially not a couple of medical students rummaging around for a cause to make a name for themselves. “Hospital-acquired morbidity,” my ass, he thought glumly. The next thing they might do is put on Twitter or Facebook what they believed to be sage observations about the case. God, it would be a disaster!
Drumming his fingers on his desk, Benton thought that running the Mason-Dixon Medical Center’s Anesthesia Department was turning out to be more of a bother than he had bargained for. When he’d been recruited five years previously at the age of sixty-four, he had been in charge of the anesthesia department of a much larger, Ivy League center that did twice the surgical volume and had an anesthesiology residency program to boot. Yet it had somehow seemed easier in New England and without the anxiety he was dealing with here in Charleston. It was the South, for God’s sake, where he’d heard people were supposed to laze around and sip mint juleps. His goal had been a semi-retirement to enjoy life. Unfortunately it was not working out that way.
Making a decision, Benton pulled up Robert Hartley’s office number on his mobile but didn’t use it to make the call. Instead he dialed the number on his hospital landline, knowing he’d get better service from the law firm’s office help. The Mason-Dixon Medical Center was an important client.
As the call went through, Benton calmed down further. There had been some problems running the Anesthesia Department before, maybe not as big as the current fiasco, but problems nonetheless. Yet the perks he’d received from taking the job had been sweet, particularly the stock options. Their value had escalated, especially now that there was talk of a takeover of Middleton Healthcare by Sidereal Pharmaceuticals, owned by the billionaire Russian expatiate Boris Rusnak. If that happened, Benton could really retire in style.
As he expected, he was put through to Bob Hartley directly, and the lawyer picked up the phone almost before it had a chance to ring.
“What can I do for you, Benton?” Bob said. His voice was deep and reassuring. Over the years they had gotten to know each other well enough to be on a first-name basis.
“I’m afraid there’s been a breach in your directives to Dr. Wykoff. I thought you should know immediately.”
“That’s not good. What exactly happened?”
“I walked in on Dr. Wykoff having a chat about the case with a couple of fourth-year medical students. I couldn’t fucking believe it after what you said yesterday.”
“Did these medical students seek her out?”
“Yes. One of them bumped into Wykoff in the women’s locker room and asked out of the blue if she could talk about the Vandermeer case. And for some reason Wykoff agreed.”
“Do you have any idea why she agreed?”
“She says she is really upset about what happened and needed to talk about it as a kind of therapy. And get this: she said she thought of the medical students as family. Jesus Christ! Medical students. Can you fucking believe it?”
“How did the medical students hear about it? Do you know?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you know why they are interested in the case?”
“Wykoff said they were concerned about the issue of hospital-acquired morbidity: people going into the hospital for one thing and getting something worse in the process. In that regard, I’m afraid Vandermeer is a prime example. Actually, it is a real issue.”
“Did the students mention the other two cases?”
“No, they did not.”
“Did you get their names?”
“I did. Michael Pender and Lynn Peirce. I briefly checked them out. Both are really good students in the very top of their class.”
“So they could be leaders, which might make it more of a problem. Do they have a history of being activists?”
“I have no idea, but nothing like that was suggested in either academic record.”
“Whom have you told about this?”
“You are the first.”
“I think you should tell Dr. Feinberg. The hospital president has to be aware, because if the media gets ahold of this, it could scuttle the takeover negotiations, and we certainly don’t want that to happen.”
“Of course not!”
“I assume you told the students that they are not to talk about the case with anyone, friends or family. I mean really told them.”
“I made it very clear.”
“Why is Dr. Wykoff being more of a problem than Dr. Pearlman or Dr. Roux? Those two have been extremely cooperative.”
“It is really hard to say. Believe me. It could be because it is her first major complication. Some doctors take it very personally. The one thing I can say is that she is not worried about a malpractice case. She is that confident she did nothing wrong.”
“She’s being naive. Malpractice cases can go either way, no matter what the particulars.”
“She’s also a workaholic who doesn’t socialize much and lives alone. Professionally she’s very reliable and conscientious, but something of an odd duck, at least in my estimation.”
“The other two anesthesiologists live alone, too.”
“What can I say? I don’t know why she is being uncooperative.”