“Do you think she should be terminated as a precaution after this violation of my directive?”
“I think we should wait and see how she responds from this point on,” Benton said. “She’s a damn good anesthesiologist and usually a team player. A lot depends on whether a lawsuit gets filed. But I’ll leave that decision up to Josh Feinberg. He’s being paid a fortune to deal with issues like this.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Bob said. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll give it some thought. Something might have to be done with all these people if they don’t toe the line. I’ll talk with Josh after you clue him in. We’ll be in touch.”
With a sigh of relief, Benton replaced the receiver. He felt a lot better now that he had pushed the issue into Bob Hartley’s capable lap. Intuitively Benton knew he would feel even better after speaking with Josh, who would have no trouble making decisions about Wykoff. He also knew that Josh could talk to the dean about the students and nip that problem in the bud.
Getting up from his desk, Benton went out to his secretary and asked her to check to see if Dr. Josh Feinberg could spare a few minutes to see him right away. Benton wanted to do it before he went back up to the OR. With as many surgical cases going on as there were, he needed to be up there to put out sparks before they became fires.
A minute later Benton’s secretary leaned into his office. “Dr. Feinberg can’t see you until three P.M.”
“Okay, thanks,” he said. After getting all riled up he now felt let down. Yet what could he do? So he’d see the president at three. Until then he had other issues to deal with.
22
Tuesday, April 7, 10:43 A.M.
Despite her exhaustion, Lynn had taken a short detour to the cafeteria. After leaving Michael she reluctantly decided that hunger had trumped her lack of sleep. The calories from the banana and bread roll she had eaten en route to the meeting with Wykoff had quickly disappeared. She felt weak, a little dizzy, and even a bit nauseous.
With little fear of running into any of her close friends, because of the derm clinic, she opted to sit down at a table. Sensing she needed some protein, she ordered scrambled eggs and wolfed them down with a cup of herbal tea. The food helped enormously, and made her believe she could think much more rationally and less emotionally. It also made her dizziness and nausea go away, something she noticed particularly as she headed over to the dorm, passing literally and figuratively in the shadow of the hulking Shapiro Institute.
Just as she had done the previous day, she paused for a few moments, eyeing the structure. She thought about Scarlett Morrison being transferred into the institute, and the idea brought up the issue of Carl being sent over as well. She questioned what she would do if that happened, as she wasn’t family. It would mean she’d be reduced to getting updates from his parents. They had been gracious when she ran into them the day before, but that could change when they remembered that she had been the one to recommend he have his surgery at the Mason-Dixon rather than the Roper Hospital at MUSC. She might be left out in the cold. Lynn shrugged. She knew she was getting way ahead of herself. With a sense of resignation, she continued toward the dorm.
It felt weird going into Michael’s room without him. After closing the door behind her, she stood for a moment, taking in the familiar sights and aroma. Michael was far neater than she, and everything was in its place. Even the books were shelved according to subject matter. Over the years she had teased him about the fastidiousness in his lifestyle, just as he had given her grief about her lack of it.
Although it was a bit strange to be in the room without Michael, just being there also felt comforting. She had spent considerable time in his room, as he had in hers. Especially during the first two years, they had studied a lot together in one or the other’s room. Many of the other students had preferred the library or the student center for communal learning. Not Lynn and Michael. What made studying together so rewarding was that they silently pushed each other to make greater efforts than what they would have had they studied on their own.
She sat down at Michael’s computer. He had cobbled it together from various components to maximize the gaming experience. She had gone through a gaming period herself but had grown out of it. Not so with Michael. She knew that he still used it to relieve anxiety and difficult emotions that medical school was capable of engendering, especially for a black man in a southern, mostly white professionally staffed medical center. He had admitted to her that he often gamed for fifteen minutes or so late at night, explaining that when he was a teenager, gaming had been a much-needed escape from the pressures of the ’hood, and a way of dealing with aggression.
After turning on the system, Lynn pulled up pictures. Expecting to find a well-organized and well-thought-out photo filing system as further evidence of his compulsiveness, she found something quite different. The photos were organized merely by date, meaning the chronological order in which the photos were taken.
Remembering that Ashanti had had her surgery several months earlier, Lynn started looking at photos taken in January. To her surprise, she came across a series of pictures that had been taken on a Saturday-afternoon excursion to the gorgeous Middleton Place, the apparent namesake of Middleton Healthcare, a sixty-acre landscaped garden begun as a rice plantation in the seventeenth century and now listed as a National Historic Landmark. Michael, his girlfriend, Kianna, Carl, and she had gone.
Lynn’s breath caught as she found herself looking at a photo of herself and Carl and Kianna in a horse-drawn carriage. Michael was not in the photo because he was the photographer. It was a happier time: a sublime time.
For a second Lynn closed her eyes and let the reality of Carl’s coma flood her thoughts. She had been getting by on a ton of denial and intellectualization, but now the realization that his mind and memories were gone descended on her like an avalanche. For the first time since the tragedy had begun, she let herself be enveloped by raw emotion. She began to cry. And cry she did, with shuddering intensity like a summer thunderstorm.
After what seemed like an eternity, the tears slowed. Eventually Lynn managed to get up and get some toilet paper to dry her cheeks and blot her eyelids. The small amount of makeup she used came off in a dark, dirty smudge.
Regaining a semblance of control, she went back to shuffling through Michael’s extensive photo collection, avoiding pictures of Carl and herself as much as possible. It was difficult because there were a lot. She had forgotten they had double-dated with Michael and Kianna quite so often. There were photos of all sorts of things, including hundreds of shots of Charleston historic houses.
Eventually Lynn found the image she’d been searching for and brought it up onto the screen. It was entirely readable, especially since its compression had been slight, and she was able to enlarge sections. Satisfied, she e-mailed the image to herself in a large format. She wanted to preserve her ability to look at the details, particularly his vital signs. A moment later she heard the phone in her pocket announce she’d gotten the e-mail.
Lynn was back in her room a few minutes later. She took off her white coat and draped it over the reading chair, which also contained a ball of recently washed clothes. It always took her time to sort through the bundle when she brought it up from the laundry room in the basement. Sometimes she didn’t bother. On those occasions she just used the clothes as they were needed.
For a moment Lynn eyed her bed, which she made only when she washed her sheets, which wasn’t often. She had always thought she had better use for her time. Briefly Lynn considered lying down for just a few moments. Then she changed her mind. She knew that once she was horizontal, it might be difficult to get up.