Oh, boy, thought Jane, who knew from other visits up here that the woman had a temper. And Thomas could be less than diplomatic when pointing out someone else's mistakes.
But thankfully, this morning Yablonsky seemed set on avoiding a fight. Her rigid posture relaxed a notch. "Sorry," she said, "I should have checked."
Thomas studied her, then his eyes crinkled good-naturedly as he gave her a smile. "That's okay. We can all forget something sometimes. It just surprised me. Calling a code on her"- he gestured at Matthews's body-"is a rookie move."
Yablonsky's eyes hardened.
Ah, shit! Jane thought. Now why did he have to add that? He seems set on provoking her.
The supervisor adopted a time-to-put-this-smartass-on-the-defensive look. "Oh, really? Well, I'd advise you to write it up by the book, Dr. Biggs, because Dr. Earl Garnet himself is going to be taking a big interest in her death."
The merriment in the corners of his eyes slipped a notch. "What do you mean?"
"Just what I said. Dr. Garnet will want to know what happened here, believe me."
"Why would Dr. Garnet be interested in a terminal cancer case?" he asked. The cockiness in his voice had faded a bit more.
"Because he personally doubled her morphine dose last night without her physician's knowledge."
Thomas's mask elongated as his jaw sagged in disbelief. "What made him do that?"
The other residents had started to pay attention.
"Ask the man yourself," she answered, making no attempt to lower her voice. "All I know is, he intended to jump-start some kind of audit into how we medicate pain. Well, it backfired. He'll get his audit, but now it'll be him on the hot seat."
"But surely a terminal patient's death won't be questioned." Thomas sounded more incredulous by the second.
"Oh, but it will, Dr. Biggs, because according to her doctor, she still had months to live."
"Nobody can predict that sort of thing with any certainty."
"That may be. But I advise you to write this one up without skipping any details. It's going to be gone over with a microscope, I promise you."
The ridges in Thomas's forehead thickened a little. "I see," he said.
"I should hope you all do," she added, addressing everyone in the room as if they'd all been errant schoolchildren.
The bitch! Jane thought, as wide-eyed with astonishment as everyone else at what she'd just heard. But the part that most shocked her was not that the woman had pulled a classic shift-the-focus-and-cover-your-own-behind move but that she'd done it specifically at Dr. G.'s expense. Thanks to her big mouth, rumors of his having possibly overmedicated the woman would be the talk of the hospital by breakfast. In the court of innuendo, he'd be convicted before noon. Getting out from under that kind of cloud, even if the official verdict cleared him, could be a struggle, and Yablonsky had been around long enough to know it. So why the hell would she do something so vicious?
If anyone hadn't heard about his connection to Elizabeth Matthews, Earl Garnet didn't run into them on his way to the eighth floor.
Among the groups of nurses, residents, or doctors he passed in the corridors, conversations stopped dead as he rushed by, replaced by whispers and embarrassed glances in his direction. Some he encountered avoided eye contact altogether. Even the janitors looked away. But everybody had a good gawk at him behind his back. He could feel their stares like a thousand arrows.
Thanks to small mercies, he got to ride the elevator alone. Sunday mornings, even at shift change, tended to be quieter than the start of other days. As the floors ticked by, he braced himself for the imminent confrontation with Peter Wyatt. Earl had hung up on the man rather than listen to him scream threats over the phone, but not before he'd heard a good part of what the oncologist had planned for him. For starters there'd be charges of unprofessional conduct; a motion to suspend his appointment as VP, medical; and, after confirmation of lethal morphine levels in Elizabeth Matthews's blood, an official coroner's inquiry. Wyatt then pledged to lead a push that would see Earl prosecuted by law for gross negligence at best, manslaughter at worst. And of course he'd indicated a willingness to leak every savory detail of the process to the media.
But what Earl dreaded most had nothing to do with facing Peter Wyatt.
The door slid open, and he stepped into the ward. His welcome committee stood waiting for him by the nursing station, but he focused only on the elderly man with the gaunt eyes who sat hunched in a chair, looking out the window at a dreary gray dawn.
Monica Yablonsky, her brow furrowed like a gathering storm, tried to glare at him, faltered, and fidgeted with her glasses. Two nurses whom he hadn't seen before flanked her, their expressions expectant, as if he might be there to fix the mess. Wyatt, dressed for the occasion in his three-piece churchgoing best, bolted forward like the leader of a lynch mob in a bad western.
"Shut up, Peter," Earl said before Wyatt could open his mouth. Then he walked right by him, focusing solely on the frail figure by the window. "Mr. Matthews," he said, kneeling by his side.
The old man made no reply and didn't even glance his way.
Earl hesitated, uncertain whether to take the lack of response as a refusal to speak with him, or as the paralyzing impact of grief.
"Mr. Matthews," he repeated.
"Go away, please." The wavering voice sounded hollow, as if emanating from a gourd that had had the insides gouged out.
Earl swallowed. "Mr. Matthews, I know you have every right to be angry…" He trailed off, overwhelmed by how useless his words sounded. They always did when he attempted to comfort the living in the aftermath of a death, and this time he'd more than usual to account for. "I'm so sorry," he said again. He cast about for something to add, then let it be, resigned that nothing he could say would help.
In the depths of Matthews's eyes, previously so blank and lifeless, a dark glow began to burn, angry and hot. "I left her alone because you promised me she'd be all right." His voice rose barely above a whisper yet cut like steel. "From the day she got sick, that's what frightened her the most- my not being there at the end…" A sob convulsed him, choking off the rest of his lament, and left him struggling to draw breath. The jagged cry that finally burst from his throat resonated loudly along the corridor. Earl imagined it penetrating the elevator shafts and extending through the morning gloom to permeate the final seconds of every patient's awakening dream. This, it warned, is how much they can hurt you here.
Chapter 6
Thomas's silence while Jane prepared brunch became bothersome.
True, they were both worried about Dr. G. They'd talked about little else. But then he'd fallen silent, and she wondered if something else was troubling him. Had he not liked their lovemaking? Or did he find it awkward being in her new apartment?
She'd moved here just a few weeks ago, having previously shared a pad with some of her female colleagues to save money, but after two years of sorority living, she wanted the privacy of being on her own. Simple, small, but neat, the place felt cozy. She'd adorned the walls with bright travel posters from Greece, Hawaii, and the Caribbean and prints of Klee, Townsend, and Chagall paintings to make up for the lack of view- other brownstone apartment buildings and a nearby freeway. Sheer white curtains over the large windows admitted plentiful supplies of natural light while deadening the sight of neighborhood grunge. In all, not bad, especially since she'd accomplished everything on a nurse's salary. At least that's how she felt showing it to the girls from work. With Thomas, she'd wondered if her efforts might look pathetic to someone a year away from earning a doctor's income.
Not that he'd ever acted like a snob. If he had, she would have dropped him in an instant, having no time for superficial losers of that sort. Her doubts about his reaction had more to do with something quite profound in him that had taken her a while to find out. From what he'd told her of his background- farm people much like her own, his mother also a widow to whom he sent money- he seemed grounded in the same values of hard work and responsibility to family that she'd been raised to cherish. But bit by bit, usually when he lay in her arms after they made love, he also revealed how much he'd detested the harsh circumstances he and his mother endured after his father died. She slowly discovered that under his easy southern charm there burned a resolve to never again let anyone he loved fall victim to poverty. So she didn't know exactly how he'd react to her modest new home- be comfortable in it, as she hoped, or be constantly thinking he should upgrade her to a better one?