Earl hesitated, not sure this would be the best time to bring up his own problem.
"Out with it, Earl," Stewart said, but didn't look up. "What do you want?"
"I need a favor about the Matthews case."
Stewart's pen stopped in midstroke. "Oh?"
"Yeah. I just came from her post. The gross showed tumor as expected and no surprises." He handed over the folder. "These are the morphine levels found in her blood, and the resuscitation team's observations, including an estimated time of death. The rest are lab reports, nursing notes, the times of the injections and the doses. Plus her height and weight."
"So?"
"I want you to calculate backward and figure out the dose she must have received before she died." Complex formulas existed in obscure pharmacology references involving the metabolic breakdown rate and body dispersion quotients for just about every drug in the world. They made the exercise possible, and Stewart read that kind of thing as light reading.
"Wait a minute. You figure someone gave her more than what you prescribed?"
"In a word, yeah."
His eyes narrowed, suspicion displacing fatigue. "Why are you asking me to figure it out? You could do it yourself."
"And Wyatt would immediately demand an independent opinion. He's lit a fire under pathology to have the slides ready early next week, plus scheduled death rounds for the day after. In other words, he's hot to nail me. I need you in my corner on this."
Stewart continued to scrutinize Earl, his brow unfurling slightly. "Yes, of course. I'd be glad to help you out. But who do you suspect screwed up? I've pissed off too many people at St. Paul's already not to check out whom I'll offend this time."
Earl told him his theory about the nurses and the double dose.
Stewart's forehead relaxed the rest of the way. "Count on me."
Evidently Yablonsky and company weren't on his don't-mess-with list.
"But what if I don't get the results you expect?" he asked.
"Then I'm probably screwed." Earl got up to leave, then added, "Oh, by the way, I heard about some other peculiar goings-on up there that I've been meaning to ask you about."
The frown returned.
"Wyatt told me some patients have been complaining they'd had near-death experiences, and when his nurses asked you to look into it-"
"That was bogus!"
"Bogus?"
A flush spread over Stewart's face from under his mask. "Yes. The ones I talked to no more had a near-death experience than you or I."
"I don't understand."
"I told Wyatt it probably resulted from all the media reports my work has generated. The power of suggestion, combined with all those drugs they're on, can make for some pretty potent dreams."
"But Wyatt said that after interviewing some of the patients you accused him of trying to set you up."
His color deepened. "Well, that's not exactly true…"
"And according to the nurses, you stormed off the ward mad as hell."
"Mad? Not at all. Annoyed, maybe, that they'd wasted my time, making me check out crap reports."
Earl's curiosity grew. Stewart never minimized a slight or perceived wrong, yet here he seemed intent on portraying whatever happened up there as inconsequential. "Explain crap."
"The accounts were made up. Trust me, I've analyzed enough true experiences to know the components common to the real thing. These just weren't authentic."
For a man who always had at least ten reasons to support an opinion, and in any discussion would usually machine-gun Earl with them, "Trust me" sounded positively evasive. "Look, I'm not blaming you for anything, Stewart. It's just if you found something screwy going on in Wyatt's department, I want to know about it."
Stewart's ears became glowing red half shells. He took a breath, then exhaled slowly, practicing one of the many self-control techniques Earl knew he'd tried to learn over the years. "Okay, I first got a little steamed and figured Wyatt and the nurses had primed their patients to try to dupe me into believing a bunch of trumped-up accounts."
"Dupe you? Why the hell would they want to do that?"
The pupils of his eyes flared wide with anger. "To discredit me and my work." He leaned forward, continuing to speak with a hushed urgency that Earl found uncomfortable. "You see, if I fell for it and incorporated those stories as part of my research cases, then they could expose what happened, and it'd be ammo for all those who say my publications aren't real science."
Lord help him. "Stewart, for what conceivable reason would Wyatt and a floor full of palliative care nurses even want to do such a thing, let alone go to all that trouble? And how do you figure they got the patients to cooperate?"
Stewart took another protracted breath. "Well, I had to admit afterward that that part didn't make sense."
Thank God, Earl thought, grateful to see that a flicker of reason had once again prevailed, however barely.
A layperson might label Stewart paranoid. Earl knew better. He read him as someone bright enough to scan twelve steps ahead of everybody else and see possible scenarios that might mean very real trouble. A great asset in ICU, but a little hard to take in everyday life. What distinguished him from a truly crazy person? He could admit later, although it took a little encouragement, that perhaps his predictions, when they were based on his social exchanges with people, weren't all that probable. Stewart appeared to have once more cleared that hurdle as far as Wyatt was concerned, but Earl still sensed that he was holding something back. "You haven't explained why you thought the accounts were bogus," he said, trying not to sound confrontational.
The flush receded. "I just knew, that's all. Pattern recognition. Hey, some things aren't quantifiable."
Bullshit! Stewart could and would quantify anything remotely to do with his research, including how to recognize bogus data. But in an attempt to render him less defensive, not more, Earl nodded and took another tack. "So you don't think Wyatt is up to anything. Believe me, it might help my situation if I had something on the guy."
Stewart immediately relaxed. He sank back in his chair, his high color returning the rest of the way toward normal, and cocked a bushy eyebrow as if Earl were the crazy one now. "I meant only that the idea of Wyatt recruiting patients and nurses to discredit me didn't make sense. But don't think he wouldn't sabotage another researcher's work, even outside his field. That hothead's so bitter about losing the limelight, he can't stand to see anybody else step into it." Stewart raised his head a little, as if posing for a profile shot. "Especially when that person is as controversial as I am."
4:00 p.m.
All researchers were crazy.
Every one of them secretly believed that his or her work in whatever little corner of the scientific world, however obscure, deserved a Nobel prize. Lifelong feuds, suits, countersuits, allegations of plagiarism, fraud, and the theft of data, suicides, murders- all committed over impugned reputations. The high drama of behind-the-scenes passions remained legend, and this in a profession supposedly dedicated to the cool practice of objective reason.
And Stewart carried that fire in spades, Earl thought, steaming into the elevator. He just wished he could keep St. Paul's free of it.
Some VP, medicals, he knew, spent half their workweek pulling prima donnas from each other's throat. Stewart's wacky story hadn't made sense, but if it had even a speck of truth to it, he'd better check it out and nip in the bud whatever was developing between Stewart and Wyatt. One thing was for certain- Stewart had been hiding something. Earl felt that in his bones.
The ride to the eighth floor took five minutes this time. Small groups of masked patients dressed in robes and pushing their portable IV stands tottered off at each stop, insisting loudly to each other that they should file a complaint about all the waiting they'd had to do in physio that afternoon. He thought nothing of it until he remembered that part of his new position meant he'd be the one who would ultimately answer to them.