Kelly awoke at two and got himself cleaned up. This afternoon's mission demanded that be look civilized, and so he wore a shirt and a tie and a jacket. His hair, still growing back from being shaved, needed a trim, but it was a little late for that. He selected a blue tie for his blue blazer and white shirt and walked out to where the Scout was parked; looking like the executive salesman he'd pretended to be, waving at the apartment manager on the way.
Luck smiled on Kelly. There was an opening on the traffic loop at the hospital's main entrance, and he walked in to see a large statue of Christ in the lobby, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet high, staring down at him with a benign expression more fitting to a hospital than to what Kelly had been doing only twelve hours earlier. He walked around it, his back to the statue's back because he didn't need that sort of question on his conscience - not now.
Sandy O'Toole appeared at three-twelve, and when he saw her come through the oak doors Kelly smiled until he saw the look on her face. A moment later he understood why. A surgeon was right behind her, a short, swarthy man in greens, walking as rapidly as his short legs permitted and talking loudly at her. Kelly hesitated, looking on with curiosity as Sandy stopped and turned, perhaps tired of running away or merely bending to the necessity of the moment. The doctor was of her height, perhaps a little less, speaking so rapidly that Kelly didn't catch all the words while Sandy looked in his eyes with a blank expression.
'The incident report is filed, doctor,' she said during a brief pause in his tirade.
'You have no right to do that!' The eyes blazed angrily in his dark, pudgy face, causing Kelly to draw a little closer.
'Yes, I do, doctor. Your medication order was incorrect. I am the team leader, and I am required to report medication errors.'
'I am ordering you to withdraw that report! Nurses do not give orders to doctors!' What followed was language that Kelly didn't like, especially in the presence of God's image. As he watched, the doctor's dark face grew darker, and he leaned into the nurse's space, his voice growing louder. For her part, Sandy didn't flinch, refusing to allow herself to be intimidated, which goaded the doctor further.
'Excuse me.' Kelly intruded on the dispute, not too close, just to let everyone know that someone was here, and momentarily drawing an angry look from Sandra O'Toole. 'I don't know what you two are arguing about, but if you're a doctor and the lady here is a nurse, maybe you two can disagree in a more professional way,' he suggested in a quiet voice.
It was as though the physician hadn't heard a thing. Not since he was sixteen years old had anyone ignored Kelly so blatantly. He drew back, wanting Sandy to handle this herself, but the doctor's voice merely grew louder, switching now to a language he didn't understand, mixing English vituperation with Farsi. Through it all Sandy stood her ground, and Kelly was proud of her, though her face was growing wooden and her impassive mien had to be masking some real fear now. Her impassive resistance only goaded the doctor into raising his hand and then his voice even more. It was when he called her a 'fucking cunt,' doubtless something learned from a local citizen, that he stopped. The fist that he'd been waving an inch from Sandy's nose had disappeared, encased, he saw with surprise, in the hairy forepaw of a very large man.
'Excuse me,' Kelly said in his gentlest voice. 'Is there somebody upstairs who knows how to fix a broken hand?' Kelly had wrapped his fingers around the surgeon's smaller, more delicate hand, and was pressing the fingers inward, just a little.
A security guard came through the door just then, drawn by the noise of the argument. The doctor's eyes went that way at once.
'He won't get here fast enough to help you, doctor. How many bones in the human hand, sir?' Kelly asked.
'Twenty- eight,' the doctor replied automatically.
'Want to go for fifty-six?' Kelly tightened his pressure.
The doctor's eyes closed on Kelly's, and the smaller man saw a face whose expression was neither angry nor pleased, merely there, looking at him as though he were an object, whose polite voice was a mocking expression of superiority. Most of all, he knew that the man would do it.
'Apologize to the lady,' Kelly said next.
'I do not abase myself before women!' the doctor hissed. A little more pressure on the hand caused his face to change. Only a little additional force, he knew, and things would begin to separate.
'You have very bad manners, sir. You only have a little time to learn better ones.' Kelly smiled. 'Now,' he commanded. 'Please.'
'I'm sorry, Nurse O'Toole,' the man said, without really meaning it, but the humiliation was still a bleeding gash on his character. Kelly released the hand. Then he lifted the doctor's name tag, and read it before staring again into his eyes.
'Doesn't that feel better, Doctor Khofan? Now, you won't ever yell at her again, at least not when she's right and you're wrong, will you? And you won't ever threaten her with bodily harm, will you?' Kelly didn't have to explain why that was a bad idea. The doctor was flexing his fingers to work off the pain. 'We don't like that here, okay?'
'Yes, okay,' the man said, wanting to run away.
Kelly took his hand again, shaking it with a smile, just enough pressure for a reminder. 'I'm glad you understand, sir. I think you can go now.'
And Dr Khofan left, walking past the security guard without so much as a look. The guard did give one to Kelly, but let it go at that.
'Did you have to do that?' Sandy asked.
'What do you mean?' Kelly replied, turning his head around.
'I was handling it,' she said, now moving to the door.
'Yes, you were. What's the story, anyway?' Kelly asked in a reasonable voice.
'He prescribed the wrong medication, elderly man with a neck problem, he's allergic to the med, and it's on the chart,' she said, the words spilling out rapidly as Sandy's stress started bleeding off. 'It could have really hurt Mr Johnston. Not the first time with him, either. Doctor Rosen might get rid of him this time, and he wants to stay here. He likes pushing nurses around, too. We don't like that. But I was handling it!'
'Next time I'll let him break your nose, then.' Kelly waved to the door. There wouldn't be a next time; he'd seen that in the little bastard's eyes.
'And then what?' Sandy asked.
'Then he'll stop being a surgeon for a while. Sandy, I don't like seeing people do things like that, okay? I don't like bullies, and I really don't like seeing them push women around.'
'You really hurt people like that?'
Kelly opened the door for her. 'No, not very often. Mainly they listen to my warnings. Look at it this way, if he hits you, you get hurt and he gets hurt. This way nobody gets hurt except for a few bent feelings, maybe, and nobody ever died from that.'
Sandy didn't press the issue. Partly she was annoyed, feeling that she'd stood up well to the doctor, who wasn't all that good a surgeon and was far too careless on his post-op technique. He only did charity patients, and only those with simple problems, but that, she knew, was beside the point. Charity patients were people, and people merited the best care the profession could provide. He had frightened her. Sandy had been glad of the protection, but somehow felt cheated that she hadn't faced Khofan down herself. Her incident report would probably sink him once and for all, and the nurses on the unit would trade chuckles about it. Nurses in hospitals, like NCOs in any military unit, really ran things, after all, and it was a foolish doctor who crossed them.