Final Mercy

by Frank J Edwards

  “Shut the door and have a seat, please,” Jack said.

  Atwood bit into the doughnut then moved the chair farther from Jack’s desk with his foot and slowly occupied it.

  “Can we make this quick?” he said, dabbing icing from his mustache with a napkin he took from his shirt pocket.

  “Sure, Humphrey, we can make this quick. Let me tell you the story I just heard.” He described the events as the old man had reported to him.

  Atwood shrugged and screwed up his eyebrows dubiously as he swallowed the last of his pastry.

  “He’s sure it was me?” he said.

  “Unequivocally.”

  “Ah, yes. Now I remember. Yes, interesting. Well, it goes to show that even the best of us can be fooled. I’m an internist, after all. I mean, a kid comes in with a sprained ankle and ends up having a brain tumor. Osler himself couldn’t have figured that one out.

  “This clearly indicates why we should move in the direction of having three separate physician staffs in this ED, as it used to be—adult medicine, pediatrics and surgery. That’s been my idea all along. We should return to the standard model.”

  “Sure, let’s step backwards, Humphrey, so we can have three physicians on at any given time instead of one real emergency doctor.”

  Atwood chuckled. “We’ll never see eye-to-eye on that one, will we?”

  Jack felt his jaw muscles tighten.

  “In any case, this situation has nothing to do with how to run an emergency department, Humphrey. It’s about practicing medicine—it’s about jumping to unfounded conclusions. You mentioned Osler. Do you think he would have generated this kind of complaint?”

  “What gives you the right to talk to me about practicing medicine? Is that what you’re implying? That I’m some kind of quack? Forester, I cannot win with you. Never.

  “For the sake of argument, let’s assume this child had, indeed, been getting into his parents’ hooch and I’d failed to notify Social Services? Where would I be then? I’ll tell you where I’d be—I’d be standing right here on this same carpet.”

  “I doubt that, Humphrey. You failed to empathize with that mother. You didn’t listen to her. You made a cockeyed snap judgment.”

  “Open your eyes, Forester. This is an emergency department. I erred on the side of caution. I should be patted on the back, not vilified. It was busier than usual that night, and I did what I thought was right, and I’d darn well do it again. Complaints are part of the rough-and-tumble.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “They’ve been a part of every ER I’ve ever worked in.”

  “Maybe it’s you, then,” Jack snapped, regretting the words the instant they left his lips.

  “All right, be insulting,” Atwood cried, his eyes bulging. “Meanwhile, I’ve got a major bone to pick with you.” He jerked to his feet and glared. “When are you going to install my special pager system?”

  A wave of heat suffused Jack’s cheeks. Atwood’s special paging system was a major bone, all right—a major bone sticking in his craw.

  When he’d first taken on the directorship, New Canterbury’s emergency department often lacked a supervising attending physician on duty. Even when there was one, he or she often wandered the hospital doing other things, leaving the interns and residents unsupervised for hours on end. One of Jack’s first actions had been to ensure that at least one attending doctor was on duty 24 hours a day, and he’d mandated they stay in the department. It had taken two years to get to that point, and even now half the shifts were filled by not-well-qualified moonlighters—or worse, boobs like Atwood.

  Atwood folded his arms and continued staring.

  “Well, when is it going to be in place?”

  Atwood wanted to be able to leave the department whenever he chose, as in the old days, and intensely disliked Jack’s policy. If they needed him, they could page him. But because the standard paging system still didn’t reach all corners of the hospital, he wanted a special system just for him, “to free me up for more important duties than babysitting residents,” as he put it. “They need to learn how to swim in the deep end.”

  The new system would require the installation of a few hundred dollars-worth of new antennas. Witner, to no surprise, had authorized the expenditure. It was Witner who had foisted Atwood on him as the assistant director and given him privileges beyond his value, for reasons that continued to mystify Jack.

  So, he had been dragging his feet on submitting the paperwork, and he intended to continue to drag his feet. Atwood, of all people, should not be allowed to break the rules.

  “Humphrey. The bottom line is that, when you’re on clinical duty, I want you to stay in the department with the trainees. I’m not going to compromise on this.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Atwood, his mustache twitching. “Is this all, or do you want to waste some more of my time?”

  “As a matter of fact, it’s not all.” Jack leaned forward and rested his arms on the desk. “I want you to write a letter of apology to that little boy’s mother.”

  “You what?”

  “You heard me, Humphrey. Draft an apology letter. Let me see it first.”

  Atwood snorted.

  “Fine, a letter, wonderful! And maybe I could also attach a list of malpractice attorneys so she can sue me. I’ll write it as a confession of negligence so she can use it in court.” He shook his head and snorted again. “Forester, you are out of your mind. You’ve gone too far. I’ll see you later.” He turned to leave.

  “Humphrey, I want it by this afternoon.”

  “Forget it.” Atwood gripped the door handle. “I believe it’s even against hospital policy.”

  “No, it is not against hospital policy. You simply apologize for the fact she had a bad experience. You tell her you would be happy to speak personally with her. You don’t admit to negligence. These things can head off lawsuits.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  Jack rose and leaned over his desk.

  “Listen, I don’t care what you think. You’re going to do it.”

  “I refuse.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s against my better judgment and general principles, and I refuse to lower myself.”

  “Fine, then immediately resign as my assistant director.”

  “I am not your assistant director. I am the assistant director. I am not your lackey. We’ll see what Dr. Witner and Dr. Scales have to say about this.”

  “Humphrey, that family deserves an apology from you personally, and I suspect the board of directors of this hospital, who are very sensitive to public opinion, would agree.”

  “So, you’re threatening to take this to the board?”

  “You bet, my friend. I will take this to the board in a heartbeat. Have you ever thought, Humphrey, about what will happen to you if your special pal Bryson Witner doesn’t get the permanent deanship? Were you also aware Dr. Gavin is back in town? Remember him, the man who was dean here for a quarter-century, my friend and mentor? He was at the general faculty council meeting this morning. I don’t think he’s very happy with Dr. Witner and his changes.”

  Atwood’s mustache twitched violently.

  “We’ll continue this later, Forester,” he said, his tone less arrogant. “I’ve got projects to attend to.”

  “The letter, Humphrey,” Jack repeated, tapping the middle of his desktop. “It needs to be sitting right here by tomorrow morning. Or else it’ll be time for a shitquake—with you at the epicenter.”

  Atwood slammed the door.

  Jack let out a breath. His shoulders were aching.

  X

  New Girl In Town

  Zellie strode into the lobby of the Seneca Hotel and looked around in surprise. It was quite large, and its decor was straight out of the 1890s, with gilded wall sconces and polished pink marble columns. Clawfoot sofas and chairs had been artfully arranged among large potted Ficus trees. On her way to the registration desk, she passed a viol
inist playing in an alcove—a girl dressed in a black T-shirt and pants, her bow arching up and down, making notes Zellie could not hear.

  After checking in and settling her things in the room, she decided to take a walk, both for the exercise and to get a better feel for the place. A sharp wind was blowing down the sidewalk under a low sky of broken clouds that contained more shades of gray than she thought she’d ever noticed before. Turning her back to the gusts, she headed out, passing other strollers walking into the wind with heads lowered and collars pinched closed.

  The hotel was on a street called West Avenue, where the storefronts were old and elegant. A few minutes later, she came to the intersection of West Avenue and Main Street and realized she was probably in the center of town. There were department stores and office buildings, the tallest of which rose five or six stories above the street. Beyond the buildings, she could see tall snow-dusted hills—small mountains, really—rising close by the town on three sides and giving the impression it sat alone in a deep valley like one of those villages in a liquid-filled glass ball you shake to create a snowstorm.

  She found a post office, mailed the letters she’d written on the train, then went into a little bookstore across the street. It appeared deserted at first.

  As always when entering a bookstore, Zellie ambled to the fiction section and looked under A to see if, by some outlandish possibility, her novel might still be on the shelf. Only once in the last five years had she found a copy.

  It wasn’t there, of course, and despite her having armed herself against disappointment, her heart sank a little. It was not that her book had failed to find a permanent place on the shelves—for such was the natural fate of most novels, no matter how good or bad—but that she still couldn’t bring into being another one.

  Vibration in the old floorboards told her someone was approaching. She stepped away almost guiltily and turned to see a bespectacled man of about sixty with a potbelly and a gray beard. He had a kindly smile, and a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Something in particular you’re looking for?”

  “Just browsing. I was looking for some local history.”

  “Ah, indeed,” he said, beaming. “Well, that will be over in Regional Interest. Here, let me show you.” He led her to a row of books near the front of the store and began pulling titles out. “Now, these three are a series about the frontier days in this part of the Southern Tier, written by a local newspaper reporter back during the fifties. But they’re verbose and apocryphal—a lot of Injun Joe stories, if you know what I mean—so I couldn’t recommend them if you’re really interested in local history. I take it you’re not from around here?”

  Zellie shook her head

  “Visiting relatives, are you?”

  “Nope. Here on business. I’m writing a piece on the medical center.”

  “Ah, why didn’t you say so?”

  He was obviously eager for company. He introduced himself, and they shook hands, and a few moments later he was brewing a fresh pot of coffee. He pulled up a chair for her behind the counter.

  Jonah Peters was head of the New Canterbury Historical Society, had, in fact, written one of the books on the “Regional Interest” shelf—a copiously illustrated history of barn construction in the Seneca River Valley titled From Post and Beam to Laminated Trusses.

  After describing how the book combined his love of history and photography, he went on to give her the highlights of the region’s settlement from pre-colonial days to the present—the original Iroquois tribes that had hunted and fished here, how the land grants brought the first white settlers, how the Iroquois had unfortunately sided with the British during the Revolution and lost their lands as a result, how the canal and railroad spurred an explosion of development in the 19th century, how New Canterbury produced more ball bearings than any other city in North America just before World War I.

  “But sadly, as you can see by looking at the empty factories on the other side of the river, we’re a region in decline,” he said. “The ball-bearing works finally closed five years ago. We’re just too far off what’s now the beaten path, and—oh, the winters. They’re something.”

  “But the university and its medical center seem to be thriving. Aren’t they?” Zellie said.

  “They’re under threat, too, I’m afraid,” he replied. “Their glory days may be over.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Part of it is due to population shrinkage, Ms. Anderson, and part of it is financial. I’m not a pessimist by nature, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but New Canterbury is a private university, you see, not state supported, and they face a lot of competition from the public system nowadays. Their endowment isn’t what it used to be. They lost buckets on their investment portfolio they’ll probably never recover.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “And the medical school has been through a lot of turmoil lately, ever since Dr. Gavin stepped down as the dean. James Gavin had an international reputation, and he really put the place on the map. Did you hear what happened to the man who replaced him?”

  “Not really, no.” Her curiosity was now officially piqued.

  “Terrible tragedy. He was scuba diving in Lake Stanwick, exploring caves—though for the life of me I can’t understand why that particular sport would appeal to anyone in their right mind. In any case, he apparently got lost in a cave and ran out of oxygen. Never made it out.”

  “How horrible.” A shudder passed through her. “What an awful way to die.”

  “Indeed. Now, this new fellow who’s taken over, a man from Harvard by the name of Dr. Bryson Witner, is really shaking things up, they tell me.”

  “He’s the one who started the Medical Media program I’m going to write about.”

  “Exactly. He’s a real mover and shaker, apparently. I hear some folks like it and some don’t. Some say he’ll put us back on the map.”

  “I’m scheduled to interview him tomorrow,” she said.

  “That should be interesting. I hear he’s quite the charmer. You’ll get a good story, I’m sure.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Why maybe?”

  “Oh, I’m just being negative,” she admitted. “I’m under relatively strict guidelines about what to write. I must be upbeat and positive. As my editor said, ‘Fry the egg any way you want as long as you make it sunny-side up.’”

  He laughed, and his belly shook, his glasses sliding halfway down his nose.

  “Well,” he said, after a moment’s pause to recover his breath, “I guess we must do what we must do to survive. If I had my way, I’d be roaming around shooting pictures of dilapidated old country stores right now for a second book, to the dismay of my long-suffering better half. I’ll probably never get around to it, though. I guess I only had one book in me. I’m old, and the fire is almost out.”

  “I hope you do,” said Zellie, wondering if she’d make a similar comment when her own hair was gray.

  “But, editorial restrictions or not, you should use this opportunity to tell a grand story. Youth is full of adventures.”

  They talked for another half-an-hour before Zellie finally thanked him and went back out into the cold, her satchel now weighed down with a complimentary copy ofFrom Post-and-Beam To Laminated-Trussesthat he'd presented her, tied with a bow,when they said goodbye. She wondered what tomorrow would bring, and found herself for the first time since boarding the train that morning intrigued by this assignment, and even by the thought of meeting Bryson Witner.

  XI

  Poker Face

  Bryson Witner slowed as he approached the dean’s suite, partly to admire the elaborate arched molding of fluted cherry wood that distinguished his new office from all others in the medical center, and partly to eavesdrop on Greta, whose desk sat near the entrance. He was glad he did. It was not Greta’s voice he heard but that of James Gavin.

  He listened intently. Gavin was using the telephone on Greta’s desk, having a one-sided conversation
of which Witner couldn’t make out the words except for the final goodbye. Then, Gavin murmured something to Greta.

  Witner rounded the corner and cleared his throat. Greta blushed, her eyes widening. Gavin turned to face him, his expression neutral.

  “This is a pleasant surprise, Jim. I was hoping you’d stop by sooner rather than later, but this is excellent timing. I just finished rounding with the Blue Team.”

  “Greta says you have the rest of the morning free,” Gavin said.

  “Greta never lies. Hope you haven’t had to wait long.”

  “No, we’ve just been catching up.”

  “She often lets us know how much she misses you. Greta, would you bring us some coffee or tea?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Gavin said. “I ran into Norm Scales, and he told me what you’ve done with the Blue Team. You certainly move fast.”

  “When the sun shines, as they say. Shall we?”

  Witner unlocked the door and ushered the older man inside. They sat on red leather-upholstered chairs in front of the fireplace, the coffee table between them.

  “So, Jim,” Witner continued, lacing his fingers together, “how’s your jungle research coming along. Is semiretirement being kind to you?”

  “You’re really getting used to this, aren’t you, Witner?”

  “What? Your old office?”

  “Everything. The trappings and levers of power.”

  “Not really. I’m just temporary help, Jim. I’m an individual lost in shoes ten times too large. I’m a little man drowning in a sea of past—”

  “Spare me the rhetoric,” Gavin interrupted.

  “Jim, have I done something to offend you?”

  He watched the old man’s eyes spark with anger. Good. Let him lay his cards on the table.

  “Witner, you know as well as I that the role of an interim leader is to keep the ship on course and running smoothly—period. It is not to change directions. It is not to derail long-standing projects.”