Final Mercy

by Frank J Edwards

  “I was just thinking about my meetings with Dr. Witner. I know this is going to violate every tenet of journalism, me saying this to you, Jack, but there’s something very odd about that man.”

  “Like how?”

  “I’m not really sure. It’s as if his outside and his inside don’t come together. I sensed a disconnect between the inner and outer man, if that makes any sense. I don’t know why I’m sharing this with you.”

  He held her gaze.

  “I appreciate your trust.”

  She smiled.

  “I’m very glad I heard your side. Things are beginning to make more sense, but I still feel like I’m wandering in a maze.”

  He nodded.

  “I’m wondering what it’s going to feel like walking into the ED tomorrow morning and not be the director anymore—I’m working the day shift. At least, they’re not afraid to let me practice medicine.”

  “How is the staff likely to take it?”

  “They’ve seen directors come and go before. They’ll be fine. I hope.”

  “So,” she said, changing the subject, “you say your closest confidant is a dog, Dr. Forester?”

  “Indeed, right after Tim Bonadonna. Or maybe before. His name is Arbus.”

  “Someone who never talks back. Sounds great.”

  “Actually, he’s more critical than you might imagine.”

  “Really? What does he find to criticize?”

  “My housekeeping. Well, okay, he doesn’t really mind that as much as the laziness. I don’t go for walks enough, and I talk to myself.”

  “You say that with a straight face.”

  “You don’t know my house and habits.”

  Watching her as she teased him, he could only smile. That lovely face, those intelligent hazel eyes—the image he had carried around in memory all these years. Could there be the remotest possibility she might like him?

  “You know something,” she said, turning serious again for a moment. “I agree with your friend. I think you should stay. I don’t believe you should take their offer.”

  “Are you taking sides?”

  “Don’t press your luck.”

  XXI

  The Last To Know

  Three nurses were talking animatedly by the door of his former office when Jack arrived in the emergency department the following morning. He’d spent a while in the SICU checking on Dr. Gavin, whose condition remained unchanged—still on life-support and unresponsive.

  “Good morning,” he said to them. “What’s up?”

  “Dr. Forester, we can’t believe they did this,” said Bridget. “I think we should all just walk out.”

  She pointed to a sheet of paper taped to his door. They parted so he could see. The memo was on Bryson Witner’s letterhead and simply stated that, effective immediately, Dr. R. Delancy would be serving as acting medical director of the emergency room. Jack’s nameplate had been unscrewed from the door, leaving a rectangle of bare wood slightly paler than the rest.

  Jack hadn’t slept well. While showering that morning, and all during the drive, he had mentally prepared himself for the change, but even so, this struck him with a wave of almost nauseating anger and disbelief.

  He tried the door. It was unlocked. Sometime during the night they had cleaned out his belongings, and a half-dozen boxes now sat stacked by the desk. Everything—the contents of his desk, the books and journals, his files—all was packed away. His diplomas were gone, even the Everest poster. The only thing they’d missed was a little trinket sitting on top of the bookshelf, a porcelain figurine of a golden retriever that resembled Arbus.

  The three nurses had followed him.

  “You don’t deserve this,” Sheila said. “We should picket the dean’s office. And we don’t deserve Randy Delancy.”

  “He’s just a resident!” said Bridget. “This is such an insult to all of us. Jack, are you okay?”

  He was leaning against the desk, staring at the boxes. At least Zellie Andersen had agreed to have dinner with him again that evening. That would be his link to sanity for the remainder of the day.

  * * *

  Several hours later, Jack was at the charting station writing up a case when Randy Delancy came up. Jack saw him out of the corner of his eye but kept working on the chart.

  “Good morning, Dr. Forester.”

  “Hello, Randy.”

  Randy thrust his hands in his pockets, then took them out and folded his arms. Jack looked up at him. His face was unsmiling, embarrassed.

  “I’ve heard the news, Randy,” Jack said. “Listen, I’m not angry with you. It is what it is.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Forester. They asked me to help out, and what could I say? I don’t have any qualifications to do this.”

  “All Dr. Witner wants is obedience, Randy.”

  Jack returned to his chart.

  “Dr. Forester, I was wondering if I might be able to use you as a resource?”

  “Sure. My best advice, first of all, is to listen to the nurses. Second, don’t come to work drunk, and third, always take notes at meetings so you can remember what the hell you promised people. But the major thing is making sure you get the physician schedule out on time.”

  “The physician schedule?”

  “Oh, they neglected to mention that? As medical director, you make sure all the shifts are covered. We’re chronically short-staffed, however, so it’s a little like putting out brush fires with your bare feet. You’ll have to ask people to do things like work seven nights in a row.”

  “Don’t you have a secretary do the schedule?”

  “They don’t have enough clout. Gail Scippino and I share Bonnie Grimes. She’ll make some calls for you, but she’ll be out the door in ten minutes if you ask her to do the whole thing. Besides, if you’ve got an open shift, a secretary can’t work it, right?”

  “What happens when there’s an unfilled shift?”

  “As director, you are the ultimate backup.”

  “Does that happen often…I mean, the director having to fill open shifts?”

  “It varies. Around the major holidays and in summer, once or twice a month, maybe.”

  Delancy cleared his throat again.

  “I’ve only worked in the ER as a resident before.”

  “Well, the schedule may get a little tougher. If they have their way, there’s a good chance I’ll be packing my bags, and that’ll leave open ten clinical shifts a month. Wally Deutch’s almost gone, too, and Susan Redwater has been talking about taking a job in Pittsburgh. Of course, you can always return to using every moonlighter you can dig up who wants to make a few extra bucks, but then you’ll be dealing with more complaints and more errors. Maybe you can get Dr. Witner to pull a few shifts. Or Dr. Scales.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Jack looked up and laughed, then handed Delancy one of his business cards.

  “If you get overwhelmed, Randy, as long as I’m still around you can give me a call. That’s my cell number.”

  Delancy took it, a numb expression on his face.

  “Randy, this ain’t bad at all,” Jack lied. “All I’m doing now is taking care of patients.”

  * * *

  It was a typical hectic Sunday. Immersed in dealing with the problems of others, he gave no more thought to Bryson Witner until the man’s name came up in a completely unexpected context.

  He went in to see a thirteen-year-old girl with abdominal pain. She was accompanied by a woman who sat in a chair reading Cosmopolitan and didn’t seem terribly concerned. He read her name on the chart.

  “Hi,” he greeted the patient. “I’m Dr. Forester. You must be Katrina?”

  The girl nodded. She was small for thirteen, underdeveloped and very thin, her face pale and her hair in need of washing. An image came to his mind of a doll forgotten in the corner of an attic. He turned to the woman.

  “You’re Mrs. Hinkle?”

  “I am, but I’m her stepmother.”

  He took note
of the heavy makeup, the leather pants and stiletto-heeled boots, the mass of jewelry on fingers and ears, and the bull’s-eye tattooed on the back of her right hand. Martine Hinkle smelled of too much perfume and too many cigarettes.

  He turned back to the girl.

  “Katrina, tell me where you hurt.”

  “All around,” she said.

  “Point to where it’s the worst.”

  Her index finger circled the middle of her belly.

  “How long have you been hurting?”

  The girl looked at the woman and shrugged.

  “Do you have the pain now?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Katrina,” the stepmother snarled, “I brought you all the way in here, now you tell him about it. It’s all she talks about at home.”

  The girl flinched.

  “Does it hurt more after you eat, Katrina?”

  She didn’t reply, but her lips quivered slightly.

  The stepmother dropped the magazine on the floor and stood.

  “She’s been complaining about it for months, especially when she doesn’t want to go to school. She started crying this morning, and her father wanted her checked out. He had to go to the marina as usual, so here we are.” She turned to the girl. “I hope this isn’t going to be another waste of time.”

  Jack cocked his head. The name Hinkle suddenly connected. A man named Fred Hinkle ran the largest marina on Lake Stanwick.

  “Would that be Deepwater Marina?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” the stepmother said. “You got a boat there?”

  “Not since the place changed hands. I keep my little sailboat at a friend’s house now.”

  “Listen, she’ll probably talk more if I leave, and I need a cigarette anyway. Katrina, talk to the man, or we’ll just go.”

  With the stepmother gone, the girl indeed began opening up. The pains had been going on more than a year, almost every day. Her appetite was poor. The more Jack heard, the more he suspected the problem was functional, something non-organic. Her vital signs were normal, and her abdominal exam completely unremarkable.

  “Katrina, we’re going to run a few tests on you, but tell me how things are going. Is there much stress at school, or maybe at home?”

  Her eyes met his for a second, but then she looked away, shrugging again.

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Hey, listen,” he assured her. “It’s safe here. You can say anything you’d like.”

  She kept her eyes averted.

  Jack walked out to the central station with a heavy feeling in his chest. He ordered a blood count, electrolytes, a urinalysis, and decided to include a pregnancy test, too. He’d been surprised too many times in the past, remembering a fourteen-year-old who’d come in with abdominal pain and delivered a full-term infant an hour later, to the shock of her mother as well as to Jack.

  He went on to new cases; and about an hour later, when the tests were back, he returned to Katrina’s room. They were all negative.

  “Where’s your stepmother, Katrina?”

  “She went out to smoke again. Have you found out what’s wrong?”

  “I think you might have what we call irritable bowel syndrome, Katrina. It’s where the intestines cramp up and cause pain. But there could be other things going on.” Like depression. “Do you have a family doctor?”

  “My dad took me to see Dr. Witner last summer when I had a headache.”

  That statement shocked him.

  “Do you mean Dr. Bryson Witner?”

  Katrina nodded.

  Witner was an internist, not a pediatrician or a family doctor, and this was the first he’d heard of the man seeing private patients outside the hospital.

  “How did you get to see him?”

  “My father and Dr. Witner are friends, but I don’t like him. His hands are like ice.”

  This was extremely odd.

  “Katrina, where’s your real mother? Does she live around here?”

  The teenager looked down and swung her legs.

  “No. My mom’s dead.”

  Forester found Martine Hinkle in the waiting room. He took her into the family consultation room to discuss his impressions with her.

  “So, you’re saying she’s just faking?”

  “No, no, not at all. The pain is real. She’s not pretending anything.”

  “So what the heck do we do now?”

  “First off, she needs a full workup by a good pediatrician.”

  “What about Dr. Witner? Fred does some work for him, and he doesn’t charge us anything. He lives right down the lake.”

  “I don’t think so, Mrs. Hinkle. This is way out of his field. I’m going to refer you to Virginia Sortelli. She’s got an office on the west side of town. Her name and number will be on the discharge instructions.”

  He didn’t mention that Virginia was a former med school classmate of his, and she was especially good with teenage girls from broken homes, having been one herself.

  As for Bryson Witner taking care of a troubled kid, the idea chilled him to the marrow.

  XXII

  Figurines

  Jack found Zellie sitting in a booth with a notepad in front of her, her pen sailing over it; a candle burned in a small red globe on the table. She looked up and smiled.

  He slid in across from her.

  “Working on the long-awaited second novel?”

  She closed the notebook.

  “Maybe.”

  He took a small package from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table. It was a white cardboard box tied with black silk suture material, the only thing he’d had on hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it.”

  She hesitated.

  “Listen, this is kind of you, but I shouldn’t be accepting gifts.”

  “Believe me, it’s not worth much. I’d have brought cash if I wanted to bribe you.”

  She picked it up and turned it over.

  “So, what is it?”

  He smiled at her.

  “That’s why God made fingers. Open it.”

  She slid off the string and lifted the lid. Nestled in gauze pads was his china dog.

  She held it up and examined it.

  “It’s a golden retriever.”

  “Yes.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him and grinned.

  “Your dog wouldn’t happen to be a golden retriever, would he?”

  “This is Arbus the Second.”

  “Why are you giving it to me?”

  “When they came to my office and cleaned it out, this was the only thing they didn’t toss into a box.”

  “You’re kidding. They’ve cleared out your office already?”

  “Sometime last night. So, this little guy needs a new home. Do you like it?”

  “I do,” she said. “But I really shouldn’t take it.”

  “Listen, if I wanted to influence your opinion I’d find something a little more dramatic.”

  “Alright, then, he’ll be our chaperone.” She set it near the candleholder, adjusting it. “There. He’s our journalistic watchdog. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “That must have been lousy, finding your office invaded like that. How cold.”

  “It was like a spin-kick below the belt, if you really want to know.”

  “I can imagine. How did the day go otherwise?”

  “Not bad. No one handed me a single administrative problem. All I had to do was be a doctor.”

  “And that was okay?”

  “Yeah…I think. It was different. I don’t know.”

  “Ambivalence, Dr. Forester? Sounds like the kind of thing you need to discuss with your canine advisor.”

  “But he hates it when I waffle. Actually, I did have one administrative task today.”

  “What was that?”

  “I had a brief meeting, in between patients in the afternoon, with our nurse manager, Gail. She’s new to the job, and she believes this
is going to make her job harder. I’m afraid she’s right, but there’s not much I can do to help at this point.”

  “Here comes the waitress,” Zellie said. “Listen, this is Dutch treat. I’m on an expense account.”

  After they’d given their orders, he asked her how the research for the Gavin article was coming.

  “Not bad, for a Sunday,” she said. “I went over to the hospital and had a little interview, which was fairly pointless but short. After that, I went to the medical center library and looked up some old articles Dr. Gavin had written, not that I could understand much of it. Then I had a lucky meeting with one of the volunteer ladies, who were very eager to chat, and she told me a bunch of Dr. Gavin stories. Did you know he treated Richard Nixon for a kidney stone?”

  Jack laughed.

  “That must have been Eleanor Lane.”

  “Yes, what a sweetheart. After listening to her, I can understand why you admire the man so much. Your name came up, too, by the way. She’s quite a fan.”

  “Likewise. This place would fall apart without people like her.”

  Zellie nodded, her face turning serious.

  “Jack, I want to ask you a favor.”

  Jack turned to the statuette.

  “Are you monitoring this, Arbus Two?”

  “Seriously,” she said.

  “Ask away.”

  “Would you take me to visit Dr. Gavin?”

  Jack looked at her. She wasn’t joking.

  “You know he’s still comatose, right? I went by after work.”

  “Yes, I understand that.”

  “Well, we could drop by the hospital after dinner, then, if you’d like.”

  “I would, very much. While we’re there, maybe you can show me your ER.”

  “You’re on. But call it an ED, not an ER.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “A pet peeve,” he said.