Arthur was quite sure he had never seen a body like Shari’s in person, only in the movies. Maybe. His fantasies had not done her justice. He got up and moved to the opposite side of the bed, stumbling over the quilt in the process. Completely at ease in a courtroom or a boardroom in the company of the powerful, wealthy and famous, he now felt as awkward and clumsy as a teenager on a first date. Forty years had not cured him of that insecurity. Normally he took pride in how fit he was for his age. Now, he undressed as quickly as he could and scooted under the covers, to avoid drawing attention to his relative misproportion.
When he stopped moving, he felt his head spinning with lust, adrenaline and Mouton Cadet. He sensed that considerably more foreplay was called for in this situation than he had become accustomed to after more than thirty years with the same partner. But he hoped he would not feel obliged to demonstrate his familiarity with a lot of techniques he had not employed since he was a student. To his relief, Shari was sticking with the basics, not showing off, astonishingly natural, normal, comfortable, intimate, warm, real.
Her hair smelled like cloves; it combined with the taste of claret in her mouth into a sensual cocktail. When the moment came, she indicated her readiness with a subtle but unambiguous shift of her hips.
So real Not a fantasy.
Again, she moved her pelvis to him, signaling: now.
“Is something the matter?” she asked. Arthur was not moving. He was virtually holding his breath.
“Yeah,” he said. “Something’s the matter.” He turned away and rolled onto his side. “I can’t do it.”
“What?” she said.
“I can’t.”
She reached around and felt him with her thumb and index finger, like she was checking a tomato at a vegetable stand.
“No,” she said, “you’re fine. In fact,” she whispered, “you’re hard as hell.”
He took her wrist and moved her hand away. “I don’t mean I can’t that way. I mean I just can’t.” He sat up and flung his legs over the side of the bed. “I don’t know what I mean. What the hell am I doing here? I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
“Oh great,” said Shari. “So I make you sick.”
He looked at her, his sweaty face twisted with pain. “God, no. I’m making myself sick. It’s some kind of panic attack or something. I don’t understand it.”
“I understand it,” said Shari. “It’s simple. You love your wife. So that’s that.”
Arthur sat in silence for a minute, noticing the tension in the muscles of his neck subside. He heard himself say, “Thank you.”
Shari sat up on the other side of the bed and began to get dressed. As Arthur’s nausea backed off, acute embarrassment took its place.
“You must think I’m completely nuts,” he said.
“I think you’re sweet,” she said. “I wish my husband still loved me like that. I envy your wife.”
“Don’t do that,” said Arthur. “She’s in the hospital. If she knew where I was right now, she’d lose her mind. Which, if the doctors are right, she’s going to lose anyway.”
While Shari finished getting dressed, Arthur lay back on the bed, pulled the blanket up to his chin and wept softly. He had never in his entire life felt so ashamed. That an involuntary paroxysm of anxiety, or whatever it was, had caused him to bail out at the last minute did not make him one bit less culpable in his own estimation.
Shari poured herself a glass of wine, drank it, poured another, drank it. She gathered up her purse and keys. As she was about to leave, she said, “Can we still be friends?”
“Of course.”
“Will you still get me the job as a runner?”
“Of course,” said Arthur.
CHAPTER
8
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” said Anne Delaney, surveying Karen’s yet-to-be-cleaned office. “Who’s your decorator, Osama bin Laden?”
Anne Delaney was Shoreview Memorial’s risk manager, responsible for identifying and minimizing problems of any kind that could result in a loss to the hospital An infinite variety of such risks always existed, from the mundane, such as slip-and-fall cases or gaps in insurance, to the bizarre, such as rampaging psychiatric patients or drug-addicted doctors. The relentless stress of her responsibilities had given Anne a premature, permanent furrow between her dark eyes, a figure that betrayed her addiction to comfort food and a dim view of human nature. None of which prevented her from being one of Karen’s favorite people.
Anne had a pudgy but pretty face and curly brown hair that she kept short in order to save primping time. She wore a practical, boxy gray suit that strained at the seams.
“You’re on thin ice, Delaney,” responded Karen. “Just make a space amid the rubble and give me the abridged version of your report. Remember, I’m reduced time.”
“Don’t rub it in,” said Anne, to whom forty hours a week would have been reduced time. “First, we’ve got another confidentiality issue with that guy in the psych unit whose records the police wanted.”
“The schizophrenic pedophile.”
“That’s the guy. His name is Clifford Gooch. The cops backed off but they want to know when he’s about to be discharged. I think they’ll pick him up. Now he’s trying to sign himself out. He’s voluntary.”
Rocks and hard places. Disclose the patient’s discharge to the police, the police pick him up and he sues the hospital for breach of confidentiality. Don’t disclose, and the patient leaves, commits a crime, and the victim sues the hospital. Hold a voluntary patient against his will, possible lawsuit. Let him go and he hurts himself, same result.
“Does his shrink say he’s ready to go?” asked Karen.
“No, but he doesn’t lack capacity. He’s signing out against medical advice.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“His attending psychiatrist says he might be.”
Karen coiled a lock of hair around her index finger and looked out the window. Another gorgeous day wasted inside. She uncoiled the lock, noting with dismay several silver strands. Soon she would have to decide whether to let her sable hair, which she had always considered her best feature, go gray or resort to the bottle.
“Maybe if we tell the patient the cops are asking to be told when he’s discharged,” said Karen, “he will decide to stay until he’s cleared.”
“Tried that. He’s adamant.”
Karen re-coiled the tress of hair around her finger. Outside her window, a thrush in the sugar maple was yodeling like Janet McBride.
“Okay, discharge him against medical advice,” said Karen. “But first call the police and say that on advice of counsel, you can’t tell them when the patient is leaving, but if they want to stake out the main entrance starting now, we can’t stop them. Safety first. What else have you got?”
“The monthly memo from the Department of Health has a couple of odd items. One has to do with patients presenting at the emergency room wanting to be tested for SARS. They’re clogging up the ERs. The department wants us to send them home if they don’t have obvious symptoms.”
“It’s a violation of the federal patient transfer law to send patients away from the ER without a screening exam,” said Karen. “Ah, the vexations of the federal system! Springfield tells us to do things that Washington prosecutes us for doing. What’s the other odd item?”
“An alert about the so-called serial killer doctor phenomenon. Remember Dr. Shipman?”
“The English doctor who killed more than two hundred patients over the years. Most prolific serial murderer in history.”
“Right,” said Anne. “His conviction came right on the heels of the reports about Dr. Swango, the American doctor who is believed to have killed more people than Jeffrey Dahmer.”
“I remember. His colleagues called him ‘Double-O Swango’ because he seemed to have a license to kill.”
“Those are the most famous cases, but there are a lot of other examples of serial docs, and a multitude of
apparent motives. Shipman was supposedly pure bloodlust, while Swango was sort of an experimenter who got a charge out of seeing the effects of various poisons and injections. Then there’s the ‘angel of death’ mercy killers and the ones with a profit motive.”
“How do they profit?”
“Lots of ways. One is, they get longtime patients to write them into their wills, then bump ’em off.”
“How enterprising. So what does the Department of Health want us to do about it?” asked Karen.
“Run mortality rates, long-term, on all of our medical staff members, do a retrospective review on any outliers and notify the department if we turn up anything suspicious. Apparently, a lot of these characters could have been stopped midcareer if anybody had bothered to check.”
“Does the department have any suggestions on how we explain this review to our medical staff? They’re gonna think we’re lunatics,” said Karen.
“What if we say the department ordered it, without explanation?”
“If you believe the docs will go along with that,” said Karen with some sarcasm, “this must be your first day in hospital administration. You know they hate reviews they can’t control. If you don’t want to wear armor to work for the next few weeks, try to do the review yourself, without telling anybody. Anything else?”
“Just gossip. Do you know what’s going on with the Winslows?”
Karen knew more than she wanted to, but she wasn’t inclined to feed the rumor mill.
“Lorraine’s a patient on the third floor. Dr. Treacher diagnosed Huntington’s chorea.”
“I know. That’s what Woody Guthrie died from. I remember people worrying about Arlo because it’s inherited. Do the Winslows have kids?”
“One seventeen-year-old daughter,” said Karen. “They can do genetic testing to find out if she’s going to develop it, but would she want to know? A positive result could ruin whatever healthy years she has ahead, but a negative one would sure help her plan the rest of her life.”
“There’s a huge financial risk in getting tested,” said Anne. “At seventeen, she’ll be coming off her parents’ health insurance in a couple of years. With a positive for Huntington’s, she may never be able to get insurance on her own.”
Anne would think of that. “Good issue spot,” said Karen. “I’ll talk to Arthur about it. Speaking of insurance, Annie, does the hospital’s D&O or general liability insurance cover us for sexual harassment claims?”
“Why do you ask?” said Anne.
“Just curious,” said Karen.
DOWNTOWN JEFFERSON HAD once been used to film a scene from a movie set in the 1890s. The main street was lined with ornate, old-fashioned storefronts and wrought-iron street lamps topped with gaslights. A river wound through the center of town, spanned by an imposing arched bridge flanked by haughty concrete lions. An old mill of weathered gray wood perched on the riverbank, its nonfunctional but affable wheel turning languidly on root beer-colored waters.
The step-back-in-time effect that had attracted the movie company was later spoiled by the construction of a fourteen-story, flat-topped steel and glass office building that now loomed over the antique buildings, bullying them, making them look feeble rather than quaint.
The top two floors of the new office building were occupied by Van Dyke ~ Eddington, Jefferson’s largest law firm since the breakup of Winslow & Shaughnessy. The firm’s marketing committee clustered together at one end of a twenty-foot-long polished mahogany table in a corner conference room with a 180-degree floor-to-ceiling view of the rooftops of the adjacent buildings, the river and the level horizon in the distance. Poised above the enormous table was a procession of brass spider chandeliers, stretched below it a sumptuous burgundy Bokhara rug.
Name partners Trevor Van Dyke and Lyle Eddington, the oldest members of the firm in their early sixties, wore dark navy suits, maroon neckties and starched white shirts with gold cufflinks. The female on the committee, Shirley Roach, wore the distaff version of the same uniform, a red scarf instead of a necktie, lace in place of the French cuffs. The dewy cheerleader looks that had turned Trevor Van Dyke’s graying head eighteen years before had gradually morphed into those of a stout, hard-shelled soccer coach. Matthew Stoker joined the meeting ten minutes late, his seersucker suit testifying to his awareness of the turn in the weather. He wore tinted glasses; the other marketing committee members all wore bifocals.
As Matthew sat down, Emerson Knowles handed him a copy of the document Matthew had asked Emerson to prepare for the meeting: a list of all the former clients of Winslow & Shaughnessy.
“Thanks, Emerson,” said Matthew. “I’ll stop by your office after the meeting and fill you in.”
Emerson stood motionless, his eyes checking the committee members for reaction. “Uh, I sort of thought I should attend,” he said unassertively. “I put the meeting together and I’m familiar with a lot of my old firm’s former clients, and . . .”
“Won’t be necessary, Emerson,” said Matthew. “Thanks.”
Emerson left and Trevor called the meeting to order.
“I’m thinking it might have been a good idea to let Emerson stay,” said Lyle Eddington, with the same expression on his narrow face he always wore, as if he had something exceedingly bitter in his mouth. He suffered from a slight facial tic in his left cheek. “He does know a lot of these clients.”
“And how many has he brought in?” said Matthew. “Face it, Emerson’s a decent desk lawyer but he hasn’t done diddly to take advantage of his firm’s collapse.” Matthew brandished the list of Winslow & Shaughnessy clients. “There’s gold in these here hills, and I’m going to mine it.”
“We need to go over this list carefully,” said Lyle, “and agree on the criteria for selecting the target clients.”
Matthew had expected that the old-fashioned, conservative Eddington might give him trouble. Van Dyke looked on Matt as his protégé and would back his proposal. Roach always voted with Van Dyke. Best to get Eddington back on his heels right away. Matthew leaned forward over the table and held up three fingers.
“There are only three criteria for determining whether a business is a target client,” said Matthew.
“What are those?” said Lyle.
“Is it profitable, is it profitable, and is it profitable,” said Matthew.
Trevor smiled. Shirley looked at Trevor and then also smiled. Lyle’s facial tic intensified.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Lyle, “if the prospective client requires the type of services we are unable to provide competently? Whether the work is desirable, or even if the prospective client is reputable?”
“Not if they can pay our fees,” said Matthew. “Law is a business. Does GM refuse to sell Cadillacs to the mob? Does Harley turn away the Hell’s Angels?”
“So, you’d represent Satan himself if he paid your hourly rate,” said Lyle.
“From him I’d want a 20 percent write-up,” said Matthew.
Trevor laughed heartily and Shirley joined him, less heartily. Lyle picked up his copy of the list and studied it. He pinched his cheek between his thumb and index finger in an attempt to constrain the tic. “We still need to consider the best method of approaching the target clients, and who should be the liaison,” he said.
“The key to marketing legal services,” said Matthew, “is relationships. The key relationship to reaching the former clientele of the Winslow firm is Arthur Winslow. I got an engagement letter from him yesterday. He could steer a lot of business our way.”
“He’s right,” said Trevor. “A lot of Winslow & Shaughnessy’s clients are still in play, trying out Chicago lawyers, using multiple firms. Arthur Winslow’s endorsement would be invaluable.” He smiled approvingly at Matthew. “Quite a coup landing him as a client. How’d you pull it off?”
“A contact introduced me to Karen Hayes, the in-house attorney at Shoreview Memorial, where Winslow’s now the CEO. Which brings me to the first action item. I’d like approval to offer
her a contract partnership. She’s very good, and I can tell Winslow relies on her.”
“Lyle and I will need to interview her,” said Trevor, “but I’m sure it will be no problem. What’s the other action item?”
Matthew straightened up in his chair and thrust his chest out commandingly. He knew what he was about to propose was audacious and shamelessly selfish. He could convey no diffidence.
“I signed Arthur as a client,” he said, “and a lot of the time I’m going to put into this will be nonbillable. To avoid a lot of hassling and haggling, I’d like to have a decision from the committee that any of these,” he held up the list of Winslow & Shaughnessy clients Emerson had prepared, “who come in on Arthur’s recommendation will go on my billing list.”
As everyone in the room was acutely aware, the size of a partner’s billing list was the most important factor in determining how large a share of the firm’s profits he received. The decision of the marketing committee, though not binding on the executive committee, would settle the issue. The other partners on the executive committee would defer to Trevor, Lyle and Shirley.
“I’m in favor,” said Trevor, Matthew’s mentor.
“So am I,” said Shirley, Trevor’s pocket vote.
Lyle sat silently, lips pursed, cheek twitching. He raised his palms in a gesture of surrender. “All right, I’m on board.”
Trevor adjourned the meeting and Matthew dashed from the room. As the name partners ambled to the door, Trevor clamped a chubby hand onto Lyle’s shoulder.
“Matthew’s really got brass balls, doesn’t he?”
“Mmm . . . yes,” said Lyle dubiously. “It worries me a tad to think that someday he’s going to be running this firm.”
Trevor chuckled. “In case you haven’t noticed, he’s running it now.”
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