“The policeman flashes his badge at a lab tech, what do you expect her to do? I heard this detective who was here on Sunday, he threatened to charge the tech with obstruction of justice if she didn’t show him the report.”
“I know they do that,” said Karen. “They can’t make it stick.”
“Maybe not,” said Rosalinda, “but the techs aren’t paid enough they should sit in jail for a few hours while the lawyers straighten it out.”
Karen liked the way the lab supervisor protected her staff. A lot of supervisors in her shoes would have been glad to have a scapegoat.
“No one’s in any trouble,” said Karen. “Just ask the staff to contact the hospital attorney before talking to the police. Even if it’s in the middle of the night.”
“All right,” said Rosalinda.
Karen asked her about the report on Lorraine Winslow’s stool culture.
“I don’t have to look it up,” she said. “Everybody down here was talking about it on Monday. CEO’s wife, people are going to talk. Nobody here has ever seen a culture like that one.”
“What was in it?”
“What wasn’t?” said Rosalinda. “It was positive for staphylococcus, salmonella, E. coli and campylobacter, among others. It was like the patient drank a germ cocktail.”
“Could this have been caused by accidental food contamination?”
“No huay,” said Rosalinda with a sarcastic snort. “You wouldn’t get a culture like that if you drank right from the worst cloaca in Calixtlahuaca.”
The report from the toxicologist at the state crime lab was consistent with Rosalinda’s opinion, if less colorfully expressed. As Karen left the lab, she checked the time. It was almost 2:00 P.M., so she reluctantly headed toward Max Schumacher’s office, wishing she hadn’t promised to talk to him about firing Margaret’s boyfriend.
Max was a good-natured polar bear of a man, an ex-cop who had little tolerance for criminal behavior by hospital staff. He was in his early fifties, with a gray crew cut and a face full of sags and wrinkles, but he was built like a heavyweight boxer still in fighting form. His office was tiny and cluttered with sturdy, well-worn security equipment. He sat at a battered metal desk in front of a bank of monitors, dressed in a navy blue short-sleeved uniform.
“It wasn’t fifty dollars, it was a hundred and fifty,” said Max. “First time I asked him about it, he lied. That boy is so crooked you could screw him into the ground.”
So much for “opposites attract,” thought Karen. “My secretary wants me to ask if you’re going to report the theft to law enforcement.”
“I guess I wouldn’t have to,” said Max somewhat grudgingly.
“Any chance we could use him in a less sensitive position?”
“I wouldn’t trust Ed Luebsdorf to change bedpans,” said Max. “Your secretary better watch her backside. Say, at some point were you planning to tell me why the police searched the CEO’s office? Or do I have to call my pals at the station house to find out what’s going on around here?”
Karen filled Max in on what little she knew about Lopopolo’s investigation, and about the suspicious lab report.
“Someone gets murdered in the hospital and you don’t tell the head of Security?” said Max.
“I just got the details on the lab report five minutes ago,” said Karen.
Max eyed her with a wry face, then appeared to soften. “How’s your dad?” he asked. Max knew about Gene’s prostate cancer.
“Hanging in there. He’s been through a lot of treatment. Last time I asked, his PSA was stable.”
“Anything else happening I should know about?”
When Karen told him that Friday was to be her last day at Shoreview Memorial, Max surprised her with a warm hug and some very uncop-like sniffling. Karen left with a lump in her throat. She was going to miss some of the staff at Shoreview.
The one she would miss most was Anne Delaney. Karen decided to stop at Anne’s office. Anne was seated at a folding table, gnawing her fingernails as she pored over patient records. She met the announcement of Karen’s job change with outward aplomb.
“Deserting the sinking ship, eh, Hayes?” said Anne. “Can’t say that I blame you.” She used a finger to wipe a bead of moisture beneath her eye.
“Not deserting,” said Karen. “I’ll be the hospital’s outside general counsel.”
Anne smiled. “It’ll just cost Shoreview twice as much.”
“More like four times,” said Karen. “Van Dyke takes half.”
“Oh . . . hell,” blurted Anne. She jumped up and hugged Karen. “Congratulations, Karen. You deserve it.”
“Thanks, Annie. And just think, we’ll still be working together on all the same old crap.”
Anne sat down and quickly composed herself. “Speaking of which, Jeffrey Treacher’s medical records are a disaster. He needs a remedial charting tutorial. His patients have a high death rate, but that could be explained by a number of things. For example, his average patient age is above the norm, and he treats more males than females. I’ll crunch some more numbers. None of the deaths look like foul play.”
“Not at first glance,” said Karen.
Anne eyed her with a hint of reproach. “You know something I don’t?”
Karen filled Anne in on the disappearance of Lorraine Winslow’s drug allergy sheet and Medic Alert bracelet, and about Rosalinda Fuentes’s opinion that Lorraine’s food poisoning could not have been accidental. She also told Anne about the night nurse, Bonnie Bach, having shared a box of Lady Coventry chocolate with Lorraine before getting sick herself.
“Good God,” said Anne. “Sounds like the work of a homicidal maniac.” She blinked hard. “Whoa.”
“You know something I don’t?” asked Karen.
“No, but when I said ‘maniac’ I thought of our favorite resident schizophrenic, Clifford Gooch. Scary guy.”
“I remember when you called me about discharging him,” said Karen.
“The police brought him back Monday on an emergency detention. The county is doing an involuntary commitment.”
“Not his first as I recall.”
“The hospital initiated the last one,” said Anne. “You remember, he tried to sue us, made violent threats against everybody. Really freaked out one nurse when he said, ‘I know where you live,’ and proceeded to recite her home address.”
“Charming fellow,” said Karen.
“Hard to believe he was once a middle school science teacher. Until he got caught in the school darkroom with a twelve-year-old, and they weren’t developing pictures.” Anne paused to chew a thumbnail “He was in the psych unit in May at the same time as Lorraine Winslow.”
Karen sat down on a metal folding chair. The two women sat in silence for a minute, Anne nibbling her nails, Karen twirling her hair with a finger. Karen spoke.
“Would you enjoy a little detective work that isn’t strictly within your job description?”
“Do turtles like to sunbathe?” said Anne.
“I don’t know turtles,” said Karen, “but I know you. There has to be a way to trace how that Lady Coventry chocolate box got to Lorraine’s room.”
“Consider it traced,” said Anne.
Karen doubted she would work with anyone at Van Dyke ~ Eddington in the same league as Anne Delaney.
WHEN SHE GOT back to her office, the red message-waiting light was blinking on her telephone console. The message was from Emerson Knowles.
“I just got the news you’re coming to Van Dyke, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Matthew asked me to convene a meeting of the marketing committee for Monday at noon, and guess who’s invited? The muckety-mucks must have big plans for you, Karen. I’ve been here almost a year and I’ve never been in on a marketing committee meeting. Must admit, I’m a little envious. Look forward to seeing you here Monday.”
Marketing committee? Yuck. Emerson could go in her place as far as Karen was concerned. Marketing legal services did not interest her. She found dru
mming up business by selling clients services they didn’t need, making promises that would not or could not be kept, inventing phantom problems with complicated legal solutions or helping clients skirt the law through the disingenuous use of technicalities to be distasteful. She considered the dog-and-pony shows lawyers put on for prospective clients an admission of defeat. Every really good lawyer she knew attracted and retained clients by consistently doing good work, not by hustling legal services like so much aluminum siding. She understood the importance of marketing in many business contexts, but with professional services it seemed too often to lead in the wrong direction. In law, it led to pointless corporate restructurings and endless litigation where the parties got nothing and the lawyers got everything. In medicine, it led to unnecessary surgery and diagnostic procedures that went on and on, until the patient succumbed to the treatment.
In accounting, it led to Enron.
Karen remembered that her Van Dyke contract said something about committee assignments. Was she stuck?
“Margaret, I had a contract on my desk clipped to Van Dyke ~ Eddington letterhead. Have you seen it?”
“A messenger from Van Dyke came by and picked it up while you were out. Was it okay I let him take it?”
“Yes,” said Karen. Margaret had a look of anxious pleading in her eyes. Karen knew what was on her mind.
“I talked to Max about Ed. No police report, but no reconsideration on the termination. Sorry.”
“What are we going to do? I don’t think we can make this month’s rent.”
Karen’s glance fell to Margaret’s wrist. That Rolex looked like about a year’s rent. Karen said nothing.
THE AIR CONDITIONING needed to be recharged in Karen’s ancient Volvo, which dated from the era when fuel injection was so special they spelled it out in chrome on the tail of the car. She preferred to drive with the windows down anyway, enjoying the smells of summer as she cruised through her neighborhood. Grass and clover, dandelions and honeysuckle, charcoal starter and chlorine. Karen liked the old gingerbread Victorians and mature trees. She and Jake were already getting pressure from friends and family to move to a suburb with fresh new homes and better schools for McKinley. To Karen, the ’burbs of Jefferson meant boring taupe tract houses, no side-walks and trees with trunks the size of broomsticks. Wait until kindergarten, at least.
Elizabeth had arrived ahead of Karen and was seated on the living room sofa with McKinley’s head in one hand and an old-fashioned in the other. Karen was almost as impressed with the durability of her mother’s liver as she was with her legs. Elizabeth was wearing a pink golf shirt, white culottes and tennis shoes.
Jake sat in a loveseat that matched the sofa across a mahogany butler’s table from Elizabeth. He gave Karen the sort of look she imagined someone lost in the Alps might give a St. Bernard. Karen plopped on the sofa beside her mother.
“How is my little snookum-wookums?” said Karen.
“Isn’t he a cute little guy?” said Elizabeth.
“Such a cute little one,” said Karen. “Yes, yes.”
Jake rose and walked quietly from the room, shaking his head. Karen and her mother fussed over McKinley for several more minutes before Karen asked her mother the reason for her visit.
Elizabeth put her drink down and inserted a bottle into McKinley’s mouth. “It’s about your father. He got the results from a bone scan this morning. His prostate cancer has metastasized.”
Karen had a stab of apprehension, followed by a spate of other feelings. Weakness in her muscles. Anger at her mother for being so blunt. An urge to leave and come back in again to a different conversation.
Gene had been through surgery, hormonal therapy and radiation. He was supposed to have ten, fifteen, twenty years left, but metastases to the bone changed the prognosis drastically. This was way too soon.
“How is he handling it?” said Karen.
“He’s stoical, solemn, trying to be philosophical. You know, same as always.”
“How are you doing?”
Elizabeth’s face became grave. “Me? I’m not good. I’m not good at all.” Her hand was shaking. The bottle slipped out of McKinley’s mouth and into his eye. Karen took the baby and Elizabeth took a long swig of her old-fashioned.
“I realized a long time ago that leaving Gene to chase rainbows was the biggest mistake I ever made. I’ve been trying to make up for it, but I haven’t moved fast enough. Now I’m afraid I’ve run out of time.”
Karen knew the “rainbows” her mother had chased included an affair that didn’t pan out with a more exciting man. She recalled telling her mother about the Van Dyke job offer and her mother’s exhortation to “go for it.” The memory gave Karen a qualm. Had her mother’s impulsiveness influenced her, if only genetically? Of course, there was a huge difference between bolting on a stable but humdrum marriage and changing jobs. There was less at stake, and the decision wasn’t influenced by the treacherous siren song of infatuation. With that thought came an image of Matthew Stoker, the smell of his aftershave and another qualm.
Karen had no solace to offer, so she fed the baby while her mother finished her drink.
“But enough about my problems,” said Elizabeth. “Karen, you can’t put the baptism off any longer. Gene won’t say much, but you can understand that where he’s at right now, these things seem much more important. He’s even going to church regularly.”
Karen understood and was not surprised that her father, for all his stoicism and rationality, was experiencing the uncovered faith of the imminently mortal. She promised her mother to set a date for the baptism, but not before Jake had agreed.
“SURE,” SAID JAKE. “NO problema.”
Karen was surprised that Jake was going along so easily. “I was afraid you’d call it sanctimony.”
“Not at all. It will be helpful to your parents, not harmful to anyone and motivated by kindness.” He placed his palms together in front of his chest in the gassho Buddhist prayer position. “I see it as samma kammata, Right Action, the fourth element of the Noble Eightfold Path laid out by the Buddha.”
“No shit,” said Karen.
“Besides, it’s a cool ceremony. I have fond memories of my own.”
“You remember your baptism?”
“Sure. I was twenty years old.”
“What!”
“My parents were so disorganized, they couldn’t get the lawn mowed, let alone get me or my brother baptized. You remember the bass player from my band in college?”
“Chandler. How I loved the Lowdown Polecats.”
“Chandler had a year of divinity school. One night we’re driving to a gig in his van and it comes up that I’m not baptized. He says I better take care of that, and he pulls off. The van was a piece of junk with a leaky radiator, so he’s got a jug of distilled water in the back. We get out, I kneel down in the gravel on the shoulder of the road and Chandler baptizes me with the radiator water.”
“Does that count? No minister or anything?”
“Chandler said it does. Anybody can perform a baptism.”
“My mom wants McKinley’s to be at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. They’ll pressure us to join.”
“What’s that entail?”
“For starters, tithing.”
Jake placed his hands in gassho prayer position and lowered his eyelids in a placid, meditative expression. “Let’s not get carried away,” he said.
CHAPTER
16
Arthur Winslow sat in his tile-floored sunroom staring dully at the lake through mullioned windowpanes, deriving no pleasure from the view. The sun sparkling on the rippled water only served to irritate him. He and Lorraine used to take their morning coffee on the pier in summer. Lately his stomach was too touchy to handle coffee and his knee was acting up so badly that walking down the hill to the pier and back up was agony. Besides, without Lorraine, what was the point? He picked up the business section of the Tribune, but he could not keep his mind on the stock market and
the economy. Would such things ever matter to him again? According to his lawyer, he’d soon be fighting for his life. And in two days, he would be burying the only woman he had ever loved. That he ached with remorse over how he had wronged Lorraine only served to make his love for her seem more tangible, and more forlorn.
The one bright spot was Amy. Her energy and good nature through this ordeal made him look fainthearted by comparison, but she made him proud. Arthur wished she were here now to keep him company, but they had decided she needed to resume her summer program at St. Andrew’s Academy as soon as possible. She had been struggling in school. If she failed to complete the remedial coursework this summer, she would not graduate next spring with her classmates, and that would ruin her chances for admission to an elite college.
It was an effort to push himself out of the white wicker chair to answer the phone. The headmaster of Amy’s prep school was on the line. He summoned Arthur to pick up his daughter at school immediately. Illegal drugs had been found in her locker. Amy had been suspended.
HEADMASTERS’ OFFICES HAD not changed much in forty years, nor had the apprehension of sitting in one and receiving a lecture. The headmaster of St. Andrew’s Academy was skinny and bespectacled with messy gray hair. He made an effort to be gentle but implied that Amy’s behavior was in some part her parents’ fault. Arthur did not disagree. The headmaster described in detail the symptoms and risks of Ecstasy use. Some of the symptoms—anxiety, muscle aches, stomach cramps and brain damage—sounded horrible to Arthur. But some sounded like the very things he had been so proud of, such as Amy’s pep and affection. When the headmaster mentioned acne, Arthur became skeptical. It seemed they blamed acne on anything teenagers put in their mouths. In his day it was candy bars and pizza. Of course, telling teens that Ecstasy caused acne might actually discourage many of them from using it, since they were more worried about pimples than brain damage.
Arthur reminded the headmaster of the death of Amy’s mother and pleaded for leniency, while his intestines gurgled audibly. Amy sat next to him, not saying a word. The headmaster was noncommittal but said the suspension would remain in effect “until further notice.”
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