“Wha— Oh my God. I don’t know how you do it.”
“I’m used to it,” she said, unsure if he meant staying awake all night or removing weird objects from intimate body parts. “But to tell you the truth, I’m running on adrenaline today. This afternoon is Jonah’s showdown with human resources.”
Every day over the past week, more patients had been dismissed from Jonah’s practice.
“I know,” said Mark, in a quieter tone. “Will you call me afterward? And tell him I’m thinking of him.”
“I will,” she promised.
Inside the clinic, she headed for the lounge. Turning the corner, she spied Darby Gibbes, wearing a silk flower-patterned dress, chatting with a clump of rehab people. As Darby looked up and noticed her, she flashed a neatly manicured hand and detached from the group. Georgia caught up to her.
“Hey there,” said Darby. She motioned toward the group she’d just left with a sideways jerk of her head. “I just heard something.”
Georgia’s antennae went up; it wasn’t like Darby to dispense with pleasantries. “What?”
“It’s about Jonah Tsukada,” said Darby. She gave Georgia a meaningful look, presumably based on their conversation in Amsterdam. “They’re saying he violated some sort of ethical guidelines.”
“What? Who’s saying that?”
“I don’t know exactly who; you know what the hospital rumor mill is like. But that’s not the worst of it.”
“What could be worse than that?”
“You know those missing medicines?” started Darby. She went on, but Georgia lost the rest of her sentence as something caught her attention; a herd of white coats entering the corridor from an outside door. The surgery team. There were at least eight of them, mostly men, mostly tall, but two women tailed the group; one with a blond ponytail and the other a young black woman, her hair swept back. The ponytail she recognized as a nurse practitioner. The other woman was unfamiliar, probably a medical student on a community-hospital rotation shadowing one of the surgeons.
“Excuse me, Dr. Gibbes?”
Georgia turned to see one of the fifth-year surgery residents regarding Darby, taking in her little heart-shaped face and her tiny ballet flats and her carefully curled hair. She looked back at him, wearing her baseline face: accommodating, trusting, eager to please, despite the fact that as an attending, she outranked him in the hospital’s hierarchy.
“Room 117,” he said to her. He had bright blue eyes and a build that managed to combine stockiness and grace, like an agile receiver on a high school football team. “Mr. Drake, in rehab.”
“Yes?”
“Did you . . .” The fifth-year paused, leaving a momentary conversational thud in the air. No one met his eyes as they waited for the rest of the sentence. “Did you remove the staples from Mr. Drake’s incision?”
She was still clueless. “Oh! Yes.”
“I see. You consulted us on this guy and then you took it upon yourself to intervene in a surgical patient’s postoperative care, because you’re the expert. Do you still expect the surgical team to follow him, or were you going to perform his next procedure too?”
No rustle of movement from the team. Even the air went still, as the smile left Darby’s face.
“There were instructions on the chart to remove the staples on POD”—that was postoperative day—“fourteen.”
“Did the instructions say for you to remove the staples?”
Darby’s brow knitted together but her voice, clear and sweet, retained its unmistakable sincerity. “There was no specificity as to who should remove the staples. So we paged your team for clarification but didn’t hear back. That was two days ago, so we removed them on POD fifteen. The incision is closed and healing nicely without any sign of infection or dehiscence. As I hope you’ve appreciated.” She paused, and then added, with no apparent guile, “And I hope that was handled appropriately.”
Another silence.
Then: “I received no such page.” He looked to his team. “Did any of you receive a text about 117’s staples?”
One by one, the team members shook their heads. Darby looked back and forth between them, her lips parted slightly. She began blinking.
“In that case, I think—”
“Excuse me?”
Everyone looked: it was the young woman on the team. She had a genial expression dominated by wide, lively eyes. “I received the page, sir,” she said.
If looks could kill, the entire planet would have detonated and settled into a smoldering ruin. “You received a page and you failed to answer it?”
Without a trace of fear: “Yes, sir. I mean no, sir. I didn’t answer it because I didn’t know who was supposed to remove the staples and I didn’t want to assume. So I asked Dr. Dalton”—she gestured to another man in his late twenties, whose name badge read J. Augustus Dalton III, M.D.—“and he said he’d handle it.”
J. Augustus Dalton III, M.D., who twenty seconds previously had denied knowing anything about the critical matter of staple removal in a rehab patient, now mirrored his chief resident’s apocalyptic scorn. “No such thing happened.”
“It did,” said the medical student, unruffled. “Remember, we were in the cafeteria and you said, ‘It’s like these physical therapists have an alarm telling them we’re about to eat,’ and I said—”
“—physiatrists—” said Darby.
“—Yes, thank you, physiatrists, and I said—”
“Enough!” said Dr. Dalton. Georgia regarded him: with stringy brown hair and a thin, slightly lopsided face, he hadn’t been particularly appealing to begin with, but now his eyebrows were lifted, cheeks reddened, a crazy gleam in his eye. “This never happened!” He looked at his chief, appealing. “She’s lying.”
“I am not lying,” said the medical student calmly.
The chief readjusted the glare of his indignation onto her. “Have you no respect for your team? Dr. Dalton is your superior.”
“I do, sir, but I didn’t want you to hold this doctor”—she gestured to Darby—“accountable for our misfire. Even though it sounds like the staples were removed properly.”
“What’s your name again?” snapped the chief, despite the fact she was wearing a visible name badge, same as the rest of them, and despite the fact that she’d probably been on this rotation for at least a full day.
“Glory,” said the student. “Gloriana Miller.”
“Well, Glory-whatever, I’d say you just earned yourself an interesting evaluation from Dr. Dalton here. Right, Dalton? Did you know the third-year resident helps with the med student course grades, Glory?”
“No, sir, I didn’t know.” A lesser medical student would have crumbled to ash by this point, but Gloriana Miller, chin up, stared straight back at him with powerful impassivity. He blinked first.
Caught up in this ridiculous drama, Georgia startled at the touch of a hand on her shoulder. She turned her head and found herself staring directly into the expressionless gaze of Donovan Wright.
Anyone observing would have to have a keen eye to see past her calm exterior; she kept still and didn’t change her expression. Internally, however, a nuclear dumpster fire consumed her, accelerating her heart rate from zero to sixty—or more accurately, from sixty to one hundred—in an instant; dilating her pupils; sending her sweat glands into hyperdrive.
Donovan Wright: an anesthesiologist, known around the clinic for his meticulous care in the OR, but also for his habit of parking his Ferrari square in the middle of two spaces in the doctors’ parking lot to avoid acquiring a door ding from an inferior vehicle. Before she’d known him, he’d come across to her as both bland and bombastic; a dime a dozen, as far as male doctors went—your basic golfer in a white coat. The most notable thing about his appearance was the unearthly hue of his eyes; they were so pale they reminded her of icebergs.
&
nbsp; “Hey there,” he said, gripping her shoulder tighter. “How’s it going?”
With a final squeeze he released her arm. Without thinking, she dropped her face into the crook of her elbow as if to shield her expression from the group. Taking in a shaky breath, she lifted her head again, willing her features into blankness. She managed to take only one step away from him before the blade of his voice caught her in the back.
“One moment,” he said. She looked at him, but he was looking at the chief resident. For the first time, she noticed the guy’s name badge: H. Jonathan Ramsey, M.D. What was with the surgery team referring to themselves by first initial? Maybe she should start calling herself G. Maybelle Brown, M.D. instead of Georgia.
Some of H. Jonathan Ramsey, M.D.’s cockiness had begun to wither under the unrelenting stone-faced stare of Dr. Wright. He shifted to the side a bit. Like children observing a fraught parental interaction, the rest of the team turned from Wright’s face to his and back again as they waited for the storm to hit.
When he finally spoke, Donovan’s voice was all the more devastating for its icy quietness. “Apologize,” he said to Jonathan Ramsey, “to Dr. Gibbes.”
Ramsey’s blinking increased in tempo. “What?”
“You heard me.”
For a moment it seemed Ramsey might defy him. Despite the fact that Donovan Wright was the head of the anesthesia department and therefore a powerful figure around the hospital, he was not a surgeon; he had no direct jurisdiction over the surgery residents. The two of them remained locked in a mortal stare-down until, suddenly, Dr. Ramsey bit the dust.
He turned to Darby, his sculpted cheeks and well-cut jaw now subsumed by an unattractive blotchy redness spreading up from the hollow of his throat, highlighting a bit of stubble on his Adam’s apple. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“Dr. Gibbes,” said Donovan, still in the same tone, “is an attending physician. You might be a chief, but you’re still a resident. Dr. Gibbes deserves the same level of respect I’d expect you’d display to me, or to anyone for that matter, whether they’re the head of a department”—he gestured to himself—“or a patient or a part of the cleaning staff. Is that understood?”
Everyone nodded.
“Ladies,” said Donovan, tipping his head to Darby and Georgia and the medical student, who’d drifted over next to Darby in silent solidarity. “I have to get to a meeting.” He stalked off down the hall, the reproached team drifting in his wake like a shape-shifting amoeba, nearly running into one another when he stopped to add, over his shoulder, “Nice to see you, Georgia.”
Before she could respond, he’d gone.
Darby unfroze, her eyes enormous. “What in the world just happened?” She leaned in the direction of the departed surgery team, so close Georgia could see a tremble in her lower lip.
Georgia reached for Darby’s shoulder. “Honestly. Staples? What a dick.”
“That was sweet of Donovan, though,” said Darby. Her hand fluttered, birdlike, by her hair. She smoothed it down, running her fingers through her shiny curls, succeeding only in mussing them.
Georgia jammed her hands into her pockets to hide their trembling. “You know him?”
“He goes to my church. His dad golfs at Wild Dunes with my dad. He’s nice.”
“He’s not nice,” Georgia said, her voice coming out too soft. Darby looked up, startled out of her preoccupation about the encounter with the surgery chief.
Hastily, Georgia deflected before Darby could query her. “Well, I think I’m gonna see if anybody on the surgery floor looks like they’re begging for staple removal. Catch you later?”
It was lame but it worked. Darby smiled. “Thanks, Georgia. See you later.”
Only after she’d disappeared down the hall did Georgia relax, allowing her breath to unfurl from a brittle knot in the center of her chest. She stared for a moment in the direction of the departed Dr. Wright, trying to will her mind into blankness.
* * *
—
Jonah was still seeing patients when she reached his practice that afternoon. Normally she’d have chatted with his office staff—she liked them, especially the women who worked the front desk—but today it occurred to her that someone in this office had complained about how intolerable it was that transgender patients were receiving medical care. She felt something shift and harden in her throat as she stalked past the front desk, entering Jonah’s private office.
Although Jonah admired an aesthetically pleasing room, an inborn sense of interior design did not rank among his talents, so he’d hired someone to deck out his office in swank tweeds and nubby grass cloth. Should he have spent money on this? Arguably, no. But it was hard to take issue with the immense pleasure he took in this space: he liked it so much he’d been known to sleep here on nights when he worked late.
If she strained, Georgia could hear his voice from an exam room down the hall. She couldn’t make out the words, but the cadence of his speech—calm, reassuring, knowledgeable—was clear. A higher-pitched voice alternated with his, speaking faster, a note of anxiety clearly audible. The voices established a pattern—anxious, calm, anxious, calm—until the anxious voice gradually lost its strident sound, slowing and softening. Then there were only low murmurs and, finally, the sound of a door swinging open. Georgia stuck her head out of the room in time to see Jonah ushering a woman into the hallway. Everything about her had faded with age: her dishwater-colored eyes, her once-brown hair, even the veiny ropes on the backs of her hands. The two of them had reached the end of the hall when she stopped. Her voice was quivery and sweet. “Thank you, Dr. Tsukada,” she said. With some hesitation, she lifted her arms and enfolded Jonah in a brief hug.
“It’s been an honor to take care of you, Mrs. Eads.” Still focused on his patient, Jonah hadn’t noticed Georgia yet. “If you change your mind, I’m here. Anytime.”
The older woman looked at him a final time. Then she pushed open the door to the waiting room and was gone.
Jonah stood for a moment, watching through the glass. His erect posture loosened slightly, a slump appearing in the line of his shoulders. Finally, he turned.
“George,” he said. A tired hand flashed in the direction of the waiting room. “Sorry about that. I’m running late.”
“What happened? Surely she’s not one of the patients being told to leave? She looks like a little old church lady.”
“You’ve got to stop making assumptions based on appearance, G,” said Jonah, reviving a bit at the opportunity to needle her. “She’s as queer as they come.”
“Oh,” Georgia said, chastened. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.”
“Just kidding,” said Jonah, grinning wickedly. “She’s a little old church lady.”
“Oh,” she said again. “Okay, you got me. But why is she leaving?”
“Apparently,” said Jonah, spinning in the direction of his open office door, “it just dawned on her that her physician is living a sinful life. She’s conflicted. She doesn’t want to leave; I’ve seen her through a number of problems she felt were inadequately treated elsewhere. Plus, I know she’s lonely—sometimes I think she makes up physical symptoms just so she can come in here and have another human being hear her voice.” A tender look crossed his face.
Georgia followed him into his office, watching as he shrugged off his white coat and placed it neatly on a hanger in the closet. “So why is she going?”
“When she read in the newspaper that I might be aligned with the devil, she asked her minister what to do,” said Jonah, “and he told her to distance herself from sin. So she came in to find out who I’d recommend she see now.”
“Ugh. What a—”
Jonah cut her off. “She’s torn up about this; she didn’t want to do it.”
“So you comforted her because she was upset she’s leaving you.”
He offered a
guileless smile. “Yeah. Basically.”
In contrast to his usual immaculate style, Jonah appeared a bit off today. His bow tie drooped; a tiny shred of food clumped between his upper incisors. Georgia had planned to ask him about the drug rumors to which Darby had alluded, but on second thought, that appeared to be a poor idea. Why get Jonah agitated right before a meeting in which it would be crucial that he kept his calm? He might not be displaying any feistiness at the moment, but that could be a good thing.
“Well,” she said, taking his arm. “Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Let’s go see Beezon.”
11
A DANGEROUS POINT OF COMBUSTION
As they neared the glass-walled enclosure of the clinic’s conference room annex, they could hear voices: Beezon’s drone, mingling with the clipped consonants of the clinic’s chief medical officer, a stringy, blade-nosed physician named Claude Reiner. For all his haughty angularity, Claude was an attractive man, or he would have been if he possessed a shred of animation. He’d always reminded Georgia of a starved cowboy, weathered and masculine, with eyes so light they were opalesque. Both of them were seated with their backs to the door, and to their left sat a stubby man she didn’t recognize. Even from behind, he radiated waves of importance, so he was probably the legal counsel for the medical practice, or maybe some kind of HR crisis person. He held a fat stack of papers in his hands. As her eyes traveled to the end of the table, Georgia blanched. Next to the lawyer, his head turned slightly in profile, sat Donovan Wright, tapping a ballpoint pen along the edge of the conference table in repeating staccato bursts.
Jonah, sensing her sudden apprehension, gripped her hand. “You don’t have to come in.”
“Of course I’m coming in. Unless you don’t want me.”
He squeezed her hand tighter. “You know I want you.”
“I’ll try not to embarrass you. Anyway, you know who really needs to be here: your lawyer.”
“My lawyer agrees with you,” said Jonah, “but I’m still hopeful I can work this out on my own. Maybe not with Beezon,” he added quickly, seeing her opening her mouth, “but there are other people who might be persuadable. I think it’s worth a shot. Once they know I’m lawyered up, everyone will get hostile.”
The Antidote for Everything Page 12