And therefore she’d never said a word to anyone.
But there was another facet to this, one just beginning to make itself known to her. Perhaps this awful thing gave her the power to help Jonah. Donovan must harbor some worry she’d go public with this. He didn’t know she hadn’t told anyone. For all he knew she’d gone home, carefully scraped his skin cells from beneath her fingernails, and preserved them. Maybe his fingerprints were on the remaining buttons of the torn shirt she no longer possessed. Maybe, that evening, she had hit record on the cell phone in her pocket.
“I think I should go with Jonah to the next meeting with Donovan,” she told Stewart.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Not a chance,” said Jonah, who still held her hand under the table. “There’s no way I’m letting you do that.”
“I take it there was an incident between the two of you,” Stewart said, after a moment’s pause. “And you believe it would offer some leverage in negotiations with Dr. Wright on behalf of Dr. Tsukada. Are you comfortable telling me the details?”
She wasn’t, of course, but she did. And she was right; this time was easier. Stewart listened, his fingers steepled up in contemplative absorption, pausing every now and then to ask a question. By the time she finished, he’d filled several pages with notes.
“One thought,” Stewart said. “You could take a polygraph. It doesn’t commit you to any particular course of action, but in the absence of other evidence it could prove useful.”
“A lie detector test?”
“Yes. It’s a useful signifier of your veracity, or at least your perceived veracity.”
“In English, though,” Jonah said, and then, having evidently appointed himself as Stewart’s legalese translator, “he’s saying it will demonstrate you’re telling the truth.”
“No,” said Stewart. He tilted his head slightly, addressing his comment to Georgia. “Let us make the assumption that you are not a psychopath.”
“Allow me to stipulate,” said Jonah. “She’s not psycho.”
“Excellent,” said Stewart. He turned back to her. “If you pass a polygraph, it indicates your physiological reactions may be compatible with honest responses to the questions. As you probably know, polygraphs are not admissible in court, but that doesn’t matter to us, because this is not a court. What matters is your willingness to take the test; it indicates you believe your story to be true.”
“My story is true.”
Stewart slid his glasses down the considerable length of his nose, peering over them at her. “The truth—whether or not this happened, and whether or not it happened in the manner you describe—is of very little consequence to us in the absence of a witness, or a recording device, or something similar.”
“The truth doesn’t matter?”
“Not really,” Stewart said gently. He gave her time, waiting until she processed this statement. “We cannot prove it happened, and I certainly hope Dr. Wright cannot disprove it happened. Forget about the truth. What matters are the optics.”
She felt her spine straighten. “The optics?”
“If I were representing you,” he continued, “and you intended to pursue a claim against Dr. Wright, there are certain things I’d advise you. It matters who comes across as more credible in a situation like this. Does your story make sense in the context of what is known about both you and the man you accuse? Is there any corroborating material: evidence that both parties were present at the time? Or is there someone to whom you may have contemporaneously relayed the events from your perspective? In this case, no. Are both parties willing to submit to a polygraph examination? Is there anyone upon whom the accused may have inflicted similar traumas? Do you have a history of similar accusations against other men? Do you have any potential secondary gain from this accusation? Have either of the parties lied about anything significant before? And that last one relates to our biggest concern: if either of you could be proven to be lying—about anything relating to this accusation, no matter how minor or seemingly irrelevant—it’s game over, no matter what actually happened. The other person wins.”
Somewhere in the building, an air-conditioning unit kicked on. Recessed within the floor at her feet, a brass vent rattled faintly and, like magic, a cool stream of air entered the room. Georgia shivered—it was already cold in here—and then sat up straight. As if carried on the current, a little burst of clarity appeared, hovering with tantalizing promise just outside her grasp until, her heart racing, she lunged to pluck it from the air. “Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus,” she said.
“That is correct,” said Stewart. Eyebrows slightly raised, he tilted his head toward her in appreciation.
“What is correct?” said Jonah. “What did you say?”
“It’s the Latin term for what Stewart was saying. It means false in one thing, false in everything. If they can show you got one thing wrong, even if it doesn’t really matter, then no one will believe anything you say.”
“Well, that’s fine, because I never lie,” said Jonah.
“Or exaggerate.”
Jonah’s eyes widened. “Does sarcasm count?” He put his head down on his crossed arms. “Oh, fuck, I’m doomed.”
Stewart brought the train back to the station. “Dr. Brown,” he said. “I take it you do not intend to pursue any legal options toward Dr. Wright?”
“That’s right. And just so we’re clear, I’m not planning to overtly threaten Donovan either.” She thought back to his demeanor during the meeting when Jonah was fired; he’d seemed uneasy. “But I have no qualms about allowing him to make his own interpretation of my support of Jonah.”
Jonah let go of her hand. “You can’t let him get away with this, Georgia! You should sue him for harassment.”
Stewart removed his reading glasses, folded them, and set them on the table. “Even if she sued,” he said, in a gentler tone than she’d heard him use before, “she might be prevented from publicly commenting on anything that happened to her.”
“Seriously?” said Jonah, dropping his head back into his hands.
She replayed the last portion of Stewart’s sentence in her mind. “What about Jonah? I thought your entire strategy in Jonah’s situation revolved around bringing this to the public’s attention.”
“Ah,” said Stewart. “That’s because they made a mistake. A big one.” He paused. “Or rather, their attorneys did. There’s a significant error in the original arbitration clause: it does not include a confidentiality provision.”
A light switched on for Jonah. “You mean there’s no rule saying I can’t talk.”
“That’s correct. Because there was no provision regarding confidentiality in the original electronic document you signed, you’re free to talk about what happened to you as much as you want.”
Georgia was still puzzled. “That’s the same thing I signed, though.”
“Yes, but you can be sure now that they’ve seen the counter-letters Jonah has been sending to his patients, they’re going to add a clause to the arbitration document stating one of the conditions is confidentiality—anyone who has a problem with the clinic may not be legally allowed to make public comments on their situation. One of the major goals for companies who require these agreements is to prevent the public, including other people in their employ, from knowing anything about cases against them. It was a big oversight to leave this out.”
“Why would anyone agree to sign anything giving up their right to talk about their own circumstances?”
“They can force you to accept this provision the same way they made you sign the original agreement to use arbitration: it is a condition of your employment. They can fire you if you don’t agree. I’d expect an amended arbitration agreement to go out to every employee of your clinic any day now.”
“Well,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. Even if I thought I coul
d win, I wouldn’t sue—or arbitrate—anything. I don’t want to keep reliving this.”
“Even if you thought you’d win?” Jonah stared at her.
“Correct. But we all know I wouldn’t win, so what choice do I have at this point? I can’t prove it. If I bring it up and can’t account for every single detail, I’ll be branded as a liar. If I bring it up and cannot remember everything, I’ll be branded as a liar. And if I bring it up and then drop it, I’ll be branded as a liar.” She stared past them, her gaze unfocused. “I probably should have kept my mouth shut in the first place.”
“If you brought it up and then didn’t pursue it,” concurred Stewart, “Dr. Wright would almost certainly claim you slandered him. I doubt he’d pursue legal action; I’d advise him not to, if I were his attorney, given the same constraints you have: he cannot prove you are lying.” He let loose with an irony-conveying harrumph. “Theoretically, if you made these claims and then dropped them, allowing him to proceed unchallenged in his characterization of them as untrue—then he’d have a case for slander. You spoke something negative and false about him, causing him substantial harm to his reputation.”
Jonah leaned forward. “I wonder if he’s consulted a lawyer. I mean, what could he be thinking?”
For a few seconds, she tried to imagine it: Donovan Wright in some hushed, upscale law office like this one: floor-to-ceiling bookcases; thick Persian rugs; a silver fox in a thousand-dollar suit gazing solemnly and wisely from behind a desk, discreetly offering a container of tissues when emotions got the better of someone. How would he bring it up? One second I was trying to save a dying teenager, and the next this woman flung herself on me in a supply closet. What could I do? It was hopeless; she could no more place herself inside Donovan’s mind than she could fathom the motives of a tornado.
“I have no idea,” she said.
15
A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
The clinic contained two private areas for doctors: one, a space adjacent to the outpatient OR suite; and the other, a larger lounge on the first floor, complete with its own kitchen, a food bar, charting areas, and a television perpetually tuned to SportsCenter. It being a weekday morning, this space hummed with bodies. The usual suspects were in all the usual places: a scattering of bleary-eyed hospitalists—internal medicine doctors who ran the inpatient service—parked at computers along the back wall, entering notes from their shifts the night before; a clump of surgeons, awaiting the start times for their morning cases, seated on couches in front of the television; a swirl of people at the breakfast buffet surveying hot metal rectangles full of cheese grits and eggs. Georgia could say this for the ladies who ran the cafeteria: in the time-honored tradition of the South, they equated food with love. None of their doctors were ever going to starve.
Not quite a week had passed since the meeting with Stewart. It was maddening, waiting for word, but the clinic dragged their feet on every communication. All Jonah could do was hunker down and wait. He’d begun to fret about his patients, texting Georgia frequently to see if any of them had reached out to her. She checked her phone now and then slid it back into her pocket.
One of the partners in her urology practice, McLean Andersen, sidled up, his round cheeks puffed out as he munched. Waving a red strip of meat, he unleashed a grin. “Want some bacon?”
This had become their ritual: in reference to the Pulp Fiction character who didn’t dig on swine, McLean cheerfully offered her bacon almost every morning, and, in keeping with the character, she refused to accept it. Like Georgia, McLean possessed a near-encyclopedic ability to regurgitate eighties and nineties movie lines, which, surely everyone would agree, was a desirable trait in a urologist. Or in anyone, really.
After belting out her lines (No man, I don’t eat pork) Georgia nodded politely to her carnivorous colleague and plodded over to the coffee machine. Despite the fact that it took foam cups five hundred years to decompose, the clinic insisted on purchasing them, so Georgia kept her own mug squirreled away under the sink. At first she’d used a charming handmade pottery mug, but after weeks of walking into the lounge to find other people drinking from it, she’d eventually switched to one emblazoned with the words DR. BROWN: URINE GOOD HANDS. Now no one touched it.
McLean had drifted over to the end of the counter to speak to an ancient, bristly spine surgeon named Rooney Greeley and a bookish anesthesiologist whose name Georgia couldn’t remember. She joined them, guzzling from URINE GOOD HANDS.
“. . . heard they’re making us all take a urine test,” McLean said. “They don’t need to bother in my case. My wife would castrate me if I was messing with drugs.”
Rooney, who’d been standing with the immobile passivity of a turtle, suddenly stirred, clapping McLean on the back hard enough to cause him to take a step forward. “Huh,” he harrumphed. “Sounds like your wife rules the roost.”
Georgia rolled her eyes at McLean, who, despite his ire about the drug testing, managed a grin in her direction. Rooney was about a thousand years old and still regarded women through a prehistoric filter where you told them the way it was going to be and they said “Yes, dear” and went to iron some socks. He’d only barely managed to adjust to the newfangled idea of female surgeons, and now a bunch of evil administrators were swooping in to force him to pee in a cup. She almost felt sorry for the guy.
McLean diplomatically ignored Rooney’s spousal assessment. “Does anyone know any specifics about the drug theft?”
“The administrators do,” said the anesthesiologist. “The executive committee met about it last night. Claude Reiner, Dan Tolbert from internal medicine”—he gestured across the room—“Judd Sluder from cardiology, Donovan Wright. John Beezon, of course. The hospital’s lawyers were there too.”
Georgia snorted. “So basically a bunch of old white dudes.”
“Don’t start that PC stuff with us, Georgia,” McLean said, winking at her. Next to him, Rooney, breathing heavily, appeared to have fallen asleep standing up. Georgia stared, fascinated, as his nose hairs ruffled with each prodigious exhalation.
The anesthesiologist sidestepped the issue of representation on the committee. “I heard it’s been a mixture of drugs,” he said, “not just opiates. Ketamine, some benzos.”
Rooney roused himself; apparently he was listening with his eyes closed. “Why in God’s name would anyone steal ketamine? It puts you to sleep.”
“Technically, it doesn’t,” said the anesthesiologist. His nose twitched in a rabbity fashion and he absently rubbed it with his sleeve. “It’s a dissociative anesthetic. It detaches you from reality.”
“And why, oh why, would anyone ever want to detach from reality?” said McLean, grinning.
Georgia drifted a few feet away to slurp her coffee. Rooney and McLean and the anesthesiologist, still talking, had moved from the counter to a clump of chairs in front of the television, with several other people joining them. Marianna Aiken, a plastic surgeon, passed behind the couch, pausing and squatting in her block-heeled pumps to bestow an air-kiss on the anesthesiologist’s face, whose name, Georgia now remembered, was Tom Aiken.
Georgia eased toward the group. “. . . Jonah Tsukada’s the one suspected of the medication theft,” a pediatrician, Gretchen Nease, was saying. “So maybe that’s why he was fired.”
“What? That didn’t happen.” Georgia had spoken more loudly than she’d intended; across the room, a couple of the bleary hospitalists turned their heads.
“I’m certain Jonah wouldn’t steal medications,” offered someone. Georgia swung her head around to note Darby Gibbes standing next to the Aikens. If Georgia’s tone had caused everyone to tense, Darby’s had the opposite reaction: Gretchen Nease was smiling at her, and so was Tom Aiken. Even old Rooney Greeley had softened.
She tried again with Gretchen, this time trying to imitate Darby’s soft accent. “Where did you hear that?”
“From o
ne of the PAs. In fact, I’ve heard lots of people talking about it since it was on the news the other day.” People nodded; over the weekend, both the local newspaper and the local TV stations had carried the story, framed as a dispute with a troubled employee. “The first thing they said was that he’d been engaging in questionable medical practices”—Gretchen answered the question before Georgia could get it out—“specifically, I think they were talking about hormone therapy for transgender people.”
“That’s not—”
“I’m just telling you what they said. Or that’s what I think they said; they weren’t talking to me. But they moved on from that right away to the missing drugs.”
“Could they point to anything to indicate he did it?”
“Yes, actually,” Gretchen said. “I heard they found a bottle of fentanyl in a coat pocket hanging outside the procedure room. Around the time Jonah was fired.”
“Whose coat?” Georgia asked, her mouth suddenly dry.
A very slight smile appeared on Gretchen’s face. “Jonah’s,” she said.
Darby placed a hand on Georgia’s arm before she could respond. “This is only speculation, y’all. We shouldn’t repeat it.”
“They were right to kick him out,” said Rooney. “And any other drug users along with him.”
Darby’s voice took on a faint quiver. “People who abuse drugs need treatment, not condemnation.”
“Listen,” Georgia said, “I was in the meeting when Jonah got fired. They fired him because he treats queer people. Not because of medication in a coat pocket, which they didn’t say a thing about and which anyone could have placed there. If they’d been able to prove he did it, they’d have fired him for that when it happened. He didn’t do it.”
She looked around: at the word queer, everyone’s eyes had shifted away. Only McLean and Darby were still looking at her. “Please, you guys. We’ve got to band together to fight this idea that the hospital can dictate who we treat. I’m going to put together a petition and I hope y’all will get behind it.”
The Antidote for Everything Page 17