3 Executive Sick Days

by Maria E. Schneider

  I crashed hard, smearing a line of blood across the linoleum squares.

  Dr. Fox, clutching his scalpel like a mad scientist, stopped in his tracks. Dr. Staple pulled at his pants because it was probably embarrassing to have everything unzipped and unfastened in public. Crissa stood frozen, her blouse off one shoulder.

  "Geez, Dad, no one ever comes down here and...Don't even start in on me about what people will think. You cheated on Mom how many times?"

  "Dad?" I gasped. For half a second I thought maybe she was talking to Dr. Staple, which made no sense at all given the closet embrace, but then I looked up and stared right into her green eyes.

  The same green eyes were looking at me from Dr. Fox's face.

  "Dad?" I repeated stupidly.

  "It's none of your business anyway!" She seemed to notice the scalpel in "Dad's" hand. In confusion, she looked back at me. "What are you doing down here?"

  The four of us stared at each other, none of us moving. All of us breathed as though it could be our last.

  "I guess this is why you didn't answer the page when Attila was looking for you," I said.

  Crissa tugged her shirt back into place. "Stupid bitch," she muttered and stalked off. "Now you're spying on me."

  I couldn't believe it.

  I heard the distinct sound of a door clicking closed. I prayed it was Radar going for help. At least I hoped he remembered to call for help before he started hacking the records of these people.

  Dr. Fox's eyes flicked backwards when the door clicked. He stood up straight, extracted some sort of cover for the scalpel, put it in his pocket and calmly walked off down the hall towards the morgue and back entrance.

  I looked up to find Dr. Staple staring intently at my arm. I scrambled to my feet and instinctively covered the cut with my hand. Almost as fast as before, I hightailed it to the stairwell. Somehow I couldn't see letting a guy who had been in the middle of what he had been in the middle of touching my arm. Ye-ick.

  I ran all the way to the ER.

  Dr. Taylor looked resigned when he saw me.

  Chapter 35

  Dr. Taylor cleaned my wound without asking anything but medical questions. I thought about Crissa and her blond hair. It could have easily been her in the storage room the night Mark and I broke in. Later, I had seen her and Dr. Fox together, but only at a distance. It never occurred to me that she was his daughter. She didn't have the same last name, but apparently she was married or had been.

  I remembered the photographs in Dr. Staple's office. Crissa had been in the pictures with both Staple and Fox, but I had "dating" on the brain. I had only been half right. Fox with Crissa was a family picture. Staple was likely a friend of the family--and was apparently becoming a closer friend to Crissa. Ugh.

  Through the curtain, I watched Mark barrel into the back section of the ER, ignoring the triage nurse voicing her objections.

  There went my plan to sneak back to the x-ray department, get my coat and leave. Radar must have called him. Radar talked to Mark briefly before Mark came through the curtain where I sat, forlorn. Radar, as was his usual mode of operation, never said boo to me; he just faded away down the corridor.

  Mark's face was glowing. Well, it was actually a deep red underneath his tan. He looked tense.

  "Hi," I mumbled. I wasn't certain, but getting picked up at the hospital by a boyfriend might be worse than asking my brother to take me home.

  Nah. Sean didn't know I was working here. If he found out for certain, he'd have carted me off and locked me away from Brenda until after she had her baby.

  I held out my arm. The stitches were covered with a nice bandage, and it hadn't leaked yet. "It's fine." The statement would have been more impressive had my voice not cracked in the middle.

  He gathered me up and wrapped me in his arms. That sort of thing always made me a bit teary even without painful stitches. Dr. Taylor had used Novocain before he sewed me up, but he must not like me much because it felt as if he hadn't used enough.

  Mark just held me, staring over my head without saying anything. Asking if he was mad would be too stupid. "I can drive," I said.

  He laughed then, softly. "I'm sure you can. Superwoman can do anything." He stroked my hair before squeezing me hard. He finally backed off, scrutinized me head to toe, and then sat on the doctor's stool. "What happened?"

  Having dealt with angry brothers before I knew elaborating now wasn't a good idea. Men didn't react well to accidents, problems and…attacks. In fact, there was never going to be a good time to tell Mark what happened. "I suppose Radar told you that Doctor," I choked on the name, "Dr. Fox had some issues with my part in the investigation?"

  The muscle in his jaw clenched. "Issues? Sedona, the man was trying to kill you!"

  I picked at the edge of the bandage on my arm. "Well, yeah, he mentioned that was his intent."

  "And he already tried to kill Dr. Hernandez." Mark stopped and took a deep breath. Dr. Taylor drew back the curtain and glared in.

  "Will you take her home and chew her out? This is a hospital where we try to present some dignity and calm. People are sick. They are in pain." At the mention of pain, he glanced at my arm. "I'll give you a prescription for a pain killer. You'll need to have those stitches out in ten days."

  Maybe Mark hadn't known for sure there were stitches underneath the bandage, because his jaw twitched. "Thanks Doc," he said.

  Dr. Taylor unbent a little. "It's my job."

  "It would probably help," Mark sighed, "if some of us got different jobs, wouldn't it?"

  Dr. Taylor looked at me and opened his mouth to snap out a reply. Maybe because I was so pathetic, he relented. "I guess if you weren't doing your job, I would end up with more accidents like this one and the head trauma Dr. Hernandez suffered. Eventually people who don't have any consideration for human life take more than one."

  He pulled out a pad and wrote a prescription. "You might not want to volunteer for a few days." He ripped the sheet of and gave it to me. "Or do whatever else it is that you do." He smiled at his own cleverness and departed.

  I hopped gingerly off the table. Mark put his arm around my waist. It felt good. It would have felt better if I hadn't been dizzy.

  He wheeled me out in the wheelchair because the hospital required it.

  Huntington's Jaguar was in the parking lot. That was good. I was glad that Mark didn't have the SUV because it was higher and harder to get into.

  Chapter 36

  It didn't take long for me to recover. After a good night's rest I was almost feeling normal, and barely in time, too. There were a lot of people with questions. My brother was one of them. Whenever he had questions, he came over, made himself at home and started making demands. Of course, not only did he want answers, he wanted food.

  Brenda had kindly brought some food, and even nicer than usual, she hadn't made it herself. She was dressed as a pregnant woman; wearing one of the coverall outfits without the benefit of extra padding, cuffs or capes. She looked great.

  Mark had not left my side since the hospital so when Radar showed up, followed by Huntington and the Hernandez's it looked like we were going to have more people than food.

  "How are you?" I enclosed Dr. Dan in a huge hug. Amy smiled at me from behind him and held up a cake.

  "Payback!" she said cheerfully, squeezing around everyone and taking it to the kitchen table.

  Sean wasn't one to stand on ceremony. He helped himself to the plates and silverware so that she could serve.

  "He's been arrested?" I asked when I saw the triumphant look in Huntington's blue eyes.

  He nodded. "Got him a couple hours ago boarding a plane to Bermuda."

  I smiled and a large knot inside unwound.

  "For the record," he added with a smirk, "he had a bullet wound in one leg and another grazed spot along his ribs."

  I sucked in a breath and tried not to remember the shooting. Mark looked over my head the way he did when he was annoyed with me.

&nbs
p; "Has he confessed?" Brenda asked. "I still can't believe it. He was always so nice."

  Sean gave her a disparaging look. "Criminals don't wear signs, which is why you should be more careful. Sedona never should have involved you in this at all."

  Before Sean could throttle me, Huntington provided a distraction. "He didn't confess, but it doesn't matter. We have enough of a paper trail."

  "Don't we have too much of a paper trail?" The number of hospital bills and x-rays had stumped us from the beginning.

  Huntington shook his head. "Most of the fake billings weren't done to line his pockets, they were done to cover his tracks."

  Dr. Dan agreed. "I thought by talking to Alex--Dr. Fox, I was safe. He couldn't have anything to do with the x-rays, because there was no way he would gain from the phony x-rays. It didn't occur to me that the x-rays were a cover-up for other billing that I couldn't see."

  Radar's eureka finger went in the air. "He only billed for non-existent surgeries after he made sure the patient didn't notice the extra hospital charges. I've traced the records. First, he added the hospital charges and x-rays that made it look as though the patient needed some type of surgery. Then he would wait, usually three or four weeks. If the charges didn't get flagged or changed, he assumed the patient wasn't going to complain. Then he'd send his surgery bill in for whatever the x-rays or scans indicated had to be done."

  Sheepishly, Dan nodded. "Since I complained about the mistake on my sister-in-law's bill, I never received a bill for a surgery. At the beginning of this scheme, he may have been billing right away, but realized that when patients complained, his extra bill was going to be a problem."

  "So he got smarter," I said.

  Radar nodded. "I'm still going through records, but some of his earliest bills don't appear to be tied to hospital charges at all. At some point, he figured out how to enter the codes for different radiologist charges and other doctors. He began adding to the length of stays on patients who weren't admitted by him. That way, the strange charges were spread across different doctors."

  "And insurance didn't flag it because the other tests on record backed up the procedure he was charging for." I shook my head. "Unbelievable."

  Dr. Dan added, "I didn't want to involve Henry--Dr. Johnson--until I had figured out what was going on. But after I woke up in the hospital, I couldn't remember who I talked to. When Huntington stopped by and told me that Dr. Fox went after you with a scalpel, the scheme clicked. As the head surgeon, he would get referrals from other doctors. He not only knew the doctors, but often really did surgery on the patients."

  "But what made you ask him questions in the first place?" I asked.

  Radar made a cutting motion across his neck and then looked terribly guilty when Amy clucked at him.

  Dr. Dan shook his head. "I don't know. My memory isn't crystal clear. The duplicate x-rays in the files you showed me indicated a colonoscopy was needed. Normally it would be done by an internist on an outpatient basis, not a surgeon. Those particular x-rays didn’t point to Dr. Fox at all.”

  “But a surgeon could do surgery to remove polyps, right?”

  “Without better patient notes it would be hard to argue for it, but apparently having x-rays was enough for Dr. Fox to feel comfortable billing for surgery anyway. I may have talked to Dr. Fox because he was the head surgeon and knew all the players. Either way, Dr. Fox must have realized that I was getting too close and attacked me. If he got rid of me, he probably thought the problem would be solved."

  "So when he showed up while you were walking the dogs what happened?" I prompted.

  Dr. Dan shook his head. "That part still eludes me."

  Amy couldn't help herself. She leaned over and gave him a hug. "It's for the best."

  Huntington didn't look like he fully agreed and neither did Sean. Neither had enough manners to keep their mouths shut, but my brother beat Huntington out. "It would be better if you remembered. Then you could testify against Dr. Fox. What did he hit you with?"

  Dan put his hands out, palms up. "No idea. I don't remember a thing about it, not even going out for a walk. I remember the x-rays, and I remember thinking I could talk to several people, one of whom was Dr. Fox. Then I woke up in the hospital."

  I turned to Radar. "What else did you figure it out?"

  "Remember Mrs. Johanna?"

  Hard to forget the one dead body I had to take to the morgue. "What about her?"

  "I followed her billing after those late charges showed up. I asked the nephew to check the bills for his aunt. Kid was more than happy to help."

  My mouth dropped. "You asked the kid? The one who attacked me in the morgue?"

  "Donald," Radar helpfully supplied his name. "He found a bill from Dr. Fox for a tumor extraction. That allowed me to find other records once I had his name."

  I frowned. "I thought we agreed we weren't going to go asking questions and raising suspicions. What if the kid was a diabolical hacker that some doctor had hired to break into the system?"

  Radar smiled. "That could have been the case." He helped himself to another piece of cake. "All along I presumed a hacker was entering charges. Turns out that Dr. Fox spied on his peers until he knew all the passwords. He could enter all kinds of charges for preliminary tests that would lead to surgery. That way, when the insurance companies got bills for his procedures, the medical history looked like it matched."

  "He was taking an awfully big chance," I said.

  Dr. Dan shook his head. "If an audit caught anything, it would be the internists or whichever doctors appeared to be responsible for ordering the x-rays and other early tests. Remember I told you that the records didn't look complete? Any attention on the internist for incomplete records would be an early warning for Dr. Fox. I am pretty sure I didn't talk to either of the internists because after seeing the x-rays you brought me, that's who looked the most guilty."

  Mark added, "But most quick checks showed everything was in the files where it should be. Crissa, his daughter, worked in x-ray at least once a month. Like you, she learned to run the machines. She could collect batches of x-rays that would work for Dr. Fox and stamp them over at The Pavilion. When that was done, she took them down and added them to the patient's files."

  "Why is her last name Sheldon, not Fox?" Brenda wondered.

  Huntington answered. "Sheldon was her mother's maiden name. Dr. Fox divorced his first wife a long time ago when he was still a medical student. The mother got full custody of the very young daughter and made sure Crissa had her name."

  "But she followed in Dad's footsteps anyway." In more ways than one, if her closet episodes were common.

  Huntington pointed at Dr. Dan. "Dr. Fox generally picked patients who weren't young or weren't local. People who weren't local couldn't make a stink in person. They'd most often ignore errors in their bill."

  "Or," Radar said, "he picked dead ones. The dead ones weren't going to complain. Family members weren't focused on which procedures really happened." He stood up and glanced at his watch. "Thanks for the cake. I've got a few more things to track down." He grinned at Huntington.

  "We need to get going as well," Amy announced. "I don't want Dan to overdo it. He's still recovering and needs his rest."

  Her husband started to protest, but he was going to look perpetually tired until his hair had a chance to grow back over his wound. With such an obvious injury, he looked like he needed rest, even if he didn't.

  I accompanied them to the door. When I returned to the dining area, Sean and Brenda were arguing in a loud whisper about whether it was appropriate to stay for dinner, even though there wasn't any dinner to be had. I gave Sean my best warning look, which he took to heart with a loud sigh.

  The door was barely shut behind them when the doorbell rang. I assumed one of them had forgotten something, but it was a courier.

  The courier barely waited for my signature. I finished signing and ripped the tab off. There was only a single sheet of paper within, which I read qui
ckly. Mark and Huntington stared at me, waiting.

  "Wow," I exclaimed. "I've been fired from my volunteer job. I wonder how often that happens?"

  I shouldn't have asked.

  Mark couldn't quite conceal his grin. Huntington didn't even try.

  "It all works out," Huntington announced happily. "You'll be available when I need your skills again."

  "Huntington," I warned, "don't you think it would be a better idea if I got a real job?"

  Mark solemnly nodded his agreement with my assessment.

  Huntington shrugged. "How can you possibly go back to a single income?"

  I bristled. "Have you noticed that this last job only had one income? And I never know how long the jobs will last. I have to save as much money as possible, because I never know what is going to happen next."

  "Plus you get fired a lot," he added quite unnecessarily. "It's probably a good thing you save your money."

  "Acetel will still take me back." I said it with more self-confidence than I really felt. "It wasn't the best pay, but it would suffice until I found something else."

  Mark winced.

  Huntington grinned like a cat.

  "What?" I demanded.

  "They filed for bankruptcy last week," Huntington explained. "Investors pulled out of the stock after the scandal came out. When customers heard about it, several decided to stop using Acetel's services. Don't you read the papers?"

  I glared at Huntington, but he was unperturbed. "You might not have noticed, but I was a little preoccupied." We all knew that I could still work at Strandfrost, but only until they found out I wasn't pregnant. I sighed. Huntington's grin did not fade.

  "This time, it's a perfectly safe case," he said. "I don't even need Mark's help. It'll be easy."

  Ohboy. With Huntington, it was never that safe--or easy.

  Mark closed his eyes and reached for my hand. I held on tight. Huntington might not need Mark, but new case or not, I did.