Bada-BOOM!

by Wally Duff

  6

  I heard a click on her keyboard. My email dinged. I opened it, and my computer screen lit up.

  “I’ve already read most of this about his medical missions and his results,” I said, when I finished speed-reading through the articles. “These stories have already been written.”

  “But remember when Cas mentioned Fertig has never published how he does his surgical technique or any of his results?”

  “I do. So what?”

  “When an article is published in one of our legal journals, it is first vetted by a committee of scholarly lawyers to validate the results and conclusions before they are published.”

  “I get that. It’s to keep fake information out of the literature.”

  “Exactly. It’s the same for medical publications. Their peer reviews are even more rigorous than ours.”

  “Again, so what?”

  “Fertig has gone on record declaring that until other surgeons can master his operative technique, none of them are qualified to review and assess his statistics.”

  “Huh?”

  “And here’s one more thing. Fertig has never taken the boards in surgery.”

  “I remember when my friend Dr. Eddie Wallace took his after he finished his ENT residency. He said if he didn’t pass, it would be almost impossible to get on a hospital staff.”

  “Obviously, Fertig is on the staff at MidAmerica Hospital. He’s the hospital’s first — and, to date, only — chief of surgery.”

  “That’s weird. Why didn’t he take the boards and be done with it?”

  “He was asked that question on one of the TV talk shows. He said he had tried to teach his new technique to many other surgeons, but so far, none of them have had the manual dexterity necessary to master his operation, and thus, no surgeon was qualified to test him for the boards.”

  “He doesn’t publish any medical papers or give scientific presentations. No other surgeon can master his surgical procedure. No surgeon’s breast cancer cure rates equal his. He hasn’t taken the boards, because no surgeon is qualified to test him.”

  “That sums it up.”

  “Maybe the focus of the story should be about his enormous ego.”

  “If Warren proves his results are phony, that might be hard for Fertig to take.”

  No wonder he gave Warren a look that could kill…

  “I wonder, what would Fertig do to prevent that from coming out?” I asked.

  “That is a scary question.”

  7

  Monday afternoon, Kerry took a nap in her room on our third floor. I was in the lower-level computer room. The Nanit app was on so I could monitor my daughter’s sleep on my cell phone.

  Before I went any further, I needed to know more about the other players. Linda and I had begun investigating Fertig. Now it was Dr. Peter Warren’s turn.

  It didn’t take long. He was born into an old money Chicago family. His father and grandfather were lawyers. After law school, it was announced that he was going to join the family law practice like his older brother, William Junior.

  But Peter didn’t. He went to medical school instead.

  A rebel?

  I wondered about his relationship with Cas. If he was a maverick, maybe he dated her because of the difference in their cultures.

  But then why did he break up with her?

  A possible answer flashed on the screen. Diane Warren, his blond wife, appeared to be almost as tall as her husband. She was slender with minimal muscle tone. Her totally white skin was the polar opposite of Cas’s.

  Diane and Peter were pictured together in numerous stories detailing the parties and opening events attended by the affluent members of Chicago’s Gold Coast society. He was always next to her, but he never smiled.

  But then, neither did she.

  There was more information about Peter’s society flings than what he did in medicine or with the law. It was amazing the poor guy had time to sleep.

  I saw another picture of the perfect couple, this one at an opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art on East Chicago Avenue. They stood erect, staring at the camera with the stony faces of two people who looked like they would rather be having a root canal.

  They have a son and a daughter who attend tony private schools back east. Their home on Lake Shore Drive is close to where Linda’s wealthy parents live.

  Big money.

  One story detailed that Diane’s family had more money than Peter’s. Maybe their marriage was more of a financial merger than a romantic union.

  Hmm?

  Peter and Diane? Peter and Cas? Diane and Cas? My reporter’s bell dinged in my head.

  What’s going on here?

  I needed an eye exam.

  8

  I found Warren’s office phone number online and called for an appointment. “Hi, my name is Tina Thomas. I would like to make an appointment with Dr. Warren.”

  “Have you been seen by Doctor before?” a female asked. She had a trace of a Bostonian accent.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Who is the referring physician?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  Silence.

  “Is that a problem?” I asked.

  “Doctor is very busy, and we rarely take new patients who are not referred by another physician.”

  “I do have insurance, if that’s the problem.”

  “I’m sure you do, but Doctor does not accept insurance.”

  “Then how does ‘Doctor’ get paid?”

  “Each patient is responsible for his, or her, own bill.” She paused. “Of course, you can file your own insurance claim if you wish.”

  Which I tried to do once after a visit to the ER for a broken finger suffered in a coed softball game. I’m a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Indiana University, but I couldn’t decipher the insurance forms. I finally gave up and paid the bill with my own money.

  “And Doctor would prefer that you pay in advance, unless you are known to us,” she continued.

  “Is there any other option?”

  “None.”

  His way or the highway.

  “I guess I’m good with that.”

  “Fine. What seems to be your problem?”

  I thought this tedious conversation needed some humor. “I need to get my eyes checked. When I shoot my Glock 19 handgun, I have trouble seeing the center of the target.”

  The Glock wasn’t a joke. I do have one, which I kept when a neighbor left it on my kitchen floor after he “accidentally” died there. And I learned to shoot, first, hunting with my dad and brother in Nebraska and, later, shooting on the range with a Chicago cop who is now a detective.

  There was a long pause. “A routine examination?”

  “Exactly.”

  She paused again. “Oh, my.”

  “You do routine exams, don’t you?”

  “Of course we do. Doctor can see you on April fourth at ten a.m.”

  “April fourth?”

  “Yes, of next year. You must understand, Doctor is quite busy.”

  This is ridiculous.

  “Thanks for your time, but I’ll pass on the eye exam.”

  9

  The whole conversation with the lady was frustrating. Was there a story to investigate? To figure it out, I needed to see Dr. Warren sooner than April of next year.

  I called for help.

  “May I speak to Dr. Wallace, please? It’s Tina Thomas.”

  My older brother, Jimmy, and I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, with Eddie Wallace. Other than my brother and my husband, Eddie is my closest male friend.

  There was a child screaming in the background, and I was put on hold. When Eddie picked up, the racket was gone, exchanged for opera music playing softly in the background.

  “Sounds like you have an unhappy patient,” I said.

  “There’s a reason why in some animal species the adults eat their young,” Eddie responded. “But hey, it helps pay the alimony.”

  Eddie would b
e the perfect husband except for one tiny flaw; he has trouble keeping his zipper up. He is on his second marriage, which now seems to be heading toward a divorce.

  “But only one check?”

  “Yeah, about that. Suzy went to Palm Springs to get her hair done and never came home.”

  “So it’s over?”

  “It is, and I can’t blame her. I’m the idiot who fooled around. I thought we could work it out, until we went to court. She told the judge the only thing she was going to miss in our marriage was the free Botox.”

  Brutal.

  “But I no longer pay either alimony by check,” he continued. “I use my United Airlines credit card so I get frequent flyer miles.”

  Only he would figure out a way to make the two divorces give him something positive.

  “Okay, enough of this. What’s the deal with eye doctors?”

  “The deal?”

  I explained what happened to me.

  “It’s all about money,” he said, after I finished.

  “Not saving my vision?”

  “No way. They don’t get paid squat for a routine eye exam, or even for cataract surgery. They make a killing on procedures like LASIK.”

  “Are you telling me that if I had called in for an appointment for LASIK surgery, I would’ve gotten in immediately?”

  “I’ll prove it to you. What’s the doctor’s name and phone number?”

  10

  Eddie called back three minutes later. “You have an appointment Wednesday at eleven,” he said.

  “You have to be kidding me,” I said.

  “I told the receptionist you need a consult for bilateral LASIK surgery and your name is Christina Edwards.” He paused. “Warren is performing LASIK surgery all day tomorrow, which is why he couldn’t see you then. And you’ll need to pay cash, no insurance accepted.”

  “Yeah, she told me that. If you have time, I have one more question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Have you heard of a surgeon who cures all of his breast cancer patients with a new operation?”

  “No, I haven’t, but I had two years of general surgery before I went into ENT, and trust me, none of the operations we did cured all of those patients. What’s the story?”

  I told him about Fertig.

  “Do you go to meetings to learn new surgical techniques?” I asked, when I finished.

  “All the time,” he said. “Then I go to cadaver courses and follow that by scrubbing in with doctors while they are doing the operation.”

  “Have you ever seen a technique you couldn’t do?”

  “Nope. There are some I don’t think fit into my style of practice, so I don’t use them. Or the equipment is too expensive for the hospital to buy to do only one or two cases a year.”

  “But according to what I found out, Fertig is the only surgeon alive who can do this supposedly revolutionary surgery.”

  “It could be true, but if it is, it’s rare.”

  “Have you ever seen it?”

  “Not in ENT, no.”

  “What about breast cancer surgery?”

  “I don’t keep up on their literature, so I’ve never read about it. But I’ll bet a group of breast cancer surgeons in Chicago don’t like him very much.”

  “Because they’re jealous that he can do an operation they can’t?”

  “It’s not only that.”

  “What else?”

  “Money.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “The ugly truth about doctors it that we’re super competitive with each other when it comes to the number of patients we see and the money we make from seeing them or doing surgery.” He paused. “Especially with surgery. That’s where the big dollars are.”

  11

  “Why are you guys like that?” I asked.

  “It starts with our pre-med college studies,” Eddie said. “We compete for the highest grades or we have no chance to get into medical school.”

  “Even your friends?”

  “Yep. When it comes to grades, especially in organic chemistry, you have no friends, and it gets worse in med school. The higher grades you make there, the better chance you have to get into a topflight residency program.”

  “That would tend to warp your personality a little.”

  “A little? How about a lot? The worst part is that it doesn’t end there. During your residency, the academic competition is even more intense with your fellow residents.”

  “Wow.”

  “During rounds with Dr. Proud, the head of our department, we always tried to one-up each other by quoting articles from obscure medical journals. My favorite was the South African Medical Journal.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “To make the other residents look like they weren’t keeping up on their reading. And here’s the best part: since none of the other residents, or the chief, had read the article, they couldn’t prove I was lying.”

  “Were you?”

  “Absolutely, and it would drive the other residents crazy trying to find the fictitious article.”

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “That was nothing compared to the operations we did. Try this: all good surgeons are fast, but not all fast surgeons are good. In our department, a fellow resident would want to know how fast I did an operation, and then he would try to beat that time. And if a resident had a complication — or worse, made a mistake — the other residents would gloat and snicker about it behind his back.”

  “I never knew any of this.”

  “And doctors don’t want you to, because it never stops. If I play golf with another ENT doctor, I try to kick his butt. I want to own a bigger house than he does and drive a more expensive car, proving I make more money than he does.” He paused. “And the ENT doctors here loved it when they found out I was going through a second divorce.”

  “I don’t understand that. Your marriage woes are your own private business.”

  “But, in their eyes, it means I’m a failure and they aren’t. They win, and I lose.”

  “What about their wives?”

  “They’re more competitive. They couldn’t stand it when one of my wives wore an expensive designer dress or shoes. They’ve enjoyed gossiping about it every time they heard I was getting divorced.”

  “Do you think Fertig is being investigated because he’s so successful?”

  “If he has invented a new procedure that no other surgeon can do, he is raking in the money. If there are doctors on the committee who are pissed off about that, he won’t have anyone in his corner.” He paused. “But what’s Fertig have to do with Warren?”

  “Warren is heading a committee to investigate Fertig’s results.”

  “That’s a little weird.”

  “Why?”

  “How much can an eye doctor without general surgery training know about any breast cancer surgical technique, especially a new one?”

  “Warren’s a lawyer, and he’s on committees like this all the time.”

  “That makes sense but only if there’s a liability problem from Fertig cheating on his results to validate his surgical procedure. Do you think there might be a story here for you?”

  “Only if the eye doctor and his committee can prove Fertig’s results are false.”

  “Now I know why you need an eye exam.”

  12

  On Wednesday morning, I took Kerry to Alicia Sanchez’s house, which is across the street from our home. Alicia is my go-to babysitter, and she or Liv — one of her daughters, who sat with Kerry when Carter picked me up at the hospital — are almost always happy and available to help me out. It doesn’t hurt that we pay them well.

  Warren’s building is attached to the MidAmerica Hospital by a common entrance with a two-story atrium. When I arrived, the surface parking lot for both structures was packed with patients’ vehicles. I finally found a spot and sprinted into the atrium.