Bada-BOOM!

by Wally Duff

  The hospital where Linda delivered Jason and I had my recent surgery was to my left and the office building to my right. There was a semi-circular desk staffed by two men who directed the incoming foot traffic. Several people stood in front of the elevators to the doctor’s building.

  I’m so late!

  Instead of waiting for an elevator, I sprinted up the steps to the fourth floor of the six-story building. I was drenched in sweat by the time I blasted through the front door of Warren’s office.

  I ran up to the reception desk. “I have an eleven o’clock appointment to see Dr. Warren,” I panted.

  The elderly lady stared at me but didn’t move. For a few seconds, I thought she might be dead. Her white hair was pulled into a tight bun on top of her head. The skin on her face was translucent and most likely surgically tightened. She had a small dimple in the middle of her chin, which made me wonder if a plastic surgeon had tugged up on her skin so hard that he found a new location for her belly button.

  She glanced at her watch. “You are late,” she declared.

  “So sorry. Chicago traffic.”

  She drummed her short fingernails on the desk. “Which must be planned for.”

  “And then I couldn’t find a parking place,” I continued.

  “Now that is something with which I can sympathize.” She put her right hand on the computer mouse. “Name, please.”

  “Christina Thomas.”

  She moved the mouse around and then glanced up at me. “We have no appointment for Christina Thomas.”

  “You must be wrong. Someone else made the appointment for me. He’s a physician in Omaha. Dr. Edward Wallace is his name.”

  She stared without blinking at her computer screen. I waited. She still didn’t blink.

  Maybe her skin is so tight she can’t shut her eyes.

  “Yes, there is an appointment at eleven made by Dr. Wallace for Christina Edwards.”

  “That’s me.” I began talking faster. “Eddie and I grew up together, and he used my maiden name. It’s Edwards. I’m married now. To Carter Thomas. We have a daughter named Kerry.” I reached into my backpack for my cell phone. “Would you like to see a picture of her?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Guess she doesn’t like kids.

  “Sorry, I tend to talk fast when I’m nervous, but anyway, I’m here and ready to go.”

  “Since you are so tardy for your appointment, I will have to clear this with Doctor. His time is extremely valuable.”

  “I’m sure it is, but please tell him I need LASIK surgery on both eyes, and I’ll pay cash.”

  “Dear, all our patients pay cash. In advance, I might add.”

  “Right. I knew that.”

  She handed me a stack of registration papers and gestured toward a dark brown, lacquered chair to my left.

  “Please sit down and fill out these forms,” she said. “I will see if Doctor can work you in.”

  I grabbed the papers. She watched sweat drip off my forehead and nudged a box of Kleenex toward me.

  “Here are some tissues in case you need to dab any excessive moisture off the furniture.”

  I rejected the box and slid it back toward her. “Tell ‘Doctor’ that Cassandra Johnson is a friend of mine.”

  She still didn’t blink.

  “I am not sure of the relevance of that connection.”

  “Trust me. The name will mean something to him.”

  13

  I scoped out the reception area before I sat down. It was decorated in muted pastel shades with a definite hint of the art deco design that was also in the patient rooms at MidAmerica Hospital. One difference was the paintings on the walls. They appeared to be original oils favoring landscapes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  I sat down in a black leather chair. I had only completed the second line of the intake form when the door to the inner office flew open and Warren rushed out.

  He wore a heavily starched long white lab coat, a button-down white shirt, and a blue and green striped rep tie. He also wore wire rim glasses, but this couldn’t hide that his face appeared thinner and paler than the last time I saw him.

  He held out his hand. “Christina, so happy to meet you.”

  “Please, it’s Tina.”

  He smiled, displaying the only flaw in his patrician face. His two upper front teeth were slightly crooked. “Tina, it is. Please follow me.”

  The receptionist loudly cleared her throat. “Dr. Warren, she has not completed her paperwork, and she has not paid for her visit!”

  “That isn’t necessary for this patient,” he said.

  “But…!” she sputtered.

  He raised his voice. “Enough.”

  He ushered me toward his private office. I still had the unfinished registration papers in my hand. As I glanced back to the waiting room, I was mortified to see that the black leather chair glistened with sweat from my back, butt, and legs. The receptionist should have offered me a beach towel instead of a few crummy tissues.

  His office looked like a library had been transplanted from a castle in England to Chicago. The aroma from leather-bound books filled the room. More original oil paintings hung from the walls, including a large Renoir. There were framed diplomas from the schools he had attended, beginning with Choate and followed by Harvard undergrad and Harvard law School.

  According to the dates on the diplomas, after law school, he matriculated at Yale medical school, which was curious because of his obvious Harvard background. Maybe it was his way of thumbing his nose at the three lawyers in his family, who had probably attended Harvard Law School too. His eye training had been at Northwestern.

  There were framed photographs of the doctor and his wife, Diane, with the two U.S. senators from Illinois. There was a larger photo of the stone-faced couple at a White House dinner. None of the photos had family pictures of them with any children.

  There were two distressed brown leather chairs in front of his spotless desk. In front of the chairs was a large Dale Chihuly pink and blue seaform sitting in the middle of a low, two-tiered, Steuben crystal coffee table.

  I sat in one chair. He sat beside me in the other.

  “May I get you something?” he asked. “Water, perhaps?”

  “That would be nice.”

  He stood up and walked over to a small Viking refrigerator. “Still or sparkling?”

  “Unleaded would be wonderful.”

  He smiled. “Cas says that.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Leaded or unleaded. Sparkling or still. Caffeine or decaf.”

  “That’s probably where I heard it.”

  He opened a Voss bottle and poured the water into a tall crystal glass. “Ice?”

  “No, but thank you for asking.”

  He handed me the glass and sat down. “Do you live near Cas?”

  Whoa.

  The doctor knew where Cas lived. I wasn’t expecting that one. Maybe he’s the first doctor I’d met who makes house calls.

  “Yes, I do, about three blocks away.”

  He sat back in his chair. “I understand that you are interested in LASIK.”

  “I am, but I’m more interested in you.”

  14

  The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. Warren crossed his arms over his slender chest. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “It all began with the Hamlin Park Irregulars,” I said.

  He checked his watch. “I have a busy schedule.”

  “I know you do, but stay with me on this.”

  I proceeded to tell him about my background as an investigative reporter with the Washington Post and my desire to write compelling stories with the help of my close friends, especially Cas. The grim appearance vanished from his face when I mentioned her name. The temperature in the room felt like it went back up.

  “Cas alluded to her group of friends when we had lunch the other day,” he said. “She didn’t indicate t
he group had a name.”

  Lunch?

  She hadn’t mentioned that to any of us.

  “It’s a code name that was given to us during a previous story we worked on together. I am considering writing a story about Dr. Fertig and his breast cancer results.”

  “Will Cas be involved?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t consider doing it without her, Molly, or Linda.”

  He leaned closer. “As you probably know, I am a lawyer and an officer of the court, and as such, I cannot do anything illegal.”

  “I understand. Linda’s an attorney, too, and our computer expert. But she’s not afraid to hack into areas that are questionable.”

  He clapped his hands. “This is exactly what I need.”

  “Need, as long as you don’t know how we obtain the information?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And if you then have lunch or even dinner with Cas, and she happens to bring up what we find, you can discuss it with her.”

  “Since we are old friends, I discuss many things with her.”

  “I’m sure you do, Dr. Warren.”

  “Peter, please.”

  “Peter, it is. If we come up with anything, I’ll have her call you.”

  His face darkened. “That might be a problem.”

  Was his wife keeping tight reins on him, especially when it involved his “old friend” Cas?

  “Okay, got it, but what if a patient calls you?” I asked. “Will that be okay?”

  “Excellent. Let me give you my private cell phone number to facilitate any future communication,” he paused, “between us.”

  He reached into his white coat and pulled out a card. He wrote his cell phone number on it and handed it to me.

  “I think you need to finish filling out your papers before I examine your eyes,” he said.

  “Then I’ll officially be your patient.”

  “Exactly.”

  He paused as we walked toward one of his examination rooms. “And if someone else answers my cell phone, please make it clear that you are a patient.”

  “I wouldn’t think of doing it any other way.”

  15

  Friday afternoon, Linda, Molly, and I sat at a table in Panera, a franchise restaurant that Molly’s husband, Greg Miller, owns in Chicago. The Hamlin Park Irregulars were there to meet with Dr. Warren. Cas had texted me that he needed to chat with us about Fertig.

  We’d already finished our lunch when Cas and Peter came in together. She introduced him to Molly and Linda. The doctor wore a dark blue double-breasted blazer with gold buttons, front-pleated cuffed chino slacks, docksider shoes without socks, and a pink polo golf shirt buttoned at the neck.

  “It takes a real man to wear pink,” I said, as he sat down.

  “It does indeed,” he said, with a thin smile.

  Cas went over and stood in the food line to buy their lunch.

  While she was gone, Peter glanced around the table. “Cas already knows what I am going to discuss, but I think it best if I start from the beginning. Is that agreeable with everyone?”

  Nods from the group.

  He went on to explain about how Fertig claimed to cure every case of breast cancer using a surgical technique he invented.

  “Dr. Fertig has not presented any of his data for scientific scrutiny, either at a meeting or in a journal. I was appointed by our surgical staff to be the chairman of a committee to find out if his cure rates are valid.”

  Cas walked back to the table and sat down with two bowls of garlic tomato soup. Peter drank water. She had iced tea.

  “Like you, I’m a lawyer, but I’m also a math and computer geek,” Linda said. “Aren’t Fertig’s cure rates statistically impossible?”

  “That’s the primary issue here,” he said.

  “It’s easy, guys,” Molly said. “The women don’t have breast cancer. There’s your answer.”

  “Initially, what Molly suggests was our feeling too,” he said. “However, we had the biopsy slides from each patient read by an independent pathologist, and in each case, the results were positive for breast cancer.”

  “Those slides did have cancer cells, but they’re not from the patients he operated on,” I suggested.

  “Which the committee also considered, but this is where we are stymied,” he said. “Fertig will not give us access to the electronic medical records from his office. The only EMRs we have available to us are from the hospital. They were carefully vetted, and the operative notes describing his technique were redacted before we were allowed to see them.”

  “Where does the hospital stand on all this?” Linda asked.

  “An interesting question,” he said. “MidAmerica Hospital is taking in millions of dollars, not only from the large number of patients Fertig treats but also from the donations his satisfied patients have given to the hospital’s charitable foundation.”

  “So it’s not in the hospital’s best interest to know whether he’s a fraud or not,” I said.

  “Sadly, that might be the case,” he said.

  “What can we do to help you find out the real story?” I asked.

  16

  “My committee needs copies of the electronic medical records from Fertig’s office to compare to those given to us by the hospital administrators,” Warren said.

  “That shouldn’t be all that difficult, should it, Linda?” Cas asked.

  “All I need to know is what kind of computer setup Fertig has in his office and what system is used by the hospital staff,” Linda said.

  The aroma of freshly baked chocolate cookies coming from the kitchen made my stomach grumble. I went to the counter to buy some. When I returned to the table with a sack of the hot cookies, Peter was gone.

  “Did the doctor have an emergency?” I asked.

  “No, he’s a lawyer, and he didn’t want to hear how we are going to do this,” Cas said.

  “And how are we going to do it?” I asked.

  “We voted,” Molly said. “You’re going to break into Fertig’s office to find out what kind of computer system he has.”

  “Can’t you do this from home?” I asked Linda.

  “I’ll try, but I don’t think I can.”

  “And you need to look for paper charts,” Cas said.

  “What? Why?”

  “Fertig’s office EMRs might be phony, too,” she said. “If he has paper charts, I need the reports of those mammograms, op notes, path reports, MRIs, CTs, ultrasounds, and lab work. I’ll match up them with results with the EMRs Linda hacks from his office computers and those from the hospital. If all three sets of records match, Fertig is the real deal.”

  “If not, Peter is going to have some interesting meetings with his committee,” I said.

  17

  It was Sunday afternoon. Molly rode with me in my mommy van, a blue Honda Odyssey, as I drove it toward the surface parking lot of the medical building connected to the MidAmerica Hospital. Our husbands took care of our kids.

  On Saturday, Linda had delivered pizza to the OB floor of the MidAmerica Hospital to thank everyone who helped her with Jason’s birth. While there, she’d checked out the hospital computer system. That night, she’d hacked into those computers and copied their version of Fertig’s files.

  We approached the parking lot. I stopped and texted Linda. She was going to corrupt the outside security cameras of the MidAmerica medical complex so they wouldn’t record Molly and me driving into the parking lot and then walking into the atrium between the two medical facilities.

  I drove around until I found a parking stall. It was quicker than last Wednesday when I had my appointment with Warren, because it was Sunday and the doctors’ offices were closed.

  I texted Linda again. This time she shut down the inside security cameras in the lobby and on Fertig’s floor.

  The great distractor walked into the atrium in front of me. This is our nickname for Molly. She’s a slender blond, four inches taller than me. She has a fabulous figure and
was a world-traveling, high-fashion model when she met Greg and gave up the bright lights of the runway and wild social life to marry him and deliver four sons, currently all under the age of five.

  Stealth is never an option for her, and that was part of our plan. If everything went to hell while I was in Fertig’s office, she could attract the attention of any man who wasn’t totally blind, long enough for me to escape.