by Peter Styles
Mark had come into the break room while I was there, and we’d had a conversation that I barely remembered. Then Rosenfeld had called him out, and I’d known what it was for. Rosenfeld was about to tell him what had happened, and Mark would probably believe him. Hell, I almost believed the lie, and I’d been there. I knew I hadn’t ordered morphine, and yet… God, what had happened?
Eventually, I left the hospital. Roberta and Jolene watched me from the nurse’s station as I passed by on my way out. From the confused expressions on their faces, I knew they hadn’t been questioned yet. They were still oblivious to the fact that I was screwed. But it wouldn’t be long. It wouldn’t be long before everyone knew.
By the time I got to my apartment—taking a detour through the liquor store—I had gone over the scenario at least twenty times in my head. Now, as I plopped down on the sofa with Bill tucked under my arm, I swigged Jack Daniels straight from the bottle and went over it again from the point where Mark left the patient’s room.
Roberta had returned from the bathroom with Mr. Terwilliger and reported that he had been unable to pass any urine. Then the nurses hooked him up to the IV and gave him the Phenergan. The ultrasound techs showed up, and they had to wait while Mr. Terwilliger got his Dilaudid. Then Jolene went back to the pharmacy to return the unused vial of morphine while the techs wheeled Terwilliger off to his ultrasound.
I called ahead to surgery and made sure they could get him in immediately. The ultrasound confirmed it was indeed kidney stones, and due to their size and the fact that Mr. Terwilliger hadn’t been able to urinate at all for more than twenty-four hours, he was taken straight to surgery. That was the last I’d heard, since the surgery took place after my shift, and I’d been off work the next day. I’d just assumed everything had gone smoothly. Rosenfeld or Mr. Terwilliger’s own doctor would have handled any follow-up.
No matter how many times I ran through the events in my mind, I couldn’t come up with any logical explanation for the morphine in Terwilliger’s system or the absence of any trace of Dilaudid. So, I drank.
By the time I normally would have just been getting off work, I was lying in the middle of my living room floor with just over half a fifth of liquor clutched in my hand. Bill pushed at my face with his little cat nose, nudging and nudging until I thought he would take the skin off my cheek. He was obviously worried about me.
Hell, I couldn’t blame him. I was worried about me, too.
8
Mark
Several Hours Earlier
Jason never came back from his meeting with Rosenfeld. A couple of hours later, I found him in the break room, sitting at a table in the corner and staring dejectedly into a Styrofoam cup of coffee. A half-eaten donut lay on a napkin beside his cup.
“Hey, where have you been?” I asked. “I’ve been busting my ass, and I haven’t seen you take a single patient. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just peachy.”
As I got closer, I noticed his eyes were red and puffy. He rested his hands on the table and began ripping small tears into the edge of the napkin.
“Have you been crying?” I lowered myself into the chair across from him and tried to catch his gaze, but he was just staring at the napkin as he systematically dismantled it around the forgotten donut.
“A little,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about that poor napkin.”
That made him look up, and I was shocked at what I saw in his eyes. The ocean blue had dimmed to a stormy gray.
“Just give me some time alone, okay? I’m not in the mood to talk right now.”
“Or apparently to take patients,” I said. “Do you need to go home? I’ll cover for you with Rosenfeld.”
Jason huffed. “Don’t act like you don’t know. That’s just insulting.”
“Whoa, hang on a minute. I apologized this morning. No harm, no foul, right? We’re not going to see eye-to-eye on everything, but we make a good team. Please don’t let New Year’s get in the way of that. I made a stupid mistake. You’re right. I let my dick do the thinking, and he’s not known for making sound decisions.”
Jason shook his head and continued to shred the napkin bit by bit. “Either you’re the nicest guy in the world, or you’re a fantastic liar.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m the nicest in the world, but I can be pretty damn sweet when I put my mind to it.”
Jason laughed through his nose, just a stream of air, really, but he didn’t say anything. I was about to press him further when Alex Trevayne came through the door.
Not now, I thought.
Alex smiled when he saw me, but he froze when he realized who was sitting across from me. Alex had no use for Jason Whitham. That was clear in his every action and comment when Jason was around. It made me wonder if he sensed there was something between us.
There’s nothing between you, stupid. Jason thinks you’re a tool, and you spend way too much energy trying to prove him wrong.
“What’s up, Mark?” Alex approached us, looking unusually wary. Maybe he’d noticed Jason’s swollen eyes, or maybe he felt the tension in the room. Whatever it was, it had the overly-confident surgeon uneasy, and I’d never seen that look on him.
“We’re just resting our feet for a minute,” I said.
Jason looked up at Alex, and for a moment I thought I saw something like fear in his eyes. But then he just went back to shredding the napkin. At this point, the donut had been moved to the side, and the napkin was just a pile of fluffy white.
Alex crossed his arms, then uncrossed them and moved to the counter, where he popped a pod into the coffee maker and watched it dispense into a cup. The stream of liquid hitting Styrofoam was too loud in the room, adding to the sense of awkwardness.
“You want a cup?” he asked without turning around. I knew he was talking to me. He never talked to Jason unless it was to try to cut him to the bone.
“No, thanks.” I shook my head even though I knew he couldn’t see me.
Jason cut his eyes up to me and back down again. More shredding, more piling. He was going to run out of pieces soon, and then he would just have a mountain of fibers. I wanted to reach out and stop him. Just cover his hand with mine and tell him it would be okay. Whatever it was, it would be okay. But I didn’t. I’d only followed my urges with Jason one time, and look where it had gotten me. On his shit list.
He didn’t want my sympathy, and he didn’t want my attention. What he wanted was for me to go away.
“My mother is hosting a fundraiser in a couple of weeks,” Alex said. His eyes met mine as he took a sip of coffee and winced. “Damn, that’s hot.” He smacked his lips and then blew into the cup. “The fundraiser is for the war veterans something-or-other. Did you get an invite?”
“I think so,” I said. “Sounds familiar.”
“So, you weren’t planning on going.” Alex blew on his coffee again and eyed me over the rim of his cup.
“Well, I’ve been so busy. Had a lot going on.” I thought of Jason and our aborted sexual encounter, and the fact that he thought I didn’t have his back with Rosenfeld. “Just a lot on my mind. Is it black tie?”
“You know my mother. She’s never planned an event that wasn’t.”
“True. The one she did for the cancer kids last fall was nice.” Small talk. Meaningless small talk when all I wanted to do was find out what was wrong with Jason. But I was better at small talk than real talk. I had a lot more experience with it.
“This one is at the club, but it’s not open to all members. Invitation only.” He sent a side glance in Jason’s direction. Subtle, but not subtle enough. Was he making a point because Jason had managed to get himself a membership at the club?
“Sounds nice,” I lied. “I’ll make an appearance if I can, but I can’t make any promises.”
“We could ride together,” Alex said, and I could tell he was trying hard for nonchalant. “It would be a hell
of a lot more fun with you there. Probably going to be a bunch of old-timers. We could grab a bottle of whiskey on the way and show up with our ties loosened. Show those old men how it’s done. What do you say?”
I shrugged, wishing like hell he wouldn’t do this here, and certainly not right now. Because what he was doing, as covertly as possible, was asking me out on a date. In front of Jason. “We’ll see. It just depends, really.”
“On what?”
I shrugged again. “I can’t commit to anything yet. I’m sure one of the other guys from the club would be glad to ride with you. Benjamin likes to drink. You two would be three sheets to the wind by the time you got there. They’d probably have to call the cops.”
Alex chuckled. “Hey, I’m not looking to get that crazy. Just… you know. Like we used to do.” Alex gulped down the last of his coffee and tossed the cup into the trash. “Think about it, Mark. Really think about it.”
I nodded. “I will. I’ll let you know soon.”
Alex left, but before I could breathe a sigh of relief and get back to grilling Jason, Rosenfeld came in looking frazzled, his gray hair sticking out from his head in thick, greasy hanks. He stared at Jason, who met the stare with an even one of his own.
“Mark,” Rosenfeld said. “Could I see you in my office?”
“Uh… sure. Let me just finish up here, and I’ll be in—”
“Now,” he said, his eyes harder than they usually were when he spoke to me. “I’m very busy today, and I don’t have time to wait around.”
I wanted to ask him what the hell crawled up his ass and died. He was acting weird. In fact, everyone around here was acting weird.
“Fine,” I said, not bothering to disguise my annoyance. Let him reprimand me for insubordination. I was beyond caring at the moment.
“We’ll catch up later, okay?” I tapped a finger on the table in front of Jason’s shell-shocked face.
He nodded, but the gesture didn’t look anything like agreement. He still didn’t want to talk to me, or be around me, apparently. I thought maybe I should ask Rosenfeld to split us up before things got any worse, but I didn’t want to get Jason in trouble, especially after all of the things he’d accused me of. Treating him disrespectfully, throwing him under the bus to make myself look better… I didn’t do those things, did I? I mean, I was ambitious, but I’d never really thought of it that way.
“Mark…” Rosenfeld’s voice snapped my attention back to him, and I reluctantly followed him out of the break room and to his office. Something was wrong; I could tell that much. Even the sounds of the ED down the hall seemed to grow quiet as if waiting to see what Rosenfeld had to say.
“Have a seat, Mark.” He indicated the padded chair that faced his desk and took his own seat.
“What is this about, sir?”
“There’s an inquest.”
“An inquest?” My heart tripped in my chest. Had I done something wrong? Was I going to lose my career now? Was this the end of everything I had worked for?
“Mr. Terwilliger,” Rosenfeld continued. “The patient you and Mark were both working on January first. Kidney stones. Do you remember?”
“Yes.” I didn’t mention that the only reason I remembered was that Jason and I had been arguing. Terwilliger’s case had not been remarkable in any other way.
“Tell me about it,” Rosenfeld prompted. “Tell me everything that happened.”
Oh, shit. This was about the argument. It had to be. Perhaps Jason and I were being labeled Distressed Physicians—or Disruptive Physicians, as most other hospitals called it. It was not a pleasant thing to be labeled as such. We’d all heard the horror stories.
The accusations were usually anonymous, and so the accused could never confront their accusers. The hospital would look into it, and the determination was rarely in the accused physician’s favor. There would be therapy sessions, time off from work, possibly prescription meds, and consequences that would follow us wherever we went. Once a physician had been labeled disruptive, it never went away. And from what I had heard, there was little to nothing you could do to fight the charges. You either went along with the treatment, or you retired. End of story.
So, what on earth was I going to say? Rosenfeld liked me. It was no secret that I was his favorite resident. But could I manage to save myself without incriminating Jason?
“Well, sir, you told me to go and take care of the patient because he was causing a scene. But when I got there, Jason had already officially taken him. The situation was awkward, and we exchanged a few words. Nothing major, just a bit of this is my patient, no he’s mine. That was resolved quickly. I agreed that I should leave Jason with it, but when I left the room, the patient’s wife approached me and told me she thought he was allergic to morphine. I stepped back into the room and relayed the information to Jason, who promptly changed the order to Dilaudid. Then I left the room.”
“Roberta Collins, who was the senior nurse assigned to the patient, charted that Jason ordered morphine, and you counter-ordered Dilaudid.”
I shrugged. “I suppose you could put it that way.”
“I spoke to Roberta a few minutes ago, and she said that you and Jason argued. That he didn’t want to change the order even after you told him the patient was allergic.”
I pulled myself up straighter in my chair. “What is this? Because it sounds like you’re trying to say Jason is—” Don’t say distressed. Don’t say disruptive. Do not use those words. “Insubordinate or something. I can assure you he was fine with making the change. He even agreed that it was the right thing to do in light of the new information. It was just that— Well, Roberta was mistaken. Jason and I were both a little irritable, and we both said things we shouldn’t have, but I assure you the patient’s well-being was our top concern. You know Jason. He would never argue about something like that. Not really.”
“So, what was it, then?”
“He insinuated that I was just trying to make him look bad. It was stupid, and he didn’t really mean it. He changed the order, Dr. Rosenfeld. Roberta thought he was serious, but what he said, it was just—”
“Personal?”
My head jerked up at that. “What?”
“Roberta said you told Jason that he was making it personal. What did you mean by that?”
I swallowed, and my hands were suddenly sweating. What the hell was I supposed to say? That Jason and I had made out at the New Year’s party and it hadn’t ended well? That Jason was pissed at me for trying to fuck him, and I was pissed at him for rejecting me? That Jason was jealous because I was the favorite, and he was terrified of not being hired after our residency was over? I couldn’t tell Rosenfeld any of that.
“Um… Jason and I had— Well, we’d had a bit of a tiff earlier in the day, and he thought I was stepping on his toes. It was nothing, and it was resolved quickly. He didn’t mean what he said, and I regret that Roberta heard it and misunderstood.”
Rosenfeld hummed in assent and steepled his hands in front of his face.
“What is this all about, sir?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“We think Dr. Whitham went back on your counter-order and gave the patient morphine anyway.”
“What? That’s absurd. Jason wouldn’t have done that.”
“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do,” Rosenfeld said. “Mr. Terwilliger died on the operating table, and the autopsy found that the cause of death was anaphylactic shock—a direct result of morphine ingestion.”
“What? That can’t be. We gave him Dilaudid, not morphine.”
“You personally witnessed the patient receiving the medication?”
“Well, no. I left the room before the patient received the meds. But we ordered Dilaudid.”
“You ordered Dilaudid. Dr. Whitham ordered morphine.”
“Fuck. You’ve got this all wrong, Dr. Rosenfeld. Jason would not have gone back on that order. He wouldn’t have endangered a patient because of—”
“Be
cause of what? A personal vendetta? Because he thought you were stepping on his toes and trying to take over his patient? You said yourself that’s how he felt. That he voiced that concern and accused you of lying just to make him look bad.”
“No,” I said.
“There was no Dilaudid in Mr. Terwilliger’s system, Mark. None whatsoever. He was given morphine and morphine only.”
I had nothing to say to that. How the hell had this happened? Could Jason possibly have been petty enough to give a patient a drug he was allergic to just to—what? Assert his dominance? Make a point? That didn’t sound like the Jason I knew. He had been angry, sure. But to purposely endanger a patient…
“The family is suing the hospital, Mark, and they’ll probably win. Someone has to take the blame. Someone—most likely Dr. Whitham—is going down for this. I urge you to think about your actions and comments going forward because I’d hate to see you jeopardize your own career to help out a friend. I know you and Jason are close, but facts are facts. Jason was resistant to your counter-order because you two had been in an argument. Both you and he acknowledged this in front of Roberta Collins, who verified this during questioning. After you left the room, the patient received morphine instead of Dilaudid. Sounds cut and dry to me. Jason Whitham is in big trouble. The career-ending kind of trouble. Please don’t hurt yourself because of some misplaced sense of obligation. Dr. Whitham is a grown man, and he has to take responsibility for his own actions.”
“But—”
“That’s all I need from you, Dr. Johnson. I have other people to question, and I’d better not find out you’ve talked to anyone about this. You’re dismissed.”
I wandered out into the hall, dizzy like I’d just stepped off of a roller coaster. Jesus Christ. Mr. Terwilliger was dead, and Jason’s career was probably finished. It was just too much to wrap my head around. I wanted to do something to help Jason get out of this mess, but a little voice inside my head was whispering horrible things.