“I think the anesthesiologist fucked up somehow,” Lynn said. “My intuition tells me this is a ‘people’ problem just like the article suggests, not an idiosyncratic reaction or a technical problem. Mistakes are made by people.”
“That’s a possibility, too. But there are lots of possibilities. There are system mistakes as well as people mistakes. Even computers make mistakes.”
“Well, I can tell you this,” Lynn said with conviction bordering on anger, “we are going to find out what happened, meaning who screwed up, and we are going to see that they are held accountable so it doesn’t happen again.”
“Hold on a second!” Michael said with a wry smile. “What do you mean we, white man?” It was the punch line for the only joke Ronald Metzner had told during medical school that Michael had found truly funny. It was about the Lone Ranger and his Native American sidekick, Tonto, when the two of them found themselves caught in a box canyon, surrounded by a slew of bloodthirsty Indians intent on doing them in. The punch line was Tonto’s response to the Lone Ranger saying: “It looks like we are in deep shit.”
For a second Lynn was silent, hardly in the mood to respond to being reminded of one of Ronald’s stupid jokes. She was disbelieving and crestfallen at Michael’s attitude. “Aren’t you as pissed off about Carl’s condition as I am?” she demanded.
“My point is that in many respects it is a little early in this developing tragedy to go off the deep end, making all sorts of assumptions.”
“Well, I don’t know about you,” Lynn said, “but I can’t sit around on my butt, waiting for Carl to wake up, which I don’t think he is going to do, and let the trail go cold. I’m going to find out what happened, and I’m not going to rest until I do. I owe that to Carl. The way I got to where I am today is by being a ‘doer,’ just like you, I might add.”
“Listen! I can understand your feelings,” Michael said. “You have every right to be pissed. But as your friend and probably your closest friend, I have to try to rein you in. You could be jeopardizing your medical career. No one is going to take kindly to your efforts. Everybody is going to be touchy about this affair. And to make matters worse, let me remind you, violating HIPAA under false pretenses, which we have done, is a class-five felony. You’re going to be going for bad, girl. You know what I’m saying?”
“Are you finished?” Lynn asked, arms akimbo.
“For now,” Michael said. “Let’s get our asses over to the cafeteria. I think your blood sugar must be zero and it’s affecting your good sense.”
For a few minutes, Lynn held her tongue, but in the dorm elevator she was back at it. “I find it extraordinary that we as medical students have been given so little information about hospital mistakes. And errors resulting in death are just the tip of the iceberg. Think of all the patients who go into the hospital for one thing and come out with another, totally different major health problem. That statistic is over a million. That’s obscene.”
“I don’t find it so surprising that such statistics are not ballyhooed,” Michael said. “A lot of hospitals, including this one, are owned by for-profit companies. Even the so-called nonprofit hospitals are money mills in disguise. That means there’s a built-in conflict of interest situation to avoid publicizing such statistics, like so many things in health care. Hospitals don’t want to talk about their shortcomings. We fledgling medical students are still under the delusion that medicine is a calling whereas, if truth be told, it is a business, a big business, and not a fair business from the public’s perspective. Most everybody is mainly out to make a buck.”
“I didn’t realize you were such a fucking cynic,” Lynn said.
“As a black man trying to break into an overwhelmingly white man’s profession, I have had to be a realist!”
“That’s fine, dude, but it’s the kind of attitude that makes change impossible.”
Michael smiled. “You outta control, girl.”
“I’m angry,” Lynn admitted. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry if I sound like a bitch. I’m really having a problem with this and learning what I have learned. I knew there were problems with American health care but not this bad.”
“That’s cool, Blondie, but you have to chill, at least in the short run.”
“I don’t see it that way. I’m going to find out what happened.”
“Let’s get you some vittles. Your cerebrum isn’t working much better than Carl’s, and I’ve got some interesting shit to tell you about.”
14
Tuesday, April 7, 6:12 A.M.
The sun was threatening to rise within the hour as Lynn and Michael exited their dorm building. It was promising to be another gorgeous spring day, with not a cloud in the pastel inverted bowl of the gradually lightening sky. But the fabulous weather was lost on Lynn, as her mind was churning. She had already decided for sure that if Michael wouldn’t help her find out the truth about Carl’s disaster, then she would do it herself. It was an absolute must to keep her demons at bay.
“You know what else I learned last night?” Lynn said. She had to talk louder than normal to compete with the cacophony of the birds announcing the coming dawn.
“I’m afraid to ask,” Michael responded.
“The usual major-complication rate for anesthesia for a healthy patient is one in two hundred thousand surgeries. If we take only your relative, Ashanti Davis, and Carl, that’s two in about five thousand cases, considering that about one hundred surgeries are done here per day. Do you know what kind of multiple that means?”
“I guess a lot,” Michael admitted. Doing math in his head was not one of his strong suits.
“It’s eighty times the normal. Eighty times! And we don’t even know if there weren’t others, which would make it even worse.”
“Speaking of Ashanti,” Michael said, no longer able to keep his news to himself. He could tell Lynn was getting juiced all over again. “I found out she is still hanging out in the Shapiro Institute with normal vitals but a bad diagnosis of multiple myeloma.”
“How the hell did you find out?”
“A strange way,” Michael said. “Yesterday afternoon I ducked out of the ophthalmology lecture, which was shit, by the way. Just a neuro-anatomy review, so you didn’t miss anything. On my way back to my room to look for the JPEG of Ashanti’s anesthesia record, I ended up in the Shapiro Institute.”
Lynn stopped in her tracks, looking at Michael as if he had just told her he had dined with the pope. “How in God’s name did you manage that?”
Michael laughed. “I got into a little one-on-one with a Russian dude who’s only been over here for a couple of months. He’s a computer wonk brought here to fix a glitch or two in the Shapiro computer network. He came out the Shapiro door just as I was eyeballing the place.” Michael pointed to the door in question.
“And you just started a conversation out of the blue?”
“It wasn’t much of one. The dude can’t speak English worth shit. We communicated with a Google translation app on his smartphone. But I knew you might not believe me, so I took a selfie.” Michael got out his phone and pulled up the photo. “He’s been working in the Shapiro network operations center.”
Lynn took the phone and studied the photo. “Which one is the Russian?” she asked.
Michael grabbed his phone back and pocketed it. “Smart-ass!”