Virginia kept staring at Jack as she listened. He could hear Cherine talking but couldn’t make out her words. Virginia nodded few times as she listened and then finally said, “Okay, fine! I understand. I’ll tell him. Bye!” Then to Jack she said, “She is here on duty and can probably manage to talk with you briefly provided you go right over this minute.”
“Okay, terrific,” he said. He was mildly surprised and pleased. Virginia’s sign-off had suggested otherwise.
“But here’s the story,” she said. “She’s off duty at seven and is about to give report for the shift change. So time is of the essence.”
“Got it,” Jack said. He stood up and gave the desk chair a shove back where he’d gotten it. “Out of curiosity, is there a way to get over to the main hospital building without having to go through the main lobby to get to the elevators? I’d rather not risk running into Cheveau, Alinsky, or Schechter if at all possible.”
“Yes, there is,” Virginia said. “Go up to the sixth floor here. There’s a pedestrian bridge. Ortho is on the eighth floor in the Anderson Building.”
“Oh, perfect,” he said. “And thank you again for your time.”
“I hope she’s helpful,” she said. She stood up as well.
“So do I,” Jack said. He got out his mask, put it on, and waved back at Virginia as he hustled out into the main part of the Internal Medicine Clinic.
Chapter 17
Tuesday, December 7, 5:42 p.m.
When Jack got up to the sixth floor of the Kaufman Outpatient Building, he understood why there was a pedestrian bridge over to the main hospital. The entire sixth floor was composed of various procedure rooms for such things as colonoscopies and cardioversions, which could be done as inpatient or outpatient. Once in the Anderson Building, he found it simple to locate the main elevators, and within minutes he walked out onto the ortho floor.
As it was now nearing 6:00, the orthopedic floor was busier than he expected, since he’d seen a sign in the hospital’s lobby limiting visitation due to the Covid pandemic. Besides visitors, there were also more patients being ambulated after joint replacements than he anticipated since he was aware that elective surgery was still not being encouraged for the same reason. To add to the chaos, Food Service was in the process of delivering the evening meal. All in all, it was a bit more pandemonium than Jack would have liked to see, including at the busy central desk where there were upward of a dozen doctors, nurses, and nurses’ aides busily working. From experience, he knew it was the charge nurse who was tasked to monitor it all and keep it all under control. He feared that Cherine Gardener wouldn’t be able to manage much of a conversation.
Making sure Sue’s ID photo was pointing toward himself to avoid any questions, Jack approached the nearest person at the central desk. He guessed he was a resident as he was dressed in scrubs, including a surgical cap with the usual stethoscope casually slung around his neck. Jack smiled to himself. As he had gotten older, hospital residents seemed to get younger. The youthful man was busy typing into a monitor, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him.
“Excuse me,” Jack said to get the man’s attention. “Can you point out Cherine Gardener?”
Wordlessly the man gestured toward the last person in the mix that Jack would have chosen to be her. From Virginia’s description of her character, he’d envisioned someone in Sue Passero’s league, meaning athletic, muscular, and commanding. Instead, the individual the man had pointed at was a mere slip of a woman, whom Jack estimated weighed a hundred pounds give or take five. The only similarity to Sue was her short, spiky hairstyle that Jack guessed needed very little attention, which was how Sue had explained her preference for the look. Cherine had a lighter complexion than Sue, at least from what Jack could see visible above her mask. She was obviously a charge nurse who was hands-on. As he got closer, he could see she had a sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of her nose and on her temples.
After he waited for her to finish a phone call, he introduced himself. She responded by loudly calling out to one of her nursing colleagues, explaining she was going to be in the chart room for a minute or two. She then waved for Jack to follow her.
The chart room was behind the central desk next to the supply room, and when the door closed behind them, a welcome hush ensued. Although still called the chart room, there were no longer any hospital charts. The MMH, like all modern hospitals, was fully computerized, so the room’s name should have been updated to the computer room or data entry room. But, like at many hospitals, the staff persisted in calling it the chart room out of entrenched habit. Inside, three people were typing into monitors, two men and one woman. The only sounds were the clicks from the keyboards, although muffled remnants of the tumult outside at the central desk and hallway could be heard through the closed door. Jack guessed the three were attending surgeons as they were dressed in long white doctor’s coats over civilian dress like himself.
“Sorry about the chaos out there,” Cherine said as she pointed to a desk chair for him and took one herself a distance away from the other occupants. “It’s always like this at this time of day.”
“I remember it from when I was in clinical medicine many moons ago,” Jack said.
“How can I help you?” Cherine asked, ignoring Jack’s comment. “As I mentioned to Virginia, this has to be very short since I’m pressed for time with a full house and report starting in minutes.”
As quickly as he could, he reiterated who he was and why he was there. He told her that toxicology and histology results were still pending, but meanwhile he felt the need to investigate a bit more the circumstances around Sue’s untimely passing.
“I’m not sure I understand,” Cherine said. She knitted her brows and stared back at Jack intently. “What do you mean by ‘the circumstances around her death’? I was told she had a heart attack in her car in the garage.”
“I’m not completely sure what I mean myself,” Jack admitted, sensing the woman’s impatience, giving credence to Virginia’s description of her as a no-nonsense, serious person. “I suppose I mean her mindset and mood. I understand from Virginia that Dr. Passero was frustrated in her dealings with certain members of the administration about committee assignments and responsibilities. Is there any possibility from your vantage point that she could have been seriously depressed?”
Cherine gave a short, mirthless laugh. “You are right about her frustration, but believe me, she wasn’t depressed. Not in the slightest! If anything, she was becoming progressively determined over these last few weeks, and she didn’t hide it.”
“Are you talking about her wanting to become a member of the Mortality and Morbidity Task Force? Virginia talked about that being important to her.”
“Absolutely! There’s no doubt in the slightest,” Cherine said. “Dr. Passero was gearing up to make a big stink about being denied an appointment to the task force. She fully intended to force the issue, which is why her death is such an organizational tragedy as well as a personal one. She saw getting on the task force as the only way to initiate much-needed reform, because the task force essentially dictates what the M and M Committee does. The task force picks which cases, out of all the deaths and episodes of adverse outcomes, will be discussed at the committee hearings and which cases will be ignored. And I was going to help her. I’ve only been a member of the M and M Committee for a bit more than six months, but it’s clear to me, as it had been to Dr. Passero for several years, that the committee is hardly equipped to find out which hospital deaths and which adverse patient outcomes could have been prevented by instituting systemic reforms. That’s what the committee was intended to do. Instead, it’s devolved to be a kind of sham, just going through the motions to fulfill the Joint Commission requirements to maintain hospital accreditation.”