It was ten in the morning when the phone rang for the first time that day. After waking at six, Will had scrambled a trio of eggs and served them to himself with a toasted bagel and some OJ. He had rinsed what few dishes there were, put them in the washer, and failed on his third attempt to get into a Michael Crichton novel, usually a sure thing for him. Finally, he had taken a tube of caulk to the bathroom off the kitchen to tack down a small block of tiles that had been loose for at least a year. It was a good bet that Michelangelo didn’t work more meticulously on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Nowhere to go. Nothing to do.
Over the past six days, caller ID and the bathroom window overlooking the parking lot and front stoop had become his staunchest allies. Initially, the reporters had been merciless in their attempts to get at him. Only in the past two days had their calls and visits begun to die away. Now, expecting yet another BLOCKED on the display, he checked the ID on the phone in the kitchen. AUGUST MICELLI, 617-483-5300. Will snatched up the receiver.
“This is Dr. Grant.”
“Dr. Grant, this is Gladys from Attorney Micelli’s office speaking. I know your appointment isn’t for three more weeks, and this is short notice, but we’ve had a cancellation for noon today, and Mr. Micelli thought you might want to come in.”
“I can be there,” Will said, hearing a small jet of enthusiasm in his voice for the first time since that moment in the OR.
“However,” the woman added, “he asked me to tell you not to get your hopes up and to remind you that he really just takes the cases of people suing doctors, not the doctors who are being sued.”
“I understand.”
“You know where the office is?”
“Park Street in Boston. Right down the street from the State House.”
“We’ll see you at noon.”
The recommendation to try August Micelli, MD, LLD, had come from Susan Hollister, who did not know the man well but did know that his intelligence was respected by physicians, even though the nature of his law practice was reviled. It was while Will was turning his practice over to her that Susan had suggested he might call the man, who was widely advertised as “the Law Doctor.” The patients Susan inherited from Will included Grace Peng Davis, on whom she had operated the following day, and several others whose surgery needed doing.
After being turned down for legal support by his malpractice carrier as expected, Will had tried two attorneys-one local and one in Boston. Emotionally and intellectually, he failed to connect with either, and the retainers and fees each demanded would have virtually broken him even before the game of saving his professional, personal, and financial lives began. Visions of running out of money and lawyer at the same time had sent him trudging back to the sanctuary of his condo. When he returned from the disappointing session with the second of the attorneys, there was a letter from a third firm waiting in his mailbox. However, rather than offering him representation at an exorbitant fee, this attorney was announcing that he and his firm had been retained by Kurt Goshtigian and his family to institute a malpractice claim against him. After two extra trips to the OR, it appeared that the man was going to make it, but his debility would be profound, if not permanent.
Will was dressing for the trip into Boston when the front doorbell sounded. He scurried over to the bathroom-window observation post. Beneath him, a husky black man in a business suit stood motionless by the front door. Not a reporter, Will guessed; the man was simply too well dressed. He discarded salesman as a possibility for the same reason and decided to open the window.
“Yes?” he called down.
The man squinted upward at him.
“Dr. Willard Grant?”
“Yes.”
“My name’s Sam Rogers. I’m an investigator with the Board of Registration in Medicine. May I come in for just a moment, please? I have a letter I need to hand-deliver to you.”
Will knew even before he opened the door what the official-looking envelope contained. Still, Rogers explained it to him.
“This is a summary suspension of your privilege to practice medicine in this state of Massachusetts. It has been issued because of the suspension recently ordered by Fredrickston Hospital. It is effective immediately and may be appealed through channels established by the board. Do you have any questions?”
Without bothering to read the letter, Will tossed it onto a pile of junk mail and unopened bills on the coffee table. Somewhere in the mound of mail was another letter-one he had read. It was from Tom Lemm, unofficially requesting that he remove himself from his very important and sensitive position with the Hippocrates Society until his pending matter with the hospital could be satisfactorily resolved.
“Are you here to investigate what was done to me?” Will asked Rogers.
“No, sir. I may well be investigating your case sometime in the future, but for the moment my assignment is to deliver this letter and explain its contents.”
“Thanks,” Will said with no emotion whatsoever. “As far as I’m concerned you’ve done your job and done it well.”
“In that case,” Rogers said, “if you wouldn’t mind signing off on that right here. .”
Will would have been the first to admit that he had never been on anyone’s best-drivers list. His reflexes were sharp, and that certainly helped, but even under the best of circumstances his thoughts were constantly wandering, as was, all too often, his car. Although he had never been involved in anything more destructive than a minor fender bender, he sometimes wondered if there were accidents he would never know about for which he had been responsible.
This morning, traffic was light, and the drive into Boston was less grueling and perilous than usual. Susan had told Will little of Augie Micelli except that he had once been on some sort of board or community-service organization with her and that he had been treated poorly by the Board of Registration in Medicine and the medical community. Micelli’s response to both had been to get a law degree and subsequent notoriety as the Law Doctor-highly promoted in the press and on billboards as the place to go for justice against physicians responsible for bad outcomes. It was Susan’s hope that the similarities in the ways Micelli and Will had been treated might lead him to agree to get involved in Will’s case. It was a long shot, but in this mounting gale, even the smallest landing field would be welcome.
As Will turned off the Mass Pike and headed into the Back Bay, he found himself thinking of Patty Moriarity. Since her visit to Wolf Hollow Drive, she had not been among the hordes who had tried to reach him by phone or through simply showing up on his doorstep. He assumed the wiretap on his phone was in place and still functioning, but he had no way of knowing if her position as an investigator on the case was surviving.
He gave passing thought to reaching out to her, but nothing she had said or done during her odd visit had encouraged such familiarity, and her abrupt departure had accomplished just the opposite. He expected to reconnect with her if he ever received another call from the murderer, but so far nothing. Maybe he simply wasn’t good enough for the serial killer anymore.
He left the Jeep in a lot off Tremont that was more expensive than some surgical procedures and walked along the Boston Common to Park. Although the street itself was elegant, the Law Doctor’s office was not. Located on the third-floor alley side of a four-story brownstone, it consisted of a small, eclectically furnished waiting room, off of which was an entrance from the dimly lit hallway and one other door, presumably to Micelli’s inner sanctum. The oriental carpet was threadbare in spots, and the two framed prints on the wall-a farm scene perhaps by one of the Dutch masters, and a courtroom depiction that might have been offered as a premium for subscribing to a law magazine-had little to do with each other. A bottle-blond woman in her late forties peered up from behind her granny glasses as he entered, and smiled kindly.