“Dr. Grant?” she asked in what he could immediately tell was a dense Boston accent.
“Yes.”
“I’m Gladys. Please fill out this registration form. Bring it in with you when you go. Mr. Micelli’s on the phone right now, but it shouldn’t be too long.”
“I’m in no hurry,” Will replied, in the understatement of the day.
The form, clearly meant for someone who was hoping to sue a doctor, contained only a few lines of demographic questions that Will could answer. He finished it in less than a minute and slipped it into his thin black leather briefcase, which contained copies of the lab reports from the hospital that Susan had obtained for him, as well as of the letters of suspension from Sid Silverman and the Chairman of the Board of Registration in Medicine. In addition, there was the letter from the multipartnered law firm in Worcester that told him he was being sued for malpractice. That letter included paragraphs taken directly from some law boilerplate, describing the legal basis for Kurt Goshtigian’s action against him.
Please consider this letter, together with the attached complaint, incorporated herein, to constitute a written demand for relief on behalf of your former patient Kurt S. Goshtigian. We intend to file a lawsuit following the expiration of fourteen (14) days from the mailing of this demand.
It is our contention that through your negligence and use of mind-altering drugs at the time of Mr. Goshtigian’s cancer surgery, you have caused infection, excess bleeding, extended operating-room time, substitution of principal surgeons, additional surgery, and additional medication. In addition, your negligence has caused unnecessary pain and suffering for Mr. Goshtigian and his family. Please provide your medical malpractice and personal-liability carriers with the enclosed documents and have their attorneys send us notice of representation. The amount of damages to be demanded will depend on Mr. Goshtigian’s survival from your malpractice and his condition at the time of discharge and subsequent to that time, but in no case will it be less than fifty (50) million dollars.
Fifteen minutes passed during which Gladys answered four calls, each, it seemed, from a potential new client. Just as Will was beginning to get restless, the door to Micelli’s office opened and a thick-waisted, broad-shouldered man emerged, who had probably been an athlete at one time, although clearly not anymore. He had dense gray-black hair and olive skin and was wearing a light-blue sport shirt open at the collar, with no jacket. He could have easily played one of Don Vito’s bodyguards in The Godfather, except for his eyes, which Will did not appreciate until the two of them had shaken hands and he had settled down on the hard-backed chair beside Micelli’s desk. They were very dark, with an intriguing forcefulness and intelligence. But in those first moments together, Will saw something else as well-the sadness and ennui of a man who didn’t care about much.
“Drink?” Micelli asked, heading over to a sideboard with three crystal decanters labeled SCOTCH, WHISKEY, and RUM, half a dozen glasses, and a brass ice bucket. “It’s past noon.”
“No thanks, Dr. Micelli.”
“For chrissakes, don’t call me that. Augie’ll do fine; Mr. Micelli if you have a need to be formal, but please, no ‘Doctor.’ ”
He splashed two fingers from the SCOTCH decanter into a Waterford tumbler, added an ice cube, and took a gulp before heading over to his chair. There was a law degree from Suffolk on the wall behind his desk alongside a medical degree from Harvard, but no other certifications or, for that matter, pictures of any kind. One wall was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf filled with carefully aligned sets of legal tomes that appeared as if they had never been read. The window to Will’s left looked out on the side of a building. The wall behind him included the door to the waiting room and a small fireplace, neatly painted, with three logs decoratively and probably permanently arranged. The Law Doctor. With all the advertising, Will had conjured up visions of a massive medico-legal mill with lawyers scurrying from exquisitely appointed offices into mahogany-paneled conference rooms and libraries.
“You look a little dismayed,” Micelli said. “Not what you had expected?”
“No. I. . I mean yes. I mean not exactly. All those ads. .”
“And worth every penny, too. Malpractice cases come in here by the barrel. Just listen to that phone ringing. Most of them are frivolous, ridiculous, or simply nasty and vindictive. But a certain percent of them have some merit, and once in a while the ol’ amputated-the-wrong-leg or plucked-out-the-wrong-kidney mother lode comes hobbling in. But you see, Dr. Grant, I don’t actually do the cases. In fact, I don’t do any cases at all, so I don’t need much help and I don’t need much space.” He drained what remained in his glass and immediately restocked it. “I bring the cases in, evaluate them from a medical standpoint, and either ship them off to one of the firms that can actually do something with them or send them on their way to pursue their complaint if they want, but not with me.”
“And you get a finder’s fee from the firms you refer to?”
“Sometimes a really big one, plus as many dinners at swanky restaurants as I care to accept. They all want to be my friend.”
“Isn’t that fee splitting?”
“By any definition of the term I would say so, yes.”
“And isn’t that illegal?”
“In medicine it’s illegal. You can’t refer a patient to a specialist and then get a kickback from that specialist. In law it’s considered good, sound business.”
Will sighed and stared out the window, as uncertain whether he wanted to continue this session as Micelli probably was. Finally, he shrugged and asked if the lawyer wanted to hear why he had come.
“You go ahead with your story if you want to,” Micelli replied, “but as Gladys told you, the only help I might be is to give you the names of some firms to call. Our motto here is if it takes work, we don’t want it.”
He managed a thin smile, but there was nothing cheerful in the way he said the words. Will may have been a surgeon, but he could recognize depression when he saw it, and probably alcoholism, too. Thank you, Susan Hollister.
“I think I’m going to go,” he said.
“Suit yourself.”
“You know, my partner Susan Hollister said you have had some trouble of your own.”
“Plenty of it.”
“And she said because of that you might have some sympathy with what’s happening to me.”
“I might. That doesn’t mean I can be of any help.”
“Well,” Will said, “exactly what is it that happened to you?”
Micelli eyed him for a moment, then drained his tumbler. It was as if the question was one nobody had ever asked.
“I killed my son,” he said simply.
Will stifled any knee-jerk response.
“Go on,” he said.
“You sure?”
Will nodded.
“Okay. Remember, you asked for it. I was an internist with all the right medical pedigrees, very full of myself,” Micelli said in a near monotone, virtually devoid of the emotion inherent in the terrible account. “My then wife and son and I were in Utah, set to go on a camping trip into some pretty remote country. Ryan had a little fever and a stuffy nose. His mother wanted to cancel the hike. I told her he was nine and she was being overprotective. I even checked him over so she would be reassured. A little red throat was all. So off we went.”
Will could see the shattering end of the story already and wanted to spare both of them any unnecessary anguish.