“Good evening, Doctor.”
Jill Leary, a trench coat belted about her trim waist, came up from behind and touched him on the arm.
“Hey, welcome back,” Will said. “I really appreciate your doing this.”
“No problem. I hope we find something, but as you said in my office, there will be some significance if we find nothing at all. I’ve tried, but I still haven’t been able to poke any holes in your theory, except to say that in hospitals dumb things happen all the time, and yours wouldn’t be the first clothing bag that was inadvertently thrown out.”
Will sighed, momentarily and inexplicably consumed by an immense fatigue.
“I suspect we’ll be left with that possibility,” he said.
Leary’s look was understanding. Guilty or not, it said, she appreciated that he had been through a great deal. Will immediately felt his composure begin to regroup. Kindness and compassion cost so little.
“Let’s wait inside for the others,” she said finally. “I’m sure Sid wouldn’t mind.”
Will followed her into the hospital. A few minutes later, Augie Micelli arrived, wearing a rumpled navy blazer, gray slacks, a red power tie, and a dominating cologne. He looked like a premature retiree in Florida or Arizona, but he seemed excited and, best of all, totally sober. His eyes were bright and keen and showed none of the ennui Will had noted when they first met. Micelli was accompanied by a nattily dressed black man carrying a briefcase, whom he introduced as Gil Murray, an assistant DA from Middlesex. Behind Murray was Robert McGowen, a young uniformed Fredrickston policeman whom Will had worked with a number of times in the ER. The Law Doctor guided them over to a deserted corner of the lobby.
“So,” he said, clasping his hands together enthusiastically, “this mighty task force has been assembled to answer the question of what became of Will Grant’s clothing bag. Ms. Leary, thank you for sacrificing your evening on our behalf.”
“No problem.”
“Dr. Grant and I have each spent a good deal of time on the clinical side of hospitals, and so are well aware of the chaos and confusion that can accompany a medical emergency such as his. Officer McGowen assures me that the many cases he has helped haul to the ER here have taught him the same thing.
“Given that a massive amount of the drug fentanyl was in Dr. Grant’s body that day, and given that Dr. Grant is adamant in his denial of having taken any, we are forced either to brush him off as a loser and a liar or come up with another explanation. I have chosen to discard the loser-liar alternative and instead, after considering and rejecting many possible scenarios, have chosen to focus on his OR shoes, which, at least as of this moment, appear to be missing. A chemist at one of the pharmaceutical houses that manufacture fentanyl believes that my theory is physically and physiologically possible, provided enough drug is soaked into the insole. Everyone ready?”
“All set,” McGowen said.
“Well then, the supervising nurse in the ICU is expecting us, as is the nurse in charge of the ER. This shouldn’t take too long. The idea of having Gil and Officer McGowen along is that if, by any chance, we actually come up with something, it will immediately need to be handled by strict chain of custody. Gil has plastic bags and gummed seals we can all sign, and Officer McGowen will take the bags directly back to the station.”
“Do you really expect to find anything after all this time?” Leary asked.
“The truth is, I don’t know what to expect. People in hospitals-in most workplaces, for that matter-tend to ignore anything that isn’t directly their job. It’s not that hard to imagine a custodian, or nurse’s aide, or even a nurse working his or her way around a clothing bag, assuming someone else had placed it there for a reason.”
“I suppose.”
“Any other questions?”
Will found himself wondering about the managed-care bureaucrats who shelved Micelli’s career as a physician without so much as the courtesy of an interview. The companies were the Charybdis whirlpool that would suck a physician under even after he had survived the Scylla that was the Board of Registration in Medicine. He was, he saw now, facing the same peril. Guilty or not, his license had been preemptively suspended by the board as a result of his suspension at the hospital. In all likelihood, even if he was deemed acceptable to practice by the board, many of the multiple managed-care panels to which he belonged would remove him as a provider of treatment for their subscribers simply because he once had been suspended. It would be okay for him to practice surgery, they would in essence be saying, but not to earn a living doing it.
His involvement in the Society and that damn debate at Faneuil Hall were sure not to help matters. There probably wasn’t a managed-care company within a thousand miles that wouldn’t relish the opportunity to bring the hammer down on his career. This was the first time he realized that, regardless of whatever happened today or even down the road, he might well be finished as a doctor.
Easy does it.
Satisfied he had waited long enough for questions, Micelli turned and led the group down the hall to the elevators. In nearly ten years at the hospital, except when accompanying a patient’s litter, Will had never used any of the elevators. He suspected that not one of the other three would have passed on the stairs for just one flight, but Micelli was leading this expedition, and there was nothing about the man that suggested he would ever opt for the more physically challenging of any two options. As they headed down the corridor, Will found himself behind the others and next to Gil Murray.
“Thanks for doing this,” Will said. “I’m really grateful.”
“I would do just about anything for Augie,” Murray replied, his voice a bit like James Earl Jones’s. “I had a back operation a few years ago under general anesthesia, only I wasn’t asleep during the procedure and had no way to tell anyone, because I had been given a drug to paralyze my muscles. Some unkind remarks were made about me when my surgeon thought I was asleep. I heard them all. Augie fixed me up with some people who were able to prove that was the case, and he even found an organization named Anesthesia Awareness that’s made up of others who’ve experienced the same thing.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Will said, cringing at Murray’s story.
“It’s one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me. Augie helped me get a settlement for what I went through, but it’s the other things he did that really mattered. He’s had some tough times, and doesn’t take such good care of himself, but underneath it all he’s the best.”
“I’m learning that.”
“On the way over, Patrolman Bob there told me that Augie had helped his dad, as well.”
Up ahead, Micelli was holding open the elevator door, motioning them to hurry up. Loss of a child, loss of self-esteem, loss of health, loss of a hard-earned profession. No one would argue that Will wasn’t going through a devastating situation, but the Law Doctor still had him beat.
Nurse Anne Hajjar, usually on the day crew, was waiting for them in the ICU. She was, as usual, radiant and upbeat, even though, she explained, she was working a double because of a hiring freeze on RNs. She nodded to Will, her expression neutral if not a bit cold. He felt a deep pang. They had worked so well together for so long back when life was normal. Now her respect for him seemed all but gone.