Crisis (19 page)
"If you're trying to make me feel sorry for him, it's not going to work."
"I just want you to know what we're up against. The plaintiff's attorney knows that Craig and Leona had tickets for the symphony on the night the plaintiff's wife died. He says witnesses will prove that Craig made the house call even though he suspected the patient had a heart attack on the outside chance it wasn't. If he had found that to be the case, he would have been able to make the concert. Symphony Hall is closer to the plaintiff's house than Newton Memorial Hospital."
"Let me guess -- this Leona is scheduled to be a witness."
"Of course! She's now the spurned lover. To make matters worse, she is still working in Craig's office and he can't fire her for fear of another lawsuit."
"So the plaintiff's attorney is contending that Craig put the patient at risk by playing the odds against the possible diagnosis."
"That's essentially it. They're saying that it's not up to the standard of care in terms of making a timely diagnosis, which for a heart attack is critical, as events have shown. They don't even have to prove that the woman would have survived had she been taken to the hospital immediately, just that she might have. Of course, the cruel irony is that the allegation is diametric to Craig's practice style. As we've said, he's always put patients first, even before his own family."
Jack ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "This is more complicated than I thought it would be. I assumed the question revolved around some specific medical issue. This kind of case means there is even less chance of my being any help than I thought."
"Who knows?" Alexis said fatalistically. She pushed back from the table, went over to the service desk, and hefted a sizable manila envelope stuffed with papers. She brought it back to the table and plopped it down. It made a resounding thump. "Here's a copy of the case I put together. It's pretty much everything, from interrogatories to depositions to medical records. The only thing that's not included is a transcript of today's proceeding, but I've given you a good idea of what was said. There's even a couple of Craig's recent research papers he suggested I include. I don't know why: maybe to save face, imagining you'll be impressed."
"I probably will be if I can understand them. Anyway, it looks like I have my work cut out for me."
"I don't know where you want to work. You have a lot of choices. Can I show you a few alternatives besides your room downstairs?"
Alexis led Jack on a tour of the first floor of the house. The living room was huge but appeared uncomfortably pristine, as if no one had ever stridden across its deep pile carpet. Jack nixed that. Off the living room was a mahogany-paneled library with a wet bar, but it was dark and funereal with poor lighting.
No thanks!
Down the hall was a media room with a ceiling-mounted projector and several rows of lazy-boy chairs. Inappropriate, and worse lighting than the library. At the end of the hall was a sizable study with matching his-and-hers desks on opposing walls. His desk was neat with each pencil in a pencil cup sharpened to a needle-like point. Her desk was the opposite, with haphazard stacks of books, journals, and reprints. There were several reading chairs and hassocks. A bow window similar to the one in the great room looked out onto a flower bed with a small fountain. Directly opposite the window was floor-to-ceiling shelving on either side of the entrance door. Among a mixture of medical and psychology texts was Craig's old-fashioned leather doctor's bag and a portable ECG machine. As far as being a work area, the best thing about the room was the lighting setup, with recessed ceiling fixtures, individual desk lamps, and floor lamps by each club chair.
"This is a terrific space," Jack said. "But are you sure you don't mind me in your personal study?" He switched on one of the floor lamps. It cast a wide, warm glow.
"Not in the slightest."
"What about Craig, since it's his space, too?"
"He wouldn't mind. One thing I can assure you about Craig. He's not territorial."
"Okay, then, here's where I'll be. I have a feeling it will take me quite a few hours." He put the bulging manila envelope down on the table between the two reading chairs.
"As the saying goes, knock yourself out. I'm off to bed. With the need to get the kids off to school, tomorrow comes early around here. There are plenty of drinks in the kitchen refrigerator and more in the wet bar, so help yourself."
"Terrific! I'm all set."
Alexis let her eyes wander down Jack's frame, then back to his face. "I have to tell you, brother, you look good. When I visited you out in Illinois, and you had your ophthalmology practice, you looked like a different person."
"I was a different person."
"I was afraid you were going to become overweight."
"I was overweight."
"Now you look hale, hungry, and hollow-cheeked, like an actor in a spaghetti western."
Jack laughed. "That's a creative description. Where did that come from?"
"The girls and I recently watched some old Sergio Leone movies. It was an assignment for a film class Tracy's taking at her school. Seriously, you look like you're in good shape. What's your secret?"
"Street basketball and bike riding. I treat them like second careers."
"Maybe I should give them a try," Alexis said with a wry smile. Then she added: "Good night, brother. See you in the morning. As you might expect, it's always a bit chaotic with three girls."
Craig watched Alexis walk down the hall and then with a final wave disappear up the stairs. He turned around and scanned the room again. A sudden silence descended like a blanket. The place looked and smelled so different from his own surroundings, it could have been on a different planet.
Somewhat self-conscious about being in someone else's space, Jack sat down in the easy chair illuminated by the floor lamp. The first thing he did was take out his cell phone and turn it on. There was a message, and it was from Warren, with the promised name and phone number of his friend in Boston. The name was David Thomas, and Jack called immediately, thinking he might be in need of exercise if the morrow turned out to be as stressful as he feared. Alexis's evasiveness about Craig's response to Jack's visit was enough to make anyone feel less than welcome.
Warren must have been full of praise about Jack when he talked to David, because David was overly enthusiastic about Jack coming for a run.
"This time of year we play every night starting about five o'clock, man!" David had said. "Get your honky ass over there and we'll see what you got." He gave Jack directions to the court on Memorial Drive near Harvard. Jack said he'd try to get there in the late afternoon.
Next, Jack called Laurie to report that he was settled as best as could be expected so far.
"What do you mean?" she asked warily.
"I have yet to see Craig Bowman. The story is, he's not all that happy I'm here."
"That's not very nice, all things considered, particularly the timing."
Jack then described what he thought was the positive news about his response to Alexis's daughters. He told Laurie that one of the girls had even brought up the crash right off the bat, but that he had taken it in stride, to his pleasant surprise.
"I'm amazed and pleased," Laurie said. "I think it's terrific, and I'm relieved."
Jack went on to say that the only bad news was that the malpractice didn't involve a technical medical issue, but rather something far more convoluted such that there was even less chance that he could help them than he'd thought.
"I hope that means you'll be on your way back here straight away," Laurie said.
"I'm about to read the file," Jack said. "I imagine I'll know more at that point."
"Good luck."
"Thanks. I'll need it."
Jack ended the call and put his phone away. For a moment, he strained to hear any noise in the vast house. It was as silent as a tomb. Picking up the manila envelope, he dumped the contents onto the side table. The first thing he picked up was a research paper Craig had coauthored with a renowned Harvard cell biologist and had published in the prestigious
New England Journal of Medicine.
It was about the function of sodium channels in cell membranes responsible for nerve and muscular action potentials. There were even some diagrams and electron micrographs of subcellular molecular structure. He glanced at the materials-and-methods section. It was amazing to him that someone could conceive of such arcane concepts, much less study them. Seeing as it was all beyond his current comprehension, he tossed the paper aside and picked up a deposition instead. It was the deposition of Leona Rattner.
7
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS TUESDAY, JUNE 6, 2006 6:48 A.M.
The first thing Jack was aware of was a distant verbal disagreement followed by the concussive force of a door slamming. For a brief moment, he tried to incorporate the sounds into his dream, but it didn't make any sense. Instead, he opened his eyes only to have not a clue where he was. After checking out the fountain bathed in bright sunlight outside the bow window as well as the interior of the study, it all came back to him in a flash. In his hand was a deposition of a nurse named Georgina O'Keefe from the Newton Memorial Hospital, which he had been in the process of rereading when he'd fallen fast asleep.
Gathering up all the papers from the
Stanhope vs. Bowman
malpractice case, Jack slipped them into the manila envelope. It took some doing to get them all in. Then he got to his feet. A wave of momentary dizziness made him pause briefly.
He had no idea what time he'd fallen asleep. He'd read through the entire collection of papers and had been in the process of going back over those parts he thought most interesting when his eyes closed involuntarily. To his surprise, he'd been captivated by the material from the start. If the story didn't indirectly involve his sister, he would have thought it an entertaining script for a soap opera, since the colorful characters' personalities leapt off the pages. There was the gifted and dedicated but arrogant and adulterous doctor; the nubile, spurned, and angry lover; the precise and rather laconic bereaved spouse; the knowledgeable but contentious experts; the parade of other witnesses; and finally the apparently hypochondriacal victim. It was a comedy of human foibles, except for the unfortunate fatal outcome and the fact that it had ended up as a malpractice suit. As far as the probable outcome of the suit was concerned, at least from reading the material, Jack thought Alexis's concern and pessimism were well founded. With his grandiosity and arrogance, which came out in the latter stages of his deposition, Craig did not help his cause. The plaintiff's attorney had succeeded in making Craig sound as if he believed it was an outrage that his clinical judgment was being questioned. That wouldn't play well with any jury. And on top of that, Craig had implied that it was his wife's fault he'd had an affair with his secretary.
Whenever Jack was pressed to describe the goal of his job as a medical examiner, his usual response, depending to a degree on the inquirer and the occasion, was to say he "spoke for the dead." As he read over
Stanhope vs. Bowman,
he found himself ultimately thinking mostly about the victim and the unfortunate but obvious circumstance that she could not be deposed or serve as a witness. Playing a game in his mind, he considered how it would influence the case if she were able to participate, and thinking along those lines made him believe that she was the key to a successful resolution of the case. It seemed to him that if the jury believed she was the hypochondriac Craig said she was, they'd have to find for the defense, despite her final symptoms being all too real and despite Craig's narcissistic personality. Thinking in this vein emphasized the unfortunate reality that there had been no autopsy and, accordingly, there was no medical examiner on the defense's witness list to speak for the deceased.
With the manila envelope under his arm, Jack snuck down the hallway toward the basement stairs beneath the main staircase. As scruffy as he was, he preferred not to run into anybody. As he started down the stairs, he heard more yelling above by one of the girls and another door slam.
Down in his quarters, Jack shaved, showered, and dressed as quickly as he could. When he got back upstairs, the entire Bowman clan was in the great room. The atmosphere was strained. The three girls were at the table behind cereal boxes. Craig was on the sofa hidden behind the
The New York Times
with a mug of coffee on the coffee table in front of him. Alexis was at the counter, busily making sandwiches for the girls' lunches. The TV above the fireplace was tuned to the local news, but the sound was barely on. Sun streamed in through the bow windows. It was almost blinding.
"Good morning, Jack," Alexis said lightly when she noticed him standing in the doorway. "I hope you slept okay downstairs."
"It was very comfortable," Jack said.
"Say good morning to your uncle," Alexis advised the girls, but only Christina did so.
"I don't know why I can't wear the red top," Meghan whined.