Final Mercy

by Frank J Edwards

  “Then you need to hear things from a different angle.”

  “So I can be Foresterized?”

  “I’m sorry for that. Listen, I’m glad you told me. You could have led me down the garden path and gotten a candid interview without me knowing it.”

  “Well, I’m glad to know you think I might have done that to you. I don’t operate that way.”

  Jack felt the situation spiraling out of control. She was gathering up her satchel.

  “No, I know you wouldn’t have done something like that. That’s not what I meant, honestly.”

  “You talk as if you know me. Reading a book doesn’t mean you know the writer.”

  “Speaking of that, it really was a great book.”

  “Please cut the flattery,” she snapped, beginning to rise.

  Jack held out his hand.

  “Wait. Would you like to hear my side of the story?”

  She froze.

  “You don’t owe anything to me,” he said. “You owe it to yourself.”

  She sat back down, shaking out her hair. The waitress came.

  “Sorry I couldn’t get back sooner,” she said. “Are you ready to order yet?”

  “Not quite,” Jack told her.

  “Can I get you another glass of wine?”

  “I’d like a double Gibson, if you don’t mind,” Zellie said, “on the rocks.”

  “Certainly. Sir?”

  “A Talisker. Make mine a double, too, and a couple of ice cubes.”

  “You got it.”

  “So,” Jack went on after the waitress left, “may I say something straightforward?”

  Zellie was drumming the red-checkered tablecloth with her fingertips. She stopped.

  “It’s a free country,” she said.

  “I don’t care if you want to pick my brains. Well, I do care, but I’m going to enjoy this evening one way or the other. I’m happy to be here with you, and I hope you have a pleasant time. You needed to talk to Witner—that’s your job. I’m just sorry his version seems to have interfered with our having a pleasant night. So, maybe we should clear the air.”

  “I agree.”

  Her eyes met his again, and this time a smile curved her lips.

  “Frankly,” she said, “I would like to hear a perspective other than Dr. Witner’s. You’re right. I owe it to myself. And to my last fan in North America.”

  The waitress set down their drinks and took orders for dinner.

  “Okay, are you ready for my side?” he said.

  “To be honest, no. Not yet. Tell me something about yourself first. All I know is that you’re a doctor with a precocious memory for cheesy book jacket photos. Where are you from?”

  “Africa.”

  “I’m not interested in having my leg pulled.”

  “Seriously. My dad was a civil engineer, and he took long stints abroad. Mom would sometimes go with him. So, I was born in Mozambique. I never saw home in New Canterbury till I was three years old.”

  “So, you grew up here?”

  “Pretty much, until I was sixteen. Then we went to Bolivia.”

  “You went to high school in Bolivia?”

  “I did. And college in New Mexico.”

  “What was high school like in Bolivia?”

  “Well, it would have been handy to know a little more Spanish before I got thrown into the deep end. My brother was younger, and he stayed here in boarding school. But it was okay. Still, I would never do the same sort of thing to my own kids.”

  “You’ve got children?”

  “I mean hypothetical kids. I’m unattached.”

  “How did you end up back here?”

  “I came back for medical school, then went to California for residency, and after that I returned to take a job here. All the family is from New Canterbury. My great-grandfather settled here before the Civil War. I now live on what’s left of the old homestead.”

  “Where are your parents now?”

  Jack paused.

  “They died, in a plane crash in Bolivia.”

  A look of sympathy appeared on her face.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I lost my mom when I was young, and it’s never easy. I can’t imagine losing both at once.”

  “In any case, that’s pretty much it. I’ve been here at the medical center for the last five years.”

  “Just one brother?”

  “Just one. His name’s Tony, and he lives with me now.”

  “I hate to make this Twenty Questions, but what made you want to be a doctor?”

  “When I was a kid, it was a toss-up between baseball and archeology. But the summer before my folks died, I went fishing with some friends out on Lake Titicaca.”

  “Fishing in Lake Titicaca?”

  “You bet. It’s full of catfish. In any case, we ran into a couple of thieves, and my friend Enrique ended up getting stabbed in the chest. We had to drive him forty-five minutes to the closest city to find a doctor.”

  “Did he make it?”

  “No, he didn’t make it. He died. My friends wanted to get guns and find those guys, but I just wanted to know why this tiny wound had killed Enrique. It wasn’t much bigger than your fingertip, didn’t even bleed much. The damage was all internal. I kept wondering what I could have done to save him. Something told me he didn’t have to die.”

  “And that got you interested in medicine?”

  “I think it woke something up in me. That, and the fact my brother has a developmental handicap. I believe that kind of experience makes a person interested in fixing broken people.”

  A hand clamped down on Jack’s shoulder, and he looked up into the face of Tim Bonadonna. Standing next to Tim was a petite brunette—his wife Sonia.

  “I beg your pardon, miss,” Tim said to Zellie, “but don’t believe a syllable that passes this man’s teeth—especially if he says he wants to leave town.”

  Jack made introductions. Sonia Bonadonna stared at Zellie with congenial curiosity. Jack invited them to share the table. Sonia was reaching for a chair when Tim put his arm about her.

  “Most incredibly kind of you, Jack, but we’re running late for the movies.”

  “How long will you be in town, Zellie?” asked Sonia.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “We’d love to have you out to our place.”

  “Yes!” Tim agreed. “But, anon—we must leave you. Miss Andersen, the good doctor is not only my best friend but a reasonably trustworthy person. A prince, indeed, and he can even hold his liquor. You are in good and relatively non-debauched hands. I hope we see you again.”

  When they were finally alone, Zellie’s former reserve had transformed into amusement.

  “So, how about you?” he said.

  “What about me?”

  “All I know is that you write and come from North Carolina.”

  “Where do I start?” she said. “Well, my father was a helicopter pilot in the army, a Vietnam vet, and my mother was a nurse. I went to college in Chapel Hill and got lucky with publishing a little book, and now I live in Brooklyn and wish I could write another and be rich and not have to write stories about Brenda Waters’ colonoscopy. I’d buy a house on Okracoke Island, and keep a tan, and write, and take walks whenever I feel like it. That’s me. Oh, and I’ve got a married younger sister living in Florida. My parents are both gone, too.”

  Jack took a sip of his scotch.

  “Not married, then?”

  “Contentedly single,” she said. “I can see myself either alone and happy fifty years from now, sipping brandy and reading a book all by my lonesome or, on the other hand, surrounded by grandbabies and baking cookies. Who knows? I think the less you worry about those things, the better.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Jack said. How can such a lovely woman be unattached? “So, what are we doing now? Is this still an interview?”

  “What do you want it to be?”

  Jack grinned at her.

  “I suppose writers and docto
rs never leave their jobs behind.”

  She raised her glass in a mock toast.

  “Well said. Let’s just talk.”

  “No hidden tape recorders,” he agreed, clinking his glass against hers. “Conversation sounds good. My closest confidant now is a dog.”

  “I see. Why’s that?”

  “I work too much.”

  “Listen, as long as we’re opening closet doors, there’s something I want to show you. Maybe you’d already noticed.” She turned her head and pulled back her hair to expose a beige plastic hearing aid in her right ear. “It’ll spare us both embarrassment later on, in case it seems like I’m ignoring you.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “With this in, my hearing is about fifty percent, better with low frequencies,” she explained, letting her hair fall along her cheek. “Without it, I can just barely hear the sound of your voice. Lip-reading helps either way.”

  “You lip-read?”

  “I do.”

  “That’s got to be extremely difficult.”

  “Not if you have some training. Here, you try it. Press your ears closed and watch me talk.”

  He obeyed.

  “I can still hear you,” he confessed after a moment.

  “I’ll make it hard for you to cheat by whispering.”

  He concentrated, but it was more the lips themselves, and the face, that drew his attention than whatever she said.

  “You’re reciting the Gettysburg address,” he guessed.

  The waitress came up and gave him a puzzled smile.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m trying read her lips,” he explained.

  “Okay.”

  He saw Zellie chuckle.

  “So, what were you really saying?” he asked.

  “I’m not going to tell.”

  “How long has it been like this for you?”

  “I got sick when I was in the first grade.”

  “Meningitis?”

  “Yes, doctor. My mother and I both had it.” She looked down for a moment. “She didn’t survive.”

  “My turn to say I’m sorry.”

  “Lord, that was so long ago,” she said.

  Jack watched sadness sweep across her eyes before she continued.

  “I was completely out of it for almost two weeks and didn’t know she’d gone. My father told me by writing on a little chalkboard. He sat down on my bed, and I knew something was wrong by the way he kept wiping it off with his hand and starting again, and when I saw he was crying I knew.”

  Jack nodded.

  “Funny thing,” she mused. “I can remember that chalkboard better than I can recall her face. What I mean is that, for some strange reason, I can’t put together in my mind a complete picture of her. I know what she looked like from pictures, but in my mind’s eye, I only see individual parts—her eyes, her hands, her hair, her neck. And forgive me for babbling on like this.”

  “No, please, go on.”

  “I remember the way her neck smelled. Isn’t that strange? The perfume she used. They say I’ve got her neck and her little feet, but my father’s big bony hands.”

  She held them up and turned them over. Jack didn’t think he’d ever seen a more graceful or lovely pair of hands in his life.

  “I’m sure your mother was very nice,” he said.

  The meal came, and they ate for a while in silence.

  “You’re right, the salmon is wonderful,” she said.

  “Glad you like it. You know, I’m not a person who gets angry easily, but knowing Dr. Witner wants to hang the blame on me makes my blood boil.”

  She looked at him. “You’ll have to repeat that. I wasn’t watching you.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was just saying that being blamed for what happened to Dr. Gavin makes me angry.”

  She nodded.

  “It’s not only unfair to me personally, but I loved—love—Dr. Gavin. He’s been a mentor to me, and a friend.”

  She set down her fork and folded her hands.

  “Please tell me about it.”

  “No, finish your dinner. I’m sorry.”

  “No, please,” she insisted. “Tell me. I can eat and watch you at the same time. You just have to pause a little when you see my eyes move away from your face. It’s all the ambient noise in this place that makes it harder for me to hear, I think.”

  Jack nodded. Having to watch her closely didn’t bother him in the slightest.

  “Well, let me give you some background. After med school, I decided to specialize in emergency medicine.”

  “The kind of doctor who could have saved Enrique?”

  “Right. It just felt like a good fit for me. I like the mix of cases, the breadth of things you see, and I like knowing that I can deal with the really bad things that roll in the door. So, I did a four-year residency, got board certified, and found out New Canterbury was looking for a new ED director. Ordinarily, they wouldn’t touch a person fresh out of training for a job like this, but they were having trouble recruiting. Dr. Gavin was the dean then, and he was willing to give me a try.”

  “And that was five years ago?”

  Jack nodded.

  “My friends thought I was biting off more than I could chew, but I was inspired by the challenge. Might as well leave a mark on my alma mater, you know?”

  “Why were they having trouble recruiting?”

  “There were too many turf battles. Emergency medicine is still a relatively new specialty, and New Canterbury is still a very conservative place. Emergency medicine encroaches on other fields.”

  “How so?”

  “Lord, when I first got here, some of the old pediatricians didn’t trust me to take care of sick infants, and there were surgeons who didn’t want me putting in chest tubes. The anesthesiologists were resisting the ED use of paralytic drugs for intubations, despite my training.”

  “Intubations?”

  “That’s when you place a tube directly into the patient’s trachea so you can breathe for them and protect their airway.”

  “Is it hard?” she asked.

  “Sometimes—but it’s the most important thing an emergency doctor can do in a life-or-death situation. If you can’t control the airway, the game is over immediately.”

  “But the anesthesiologists consider that their turf?”

  “They used to, at any rate, and they’re excellent intubators, of course. They do it all day long in the operating room. The problem is they’re not here at two a.m. when the combative drunk arrives with a bad head injury who needs to be paralyzed and intubated before he gets his CT.”

  “You can’t wait.”

  “Not if you really want to help these people. Throw in heart attacks, strokes, seizures, infections, trauma and a lot of minor things all demanding attention at the same time, and you’ve got emergency medicine in a nutshell.”

  “Sounds like you enjoy it,” she observed.

  “I do.”

  “I liked ER on TV. Was it accurate?”

  “So I hear.”

  “You didn’t watch it?”

  “I caught it once. For me, it was like getting hit on the head with a bunch of clichés.”

  “I see what you mean. So, you won some turf battles when you first got here?”

  “A few. There was a lot of low-hanging fruit when I arrived. The nurses needed a better triage system, the physician staff needed upgrading, we were missing all sorts of equipment. We’ve made a good deal of progress, but believe me, we’re not halfway where we need to be.”

  “Like what sort of things?”

  “Mainly, building a new ED and starting our own residency program—things that take a tremendous amount of time to get off the ground. When Dr. Gavin was dean, he was very supportive, and so was his successor, Bob McCarthy. But everything was put on hold when Dr. Witner stepped up.”

  “When did Dr. Witner take the job?”

  “They named him interim dean after Bob McCarthy died back in
July. Now, it looks like he’s going to get the permanent slot. And as far as my plans for the emergency department go, he’s been nothing but negative. He helped make sure they got blown out of the water—actually, just a few days ago.”

  “Why?”

  “If I tell you, Zellie, you’ll think I’m being childish.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well, I believe it’s because he knows I don’t like him.”

  “That’s why? Just because you don’t like him? What is this, elementary school?”

  “I didn’t join his fan club. Many of the other people who don’t support him are planning to leave. Meanwhile, his friends are being elevated.”

  “Would that include Dr. Atwood?”

  Jack grimaced and took a sip of wine.

  “That’s right, you’ve spent some time with Humphrey. What do you think?”

  “I think the whole situation here is bizarre. But keep going.”

  He explained the purpose behind his long-standing attending-stays-in-ED policy, and how Atwood had resisted.

  “That’s why you stonewalled the paging system?” she said.

  “Witner was telling the truth—I ignored his instructions. I thought I was doing the right thing, but…” He let his voice trail off and stared at nothing for a long moment.

  “But what?” she encouraged him.

  “I told Tim Bonadonna this morning that when you do what you think is right, and it ends up hurting someone, maybe it really is time to move on.”

  “So, that’s why he mentioned something about you leaving town.”

  “I can’t follow my instincts here anymore.”

  She set down her fork, still maintaining eye contact.

  “What other conclusion can I come to?” he added.

  “I see the conundrum.”

  “And they’ve made me a great financial offer if I resign.”

  Her eyebrows rose.

  “Who has?”

  “Witner and his pal Nelson Debussy, the university president.”

  “So, they’re accusing you of having made a terrible mistake, and yet they’re offering you a golden parachute if you leave?”

  “They’ll even scrub my letters of recommendation of anything negative.”

  She looked thoughtful.

  “That just seems very strange.”

  “Witner’s cleaning house. I don’t mean to puff myself up, Zellie, but I really haven’t done such a bad job here. The med students voted me clinical teacher of the year twice in the past five years. For the volume of patients we see and the antiquated physical plant, our frequency of patient complaints isn’t that bad, compared to other places. I’ve managed to help get a couple of research projects off the ground. Staff morale is reasonable. This could have been a great emergency department in five years.”