by Elaine Viets
“His other patients agreed with you,” I said. I could hear the stairwell door open. Bill didn’t seem to notice. He was still talking.
“Dr. Boltz was the last name on my list, but he really started it all. He ruined my hopes, you know. If he’d testified, none of this would have happened. I would have …”
I heard shouts and a commanding voice said, “Man with a gun. Drop it! Drop it now!” I saw two uniformed police officers running toward us and figured there must be more out of sight.
“Shoot me,” Bill said to them. He never moved off the wall and he never dropped the gun. “It would be a kindness. Please kill me. Make it quick. It hurts too much to live.”
I couldn’t bear to watch this, or see him hurt anymore. “Put your guns down, officers,” I said. “He won’t shoot.”
Bill looked at me, then looked at them.
“You’re right,” he said, “I won’t,” and he went over backward off the top of the garage.
EPILOGUE
I stared at the empty space on the wall where Bill had been sitting. There was nothing. No sign he’d been there. He’d simply tipped himself backward and gone over. The only sound I heard was the terrible wet thud when he landed. My Aunt Marie used to crack grocery store coconuts by dropping them out a window onto the sidewalk, two stories below. It was that sound.
I stood there, barefoot, my ridiculous scarf turban half off my head, unable to make a sound. Someone was speaking to me. “Francesca,” I heard. “Francesca, it’s me.”
It was detective Mark Mayhew. “Talk to me, Francesca,” he said, gently. “Tell me what happened.”
“He—he—I—I.” I made some kind of squeaky noise, like a rusty door opening, and then I started crying. I hoped I was crying for Bill, but I thought I was crying for myself. I wanted so badly to stop. I didn’t want to cry in front of these people, in front of the police, in front of Mayhew. I never cried, not even when Lyle left me, but now I couldn’t turn off the tears. Mayhew reached in his pocket for a handkerchief and came up empty. “A gentleman always carries one,” he said, “but I guess I’m no gentleman. I forgot it.”
“That’s okay,” I said, still sniffing a bit, my voice wobbly. I rubbed my eyes and my hands came up black with eyeliner. My scarf turban was now hanging limply around my neck like a bad fur stole. I whipped it off, dried my eyes and blew my nose.
“That’s disgusting,” he said, but he sounded amused.
“You want disgusting, you should have seen it on me,” I said, and set the scarf on the parking garage wall. A spring breeze grabbed the scarf. It billowed out like a sail, then wafted over the side. It was gone, too, but I didn’t look. I didn’t want to look down ten stories. I knew I’d see the people swarming frantically around Bill’s body, like ants on a piece of meat.
Mayhew took me to the elevator and out the front entrance of the garage, so I wouldn’t have to see Bill’s body. I heard the sirens and saw some of the police cars, but that’s all. We crossed the street into Moorton. Someone gave us an empty office and a couple of cold sodas. I sat down on a chair, and the questioning started. I told my story, many times. The only part I left out was Katie’s role. But no matter how often I repeated it, I couldn’t quite make it real. When I finished, and Mayhew had his signed statement, all I wanted to do was sleep for a thousand years. But I couldn’t. I had to write Bill’s story. I was in no shape to drive, so Mayhew dropped me off at the Gazette. I showed up in the newsroom, barefoot and half-drunk with shock, but I wrote one hell of a story. I don’t give myself much credit for it. I didn’t have to do anything but write down what Bill said. No fancy flourishes, no witty remarks, just straightforward reporting. The strange thing is that I can’t remember most of what he said now—I have to reread my own story. But I still remember how he went backward off the wall. I still remember the long silence as he fell. And most of all, I remember that empty wall, with nothing there.
Everyone told me Bill’s death was for the best, it was over quick, he didn’t suffer. They were wrong. He did suffer. He’d suffered for three long years. I was sorry he didn’t get to say good-bye to his son. I was sorry Billy Junior would see his father branded as a murderer. That’s what Bill was. But I made sure everyone knew what made him that way. I told the story of what happened to the man who did everything right and died anyway.
Did I approve of what Bill did? No. But I understood it. Oh, yes I did.
So did most of my readers. There was a real outburst of sympathy for Bill. Many of them had had cancer, or they loved someone who had, and all too often the sick person had been treated like Bill. Some had been treated worse.
A few readers chewed me out for not having more sympathy for the victims. They were right. I usually do. And I tried this time, I really tried. But I didn’t like them. I didn’t like the sadistic receptionist, who used her little bit of power to torment sick people. I didn’t like the unfeeling radiation oncologist and the tech who worked with him, cracking jokes over the surgically maimed bodies of hurting people. I didn’t like Dr. Tachman, who used the easiest and roughest means to examine patients, because it was convenient for him. If Tachman had spent a little more time with his patients, if Tachman hadn’t been so eager for a quickie with a secretary, Bill might be alive today. So might Tachman, for that matter.
But Tachman’s faults were at least human.
It was Dr. Brentmoor who made me the angriest. Brentmoor, who didn’t bother to call back patients writhing in pain. Brentmoor, who was too arrogant to answer the questions of a frightened patient. The worst part was that Brentmoor wasn’t unusual. Georgia’s oncologist did the same thing. A cancer doctor without compassion was a shell of a human, in my book. When Bill shot Brentmoor, I thought he had killed a dead man.
Dr. Jolley was the one I almost felt sorry for. Almost. He was growing old and careless and he neglected a basic exam. But at least his patients loved him, and he seemed to sympathize with them. Except where that HMO incentive bonus came in. Dr. Jolley held the line on those costly visits to specialists, and made sure they didn’t cut into his nice little bonus. His greed killed Bill, just as surely as if Jolley had put a gun to his head. But a gun would have been quicker and kinder.
Of course, as the doctors’ defenders liked to point out, the victims weren’t there to speak for themselves, and that was true. But I knew Bill was telling the truth. Katie had seen his medical records, and they confirmed his sorry story. I’d talked to other patients of the dead doctors and heard their stories. And I’d been there with Georgia. I knew Bill wasn’t exaggerating.
I did call the one survivor, Dr. Boltz, and ask him for a comment about what Bill said for my story. Boltz said he didn’t want to talk. That’s what nearly got him killed, but it made a nice counterpoint in my story. His own silence condemned him. I wondered if Boltz felt any guilt about not testifying for Bill. His peers, like Katie, were in awe of his medical mastery. But he was one of the good doctors who kept silent and allowed the bad ones to flourish.
Georgia drove me home that night, when I finished the story. She also lent me enough cash for a cab the next morning. I took the cab to Moorton to pick up my purse and car. I found my purse at Dr. Boltz’s office, and no money or credit cards were missing, a minor miracle. Boltz’s assistant, Kristine, saw it on the waiting room floor after Bill’s dramatic run, and put it away in the safe for me. I asked after Mrs. Kaffee, the woman who got knocked flat on her fanny when I bolted after Bill. Kristine assured me she was fine. In fact, she was basking in her new celebrity status. Mrs. Kaffee was interviewed on TV that night. She told the reporter that she knew Bill was a killer. She could tell by his eyes.
Kristine thanked me for saving the doctor. Boltz never bothered.
My car was gone when I got to the garage. At first I thought Ralph was stolen, but he had been ticketed and towed for parking in a Doctors Only zone. The hospital said it was sorry, but the parking garage was a private concession, and they couldn’t do anything about the ticket
or the towing costs. The Gazette wouldn’t pay for them, either. They came to one hundred fifty dollars, total. I paid them and put them on my expense account at the rate of three dollars a week, for almost a year. I put them under parking.
* * *
I took Katie out for a thank-you lunch, and this time it wasn’t at McDonald’s. She was back in her healthy mode again, and munched a salad at O’Connell’s Pub. She seemed pleased with how her efforts turned out. “You know,” she said, “Boltz was the only doctor out of that bunch worth saving.”
“His gratitude has been touching,” I said, sarcastically.
Katie shrugged. “I don’t care about that,” she said. “I just want him around in case I ever need a surgeon.”
She had the right attitude—surgeons existed for her, and not the other way around.
I wanted to get Katie something for all she did, some acknowledgment of her help. After all, she risked the most to save Dr. Boltz’s ungrateful neck. But what do you get a country girl who liked dogs and guns and pickup trucks? A box of bullets? A new set of mudflaps? Finally, I heard her talking about a medical society banquet she was going to attend. It was a formal affair, and she was getting some kind of honor. I saw just the gift for her in a Tiffany’s catalogue and ordered it. She called me the day she got it.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “Fits right in my little beaded bag. Sterling silver, too. It’s the evening accessory every woman should have.”
No woman should be without a formal pocket knife.
I saw Jack, the former Leo D. Nardo, in the Clayton Schnucks’ supermarket, wearing a wedding ring and about six hundred dollars worth of Ralph Lauren. He was pushing a shopping cart and looked very happy. He and his bride went through a tough spell with her children after they came back from their honeymoon. Rutherford and Althea—those are the kids—didn’t like the prenuptial agreement that gave Leo a million dollars. The rest of Nancy’s fourteen-million-dollar fortune was theirs, but it wasn’t enough for them.
Rutherford, a real prune, declared that his mother must be crazy to marry a common stripper. His sister Althea was shocked that her stepfather was half a century younger than her mother. I wondered how someone as lively as Nancy produced such a pair of prigs.
Rutherford and Althea hired a bunch of lawyers. Their mother, Nancy, hired a bunch more. At the sanity hearing, Althea and Rutherford’s shrinks testified that their mother was batty as a barn owl. Nancy’s shrinks said she was sane.
After all the experts yammered away, the judge asked Nancy why she’d married Jack. “For sex, your honor,” she said. The judge, a woman with a young face and gray hair, declared Nancy sane. So did every woman in the courtroom. Nancy promptly changed her will. The bulk of the estate was going to her beloved husband, Jack. Each child would get “only a million,” which they regarded as a poverty-level income. I could have probably eked out a decent life on a million bucks, but then I was a South Sider and used to making do.
Heather, the nurse Dr. Brentmoor was supposed to marry, gave birth to a nine-pound, six-ounce boy. DNA tests confirmed that Brentmoor was the father. Heather promptly sued the Brentmoor estate on behalf of her son. Brentmoor’s wife, Stephanie, hired herself a real shark. The suit was dropped when Brentmoor’s parents agreed to support the child in exchange for generous visiting rights.
Stephanie had a fling with her attorney, who was recently divorced. She kept her house in Ladue, but moved into his condo in Clayton. She said he promised to marry her, and gave her an engagement ring. He said the ring was a farewell gift. All that is known for certain is the lawyer took up with a thirty-year-old nurse he’d deposed in the Brentmoor case, and Stephanie was out on her ear. The resulting palimony suit gave Stephanie plenty of ink in Babe’s column, but I don’t think she wanted it. Stephanie spent most of the money she got from Brentmoor suing her lawyer lover. The last I heard, she was selling real estate in West County. She was good at it, too.
Bill comes back to me in my dreams sometimes. I hear him say his final words and I see him fall backward and I hear the long silence before he landed. And scariest of all, I see that empty wall. That’s the part of the dream where I wake up with a pounding heart. When I see nothing.
The insurance company wanted to get out of paying death benefits to Billy Junior, claiming his father’s death was a suicide. I guess it was by their definition, but I considered it medical murder. I wrote a story about how the insurance company was leaving an orphan destitute. Readers felt so sorry for Bill’s son, they sent me money for him. I talked with his mother in Tampa. She used it to set up a college fund for him at a local bank. Billy had a future after all. His father’s death accomplished that much.
My dreams about Bill began to fade after that. Maybe because Bill could finally rest, now that his boy was provided for. Maybe because I didn’t have to spend any more time at Moorton Hospital.
Georgia had finished her course of chemo and radiation after eight months. At her last chemo session, the nurses came into the room cheering and waving sparklers and blowing bubbles. She looked embarrassed and pleased at the attention. They presented Georgia with a nicely lettered Certificate of Achievement.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” asked Georgia on the way home.
“Keep it,” I said. “You earned it.”
“I didn’t do anything but stay alive.”
“That’s enough,” I said.
She’s gained back most of the weight she lost and all of her foul-mouthed high spirits. She looks good. She’s been cancer-free for a year. Four more to go, before the cure is official. She’s sure she’ll make her five-year anniversary. I am, too.
Georgia needed reconstructive surgery after the surgery healed and the radiation was over. She decided to have breast implants while she was at it—the saline kind. “Hell, why not,” she said. “The insurance company’s paying for it. Never too late to have tits.”
Speaking of tits, Charlie, my reptile of a managing editor, quit giving me sleazy stripper assignments after I cracked the Doc in the Box case. My series on the subject created quite a stir. I gave a lot of speeches about the killings to the Kiwanis and other groups, which the paper considered good PR. The audience, unless it was a bunch of doctors, was sympathetic to Bill.
The doctors, or the doctors’ relatives, would get all hot under the collar when I mentioned Dr. Jolley’s misdiagnosis. They’d say it was easy for any doctor to forget the basics, and I’d say, “For a whole year?” Or they’d try to explain away a cold fish like Brentmoor. “Isn’t it better that we have the doctors’ knowledge to save lives? Do we need their feelings, too?” they’d say. We did, I said. Many of the chemo nurses managed to have both brains and feelings. The nurses were far from perfect, but a lot more of them were recognizably human. I could hear the men in the audience snort at the radical notion that nurses might handle anything better than a doctor and see the women nod their heads in agreement.
And if doctors couldn’t deal with their patients’ pain, I’d add, maybe they should be in research. Slides and test tubes have no feelings. This was when some guy, usually older, would say that the oncologists saw so many bad things, they needed to “protect themselves.” But it wasn’t protection, was it? The doctors were dead, weren’t they?
They were as dead as my love life. I spend a lot of time thinking about Lyle, and what we had and what we lost. I tried to pick up my life after we broke up. I went out with other men. My friends fixed me up with “nice guys” who were so nice, I had to struggle to stay awake when we went out. They weren’t men I could ever love. So I stopped going out. It was better that way. There are women who can be content with minor romances, but I’m not one of them. I’d rather have nothing.
I had my work, and that was enough consolation. Especially since my Doc in the Box series was a finalist for the McNamara prize for distinguished feature reporting.
“Congratulations,” Georgia said, when I got the phone call from the prize committee.
“This is the big time.”
“It’s an honor just to be chosen,” I said with uncustomary humility.
“Bullshit,” she said. “It’s a bigger honor to win. And you’ll get twenty thousand dollars if you do.”
The awards dinner was at the Sheraton New York in Manhattan. The Gazette offered to pay my fare and room—if I won. Georgia and I figured they had a good chance of popping for my trip. The other nominees were a Los Angeles Times series about police brutality, a Des Moines Register series on fraudulent home repairs, and a conservation magazine series about a Canada goose. The two exposés were solid stories, but not groundbreaking. The goose story wasn’t in the same league.
At the awards dinner in New York, Georgia and I and the Gazette brass all sat at the same table: Charlie said his wife, Nails, was home with the baby. My editor, Wendy the Whiner, ignored me and talked with Smiley Steve, the assistant managing editor for scummy stuff. Georgia tried to make conversation with me, but I was too nervous to talk coherently. I cut my sixty-five-dollar chicken into little pieces and pushed my food around on my plate. I wore a smashing Ungaro dress, and Georgia said I looked every inch a winner.
But I didn’t win. I lost to a heartwarming series about a state conservation agent named Gus who hand-raised a baby goose. The gosling imprinted Gus as his parent and followed him everywhere. Everyone said it was a charming story. The judges agreed.
Charlie looked relieved when I didn’t win. I was trouble enough as it was—I’d be insufferable if I had won a big prize. After I lost, the brass left the table quickly, as if my failure embarrassed them.
Georgia and I went to the nearly empty hotel bar and for once in my life I set out to get plastered. “Here’s to Gus and his fucking goose,” I said, hoisting my glass of white wine. “I hope he winds up on a platter at Christmas.”
