Natural Causes

by Michael Palmer

  “Easy, Glenn,” Colin Smith said. “He’s not worth it.”

  “I want you away from my hospital!” Paris shouted.

  “You’re looking and sounding more and more like a drowning man, Paris,” said Mallon, who suddenly appeared to Sarah as some sort of serpent. “And as for its being your hospital, enjoy it while you can, because I don’t believe that will be the case for much longer.”

  “Get out of here!”

  This time Colin Smith had to physically restrain his boss.

  “I do actually have more important things to do than to watch you gun yourself in the foot again, Paris. I can catch the highlights of that on the evening news.” Mallon turned without waiting for a response and left through the outpatient building.

  “Scum,” Paris muttered.

  “Easy does it,” Smith urged.

  “They’re not going to get us, Colin. The day Everwell and that creep take over MCB will be the day they have to bury me.”

  “It’ll never happen, Glenn,” Smith said. “We’ve got the ace up our sleeve. You know that, and I know that.”

  His words had a remarkably calming effect on Paris. Sarah could see the muscles in his face relax. His fists unclenched. And finally he smiled.

  “Right you are, Colin,” he said. “Right you are. You’re a good man.”

  He apologized to Sarah for his loss of composure, and introduced her to Smith and the other man, whose title had something to do with overseeing the hospital’s physical plant. Then he sent them on ahead.

  “Sarah, in case you hadn’t guessed,” he said, “the ace Colin was talking about is our grant. It’s coming from the McGrath Foundation, and we’ve been courting them for almost three years now. But please, not a word to anyone. As I said before, this is not yet signed, sealed, and delivered. And I have no doubt that if he knew the magnitude of the grant and who it was coming from, that sleaze Mallon would do whatever he could to keep it from happening.”

  “It’ll happen,” Sarah said.

  “Well, it’s down to the wire now. We get the money, we win; we don’t, Mallon and Everwell win. It’s about as simple as that.”

  As they reached the building that housed the auditorium, they heard, then spotted a sleek helicopter, which swooped over the campus and then made a neat landing on the helipad Paris had insisted be built atop the surgical building.

  “The person from the CDC?” Sarah asked.

  “Doubtful. I don’t even know if they’re sending anyone yet. More likely it’s some network VIP coming to the press conference.”

  “Or else one of our patients has some well-off family or friends.”

  “Doubtful again. I have every admission checked over by our PR staff. If somebody worth knowing about was a patient here, I promise you I’d be aware of it. Now, then, let’s go in and give them a show.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Sarah said.

  • • •

  Belted in the copilot’s seat of his Sikorsky S76 jet helicopter, Willis Grayson watched the Medical Center of Boston expand below. What excitement he felt at the prospect of seeing his only child for the first time in five years was virtually consumed by his rage at those who had led her to such a place and such a condition.

  Upon his return from restructuring a Silicon Valley company, he had found a detective named Pulasky camped outside the gate to his Long Island estate. The detective had the first new photos Grayson had seen of his daughter since well before she disappeared. The man also had with him copies of both Boston papers. And although the stories in them contained no pictures of Lisa Summer, Pulasky assured him the patient in the Medical Center of Boston and his daughter were one and the same person.

  A visit by some of Grayson’s Boston people to Lisa’s Jamaica Plains address confirmed Pulasky’s claim. After paying the man off, Grayson had made two calls. The first was to summon his pilot; the second was to order Ben Harris, his personal physician, to cancel his office patients and clear his schedule for an immediate flight. Within two hours they had touched down on the rooftop heliport of the Medical Center of Boston.

  “Keep her warm, Tim,” Grayson said, stepping out onto the tarmac. “If Lisa’s in any condition to travel, we’re getting her the hell out of here and down to our hospital.” He helped his internist out onto the roof. “Now don’t hold anything back from me, Ben,” he ordered. “Remember, your allegiance is to me, not to that inbred medical fraternity I keep reading about. If someone’s fucked up with Lisa’s care, I want to know.”

  For nearly all of his fifty-four years, the driving force in Willis Grayson’s life had been anger. As a child, he had drawn strength from the helpless rage of being strapped down on hospital beds while doctors wrestled with his life-threatening attacks of asthma. In his teens, fury at the prolonged absences of his industrialist father and the emotional unavailability of his socialite mother became manifest in repeated aggressive acts, leading to his expulsion from several private schools.

  And years later, when he was finally admitted to the inner sanctum of his father’s company, it was his desperate, unbridled need for retribution that drove him to maneuver the man out of power and to rechart the course of the business from manufacturing to corporate raiding. In just over two decades, his personal worth had grown to nearly half a billion dollars. But within him, little had changed.

  Lisa’s room was on the fifth floor of the building on which the chopper had landed. While the helipad was state of the art, the fifth floor was in need of refurbishing. In less than a minute, Grayson had made mental notes of an unemptied wastebasket, walls in need of paint, an unattended elderly patient strapped to his chair in the hall, and a pervasive smell that he suspected was a mix of grime, sweat, and excrement.

  “This place is a pit, Ben,” he said. “I just don’t understand it. She could buy her own goddamn hospital, and she ends up in a place like this.”

  Grayson’s people had reported Lisa’s room as 515. With his physician several paces behind, Grayson hurried past the nurses’ station, oblivious to the woman who was seated there, writing notes.

  The stocky young nurse, whose name tag identified her as Janine Curtis, R.N., M.Sc.N., called out to them. “Excuse me. May I help you?”

  “No,” Grayson growled over his shoulder. “We’re going to room five fifteen.”

  “Please stop,” she demanded.

  Grayson stiffened. Then, his fists slowly opening and closing at his sides, he did as she requested. Behind him, Dr. Ben Harris breathed an audible sigh of relief.

  “Lisa Summer’s real name is Lisa Grayson,” Grayson said with exaggerated patience. “I’m her father, Willis Grayson, and this is her private physician, Dr. Benjamin Harris. Now may we proceed?”

  Confusion darkened the nurse’s face and then just as quickly vanished.

  “Our visitors’ hours don’t begin until two,” she said. “But if Lisa approves, I’ll make an exception just this once.”

  Grayson’s fists again clenched. But this time they remained so.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  “I know who you say you are. Look, Mr. Grayson, I don’t want to be—”

  “Ben, I just don’t have time for this,” Grayson snapped. “You stay here and explain to this woman who I am and why we’re here. If she gives you any problem, call the goddamn director of this excuse for a hospital and get him up here. I’m going to see Lisa.”

  He stalked off without waiting for a reply.

  One of the slide-in labels on the door of room 515 read “L. Summer.” The other was blank. Willis Grayson hesitated. Had he done the right thing by not sending flowers or calling first? If, as he suspected, others had poisoned her against him, there was no telling what she was thinking. No, he decided, it was better to make this visit unannounced.

  After she had been coerced into leaving home by Charlie or Chuck, or whatever the hell his name was, Grayson had spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to find her. The trail went cold in Miami. Th
en suddenly the boy showed up at home without her and with no idea where she had gone. For months afterward Grayson had him followed and his mail screened. But nothing came of it. Eventually the boy had just drifted away, with no clue as to how close he had come to having both his legs broken—or worse.

  No, Grayson thought angrily, it will take more than a few flowers.

  He tapped lightly on the door, waited, and then tapped again. Finally he eased it open. The olio of powder and lotion, starch and antiseptic was familiar and unpleasant. He had not been in a hospital room since the evening nearly eight years ago when he and Lisa sat together, holding his wife’s hand as she surrendered to the malignancy she had battled for over a year.

  Now his daughter sat motionless in a padded, high-backed chair, staring out the window. The sight of the bandages covering what remained of her right arm brought bile to Grayson’s throat. He stepped around and sat down on the marble sill. Lisa glanced at him momentarily, then closed her eyes and looked away.

  “Hi, honey,” he said. “I’m so glad I found you. I’ve missed you so much.”

  He waited for a response, but knew from her expression and the set of her shoulders that there would be none.

  Damn them, he thought, lumping her friends, roommates, lovers, and doctors—real and imagined—into an ill-defined object of molten hate. Damn them all to hell for bringing you to this.

  “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through.” He tried again. “Please, Lisa. Please talk to me.… I want to get you out of here. Dr. Harris flew up with me. You remember him. He’s right outside. His staff is waiting for you at the medical center back home. He’ll check you over, and if he says it’s safe, we’ll have you there in ninety minutes. Tim’s on the roof with the helicopter. He’s missed you, too, hon. Everybody’s missed you. Lisa?”

  Lisa continued looking away. Grayson stood and paced about the room, searching for the words that would begin to open her heart to him.

  If only you had listened to me in the first place, he wanted to scream. If only you had listened to me, none of this would have happened.

  “I know you’re angry with me,” he said instead, “but everything can be all right now. You’re all I have, and I’ll do anything to have you with me again.… Please, Lisa. I know you’re hurting. I want to help you fight back. I want to help you find out why this horrible thing happened to you and … and to my grandson. And if anyone is responsible, I want more than anything to be the hammer that helps you strike them down.… All right, all right.” He took a calming breath and moved back to the window. “I understand that it might not be easy for you after all this time. Listen, I’ll be staying at the Bostonian. The number will be right by your phone. I’m going to arrange for a private nurse to take care of you, and I’m going to have Ben Harris get in touch with your doctors. Please, baby. I—I love you. Please let me back in your life.”

  He hesitated, and then turned and headed for the door.

  “Come back later, Daddy,” she said suddenly.

  Grayson stopped. Were the words only in his mind?

  “This afternoon,” she said. “Three o’clock. I promise to talk with you then.”

  Her soft monotone held neither anger nor forgiveness.

  Willis Grayson turned back and stared at her. Lisa was again sitting motionless, gazing out the window.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Three o’clock.”

  He gently kissed his daughter on the top of her head. She reacted not at all.

  “I’ll be here at three,” he whispered. “Thank you, baby. Thank you.”

  He paused by the door and looked back once again at the stump that had been her hand and arm.

  Someone was going to pay.

  CHAPTER 10

  SARAH FOLLOWED GLENN PARIS THROUGH THE FRONT entrance to the amphitheater and up onto the stage. Only the last few rows of the hall were empty, and people were still trickling in. The three Boston television stations, representing the big three networks, each had a pod of lights, a video man, and a reporter set between the low stage and first row of seats. Although Sarah rarely watched television, she recognized two of the newspeople. Clearly, the possibility of the outbreak of some rare disease held more than a little public allure.

  The podium, covered with wine-color velvet, was festooned with microphones, a dozen or more. Behind it were five folding chairs, three to one side and two to the other. Eli Blankenship and Randall Snyder were already seated, with one empty chair between them. Paris motioned Sarah to that seat.

  If Paris was nervous about the event or the absence of a representative from the Centers for Disease Control, it did not show in his face or manner. He measured the hall for a time, then buttoned his jacket and crossed over to the three physicians.

  “Well, we certainly can’t cry apathy about this one,” he said softly. “This whole show would have been a bit tighter if the CDC could have gotten someone up here, but we’ll just have to make do. I’ll make a few introductory remarks, then you Eli, you Randall, and finally you, Sarah. I would suggest keeping your statements brief and filling in as questions are asked. The only advice I would give you is to remember that the less you say, the harder it will be for them to misquote you. I’m going to limit each of you to ten minutes, including questions. If it seems appropriate at the end, I’ll allow a few more. And don’t worry, you’ll all do fine.”

  Sarah knew the “all” was aimed directly at her.

  “He really loves this stuff, doesn’t he,” she said as Paris approached the podium.

  “He should,” Blankenship responded. “He’s very good at it. You, on the other hand, look a little peaked. Are you going to make it?”

  “I thought I’d be fine until I got up here. Look at that mob.”

  Blankenship reached over a meaty hand and gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder.

  “Just remember the old medical adage,” he said. “All bleeding eventually stops.”

  “That’s very reassuring. Thank you.”

  Paris’s introductory remarks, made without notes and delivered without a hitch, painted the picture of an institution devoted to the health and welfare of the citizens of Boston, and fearless about stepping forward to confront problems of public concern.

  “We have been in close contact with the epidemiology division of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta,” he said, “and they have promised to send us one of their top people to augment our own intensive investigation. I had hoped he would be here in time to participate in this news conference—” He gestured to the empty chair beside his. “—but unfortunately that wasn’t possible.”

  The three cases of DIC, he stressed, might add up to nothing more than coincidence. However, the approach decided upon by the Medical Center of Boston was to take the bull by the horns and begin an immediate investigation, while keeping the public aware in an ongoing manner.

  Sarah was disturbed that Paris would tout the imminent arrival of a CDC epidemiologist, when he had just told her he did not know if one was even coming at all. But she reasoned that the exaggeration was harmless enough, and given the circumstances, understandable. He was simply trying to diffuse as many issues as possible. And in fact, by the time he introduced Eli Blankenship, it was as if the Herald item had not forced his hand at all.

  Buoyed by the CEO’s performance, Sarah felt some of her tension abate. Still, it was not until Blankenship was finishing his formal remarks that she felt comfortable enough to look out at the audience. If, as she remembered once hearing, the amphitheater held 250, at least 200 were there. Many of those attending were residents and medical school faculty, including Andrew, who was back in his traditional last-row center seat. But a significant number, judging from their appearance and dress, seemed simply to be from the community. Among them, Sarah recognized one woman with whom she was training to do home birth, just as she had with Lisa. It wasn’t difficult to imagine her thoughts and concerns.

  But it was another woman, seated not far from An
drew, whom Sarah found the most interesting. She was African in her skin color, hairstyle, dress, and jewelry. And even through the lights and distance, her uncommon beauty was obvious. Sarah was scanning the audience when she realized the striking young woman was looking straight at her, smiling.

  I know you from someplace, don’t I? Sarah thought. But from where?

  Blankenship lumbered back to his seat to a smattering of applause. Sarah whispered congratulations, even though she realized that she had been preoccupied with the woman in the last row and had missed his final answer.

  As Sarah expected, Randall Snyder was down-to-earth and reassuring in his presentation and responses to questions. The three DIC cases were certainly a cause for concern, he said. But without a careful review, especially of the way the diagnoses were made, it was still too soon even to link them. Meanwhile, he concluded, the public should rest assured that his department would be carefully screening all obstetrical patients for any abnormality suggesting an increased susceptibility.

  The applause for Snyder was measurably louder than it had been for Eli, even though his presentation had not been nearly as substantive. The power of the fatherly image, Sarah acknowledged, recalling at the same time that she had voted for substance over fatherly image in almost every presidential election since she turned eighteen and had only once backed the winner.

  Finally it was her turn. In an effort to keep reasonably organized, she had printed the points she wanted to make on a set of three-by-five file cards. By the time her five-minute presentation was over, she had covered most of what was on them. Throughout her remarks, though, she felt a gulf separating her from the audience. She knew that, in spite of herself, she was sounding stilted, and far more proselytizing and pompous than she had intended.

  Hey, everyone, this isn’t me! she wanted to scream out. These are issues I really care about. I would love to talk about them—but with you, not at you. How about we all go to the Arnold Arboretum, throw some blankets on the grass, and really get into why people become ill, what it means to be sick, and what it takes to get well?