Code 15

by Gary Birken

  The question that continued to plague her was, why had he made it a point to inform Carrie that he knew she was Allen Hawkins’s daughter? He had to have known Carrie would tell the police. And why would he leave that cryptic note? As disturbed as she suspected Gideon was, she was convinced he was a man with an unambiguous agenda and a very specific method to his insanity. It didn’t take a criminologist to see he was inviting the police to engage in some twisted mind game with him.

  Morgan looked in her rearview mirror and slowly backed out of her parking space. As much as it frightened her to consider the possibility, she had to wonder if Gideon’s strange preoccupation with her meant that she too was part of his ruthless obsession.

  CHAPTER 13

  When Gideon spotted Jimmy’s Place, a well-known family restaurant in North Miami, he put on his directional signal and turned into the parking lot.

  Before he got out of his car, he checked the time. If her schedule hadn’t changed, Faith Russo would be working lunch. Gideon hadn’t come across Faith by pure happenstance. To the contrary, he had invested a considerable amount of time and energy searching for just the right woman.

  Once he had decided on Faith, he spent several weeks care fully cultivating his relationship with her. When he walked through the front door, the first thing he noticed was that the usual lunch-hour chaos was winding down. On the line, one of the short-order cooks was tossing a salad while the other stood in front of the grill tending to a sizzling burger.

  Gideon finally spotted Faith at the far end of the three-sided counter taking an order. He bypassed a few empty tables and took a seat at the end of the counter. As soon as Faith saw him, she smiled and waved. At the age of twenty-six, Faith Russo was possessed with a trusting nature and a tranquil disposition. She had a rail-thin figure, generous eyebrows, and a slightly upturned nose. From the beginning, Gideon saw her as a street-smart survivor, always looking for a shortcut to a better life. In spite of a deadbeat for an ex-husband and a few lackluster boyfriends, Faith was steadfast in her optimism that she would one day meet the right man who would rescue her from the day-to-day drudgery that had become the main-stay of her life.

  Filling a brown mug with coffee, she walked over and set it down in front of him.

  Knowing Gideon only as Steve, she said, “You’re a little late today. What’ll you have?”

  “How about tuna and tomato on whole wheat toast? Eighty-six the lettuce.”

  She grinned and shook her head. “I don’t know why I even ask.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You always order the same thing,” she said with a flirtatious giggle.

  “Once you’ve found what you like, there’s no reason to keep experimenting,” Gideon said, stroking the back of her hand. “How are those kids of yours?”

  “They’re a handful, but I love ’em to pieces.”

  “Do you think you’ll have any more?”

  She chuckled as she scribbled his order down. “For the right guy, maybe.”

  “Really?”

  She waved the check in the air. “Let me go put this in. I’ll be right back. You look tired.”

  “I’ve been working pretty hard lately.”

  Gideon watched her walk over to the line and clip the check to a rotating rack. She looked back at him every few seconds. Ignoring her other customers, she strolled back and began wiping down the counter.

  “What is it that you do again?”

  “I’m a health-care consultant,” Gideon told her. “I advise hospitals how to improve their patient satisfaction.”

  “What do you mean by patient satisfaction?” she asked, topping off his coffee.

  “Hospitals want to make sure their patients are happy with the care they receive.”

  “Why? What choice do they have? It’s not exactly like going to Disney.”

  “That’s just the point. People do have a choice. Nowadays, hospitals are no different than all those car dealerships down Seventh Avenue,” he said, pointing toward the large window. “They both compete for your business in a big way.”

  “So why do these hospitals need you?”

  “My company evaluates patient satisfaction and then provides the hospital with key information on how to improve it.”

  “Which hospital do you work for?” she asked.

  “Several, but Dade Presbyterian’s my biggest client.”

  “You’re up, Faith,” came a voice from the line. She glanced over, saw that her order was ready, and went to pick it up.

  “How do you find out if the patients are happy or not?” she asked, putting his plate down in front of him.

  “Lots of ways but mostly by interviews and surveys.” He took the first bite of his sandwich and reached for his a napkin. “If you don’t mind me asking, how much do you make as a waitress?”

  “On a busy day, I can make a hundred in tips.”

  “For the way you guys work, that doesn’t sound like much.”

  “It’s not bad compared to some of the other jobs out there. It’s not like I’m a brain surgeon or a real-estate tycoon.”

  She picked up the saltshaker, wiped it clean with a damp rag, and then replaced it on the counter.

  “You seem pretty good with people to me.”

  “I never thought about it too much, but I guess I am,” she said with a light shrug.

  “Supposing I told you that you could make a thousand dollars for a few hours of work? What would you say?”

  She snickered, looking at him as if he was being more mischievous than offensive.

  “I’d say why pay for something you could get for free?”

  “I’m talking about a business proposition.”

  “You’re serious?”

  He held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  “What would I have to do?”

  “It’s simple. We’d prep you first and then send you into Dade Presbyterian’s emergency room where you’d pretend to be a patient. Afterward, we’d ask you a bunch of questions about how you were treated.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “All I have to do is go to the emergency room, fake like I’m sick, and then tell you about it.”

  He nodded.

  “And for that I get a thousand bucks?”

  “Pretty much. I’d have to prep you first. But in a nutshell, that’s it.”

  “What do I do if the doctor orders medications for me or wants to give me some kind of a treatment?” she asked.

  “We try to create scenarios where that doesn’t happen, but even if it does, I’ll teach you how to talk your way out of it. What do you say?”

  “Are you kidding? Of course, I’ll do it.”

  “Good. Give me your phone number. I’ll give you a call in a few days.”

  Faith tore off one of her checks, wrote her phone number on the back, and handed it to him.

  “It almost sounds too good to be true,” she said with a sudden look of hesitancy. “There’s no way I can get in trouble for this, is there?”

  “Of course not. The hospital administration is paying us to do this,” he assured her. “And this could be just the beginning. Some people we’ve hired have done so well that we’ve used them at other hospitals. We’ve even sent a few of them out of state and paid all their expenses plus their fee.”

  “This is a godsend. Those stinkers of mine all need new clothes,” she said.

  “How far do you live from Dade Presbyterian?”

  “About twenty minutes, I guess.”

  “That’s perfect. We like to do these at night so all you’ll need is a babysitter and we’re in business.”

  Faith was now beaming as she extended her hand. “I really appreciate this, Steve.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re the one who’s helping me.” Gideon took the last bite of his sandwich and stood up. “Let’s hope this is the start of something really special.”

  Faith blushed.

  “There’s just one thing,” he said, pretending to look around wit
h concern. “I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t discuss this with anybody.”

  “How come?”

  “When people hear about something like this, they all want to get in on the act. The last thing I need with my schedule is to be flooded by a million requests for jobs.”

  “Not a problem,” she said, raising her finger to her lips.

  Gideon handed her a twenty-dollar bill. “I’ll speak to you in a couple of days.”

  “Sounds great. I’ll be right back with your change.”

  “Keep it,” he said. “Get something for the kids.”

  “You’re so nice,” she told him. She then looked in the direction of the cash register where the manager was busy with a customer. Gideon was just about to stand up when she quickly leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek.

  Walking toward the front door, he was pleased with how easily he had been able to bring Faith into the fold. He harbored some remorse about using her as a pawn. But her involvement in his affairs would be brief, and it would give an otherwise inconsequential person the opportunity to serve a much higher purpose.

  CHAPTER 14

  DAY FOUR

  Apart from performing an occasional FAA flight physical, Ben Docherty was firm in his decision never to return to the day-to-day grind of practicing medicine.

  Having just completed an examination of a radiologist who had recently decided to return to flying after a twenty-year layoff, he stopped at the CB Discount Pharmacy to pick up the morning newspaper. The establishment, which was located directly across the street from Dade Presbyterian, had been there almost as long as the hospital and was one of the few independent drugstores to have survived the invasion of the national chains.

  Making his way past the usual swarm of people waiting impatiently for their prescriptions to be filled, Ben worked his way toward the main counter. He was just about to reach for the Miami Herald when he saw Morgan standing in front of the cashier.

  From behind her he said, “Do you want me to call the phone company for you?” he asked. “I think your voice mail is on the fritz.”

  Recognizing his voice immediately, she shook her head, turned, and said, “I got home late. I was going to return your call but then I remembered about calling you past nine o’clock.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “C’mon, Ben. Every time I call you much past nine, I wake you up. It’s like calling a nursing home.”

  Guilty as charged and seeing no reason to try to debate the point, Ben moved on. “Did you go over to your father’s office?”

  “I went yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “It was sad. I guess I miss him more than I thought.”

  “It’s only been few weeks. Give yourself a little time,” he told her. “Did you get a chance to speak with anybody?”

  Morgan stepped up to the cashier and paid for her hodgepodge of candy and sundries.

  “I have to meet with the first-year residents in about twenty minutes. Walk me over to the library and I’ll tell you about it.”

  Ben nodded and pointed toward the exit. Morgan put her change in her purse and they started for the hospital.

  “I spoke to the office manager and his physician’s assistant. Her name’s Carrie. I think you may have met her at the office Christmas party.”

  “The name’s familiar.”

  “Do you remember I told you that the man who killed my father signed in under the name of Stuart Artesian? “

  Ben nodded.

  “It seems he left this mysterious note neatly folded on the countertop. It read: Hell is truth denied. Comes now the penance for the third of three. He signed it Gideon.”

  “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “That’s all I’ve been thinking about since yesterday,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t come up with a thing.” The light turned green and they quick-walked across the street. They continued under an ivy-covered walkway until reaching a revolving glass door that accessed the main lobby of the hospital. While they walked, Morgan filled Ben in on everything else she had learned from talking to Carrie and Annalisa.

  “The police never said a word to you about any of this?” Ben asked.

  “Remember what I told you about how they conduct their investigations. They don’t share information with anybody. I’m getting pretty frustrated.”

  “I still think you have to give them more time. It’s not as if you have a lot of other options.”

  “I’m trying to be patient, Ben, but there are a lot of things about my father’s death that don’t make sense. If this guy, Gideon, were simply a disgruntled patient, he could have murdered my father in a lot simpler way. Why did he go to such extreme lengths? Why would he leave that cryptic note . . . and why would he take the time to kill my father by filling his chest cavity with air and collapsing his lung?”

  “I don’t know if there’s an answer to that. The problem is you’re trying to logically account for the actions of someone who is almost certainly irrational.”

  “I don’t know how to measure his insanity, but he’s definitely methodical.”

  They walked down a long hallway adorned with a series of bronze plaques recognizing the past chiefs of staff of the hospital. With five minutes to spare, they reached the library. Once inside, they made their way to a small glass-fronted study room and sat down at a racetrack-shaped conference table.

  “I had breakfast in the doctors’ dining room today,” Ben began. “Everybody was taking about some disastrous open-heart operation. Did you hear about it?”

  “I chair the Patient Safety Committee. Of course I heard about it. I was probably the first one they called.”

  “Who was the surgeon?” Ben asked.

  “McBride.”

  “He’s a good technician. What went wrong?”

  “We don’t know yet. I spent most of yesterday afternoon with him and everybody on the cardiac team.” She stopped and filled her lungs with a deep breath. “We can’t figure it out. The operative record is clean. From all appearances, it was an uneventful case—no mistakes.”

  “Until the pump clotted off, you mean. Are you going to report it as a Code Fifteen?”

  “Ben, a cardiac bypass pump clotted off in the middle of an open-heart operation and the patient died. Are we going to report it?” she asked rhetorically. “We’ll be lucky if the Agency for Health Care Administration doesn’t make this case their poster child for Code Fifteens.”

  “Have you started a root cause analysis?” he asked.

  “The committee’s meeting tomorrow to get it rolling. I’m sure it will be a long, drawn-out process. This case was bad enough, but coming on the heels of our last Code Fifteen, which also involved a Cardiac Care Center patient . . . well, I’m sure you can imagine everybody’s a little edgy to say the least.”

  “Bob Allenby must be ready to kill himself.”

  “He is the CEO of the hospital,” Morgan said. “The Cardiac Care Center was his baby. Up until a couple of months ago we never had a Code Fifteen involving a heart patient. Now we’ve got two and they’re both bad ones.”

  “What was the other one?”

  “It was a pacemaker case involving a young woman. It happened a few weeks ago. It was a totally routine procedure until about eight hours after surgery. For no apparent reason, she suddenly developed a disturbance in her cardiac rhythm. They couldn’t get her heart rate below two hundred. She eventually had a full cardiac arrest. They worked on her for almost an hour but couldn’t get her back.”

  “That sounds like ventricular tachycardia. What caused it?”

  “I wish we knew. We reviewed every aspect of the case. It was probably the most thorough and exhaustive root cause analysis I’ve ever been involved with. We still haven’t come up with a thing,” Morgan said with a long sigh. “They made me the chairperson of the committee for a reason. I’m supposed to be an expert on patient errors. I don’t feel like I’m doing my job very well.
I know there’s an answer to all of this, but for some reason I’m just not seeing it.”

  “Then take it to the next level. Try treating it as if it were a complicated aviation accident.”

  Morgan’s eyebrows arched in question. “Which means what exactly?”

  “Dismiss your assumptions and expand the possibilities. I’d start by talking to everybody involved again, but this time look beyond the obvious.”

  Morgan looked at him as if he he’d been reading her diary. “It’s funny you should say that. I called Dana McGinley yesterday. She was the CCU nurse assigned to Miss Greene. I’m supposed to meet with her later today. She was interviewed by Arnie Miller from Neurology but I never spoke to her personally.”

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, you seem pretty discouraged.”

  Before Morgan could respond, three young women dressed in pale blue surgical scrubs burst through the doors in laughter. When they saw Morgan and Ben, a sudden sense of decorum came over them.

  “Whoever’s doing the first case presentation, get it ready. I’ll be right back,” Morgan told them as she and Ben stood up. They walked back to the library’s entrance.

  “Have you heard from Kevin?” he asked.

  “Not a word.”

  From her unconcerned manner and tone, he assumed she wasn’t crestfallen about it. For the past couple of days, he couldn’t help from wondering if Morgan had already started dating. He wanted to ask her to dinner but the fear of embarrassing himself kept him tongue-tied. He couldn’t imagine anything more humiliating than allowing Morgan to know he was romantically interested in her only to find out that she considered him like another older brother instead of a love interest. He knew how friendly she was with her obstetrician, Jenny Silverman. He was also familiar from personal experience with Jenny’s incurable compulsion to fix up every unattached woman she knew.

  “What are you thinking about?” Morgan asked him. “Your lips are moving.”

  “Excuse me?”