Code Blue

by Richard MD Mabry

  YOU LOOK DIFFERENT TODAY. NEW HAIRSTYLE?" THE REMARK WAS SO out of character for Josh that it took Cathy by surprise.

  "No, same style I've had since I started med school. Low maintenance and plain."

  "Maybe it's the makeup. You look different."

  Cathy settled more comfortably in the chair. "I guess it's because I feel different. Let me tell you what happened a couple of days ago."

  When she'd finished relating her experiences in surgery, Josh leaned back, crossed his legs, and clasped his hands together in front of his knee. "How are you sleeping?"

  "I've been so worn out recently that I'm asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow."

  "Any more run-ins with that black SUV?"

  Cathy shrugged her shoulders. "No. The sheriff' s looking into it, and I'm careful."

  "Let's review. You came here because you were depressed— understandably so, given what you'd experienced, although you didn't seem to realize it. Actually, you thought you were on the road to full-blown paranoia. You were afraid you might be showing signs of the same schizophrenia your mother developed. How do you feel now?"

  "Better, I guess."

  "You're relieved because, instead of being mentally ill, your life is actually in danger?"

  "I know. It's crazy." Cathy laughed at her poor choice of words. "You know what I mean. Anyway, this is something I can fight, and I've made up my mind to do just that. And I have some help."

  "The boyfriend turned lawyer?" The smile Josh flashed was a rare sight and one Cathy had learned to appreciate.

  "Actually, the boyfriend turned lawyer seems to be turning into a boyfriend again. At least, I think so. Right now I want to stand on my own two feet, but it's nice to know someone has my back."

  Josh shifted in his chair. "So, do you think we're about done here?"

  Cathy shook her head. "I'd like to come back for a few more visits, but maybe we can stretch them out. I've still got some issues I'd like to talk out with you."

  "Good enough. Let's do it."

  For the rest of the session, Cathy poured out her thoughts as fast as they entered her mind, in a true stream-ofconsciousness catharsis. No stopping for a drink of water.No sweat running down between her shoulder blades. No racing of the pulse. Maybe she had gotten a handle on her problems.

  Soon, Josh stood and stuck out his hand. "I'll see you in a couple of weeks. Call me earlier if you think it's necessary.But I think you'll be fine."

  First a smile, and now this. Quite a red-letter day. She shook the hand Josh offered. "I appreciate all you've done."

  Cathy stopped at the secretary's desk to arrange her next appointment. As she was about to leave, she said, "When I shook hands with Dr. Samuels, I couldn't help noticing the calluses on his hands. Unusual for a doctor, isn't it? How did he get those?"

  "Oh," the secretary said, "that's from his hobby. He's a carpenter. He spends a lot of time repairing things that are broken—and building new ones."

  Cathy envied Will as he sat next to her at the conference table arranging his notes, scribbling an occasional addendum in the margins. No sign of nervousness. Of course, he wouldn't be. This was his office. And he was a lawyer.Depositions were as common for him as cutting hair was for a barber. But she'd never been through one, and she was as nervous as she'd ever been in her life.

  The door opened, and the stenographer entered. She took her seat before a strange-looking machine, added a fresh stick of gum to the wad already in her mouth, and stared at the wall with a blank expression.

  Will leaned in and whispered in Cathy's ear. "Remember.Pause before you answer. That gives me time to stop you. If you have any questions, you can whisper them to me."

  "What if you object to something they ask?"

  "My objections will simply be to get them on the record.There's no judge here to rule on them. But anytime I object, you clam up. Okay?"

  Cathy nodded. Her mouth felt as dry as the sands of West Texas. She poured a glass of water and sipped from it, but it didn't seem to help much.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting." Sam Lawton, Nix's lawyer, ambled into the room. He took a seat at the head of the table, nodded to Will and Cathy, and asked, "Is the court reporter ready?"

  "Yes, Judge."

  Will responded to Cathy's quizzical look with a whispered explanation. "Even though he was voted out years ago, Lawton's like most judges. He wants that title for life.Don't let it throw you. "

  Lawton's gray hair spilled over the collar of a wrinkled dress shirt. He wore a blue suit that was five years out of style, accented by a slightly askew red polka-dot tie. Smeared reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He reminded Cathy of a fine home gone to seed. But Will had warned her that, despite his age and appearance, Lawton's mind was sharp, his legal skills honed by years on the bench.

  "Dr. Sewell, let's get started." Lawton's disarming smile was akin to what the snake must have displayed as he approached Eve.

  Cathy placed her left hand on the Bible held by the court reporter, raised her right, and was sworn in.

  "Now, Dr. Sewell, tell us about your medical training."

  Cathy detailed her education, her residency training, and her postgraduate courses.

  Lawton nodded in satisfaction, as though he'd just proven something important. She remembered Will's warnings.Don't try to read the man's expression. This was part fact-finding, part mind game.

  Lawton led her on through a series of benign questions, and she concentrated on answering truthfully, careful not to volunteer information. Then, out of the blue, the lawyer asked, "And did you deliberately try to poison Milton Nix, or was it an accident?"

  Will's voice never rose. "Sam, I'll object to that question and ask my client not to answer." He turned to the stenographer."Offthe record."

  The woman took her hands offthe keyboard and rubbed them together.

  Will shook his head. "Sam, do you take me for a secondyear law student?"

  Lawton grinned like a fox. "Never hurts to ask, Will.Never hurts to ask."

  The questioning seemed to go on and on. Finally, Lawton asked Cathy about her decision to switch Nix from Lanoxin to generic digoxin. She answered without pausing to think."I thought it would be nice to save him a few dollars."

  "Had you been visited by a detail man from one of the pharmaceutical companies that makes this form of digitalis just before you saw Mr. Nix?"

  Cathy bristled. "I never let pressure by pharmaceutical companies influence my prescribing. And for your information, generic drugs aren't detailed to doctors like brand name drugs. Maybe that's why they're cheaper."

  Will's hand touched her arm and knew she'd violated one of the rules he'd stressed. Answer the question, don't volunteer information, and don't lose your temper.

  "Never mind." Lawton pushed his glasses up offthe tip of his nose. He reached into a thin manila envelope resting on the table beside him. "This is a photocopy of the prescription you wrote for Milton Nix. Does the dosage appear correct?"

  "I didn't—."

  "Just answer the question I asked. Is the dosage correct?"

  "No."

  Cathy looked at Will, expecting him to say something about the prescription being altered. Instead, he turned away and appeared to study the crown molding across the room. For a moment, Cathy flashed back to the credentials committee meeting—men sitting in a room deciding issues that would affect her life, while she sat helpless. Was Will hesitant to go up against Judge Lawton because he didn't want to upset a local power broker? She ground her teeth as she prepared to answer the next question.

  After the deposition, Will shook hands with Judge Lawton and said, "Sam, I'll be in touch about deposing your client."

  "Just give my secretary a call, Will." Lawton picked up his briefcase. "You know, I was surprised that you're handling this case instead of a lawyer from the insurance company."

  "They're willing to let me be the local presence. And I might as well be involved from the start. After all, I'll be
filing the countersuit against your client."

  To his credit, Lawton showed no surprise except a faint twitch of his bushy eyebrows. "Oh?"

  "Sure, for malicious prosecution, tampering with evidence, and a few other violations. We'll be asking for five million." Will butted a stack of papers together and shoved them into his briefcase. "See you, Sam."

  "Will, what was—?"

  Will gave his head a single vigorous shake, his meaning clear. They stepped into the elevator and rode in silence to the ground floor. When they finally slid into Will's pickup and shut the doors, he turned to Cathy. "I guess I surprised you."

  "You mean the way you let him accuse me of malpractice without objecting? The way you allowed him to imply that I'm guilty without uttering a word in my defense? Why, yes.You surprised me."

  "A deposition isn't necessarily about getting information.It's mainly sparring, seeing if you can get the witness to lose their temper, say something rash so it's on the record under oath. That way, if that information comes up at trial, the witness can't back out of any corner they've painted themselves into without committing perjury. As for what we did today, I doubt that it will affect the trial—if there is one. He might ask you some of those same questions, but if he does, now you're prepared for them."

  Cathy thought about that. "So you don't want to argue about anything he brought up?"

  Will's eyes never left the road. "Why should I tip our hand? We know what our defense is, but they don't. Let's keep it that way."

  "What about the countersuit. We never talked about that."

  "Oh, if you want to go to the expense and trouble of filing one, we can do it after we discover who altered that prescription and why, but you'd never win it. Nix surely didn't change the directions so that he'd almost die, so there's no use suing him. He actually filed this suit in good faith. What we can do, after we get to the bottom of this, is see that whoever's responsible is prosecuted for what they did. But we're not about to file any civil suit. I just wanted to throw Sam off balance." He grinned. "He may be old and crafty, but I'm no slouch myself."

  She knew he couldn't see her smile, but she hoped her voice showed it. "No, Will. No, you aren't."

  "So, next we subpoena our own deponents."

  "Pardon?"

  "We serve subpoenas to the people we want to depose.Nix, his wife, the two pharmacists. Who else?"

  "Let me think." Cathy nibbled on her thumb, a habit she thought she'd broken in her teens. Suddenly, she saw Robert's face in her mind's eye. The rumors? That would be his style. And he wouldn't be above paying someone to run her offthe road and frighten her. But arranging the alteration of a prescription—almost killing a patient? Despite his arrogance, Robert was a good doctor. She couldn't believe that of him.

  "Well?" Will asked.

  "I'm sorry, Will. I'm blank. I can't imagine how anyone else could have altered that prescription. It's got to be one of those people."

  Will stopped at a traffic light. He turned to Cathy. "Don't forget to think outside the box."

  "Like—?"

  "Someone blackmailing one of the pharmacists. Someone with a key—the cleaning person, a former employee.Someone—."

  "Okay, I get it. Anyone could be behind this."

  Will accelerated smoothly into the intersection, then slammed on the brakes.

  "Whoa!" Cathy felt the tug of her seatbelt. "What was that?"

  "Some idiot driving a black SUV almost hit us."

  Emma Gladstone settled carefully into the patient chair. The patent leather purse she held in her lap looked big enough to accommodate supplies for a three-day trip.Cathy wondered how the elderly lady could manage carrying around that load just ten days after major surgery.

  Cathy leaned across her desk. "Mrs. Gladstone, can I get you anything? Are you comfortable?"

  The woman smiled serenely. "I'm fine, Doctor. I just wanted to come by and tell you how much Ernest and I appreciate everything you've done."

  Cathy tried to act as though compliments came her way every day, instead of with the frequency of snow in July."Think nothing of it. All I did was assist Dr. Harshman. And at that, I had to scrub out before the case was finished."

  "Oh, I don't mean just the surgery, although Arthur told Ernest that you were a lot of help. I wanted you to know how much we appreciate your coming by to check on me in the hospital and calling me after I went home."

  Harshman actually complimented her? Despite her best efforts to appear cool, Cathy felt her jaw drop when Mrs.Gladstone unloaded this bit of information. Would wonders never cease? "I try to show all my patients how much I care for them."

  "And it's appreciated."

  "I'm afraid there are some folks who don't share your opinion of me."

  Mrs. Gladstone wrinkled her nose. "Oh, that suit Gail Nix had her husband file? I was sorry to hear that."

  "Mrs. Nix is behind the suit? Not Mr. Nix?"

  "Dear, I have a good idea of pretty much everything that goes on in this town. I heard from a reliable source that Milton was grateful that you saved his life. He didn't care about the prescription error. It was Gail who badgered him into filing the suit. Apparently, she has something against you."

  Cathy thought back to the contact she'd had with Gail Nix since returning to Dainger. She'd pegged the banker's wife as a vapid airhead, more interested in her social position than anything else. Why would she have a grudge against Cathy?

  After Mrs. Gladstone left, Cathy plunged into her afternoon's appointments and soon was too busy to think further about Gail Nix. With one thing and another, it was late that night before Cathy's thoughts returned to her conversation with Mrs. Gladstone.

  During her training Cathy developed the habit of mentally walking the halls of the hospital each night before she dropped offto sleep. She'd review the patients in every room, patients whose lives had been given over to her care. With her switch to private practice, Cathy made only one small adjustment. Now each night she reviewed the patients she'd seen in the office that day. Only when she was satisfied she'd done all she could for each of them was she able to turn over and fall asleep. Not tonight.

  Lying in the dark, Cathy wracked her brain to figure out what she'd done to anger Gail Nix. Why had the woman badgered her husband into filing a malpractice suit?

  "You've done it now. You're awake." Cathy was surprised to hear that she'd spoken aloud. Maybe she wasn't handling the stress as well as she'd implied to Josh. She slipped out of bed, turned on the bedside lamp, and padded to the medicine cabinet. How about a couple of Tylenol? It might help the headache that had become a frequent companion. Her self-diagnosis was tension headache. Should she go back to Josh and ask him for something to calm her nerves? She'd avoided sleeping pills and tranquilizers all her life, probably because she'd seen her mother take too many of them. That thought cemented her decision. No, she'd gut it out.

  She slid back beneath the covers and turned out the light.She was still awake when she heard a commotion outside.What—?

  Quickly, she wrapped her robe around her and groped under the bed for her slippers. She was halfway to the window when she heard someone shouting.

  "Cathy! Cathy! Get out. The garage is on fire!"

  It took a moment for the words to register. Fire in the garage below her! Cathy snatched the little framed photo of her parents from her bedside table and slid it into the pocket of her robe. At the door, she reached for the knob, then pulled her hand back with a shriek, bringing it to her lips to soothe the burn. Now what? These stairs were the only real way out. Get out a window? Knot bed sheets together and shinny down them? Would they hold? What if she fell and broke an arm or a leg? There seemed to be no other choice.

  She pulled the top sheet offher bed, but before she could make use of it, the floor shook beneath her and a thunderous blast assaulted her eardrums. Something hard struck the back of her head, and she descended into silent darkness.

  "I think she's coming around."

  Cathy had
been under general anesthesia only once in her life: a tonsillectomy when she was six years old. She recalled the sensations as she woke up. The strangeness of moving slowly from a dark tunnel into the light. Her confusion as she tried to make sense of the images hitting her retina. She had that same feeling now. Blurred forms hovered over her, their voices reverberating like sound at a rock concert. Only this time, like a velvet curtain, the smell of smoke permeated the air.

  "Doctor, can you talk?" She squinted her eyes and made out the face of Joe Elam, concern lining his already wrinkled face. His wife, Bess, stood beside him.

  "I—" Cathy shook her head, trying to clear it as she'd seen athletes do after "having their bell rung." The motion set offa pounding in her head like men with hammers holding a convention inside her skull.

  "Just lay back." Bess Elam's voice was calm. No panic there. This was a mother and grandmother, used to taking care of bumps, bruises, and any other catastrophe that came along.

  Cathy relaxed back onto the grass and tried to remember how she'd gotten here. Then it came to her. A fire. Then an explosion. Her apartment! Everything she'd accumulated in the past ten years was in there. Granted, most of it was still in boxes, but it was precious to her. Insurance couldn't replace the memories some of those boxes held.

  "Doc, open your eyes." She forced her lids to respond and looked into the face of Mark, the emergency medical technician.

  "Mark—" She choked and gagged. Someone held a bottle to her lips, and she sipped water. "We've got to stop meeting this way."

  "Yeah." His laugh was forced. "Doc, let me check you over. You got knocked on the head pretty good."

  "How long was I out?"

  "They tell me it was only a few minutes. But I still need to go through the routine."

  She lay still as he took her blood pressure and pulse, then shined a light into her eyes. His fingers probed the back of her skull, setting offan encore by the men with hammers.

  After he'd finished his examination, she asked, "So, do I get a clean bill of health?"