“So,” he said. “There you have it. Frank has had his say, and now Mrs. Beaulieu has had hers. Any other comments in the few minutes we have left? … Good enough. Well, in view of the seriousness of this repurchase matter, it has been suggested, and I agree, that we vote on the issue by closed ballot. Any objections? … Okay, then. You’ll each find a ballot in your folder. Just mark whatever you think is right, and pass your vote over to me.”
Across the room, Frank subconsciously nodded his approval. Beneath the table, his leg was jouncing in nervous anticipation. After immobilizing Suzanne Cole, he had called Annette Dolan and insisted that she stay home for the remainder of the day. Next, he had worked out an exquisite scenario for Zack and Suzanne, which would take both of them out of his hair for good and place the blame for their accident squarely on the shoulders of his brother.
He couldn’t have scripted things better. First Mainwaring’s million, now the vote, and later, a call to Zack and one final test of Serenyl—this time at the edge of the four-hundred-foot drop-off at Christmas Point. It would be the perfect ending to a perfect day. The game hadn’t been easy, but he had met and overcome every obstacle. And now, at long last, Frankie Iverson was about to be on top again.
In the back of his mind, the cheerleaders’ chant had begun to build.
Frank, Frank, he’s our man.…
With Henry checking the corridors and stairways ahead of him, Zack moved easily through the kitchen and up the north stairway to the ICU. The pain from his shoulder, while tolerable, was continuing to make its existence known, especially when he tried to raise his arm.
“Good luck in there, Doc,” the guard said, barely able to contain his enthusiasm at the decision he had made. “I’ll be around the hospital if you need me. Just have me paged.”
Zack shook his hand gratefully.
“You’ve done a good thing, Henry,” he said. “A really good thing. I’ll page you if I need you.…”
Readying himself for the struggle ahead, he turned and entered the ICU.
The unit was virtually as he had left it two hours before, except that neither Suzanne nor Owen Walsh was there. Half of the glass-enclosed cubicles were empty, and what activity there was continued to center about Toby Nelms.
The nurses eyed him uncomfortably as he approached. Off to his right, he saw the unit secretary snatch up the receiver of her phone and then slowly set it back down again, as if unwilling to take sole responsibility for reporting his appearance in the hospital.
Bernice Rimmer, the nurse assigned to Toby’s care, had actually been a classmate of Zack’s from early childhood through high school. She was the mother of three children now, but still looked nearly as slim and buoyant as she had during her teens. She was also a nurse’s nurse, tough on the outside, but with a core of honey—and smart. Her presence this day was, Zack realized, no less fortunate for him than his encounter with Henry. If any nurse would give him a break, it was she.
As he approached, Bernice, almost as if reading his thoughts, sent the aide who was working with her out of Toby’s cubicle.
“Hi, Bernie,” Zack said.
“Funny,” she responded, “you don’t look like public enemy number one.”
“I’m not.”
“Tell that to your brother. I never thought the two of you got along all that well, but this is something else.”
She took a folded sheet of paper from her uniform pocket, smoothed it out on Toby’s bed, and passed it over.
Zack was not surprised at the content of the memo, only at its viciousness. In essence, Frank had outlined a set of charges against him that would have made Attila the Hun proud, and had threatened summary dismissal for anyone not immediately reporting his presence in the hospital.
“Frank and I are having a few problems,” he said.
“I guess.”
“How’s Toby doing?”
“About the same. His temp’s staying around 101. Pupils are still equal. No change in his consciousness.” She gestured at the memo. “You do all those things?”
Zack shook his head.
“Frank doesn’t want to believe that the anesthesia this child received for his hernia operation is responsible for his problem.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Bernice Rimmer studied him for a time, and then she gazed down at her charge, reached over, and stroked the boy’s forehead. Finally, she looked past Zack to the unit secretary and shook her head.
“So, what do you propose to do about it?” she asked.
Zack started to thank her, but the look in her eyes stopped him. She wanted action, not platitudes.
He conducted a brief neurologic check of Toby.
“I need to have a few words with Jack Pearl,” he said.
“He’s to the O.R.”
“That’s okay. But before I see him, I need to go over some things with Suzanne. Do you know where she is?”
“No idea. She called a while ago to say she’d be down here shortly, but she hasn’t showed. I think Dr. Walsh paged her once, but as far as I know, she never answered. He’s gone to his office.”
“Could you have her paged again, please? Also, try the E.R., just in case she’s tied up there.”
They waited several minutes for Suzanne to answer. Then, once again, Zack tried calling her at home.
“This is very weird,” he said. “Does she fail to answer pages often?”
“Never.”
“Hmm. Bernice, could you do me one more favor and page Henry Flowers, the security guard. Ask him to come here.”
“You want security?”
“Not security—Henry. It’s okay. And please thank the rest of the staff for holding off on reporting me.”
Henry Flowers arrived at the unit in less than two minutes.
“How’m I doing?” Zack asked.
The massive guard shrugged.
“As far as I can tell, no one knows you’re here.”
“I’m trying to find Dr. Cole. You know her?”
“Of course. I just heard her paged.”
“That was me. She didn’t answer.”
“So?”
“So I’d like you to start looking around for her, if you could. I don’t think I’d last very long out there.”
“Okay.”
“Check her office in the P and S building first. Then maybe the cardiac lab.”
Henry stroked his pocked cheeks.
“I saw her,” he said thoughtfully.
“When? Where?”
“Not too long ago. I … I can’t remember where, though, Doc.”
“Try.”
“Let’s see.… I started my rounds on the front lawn, and then crossed through the lobby, and then …” Suddenly, he brightened. “I remember, now. I remember where I saw her.” Then, just as suddenly, his expression darkened.
“Henry, where?” Zack asked.
“It was in the west wing,” he said distantly. “She … she was going into Mr. Iverson’s office.”
Zack felt an instant chill.
“Henry, get me there,” he said. He turned to the nurse. “Bernie, could you please find out who’s on for anesthesia beside Dr. Pearl? Call whoever it is and ask them to stand by. Don’t tell them it’s for me.”
With Henry resuming his role as scout, they left the unit and made their way down to the sub-basement, then across the hospital to the west-wing staircase and up. Zack flattened himself against the stairwell wall.
“Henry,” he whispered, “I think my brother is in a meeting, but he has two receptionists.”
“Yeah, I know. The knockout twins.”
“Exactly. Talk to them. See if they remember when Suzanne left, or better still, where she might have gone. Also, find out if Frank was with her when she went.”
Subconsciously, the huge guard straightened his tie, adjusted the lapels on his uniform, and pushed his massive shoulders back a notch. Then he slipped out the stairway door to confront the knockout twins.<
br />
Half a minute later, he was back.
“No one there,” he said.
“No one?”
“Nope.” He appeared disappointed. “Not the blonde. Not the dark-haired one. No one. I even took a chance because there was music playing inside, and unlocked the outer office door and listened at Mr. Iverson’s door for voices.”
“Music?”
“Violins. Pretty music, but it must be on awful loud to be able to hear it through two closed doors.”
“Henry, I want to go back there.”
“Okay, but—”
Zack was already through the stairway door. The guard shrugged and followed closely.
Just outside Franks outer office, Zack stopped and listened. As Henry had said, the music coming from the inner office was quite audible.
It took just a few seconds for Zack to recognize the piece.
“Jesus, Henry, open this up, please!”
The guard did as asked.
The music, much louder now, brought a sickening tightness to Zack’s gut. He knocked on the door and called out once, but knew there would be no answer.
“This door, Henry. Open it, please!”
“Can’t.”
“Henry, it’s important. I think Dr. Coles in there, and I think she’s in trouble.”
“No key. Only Mr. Iverson has a key to that door.”
“Henry, we’ve got to get in there.…”
The guard hesitated.
“Please …”
“Well,” he said finally, “I guess I can’t get fired more than once, can I?”
He took a single step forward and then hit the heavy door with such force that the entire frame shattered. The door itself, crushed where his shoulder had made contact, fell to the floor like a playing card.
Fantasia on Greensleeves was playing at a near-deafening level.
Zack snapped off the tape, glanced about the office for a moment, then raced into the bathroom.
“Henry,” he yelled. “Get in here!”
No longer mindful of being seen, Zack raced ahead as Henry carried Suzanne through the corridors of the hospital and up the stairs to the ICU. She was motionless, unresponsive, and soaked with perspiration. Her level of coma was deep, and her elevated temperature quite apparent.
Bernice Rimmer’s surprise at their arrival lasted only seconds before she was in action, stripping Suzanne’s clothes off, getting a blood pressure cuff around her arm, and ordering a Ringer’s Lactate IV from one of the other nurses.
“She remind you of anyone, Bernie?” Zack asked. “She got the same anesthesia as Toby. You believe me now?”
“I believed you before,” the nurse said, listening to Suzanne’s chest. “You probably don’t remember this, but I once asked you to cheat on a Latin translation for me, and you refused. I figured that if you were such an honest nerd then, you couldn’t have changed all that much.”
“Who’s Pearl’s backup?”
“The nurse anesthetist. She’s in obstetrics.”
“Call her, please. Tell her to meet me by the operating room doors in two minutes. Tell her it’s a life-and-death emergency. Also, order some labs and blood gases on Suzanne—everything stat. And give her Decadron. Ten milligrams IV”
“Done.”
“I’ll be back shortly.… Get ready, Pearl, you bastard,” he murmured as he slammed through the unit doors. “This crap has gone on long enough. I’m coming for you!”
36
Frank knew, as he watched Whitey Bourque separate the ballots into two piles, that the vote was going to be closer than he had wanted. He counted exactly ten ballots in one pile and nine in the other. By insisting on a closed vote, it had been his hope to minimize any influence the Judge might still have had on certain members. Now, it appeared, he had succeeded more in minimizing his own.
Fuck you, Garrison, he thought, watching the last of the ballots smoothed open. Starting next year, it will be Fords for this hospital. Bank on it.
“Well,” Bourque said as he and the member seated next to him finished a cooperative tabulation of the votes. “I make it ten to nine. You get that, too, Charlie? … Good.” He banged his gavel. “In that case, I am pleased to announce that the Davis—er, excuse me, the Ultramed-Davis board of trustees has, by a vote of ten to nine, approved the finalization of the sale of this hospital to the Ultramed Division of RIATA International.”
Several members applauded; many others simply shrugged. Leigh Baron accepted the congratulations of the attorneys and then turned to Frank.
“That was close,” she said.
Frank smiled.
“Hand grenades and horseshoes,” he said giddily.
“Pardon?”
“Oh, just a little phrase my father drummed into my head.”
“Well, Frank, it would appear that you are to be—”
“Excuse me, but I wondered if the acting chairman could delay the celebration long enough to listen to one more point of view.”
Like the gallery at a tennis match, every head in the room swung, in unison, toward the door.
The Judge, a blanket over his lap, sat in a wheelchair just inside the room, pale but smiling grimly.
Whitey Bourque raced around and shook his hand.
“God, Judge, it’s good to see you up like this. You all right? I mean, can you—”
“I can move ’em, Whitey. Not very much yet, but more every minute.”
Somewhat painfully, he demonstrated by lifting his right foot several inches off its support.
Frank, too stunned by the sudden intrusion even to react, glanced down at his watch. It was eight minutes till noon. At that moment, he realized his father was watching him.
“Good to see you, Judge,” he managed hoarsely.
The Judge nodded at him and then exchanged a prolonged look with Leigh Baron.
“I’d like to address the board, if I might,” he said
“Of course, Judge,” Whitey Bourque replied. “Why don’t you just let me wheel you up front.”
“Judge,” Frank said, “the voting’s over.”
“Is it?”
“I’m afraid so, Judge,” Bourque said. “Ten to nine it was, in favor of Ultramed.”
“Well, perhaps I can change a mind or two,”
“That’s not legal, sir,” one of the Ultramed lawyers said. “The vote’s done.”
Clayton Iverson fixed him with a glare that would have melted block ice.
“Don’t you dare tell me what’s legal and what’s not, young man,” he rasped. “I was a lawyer and a judge while your mommy was still wiping your behind. Our contract with you people says that we have until noon today to repurchase this hospital by a majority vote of the board. That’s what it says. No more, no less. And unless something’s wrong with my timepiece, here, I make it seven of.”
Ashen, Frank watched as his father was wheeled up to the chairman’s table. He was desperately sorting through disruptions he could instigate that might carry the meeting past the deadline. But before he could light on a specific action, the Judge was speaking.
“I’ll make this short,” he began. “I had promised many of you that I would do the legwork necessary to ensure that it was to the benefit of our community to finalize our temporary arrangement with the Ultramed people. Because of my accident, and for other reasons which I have neither the time nor inclination to go into now, I decided to withhold my conclusions about this business and let the chips fall where they may. Well, I have come back at this time to tell you that my reaction was unfair—to you, my friends and colleagues, and to the city of Sterling as well.
“I have learned enough to appear before you now and tell you categorically that while we may have benefited in the short run from Ultramed’s involvement with our hospital, it would be a grave mistake to turn Davis Regional over to them permanently. My housekeeper, Annie Doucette, almost died because of a policy—an Ultramed corporate policy—that rewards physicians for transferring patients out of t
he hospital as early as possible, and rewards them even more if that transfer is to an Ultramed-owned nursing home. Patients who helped build this hospital are being shunted off to Clarion County because they haven’t got enough insurance. There’s more—much more”—he glanced at Leigh Baron—“but because of the time, I’m going to ask you to trust me on that. Now, we have three minutes until noon. If it is agreeable with Whitey, here, I would like to call for another vote on this question.”
“Any objections?” Bourque asked.
“Yes,” Frank said, standing. “I object.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Frank,” Bourque countered, “but you’re not a board member, ’n’ we don’t have time for any outside objections.”
Frank hesitated, and then sank numbly to his seat.
“Okay, then,” Bourque said. “You all have a second ballot in your folders. I put one there knowin’ that at least some of you were bound to screw up the first one.”
A brief volley of laughter gave way to dense silence as the twenty board members marked their ballots, folded them, and passed them toward the front of the room.
Leigh Baron, her back to Frank, sat staring stonily at the gallery of presidents.
As the last of the ballots reached Whitey Bourque and was counted, the steeple bells of St. Amies began tolling the noon hour.
Sara Newton, the nurse anesthetist, was a mousy young woman with braces that had yet to correct a striking overbite. She had been asleep in maternity, awaiting a delivery, and arrived at the doors to the operating suite only moments after Zack, breathless, bleary-eyed, and disheveled.
“Where’s the emergency?” she panted, tugging at a kink in her bra.
“In the unit,” Zack said.
His shoulder was throbbing from the dash through the hospital, and he had resorted to partially splinting it by jamming his thumb through a belt loop.
“The unit? Well, then, let’s get going. Say, are you okay? You look a little pale.”
‘I’m fine. A little stressed out is all.”
“That’s right. There was a notice sent around that you’ve been fired.”
“Ive been rehired. Sara, I need Jack Pearl. It’s a case he’s familiar with. I’d like you to take over his case in O.R. 1 so he can leave.”
Flashback (1988) Page 41
