Do No Harm (2002)

by Gregg Hurwitz

  "You've been missing from the floor for fifteen minutes--again--and I catch you drawing pictures like a sadistic little bully."

  Still flushed, Don slid the marker into his pocket. "I didn't write that," he said.

  David felt drunk with fury. "Don't insult my intelligence."

  "You've been a bit on edge lately, Dave. Let's not jump to hasty conclusions."

  "Get the fuck out of here." Gripping Don firmly around the biceps, David pulled him toward the door. "I want you out of my ER. Right now."

  Don pulled his arm roughly from David's grasp, but kept walking toward the door at David's prompting.

  "All right, Chief," Don said. "I'll let you flex your muscles and be the big ethical guy again since it worked out so well for you last time."

  Ignoring him, David guided him through the door into the ER, his hand on the base of his back, hurrying him. By the time they reached Hallway Two, Don's uncomfortable expression and David's propelling him toward the door made the situation quite evident. Nurses watched with gleeful interest; patients stared; a girl with a teddy bear tittered. The phone rang and rang in the CWA, but no one reached for it. Don slapped David's hand from his back and walked faster toward the swinging doors.

  David's face still burned with anger. When Don paused at the hall's end, David raised his arm, pointing at the doors.

  "Imagine that," Don said. "A guy who pulled the plug on his own wife without hesitation getting all worked up over some acid-throwing psycho."

  David seized Don and hurled him through the exit. Don's feet tangled as he struck the swinging doors, and he slapped to the lobby floor, the doors fanning his red face. A news photographer popped up from his recline in one of the triage chairs, snapped several photos, then grinned as if he'd just captured Big Foot humping the shooter from the grassy knoll.

  An overweight woman with a bun looked up from her needlepoint. "Oh dear," she said. The doors stopped swinging, hiding both Don and the woman from view.

  David turned back up the hall and faced the myriad staring faces. One of the nurses began to applaud tentatively, but stopped when no one joined in.

  David headed slowly back to the board. "Next patient," he said.

  "A fucking disgrace is what it is," Sandy barked. The elevator stopped at the second floor with a ding and everyone cleared out, though plainly it was not everyone's floor. When the doors closed again, she threw the EMERGENCY STOP switch and glared at David, lowering the turkey sandwich she gripped like a football in her right hand, careful to hold it clear of her maroon silk blouse. David gestured for her to wipe off the few crumbs that dotted the corner of her mouth, and she all but swung at his hand.

  Don had called her after retreating from the ER. Sandy had come running from the cafeteria and followed David through the corridors, failing in her attempts to keep a lowered voice and drawing looks from everyone they'd passed. David had moved through the halls purposefully. Something had rekindled inside him, and he felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. He'd been weathering Sandy's reprimand without the feelings of remorse and shame he would have expected.

  "You've done it this time, and there's nothing I can do to cover your ass," Sandy said. She shook her head. "Your mother must be spinning in her grave."

  "My mother is hardly in a position to spin disapprovingly."

  Sandy cocked her head in condescending fashion. "Maybe that's what this is all about." He didn't give her the satisfaction of a reaction, but she raged on, undeterred. "Manhandling a colleague. Hurling him out of the ER in front of his staff and patients."

  "My staff," David said.

  "Well, maybe not anymore. The board will be convening tomorrow at nine in the morning, and you'll need to appear. They've been less than thrilled at your new controversial self as is, so this is only fuel to the fire. You finally did it. You gave them something tangible." She flipped the switch, and the elevator continued to rise. "You know damn well that as a physician--and particularly as a chief--you are a representative of this hospital everywhere you go."

  Something crossed tracks in David's mind. Clyde's intense and growing fixation. The dark waters of motive. He waited for something to resolve but couldn't discern it, and Sandy was still yelling.

  "You've turned this business with Clyde into a three-ring circus." Her cheeks were getting flushed. "The Mayor called me this afternoon. The Mayor, for Christ's sake."

  "You don't think I know this, Sandy? You don't think that I, of all people, am aware of the stakes here? At all levels? You're not the one getting strung up by a reactive press. I've been under a magnifying glass every day of this thing. You think I'm doing this for my own enjoyment?"

  "Your motives aren't relevant here, David." Sandy took a deep, angry breath. "I've been urging you to take some time off for a long while, and it would have served you well. But you stayed here, and you fiddled around with this case, and you crossed the line, despite my attempts to help you quietly and keep you within the bounds of discretion. And I'll tell you something else. If you keep pushing this--with the cops and the media and the private eye routine--your future at this institution will be jeopardized."

  The elevator opened again, and David stepped out. He turned and faced her from the hall. "Listen, Sandy, you can handle this however you want, but let me tell you something. Don Lambert is a lazy piece of shit, and I'm tired of putting up with his incompetence. I am a physician. I am trained to take care of people, and that's what I'd like to do--my way. I'm tired of smug, second-rate physicians; I'm tired of the HMOs; I'm tired of so-called medical professionals more interested in punishment than repair, and while we're at it, I'm tired of you and your legal considerations. So thanks for the recommendation--I will be taking some of that vacation time, starting right now, to pursue this case and set things right, because I might be the only one who can. And if you or the board are displeased with that, you be sure to tell someone who's actually interested."

  The doors shut in Sandy's surprised face, and David headed down the corridor to the ICU. The halls were still and silent.

  "She's been having a tough time," the ICU nurse said. "And she hasn't had any visitors lately. Should I tell her you're here?"

  "No," David said. "That's all right. She actually asked I not visit. I've just been concerned."

  The nurse gave him an odd look.

  "Are the skin grafts taking?" David asked.

  "Some are, some aren't. Right now, our primary objective is making sure she doesn't get septic."

  Nancy's looks were the least of their concerns.

  "I was just dropping by to let you know that I'm not going to be around for a while. The hospital." He was surprised by how difficult that was for him to say. "But if there's anything I can do to facilitate Nancy's treatment, please let me know."

  "Thanks, Doctor." The nurse touched his arm curtly, then pivoted and headed back to the nursing station.

  Twilight crept through the windows, turning the room gray and ashy. The curtains were spread to Nancy's bed, ever so slightly, and David could see through the gap.

  The front half of her crown was little more than mottled flesh, the hair having all fallen out. Her eyeballs had shriveled further, and the sockets were oozing a thick pus. The skin of her face was the worst of all--most of the grafts had not taken, and the flesh hung loosely in gray and yellow squares, a grotesque patchwork. A cheek wound had begun to contract, drawing her right nostril down toward the corner of her mouth.

  Her lips, cracked and oozing, moved slowly; she was murmuring something to herself.

  David wondered whether the plastic surgeons were working on her as fastidiously as they were on their other patients. There was little reason to risk complications and infection from plastics work; after all, Nancy would never have to see her own face again. Probably a blessing.

  To think this was all caused by a confused, pathetic man and a beaker of alkali. Nancy would probably survive, and drag out the rest of her days in pain, hidden from her own sight and t
he eyes of others. Clyde's perverse turning of the tables.

  The mindless embolus that had claimed Elisabeth's brain seemed almost humane by comparison.

  Nancy's lips continued to whisper, and when David realized what she was saying, his mouth flooded with saliva as it sometimes did before he vomited.

  "I wanna die," Nancy was saying. "I wanna die I wanna die I wanna--"

  David drew back quietly and headed for the door, feeling his pulse race.

  A man sat on a visitor's chair beside the last unoccupied bed in the row, his shoulders hunched, his hands dangling between his legs. Jenkins. David had not noticed him on his way in.

  Jenkins wore a blank stare, his cheeks hollowed with grief. David paused before him, his breathing slowing. Jenkins's eyes moved slowly up to David's face, but showed no glint of recognition. Jenkins lowered his head again, studying the tiled floor. "What the fuck are you doing by my sister's bed?" he murmured.

  Across the ward, a woman cried out in pain, and Jenkins flinched, the skin around his eyes drawing up in a squint. He did not look up.

  "I shouldn't be there," David said. "But you should."

  David reached out his hand, an offering to be taken or slapped away. A moment passed, then another. Jenkins's shoulders vibrated once, an intimation of a sob. He reached up with a trembling hand and grasped David's. Then he leaned forward, his weight pulling on David's arm, his face downturned, both hands gripping David's so tightly the skin of his knuckles turned white.

  Motionless, he hung from David's hand, clinging to sanity, a man receiving an unexpected blessing. After a moment, he stood.

  David left quietly as Jenkins headed to his sister's bed.

  Chapter 62

  DASH pulled off his sweatshirt and draped it over David's couch, where it sprawled like a gray blanket. He put his feet up on the table, and David worried momentarily it would give under the weight of his legs. Dash flipped through the bad photocopy of Connolly's abstract--Yale had taken the original--and let a grumble escape his chest.

  Someone had leaked the story of the torture-tape call, causing a fresh influx of reporters to sweep through the Med Center grounds. David had all but waded through reporters on his way to his car after work. News of David and Don's dispute in the ER had not helped to abate the media frenzy. David had returned home to find a photographer camped out across the street and six messages on his answering machine from trashy TV "news" producers and more legitimate reporters. David's problem-resolution instincts had been firing inside him, phantom synapses--to call Sandy, to protect the hospital, to spin control. When he'd closed and bolted his front door, an intense burst of stress-lined relief had hit him; at least for the duration of his time off, he was no longer a part of the medical establishment. For the first time in his life.

  Dash set down the abstract on top of the stack of other materials he and David had spent the late afternoon reviewing, and gripped his shoulder, working it with a thumb--an athlete's habit. "Have the detectives finished running down the other subjects?"

  "Most of them. Three suicides, five are in prison, and three have been completely lost track of. Probably homeless. Or dead."

  "Connolly certainly raised the bar on sadistic separation studies." Dash leaned back and laced his hands behind his head. "Those kids were never given a fair chance. Love, respect, care--these are not negotiable luxuries for children. They're fundamental needs."

  "I know, but how can we use all this? To get to Clyde."

  "I think you have several pieces of the puzzle," Dash said. "One: He wants revenge for this study. Two: He's learned that to inflict fear is to hold power." He let out a ticking exhale. "You see the problem."

  "No."

  "Well, the people directly responsible for the study are dead. He's probably not a sufficiently abstract thinker to go after grant committee members and the bureaucrats who enabled the study. So what does that leave him?"

  "The hospital."

  "Precisely. But how can you elicit fear from an institution? You can't. So he attacks some nurses and doctors, tries to run a current of fear through the hospital, but that's not personal or sufficiently satisfying. That's why he's evolving. He wants to exact more. But he doesn't know how."

  And evolved he had. He'd varied his attacks, and switched their location. From a cowardly, unseen hurler of alkali to a rapist attempting to dominate a woman directly.

  David recalled Sandy's words in the elevator that had struck something in him: As a physician--and particularly as a chief--you are a representative of this hospital everywhere you go. "Me," David said. "He can frighten me." He stood. "Of course--I'd been mostly viewing his obsession with me and his attacks on Diane as warnings. As his attempts to get me to back off, since I've been pursuing him. But that's entirely wrong. He's only switched his focus."

  "What do you mean?"

  "If he's interested in revenge on the hospital, I'm the perfect object of his vengeance. I'm the highest-level employee of the hospital he's had contact with. My last name is all over the Med Center. And he perceives me as threatening him in my attempts to locate him--something that surely must recall the persecution he felt as a child in Connolly's study. Why else would he call me in the middle of the night and play a recording of a woman being tortured? Why else would he attack Diane? To scare me. But he doesn't want me to back off. He wants to involve me more. He wants me to be diminished."

  "I suppose it makes sense. A movement from the general to the specific." Dash crossed his legs, letting a size-seventeen foot dangle over his knee. "What are the ways to instill fear in you? To threaten or injure you directly, or to threaten those you love."

  "I'll have to call Yale and see if we can get some protection on people close to me."

  "Okay. Who?"

  "Diane . . . Sandy . . . " David was embarrassed that he couldn't think of anyone else.

  "I assume there's already protection on Connolly's wife."

  "I believe so, but I'll double-check."

  "How about men?"

  "No way. He doesn't have the balls."

  "He attacked you."

  "On his turf. In his comfort zone. He had to lure me near that house. Plus, I walked into that attack--he didn't plan it."

  "He attacked the security guard who was with Diane."

  "Yale said the kid looked barely older than an adolescent." David shook his head. "I have to say, despite Clyde's emergence from timidity, I still doubt he's acquired the courage to attack a full-grown man." David rubbed his temples, straining to think of other names. "The only other person I'm close to who he knows about is you." David looked at Dash's barrel chest, the ridges of muscle capping his shoulders. "And he'd be an idiot to try that."

  "Let's keep in mind that you and those around you are not necessarily his only targets. While you're certainly appealing to him, there's nothing to say he's not still planning other attacks on nurses and docs."

  David moistened his lips, which had grown dry. "If there was some way to provide an opportunity for him to inflict fear, maybe we could lure him."

  "Well, what are the ways you could draw someone like Clyde? The appearance of vulnerability. Who appears vulnerable? Old ladies. Kids. Women."

  "We wouldn't risk anyone in those categories, except female cops, maybe. Besides, how do you make someone look susceptible to being scared?" David shook his head dismissively. "Maybe there's a play to be made at locations that are meaningful to him. He's been driven off his own turf. The only other area we know is of interest to him is the hospital. Maybe we could tempt him there."

  "If you think he's that stupid. Security's been cranked up another notch after his attack on Diane. He's got to know he's playing increasingly bad odds there."

  They sat quietly for a few moments, digesting their respective thoughts. The phone rang, and David heard the machine pick up in the bedroom. "Hi, Tom McNeil from the LA Weekly. I've received word that you're actually in contact with the Westwood . . . "

  "I could try to man
ipulate him if he calls back," David said. "Actively draw his interest. If he threatens me, how can I respond to make him more likely to contact me again? If I can agitate him, maybe he'll give up more information. Should I act really scared or not scared at all?"

  "I'd imagine your being immune to his attempts to scare you would be more galling. If you taunted him, even, that might draw him in. But don't overdo it. He's not beyond being scared off himself." Dash paused. "There are risks."

  "Aside from the obvious?"

  "Yes. Every intervention so far has driven him to a higher level of violence. When he's foiled, he comes back with something more bold. The more bold he gets, the more fear he's able to generate. Think of it as an intensifying addiction."

  "What can I do about that?"

  Dash shrugged, a massive, shifting movement. "Probably nothing. I'm just making something clear. You're the one who's been raising the stakes."

  Chapter 63

  OUTSIDE Sandy's office, Don shot his cuffs and readjusted a gold cuff link with a practiced flick of his thumb. A female resident walked by, full in the ass and tight in the waist, and he watched her until she disappeared around the corner.

  "Come in," Sandy called out, before he could knock. The door was solid, windowless.

  Seated at her conference table, she continued to sort through mounds of paperwork, not looking up. "What can I help you with, Dr. Lambert?" she asked.

  "I wanted to let you know that I'm going to actively pursue assault charges against Dr. Spier unless this matter is handled expeditiously in-house."

  "Don't split your infinitives, Dr. Lambert," Sandy said. She removed her wire-rim glasses, set them on a folder, and rubbed her eyes. "It spoils the illusion of eloquence you seek to cultivate." The smell of his aftershave permeated the room. Sandy finally looked at him. She whistled. "Where you going all dolled up?"

  Don adjusted his tie nervously. "I'm on my way home from the opera. My date is waiting in the car."

  "Well, I hope you left a window cracked."

  Neither smiled.

  "So you've been worrying this all night like a canker sore, have you?" Sandy put her glasses on and studied him. Her icy blue eyes matched the starched collar of her shirt. "What do you propose we do?"