Dead Certain

by Hartzmark, Gini

  “No doubt you’re right,” I said coldly. “But there is one significant difference.”

  “What is that?”

  “When the kid at the drive-through window screws up your order, you don’t die.”

  I was on my feet and already out the door by the time I heard the timer go off.

  I don’t think it was any one thing that made me change my mind. Perhaps it was that I had seen the difference that one doctor in one hospital can make, or the fact that I’d seen how the ripples from that life can move through the world. Or maybe it was just the stunt with the chess clock, but whatever it was, I walked out of the Darth Vader building certain that Gerald Packman for all his audacity was simply wrong.

  The night before at Prescott Memorial Claudia hadn’t served up a Happy Meal. She’d saved a life. Trauma care wasn’t a product line. It was a battle against death fought hand to hand. I suspected that Claudia would be amused by my reaction—a lawyer blown away by what she does not understand. But in my heart I also knew that she would agree with my conclusions. Gerald Packman had to be stopped.

  I marveled at how light the traffic was this time of day, especially heading out of the city. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been out of the office on a weekday morning. It felt strange to see that there was a whole world beyond LaSalle Street, people going about their business and enjoying the day.

  As I made my way down the familiar tree-lined drive toward the stately Tudor clubhouse, I tried to remember the last time I’d been here. Not that it mattered. The whole point of places like the Lake Forest Country Club was that nothing in them ever changes. No doubt my great-grandfather had driven past these very same elms on his way to play cards with his friends and boast about the hospital he planned on building.

  I pulled up under the big green awning, handed my keys to the valet, and made my way up the carpeted steps to the club’s main entrance. As I pushed through the heavy oak doors I could almost feel time slowing down. As I made my way to the ladies’ card room the grandfather clock in the hall marked out the seconds like a miser doling coins from his purse. This was a place where people came to pass the time, not cram as much as they possibly could into every billable sixth of an hour.

  As such, it was probably an anachronism, though one that managed to be embraced by succeeding generations. Comfortable and serene, it was governed by a set of archaic rules set out in an oft-consulted volume the size of a small-town phone book. There were regulations covering all forms of behavior. There were elaborate dress codes for both sexes and every situation, including a strictly enforced white rule for tennis that meant that members looked like they were batting the ball around in their underwear. There were separate dining rooms for men and women at the lunch hour and a men’s-only grill at dinner where cigar smoking was permitted. Women were allowed on the golf course only during certain hours of the day in order to give the men who presumably Worked downtown preference in the afternoons.

  I sighed and turned the corner into the ladies’ card room, a pink and white trellised space done up as a sort of gazebo. Today it was filled with so many women that

  11 looked like a fire sale at Chanel. They were all sitting at tables of four, filling in the hours until lunch by taking a bridge lesson. They chatted and peered at their cards while a forbidding woman who sounded like a high-class dog trainer trilled out incomprehensible instructions about tricks and trumps.

  I scanned the room and tried to pick out my mother. One thing that I’d never been able to understand is the singular energy with which these rich women simultaneously copied and competed with each other until they I managed to transform themselves into a veritable army of well-dressed clones. No wonder their husbands were forever giving them expensive necklaces, I thought to myself savagely. Like dog collars, they’re the only way to tell them apart.

  I finally spotted her at a table near the front and made my way awkwardly through the room, bumping into chairs, stumbling over handbags, and offering whispered apologies.

  “What on earth are you doing here, Kate?” demanded Mother in an irritated whisper once I finally reached her table.

  “Since when do I need a reason to drop in and see my own mother?” I replied, unable to resist. One look at her face was enough to tell me that she did not appreciate the joke. “I need to speak to you about something,” I continued. “It should only take a minute.”

  “Can’t it wait?” she demanded. “We’re in the middle of playing out a hand.”

  I rose to my feet from my tableside crouch. “That’s all right,” I said. “I’m heading back to my office. You can reach me there whenever you find time in your busy schedule.”

  I made it as far as the hallway outside of the men’s grill before my mother finally caught up to me. I could tell that she was furious.

  “Do you mind telling me what you think you’re doing barging in and embarrassing me in front of my friends like that?” she demanded.

  “You know, it was a nice day and I just felt like taking a ride to the suburbs,” I shot back. “Why do you think I came out here?”

  Mother stared back at me uncomprehendingly.

  “Why don’t you let me give you a hint? I came straight from my meeting with HCC.”

  “Oh, that’s right, I’d forgotten all about that,” said Mother as if I’d just brought to mind an overlooked hairdressing appointment. “How did it go?”

  “Gerald Packman gave me ten minutes of his time,” I continued.

  “And?”

  “And you were absolutely right about HCC. We have to stop them from buying the hospital.” Mother stared at me over the tops of her reading glasses, no doubt rendered speechless by the fact that this was the first time I’d told her she was right about anything since I was six years old. “That’s the reason I drove all the way out here today,” I pressed, “to see whether you were serious about stopping the sale of the hospital or if you’d just gotten your feathers ruffled by HCC.”

  “How dare you even suggest that I didn’t mean what I said?” declared my mother, stung.

  “And how dare you insist that I drop everything else that I’m doing to deal with HCC, while you can’t be bothered to interrupt a hand of bridge?” I snapped.

  For a minute we just stood there glaring at each other. I doubted it was a picture anyone would want to put on a Mother’s Day card.

  “How do you propose to stop them?” inquired my Mother finally.

  “First of all, it’s not me, it’s us. I need you to be clear on that up front. There is no possible way to do this wWithout a commitment from you.”

  “Then tell me, how do you propose we do it?”

  For a minute I wondered if I was out of my mind. Then I took a deep breath. “Let’s start by getting a few things out on the table so that we’re sure we understand each other. The first thing you have to realize is that if we do this, it isn’t going to be like anything you’ve ever done before. HCC is a big company and they have a tremendous amount riding on this transaction. I guarantee they’re not going to back away from it without a big, ugly fight—the kind of fight you can’t win between bridge and lunch.“

  “There’s no need to be insulting about it,” said Mother. “You’ve made your point.”

  “Good, because if we commit to doing this, being insulted is going to be the easy part. HCC is not only aggressive, but they’re used to winning. I’m willing to take them on because I think what they’re doing is wrong and there has to be a way to use the law to stop them. But that still doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to beat them without an all-out fight, and I can’t do that alone. You’re the one who’s going to have to marshal the political support, you’re the one who’s going to have to get into the media spotlight and put the weight of your social position behind this thing.”

  “You make it sound as if doing this wasn’t my idea in the first place,” protested my mother, “and I resent the suggestion that I’m not serious about seeing it through.“
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br />   “Serious enough to use your connections?” I demanded. “Serious enough to risk not only finding yourself bearing the brunt of unfavorable publicity, but also seeing lies and rumors about you, your family, and friends in print? Are you serious enough about beating HCC to ask favors of people you normally wouldn’t even think of entertaining in your woodshed?”

  “I am prepared to do whatever it takes to preserve Prescott Memorial Hospital as a nonprofit institution,” declared my mother firmly. “The question now is, are you?”

  CHAPTER 8

  As soon as I got back to the office I proceeded to launch my own personal jihad against HCC. Of course, not everyone in my little universe was necessarily delighted by this development. For a second I actually thought Cheryl was going to kill me. With final exams approaching and a Day Runner already crammed with job interviews, the last thing she needed was for me to start tilting at windmills. Even so, she took down in her own peculiar brand of shorthand the long list of things I needed her to do, and when I was finished, she stomped off in search of Sherman Whitehead, muttering something under her breath about misery loving company. I had no doubt she was already counting the days until she had a secretary of her own to push around.

  Sherman showed up a few minutes later, bobbing and shuffling in the doorway his usual Saint Vitus’ dance of nerdy ticks. At Callahan Ross, Sherman was considered a special breed of pariah. Having been deemed NPM (not Partnership material) on account of his profound and terminal geekiness, he had confirmed everyone’s fears by refusing to have the good sense to shuffle off, tail between his legs, to a smaller firm. Instead, he appeared content to stay on at Callahan Ross indefinitely, relegated to the purgatorial role of “counsel.” The sad part was that he was not only brighter but more able than most of the partners put together. However, I was one of the few people who could get past the dandruff and greasy hair i to see it.

  As I outlined the situation with Prescott Memorial and HCC, Sherman honed in on the key issues before I even had a chance to articulate them. Inside of five minutes he outlined his plan to hunt down any legal precedent that could potentially be used to block or, at the very least, f delay the sale. He also promised to dig up any other relevant information about HCC: for example, the outcome of any other attempted purchase of a charity hospital or whether in the company’s six-year history they’d ever been sued.

  What I didn’t tell Sherman was that these efforts merely constituted a backup plan. With three out of five trustees voting in favor of the sale, the easiest way to thwart HCC wasn’t going to be to sue them, but simply to convince one of the trustees to change their vote. I even had my candidate for “most likely to be swayed” picked out. By the time Sherman departed for the library, Cheryl was already on the phone trying to set up an appointment for me to see Prescott Memorial’s chief of surgery, the famous Dr. Gavin McDermott.

  In the meantime I put in a call to Denise Dempsey. Denise was one of the city’s top PR specialists. Highly professional and extremely well connected, she also made no secret of the fact that she preferred social rather than business issues. The rap against her was that in her heart of heart she was antibusiness. In short, she was perfect.

  I spent a little over a half an hour on the phone with Denise, selling her on the idea of stopping HCC and explaining what I was trying to do. When I was done, she offered up a thumbnail sketch of a public relations battle plan. Listening to her, I had the fleeting sense that all of this just might work. Then I reminded myself that plausibility and persuasiveness were the PR expert’s stock in trade.

  It wasn’t until we got down to talking about money that I started getting nervous. I must confess that I was shocked to learn that Denise charged even more an hour than I did—likability obviously being in much shorter supply than legal acumen. I wondered what Mother had been thinking when she said that she would do whatever it took to fight HCC. Well, I thought to myself as I said good-bye to Denise, I was definitely giving her the chance to put her money where her mouth was.

  For the rest of the afternoon things pretty much went downhill—particularly when it came to Delirium. First I called the hospital to find out how Bill Delius was doing, but all they would tell me was that he was still in the cardiac intensive care unit and listed in stable condition. Then I tried to get in touch with Claudia, only to be told by the page operator that my roommate was seeing clinic patients all afternoon and was taking only emergency calls. To make matters even worse, I was convinced that Mark Millman was deliberately avoiding me. I left messages at every number I had for him, but my only reward was a profound and persistent silence.

  Gabriel Hurt and everyone else from Icon were equally uncommunicative. In between calls to people who were not there, were on the other line, or whose cell phones Were switched off, I checked my e-mail at ever shortening intervals, going so far as to read the day’s list of firm birthdays and a memo outlining the partnership’s Policy on personal use of frequent-flyer miles. Jeff Tannenbaum, the associate who’d carried the heaviest load on Delirium, stopped in for an update and ended up moping around my office because I felt too guilty to tell him to get lost.

  His yearly review was coming up, and his name was going to be considered for partnership. Closing the deal with Icon would have clinched the matter for him. While he didn’t say it, I knew what he was thinking. It was easy for me, a partner with fuck-you money in the bank, to ride out the ups and downs of a difficult transaction, but it was Jeff’s future on the line as much as it was Delirium’s. Hunched inconsolably at the end of my couch, his presence was a physical reminder that I should be spending my energy getting talks with Icon back on track instead of letting myself be drawn into a futile and self-indulgent pissing contest with HCC.

  By four o’clock I was more than happy to get out of the office in order to go see Gavin McDermott who had grudgingly agreed to squeeze me in between patients at his office at the Northwestern Memorial medical center. Like the other physicians at Prescott Memorial, McDermott conducted the bulk of his practice elsewhere, devoting only a handful of days a month to charitable cases. In addition to a faculty appointment at the Northwestern University Medical School, he was also a partner in a lucrative North Shore surgical practice whose patients and their problems were light-years away from those he treated at Prescott Memorial.

  According to Claudia, Gavin McDermott, like the other private-practice surgeons who rotated through the hospital, saw their time there as a chance to practice real medicine uncomplicated by the intrusion of insurers’ restrictions and the demands of operating a practice. Instead, they relished the opportunity to revisit the things that attracted them to medicine in the first place—the challenges of surgery and the chance to be a healer as opposed to a service provider.

  I don’t know what I expected when I got to Dr. McDermott’s office, but it certainly wasn’t to wait on a vinyl couch surrounded by people in bandages and surgical drains. While I realized that doctors delight in making lawyers wait—it is part of the petty friction played out between antagonistic professions—I hadn’t expected to be treated this way by McDermott.

  For one thing, Prescott Memorial’s chief of surgery was a personal friend of my parents, who had endowed his teaching chair at Northwestern. Not only that, but his latest wife was a girlhood friend of mine. His marriage to Patsy placed us both within the claustrophobic confines of the same social circle. Even if he was a relative newcomer, Gavin knew as well as anybody how the game was played.

  From Claudia, I was also well aware that McDermott was a man whose every action was the product of deliberation. While most OR personnel tied their face masks in quick bows, McDermott knotted his a half beat quicker and then broke it with a snap when he was done. Instead of wearing the paper booties everyone else wore to protect their shoes from blood, McDermott wore one of three identical pairs of dark red clogs, silicone treated and thus washable. If I was being made to wait, it was for a reason.

  Eventually a nurse called my name
and reverently ushered me into the great man’s office. Under the circumstances I felt lucky that at least I wasn’t being shown into an examining room and told to get undressed. The fact that McDermott was on the phone and didn’t even look up when I entered merely reinforced my suspicions.

  Prescott Memorial’s chief of surgery was a theatrically handsome man in his late forties, though he looked a full decade younger. Tan and fit, even after a Chicago winter, it was only since his marriage to Patsy that his dark hair had turned the corner toward gray. His hair was one of his many affectations. He wore it combed straight back from his high forehead like the more pretentious variety of orchestra conductor. He had a beak of a nose, prominent and thin, and piercing blue eyes that Pm sure his patients thought of as all-knowing. But what was really remarkable about him were his hands—slim, expressive, and with sensitive fingers that seemed to measure everything they touched.

  As I waited I listened to him describe in great detail the various ways that an elderly woman’s bladder might be surgically enlarged. I couldn’t help but wonder if he would have been half as rude if he knew that I was aware of how many patients he’d lost recently. As the conversation dragged on about the poor woman’s bladder, I cast my eyes around the room. It was not a warm place. Diplomas and awards covered the walls. Duke, Indiana University, Columbia Presbyterian, and the University of Chicago had all contributed to Gavin McDermott’s education, while a constellation of other institutions including the American College of Surgeons, the American Medical Association, and Prescott Memorial Hospital had all conferred awards on him. There were no family photos, no handmade tributes from grateful patients, no mementos of hobbies or outside interests.