The Sisterhood

by Michael Palmer

  “I have had the chance, Dr. Shelton, to speak briefly with some of the other physicians and nurses who were with you in Charlotte Thomas’s room. Like you, several of them were concerned that something was not completely right. Apparently the problem was obvious enough for others besides you to pick up on it. Whether or not they would have gone so far as to ask for blood tests on this woman, we’ll never know because you did. At least, for the potassium you did.”

  “And you’re trying to say I did that to cover myself and to insure that nobody thought about anything like morphine?” Dockerty shrugged. “This is ridiculous! I mean this is really crazy,” David cried.

  “Dr. Shelton,” Dockerty said calmly. “Please get hold of yourself. I am not accusing you or anyone else of anything.”

  “Yet,” David spat out.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing. Are you finished with me?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Once again Dockerty appeared as mechanical as he had throughout most of the inquiry. As David stalked back to his seat, he noticed that halfway up the center aisle Wallace Huttner sat staring at him with icy, metallic eyes. Involuntarily, he shuddered.

  Dockerty whispered with Dr. Armstrong for several seconds, then called Dorothy Dalrymple. The nursing director extracted herself from her seat with the side-to-side movements of a cork coming free from its bottle. Once released from her chair, she glided down the aisle steps with paradoxical grace. A feminine handshake with Dockerty, then she adjusted herself on the oak chair and smiled that she was ready.

  Dockerty led her through a description of Charlotte Thomas’s appearance over the day prior to her death as summarized in the nurses’ notes. “The nurses’ notes are generally written at the end of each shift,” Dalrymple explained. “Therefore, the notes from the October second evening shift were not done until after the patient’s death. However, the nurse who cared for Mrs. Thomas that night, Miss Christine Beall, saw her at seven o’clock, approximately two hours before her death. Her excellent note states that the patient was—and I quote now—‘alert, oriented, and somewhat less depressed than she has been recently.’ Miss Beall further writes that her vital signs—pulse, respiration, temperature, and blood pressure—were all stable.” Dalrymple swung her massive shoulders and head toward the audience and peered up to where the nurses were grouped. “Miss Beall,” she called out, “do you have anything to add to what I have told the lieutenant?”

  Christine, who had been totally depressed and distracted since David’s outburst, was not paying attention. She had learned about the discovery of morphine in Charlotte’s body less than twenty-four hours before. The information had come via a telephone call from Peg, the nurse who had asked her to evaluate Charlotte Thomas in the first place. “Christine, I want to keep you abreast of as much as we know of what is going on here without worrying you unduly,” the woman had said. “There is going to be some kind of inquiry on the case tomorrow night, I’ve been told. A policeman will be there. However, your Sister, Janet Poulos, has reviewed your notes in the patient’s chart. There is nothing there, she feels, that will in any way implicate you. It is our belief that the investigation will be a short-lived and fruitless one, and that Charlotte Thomas’s death will be attributed to the work of an individual whose name and motives will never be discovered. All Sisterhood operations at your hospital will be curtailed indefinitely, and before long the entire matter should just blow over. You are in no danger whatsoever, Christine—please believe that.”

  Christine, lips pressed tightly together, was staring up into the blue and gold dome when Dalrymple addressed her.

  Several seats away, Janet Poulos watched helplessly, every muscle tensed by the prospect of Christine leaping to her feet, shouting her confession to the hall, then crying out the only other Sisterhood name she knew: Janet’s. God, she wished there had been enough warning to call Dahlia. Dahlia would have known exactly how to handle things.

  Janet’s gaze moved past Christine to where Angela Martin sat, cool blue eyes fixed on the scene below, golden hair immaculately in place. The woman was absolutely nerveless. Even if it had been her name that Christine Beall knew, Janet doubted that Angela would have been ruffled. Almost ten years as members of The Sisterhood and they had never even known one another. Now they were best friends, sharing the excitement and rewards of The Garden and speculating about the mysterious woman who had brought them together.

  Janet scanned the hall and wondered if Dahlia had eyes and ears present other than Lily’s and Hyacinth’s. Quite possibly, she acknowledged. The woman remained only a whispered voice on the telephone, but time and again Janet had been impressed with her cold logic and endless sources of information. Because of her The Garden was growing steadily—in other hospitals as well as in Boston Doctors. Anywhere there was a Sisterhood of Life member, there was a potential flower. Dahlia believed that more than anything else. The bottom line of both movements was the same: nurse and patient alone in a room. She had, perhaps, been hasty about Beall, but she remained a woman of near-perfect judgment whom Janet wanted desperately to know.

  Powerless for the moment, Janet slid back in her seat and watched.

  “Miss Beall?” Dalrymple called again. Winnie Edgerly nudged Christine. “I asked if you had anything to add to what I have told the lieutenant.”

  Christine swallowed. Once, then again. Still, when she tried to speak only a sandpaper rasp emerged. She cleared her throat and tightened her grip on the arms of her seat.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed. “No, I have nothing to add.”

  Janet sighed relief and closed her eyes. Beall had come through.

  Christine looked down to where David sat, head resting on one hand, staring vacantly at Dalrymple and Dockerty. She could feel as much as see his isolation. In fact, she realized, she too was isolated. Despite the calls from Peg, despite the words from Janet and the knowledge that the vast Sisterhood of Life was behind her, Christine felt marooned. At that moment she wanted to run to him and somehow reassure him. To tell him that she, above all people, knew he had nothing to do with Charlotte’s death. “Everything will be all right,” she told herself over and over again. “Just leave things alone and they will be all right.” She forced her concentration back to the scene being played out below her.

  “Miss Dalrymple,” Dockerty continued, “you have a list of the medications given to Mrs. Thomas?”

  Dalrymple nodded. “She was receiving chloramphenicol, which is an antibiotic, and Demerol, which is an analgesic.”

  “No morphine?”

  “No morphine,” she echoed, shaking her head for emphasis.

  “No morphine …” Dockerty let the word drift away, but his voice was nonetheless loud enough for all those present to hear. “Tell me,” he said, “is it possible for one of the nurses or other hospital personnel to have gotten his hands on morphine sulfate in the quantities Dr. Hadawi has suggested were given Mrs. Thomas?”

  Dalrymple thought the question through before answering. “The answer to your question is, of course, that anyone can get his hands on any drug if he has enough money and is willing to go outside the legal channels to do so. However, I can state that it would be virtually impossible for one of my nurses—or anyone else for that matter—to get away with more than a tiny quantity of narcotics from the hospital. You see, only a small amount of injectable narcotic is kept on each floor, and that is rigidly counted by two nurses at each shift change—one from the group that is leaving and one from the group that is coming on. The night nursing supervisor has access to the hospital pharmacy, but even there the narcotics are locked up securely and only the hospital pharmacists have keys.

  “So,” she concluded, shifting her bulk in the chair and folding her hands in a large, puffy ball, “assuming a legal source, only a pharmacist or a physician could obtain a sizable amount of morphine at a single time.”

  Dockerty nodded and again conferred in whispers with Dr. Armstrong. “Miss Dalrymple,” he said f
inally, “do the nurses’ notes indicate whether or not there were any visitors to Charlotte Thomas’s room on the night of her death?”

  “Visitors to a patient’s room, other than physicians, are not usually recorded in nurses’ notes. However, I can tell you that none were mentioned.”

  “Not even the physician who found Mrs. Thomas without pulse or respiration?” Dockerty asked.

  Dalrymple’s expression suggested that she did not at all approve of the detective’s oblique reference. “No,” she said deliberately. “There was no mention of Dr. Shelton entering the patient’s room. However, I hasten to add that most of the nurses were on break at the time of the cardiac arrest. There was no one on the floor at the time to see him arrive. ”

  Dockerty seemed to ignore her last point. “That will be all, thank you very much,” he said. As he nodded the woman back to her seat, David again ignited.

  “Lieutenant, I’ve had just about enough of this!” He stumbled to his feet and braced himself against the seat back in front of him. To his left Howard Kim’s moonface looked up at him impassively. “I don’t understand why you think what you do or even what you are driving at, but let me state here and now that I would never administer a drug or any treatment to a patient for the express purpose of harming him in any way.” In the seconds that followed David heard his tiny mental voice telling him that, once again, he was sailing on his own words toward a maelstrom.

  “Sit down, for Christ’s sake,” the voice kept saying. “He can’t hurt you, dummy. Only you can hurt you. Sit down and shut up!”

  Mounting rage and panic snuffed out the voice. His words were strangled. “Why me? Surely there are others—her husband, relatives, friends who were in that room before I was. Why are you accusing me?”

  “Dr. Shelton,” Dockerty said evenly, “I have not accused you of anything. I said that before. But since you brought it up, Professor Thomas was teaching a seminar that evening. Twenty-three students. Seven to ten P.M. And, as far as he knows, no other visitors were scheduled to see his wife. Now, if I’ve answered your questions, we can proceed with—”

  “No!” David shouted. “This whole inquiry is a sham. Some kind of perverse kangaroo court. A first-year law student could conduct a more impartial hearing than this. If you want to railroad me into something, then do it in court, where at least you have to answer to a judge.” He stopped, grasping for some morsel of self-control. Inside him, the voice resumed. “Don’t you see, dummy, this whole inquiry was a setup to get you to do exactly what you have gone and done. I tried to tell you to keep cool, but you don’t even know how, do you?”

  “Very well,” Dockerty said. “I think we’ve heard enough for now. I’ll be contacting some of you individually in the near future. Thank you all for coming.” He whispered some final words to Dr. Armstrong, then packed his notes together and left the hall without so much as a glance at the pale statue that was David.

  By the time David had calmed enough to release the wooden seat back and look around, the Morris Tweedy Amphitheater was nearly empty. Christine and the other nurses had gone. So had Howard Kim. As he scanned the back of the hall, his gaze met Wallace Huttner’s. The tall surgeon’s eyes narrowed. Then, with a derisive shake of his head, he turned and strode out, arm in arm with Peter Thomas.

  David stood alone, staring up at the glowing red EXIT sign over the rear door, when a hand touched his shoulder. He whirled and met the concerned, blue eyes of Margaret Armstrong.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sure, great.” He made no attempt to clear the huskiness in his voice.

  “David, I am so sorry for what just happened here. If I had known how heavily Lieutenant Dockerty was going to pounce on you, I never would have allowed the whole thing to happen. He said he wanted to check the spontaneous reactions of several people. You were just one of them. All of a sudden you erupted, and there wasn’t even a chance for me to …” She gave up trying to explain. “Look, David,” she went on finally, “I like you very much. Have since the day you got here. Just give me the benefit of a hearing. After what’s just happened to you, I know that won’t be easy, but please try. I want to help.”

  David looked at her, then bit back his anger and nodded.

  “How about an hour or so at Popeye’s?” Her smile was warm and sincere.

  “Popeye’s it is,” David said, picking up his jacket. Together the new allies left the hospital.

  Popeye’s, a local landmark, had seen nearly thirty years of doctors and nurses bringing their problems and their lives to its tables. Outside the tavern an animated neon sign, the pride and joy of the management, depicted characters from the comic strip chasing Wimpy and his armload of hamburgers across the building. As they entered, David caught sight of four of the nurses who had been at the inquiry. Neither Dotty Dalrymple nor Christine was among them.

  “I haven’t been here in years,” Dr. Armstrong said after they had settled at a rear table. “My husband and I courted in some of these booths. Nothing has really changed except for that garish sign outside.”

  David noted that she wore no wedding ring. “Is your husband living?” he asked.

  “Arne? No, he died eight, no, nine years ago.”

  “Oh, yes, how stupid of me,” David said, remembering that he, like everyone else at Doctors Hospital, knew she was the widow of Arne Armstrong, a world famous neurophysiologist and a possible Nobel laureate, had he lived long enough to complete his work. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be silly …” Dr. Armstrong said, stopping in midsentence as a shapely blonde in a black miniskirt and skintight red sweater arrived to take their order. “I’ll have a beer, a draft. And my date here?” She smiled over at David.

  “Coke,” he said. “Extra large, lots of ice.”

  The waitress left and Armstrong looked at David. “Not even with all that’s happened to you tonight?”

  She knew. Of course she knew. Everyone did. But she wasn’t testing him. There was, David realized, admiration in her voice.

  “It’s been nearly eight years since I touched a drop of alcohol. Or a pill,” he added. “It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than Dockerty could ever dish out to get me back there. Even though I’m sure my teeth will finally vaporize from all the cola I consume.” His voice drifted away. Thoughts of John Dockerty staring placidly through him were followed by images of other confrontations he had been forced to endure over the years since Ginny and Becky were killed.

  As if reading his thoughts, Armstrong said, “David, you know that I’m aware of much that has happened to you in the past.” He nodded. “You should be aware, then, that Lieutenant Dockerty also knows. I am not sure how he learned so much so quickly, but he is very good at his job, I think. And you know what a giant glass house a hospital is. Everybody’s life is everybody else’s business and what people can’t gossip about with certainty, they usually contrive simply to fill in the gaps.”

  David gave a single, rueful laugh. “I’ve been the center of hospital rumor before,” he said. “I know exactly what you mean. This time, though, it’s not just harmless speculation. I would never set out to hurt anyone, let alone murder him.”

  “No need to tell me,” she said. “I’m already a believer. As I said before, I think Lieutenant Dockerty is very thorough and very good at his job. I’m sure that will be in your favor. He just doesn’t seem the type who will stop until his case is airtight.”

  Their drinks arrived, and David welcomed the chance to break from the conversation for a few minutes. “Maybe I should voluntarily take myself off the staff until this whole thing blows over,” he said at last.

  Armstrong slammed her stein on the table, splashing some of its contents and startling the couple in the next booth. “Dammit, young man,” she said, “never in all my days have I run into anyone who was more his own worst enemy than you are. Based on what I heard tonight and what I believe to be true, our lieutenant friend had better come up with a great
deal more in the way of incriminating evidence before I’ll allow anyone, including you, to move for your suspension. And if you don’t think I have that kind of power around here, then just watch.”

  David’s smile came more easily than it had all evening. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

  “Well, now.” She glanced at her watch. “This old bird has a full day at the office tomorrow, so I suggest we call it quits for the night. We’ll talk again. Meanwhile, you’ve got to make yourself relax. Be patient. People like Lieutenant Dockerty, and also your friend Wallace Huttner, can’t be told much of anything. They have to find out for themselves.” She smoothed a five-dollar bill on the table and, without waiting for change, walked with him to her car.

  As she got in and rolled down the window, David said, “I’ve repeated myself so many times, I feel like a broken record, but … thank you. I guess there just aren’t any better words. Thank you.”

  “Just take care of yourself, David,” she said, “and get through this in good shape. That will be all the thanks I need.”

  He watched until her car had disappeared around the corner, then walked numbly to the adjacent lot where his was parked. The car, a yellow Saab he had owned for less than a year, rested on its rims. All four tires had been viciously slashed. Across the driver’s side, in crudely sprayed red paint, was the word MURDERER.

  “A big glass house,” David muttered as he stared at the sloppy cruelty. “You said it, lady. A big, fucking, animal of a glass house.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Barbara Littlejohn had waited outside the TWA terminal only a minute before a cab arrived. That was long enough for the raw New England evening to penetrate her clothing, stiffen her joints, and draw her skin so tightly that it hurt. The flight from L.A. had been punishing enough, she thought, but this … She was still shivering when the cab passed through the toll booth and inched down, in heavy traffic, into the Sumner Tunnel—the dank, exhaust-filled tube connecting East Boston with Boston proper. By the time they broke free on the downtown side it had begun to rain.