Small Town Doctor

by Robert James Allison

  Frank ventured, “You know. I was thinking I heard of a malpractice suit or something against the hospital back about then. Is that true?”

  “Nawh, nobody sued the hospital over that. I remember it though. They sure nailed a doctor who goofed up on his night orders. In fact, that nurse there was the one who noticed it and reported it to the administrator after the little girl was already dead. The nurse pointed out that the dose ordered would be fatal for that little girl.”

  “Why didn’t she say something beforehand?” Frank asked blandly.

  “Beats me, guess she didn’t know about it until later. Shoot, I heard them talking around that time about it. The administrator said any nurse with half a brain would have known that the order was wrong. They never said that out loud though or at least outside the hospital. Sure enough the hospital might have got sued then. It’s one thing for a doctor to goof up like that, but when they prove someone who works directly for the hospital knew about it, then they would sue the pants off the hospital, too. Everybody knows that. So I never heard no more and I wasn’t sure about what I heard anyway. I work on the electrical problems around here. I let the brain guys work on the people problems. It’s all Greek to me.”

  “How did you hear about this anyway?” Frank now asked, with his senses alert. The scent was in the air.

  “I was working on a light switch in the Administrator’s restroom. He’s got his own private one you know. Anyway, I guess he didn’t know I was there, or forgot. I heard him and Margaret talking about it a couple of days after the girl died. Didn’t mean much to me. Like I said. I just fix the electrical problems.”

  “Didn’t anyone ask you about anything you might know?”

  “Who would ask me anything about something like that? I’m just an electrician. I don’t know anything about medical stuff and I ain’t supposed to know. So who would care what I thought or knew?

  “Plus, when I was in the army they taught me never to volunteer for anything or volunteer information unless I was asked. No one asked and I didn’t volunteer. Besides, the doctor goofed up, I figure. He wrote the order. He took the heat. That’s what they get the big bucks for ain’t it?” The man finished flatly.

  “We got off the subject,” Frank said to give the impression he was not interested in what the man was saying and then asked, “So just when did the administrator and this nurse O’Toole get so close?”

  “Right about the time the little girl died. Didn’t I just say that?” The man stated, more than asked, in now what was an obvious drunken slur.

  “Yeah, I guess you did. Too many beers for me,” Frank smiled sheepishly—he was still on his first beer. He had a way of taking all night on one beer and making it seem like it was his tenth.

  “So you get to hear some off-the-wall conversations when you are working on the administrator’s bathroom, huh,” he continued.

  “There and other places,” the man chuckled. “But that one there was a weird one. Like I said, I don’t know much about medical stuff, but it was queer the way he was talking. Like I remember he said something like. ‘…You fool! Half of that would have been fatal. And then using that white out. Any fool with half a brain will see that on the chart! Providing they see the original chart…’ and like I said, it don’t make much sense to me, but it did seem like a strange conversation.

  “I just went back to my work quietly and pretty soon they left. After that though, now that I think about it, they got real chummy with each other and they been that way ever since. Maybe he was a wooing her in a way I don’t understand, but whatever it was, it worked,” he ended with a drunken laugh.

  “Hey. I been sitting here drinking with you half the night and I didn’t even ask your name,” Frank said smoothly and with feigned drunkenness.

  “Sam Donner.”

  “Frank Mahone, Sam. Nice to meet you. But hey, I got to go home and eat supper or the old lady will kill me.”

  “Okay, Frank. See you around the hospital. Say…you been there long?”

  “Not long and I may not stay much longer. Ain’t my style, you know?”

  “Some people don’t cotton to it, but you get used to it,” he ended, but Frank just waved and strolled through the bar in feigned unsteadiness, thinking he had to get to a phone and in a hurry.

  ~*~

  “Swenson.”

  “Mahone.”

  “Go.”

  “Piece of a conversation I picked up that occurred ten years ago between the nurse on duty and the administrator. Here it is....”

  “You on it?” Swenson said more than asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Stay on it.”

  Click went the phone and Frank hung up his end. He headed back to the hospital where the administrator’s office would now be vacant.

  ~*~

  Doc Collins was carefully placing his clothes in his suitcases and arranging the suitcases at the door so that Jim Shrock could carry them out to his car for him. It had been two weeks since he had talked with Jesse. After his visit with Jesse he had hoped he would come out of hiding and back into the world for better or worse. He sympathized with him, but what he had told him was the truth. You can’t hide from yourself and you are in the world whether you like it or not, but nothing came of it and Doc had decided to head back to Illinois.

  He hated to leave an unfinished job, but he could see nothing else to do at this point. Jesse had retreated from the world, with good cause, but still, he had retreated and there was nothing to be done for him now. Maybe he was right. Maybe living a nonexistence was better than an existence which was hounded at every turn.

  Existing was different than living though. Jesse existed in the world, but for the past ten years he had not lived. To Doc it would be far worse to exist as Jesse had, but not live. Not know your neighbors. Not know where your next meal was coming from or where you would eat it. Always looking over your shoulder for someone who might know you, but who you would not know until it was too late. Never able to rest, never able to relax.

  There were much worse things than death. He had been a doctor too long not to have seen some of them, but what Jesse had done to himself was death. Death without release from suffering. He was dead to the world and to himself, but he was still alive to feel the pain of both.

  A knock at the door jolted him from his musings and he thought, Jim is right on time. He closed up his last suitcase with a mental shrug and carried it to the door. He sat the suitcase down and opened the door with a smile saying, “Right on time Jim, I….” It was Jesse Blockman.

  “May I come in, Bill?”

  “Sure, Jesse, come on in and pull up a chair.”

  Jesse stepped in the room and his glance immediately fell upon the packed suitcases standing by the door. “Leaving?”

  “Yes. There’s no more for me to do here. I have things to do in Illinois, however. People to see and care for and friends to shoot the breeze with. Something you would not understand, I suppose,” he ended with a purposeful sting in his voice.

  The look on Jesse’s face indicated that he had felt the sting, as had been intended.

  “I deserved that.”

  “No. No you didn’t, Jesse, I’m sorry. I’m just a frustrated old man. I feel the same right now as did every time I lost a battle with the Angel of Death. Frustration. Knowing I was powerless to change the outcome, yet hoping the outcome would be different than I knew it would. I can’t change your life, Jesse. I can’t give you back the ten years you’ve lost and I won’t debate with you further about whether the lost ten years are your fault or the fault of a cruel world, in the form of a little girl’s relatives.”

  “I know you can’t give me back the years, Doc, but I wanted to come and tell you that you’ve given me back my life. It may not be much of a life, but it’s back. You snapped me out of my self-pity. Listening to you talk the other night and knowing for the first time in years that someone cared if I lived or died did the trick.

  “It wasn’t just
you, either. Those people who hid me in their apartment and cleaned me up made a big impression. They knew who I was and what I had done, but it didn’t matter to them. They only knew that I had done the right thing for their daughter and that was enough for them. Just like you said. I’m a good doctor and I made a mistake once, a long time ago.

  “So, I’m back in the world that you told me I had never and could never really leave. I owe it to you, but I’m not sure I’ll thank you. Now the vultures will find me and make me miserable the rest of my life. I’ll work where I can, doing what I can and I’ll pay it all to them, but I won’t hide anymore. I’ll hold my head up and face the world and my mistakes, like a man.

  “That’s what you meant wasn’t it? When you told me I couldn’t hide from myself and that the world was where I was no matter where that happened to be?”

  “Yes. That’s what I meant, but I wasn’t sure I said it the right way to make you understand.”

  “You said it right. Just took me a while to make myself accept it. I guess I always knew it, but wouldn’t admit it.”

  Doc responded in earnest now, “You know that makes me feel better. Back where I come from there are three brothers who lost their mother and father when they were very young. They turned bitter toward God. Many times I tried to tell them that it was all in God’s plan, but I couldn’t make it come out so that they would understand it. No matter what I said or how I said it they would have nothing to do with God. Finally, they came around and it was nothing I said at all that did it.

  “You’re the same, Jesse, but different. You turned bitter toward the world, but not God. I was afraid I couldn’t make you understand what I was never able to make them understand. Every life has its ‘ups’ and ‘downs’, but for everything that happens there is a reason. God’s reason and it doesn’t always coincide with what we think it should be.”

  “What makes you think I didn’t turn bitter toward God?”

  “Because you prayed for this town and not for yourself. A man who does that hasn’t lost faith in God.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve said I prayed for this town. How do you know that I did? I never told you or anyone of that?” he asked skeptically.

  “I can’t say that for sure. I only know that a man is here and I know that where that man goes it seems God’s purpose is revealed. The man himself doesn’t realize it and I don’t pretend to understand it, but I know just as sure as I stand here that God uses that man to answer prayers. Sounds crazy, but that’s what it looks like to me.”

  “What man?”

  “A man. His name doesn’t matter. A man a lot like you, Jesse. A man who made more than one mistake and now he travels the country to find himself, not realizing he was never lost. Not realizing that he searches in vain for an illusion. Reality is where you are and when you are. You can’t lose it and you can’t change it, not if you are sane.”

  “You’re talking crazy! How could a man know I prayed and come to answer that prayer?”

  “A man couldn’t, but God does and He uses men. I happen to believe that He uses this particular man, but I can’t prove that. I just believe. Like I said earlier, the man doesn’t know it, either. I don’t know it for sure, but I look at the facts and the conclusion is obvious to me.

  “Where is this man now? My prayer isn’t answered.”

  “I think he’s already gone. I’m not sure, but he probably is. There’s nothing else for him to do here. Where he’s going now I’m not sure. He probably isn’t, either.

  “And who says your prayer isn’t answered, Jesse? You’re back in the world now. The real world. Maybe that’s your answer.”

  “You trying to tell me God talks to this man or that he’s an angel or something?” Jesse asked skeptically.

  Doc chuckled, “No, he’s no angel, but he does work some good things for people he meets along the way. Like you, he’s trying to make up for years of what he considers ‘wrong doing’. He can’t, of course, like you found out, but he tries just the same.”

  “You’re serious aren’t you?” Jesse asked with his mouth hanging slightly open.

  “Yes.”

  “So why tell me now?”

  “I’m not sure of that, either.”

  ~*~

  Jim was busy in the kitchen when the phone rang. He hurried into the lobby and picked it up. “Hello.”

  “Maltby.” The crisp voice said and was silent.

  Jim twisted his face in a puzzled look and put the receiver down heading out front to find Mike Maltby. He had just checked out, but was still loading his motorcycle.

  “Mike Maltby!” He yelled from the front porch.

  Mike walked up to the front porch asking, “What’s up?”

  “Telephone for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. Rude kind of man. He just said ‘Maltby’ and that was it.”

  That was enough for Mike. He only knew of one man who made phone calls like that. Why, he wasn’t sure. Something about the nature of his job, he mused, as he headed in to get the phone.

  “Maltby.”

  “Swenson. Your man was set up to take a fall.”

  “What do you mean? Take a fall. For who?” Mike asked as he looked around to make sure the owner was no longer within earshot.

  “For a nurse who fouled up and the hospital that would have gone down with her. The nurse on duty, Margaret O’Toole. The chart said 2 milligrams and she gave 8. The little girl went into an immediate irreversible coma. That amount of morphine to anyone of any size and age with a brain injury is almost always fatal.”

  “But the chart said 8.”

  “She whited out the ‘2’ and wrote ‘8’ just to make sure it was noticed, and it was. Good job of doctoring the charts, too, no pun intended. Took our technicians about 24 hours to bring out the ‘2’ clearly enough to be read. Would have been easier with the original charts, but they got accidentally, on purpose, shredded with some old records scheduled for destruction. The hospital administrator handled that little trick personally.”

  “You know this for sure?”

  “Got a man on the inside. My best. He turned it a couple of weeks ago, but it took a few days to sort it all out. Yeah, it’s for sure. I turned the whole thing over to the U.S. Attorney a couple of days ago. This is conspiracy to obstruct justice and fraud on the courts. The U.S. Attorney jumped on it like a fly on honey, he will have a heyday with this one. First thing he did was call a press conference. Probably already hit the papers. These political types can’t do anything without a press conference. May take some time, but your man will be cleared and get his ticket back if he wants it. Won’t give him back the last ten years, but it’s better than nothing. The world ain’t necessarily fair. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I got you, and thanks.”

  “We’re even, Mike. As far as you are concerned I don’t exist anymore. Got me?”

  “Yes,” he said as the phone went dead. Mike went back the to the front porch and watched Shrock and Jesse load Doc’s bags into the car.

  ~*~

  With the bags in the car Doc turned to Jesse and said, “Well, Jesse. Welcome back to the world and so long.”

  Jesse stuck out his hand and said, “Thank you again, Doc, I….”

  “Jesse! Jesse! Look at this! Look here!” Dick Carlson said as he skidded to Jesse’s side, ending a dead run and holding out the morning newspaper.

  Jesse glanced at the paper Carlson held extended out in front of his face and the headline read:

  “HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATOR AND NURSE ARRESTED FOR CONSPIRACY”

  and in a little bit smaller print underneath it said:

  “DOCTOR JESSE BLOCKMAN NOT NEGLIGENT—COURT EXPECTED TO SET ASIDE VERDICT ON THE BASIS OF FRAUD ON THE COURT AND

  TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE.”

  Doc had slipped over to the other side of Jesse and also read the headline and by-line as Jesse read. The article went on about how the administrator and nurse had changed
records and then destroyed them to cover up for the nurse’s mistake. How the charts had been tampered with to implicate Jesse Blockman. How Jesse Blockman had admitted to the error, because of his sense of guilt, rather than because of his reason.

  “Well, Doctor Blockman. Everyone will read that story. If it made the headlines clear out here, then it made them everywhere. It’s just a matter of time now. A few refresher courses and you will be the doctor for this town that you prayed for. Funny how God works thing out isn’t it?” he finished with a smile.

  “I can’t…believe…it!” Jesse stammered. “You’ve given me back my life for real, Doc. Thank you.”

  “Thank God, Jesse. The God you never lost faith in. That’s what did it, Jesse. Your faith in God, not me. He answered your prayer, not me. Keep the faith, Jesse,” he said, as got in the car.

  Mike came down from the front porch of the Bed and Breakfast from where he had overheard the entire conversation. He went to his motorcycle and double-checked his load. Climbing on he punched the electric starter button and the engine instantly jumped to life. Idling the engine down and while letting it warm up he looked at Jesse and then over at Doc. With a smile he gave Doc a quick “thumbs up” that Jesse could not see and spun his motorcycle around, roaring down the main street and out of town. The cold January wind bit at him as he thought of the warmer places where he was heading.

  The End

 

  To find other titles by Robert James Allison, visit his website at:

  www.robertjamesallison.com

 

  Robert James Allison is an attorney who practiced law in Central Illinois for over 25 years. He has since retired from the private practice of law and moved to Louisville, KY. In the 1970s he served in the U.S. Army as a Military Policeman and later was a Captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corp, Army National Guard. Robert draws on his life experiences in his writing and melds his experiences with his characters to give them a realism that draws the reader into their lives.

  Full-length novels by Robert James Allison: