Code Blue pft-1

by Richard L Mabry

  "I've got a suggestion. I'll pick you up at your office about-what? Five thirty?"

  "Make it six."

  "Okay, I'll come by at six. We'll go to my parents' house for dinner. Then we can talk in Dad's study. If you agree to stay with them, I can come back here for your stuff. Deal?"

  Cathy wanted so badly to give up control and let someone else take over her complicated life. So far, Will hadn't disappointed her. She hoped that wouldn't change. With more conviction in her voice than in her heart, she said, "Deal."

  Cathy opened the back door of her office suite to find Jane waiting for her. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine, Jane. Mainly I have a little headache, and I smell like the inside of a wood stove. Other than that, nothing that a good night's sleep won't fix."

  "Do you want me to cancel some of today's appointments?"

  "No need. I'm fine." And besides that, if my practice grows a bit, maybe I can start drawing a full salary. "Give me ten minutes in my office. Then I'll be ready to go."

  Cathy had been pinching pennies when she moved to Dainger. Now she was glad she'd let her insurance agent talk her into the added expense of renter's insurance. Her call to him took a bit longer than ten minutes, and Cathy sensed that he wondered whether her business was worth all the trouble she had caused him, but when she hung up she'd extracted a promise to have an adjustor contact her within twenty-four hours. The Elam's insurance would cover the damage to their garage and her apartment, but she would be looking to her own insurance for expenses like cleaning, and replacing personal effects. Idly, she wondered about the effect of the heat and smoke on her laptop, her small collection of CDs, her little portable TV.

  Cathy emerged from her office and found Jane waiting in the hall. "Mr. Greiner is in treatment room one. He has a wart on his thumb."

  There was no doubt in Cathy's mind that Jane's diagnosis would be correct. In all her years as an office nurse, Jane had probably seen ten times as many cases of verruca vulgaris, or common wart, as Cathy had treated in her brief exposure to dermatology.

  Cathy put down the magnifying glass she'd used to examine the skin lesion. "Mr. Greiner, I can refer you to a dermatologist who can freeze that with liquid nitrogen. Or, if you want me to, I can use my Hyfrecator. The end result is the same. Your choice."

  "What's the difference?"

  "A dermatologist would probably use a spray of liquid nitrogen to freeze that wart. You'll get a little blister in the area. When that comes off, the skin underneath it is pink and tender. But pretty soon it will look and feel completely normal."

  "Does it hurt?" he asked.

  Cathy remembered her own experience when she'd had a wart removed from her finger while in med school. "My treatment felt like a burn, and it took a while for the pain to go away. After that, though, it was fine."

  "What about the high-ver-natum or whatever you said?" Greiner asked.

  "This is the Hyfrecator." She pointed to a rectangular off- white plastic box sitting on the waist-high treatment cabinet behind her. A thin black cord connected the box to a pencil-like probe with an angled needle on the tip. "It's an electrocautery unit. Probably the most common one in the world."

  "So how does it work?"

  "I usually inject a little local anesthetic. Then I put the tip of the needle in contact with the wart and deliver a low-voltage electric current that makes it shrivel up. A scab forms, and when it comes off, the tissue underneath it is all healed. Same end result as freezing."

  Greiner seemed to think about the options. "I don't see any need to go somewhere else for this. What you're suggesting sounds fine to me." He shrugged. "Let's do it."

  Fifteen minutes later, while Jane made Greiner's follow-up appointment, Cathy thought back to her reasons for going into family practice. One of the main ones was the ability to offer her patients a broad range of services. She had no intention of taking patients away from the specialists. She referred more complex cases to them and was glad to have their expertise to lean on. No, it all boiled down to what she thought of as her "business model." Give the patient the best care with as little inconvenience to them as possible. Now if the credentials committee would give her all the privileges she needed to do that, maybe she could get on with her life.

  Cathy looked up from the forms strewn across her desk. Was that a knock at the door? She looked at her watch. Was it after six already? She hurried to the office's front door, unlocked it, and beckoned Will inside before relocking it.

  "Sorry I didn't hear you at first. I've been doing paperwork for about three-quarters of an hour, and I guess I got lost in it." She motioned him to the chair across from her desk. "Give me five more minutes and we can leave."

  "No problem." He gestured toward the stack of papers. "If you have that many insurance claims to file, business must be picking up."

  "I wish. Most of these are claims we have to re-file because the insurance company either paid incorrectly or denied improperly. Sometimes I think they do that to hang on to their money a bit longer. I wonder how many doctors' offices take the denials at face value, bill the patient for the balance, and let it go at that."

  Will leaned back and crossed his legs at the ankles. "That's what makes you special, Cathy. You're not 'most doctors.' You take the time to care. The folks in Dainger are lucky to have you practicing here."

  She signed the last form and tossed it on top of all the others. "I hope more of them recognize that. Until some of these insurance claim checks come in, it's pretty slim pickings around here."

  She emptied the pockets of her white coat before rolling it into a ball. "Be right back. I need to toss this into the laundry hamper." That accomplished, she pulled her purse from her bottom desk drawer and grabbed her jacket from the hanger on the back of the door. "Let's get out of here. I'm starved, and if what your mother serves on a weekday is anything like what she cooks on Sunday, I'm ready for it."

  In the parking lot, she pulled her keys out of her purse and pressed the remote to unlock her car. "Shall I follow you?"

  "You can, or you can ride with me and I'll come by in the morning to pick you up and take you to work. That way I get to see you even more."

  Cathy thought about it for a moment. Why not? She locked her car and allowed Will to open the door of his pickup for her. When they were both belted in, she said, "What makes you so sure I'll end up staying with your folks?"

  He backed out of the parking space and steered into the street before he answered. A big grin spread across his face. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'd like to call your attention to the following points. Dr. Sewell's back is probably still sore from the Elam's couch. She likes my parents almost as much as I do. And…" He paused for emphasis."My mother's cooking would lure an escaped convict back to prison."

  Cathy gave him a playful punch on the arm. "Wait until I'm back in my apartment. I'll cook for you again. But, in the meantime, I'd be happy to enjoy your folks' hospitality-and your mother's cooking."

  Cathy opened one of the boxes Will and his father had just carried to the Kennedy's spare room. Because Joe and his impromptu work detail hadn't yet finished the new stairs, and Will adamantly refused to let Cathy climb up the ladder, she'd had to give him a detailed list of what to pack for her. This had proved sort of embarrassing to Cathy, but he assured her that attorneys, like physicians, were hard to shock.

  Dora Kennedy stood in the doorway after the Kennedy men withdrew to give Cathy a degree of privacy as she unpacked. "Dear, can I help you?"

  Cathy shook her head. "I think I'll be fine. Again, I really appreciate your letting me stay here. I hope it won't be too long."

  "Stay as long as you need to. There are clean sheets on the bed and clean towels in your bathroom. And you just make yourself at home anywhere in the house."

  "You've really made me feel at home." Cathy thought about what she wanted to say. It sounded terrible, but it was the truth. "You know, Mrs. Kennedy, I'm more comfortable here than the last time I
stayed with my parents."

  "Cathy, I mean, Dr. Sewell-"

  "Please. I've always been Cathy to you and your husband. Let's don't change that."

  "Cathy then. I know you may not want to talk about it, but everyone around here knows about your mother's problems. I'm sure you must have been uncomfortable when you were around her after she got to be so difficult. But before she got sick, she was a wonderful person. And your daddy took good care of her."

  Cathy shook her head. "Sorry. That's not what I've heard."

  Mrs. Kennedy appeared unfazed. "Dear, you can't be a pastor's wife for almost forty years without learning a few things. You've heard rumors that your daddy wasn't faithful to your mother, haven't you?"

  "Yes." Cathy started to say more, but decided to leave it at that. After all, most of what she suspected was unproven. But how do you get hard evidence that your father, who'd been dead for over three years, had cheated on your mother?

  "I can't give you the details-I know them, but you'll have to hear them from someone else-but I can tell you this for sure." Dora moved from the doorway into the room and picked up the Bible that lay on the bedside table. "With my hand on this Bible, I'll tell you that your daddy was not unfaithful to your mother."

  Cathy couldn't believe it. Emotions swirled through her head like a weather vane in a Texas tornado. Relief. Regret. Anguish. Confusion. She slumped onto the bed and buried her face in her hands. "I so want to believe that."

  Dora's voice was soft. "Believe it, dear."

  Cathy felt tears form. "I feel so guilty. I didn't want to believe my suspicions about Daddy, but I let them taint my memory of him anyway. Daddy, please forgive me." She choked back a sob. "And God forgive me too."

  The bed sagged beside Cathy as Dora Kennedy sat down and gently patted her shoulder.

  Her voice was like a gentle wind. "Dear, would you like me to pray with you?"

  "Please," Cathy choked out. "Yes, please."

  Cathy and Will sat across from each other at the Kennedy dining table. Will made notes on a yellow legal pad while Cathy shared the details of her conversation with Mrs. Gladstone. "I don't know why Gail Nix would have it in for me, but apparently, she's the one who bullied her husband into filing the malpractice suit."

  Will leaned back and balanced his chair on the two back legs, keeping himself in position with one hand on the table."I think maybe I can tell you a bit about that. This all happened about four years ago. You were still in medical school. I'd just come back to Dainger and started practicing law."

  Cathy looked at him expectantly.

  He brought the chair down, leaned forward, and drained his coffee cup. "This won't be nice for you to hear."

  "I've heard a great deal since I've been back here, and most of it has convinced me that everyone knows everything about everybody else in this town, and most of it's bad. Go on."

  "Okay. You remember that Gail Nix is Lloyd Allen's big sister, right?"

  Cathy nodded.

  "She and Lloyd had another sibling, a sister, Mattie. Mattie was the oldest. Got married and was divorced within a year, but kept her married name: Mattie McElroy. She stayed in Dainger-taught grade school." He picked up his cup, found that it was empty, and put it down. "She came to the emergency room one night, throwing up and hurting something fierce. Fever and chills. Really sick. Unfortunately, she'd waited three days before calling Gail to take her to the hospital."

  "What happened?"

  "Your father diagnosed a ruptured appendix. He did his best to save her. Folks tell me he sat at her bedside for thirtysix hours straight, doing everything he could. But Mattie died."

  "Surely Gail's not holding a grudge against my father for that? By the time he saw her she probably had peritonitis. Some people just can't be saved, and especially if you don't see them until they're already half dead."

  "True, it doesn't make sense. And neither does it make sense for her to carry that grudge forward to you. But that appears to be the case."

  Cathy stood and paced the few steps from the table to the door and back. "Are you sure about this?"

  "Sure as I can be. Gail came to me and wanted to file a malpractice claim against your father. In case you're wondering, I'm not really breaching client confidentiality here, because I wouldn't take her as a client. I told her it wasn't malpractice, just a bad result."

  "Did she end up getting another lawyer?"

  Will shook his head. "Nope, I was the last one in town she went to. She'd already tried everyone else. Nobody would touch the case. So I guess she's stored up all that venom over the years, and now you're the target of her anger."

  14

  Jane put a cup of coffee and three pink message slips on Cathy's desk. "Will your insurance cover your losses in the apartment fire?"

  Cathy picked up the mug and took a grateful sip. Jane's coffee was better than any she'd ever been able to make herself. She'd have to ask the secret. "Apparently so. The Elams have the same insurance company I have, and the adjustor's already been by. Insurance will pay a professional fire restoration company to clean my clothes and linens. My CDs were ruined by the heat, and my TV set appears to have given up the ghost, but the company will issue a check to cover those." She gazed into her coffee cup. "But they can't give me back the photos the smoke and water ruined."

  "So how soon can you move back in?"

  "Realistically, I'll probably have to live with the Kennedys for at least another month. Maybe more."

  Jane turned toward the door. "That shouldn't be too hard."

  "Do you mean Dora's cooking? I agree. She's the best."

  "That too, I suppose. But what I meant was the chance to see more of Will Kennedy."

  Cathy made a shooing gesture. After Jane left, she smiled to herself as she looked at the list of appointments. If this kept up, the practice might actually show a profit soon. That would be good, considering the size of the note she'd signed at the bank when she borrowed the money to set up her practice. Cathy had been thoroughly confused by the legal language, but Mr. Nix had assured her there'd be no problem renewing it after a year. "Just pay the interest," he'd said. Of course, that was then, and this was now. Nix might not be so accommodating anymore.

  There was enough variety among the cases she saw to keep Cathy engaged, but every time she had a break, her thoughts turned away from medicine. The witnesses Will wanted to depose had been served with their subpoenas. Today, he would start with the first two on the list: Milton and Gail Nix. The depositions were scheduled, one after the other, in Sam Lawton's office. Cathy wanted to be present, but Will advised against it.

  "We'll get together this evening, and I'll fill you in on everything. I don't expect to learn a lot, but you never know."

  All day, Cathy wondered whether Gail Nix was behind the wheel of that Ford Expedition. Somehow, that seemed more like something a man would do. Was Gail's brother, Lloyd, the person who was out to get her? He could have driven the car, probably could have set the fire. And it would have been no problem for him to pull Milton Nix's original prescription from the files and replace it with the altered photocopy.

  Then again, perhaps this was connected to her father in some way. Doctors might be respected by most patients, but someone could still be carrying a grudge, one they were willing to extend to the next generation.

  Did the cause of her problems lie in Dallas? Maybe not just her troubles with Robert. Had anyone suffered from a mistake she made during her residency?

  "That was the last patient." Jane took the chart Cathy handed her. "Going home?"

  "No, I'll try to finish this paperwork while I wait for Will."

  It was almost six thirty when Cathy heard rapping at the outer door. Will stood in the hall, the picture of exhaustion. His tie hung at half-mast, his dress shirt was wilted and sweat-stained. Cathy motioned him in and followed him into her office.

  "I take it the deposition didn't go well?" she said.

  Will nodded silently before slumping int
o the chair across the desk from Cathy. He dropped his briefcase and rubbed at his temples.

  Cathy gave him a "wait a second" gesture and went to the workroom to get sodas for them both.

  Will took his and held it against his forehead for a moment before pulling the tab and gulping half the can. "It was like butting my head against a stone wall. In the law, the term is 'the deponent knoweth not,' meaning that the person giving the deposition denies any knowledge. Maybe they forgot, maybe they can't recall. Whatever it is, it doesn't give the lawyer doing the questioning anything he can sink his teeth into."

  "So you didn't find out anything useful?"

  "Nix says it was his idea to file the suit. Maintains that, although he discussed it with his wife, he made the final decision. I believe his words were, 'to protect the citizens of Dainger from Dr. Sewell.' Made you sound like a cross between Typhoid Mary and Son of Sam."

  Cathy took a sip of her soft drink. "And I suppose they denied altering the prescription?"

  Will shook his head. "I didn't bring it up. I asked them how they explained the directions being different from what you had charted, and they both had the same answer: You must have written the prescription wrong, then realized your mistake and tried to cover it up by making the right entry on the chart."

  "That's so-"

  "Easy." Will held up a hand, palm forward. "Let's don't show our defense just yet. I've still got to depose both pharmacists. I want to get these people alone in a room with a stenographer, under oath, and see if I can rattle them enough that they can't keep their stories straight. Somewhere along the line, maybe I can trip up the person responsible for all this."