Under The Knife

Patrick kept shaking his head. “She was our only girl, Mr. Ransom. Our only child. She was always so good, you know? Never complained. Even when she was a baby. She’d just lie there in her crib and smile. Like a little angel. Just like a darling little—” He suddenly stopped, his face crumpling.

“Mr. O’Brien,” David said gently, “I know it’s not much of a comfort to you now, but I promise you, I’ll do everything I can.”

Patrick shook his head. “It’s not the money we’re after. Sure, I can’t work. My back, you know. But Ellie, she had a life insurance policy, and—”

“How much was the policy?”

“Fifty thousand,” answered Mary. “That’s the kind of girl she was. Always thinking of us.” Her profile, caught in the window’s light, had an edge of steel. Unlike her husband, Mary O’Brien was done with her crying. She sat very straight, her whole body a rigid testament to grief. David knew exactly what she was feeling. The pain. The anger. Especially the anger. It was there, burning coldly in her eyes.

Patrick was sniffling.

David took a box of tissues from his drawer and quietly placed it in front of his client. “Perhaps we should discuss the case some other time,” he suggested. “When you both feel ready….”

Mary’s chin lifted sharply. “We’re ready, Mr. Ransom. Ask your questions.”

David glanced at Patrick, who managed a feeble nod. “I’m afraid this may strike you as…cold-blooded, the things I have to ask. I’m sorry.”

“Go on,” prompted Mary.

“I’ll proceed immediately to filing suit. But I’ll need more information before we can make an estimate of damages. Part of that is lost wages—what your daughter would have earned had she lived. You say she was a nurse?”

“In obstetrics. Labor and delivery.”

“Do you know her salary?”

“I’ll have to check her pay stubs.”

“What about dependants? Did she have any?”

“None.”

“She was never married?”

Mary shook her head and sighed. “She was the perfect daughter, Mr. Ransom, in almost every way. Beautiful. And brilliant. But when it came to men, she made… mistakes.”

He frowned. “Mistakes?”

Mary shrugged. “Oh, I suppose it’s just the way things are these days. And when a woman gets to be a—a certain age, she feels, well, lucky to have any man at all….” She looked down at her tightly knotted hands and fell silent.

David sensed they’d strayed into hazardous waters. He wasn’t interested in Ellen O’Brien’s love life, anyway. It was irrelevant to the case.

“Let’s turn to your daughter’s medical history,” he said smoothly, opening the medical chart. “The record states she was forty-one years old and in excellent health. To your knowledge, did she ever have any problems with her heart?”

“Never.”

“She never complained of chest pain? Shortness of breath?”

“Ellie was a long-distance swimmer, Mr. Ransom. She could go all day and never get out of breath. That’s why I don’t believe this story about a—a heart attack.”

“But the EKG was strongly diagnostic, Mrs. O’Brien. If there’d been an autopsy, we could have proved it. But I guess it’s a bit late for that.”

Mary glanced at her husband. “It’s Patrick. He just couldn’t stand the idea—”

“Haven’t they cut her up enough already?” Patrick blurted out.

There was a long silence. Mary said softly, “We’ll be taking her ashes out to sea. She loved the sea. Ever since she was a baby…”

It was a solemn parting. A few last words of condolence, and then the handshakes, the sealing of a pact. The O’Briens turned to leave. But in the doorway, Mary stopped.

“I want you to know it’s not the money,” she declared. “The truth is, I don’t care if we see a dime. But they’ve ruined our lives, Mr. Ransom. They’ve taken our only baby away. And I hope to God they never forget it.”

David nodded. “I’ll see they never do.”

After his clients had left, David turned to the window. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out, willing the emotions to drain from his body. But a hard knot seemed to linger in his stomach. All that sadness, all that rage; it clouded his thinking.

Six days ago, a doctor had made a terrible mistake. Now, at the age of forty-one, Ellen O’Brien was dead.

She was only three years older than me.

He sat down at his desk and opened the O’Brien file. Skipping past the hospital record, he turned to the curricula vitae of the two physicians.

Dr. Guy Santini’s record was outstanding. Forty-eight years old, a Harvard-trained surgeon, he was at the peak of his career. His list of publications went on for five pages. Most of his research dealt with hepatic physiology. He’d been sued once, eight years ago; he’d won. Bully for him. Santini wasn’t the target anyway. David had his crosshairs on the anesthesiologist.

He flipped to the three-page summary of Dr. Katharine Chesne’s career.

Her background was impressive. A B.Sc in chemistry from U.C., Berkeley, an M.D. from Johns Hopkins, anesthesia residency and intensive-care fellowship at U.C., San Francisco. Now only thirty years old, she’d already compiled a respectable list of published articles. She’d joined Mid Pac Hospital as a staff anesthesiologist less than a year ago. There was no photograph, but he had no trouble conjuring up a mental picture of the stereotypical female physician: frumpy hair, no figure, and a face like a horse— albeit an extremely intelligent horse.

David sat back, frowning. This was too good a record; it didn’t match the profile of an incompetent physician. How could she have made such an elementary mistake?

He closed the file. Whatever her excuses, the facts were indisputable: Dr. Katharine Chesne had condemned her patient to die under the surgeon’s knife. Now she’d have to face the consequences.

He’d make damn sure she did.

* * *

GEORGE BETTENCOURT DESPISED doctors. It was a personal opinion that made his job as CEO of Mid Pac Hospital all the more difficult, since he had to work so closely with the medical staff. He had both an M.B.A. and a Masters in public health. In his ten years as CEO, he’d achieved what the old doctor-led administration had been unable to do: he’d turned Mid Pac from a comatose institution into a profitable business. Yet all he ever heard from those stupid little surrogate gods in their white coats was criticism. They turned their superior noses up at the very idea that their saintly work could be dictated by profit-and-loss graphs. The cold reality was that saving lives, like selling linoleum, was a business. Bettencourt knew it. The doctors didn’t. They were fools, and fools gave him headaches.

And the two sitting across from him now were giving him a migraine headache the likes of which he hadn’t felt in years.

Dr. Clarence Avery, the white-haired chief of anesthesia, wasn’t the problem. The old man was too timid to stand up to his own shadow, much less to a controversial issue. Ever since his wife’s stroke, Avery had shuffled through his duties like a sleepwalker. Yes, he could be persuaded to cooperate. Especially when the hospital’s reputation was at stake.

No, it was the other one who worried Bettencourt: the woman. She was new to the staff and he didn’t know her very well. But the minute she’d walked into his office, he’d smelled trouble. She had that look in her eye, that crusader’s set of the jaw. She was a pretty enough woman, though her brown hair was in a wild state of anarchy and she probably hadn’t held a tube of lipstick in months. But those intense green eyes of hers were enough to make a man overlook all the flaws of that face. She was, in fact, quite attractive.

Too bad she’d blown it. Now she was a liability. He hoped she wouldn’t make things worse by being a bitch, as well.

* * *

KATE FLINCHED AS BETTENCOURT dropped the papers on the desk in front of her. “The letter arrived in our attorney’s office this morning, Dr. Chesne,” he said. “Hand delivered by personal messenger. I think you’d better read it.”