Doing Harm (27 page)

Not to mention a little payback.

I pass by the nurses’ station and the patient examination rooms and head to a small room in the back of the clinic with two computers—a glorified closet where the residents and med students sit. Since these are the only two computers in the clinic GG and I are allowed to use continuously (the others are earmarked for the professors or located in the patient exam rooms), I know that GG will be on one or both of them throughout the morning. I take a seat at the first computer and reach into my white coat pocket for the CD. The cheap cell phone Luis gave me is sitting on top of it. Because it’s hard for me to squeeze my hand past the phone, I draw the phone out first and absentmindedly rest it on the table next to the computers before taking out the CD and slipping it into the drive of the first computer.

The University Hospital IT folks have diligently installed, no doubt at great time and expense, several security measures to prevent someone from doing exactly what I’m about to do: place unauthorized software onto one of University’s computers. It’s not terribly difficult for me to get around the security lockouts, but it’s tedious, and by the time I’ve finished loading the keystroke logger onto the first computer and erasing my digital tracks, it’s seven fifteen. I hastily eject the disk, drop it into the second computer, and begin to repeat the process. By now, sweat is dripping off my forehead, and I have to periodically take my fingers off the keyboard to wipe it out of my eyes.

I glance at my watch—7:29.

I hear a door open at the front of the clinic.

Oh shit. If she walks in now, I’m screwed.

Distracted by the noise, I make a mistake while inputting a command and have to repeat a step.

Shit!

Whirring and clicking and wheezing, the computer accepts my command and lurches into the final stages of the download.

Come on.

Footsteps—women’s shoes, by the sound of them—are echoing down the hall, coming this way.

Still downloading.

Come on.

The steps are right outside the room now.

Come on!

The computer finally signals its acquiescence. The keystroke logger is completely loaded.

I frantically eject the software CD and slide it into my pocket. Now both of the computers she’ll be using today are primed.

Just in time.

“You’re here early, Steve.” She’s standing in the doorway to the room.

Here we go.

“So are you,” I say evenly, turning away from the computer and summoning willpower I never knew I had to sound as calm as possible.

“I like to be early,” GG says, gracefully alighting in the seat next to mine. She’s holding a cup of coffee. Underneath her short white coat, she’s wearing a white blouse and black, knee-length skirt. Very proper and businesslike. She smiles. Her teeth are straight and white. Not too white, like a TV anchor’s, but appealing in an understated kind of way. I never noticed that before. I have a decidedly undoctorlike urge to rip each of them out with a pair of pliers.
How could I ever have been attracted to this woman?
“What’s
your
story this morning, Steve?”

“I’ve got a lot of extra time on my hands these days.” I’m surprised by how much genuine bitterness seeps into my voice.
Maybe this acting thing won’t be as hard as I thought.

She hears it, too, and nods sympathetically. “So I heard. Sorry. I know how much you love to operate.” She squints and leans forward. “Why are you sweating, Steve?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I dab at my forehead. “I guess I am. Whatever. The humidity’s killing me today.”

“Hmm.” She takes a sip of coffee and looks thoughtful. Her eyes light on the phone Luis gave me, which is still sitting where I’d left it, on the table between the two computers.

Shit. Idiot! Why hadn’t I put it away?

I manage not to react as she picks it up.

“Yours?” she asks.

“Just an old phone of mine,” I mumble. “Deactivated. I found it in my locker. Forgot I had it. I’m taking it home to Katie. I thought she might like it as a toy.” I casually hold out my hand toward her, palm up.

But she continues to stare at the phone, twisting it this way and that, a vague half smile on her lips. I feel a fresh crop of sweat spring up.
Has she seen Luis carrying his phone? Mine and his are identical, after all. Is she on to us already?

Finally, after what seems like hours, she places the phone in my palm. “Of course. How sweet. What a devoted dad you are.”

She stares intently at me over her coffee cup as I stick the phone back in my white coat pocket. “So,” she says. “Here we are.”

I drop my gaze to my lap and grunt.

“This isn’t going to be too weird for you or anything, is it, Steve? Working with me?” She sighs. “Because I, like, hate weirdness.”

“You hate…” I shake my head, incredulous. How can she act so
normal
? “What is it you want from me, GG?”

“To play my game.”

“You’re crazy.”

“How’s it going? Any ideas yet?”

“You are well and truly out of your
fucking mind.
”

“I guess that’s a ‘no.’” She reaches out and touches my hand. “How about me? Have you thought about
me
?”

I recoil from her touch, as if a tarantula had tried to crawl up my arm. “Look.” I concentrate on my anger, using it as a focal point for my charade, letting it guide what I’m saying. “I don’t want to talk about
your game.
And the other night—as far as I’m concerned, it never happened.”

“So that’s it? You’re just going to give up?”

“Give up what? I never wanted this. Any of this.”

“You wanted me. And I can’t believe that you’re just going to sit back and let another patient die. When that happens, knowing what you know now—”

“Shut up. Just
shut up.
” I glare at her, perhaps a little too boldly, but by now I’m pretty worked up. “You really are a fucking
whack job,
GG. You know that?” I’ve never talked to anyone like this before in my life. It’s a little unsettling, to so blithely give my id free rein. But also weirdly invigorating. It feels good to be asserting myself again with her. Very surgeonesque. “This might be some kind of twisted game to you. But it’s my
life
. And I want it back. I’m done. You and I are through. So kill patients. Save patients. Whatever.
Just leave me the fuck alone
.”

I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “fuck” so many times all at once, and
God,
it feels
fucking
good.

For her part, if she’s startled or unnerved or pissed off by my tirade, she sure doesn’t show it. Eyes expressionless, she studies me with cool indifference, like—ironically enough—a psychiatrist sizing up a patient on a couch in her office.

There’s a pregnant pause, and for a moment, just a moment, I wonder if maybe I went too far. She opens her mouth, like she’s about to reply, but a burst of laughter from outside the room interrupts, followed by snatches of genial chatter and the clatter of approaching footsteps. The clinic staff has arrived. And the moment is over.

I swivel in my chair toward my computer and log on to the electronic patient schedule for the day, breathing hard, my heart hammering away in my chest. “You asked if this was too weird for me,” I say quietly, my eyes fixed on my computer screen. “Weird doesn’t even begin to cover it. But I’m a professional, goddammit. A surgeon. And we have patients to see this morning. That’s what I care about. If I have to work with you, fine. If I have to see patients with you in order to get the job done, okay. I’ll get the job done. But if you bring up
any
of that other crap around me again, you might as well be having a conversation with a wall. Understand?”

She leans over and whispers in my ear, “You are
so
sexy when you’re mad.” Then she licks my earlobe.

“What the fuck!” I exclaim, wiping off my ear with my sleeve and self-consciously glancing out the door.

With a slight smile on her face, she calmly starts pecking away at the keyboard of the other computer. I glare at her, but she ignores me, so I guess she has nothing else to say. For the next twenty minutes, we sit there next to each other, not speaking, each of us typing away on our computers, the clicking of the keys sounding like rain intermittently falling on a tin roof. I watch her out of the corner of my eye, trying unsuccessfully to see what she’s up to, acting casual but hardly daring to breathe, hoping that the keystroke logger is working.

Our first patient arrives at exactly 8:00
A.M.

Residents’ Clinic is full of the patients the more important, senior doctors don’t have the time or inclination to see. They’re the patients without high-end health-insurance plans, or platinum Visa cards the receptionist up front can run through her scanner, or deep pockets for donating to University Medical School research projects or new wings for University Hospital.

Quite the opposite, actually. My bosses like to refer to these patients as “great teaching cases.” Some are Hispanic migrants who stay behind in the city while relatives work organic farms or construction sites out in the exurbs; others are homeless HIV-positive drug addicts sent over from the hospital free AIDS clinic; or prisoners from the city jail clad in bright orange jumpsuits, their metallic wrist and ankle shackles clanging together as they hop awkwardly down the hall to the exam room flanked by burly armed guards; or mentally handicapped adults with the intellectual capacities of toddlers, carted in from group homes and accompanied by state-appointed wards with powers of attorney who wipe the drool off their chins and fuss over them like anxious parents; or ancient residents of nearby nursing homes, tucked in wheelchairs and sucking on portable oxygen tanks through clear-plastic masks that they clutch in their shriveled hands like talismans to ward off death.

In short, these are the patients we’re allowed to practice medicine on before we actually go out into the world and practice medicine.

There’s an attending who’s nominally in charge of us and might even pop his head in every once in a while if you ask him to. But that’s a rare event. The clinic is, for the most part, run by the residents and medical students, and we’re pretty much left to our own devices.

After examining patients separately, GG and I convene in the tiny residents’ room, scouring lab results on the computers and developing a plan of care for her patients. Whatever’s going through that bizarre mind of hers, whatever alien roadways her thoughts are traveling down after our earlier confrontation, she assumes a demeanor of studied yet casual professionalism so convincing it’s like the events of last weekend and earlier this morning never occurred. She carefully recites each patient’s history, physical-exam findings, and proposed plan of care—medication orders, lab tests, X-rays. We then see each of her patients together and, as always, her assessments are spot-on.

She’d make a magnificent doctor, I think to myself, almost wistfully. Too bad she’s just as likely to kill her patients as heal them.

It’s not too busy today, which is a little unusual for Residents’ Clinic. It leaves us with a little extra time in between patient visits. During these intervals, I’m careful to leave GG alone in the resident room as I chat with the clinic nurses and secretly pray that the keystroke logger is working.

The hours pass quickly and uneventfully; eventually morning makes way for afternoon, and GG leaves to attend to other duties. I want to check the keystroke logger, but things immediately pick up after she’s gone, and I don’t have time. The patients become an unremitting tide that spills and flows out of the waiting room and into the hallway outside. They sit in extra chairs the staff and I hastily set up in the corridor, some even sit on the floor. I work furiously, cataloging symptoms, performing exams, dispensing pills. I don’t even have time for bathroom breaks.

At the end of the afternoon, utterly spent, I finish up with what I hope is my last patient of the day and trudge wearily to the nurses’ station, where our chief nurse is waiting for me. She and I are the only two staff left; everyone else has left for the day.

“Am I done? Please let me be done. Am I done?”

“Not quite. You’ve got one more. Mr. Abernathy is waiting for you.” The tone of her voice is as sour as the look on her face.

With good reason. “Mr. Abernathy? You’re killing me, Jane. You mean he’s still alive?” I met Mr. Abernathy back when I was an intern. I haven’t seen him for a few years, since I usually don’t work in clinic anymore. “What are you doing, letting him come in at the end of the day like this?”

“Don’t ask me. And don’t blame me. Wendy up at the front desk put him on the schedule at the last minute. Apparently, he walked in without an appointment and asked to see you. You specifically,
Doctor.
” She slaps me in the chest with his old paper patient chart, the one that existed before we switched over to the computerized system. I manage to grab it just before the stack of sheets inside, thick as a phonebook, tumbles to the floor. “He heard you were back in clinic. He’s always had a special place in his heart just for you, Steve. He’s missed you. He’s been talking about you ever since you left clinic, asking where you are.”

“Great. Well, I guess I won’t be going home anytime soon.”

“Oh, no you don’t. I can’t leave until you’re done, so don’t you dare stay late with him. I’ve got to pick up my kids from day care by five thirty.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I don’t want your best, Steve. I want you
done.
”

“Which room is he in?”

“Five.”

I walk over to exam room five and pause outside the closed door, my hand resting on the doorknob. I glance back at Jane and wince. She points at her watch, then at the exam-room door, then emphatically stamps her foot.

Mr. Abernathy.

Shit.

I sigh, hunch my shoulders as if I’m about to walk outside into a driving snowstorm, turn the knob, and push open the door.