Medical Error (12 page)

The lawyer listened without interruption. When Anna finished, he asked only one question. "Do you want to hire me?"

"That's what I thought this was all about," she said, fighting unsuccessfully to keep exasperation out of her voice.

"So let's meet at my office. Do you have the address?"

"No. All she gave me was your number." The next words came out without conscious thought on her part. "She told me you were very good at things like this. She also told me you were a liar and a cheat. Maybe you can explain that before I hire you."

Donovan laughed, a hearty, full-throated sound. "Dr. McIntyre, I think I can explain it all to your satisfaction. How about coming down here about eleven? 2200 Pacific, suite 1212. We can talk, and if things go well, we can continue it over lunch."

Anna promised to be there. After she hung up, she pulled three blank manila folders from her desk drawer. She labeled them with a fine- point Sharpie: "Hatley," "DEA," and "Police."Anna stuck the contact information for Donovan into the third folder, then pulled a yellow legal pad toward her and began to doodle.

The prescriptions she'd seen appeared to be written on authentic clinic prescription forms. There had been talk at the medical center of changing to tamper-proof prescription pads, but that hadn't been implemented yet. Anna suspected that wouldn't be done until a legal mandate galvanized someone in administration into action, securely locking the barn door after the horse had disappeared over the horizon.

The simplest explanation was the first one that had popped into Anna's mind: a patient took his or her Vicodin prescription home, did a little magic to alter the numbers and patient name, photocopied it, and began selling the results. Or they could have started fresh and simply forged the prescriptions. The pads currently in use could easily be duplicated at any of the hundreds of print shops in Dallas. Even someone who was good with a computer could make up blanks.

Anna kept coming back to the same thing: the DEA number was hers, the name was hers, and they matched. If a patient wasn't the one behind this, it had to be someone who had access to Anna's DEA number. It would most likely be a person at the medical center with whom Anna had regular contact—a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist. It made her shiver to think that a colleague could be the one responsible for the mess she found herself in right now.

And why would they choose her, use her name and number? Had she done something to make herself vulnerable? Surely she hadn't been any less cautious than all her colleagues. She flinched at the thought that kept intruding itself. Did someone have it in for her?

Names and faces spooled through Anna's head. Start with the patients. She couldn't think of anyone who jumped out as a likely suspect. Maybe if she went over the patient list for her last twenty clinics or so, a name would pop up and trigger a memory. Of course, to do this she'd have to go back to the med school. Could she face the looks she was sure to get from the staff?

Anna set her jaw. Let them stare. She'd stare right back at them, while she searched for the person who was dragging her good name in the dirt and putting her professional reputation in jeopardy.

Ross Donovan looked at the papers heaped on his desk, sighed, and swiveled in his chair to stare out the window at the Dallas skyline. As slow as his practice had been, it was amazing how much stuffaccumulated in two weeks away. He swung back and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He reached down, then pulled his hand back as though a snake were hissing at him from the dark depths of the space. No, not anymore.

Donovan walked through the outer office, trying to ignore the empty desk that was once his assistant's. In the tiny workroom, he moved to the coffeemaker in the corner. He measured out coffee from the almost-empty can, filled the pot at the sink, and pushed the button. As he stood there, listening to the gurgle of the filling pot and enjoying the aroma of the brew, his thoughts ranged far and wide.

He poured coffee into a thick white mug that told the world it belonged to the "World's Best Husband." That brought a chuckle, his second of the day. Must be some kind of a record, Donovan thought. Not many chuckles in his life for the past few months. He sat at his desk, pulled the wastebasket a bit closer, and began to go through the accumulated mail on his desk. Bills went into one stack, letters from past and potential clients into a much smaller one, junk into the trash. He finished his coffee just as he heard the front door open. He swept the mail into his center desk drawer, looked approvingly at the pristine desktop, and straightened his tie from its usual half-mast position. Time to talk with his next client. Time to be a lawyer again. And this time he intended not to blow the chance.

The slow ride up in the elevator gave her plenty of time to change her mind, but Anna was determined to see it through. The building was nice enough on the outside, but the halls were narrow, the walls dingy, the carpet worn. Definitely a lowrent venue.

Suite 1212 was at the end of the hall. The door had a frostedglass window in the top half, where flaking, faded gold-leaf letters announced to the world that this was the office of Ross Donovan, Attorney At Law. The waiting room held six chairs with worn upholstery, a coffee table with three tattered copies of
D Magazine,
and an empty desk, apparently meant for an administrative assistant. Two doors were on the back wall. The one on the right was partially open, allowing a view of a coffee machine, metal shelving laden with boxes and papers, and the corner of a sink. The door on the left was closed.

Apparently no one was coming out to welcome her. Anna knocked on the closed door. In less than half a minute, Gregory Peck opened the door. Well, not him, but a handsome man with black, wavy hair, a cleft chin, and sparkling blue eyes that hinted of secrets that could not be shared.

"You must be Dr. McIntyre," he said, offering his hand. "I'm Ross Donovan. Won't you come in and sit down? Would you like some coffee?"

It smelled good, but she decided to pass. "No, thank you."As she settled into one of the two client chairs across the desk from Donovan, she gave him a quick appraisal. Probably forty years old or thereabouts. Crisp, clean white shirt with cuffs turned back a neat two folds, a conservative blue tie, dark blue suspenders. And although a reappraisal showed her that he wasn't exactly a dead ringer for Gregory Peck, his looks would probably melt the hearts of female jurors from ages sixteen to sixty.

Donovan uncapped a pen—an actual fountain pen, not a ballpoint, she noted—and pulled a legal pad from a desk drawer. "Suppose you tell me what this is all about."

"Don't you want a retainer or something first?"

He waved away the question. "The TV shows always talk about giving your attorney a dollar to make the relationship formal. If Laura sent you, I suspect we can work out financial arrangements. I assure you that I'll consider anything you tell me to be privileged, even if you decide not to hire me."

Anna digested this and decided it made sense. "One more thing before we get started. Why did Ms. Ernst recommend that I consult you, and in the same breath say that you're a liar and a cheat?"

"The short answer, I guess, is that I am . . . or at least, I was. I lied to her and cheated on her. That was before our divorce."

Anna tried to conceal her surprise. Well, she wasn't hiring a husband. She needed a lawyer. "And I guess when I asked her for the name of a lawyer, she had to call to see if you were free to accept me as a client?"

Donovan grinned, and two dimples flanked the Pecklike cleft in his chin. "Nope, she called to see if I was out of rehab."

Anna wheeled into what was probably the last open spot in the faculty parking garage and hurried across the campus. She didn't want to be late for the Morbidity and Mortality Conference, especially today, when she might well have center stage. She wished she'd had time to accept Donovan's lunch invitation, though. He'd left the invitation open, and she might end up having a working dinner with him, depending on how things progressed.

Once she'd gotten past the preliminaries with Donovan, she'd been impressed by his incisive questions and sound counsel. They'd settled on a payment schedule she could meet. He'd advised her to have no more contact with the DEA or the police, assuring her that he would handle all that.

Anna stopped at her office long enough to toss her purse into a desk drawer and snatch up her white coat. The Surgery Department conference room was packed with doctors. The faculty members sat in upholstered swivel chairs scattered at intervals around the long conference table. Third- and fourthyear resident physicians ringed the table, occupying lightly padded wooden side chairs without arms. The more junior residents were scattered around the periphery of the room in plastic shell chairs guaranteed to keep them uncomfortable and awake for the proceedings.

A few medical students, easily identifiable by their short white coats and worried looks, sat together in one corner, trying to avoid being noticed, or even worse, called on. Anna figured that some were here to learn, but most were in attendance because general surgery was a required rotation they had to pass.

The long white coats of the faculty were starched and pristine, in contrast to those of the residents, which ranged between slightly wrinkled and grungy. Although scrub suits seemed to be the uniform of the day, some of the male faculty members wore dress shirts and ties. Anna had chosen a simple white blouse and black skirt, trying for a professional look beneath her white coat. She would have preferred to remain anonymous throughout the entire conference, something she knew was impossible, but she had no intention of calling attention to herself through her choice of clothing.

Neil Fowler moved aside the remains of his box lunch and pulled a stack of papers toward him. Like a ripple around the table, the residents and staffphysicians put aside their food. Most conversations died away, some chopped offin midsentence. Anna felt the few bites of ham and cheese sandwich she'd been able to choke down trying to push their way back up. She gulped the last of her Diet Coke.

"Let's get this month's M&M Conference underway. We'll start with cases from the junior residents. Shelly?" Fowler took a handkerchief from his pocket and began to polish his glasses, his gaze directed to the far corner of the room. Although two of the medical students exchanged glances, apparently wondering if the chairman's attention was wandering, Anna knew better. She'd attended more than fifty of these conferences, first as a resident and for the past years as a faculty member. Neil Fowler wouldn't miss a word that was said.

After the first presentation, Fowler swept his eyes around the room, focusing one by one on the faculty members, inviting comments. A couple of the more senior faculty had a few words about the management of the case. Each agreed that the morbidity—in this case, a severe postoperative infection that kept the patient in the hospital an extra week—might have been avoided had certain things been done differently. Fowler closed the discussion by mentioning a specific antibiotic that would likely have been more effective. "Moving on. Tim?"