Another of the club’s members was Morgan Smith, the hospital CEO and the club’s first African American member. Before signing on to run the hospital, Smith had made a fortune with a politically connected investment firm that catered to Detroit’s African American elite. His move to the hospital was viewed as the first step in a political career. Smith also loved golf, but he was a rotund man without Tierney’s physical gifts. Smith had spent his college days in the library, sweating out accounting, business administration, marketing, and the like when he wasn’t waiting tables. Smith was lucky if his golf score broke ninety, and that was with a couple of mulligans.
The two men would run into each other Saturday mornings in the clubhouse, and the chiseled Tierney would always invite the corpulent Smith to join him for a round. Smith would accept, and they would play a pleasant eighteen on what
Golf Digest
called “The Best Unknown Golf Course in America.”
Before a recent Saturday outing, Tierney had taken the unusual step of calling Smith on a Wednesday to arrange a golf date. Smith was surprised, curious, maybe even a little suspicious, but he jumped at any opportunity to spend eighteen holes with Tierney. He always enjoyed a chance to absorb some of the legendary Buck Tierney’s skills. So when the cardiac surgeon paused on the fourth tee, a 480-yard monster with a dogleg left, Smith was not surprised.
“You know, Morgan, I’m not getting any younger.” Tierney teed up his ball and launched a three-hundred-yard rocket down the fairway.
“Could have fooled me,” Smith said, laughing.
“Well, a man gets to be my age, he starts thinking about his legacy.”
“Don’t we all,” Smith said.
Smith teed his ball up, swung hard, and sent a ground ball skittering past a magnificent pine tree and into some thick underbrush.
“Take another one, Morgan. Try pausing at the top of your backswing.”
Smith put down another ball, followed Tierney’s direction and launched a high, straight drive down the fairway.
“Will you look at that,” Smith said.
“Not bad,” Tierney said, chuckling. They climbed in the cart. “As I was saying, I’ve been thinking about what will survive me, not only with my kids, but at the hospital.”
“Okay,” Smith said neutrally.
“Been talkin’ to some folks.” Tierney stopped the cart before they’d reached Smith’s drive. “I’ll put my cards on the table, Morgan. I think I can raise twenty million for a new cardiac wing. Do you think you can get the board to match that? Make Chelsea General the premier heart hospital in the Midwest.”
Smith took off his Lake Club cap and wiped his brow with his forearm. He was smiling.
“I don’t see why not.”
“Course, if you could see it in your heart to make it the Whitfield Bradford Tierney the Third Center for Cardiac Care, I would be grateful.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Has kind of a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Hell, no one will know that’s you.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“How about the Buck Tierney Center for Cardiac Care?”
“Now you’re talkin’, Morgan.” Tierney chuckled, pushed down on the gas, and the cart moved down the fairway.
Back at the hospital the following week, Smith had scheduled a meeting of the board. Tierney and Smith were returning from an off-site meeting with the heads of marketing and public relations when Tina saw them and then rushed to catch up with Brenkovski. The news had hit her like a slap.
“Tina, you do not look happy about this,” Brenkovski said.
“I know cardiac care is a profitable service line, Nick, but don’t you think this will suck the air out of the room? If we’re solely a cardiac hospital, what does that mean for the rest of our patients, especially the ones who aren’t as well off? We’re not going to be investing much in anything else,” Tina said.
Brenkovski shrugged. Tina realized a tirade would be misplaced. So much seemed to be going in the wrong direction these days. There was the lawsuit facing the resident Michelle Robidaux, and Mark’s outburst at home; even her friend Ty Wilson seemed distant these days.
“It’s just one more thing,” she added. A cloud had crossed her usually implacable facade.
“My dear Tina. Do not fret.” He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Relax. Maybe take a weekend with Mark somewhere. Life is good.”
“Thanks,” Tina said and walked away, unconvinced.
L
ater that day, Tina stood at The Free Clinic holding the stethoscope to the muscled, stooped back of a patient who told her simply to call him “Rise—like the sun.” He was her final patient of the day. Tina had not taken Brenkovski’s advice and escaped with Mark. She didn’t need a weekend away with him. The Free Clinic was all the escape she needed, and she found herself spending more and more time there.
After learning about the new cardiac wing, she called DeShawn, the clinic manager, to see how it was going. He told her the place was swamped. A young resident was covering for the first time, and things had gotten backed up. It was also Friday rush—folks who didn’t want to spend the weekend sick. Tina had hurried over.
“All right, Rise. Take a deep breath,” Tina said. The man took in a lungful of air through his nose. “Now exhale.” Rise continued to hold his breath. “Exhale, Mr., ah, Rise.” Rise looked up, confused. “Let out your air.” He breathed out.
Tina enjoyed doing her part in offering preventive medicine for many who considered the emergency room their first stop when they got sick. And she liked helping the junior doctor who looked so grateful when she arrived.
However, unlike the stories politicians liked to tell about people showing up in the emergency room with the sniffles, Tina’s experience was that these folks waited way too long to get medical care—from the ER or anywhere else. They held the kinds of jobs that didn’t pay them if they called in sick. Tina recalled one man in his early forties who had walked in with his infant daughter, and a bulging fibrous growth on the side of his head that had swollen one eye shut.
“Why’d you decide to come in today?” the chief resident had asked as casually as possible.
“I can’t see out my eye no more,” the man said matter-of-factly.
There was another man who arrived with his testicles swollen to the size of volleyballs as the result of a long-untreated hernia. The chief resident had asked him the same question.
“Couldn’t find any jeans that fit.”
These were the most blatant cases, but there were others who arrived with stage 4 colon cancer, ignoring the bloody stools they’d experienced for more than a year and only coming in when abdominal cramps started doubling them up with pain. There were others who let teeth become so abscessed, the infection reached their brains.
Cases like these were an open challenge to Tina. She took them to heart. So, while other doctors played golf on Fridays or left early for their homes on Lake Michigan or the Upper Peninsula, she did her part. She realized her efforts were statistically insignificant, but they made her feel better and they did make a difference to the individuals she was able to help. The way Tina saw it, she couldn’t
not
help these people.
Tina moved the stethoscope on Rise’s back.
“Another deep breath.” Her concentration was broken by her pager. It said simply,
311. 6
.
V
illanueva was dressed in a slightly rumpled white dress shirt. His thin, 1980s-throwback tie only came to halfway down his torso, and he was wearing an old tweed jacket, the only one he owned that fit him. His thinning hair was slicked back across his head, and he was sweating, even though he was walking at a slow pace to dinner with his son. His pager was going off, but the sound was muffled by the considerable abdominal bulge covering the device when he was upright. The numbers had been flashing
311. 6.
for quite some time. He wasn’t on call, and he hadn’t been paying attention in the movie theater, where he and Nick had seen the five o’clock show of a horror movie about a man with a brain infection that caused him to commit all sorts of bloody murders. Maybe all the screaming had distracted Villanueva. His son had picked out the movie, just as he had picked out the restaurant, a place that served vegetarian pitas.
Parking was always a problem in this neighborhood, which prided itself in its grungy hipness, so they needed to walk a couple of blocks in the brisk fall air past the organic food store that smelled like an incense factory, and the henna stand that specialized in applying the dye to the protuberant abdomens of young, pregnant women. Villanueva had never heard of the restaurant, but Nick had informed him over the phone that he was now a vegetarian.
“Eating meat, it’s bad for the environment. You know how many pounds of grain it takes to make each pound of meat, Dad?” he asked. “And that doesn’t even count greenhouse gases cows burp up and fart. They damage the ozone.”
Villanueva thought there was something odd about picking a movie where people were getting hacked to death every few minutes and then insisting on a vegetarian restaurant, but he bit his tongue. This night was going to be about Nick.
“Whatever you want, Nick,” George said. But he couldn’t resist adding, “You think I put a hole in the ozone after that time we ate at Taco Tony’s?”
Before picking up his son, Villanueva made sure he had a foot-long cheesesteak for lunch so he wouldn’t be in red meat withdrawal for dinner and a movie. Now, as they walked past a white teenager with dreadlocks, the Big Cat finally looked down at his pager and read the numbers.
“Crap,” he said.
“What is it?
“Your dad is going to get his ass handed to him on a silver platter first thing Monday morning.”
“You? How come?” Villanueva looked down at his son. To his surprise, he saw that Nick was interested. More than that, his son seemed concerned about what happened to him. George was surprised, touched by the worried look on his son’s face. He explained the case of Earl Jasper.
“I let my hatred of this guy cloud my judgment,” Villanueva said. “I should have let the neurologist see him and given him the best care possible. And then, I should’ve strangled him.”
Nick looked up, uneasily.
“I’m kidding, Nick,” Villanueva added, giving a pat that nearly sent Nick sprawling on the sidewalk.
“Yeah,” Nick said, forcing a laugh and tenderly rubbing his shoulder.
They turned the corner into a small square where white rastas, Dead Heads, and teenage beggars hung out with aging hippies banging on various percussion instruments. Villanueva thought he could smell the dope mixed in with the patchouli oil.
People must be selling drugs by the trunk load down here
.
“What a friggin’ circus,” Villanueva said.
“It’s always like this,” Nick said.
“You come down here a lot? Why do you come down here?” Villanueva tried to sound casual but couldn’t keep the prosecutorial tone out of his voice.
“Sometimes,” Nick answered. As soon as the answer was out of his mouth he amended it: “Not much.”
Villanueva was thoughtful for a moment. He realized how much there was about his son he didn’t know. His moment of introspection was interrupted by a woman’s loud voice.
“Let me be. Get your damn hands offa me.”
A small crowd had gathered in their path. An African American woman in her early twenties was trying to pull herself loose from what appeared to be her boyfriend. He was a hard-looking man, also in his early twenties, wearing a green military jacket. Every time she jerked away from him, he’d grabbed her sleeve or her wrist. Each time she tried to free herself from his grasp, he got a little bit rougher.
“Please, K.C. Let me be.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” As he tussled with her, his fist struck her across the cheekbone. She stopped struggling.
Villanueva and his son slowed to take in the scene. For some reason, the man caught Nick staring at him.
“What you looking at?” he asked Nick. His voice was menacing. “I asked you a question.” Nick was speechless.
Villanueva walked through the circle of onlookers until he was standing in front of the man. When Nick realized what his father was doing, he regained his voice and called after him.
“Dad.” Too late.
The woman and man both looked surprised when they saw Villanueva appear at their sides. Her cheek was red and swelling.
“Who the fuck you think you are, fat man?” the man asked Villanueva.
“She wants to go. Let her go.” Villanueva said. He sounded as though he was explaining the most reasonable thing in the world.
“I get it, you think you’re Dr. Phil and shit. I have been itching to kick some ass.”
The woman looked panicked. She turned to Villanueva, “You best bugger out. He whacked.”
“You want to go,” Villanueva said to her. “Go.” With that, he stepped between the stunned couple, looking the man in the eye. His girlfriend, if that’s who she was, stared for a second and then turned and started walking away fast. After she’d passed the onlookers, she broke into a run. She didn’t look back.
The man glared at Villanueva. His jaw muscles bunched.
“You want to get all in my business, motherfucker,” he said. “I should cap your ass right here.”
With that, he swept back his fatigue jacket and put his hand on the barrel of a pistol.
“Dad, come on,” Nick pleaded from the periphery. He was so scared he had tears in his eyes.
There was a
whoop, whoop
from a police car, and the flashing lights of the cruiser started dancing across the scene. The man removed his hand from his gun and punched Villanueva hard in the chest. Villanueva had braced himself for the blow, which was a lot like a defensive lineman trying to bust through the line. He didn’t budge. The man looked at Villanueva, incredulous, doing his malevolent best to look threatening but clearly unnerved. Villanueva stared back.
“All right, let’s break it up.”
As the patrolman approached, the man broke off his stare and stalked off. Villanueva watched him for a moment and then found Nick in the dispersing crowd.