Authors: R.D. Power
“But he’s saying the system is doomed.”
“All these high-paid computer experts are wrong, and this one guy is right? Come on. Sure there are problems, but are they really unfixable? Owens is just trying to get some attention, probably from you.” Mark had noticed a definite change in Kristen since this Owens had shown up: she seemed distracted and dour. He didn’t know how to construe that, but worried about what it might imply for their relationship.
“Now you’re being cynical.”
“Think about it, Kristen. He writes this report full of sensational aspersions, and they send over the one person who knows him. It was predictable.”
“He has no feelings left for me, and I have none for him,” she maintained. “In fact, he makes me really uncomfortable. I dreaded going to see him. So, what should I do? I trust your advice.”
“Hire an expert without an axe to grind or a woman to impress and throw away the Owens report.”
“He said he could entirely redesign the system for a fraction of the cost.”
“Oh, there we have it. He wants the money for himself. Brilliant. Lambaste the system and offer to be the white knight and fix it for just pennies on the dollar. What a huckster. Don’t trust him.”
“He said people would react like that, but he left it up to me whether to take the committee that offer.”
“This guy’s good. He can personally save your computer system if you only ask. He’ll be your hero. And he knows the committee will only consider it if you ask. He’s playing you for a sucker. I think you should take his offer to the committee, but under no circumstances recommend it. Just be non-committal, and leave it up to the committee.”
Kristen went back to the committee with the offer. As Mark suggested, she told them of Robert’s offer without giving her opinion on its merits. The committee immediately seized on it as a pretext for officially condemning the Owens report. They sent a memo to the sponsor accusing Dr. Owens of a flagrant conflict of interest, and said they had no choice but to hire another consultant to evaluate the system.
They managed to find another thirty thousand dollars for the task from money unused by the computer system design firms. A former employee of the lead consulting firm that designed the system was hired. He’d left on good terms to start his own consulting business. This gave the committee assurances he wouldn’t be biased against the system. In the meantime, the firm used many of the suggestions in the Owens report to patch up the system. Four weeks later, the new evaluator delivered a positive report that recommended the committee immediately implement the system. They did so.
Kristen, worried about what Robert’s reaction would be, studiously avoided him. She felt as if she’d betrayed him by not endorsing his report and his offer to redesign the system. He’d predicted the committee’s response precisely, she knew. Robert got indignant at the committee’s letter, but as he’d fully expected the outcome, he quickly put it behind him.
The computer system unveiling went off without a hitch, and everyone on the committee and at the center heaved a sigh of relief. Mark gloated. Kristen was relieved, but not so ready to dismiss Robert’s prognostications of inevitable failure.
One didn’t need to be an expert to make this prediction. Just common sense, unfortunately not so common in our world, would lead one to the same forecast. The system was extraordinarily overcomplicated. It didn’t take long before it began crashing time after time. The consultants spent weeks ironing out bugs and trying to keep it afloat. Staff threw their hands up in frustration with its complexity and unreliability. They started complaining vociferously to management. They boycotted the intensive and difficult training sessions. Just five weeks after it had been implemented, it had to be withdrawn from service for “tweaking.”
This left the center without any computer support whatever, which put patient health at risk. The panicky committee dispatched Kristen to prevail upon the computer sciences department to work out a quick stopgap, as long as that troublesome Owens wasn’t involved. She went to the dean to ask for help. He empathized, but said he was short-staffed as it was, and no one could take it on. She asked him for any suggestions he might have for expert help.
He said, “I can’t think of anyone more qualified than Dr. Owens. He’s a brilliant programmer. But, with the way your committee treated him, I’d be surprised if he said yes.”
“I’m doing this for the children,” she told herself as she went to his office. Through his half-open door, she saw a cute young woman gazing toward Robert. From Kristen’s vantage point, she could only hear him.
Robert said, “I love you so much!” The young woman smiled. He proceeded, “I’ll pick you up Friday night at seven.” The young lady said okay. For a reason she couldn’t comprehend, Kristen got so upset, she turned and left.
That afternoon there was an incident at the center with a child getting the wrong medication. He would have died but for the efforts of Kristen. That was the final straw. She marched back to Robert’s office, but he wasn’t there, so she went to the dean to ask for his address, then went to his apartment. He answered the knock and gave a surprised look.
“Are you with someone?” she asked.
“A beautiful girl,” he said to see how she’d react. She showed little emotion. Disappointed, Robert asked her in and introduced her to the girl. “Kristen Taylor, this is Kara Owens, my daughter.” Kristen smiled and said hi. Kara tugged on his pants and asked for a cookie. “I already said after dinner. Now go to your room and play, or Daddy’ll wipe the floor with you.” Having heard this empty threat before, she smiled and sauntered off.
“She’s the spitting image of Jenny,” said Kristen.
“Yeah, but she’s exactly like me, poor girl. I can guess why you’re here. I hear your system went back to the shop for some fine-tuning with a crowbar. A real shocker there,” he commented with a wry smile.
“Gloat all you want; you deserve to. Believe it or not, I’m here to ask for your help. We have no working computers and no way to find out any patient history or what we’ve done for them—or anything else! It could be disastrous. Today a little boy almost died because someone gave him the wrong medication. Mistakes like that can be expected when our paperless information system is down. So I’m swallowing every bit of pride I have left to beg you to help us.”
“Bail out the committee who did their best to ruin my reputation so they can save their own sorry hides? I’m sorry, Kristen, but my answer is no.”
“Please, Bob. These are the same kinds of kids you and I used to visit on Sunday afternoons. You know how heartbreaking that can be. The Bob I knew would do anything to help them. What happened to him?”
“He’s standing here before you. But what happens if I rescue all the incompetents who had a hand in this? They get away with putting sick children at risk and will be around to do it again. They get away with wasting four million dollars of taxpayers’ money that could’ve been used to help these children. They get away with smearing me. And, in the end, they still can’t abandon the white elephant they’ve created. That system will come back.”
“I can’t care about any of that right now. Children are at risk as we speak.”
“Then I guess you should’ve used your influence to back me and force them to deal with the problems I raised rather than look the other way as they swept it all under the carpet.”
“I trusted … never mind.”
“You trusted idiots instead of me, and now you’re paying for it. Guess what? I know what I’m doing. And I don’t have any ulterior motives. I never wanted the job of fixing your system. I offered because of … the sick kids. But it turned out that you showed more faith in the committee, or the consultants, or whoever you ended up siding with, than me. If they’re the goddamn experts, ask them to bail you out!”
She took a deep breath, said, “Sorry to have disturbed you,” and turned to leave, but halted and appended, “Tell me, do you have any respect at all for me?”
“Of course I do; I respect you more than anyone on the planet.”
“Then you must despise everyone else. You were standing there yelling at me.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just … I’m mad because you sided against me.”
“I didn’t side against you, but I didn’t take your side either, and for that I’m sorry. But in your eagerness to put me in my place, you’re consigning sick children to a terrible place.”
“Don’t put that on me; that’s not my fault.”
“Not the original sin, no, but your incendiary report made matters worse. You can’t just steamroll your way through life. Your genius does not give you license to abuse people. You have to consider people’s feelings and allow for their weaknesses. You say I’m naïve. Do you actually believe people will listen to you if you belittle and ridicule them?”
Robert lowered his head and murmured, “I guess not.”
“So then, you have to admit you share some of the blame for this situation.” He nodded. “Then help me.”
He looked at her contritely and said, “I’ll design you a new system, but I need to clear something off my desk first. Then I’ll need to talk to you, Miriam, and anyone else you think I should hear from to learn what you need the system to do. Can I come to the Center tomorrow morning to get started?”
She smiled and said, “How about eight AM?” He nodded. She thanked him, then left.
•
The next morning, Kristen was in the middle of thanking him for coming when the chairman of the committee showed up. The chairman told him to leave. Robert looked over to Kristen, who was fuming.
She exclaimed to the chairman, “If you spoil the one chance we have of fixing this mess, I swear to God, I will quit!”
“Kristen, no!” yelped Miriam.
“I have offers from San Diego to Halifax. I am not putting up with this situation any longer. Either you leave right now,” she said, pointing to the chairman, “or I’ll resign—effective immediately!” The abashed man stood and left the room. “Now, Dr. Owens, please tell us what you can do for us, and how we can help you,” she resumed.
“I can devise a basic, working system by the end of next week.”
“Pardon me,” interrupted Miriam, “but how is that possible?”
“It’s possible because top software companies have spent much more than four million dollars creating good database programs that can be bought off the shelf for a song. They are designed to do exactly what you need, albeit at a more basic level than your four million-dollar clunker. All I need to do is adapt it to meet your needs.” Kristen seemed dubious, so Robert looked at her and said, “It’ll give you everything you need and will be perfectly reliable. I give you my word.” Her eyes told him she had misgivings. Determined to overcome them, he continued, “Just trust me, Krissy.”
She darted her eyes to his to deliver the message, “Don’t call me that,” and hurried them back to the floor.
He could see now that earning her trust back was not going to be easy. And that was only the first step in earning back her love. Was it even possible?
He turned back to Miriam and said, “What I need from you is information on your most essential needs for managing patients and running the center, and a copy of the most recent data set so I can get you back up and running.”
“We can tell you what we need, but the consultants haven’t been able to give us any of our data,” said Miriam.
He laughed. “They can’t get anything out?”
“Apparently not.”
“Did you back up your data?”
“At the end of every day.”
“What happened to the backups?”
“They have them.”
“Wait,” said Kristen. “I never sent them the last one we did because I didn’t want to hand over everything to them.”
“Good, give me that. I’ll get what I need from it.”
“What will this cost?” said Miriam.
“The center is wired already, and you have ample monitors, right?” They nodded. “We’ll need a server and a software license. That’ll be several thousand dollars. As for my fee, just pay me the five thousand you owe me.”
“I sincerely apologize for that, Dr. Owens.”
“Forget it. Okay, let’s start.”
They spent all morning specifying what they wanted from a basic system and answering his questions. At the end of the session, he set up a meeting for Friday afternoon the following week and got the backup from Kristen.
As he was leaving, she said, “Thank you, Bob. I’m grateful.”
He left, happy that he found a way back into her good books. The next several days, he worked hard to program the database, doing most of the work at home so he could be with Kara. He went to the center a few times—not because he needed to, but to see if he could work with Kristen. But she was always busy.
From what he observed, he could tell how good Kristen was as a physician, researcher, teacher, and administrator: being hugged by an emotional mother whose child she’d saved; advising a fellow on the next step to take for his research project; escorting medical students through rounds, asking questions and correcting their mistakes with courtesy; escorting important public officials through the new center to assure them their investment was in good hands; being in constant demand by patients and their parents, students, residents, fellow physicians, nurses, and administrators.
If that sounds like a lot to observe by chance, it was. Robert set up his main workstation just across from Kristen’s office and arranged his time to observe her whenever possible.
One afternoon, for example, he saw on the posted schedule that Kristen was to carry out a procedure in operating room 1 at 2 PM. He just happened to be in the observation room setting up a terminal at that time. A twelve-year-old girl, a pediatric oncology resident, and Dr. Taylor walked into the room at the appointed hour.
Kristen told her patient, “Lie down on your stomach on this table.” Kristen undid her gown. “Now Dr. Moore will clean the area with soap.” She sat next to the patient so she could hold her hand and look into her eyes. “Now you’ll feel a little sting, just a needle to deaden the pain.” Addressing the resident she pointed to the pelvic bone, about four centimeters from the spine at the top of the girl’s buttocks and directed, “There. Over just a smidge.”