False Accusations (6 page)

“What am I supposed to do, turn my back on my patients?”

“Why can’t somebody else do this surgery? I thought there’s a doctor on call...John Ingersoll. It’s his weekend, isn’t it?”

“Leeza, this is a highly specialized procedure. The surgeon on call can’t do it—”

“They’re all special procedures.”

“Yes, they are. That’s why I am who I am. That’s why we live in the house that we do, the neighborhood that we do. Live the lifestyle that we live. There are only a few surgeons in northern California who can do what I do. When I get a case like this, there’s no one else who can take over for me.”

“And who takes over for you with your family? Am I supposed to?”

“I haven’t figured that one out yet. I’m working on it. I’m trying to schedule things differently. I thought this guy could make it till Monday, but he’s already had more morphine than he should’ve had, and his EMG’s degraded—he’s going to have permanent nerve damage if we don’t operate soon. We can go to the zoo another time. But for this patient, delaying his surgery another couple of days will have long-term effects on his life.”

“How long will this surgery take?”

“Probably twelve hours. It’s a bad one.”

“Twelve hours,” she said. “There goes the whole day. And evening. We had plans with the Fentons tonight.”

“Honey, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

“Daddy, you’re going to work again?” Elliott said.

“There’s a man who’s sick and I have to take care of him.”

“My tummy hurts. You have to stay home and take care of me.”

Madison felt a punch of guilt slam him in the stomach. He took Elliott’s small hand in his own and squeezed gently. “I promise, champ. Tomorrow we’ll do something very fun. Marine World or something like that, okay?”

“That’s what you said the other day,” Elliott whined. He looked over at Leeza.
“
Mom
,
will you take us somewhere today?”

“Sure, honey. We’ll go to the zoo, okay?”

Elliott leaned against his mom’s shoulder. “Okay.”

“You keep making promises you can’t keep, Phil. It isn’t fair to the kids.”

“Look, I would hope that if one of you were seriously ill and I wasn’t around, that your doctor would put you first and come in on his day off-just like I’m doing for this patient.”

“You know as well as I do that all he’ll say after the surgery is how high your bill is. You think that once he’s up and walking again he’ll care that he ruined your day off, a rare day off you were supposed to spend with your kids?”

Madison shrugged. “I can’t think about it that way.”

“Do you realize that you spend more time in meetings for the Consortium than you do playing with your kids?”

Madison held up a hand. “I’m going to cut back as soon as we get the staffing situation straightened out.”

Leeza shook her head. “One day the kids will be grown up and you’ll say, ‘Where have all the years gone?’ You can’t get back these times. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.” She looked at him, awaiting a response. But he just sat there.

“And you see all these great things we have? This house, our Mercedes, the stocks, the furniture, the artwork...none of it’s going to matter, because when you have a heart attack and die from working too much, I’ll collect the two million in life insurance and enjoy all of it with another man—one who’ll put me and the kids first and his career second.
We’ll
be playing with the money and material things you worked so hard for, because you won’t be around to enjoy them.”

“I’ll only die from the heart attack if the cardiologist on call decides to spend the day with his family and not answer his page to report to the hospital.”

“Phil, you’re impossible.”

“That’s why you married me.”

She sighed, stood up and walked over to him. “One day,” she said, draping her arms around his neck, “you’ll realize how important we are. I just hope it won’t be too late by then.”

MADISON WALKED OUT of the operating room, the perspiration from his chest drenching his blousy maroon hospital scrubs. He had removed his latex gloves and was stretching and exercising his hands. He rubbed them together, dispersing the white powder that had been deposited across his palms.

“Great job, Phil,” Fred Oliver said, patting him on the back.

Madison rolled his head around and stretched his shoulders back. “Neck’s killing me.”

“After fourteen hours, everything aches.”

“I’m glad that EMG was run this morning. The MRI didn’t show nearly that much encroachment.”

“All that scar tissue,” Oliver said, shaking his head. “It was wound around that nerve like a sheath. And that disc fragment. You did a good job fishing it out. I took one look at that and I knew twelve hours wasn’t going to be enough.”

Fred Oliver was Madison’s most requested assisting surgeon—particularly in difficult cases such as this one. He had hands of stone—with dexterity that professional basketball players would envy. And, like many neurosurgeons, he was somewhat eccentric.

“I’m absolutely exhausted,” Madison said as he flopped onto the bench in front of his locker. “If breathing wasn’t reflexive, I’d have definite cause for concern.”

“I know the feeling. As soon as I change I’m gonna call a cab, go home, and nap for the next few days.”

“Can’t. You’re scheduled in surgery at eight Monday morning.”

Oliver’s shoulders slumped. “Eight?”

“I saw it on the schedule on my way in.”

“Shit, the L5 discectomy.”

“That’s the one.”

“Totally forgot.”

“Don’t complain, at least you’ll have a day to rest. I’ve got a trip to Marine World with the family tomorrow. If I can drag myself out of bed.”

“At least you have a family to go home to,” Oliver said, pulling his shirt over his head. “I’ve got a quiet house and a maid who comes once a week.”

“I’ve got to figure out a way of spending more time with them. I’m in meetings more often than I’m with my wife and kids.”

“Bad sign, Phil.”

“So I’ve been told,” he said, walking toward the showers.

Madison dressed, gathered his energy and went out to the waiting suite, where he met with the patient’s family. Three of them were asleep, slumped across a row of padded chairs, but the parents were awake, if a bit dazed after the fourteen-hour wait. They jumped up as Madison walked through the door.

He informed them that the surgery was successful, and that their son would be able to walk again without a deficit. It was a particularly grueling surgery, but he had a very competent neurosurgeon assisting him. He briefly explained why it had taken longer than anticipated, and they nodded as if to indicate that they understood. They didn’t, but it did not matter as long as everything was going to be all right.

A nurse walked by and smiled, telling them that Dr. Madison was brilliant in the OR, and, that had another doctor performed the surgery, their son’s chances of walking again would have been significantly less.

“That’s very kind,” Madison said, “but we don’t want them to think that I paid you to say that.” They all laughed. The family was relieved. Madison, was again the hero.

King of Sacramento General Hospital.

The ride home was only about fifteen minutes, and a relatively straightforward route down the freeway. At two o’clock in the morning, he was glad that it was such an easy drive. He could have made it with his eyes closed...which almost occurred on several occasions.

Madison parked his car in the semidetached garage and entered the house via the back door, trying to be quiet so as not to wake the dog. Fortunately, Leeza had thought of it, and as usual whenever he had a late or emergency surgery, she left him in the kitchen so he would not bark from upstairs and wake the children.

Madison received a few slobbery licks from Scalpel and pacified him with a couple of pats to the head. Sitting down at the table, he began to leaf through his mail, which Leeza had evidently picked up from their private mailbox while she was out. There was a reminder notice about a leadership retreat for the board of directors of the River City Theater Company, and a letter signed by him to the board members of the nonprofit Consortium for Citizens with Mental Retardation, or CCMR, informing them of a date change for their forthcoming meeting.
Leeza’s going to love this. Another two meetings.

The theater company retreat he could probably skip, but the CCMR board was a different story. CCMR, which helped people with mental retardation assimilate into society, also provided resources to parents who needed to understand the law or navigate government bureaucracy. But most importantly, it supplied programming so adults with special needs could socialize in a positive environment.

Madison initially became involved with the consortium when he brought his younger brother, Ricky, who had been born with Down syndrome, to one of its programs eight years ago. Over the course of several months, it had helped instill the social confidence Ricky needed in order to function in society, and it educated him and his parents on the various agencies that offered job training and placement for adults with disabilities. As a debt of gratitude, Madison agreed to serve on its programming committee. That was followed by a seat on its board of directors, which led to his acceptance three years later of the vice presidency and then, two years after that, the presidency.

He put the meeting notice off to the side and continued with his mail. There were bills from SMUD and AT&T, and one from the American Heart Association reminding him of his thousand-dollar pledge. At the bottom of the pile was a catalog from Hammacher Schlemmer. As usual, Leeza had filtered out the junk mail. He had too little time to bother with get-rich-quick schemes and the endless stream of low-interest credit card offers.

He shoved the pile of papers aside and removed his shirt. Even though it was the middle of the night, the temperature outside was still around 80, which meant that it must have climbed near 110 in the late afternoon. With a separate central air-conditioning unit for each floor, Leeza often raised the ground floor thermostat to 80 during the night. He opened the refrigerator and closed his eyes for a moment. The cold air felt good.

He pulled out a couple of cartons of Chinese food—Leeza must have ordered in—and he popped them into the microwave. He really didn’t feel like eating—the cozy sheets and Leeza’s body beckoned—but he knew if he didn’t put something in his stomach, he would awaken with a splitting headache. As it was, he would probably feel awful in the morning, but he did not want to compound it.

After eating, he went upstairs without the assistance of the elevator—it would make too much noise and wake everyone—as much as he could have used it. His knees felt like they needed a quart of oil, and his arches ached.

He stopped by the boys’ rooms as he walked down the hall, and peeked in on them. He planted a kiss on their cheeks, tucked them in, and trudged into his bedroom. Throwing his clothes in a pile by the bed, he glanced at the clock: it was 2:31. He fell onto the mattress, rolled onto his side to give Leeza a kiss, and was asleep before he reached her lips.

AS MADISON SLEPT, he dreamed of being devoured by a giant whale. His face was soaked, he was engulfed in water and he found it difficult to breathe. Finally, shaken from his sleep, he realized it was Scalpel licking his face with a huge, slobbering tongue. He threw a hand up and swatted the dog away as Elliott jumped in the bed and shouted, “Daddy!”

“Wake up, sleepy head,” Leeza said. “What time did you finally get home last night? I waited up, but fell asleep after Leno’s monologue.”

His eyes were plastered closed. As he struggled to pry them open to snatch a look at the clock, Elliott sat down on his stomach. “What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty.”

He moaned. “Seven...”

“You’re lucky. I let you sleep. The kids had me up an hour ago.”

He rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t get to bed until two-thirty.”

“Two-thirty? Why so late?”

“Where’s Jonah?” he asked, moving Elliott off him.

“In front of the TV, watching
Sesame Street.
”

Madison closed his eyes. Leeza picked up a pillow and hit him. “Get up! We’re going to Marine World today, remember?”

“Yeah, Marine World!” Elliott yelled.

Madison rolled out of bed, feeling like a stiff board, and lumbered over to the shower. The cold water would wake him up. He had done it many times before in medical school and during his internship at Sacramento General.

Everyone dressed quickly while Leeza reheated the pancakes for Madison for breakfast. He sat down at the kitchen table and pulled a copy of the
Sacramento Herald
in front of him. He scanned the front page and shook his head. “Remind me to cancel this rag. The
Bee’s
a lot better.”

“Surgery go well yesterday?”

“It was a bear, but the guy will be able to walk, probably pain-free. Fourteen hours. My feet still hurt.”

“You’re not Superman anymore.”

“Shhh...” he said, bringing an index finger to his lips and smiling. “Don’t tell anyone else that.”

He finished breakfast, then loaded the van, grabbed the camera, and made it into the garage.

“I can’t believe we’re actually going somewhere as a family,” Leeza said as she strapped Jonah into his car seat.

But when Madison sat down in the van and reached for his seat belt, the phone rang. She clamped a hand down on his shoulder. “Phil, don’t answer it.”

“It could be important.” He jumped out of the van and snatched up the phone. “Hi, Ma.”

Leeza rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Great.” She cursed herself for agreeing to put a phone jack in the garage.

“Look, Ma, let me call you back tomorrow. I’ve got the kids in the car—yes, I know it’s been a couple of weeks but I’ve been busy... No, I think talking to you is important. I didn’t mean I was too busy to call you, I meant, well, I haven’t even seen the kids, Ma. I’ve really been swamped...”

Leeza was throwing dirty looks at Madison faster than an automatic weapon fires its rounds. He threw up his hands, mouthed
I’m sorry
, and turned away.