Side Effects (24 page)

Although the women were Omnicenter patients, we see no other connection among them."

"The ... the work you're doing ... I mean none of the women got ..." After years of scrupulously avoiding the Omnicenter and the people involved in its operation, Reese was uncertain of how, even, to discuss the place.

Paquette spared him further stammering. "From time to time, each of the women was involved in the evaluation of one or more products," he said. "However, Carl Horner assures me that there have been no products common to the three of them. Whatever the cause of their problem, it i is not the Omnicenter."

"That's a relief," Reese said. \

"Not really," Paquette said, his expression belying his >> impatience. "You see, our Dr. Bennett has been most persistent, despite the pressures brought about by your letter." j

"She's a royal pain in the ass. I'll grant you that," Reese interjected.

"She has tested several Omnicenter products at the State Toxicology Lab, charging the analyses, I might add, to your hospital."

"Damn her. She didn't find anything, did she? Horner assured me that there was nothing to worry about." Paquette's patience continued to fray. "Of course she found something, Norton. That's why I'm here. She even had Dr. Zimmermann phone the company to tell us about it."

"Oh. Sorry." "Our friend in Kentucky has asked that we step up our efforts to discredit Dr. Bennett and to add, what was j the word you used? distraction? ... no, diversion, that } was it--diversion to her life. We have taken steps to obscure, if not neutralize, her findings to date, but there \ is evidence in dozens of medicine cabinets out there of what we have been doing. If Dr. Bennett is persistent enough, she will find it. I am completely convinced of that, and so is our friend. Dr. Bennett has given us one week to determine how a certain experimental painkiller came to be in a set of vitamins dispensed at the Omnicenter.

If we do not furnish her with a satisfactory explanation by that time, she intends to file a report with the US Pharmacopeia and the PDA." "Damn her," Norton Reese said again. "What are we going to do?"

"Not we, you. Dr. Bennett's credibility must be reduced to the point where no amount of evidence will be enough for authorities to take her word over ours. The letter you wrote was a start, but, as I said, not enough."

Once again, Reese began to feel ill at ease. Paquette was not making a request, he was giving an order--an order from the man who, Reese knew, could squash him with nothing more than the eraser on his pencil. He unbuttoned his vest against the uncomfortable moistness between the folds of his skin.

"Look," he pleaded, "I really don't know what I can do. I'll try, but I don't know. You've got to understand, Arlen; you've got to make him understand. Bennett works in my hospital, but she doesn't work for me." There was understanding in Paquette's face, but not sympathy. Reese continued his increasingly nervous rambling. "Besides, the woman's got friends around here. I don't know why, but she does. Even after that letter, she's got supporters.

Shit, I'd kill to make sure she didn't ..." His voice trailed away. His eyes narrowed. Paquette followed the man's train of thought. "The answer is no, Norton," he said. "Absolutely not. We wish her discredited, not eliminated, for God's sake. We want people to lose interest in her, not to canonize her. She has already involved Dr. Zimmermann, a chemist at the state lab, and a resident here named Engleson. There may be others, but as far as we can tell, the situation is not yet out of control. We are doing what we can do to ensure it remains that way. Dr. Bennett's father-in-law does some business with our company. I believe our friend has already called him and enlisted his aid. There are other steps
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being taken as well." He rose and reached across the desk to shake Reese's hand. "I know we can count on you.

If you need advice or a sounding board, you can reach me at the Ritz."

"Thank you," Reese said numbly. His bulk seemed melted into his chair. Paquette walked slowly to the door, then turned.

"Our friend has suggested Thursday as a time by which he wants something to have been done."

"Thursday?" Reese croaked.

Paquette nodded, smiled blankly, and was gone.

Half an hour Jater, his shirt changed and his composure nearly regained, Reese sat opposite Sheila Pierce, straightening one paper clip after another and thinking much more than he wanted to at that particular moment of the chief technician's breasts.

"How're things going down there in pathology?" he asked, wondering if she would take off her lab coat and then reminding himself to concentrate on business. The woman was going to require delicate handling if she was going to put her neck on the line to save his ass.

"You mean with Bennett?" Sheila shrugged. "She's getting some letters and a few crank phone calls every day, but otherwise things seem pretty much back to normal.

It's been ... amusing." "Well," Reese said, "I know for a fact that the Bobby Geary business is hardly a dead issue."

"Oh?"

"I've heard the matter's going to the Medical School Ethics Committee."

"Good," Sheila said. "That will serve her right, going to the newspapers about that poor boy the way she did."

They laughed. "Do you think," she went on, "that it will be enough to keep her from becoming chief of our department?"

Inwardly, Reese smiled. The question was just the opening he needed. "Doubtful," he said grimly. "Very doubtful."

"Too bad."

"You don't know the half of it."

"What do you mean?"

"Well ..." He tapped a pencil eraser on his desk.

He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose.

He chewed at his lower lip. "I got a call this morning from Dr. Willoughby. He requested a meeting with the finance and budget committee of the board, at which time he and

Kate Bennett are going to present the results of a computer study she's just completed. They plan to ask for six months worth of emergency funding until a sweeping departmental reorganization can be completed."

Sheila Pierce paled. "Sweeping departmental reorganization?" "That's what the man said."

"Did he say anything about ... you know." Reese sighed. "As a matter of fact, baby, he did. He said that by the time of the meeting next week, Bennett will have presented him with a complete list of lost revenues, including the misappropriation of funds by several department members."

'

"But she promised."

"I guess a few brownie points with the boss and the board of trustees outweigh her promise to a plain old technician."

"Chief technician," she corrected. "Damn her. Did it seem as if she had already said something about me to Willoughby?"

The bait taken, Reese set the hook. "Definitely not. I probed as much as I could about you without making Willoughby suspicious. She hasn't told him anything specific ... yet."

"Norty, we've got to stop her. I can't afford to lose my job. Dammit, I've been here longer than she has. Much longer." Her hands were clenched white, her jaw set in anger and frustration.

"Well," Reese said with exaggerated reason, "we've got two days, three at the most. Any ideas?"
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"Ideas?"

"I don't work with the woman, baby, you do. Doesn't she ever fuck up? Blow a case? Christ, the rest of the MD's in this place do it all the time."

"She's a pathologist, Norty. Her cases are all dead to begin with. There's nothing for her to blow except

..."

She stopped in midsentence and pulled a typed sheet from her lab coat pocket.

"What is it?"

"It's the surgical path schedule for tomorrow. Bennett and Dr. Huang are doing fro/en sections this month." She scanned the entries.

"Well?"

Sheila hesitated, uncertainty darkening her eyes. "Are you sure she's going to report me to Willoughby?"

"Baby, all I can say is that Dr. Willoughby asked me for a copy of the union contract, expressly for the part dealing with justifiable causes for termination."

"She has no right to do that to me after she promised not to."

"You know about people with MD degrees, Sheila.

They think they're better and smarter than the rest of us.

They think they can just walk all over people." Sheila's eyes told him that the battle--this phase of it at any rate--was won.

"We'll see who's smarter," she muttered, tapping the schedule thoughtfully. "Maybe it's time Bennett found out that there are a few people with brains around who couldn't go to medical school."

"Make it good, baby," Reese urged, "because if she's in, you're out."

"No way," she said. "There's no way I'm going to let that happen. Here, look at this." f-"What?" 3. "Well, you can see it's a pretty busy schedule. There's a lung biopsy, a thyroid biopsy, a colon, and two breast biopsies. Bennett will be working almost all day in the small cryostat lab next to the operating rooms. Usually, she goes into the OR, picks up a specimen, freezes it in the cryostat, sections it, stains it, and reads it, all without leaving the surgical suite."

f. "And?"

"Well, there are a lot of ifs," Sheila said in an even, almost singsong voice. "But if we could disable the surgical cryostat and force Bennett to use the backup unit down in the histology lab, I might be able somehow to switch a specimen. All I would need is about three or four minutes."

"What would that do?"

Sheila smiled the smile of a child. "Well, with any luck, depending on the actual pathology, we can have the great Dr. Bennett read a benign condition as a malignancy.

Then, when the whole specimen is taken and examined the next day, her mistake will become apparent."

"Would a pathologist make a mistake like that?" Reese asked. Again Sheila smiled. "Only once," she said serenely.

"Only once."

Louisburg Square, a score of tall, brick townhouses surrounding a raggedy, wrought-iron-fenced green on the west side of Beacon Hill, had been the address in Boston for generations. Levi Morton lived there after his four years as vice president under Benjamin Harrison. Jennie Find was married there in 1852. Cabots and Saltonstalls, Lodges and Alcotts--all had drawn from and given to the mystique of Louisburg Square.

Kate had the cab drop her off at the foot of Mount Vernon Street; she used the steep two-block walk to Louisburg Square to stretch her legs and clear her thoughts of what had been a long and trying day at the hospital.

Two committee meetings, several surgical specimens, and a lecture at the medica l school, combined with half a dozen malicious phone calls and an equal number of hate letters, all relating to her callous treatment of Bobby Geary and his family.

Ellen's nose had begun bleeding again--just a slow trickle from one nostril, but enough to require Pete Colangelo to recauterize it. Her clotting parameters were continuing to take a significant drop each day, and the unencouraging news was beginning to take a toll on her spirit. Late that afternoon, the National
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Institutes of Health library computer search had arrived. There were many articles listed in the bibliography dealing with sclerosing diseases of the ovaries, and a goodly number on clotting disorders similar to the Boston cases. There were none, however, describing their coexistence in a single patient. Expecting little, Kate had begun the tedious process of locating each article, photocopying it, and finally studying it. The project would take days to complete, if not longer, but there was a chance at least that something, anything, might turn up that could help Ellen.

At the turnoff from Mount Vernon Street, Kate propped herself against a gaslight lamp post and through the mist of her own breath, reflected on the marvelous Christmas card that was Louisburg Square. Single, orange-bulbed candles glowed from nearly every townhouse window.

Tasteful wreaths marked each door. Christmas trees had been carefully placed to augment the scene without intruding on it.

Having, season after season, observed the stolid elegance of Louisburg Square, Kate had no difficulty understanding why, shortly after the death of his agrarian wife, Winfield Samuels had sold their gentleman's farm and stables in Sudbury and had bought there. The two--the address and the man--were made for one another. Somewhat reluctantly, she mounted the granite steps of her father-in-law's home, eschewed the enormous brass knocker, and pressed the bell.

In seconds, the door was opened by a trim, extremely attractive brunette, no more than two or three years Kate's senior. Dressed in a gold blouse and dark straight skirt, she looked every bit the part of the executive secretary, which, in fact, she had at one time been.

"Kate, welcome," she said warmly. "Come in. Let me take your coat."

"I've got it, thanks. You look terrific, Jocelyn. Is that a new hairstyle?"

"A few months old. Thanks for noticing. You're looking well yourself." Kate wondered if perhaps she and Jocelyn Trent could collaborate on a chapter for Amy Vanderbilt or Emily Post: "Proper Conversation Between a Daughter-in-law and her Father-in-law's Mistress When the Father-in-law in Question Refuses to Acknowledge the Woman as Anything Other Than a Housekeeper."

"Mr. Samuels will be down in a few minutes," Jocelyn said. "There's a nice fire going in the study. He'll meet you there. Dinner will be in half an hour. Can I fix you a drink?" Mr. Samuels. The inappropriate formality made Kate queasy. At seven o'clock, the woman would serve to Mr. Samuels and his guest the gourmet dinner she had prepared; then she would go and eat in the kitchen. At eleven or twelve o'clock, after the house was quiet and dark, she would slip into his room and stay as long as she was asked, always careful to return to her own quarters before any house guest awoke. Mr. Samuels, indeed.

"Sure," said Kate, following the woman to the study.