The Consultant (28 page)

“Those consultants are doing more harm than good.”  

“Kind of makes you wonder if our cars are bugged,” Phil said as they pulled to a stop at a red light.  

They were both silent for a moment, looking at each other.  

“Maybe we should eat…somewhere else today,” Phil suggested.  

Craig nodded, understanding. Any type of routine could leave them open. If the consultants knew they usually ate lunch at Chipotle…  

Better too cautious than not cautious enough. Neither of them said a word as Craig cranked up the radio and drove straight instead of turning right, heading toward a Rubio’s that he remembered seeing near the freeway.  

They did not speak again until they were out of the car and in the parking lot of the Mexican fast food restaurant.  

“This is getting ridiculous,” Craig said, locking his door.  

Phil smiled wryly. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”  

Walking inside, they ordered, then took their food to a table near the window, away from the smattering of other diners, most of whom were seated close by the salsa bar or the drink refill station.  

“Went to a meeting this morning,” Phil said before biting into his taco. “You know how Patoff loves meetings.”  

“What was it about?”  

“What do you think? They want to get rid of someone in my department.”  

“Who?”  

“Jess Abodje.”  

Craig looked at him blankly.  

“The guy in the wheelchair?”  

“Oh, yeah. I know who you’re talking about. Why do they want to get rid of him? What’s the rationale?”  

“Who the hell knows? But he’s a good guy, and I need him, and I refuse to give in to those fucks, so I framed it as a discrimination issue and hinted that the only reason they wanted to get rid of Jess was because he was disabled.” Phil grinned. “All of a sudden, the Americans with Disabilities Act was being quoted right and left. Apparently, it’s CompWare’s and BFG’s favorite law, and we were pioneers in setting up an accessible workplace.”  

“So they’re not going to fire him?”  

“They’re not even going to furlough him. Victory is sweet.” He took a long sip of Dr. Pepper.  

“I guess they’re rearranging some chairs of their own,” Craig noted. “My trusty observer Martin is gone, replaced by a fascist woman.”  

“I still have the same guy,” Phil said. “And he doesn’t seem too bad. I don’t think he toes the party line as much as your watchers do.”  

“‘Watchers’ now, are they?”  

“It seems less Orwellian.”  

“I’m sticking with ‘observers.’ By the way, whatever happened with those blood tests? Did anyone get fired or test positive for… whatever they’re looking for?”  

Phil shrugged. “You got me. But there were supposedly
inconsistencies
in the testing. Did you hear anything about that?”  

Craig shook his head. “No, but you’re always more up on things than I am. What’d you hear?”  

“When I got
my
blood test, a nurse used a needle and syringe to draw blood.”  

“Of course.”  

“Well, apparently, some people had their arms cut with a knife to draw blood.”  

“Jesus.”  

“Others were poked with rusty ice picks.”  

“That can’t be true.”  

Phil just looked at him.  

“Okay. It could be true. But why? What would be the point? It makes no sense.”  

“What does these days?” Phil wiped his hands on a napkin, then walked over to refill his drink. “That reminds me,” he said, coming back, “how goes their effort to take over the healthcare system and access all of our medical information?”  

“Angie says they haven’t started. Or at least haven’t shown up onsite. They might be combing through emails, computer files and phone records for all anyone knows, but there are no boots on the ground as of yet.”  

“Small favors.”  

“I’m curious to see what they do there. If it’s different than at CompWare.”  

“Leopards don’t change their spots.”  

“You’re just a font of clichés today, aren’t you?”  

“What I don’t get is how they’ve gotten all these big clients and how they keep getting good recommendations.”  

Craig sighed. “Like you said before: they make the companies money. People get laid off, employees get harassed, people
die
… but stock prices go up and profits do, too. How are we supposed to fight that?”  

“I don’t know,” Phil admitted. “But we will.”  

Driving back to work, they were almost to the entrance of the CompWare parking lot when a rolling contraption came speeding out into the street in front of the car. Craig slammed on his brakes so hard that the shoulder harnesses locked up. He didn’t hit the fast-moving object, but he had time to see that it was a man in a wheelchair, a wheelchair that seemed to have been shot out of a cannon, and then there was the screeching of brakes, the honking of horns, and a terrible sound of crashing metal as a pickup truck in the southbound lane smashed into the speeding chair. The man must have been strapped into the seat as the momentum of the collision should have sent him flying. Instead, it buckled him under the collapsing chair as the truck rolled over him.  

Craig threw the car into Park, got out and dashed across the double yellow lines to see a broken body tangled up in rods and wheels, blood and bits of brain spread in a sickening smear across the pavement.  

“I not see him!”  

The driver of the truck had leaped out and was running back and forth in confusion, hands in the air, looking from the mess on the ground to Craig to the other people who were beginning to gather. “I not see him!” the man kept repeating. “He just speed out in front of me!”  

Craig looked back toward the CompWare parking lot, at the spot where the wheelchair had come flying out onto the street. It had had to jump a curb, cross a sidewalk, pass over a thin strip of grass, then go off the curb onto the street. The fact that it had done so at such a speed seemed a complete impossibility, and Craig could not figure out what had propelled the chair.  

By this time, Phil had come over, and Craig did not even have to hear him speak to confirm what he already knew.  

“That’s Jess Abodje.”  

His friend looked numb, and Craig felt numb, too. No doubt, this would be classified as a freak accident, and while it was definitely freaky, he was sure it was no accident. The consultant had wanted to get rid of Jess, the same way he’d wanted to get rid of Tyler. Like Craig, Phil had objected to that decision, and, like Tyler, Jess had been killed. There was no way to prove it, nothing that would stand up in any court, but it was true nonetheless. They looked at each other, then looked across the CompWare parking lot toward the building where they both worked. People around them were shouting, screaming, talking, and someone must have called 911 because, from far away, came the sound of sirens. The front of the building was mirrored glass, so nothing could be seen within, but Craig had no doubt that if the windows were clear and he was looking through a pair of binoculars, he would be able to see Regus Patoff looking out at the scene.  

And smiling.  

TWENTY FIVE  

Caught in an atypical Saturday morning traffic jam caused by a localized power outage that had taken out three consecutive traffic lights, Angie was late for work. The minute she walked into the Urgent Care, she could tell that something was different, something had changed, though it took her a moment to figure out what it was.
The lights
, she realized. The lights in the waiting room were dimmer than usual. Someone had turned them down, probably to save money.  

The consultants were here
.  

The knowledge arrived with a shiver. Suddenly, the Urgent Care, which she knew like the back of her hand, seemed foreign to her, the placement of doors slightly off, the sink alcove smaller than usual. It was wrong to let Craig’s experiences color her perspective, but she couldn’t help being affected by what he’d told her, and in an instant, the homey familiarity of her longtime workplace disappeared, replaced by a feeling that was far less welcoming. Walking up the poorly illuminated hallway to the front desk, Angie was struck by the abundance of shadows swaddling the nurse’s station, the eerie gloom that seemed almost a solid entity and wrapped around the perimeter of the waiting room.  

She jumped when Sharon said her name. She hadn’t seen the other nurse sitting there.  

“Heads up,” her friend said in a low voice. “The new consultant’s here. Was here when I arrived. He already asked about you: why you were late, if you called in to tell us, if this is part of a pattern.”  

“There was a traffic jam. And it’s only been ten minutes!”  

“I know. I told him this was a first, that you’re our most reliable nurse, but…” She shook her head. “He had a look on his face.” She motioned Angie closer. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I liked the other weirdo better. This one…I don’t know. I don’t trust him.”  

Reaching down to the computer next to Sharon, Angie signed on and signed in. “Where is he now?”  

“Room four with Dr. London.”  

Angie patted her friend’s shoulder. “Thanks for the warning.”  

The Urgent Care was busy. So busy that it was fifteen minutes before she even saw the consultant, almost half an hour until they were in the same room and introduced to one another.  

Craig was right, she thought, looking at him. There was definitely something
off
about the man. Despite the geek chic imprimatur granted to bow ties by
Doctor Who
, the consultant’s neckwear looked not merely out of fashion but out of time, as though it could easily have come from a century ago. He was tall and unnervingly thin, and his peculiarly tinted hair was cut into an unflattering flattop that would not have been in style during any age. He smiled at her, bowed his head slightly in greeting, but the smile did not touch his eyes, which were hard and cold.  

They had no time to speak with one another. Angie had to help Dr. Bashir with a young girl who’d been bitten by a neighborhood dog and was on the verge of crying again after stopping only moments before, and the consultant was monitoring the interchange, typing notes into an electronic tablet. Angie spoke calmly to the girl, explaining to her what the doctor was doing, and once the tetanus shot was given—without an accompanying scream or prolonged crying jag—the doctor explained to the mother what was to be done, handing out a prescription, while Angie dressed the wound.  

Cleaning up after the patient and her mother had left, and after the doctor and the consultant had moved on to another exam room, Angie noticed something she hadn’t before: a video camera installed in the upper left corner of the room, cattycorner from the door. Her first reaction was shock—
This wasn’t right. It wasn’t even legal
—but then she started thinking about the logistics of such an installation. The Urgent Care had closed last night at six and had reopened this morning at eight. So someone had come here in the middle of the night to mount and wire the camera. Which meant that the consultants had keys to the building and could let themselves in at any time.  

She was upset as she walked out to inform Sharon that the room was ready for another patient. It was another ten minutes before her path and the consultant’s crossed again, and by this time, she had discovered that there were cameras in
all
of the exam rooms. So when she encountered the consultant by the coffee machine as he scoped out the tiny break room, she confronted him.  

“Why?” she asked, “are there cameras in the exam rooms?”  

“Because we put them there.”  

She could feel her face getting hot with outrage. “The patients are entitled to privacy.
By law
.”  

He gave her a flat stare. “This is not our first rodeo. We have consulted for many hospitals and healthcare companies, and, inevitably, we find that someone within the organization is stealing.”  

“Stealing what?”  

“Supplies…drugs…who knows?”  

“So you think you’re going to catch me shooting up or shoving prescription painkillers in my pockets?”  

“We don’t know what we’ll learn. But when everything is under surveillance, we are provided with a fuller picture of the workplace and are better able to make informed decisions as to its future.”  

She thought about everything Craig had told her and about the fact that the consultant had keys to the Urgent Care. She wouldn’t put it past him to steal from the office and blame it on someone else. She didn’t want to say anything to him about it, but she was going to talk to the doctors and other nurses. Before they closed up each evening, she was going to suggest, two of them should either take a quick inventory of all medications onsite or, at the very least, use their phones to photograph the supplies in all of the drawers, cabinets and closets, so the consultant couldn’t frame anybody for anything.  

“As you no doubt know,” Patoff said, “BFG is also consulting for CompWare, the firm at which your husband works. We have not yet decided whether it is a conflict of interest for both of you to be working for organizations being studied by BFG. But if it’s determined that there
is
a conflict of interest, I’m afraid that one of you will have to resign your position.”  

“What? That makes no sense whatsoever!”  

“It’s important to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”  

“Impropriety? What are you talking about? If anything’s improper it’s the fact that
you
are passing judgment on the two of
us
. If you have a problem with Craig, you might take it out on me, or vice versa. I think you need to recuse yourself from one of these jobs.”  

Patoff laughed, though the mirth did not touch his eyes. “Feisty! I like that.” He patted the top of her head as though she were a dog. “We’ll be seeing more of each other.”  

And then he was walking away, out of the break room and into the hallway.  

For the rest of the day, he was in
every
exam room in which she assisted, and it appeared to Angie that the consultant was paying more attention to her than he did to the doctors. It might have been self-consciousness, might have been paranoia, but the result was an increased ratcheting up of tension throughout the rest of the morning and the afternoon. She had the feeling he was waiting to catch her in a mistake, and though she tried to keep her focus on the patients, his unwanted attention had the effect of compromising her ordinarily unimpeachable standard of care.