The Inquisitor (5 page)

Then Jimmy rivaled the sun with a flashing grin and added, "For the course of the race, however, I will not be showing Christian kindness."

The other team leaders protested and strutted their feigned indignation in a show worthy of pro wrestlers.

"Hey, Father, unfair!"

"I'll tell your boss!"

"Divine tampering!"

But they evoked only strained laughter from the audience.

"Either our jokes are worse than ever," Thomas Biggs whispered to Earl, "or the few good citizens brave enough to show up aren't that happy to be here."

"Bit of both, I'd say," muttered Sean from behind them. "I tell ya again, we'll all be in cowbells before long."

As the presentations to other teams continued, Earl mugged for the hospital photographer, pulling deranged faces and using a grease gun like a syringe to lubricate the wheels of his team's bed.

"Set to get whipped?" Jimmy said with a sweet smile, sidling up to him.

Earl pretended to cower before him, and Jimmy flexed his muscles Atlas style, showing off a physique that most bodybuilders would die for. The photographer snapped away. "How about a quote?" she asked.

"In a two-K race, chaplains who run ten K a day ought to carry rocks as a handicap," Earl said.

"Nan, you're thinking of Hippomenes, and he was carrying golden apples to distract a woman he was chasing," Jimmy retorted. As soon as the woman left, his smile vanished and he glanced to where, a few feet away, Susanne Roberts, Michael Popovitch, Thomas, and J.S. were passing floppy straw hats to a half dozen spectators, enticing them to empty their pockets of small change.

"Can I have just a word with you in private?" Jimmy asked. "It won't take more than a minute."

Earl had already discovered that being VP, medical meant he'd never be lonely. He couldn't go to a hospital function without somebody collaring him for "just a word in private." But he'd hoped a zany affair where they all turned into clowns would somehow protect him from politics for at least a few hours. No such luck. And Jimmy, though on the side of the angels, could be a veritable Cardinal Richelieu when it came to exerting influence on the powers that be at St. Paul's.

"Sure."

They walked to a quiet alcove between a Starbucks and a wannabe Irish tavern with leprechauns painted on the windows.

Jimmy eyed the half-empty street. "Not the best turnout from our good citizenry."

"What's up?" Earl was impatient to dispense with whatever business the man had in mind so he could get back to his team. He'd few enough opportunities to shed his role as big boss and just be good old Earl with them.

"First let me say I thought you handled the Baxter case really well," the priest began. "That had to be the roughest case of that kind I've seen."

"Thanks, Jimmy."

"Are you going to use it for teaching rounds?"

"Of course."

"Will you invite the oncology department?"

"Anyone's welcome. Now, Where's this leading?"

"Just that seeing the way you were willing to sedate Baxter so he wouldn't suffer, I knew I could come to you without being accused of overstepping my bounds."

Earl bristled at being buttered up. "Cut the stroking, Jimmy. I know you're after something," he said, comfortable enough with the man to be blunt. Although they were not close friends- they only socialized in the context of hospital business- he liked Jimmy, and sensed that Jimmy liked him. But neither man offered to extend their relationship, as if they both knew intuitively to leave their friendship within boundaries where it could remain comfortable.

The priest's face sagged, and a sadness he rarely showed settled into his eyes. "You're going to get a complaint about me from some of our oncologist colleagues."

"What?"

"These last few days I've been holding up what you did for Baxter, or at least were prepared to do, as an example of what they might well emulate, and some of them got a tad upset about it."

"You didn't."

"I just wanted to warn you-"

"Jimmy, you know damn well not to interfere in how doctors practice."

"Who's interfering? When someone does the right thing, as you did, I simply make a joyful noise about it."

"A joyful noise?"

"Right. Jesus always went on about the need to make a joyful noise. I take him at his word."

"And which doctors, specifically, did you see fit to make this joyful noise to?"

"Well, Peter Wyatt, the chief of that bunch, for one. I always figure it's best to deal with the top man…"

Earl groaned. Wyatt personified the old-boy network at St. Paul's, though he himself hadn't yet reached sixty. But mentally Wyatt allied himself with those from an era where doctors were above mere mortals and not to be questioned, especially by underlings outside the medical hierarchy. "Jimmy, don't give me that naive crap. You knew going to him would stir up a hornet's nest."

"It needed doing."

"What did you say exactly?"

"That a dozen or so members of his department were dinosaurs who sucked at managing pain, and then I suggested an audit on the subject might be in order. I waited until today, of course, figuring it safer to express my opinion in a crowd, where he'd be forced to behave."

"You've got to be kidding."

Jimmy, now looking more defiant than sad, shook his head.

Earl's stomach did a pirouette at the thought of how Peter Wyatt would react, crowd or no crowd, to such a frontal assault, especially since the charge hit home. No greater hot-button issue existed in palliative care than proper pain management. The dilemma was, the more potent an analgesic and the bigger the dose, the more likely the medication would stop a person's breathing as well as the pain. Though some enlightened doctors advocated sufficient amounts to make a patient comfortable, even if they inadvertently hastened the person's inevitable death, some didn't. They administered instead rote, inadequate quantities rather than risk an accusation that they'd committed active euthanasia.

Then he thought Jimmy had to be ribbing him. He wouldn't be so crazy as to pull such a stunt with Wyatt. "Come on. This is a joke, right?"

Jimmy's gaze shifted to a point behind Earl and his eyes widened. "Oh, sweet Jesus, I see the man himself headed this way."

"Quit kidding me, Jimmy, not about this."

"Oh, but I'm not. And he's flushed purple as an eggplant."

Of course Peter Wyatt wouldn't be behind him. Maybe Jimmy had never said anything to him at all, the story being just a way of making a point about a problem that he thought deserved attention from the new VP, medical. Earl loved how the priest could quick-shift from the serious to quirky, off-the-wall teasing. Delivered at the right moment, his jokes could lift the spirits of an entire ER staff and keep the craziness of what came in the door from eating at their minds. What's more, fun could be had in playing along with the man, calling his bluff, throwing out even nuttier nonsense, the game being to top him. Earl relaxed. "Yeah, right, Jimmy. And were I to turn around, there'd be the Pope as well, the pair of them coming to admonish you for sticking your nose where it had no business."

"Dr. Garnet!" rattled the gravelly voice of Dr. Peter Wyatt, the sound running down Earl's spine like knuckles on a washtub.

Jimmy winced. "Want me to stay? I will, but my presence might inflame things."

"Jesus Christ, you really did tell him off!" Earl still couldn't believe it.

Jimmy's gaze hardened, completely devoid of the sadness from minutes ago. "As I said, it needed doing. Do you want me to stay or not?"

"Garnet, I want a word with you!" Wyatt's bellow sounded twice as close as before.

"Jimmy, I swear I'll get you for this. But right now, just get out of here."

"See ya." He flashed that magic grin, gave his hamstrings a quick stretch, and jogged off.

Earl, fuming, turned to confront the chief of oncology, and had to stifle a nervous laugh at the sight of the man descending on him. Bushy eyebrows and a furrowed forehead always endowed Wyatt's grim face with more horizontal lines than the mug of an onrushing bulldog. Normally he stuffed his stocky frame into a three-piece suit, giving himself the formidable air of a Winston Churchill. Today, however, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts, he looked more like a knobby-kneed drug dealer. "Peter, good to see you." Earl force-marched his mouth into a genteel smile and held out a hand in greeting. "Fine day for a race, isn't it?"

Wyatt huffed up to where he stood and ignored the gesture. "I see that priest's already gotten to you."

Oh, brother. "Jimmy? He just promised to leave me in his dust during today's race, as usual."

"He didn't tell you what he said to me?"

At close range, Earl could see droplets of perspiration appear across Wyatt's beefy forehead despite the cool breeze. He almost suggested the man sit down somewhere but figured Wyatt would take it as an insult, he being a staunch practitioner of middle-age macho. "He never mentioned you at all, Peter. And why would he? Today's a time for fun, not business."

"Fun, my ass. That comedian in a collar had the nerve to tell me and my physicians how to treat dying patients. Even suggested that there ought to be an audit of how we practice. I never liked these modern types of chaplains, always going on about 'interfacing' and 'holistic care,' as if that's going to shrink a tumor. But Fitzpatrick crossed the line today, and I don't want him in my department anymore. You make sure he stays away."

"Now, wait a minute. I can't do that."

"No?" Wyatt drew in a sharp breath, the kind meant to show indignation, except the wheeze in his nose ruined the effect. "If you won't, then I'll go to the CEO, the board of directors, whoever it takes to get rid of him."

The man's angry voice had started to attract passersby. "Peter, this isn't the time or place."

Wyatt looked uneasily around and broke into a professional smile. "I want him to leave oncology patients alone." His voice had dropped to a whisper but had the sibilance of an angry snake.

Earl maintained the show grin he'd started with, but his cheek muscles had started to burn. "I won't do that, Peter. Jimmy's the only person some patients have to talk with, especially the terminal ones. They'd die alone if it weren't for him."

Wyatt's smile congealed a little, like cold grease. "Garnet, I didn't want you as

VP, medical in the first place, and you sure as hell aren't changing my opinion any-"

"Well, I'm sure I can work with you, Peter," Earl interrupted. Despite the pain, he attempted to widen his grin, determined to take control of the situation. It felt more like a show of teeth than a smile. "How about I issue a formal reminder to him and all other Pastoral Service personnel? Something to make it clear that while their insights into patient needs are always valued, final decisions on issues of pain control and medication have forever been and forever will be the exclusive domain of doctors? A kind of 'render unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is Caesar's' memo."

Wyatt turned a deeper shade of purple. "You're making fun of me."

Earl imagined him in a toga and sporting a crown of leaves around his head. If anyone had an emperor's complex and fantasized about possessing the power to make all of St. Paul's do his bidding with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, it had to be Peter Wyatt. "Not at all, Peter," Earl quickly reassured him. He knew that Wyatt also held considerable sway over the other dinosaurs who'd led the anybody-but-Garnet lobby and opposed his appointment of Earl Garnet to his current post. They couldn't wait to engineer his downfall. The best defense against this bunch would be copious stroking and keeping them busy. "The truth is, Peter, you just gave me a brilliant idea."

Wyatt's heavy jaw slowly opened, as if about to swallow something whole. "Me? What kind of idea?"

"Who better to lead a hospital-wide audit on pain management than yourself? You've always showed the way in making sure St. Paul's was on the cutting edge of such protocols." And he had. The protocols gathered dust on shelves at every nursing station. "But do we really know if all of us are using them properly? It's a flaming-hot topic right now, as you're well aware, and I can't think of a better person to guide us through the minefield it's become than yourself."

"Conduct a hospital-wide audit? Why, that's a huge undertaking-"

"As far as I'm concerned, you inspired the idea, and the job's rightly yours. The Wyatt Inquiry, we could call it. You'd have the power to appoint anyone you wanted to help you, and I'd order the full cooperation of all the other chiefs. It would be your show, start to finish."

"But I'm so busy-"

"With or without you, it goes ahead, Peter. And that could be a hell of an ordeal if you have to live under somebody else making a mess of a matter you're naturally passionate about. A lot harder than doing it right yourself. Isn't that why any of us take these crazy jobs in the first place?"

Wyatt hesitated, a look of alarm pushing its way onto his thick features. "Yes, that would be hard…"

Earl watched the fight go out of him.

During the man's early days in the late sixties, Wyatt had possessed the courage to take on malignant diseases at a time when they had 80 percent mortality rates. His research had even helped develop the treatments that stood the statistic on its head for lymphomas. In that category, now it was survival rates that stood at 80 percent.

How sad it was to see this tiger so diminished, his once heroic passions for epic cancer work diverted to such puny issues as perceived turf incursions by an overzealous chaplain. "So what do you say, Peter? Will you think about it?"

No answer. He looked overwhelmed.

Earl moved in with the clincher, knowing the one sweetener Wyatt wouldn't be able to resist. "There might even be a paper in it for you, Peter. After all, if you were to develop a road map that would help other hospitals actually implement current protocols in pain management, leading journals would fight to publish it."

Wyatt hadn't had anything accepted for publication for over a decade. What's more, he'd been a victim of one of the crueler spectacles in academic research. Five years ago, still chafing under his dry spell, he'd finally received an invitation to present a paper at a national conference. He'd attended, proudly presented his latest work, and then sat down, ready for questions from the audience. But the moderator, legend had it, instead of inviting inquiries, had stood, pointed at Wyatt, and declared, "This man has demonstrated exactly the type of research we don't want."