It's Nothing Personal (21 page)

“Partly.
 
And partly because I feel bad for
me
.
 
My patient got hurt, and now she wants somebody to be punished for what
happened to her.”

“Well then, they should punish the lady who
stole the drugs.
 
She’s the one who
did the bad thing,” replied Mia, with her very astute eleven-year-old logic.

“They did punish her,” Jenna explained.
“They sent her to jail for fifty years.
 
But that’s not all the patient and her lawyers want.
 
When people get hurt, especially at the
hospital, they want someone to make up for it by paying them money.
 
They file a lawsuit against hospitals or
doctors or whomever they think they can blame for what happened to them.
 
My patient filed a lawsuit against
me.”
  

A rancid lump surfaced in Jenna’s throat as
she heard the word “lawsuit” slip past her lips.

Mia’s face turned blotchy, and her arms
flung violently as she spoke.
 
“How
can they do that?
 
You didn’t do
anything wrong!
 
It was that stupid
lady.
 
Why don’t they get money from
her?”
 

Explaining the lawsuit to her daughter
allowed Jenna to see things more clearly.
 
She realized this was a big money grab and nothing else.
 
Her newfound clarity did not take the
sting out of the accusations leveled against her, but it did offer her new
focus.

“Well,” said Jenna, “that lady who stole my
drugs is a loser.
 
She doesn’t have
any money.
 
If she did, maybe they
would have left me alone and gone after her.
 
As it turns out, I have something called
malpractice insurance.
 
I pay an
insurance company a bunch of money every year.
 
Then, if I get sued, they pay the
patient for me.
 
My patient wants to
get that money.
 
In order to do so,
my patient has to prove that I was at least partly responsible for her getting
the disease.”

“You’re a good doctor,” said Mia,
defensively.
 
“It wasn’t your
fault!
 
How much money does she want
you to give her?”

Jenna replied sorrowfully, “As much as she
can get.
 
My insurance company will
pay up to a million dollars.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Mia.
 
“That’s a lot.
 
It’s totally unfair.
 
She doesn’t deserve a million dollars
from you or your insurance company.”

“I don’t think so, either.
 
But now, I have to meet with lawyers,
and we have to figure out a way to show that I’m not the one to blame.
 
If we can do that, she’ll get nothing.
 
We just found out about the lawsuit
today, and I had to meet with my attorneys all afternoon.
 
I’m so sorry I missed out on time with
you.”

“It’s okay,” Mia said sympathetically.
 
“Will you have to go to court, like on
TV?”
  

Jenna studied her plate of cold spaghetti
and inhaled the last bit of her wine.
 
Tom automatically refilled her glass.
 
Sadly, she confessed the ugly details of
her future to her daughter.

“Maybe.
 
Probably.
 
But that won’t
happen for a long time.
 
In the
meantime, the patient and her lawyers are going to try to make me look like a
bad doctor and a bad person.
 
They
are going to say a lot of mean things about me.
 
And sometimes, it might hurt my feelings
and make me cry.”

Mia stood and hugged her mother.
 
“Mommy, I’m so sorry for you.
 
Daddy and I will take care of you.
 
Don’t let those people make you
sad.
 
It’s like when people say bad
things to me at school.
 
You tell me
to ignore them.
 
So now, you have to
do the same.”

“I know, baby,” said Jenna, choking on
tears.
 
She was surprised and
touched by her daughter’s insight and guidance.
 
“But, just like with you, sometimes the
words still hurt, no matter how hard you try to pretend they don’t.”

Tom sat in silence, watching the exchange
between the two loves of his life.

Softly, he said, “Jenna, eat.
 
I’m going to get Mia to bed, and then we
can talk.”

Mia resisted.
 
“I want to stay with Mommy.”
 
Her eyes welled up.

Jenna looked at her daughter compassionately
and said, “Mia, it’s getting late.
 
Why not let Daddy put you to bed, and I’ll come up and snuggle with you
later?”

“Okay,” Mia said reluctantly, refusing to
release her hold on her mother.
 
Jenna kissed her daughter’s curly locks and took in the scent of her
skin.
 
Tom gently peeled their
daughter away from Jenna.
 
Both of
his girls had tears running down their checks.

CHAPTER 30

It took Tom over half an hour before he was
finally able to get Mia to sleep.
 
Returning downstairs, he found his wife sitting at the table with her
bowl of spaghetti barely touched and pushed off to the side.
 
Jenna’s head was buried in her hands,
and her body was wracked with sobs.

Tom pulled up a kitchen chair and scooted it
close to his wife.
 
Lifting Jenna’s
chin, Tom forced her to look at him.
 
Her eyes were swollen.
 
He
poured them both another glass of wine.

“Do you feel like talking?” asked Tom
cautiously.

Jenna sighed, pushed her chair back, and
rested her feet in Tom’s lap.
 

She said miserably, “Well, I guess it’s
official.
 
No more wondering when
it’s going to happen.
 
I have
formally been sued.”

“Yeah,” replied Tom, with a serious
tone.
 
“So, what did you guys talk
about for six hours?”

“Pretty much everything.
 
It took three hours just to get through
the twenty-six-page complaint.
 
Jim
read it aloud, line by line, and clarified all the legal terminology.”

“Sounds excruciating,” said Tom.

“Yeah, but it was necessary.
 
I don’t think I would have understood
half of it if Jim hadn’t decoded it for me.
 
You should see the things they wrote
about me.
 
It was awful.”

“How so?”

On her third glass of wine, Jenna was
slurring her words, and her voice was high-pitched and edgy.
 

“They came right out and said that if it
hadn’t been for my negligence, Michelle Hollings wouldn’t be a victim with a
deadly virus.”

“Jenna, you can’t buy into that
bullshit.
 
You
are not responsible.
 
You are being sued because they think you’re a rich doctor who has deep
pockets, plain and simple, nothing more.
 
I assume they are suing St. Augustine, too?”

“Yep!
 
Get this, we’re co-defendants!
 
How great is that?
 
The big,
powerful corporation all lawyered up sitting side-by-side with the dispensable,
little doctor – both trying to escape blame.
 
I’m sure that will go well.
 
Nancy already told me they’d probably
serve me up as a scapegoat to save their own greedy hides.
 
At least she’s honest.”

Jenna took another swallow of wine.
 
She clumsily sloshed her glass around as
she spoke.
 
Tom was relieved she had
drained most of it, or else it would have spilled by now.
 

“What exactly are you being sued for?” Tom
asked, as gently as possible.

A shiver coursed through Jenna.
 
If seeing the lawsuit in print had not
made it real, articulating it to her husband most certainly did.
 

“There are two claims against me.
 
I guess I should feel lucky.
 
St. Augustine got nailed with
eight.
 
The first one is medical
malpractice.
 
You know, basically
I’m a rotten doctor, sub-par, I suck.
 
The second one is negligence per se.
 
That means I’m also a terrible person
who doesn’t obey the law.”

“Jenna, did they say how much they
want?
 
What kind of demands are they
making?”

“Apparently, the sky’s the limit.”

“They didn’t specify an amount?” Tom asked,
trying to keep Jenna on track.

“Nope.
 
I guess that’s up for the jury to decide.”

“So what did you spend the remainder of the
time discussing?”

Tom could tell his wife’s level of coherency
was fading fast, but he was not about to take her glass of wine away from
her.
 
If Tom were in Jenna’s shoes,
he’d most certainly be drinking himself into oblivion right now, too.
 
Yet, he also wanted to get as many
details as possible from Jenna before her drunken haze clouded her memory.

Jenna relaxed a little, grateful to be off
the topic of the complaint itself.
 
“Jim and Nancy wanted me to go over my pre-op assessment and anesthesia
record for Michelle Hollings.
 
I
basically had to do for them what they did for me – translate my world
into something they could understand.
 
It was uneventful.”

“Did they ask you what you did with your
drugs?” asked Tom.
 

“Yes.”

“And,” Tom pried, “what did you tell them?”

Jenna hung her head.
 
In hindsight, she felt so foolish for
thinking her drugs were safe.
 

“I told them the truth.”

Tom was rubbing Jenna’s feet.
 
Between that and the wine, she started to
feel relaxed and groggy.
 

Tom asked her, “Jenna, do you
feel
guilty?”

Jenna thought for a minute.
 
Fresh tears came to her eyes.
 

“I don’t know.
 
What kills me is I actually held that
syringe in my hand.
 
The very
syringe Hillary Martin had used to get high.
 
I pushed a deadly virus into my
patient.”

“Jenna?”

“Yes?”

“Never admit that to anyone else.
 
Not even your lawyers, okay?”

“I’m not stupid,” Jenna replied defensively.
 

Jenna drained the last of her wine and
stumbled across the kitchen to the cupboard.
 
Tom watched her swallow a couple of
sleeping pills.

“Are you going to be okay to work tomorrow?”
Tom asked, worried about her impending hangover and her current emotional
state.

“No, and maybe not the next day,
either.
 
I’m not going in.”

Tom looked at his wife.
 
Not having the heart to judge her, he
did not say a word.
 

CHAPTER 31

June
22, 2011

It was a warm, sunny Wednesday
afternoon.
 
Over six months had
passed since Jenna first learned she was being sued, yet the intensity and pain
of the situation never seemed to ease.
 
Today was no exception.
 
In
two days, Allison Anders would do her best to destroy Jenna.
  
She had precious little time to
learn how to keep that from happening.

Jenna arrived early for her pre-deposition
meeting with Jim and Nancy.
 
With an
hour to kill, she decided to stroll the streets of the downtown shopping
district.
 
She hoped that some fresh
air would help calm her nerves.
  

The outdoor mall was active with
professionals on their lunch breaks, women shopping, tourists taking pictures,
and panhandlers begging for change.
 
It felt good to be lost among them, simply another unknown face in the
crowd.
 
Jenna wandered around for
blocks, savoring the afternoon sun as it beat down upon her tan skin.
 
Sensing her reprieve was close to an
end, Jenna checked her phone for the time.
 
Her hour of freedom was nearly over.
 
She had ten minutes to make it back to
the steel skyscraper where her unpleasant fate awaited.

Jenna entered the lobby to find Jim and
Nancy waiting for her.
 
After
exchanging hellos, they led her back to the all-too-familiar conference room.

Consumed by anxiety and dread, Jenna
reminded herself to focus.
 
This
meeting was survival training.
 
It
was imperative that she absorbed every bit of advice her lawyers offered.

Jim spoke with fatherly concern, “Jenna, we
know this is your first deposition.
 
We don’t want anything to surprise you, so we are going to prepare you
for the worst.”

Nancy interjected, “The thing you need to
know about Anders is that her objective is to ruin you.
 
She will search for your weaknesses and
shamelessly exploit them.
  
She
will use intimidation, degradation, deceptive kindness – anything that
she thinks will successfully lure you into her den.”