Cate Campbell (24 page)

She straightened her already stiff spine. “I’m aware of it, Dr. Peretti,” she said. Her voice sounded thin in the spare conference room. “He told me—at a moment when I was dealing with a patient who was seriously ill—that he had heard a rumor I was performing abortions at my private clinic. There is no foundation whatsoever for such a charge. There is no truth in it.” She met the eyes of each of the men, ending with Whitely.

Whitely gave her a tight smile. “This is not the only complaint against you, Doctor.” He had no folder, or papers of any kind. He had a fountain pen in his fingers, and he toyed with it, tapping it on the table. He glanced at the other doctors, then back at Margot. “You have displayed a pattern of disrespect.”

“To whom?” Margot snapped. She knew she was glaring at him, but she couldn’t help it. Even now, the ruddiness of his nose and cheeks bore ample witness to his addiction.

“To me, for one,” he snapped back. He leaned back, tucking the pen into the pocket of his coat, and giving her that cramped smile again. “Your job, as a younger and less-experienced physician, is to follow my lead and learn from me in the operating theater. It is not—” His voice rose. “It is not to tell me how to do my job!”

“You’re speaking of Sister Therese?”

He made a gesture with one hand. “I don’t remember the name. Appendectomy.”

One of the other men said, addressing Margot, “Can you explain yourself, Doctor?”

Margot found she was gripping her fingers so tightly her hands had begun to ache. Deliberately, she released them, and let her hands lie palm up in her lap. “Sister Therese presented with abdominal pain characteristic of appendicitis. It was quite late in the evening. As I am not yet allowed surgical privileges, the hospital called Dr. Whitely.”

Whitely’s eyes were like shards of ice, and his reddened cheeks grew redder. She could tell he was gritting his teeth by the distortion of his fleshy jawline.

Margot had thought this through before she arrived this morning. She had discussed it with Blake, and thought over what Alice Cardwell had said. There would be no better moment than this. And no worse one.

“Dr. Whitely was intoxicated,” she said bluntly. There was a little indrawn breath, but she couldn’t tell whose it was.

Peretti said, “I have to advise you to take care what you say, Dr. Benedict.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Margot said. Her voice still sounded fragile to her, but it was steady. Without inflection, she said, “The attending nurse was very concerned, as was I. I watched carefully, but I did not intervene until Dr. Whitely nearly punctured the appendix. I recalled his attention to the patient, and the surgery went forward without further incident.”

“Ridiculous,” Whitely grated. “If you thought that, you should have filed a complaint.”

“I should have indeed,” said Margot. “That was my error.” She looked at Peretti as she added, “I was afraid of just such a situation as this one. My position at the hospital is tenuous.”

Peretti said, “Why do you feel that, Doctor?”

Margot considered carefully before she answered him. “The hospital has been slow to grant me surgical privileges.”

One of the other doctors said, “Perhaps that’s just a question of caution.”

Margot raised her eyebrows. “Caution? I had a successful residency, and my evaluations were all satisfactory. Male colleagues with similar resumes are already operating.”

“Are you accusing us of prejudice?” Whitely demanded.

Margot’s shoulders began to ache with the effort of controlling herself, and she knew she was hunching them. She tried to relax them as she addressed Peretti. “It wasn’t easy for me to get into medical school. Since the Flexner Report, as I’m sure you know, requirements for women are considerably more stringent than those for men.”

“If it were up to me,” Whitely put in, “you wouldn’t have hospital privileges here at all. Only your father’s influence got you in to begin with.”

Margot was shocked, for a moment, into wordlessness. When she could speak again, her voice shook. “That’s neither true nor fair, Dr. Whitely. I earned my position at Seattle General.”

He bristled. “Incompetence is—”

“
You
accuse
me
of incompetence, Doctor?” Her voice rose, echoing in the spare room.

Whitely folded his arms, and nodded down the table to his colleagues. “You see? It’s a pattern. Insubordination, rudeness—and we still haven’t dealt with this issue of performing illegal abortions in that little clinic of hers.”

“I’m not performing abortions in my clinic, or anywhere else,” Margot said.

“You’ve never performed one?” Peretti asked.

“In my residency, I did two therapeutic abortions, under supervision.”

“So,” Whitely said nastily, “you admit you know how.”

“I can read a surgical manual as well as anyone, Dr. Whitely. That’s why I knew you were about to kill Sister Therese.”

Whitely leaped to his feet. His reddened cheeks darkened to an alarming purple, and he shrilled, “How
dare
you?”

Margot fixed him with a steady gaze. It was over in any case, that was clear. She might as well get it off her chest. When she spoke this time, she thought she sounded like herself again, her voice deep and steady. “Come, gentlemen. We all know it’s true. You’re protected, Doctor, because of your status, and because you’ve been here a long time. Sister Therese is not the first patient you’ve endangered, and everyone in the hospital knows it.”

She turned her head to Peretti. “Should I assume, Doctor, that this entire meeting is for show? Since you’ve asked no substantive questions, I gather the decision about my future with Seattle General was taken before I arrived.”

Peretti regarded her for a moment, his chin on his hand, his mouth pulled down. Finally, he said, “We know you performed your maid’s abortion, Dr. Benedict.”

“What do you mean, you know? How could you, since it’s not true?”

“Evidently, it is true.” Peretti straightened, and leaned back in his chair with a weary air. “Dr. Benedict, your brother came here this morning. He told us what you did, and why. He thought, for the honor of your family, that we should know.”

Margot’s lips parted, but she couldn’t catch enough breath to speak. Whitely gave her a triumphant glare as he sank back into his chair.

“Your younger brother,” one of the other doctors said. He was a friend of the family, someone who had known her—and Dick and Preston—since they were children. “It was Preston.”

Margot’s breath returned, but her composure was lost for good. She said shakily, “Of course. It would be.” On trembling legs, she stood up. She tried to put on her gloves, but she fumbled with them, unable to match them to her fingers. She gave up, and kept them in her hand as she put on her hat.

“We can’t have physicians who perform illegal surgeries practicing at Seattle General,” Peretti said. “Your privileges here are terminated, Dr. Benedict. I’m sorry.”

Margot said, through trembling lips, “I want you to know, Dr. Peretti, that it isn’t true. My brother Preston was responsible for Loena’s pregnancy, and he arranged for her to have an abortion down in the Tenderloin.”

“Now, why should we believe that?” Whitely said. “And why would your brother lie about his own sister?”

Margot met his gaze with hers. “Why should you believe him?” she asked.

None of the men answered.

 

Margot walked slowly, carefully, fearful her knees would give way beneath her. Blake was waiting, and he held the car door for her without speaking. Not until she was inside did he turn in his seat to give her a look full of sympathy.

“Yes,” she said in a whisper. “It was awful. As bad as I feared.”

“Did they rule?”

“They revoked my hospital privileges.”

He clicked his tongue and said heavily, “What can you do?”

“Not much. I can try another hospital—maybe that little children’s hospital on Queen Anne, but that won’t keep the clinic going. I need those emergency calls to pay my mortgage.”

Blake turned forward to press the ignition. He adjusted his gloves and his hat, and put the car in gear.

Margot said hollowly, “Preston went to see them this morning, Blake. He told them I performed Loena’s abortion. And they believed him.”

Blake put out his arm to signal before he nosed the car into the street. “I saw him leave the house after I left you at your clinic,” he growled. “He told Mr. Dickson he was going to work. He never mentioned the hospital.”

They rode in silence for a few moments. Margot watched the buildings pass, then turned her eyes toward the bay, where the Pacific waters shifted and churned beneath a lowering sky. Dully, wearily, she reflected that it would rain soon. It always did.

Blake pulled up at the end of Post Street. He turned off the motor, but made no move to get out. “Dr. Margot, I have a little money put by.”

“Absolutely not, Blake. I would never accept it. But I thank you, with all my heart.”

“I should have done something before this.”

“What do you mean?”

His gloved hands gripped the wide steering wheel, and his gaze was fixed on something beyond the windscreen. “I tried once,” he said, his accent softening and broadening into the old Southern drawl. “I spoke to Mr. Dickson, because I knew Mrs. Edith wouldn’t believe me.”

“When was that?”

“It was getting bad,” he said. “You were ten, I think, and Mr. Preston was eight.”

“Oh. The stairs.”

“Yes.” He drew a slow breath. “No one could believe that a little boy like that . . .” His voice trailed off.

It was true. Despite the bite marks, the bruises, the cuts, once a burned hand, no one had believed Preston capable of deliberate violence. It had become a conspiracy of silence, and Blake had been Margot’s only protector. Preston was the shadow that had darkened all of her childhood and adolescence.

Now, he had found an even more damaging way to hurt her.

She put her hand on the door. Blake made a move as if to get out and help her, but she said, “No. Don’t get out, Blake, please.”

She climbed out of the car and stood looking down at him. “It’s worse since he came back from the war,” she said. “He shouldn’t have had any power in this. Any power over me.”

Blake said, in a voice she barely recognized, “Never you mind, Dr. Margot.”
Nevah
. “You let me handle it.”

Her indrawn breath ached in her chest. “Be careful, Blake. He’s strong now.”

“Yes.” Blake put his hand on the gearshift. “Don’t you worry. Go to your clinic, see your patients.”

“But what are you going to do? What
can
you do?”

He smiled up at her, a bleak smile that made her eyes sting. He started to say something, then evidently thought better of it, and turned his face forward.

As he put the car in gear, she stepped back. She stood very still, watching him turn the car and proceed up the street at his usual deliberate pace. She had a terrible feeling she should do something, call him back, stop him. She was tempted, despite the indignity of it, to run after the car, shouting his name.

She didn’t, of course. He would have hated that. But she would wish, later, that she had done it anyway.

 

Blake had never been to Dickson Benedict’s office. In the normal way of things, he would pull the Essex up in front of the Smith Tower and wait for his employer to emerge. Now, for the first time, he parked the automobile on the street. He brushed his coat with his gloved hands before he walked up the steps and into the paneled lobby.

The elevator operator, a Negro like himself, wearing a neat red-and-black uniform, gave him a strange look. “Floor?”

“Eighteen.” He stood at the back, stiffly, as the bars of the elevator swept past floor after floor.

When the doors of the elevator opened, the operator said, “Eighteen. Uh, sir.” Blake nodded to him as he stepped out.

He scanned the doors until he found the Benedict name. He lifted his hand to knock, then judged it was better to simply open the door. A receptionist seated behind a large black typewriter glanced up. “Good morning,” she said in a frosty tone.

He crossed the room, taking off his cap as he went. “Good morning, ma’am. I’d like to see Mr. Benedict, please.”

“Senior?” The young woman was pretty, rosy-cheeked and smoothly coiffed, but there was ice in her gaze. Briefly, Blake wondered if that ice melted when she was away from her wide, official-looking desk.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m Mr. Benedict’s driver.”

“Oh, yes. Blake, isn’t it.” This was not a question. She rose immediately. “Let me see if Mr. Benedict is free.”

She went through a heavy oak door, closing it behind her, but she was back in only seconds. “Mr. Benedict will see you, Blake,” she said. She stood to one side, holding the door, and shut it after he had walked through.

Dickson sat at a massive mahogany desk. Papers and ledgers were scattered across it, with an assortment of pens and ink bottles of different colors. He looked up as Blake came in, lifting his bushy eyebrows high. “I hope nothing’s wrong, Blake?”

“I can’t reassure you on that count, Mr. Dickson.” Blake stood opposite the desk, his hat in his two hands, looking down at the man who had made the renaissance of his life possible.

Dickson’s brows fell, drew together. “Everyone all right at home?” Blake nodded, and Dickson waved at a chair. “Sit down.”

Blake would have preferred to stand, but he thought if he sat this conversation might seem less like a confrontation. He pulled the chair forward, so that when he sat down, he was facing Dickson directly. He held his cap on his lap. “Sir,” he began.
Suh
. A pronunciation he had schooled out of himself years ago.

Dickson said, “Something to drink, Blake?”

Blake shook his head. “No, thank you, sir.”