Crisis (7 page)

Leona regarded him with one eyebrow raised, indicating she was only partially placated. The reality was that she demanded full attention a hundred percent of the time.

At the same moment that Craig heard the familiar whine and roar of his car engine starting somewhere nearby, he also heard his name called out from behind him. What caught his attention particularly was that his middle initial, M, had been included. Few people knew his middle initial, and fewer still knew that it stood for Mason, his mother's maiden name. Craig turned, expecting to see a patient or perhaps a colleague or an old schoolmate. Instead, he saw a stranger approach. The man was a handsome African American, quick-moving, intelligent-appearing, and approximately Craig's age. For a moment, Craig thought he was a teammate from that afternoon's three-on-three basketball marathon who wanted to gloat anew over that afternoon's victories.

"Doctor Craig M. Bowman?" the man questioned again as he stepped directly up to Craig.

"Yes?" Craig said with a questioning nod. He was still trying to place the individual. He wasn't one of the basketball players. Nor was he a patient or a schoolmate. Craig tried to associate him with the hospital, but he couldn't.

The man responded by placing a large, sealed envelope in Craig's hand. Craig looked at it. His name along with his middle initial was typed on the front. Before Craig could respond, the man turned on his heel and managed to catch the elevator he'd arrived in before the doors had had a chance to close. The man was gone. The transaction had taken only seconds.

"What'd you get?" Leona asked.

"I haven't the slightest idea," Craig said. He looked back down at the envelope and got his first inkling of trouble. Printed in the upper corner was: Superior Court, Suffolk County, Massachusetts.

"Well?" Leona questioned. "Aren't you going to open it?"

"I'm not sure I want to," Craig said, although he knew he would have to sooner or later. Craig's eyes scanned the people grouped around him, waiting for their cars. A number were curiously looking at him after having witnessed the encounter.

As the valet pulled Craig's Porsche up to the stand and got out, holding the driver's-side door ajar, Craig worked his thumb under the envelope's flap and tore it open. He could feel his pulse quicken as he pulled out the contents. He was holding a dog-eared sheaf of papers stapled together.

"Well?" Leona repeated with concern. She could see Craig's exercise-induced ruddiness perceptively fade.

Craig's eyes lifted and locked onto Leona's. They reflected an intensity Leona had not seen. She couldn't tell if it was from confusion or disbelief, yet it was clearly shock. For a few beats, Craig seemed paralyzed. He didn't even breathe.

"Hello?" Leona called questioningly. "Anybody home?" She waved a hand in front of Craig's marmoreal face. A furtive glance told her that they had become the object of everyone's attention.

As if he were waking from a petit mal seizure, Craig's pupils narrowed and color rapidly re-suffused his face. His hands began to reflexively crumple the papers before rationality intervened.

"I've been served," Craig croaked in a whisper. "The bastard is suing me!" He straightened the papers and rapidly flipped through them.

"Who is suing?"

"Stanhope! Jordan Stanhope!"

"What for?"

"Medical malpractice and wrongful death. This is outrageous!"

"Concerning Patience Stanhope?"

"Who else?" Craig demanded viciously through clenched teeth. "Hey, I'm not the enemy," Leona said, raising her hands in mock defense.

"I cannot believe this! This is an outrage!" Craig shuffled through the papers again, as if perhaps he'd misread them.

Leona glanced over to the valets. A second attendant had opened the passenger door for her. The first was still holding open the driver's-side door. Leona looked back at Craig. "What do you want to do, Craigie?" she whispered insistently. "We can't stand here forever."
Forever
came out as "forevah."

"Shut up!" Craig barked. Her accent grated against his raw nerves.

Leona let out a suppressed, mockingly aggrieved laugh, then warned: "Don't you dare talk to me like that!"

As if waking a second time and becoming aware that all eyes were on them, Craig apologized under his breath, then added: "I need a drink."

"Okay," Leona agreed, still miffed. "Where? Here or at home?"

"Here!" Craig snapped. He turned and headed back to the elevators.

With an apologetic smile and shrug for the benefit of the valets, Leona followed Craig. When she got to him, he was repeatedly punching the elevator button with a knuckle. "You have to calm down," she told him. She looked back at the group. People quickly averted their gaze to pretend they had not been watching.

"It's easy for you to say to calm down," Craig shot back. "You're not the one being sued. And getting served like this in public is goddamn humiliating."

Leona didn't try to make conversation again until they were seated at a small but tall table apart as much as possible from the happy-hour crowd. The chairs were barstools with low backs, which accounted for the table height. Craig had a double scotch, which was hardly customary for him. Normally, he drank sparingly for fear of being called professionally at any given hour. Leona had a glass of white wine. She could tell from how he shakily handled his drink that his mind-set had transformed yet again. He'd gone from the initial shocked disbelief to anger and now to anxiety, all within the fifteen minutes since he'd been handed the summons and the complaint.

"I've never seen you so upset," Leona offered. Although she didn't quite know what to say, she felt she needed to say something. She was never good at silence unless it was on her terms as a purposeful pout.

"Of course I'm upset," Craig snapped. As he raised his drink, he was shaking enough to cause the ice to clink repeatedly against the glass. When he got it to his lips, he managed to slosh scotch over the rim. "Shit," he said as he put the glass back down and shook the scotch from his hand. He then used the cocktail napkin to wipe his lips and chin. "I cannot believe this oddball bastard Jordan Stanhope would do this to me, especially after all the time and energy I've squandered on his hypochrondriacal, clingy excuse for a wife. I hated that woman."

Craig hesitated for a moment, then added: "I suppose I shouldn't be telling you this. It's the kind of thing doctors don't talk about."

"I think you should talk about it, seeing how upset you are."

"The truth is that Patience Stanhope drove me crazy with her disgusting rehash over and over of every damn bowel movement she ever had, and that was on top of the graphic descriptions of greenish-yellow, gloppy phlegm she coughed up on a daily basis and even saved to show me. It was pathetic. She drove everybody crazy, including Jordan and even herself, for Christ's sake."

Leona nodded. Although psychology was not one of her strengths, she felt it was important to let Craig rail on.

"I can't tell you how many times over the last year I had to drive out there after work or even in the middle of the night to that huge house of theirs to hold her hand and listen to her carry on. And for what? She rarely followed through with anything I suggested, including stopping her smoking. She smoked like a fiend, no matter what I said."

"Really?" Leona questioned, unable to contain herself. "She carried on about coughing up phlegm and continued to smoke?"

"Don't you remember how her bedroom reeked of cigarette smoke?"

"Not really" Leona said with a shake of her head. "I was too taken by the situation to smell anything."

"She smoked like there was no tomorrow, one cigarette after another, going through several packs a day. And that was just a part of it. I'm telling you, she was the poster woman for all the non-compliant patients of the world, especially concerning medication. She demanded prescriptions and then took the drugs or didn't take them according to her whim."

"Did you have any idea why she didn't follow orders?"

"Probably because she liked being sick. It gave her something to do. That's the long and short of it. She was a waste of time for me, for her husband, even for herself. Her passing was a blessing for everyone. She didn't have a life."

Craig had calmed down enough to take a drink of his scotch without spilling any.

"I remember from the few times I had contact with her in the office, she seemed like a piece of work," Leona said placatingly.

"That's the understatement of the year," Craig grumbled. "She was an entitled bitch with some inherited money, meaning she expected me to hold her hand and listen to her complaints ad nauseam. I struggled through four years of college, four years of medical school, five years of residency, board certification, and authored a handful of scientific papers, and all she wanted was for me to hold her hand. That was it, and if I held it for fifteen minutes, she wanted thirty, and if I gave her thirty, she wanted forty-five, and if I refused, she became sulky and hostile."

"Maybe she was lonely," Leona suggested.

"Whose side are you on?" Craig demanded angrily. He slapped his drink down onto the table, clanking the ice cubes. "She was a pain in the ass."

"Geez, relax already!" Leona urged. She glanced around selfconsciously and was relieved to see that no one was paying them the slightest attention.

"Just don't start playing devil's advocate," Craig snapped. "I'm not in the mood."

"I'm only trying to get you to calm down."

"How can I calm down? This is a disaster. I've worked all my life to be the best doctor. Hell, I'm still working at it. And now this!" Craig angrily slapped the envelope containing the legal papers.

"But isn't this the reason you pay the malpractice insurance you complain about?"

Craig eyed Leona with exasperation. "I don't think you understand. This screwball Stanhope is publicly defaming me by demanding his, quote, day in court. The process is the problem. It's bad no matter what happens. I'm helpless, a victim. And if you go to trial, who knows how it will turn out. There are no guarantees, even in my situation, where I've been bending over backward for my patients, particularly Patience Stanhope, making house calls for crying out loud. And the idea it would be a trial by my peers? That's a bad joke. File clerks, plumbers, and retired schoolteachers have no idea what it's like being a doctor like me, getting up in the middle of the night to hold hypochondriacs' hands. Jesus H. Christ!"

"Can't you tell them? Make it part of your testimony."

Craig rolled his eyes with exasperation. There were occasions when Leona drove him batty. It was the downside of spending time with someone so young and inexperienced.

"Why does he think there was malpractice?" Leona asked.

Craig looked off at the normal, beautiful people around the bar, obviously enjoying the evening with their happy banter. The juxtaposition made him feel worse. Maybe coming up to the public bar was a bad idea. The thought went through his mind that perhaps becoming one of them through his cultural endeavors was really beyond his grasp. Medicine and its current problems, including the malpractice mess, had him ensnared.

"What malpractice was there supposed to have been?" Leona asked, rephrasing her question.

Craig threw up his hands. "Listen, bright eyes! It's generic on the complaint, saying something about me not using the skill and care in making a diagnosis and treatment that a reasonable, competent doctor would employ in the same circumstance ... blah blah blah. It's all bullshit. The long and short is that there was a bad outcome, meaning Patience Stanhope died. A personal injury-malpractice lawyer will just go from there and be creative. Those guys can always find something that some asshole, courthouse-whore doctor will say should have been done differently."

"Bright eyes!" Leona snapped back. "Don't be condescending to me!"

"Okay, I'm sorry," Craig said. He took a deep breath. "Obviously, I'm out of sorts."

"What's a courthouse-whore doctor?"

"It's a doctor who hires himself or herself out to be a, quote, expert and who will say whatever the plaintiff attorney wants him to say. It used to be hard to find doctors to testify against doctors, but not anymore. There are some worthless bastards that make a living doing it."

"That's terrible."

"It's the least of it," Craig said. He shook his head dejectedly. "It's mighty hypocritical that this screwball Jordan Stanhope is suing me when he didn't even stay around at the hospital while I was struggling to revive his pathetic wife. Hell, on a number of occasions he confided with me that his wife was a hopeless hypochondriac and that he couldn't keep all her symptoms straight. He was even apologetic when she'd have him call and insist I come to the house at three in the morning because she thought she was dying. That really happened on more than one occasion. Usually the house calls were in the evenings, forcing me to interrupt what I was doing. But even then, Jordan would always thank me, so he knew what kind of effort it was, coming out there for no good reason. The woman was a disaster. Everyone is better off with her out of the picture, including Jordan Stanhope, yet he is suing me and claiming damages of five million dollars for loss of consortium. What a cruel joke." Craig shook his head dejectedly.