Dead Certain (24 page)

I saw her point. In the years since I’d begun practicing law, I’d gotten my lunch handed back to me on a fair number of occasions, but somehow having had practice falling on my ass as a teenager had made it easier. They say that good judgment is the product of experience, and experience is the product of bad judgment. But what happened when all you’d experienced was success?

“This thing with Mrs. Estrada has just wiped me out,” confessed Claudia miserably. “The problem is that surgery is a catch-22. You couldn’t do it if you didn’t believe in yourself, believe in your abilities. You’d freeze up, you’d worry so much about the potential consequences of your mistakes that you’d end up making them. But you not only let it make you cocky, you even lie to yourself that it’s not arrogance. Instead you say that you owe it to your patient to have complete confidence in your skill. You tell yourself that if you show doubt or hesitation, even for a second, then it affects the entire team and hurts the patient. You actually start believing that there’s nothing you can’t fix, nothing you can’t cure. But do you want to know what the worst part is?”

“What?”

“Somebody has to die before you realize that you were wrong.”

CHAPTER 17

The next morning I got up early hoping to catch Claudia before she left for the hospital. Even though I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, I knew that I needed to talk to her. I’d gone to bed feeling uneasy, overwhelmed by the sense that with both Claudia’s and my worlds thrust into turmoil over Prescott Memorial, events were moving too fast to be understood. I had gone to bed with the nagging feeling that I was missing something central, something important.

But when I woke up, I realized that what was really worrying me was Carlos. Just the fact that Claudia, the least alarmist woman on the planet, had gone to Security about him spoke volumes about the magnitude of the threat. I was glad that she’d taken it seriously. Having spent the better part of the last four years in emergency rooms, Claudia knew firsthand that more women seek treatment for injuries caused by their husbands or boyfriends than from car accidents, robberies, and rapes combined. It seemed worse than ironic that a hospital security officer, of all people, would choose to do nothing about a female doctor clearly at risk.

But when I got up and went looking for her, Claudia had already gone. In her place in the dining room was the neatly packed carton that contained the Prescott Memorial files. Beside it, with a surgeon’s customary economy of effort, was a one-word note in my roommate’s draftsmanlike print. All it said was “thanks.”

Disappointed, I went into the kitchen and made coffee. As I waited for the hot water to hiss and chug through the filter into the pot, I watched the changing of the guard. Outside the window, the street people and the scavengers roused themselves with the first light of the morning and got to their feet. They folded up their greasy blankets and moved on to the park or, if the police were already finished with their late-night sweeps, the relative warmth of the train station. No sooner had the last of them slipped from view than my neighbors began trickling from the building, clutching their commuter cups against the chill, unlocking the Club from their steering wheels, and heading off to work.

When the coffee had finished brewing, I poured myself a cup and made my way back down the long hall to my bedroom. I spent much longer than usual rooting through my closet trying to decide what to wear. As I pushed through dark suit after dark suit it seemed as if my entire wardrobe consisted of garments designed to either intimidate or impress. The only problem with that was that today what I wanted to do was persuade.

I settled on a gray wool suit with a blouse of pinkish silk, and in a radical departure—for me at least—I elected to wear my hair down. I brushed it carefully, pulling it back off my face with a velvet band. Then I forced myself to take my time with my makeup, extending my usually slapdash routine of mascara and lipstick with eye shadow and blush. So far my usual tactics had gotten me nowhere with the first two Prescott trustees. With only one more pitch ahead of me, it was time to try a different approach.

Cheryl had set up the meeting with Dr. Carl Laffer at his medical school office, away from the distraction of patients and the emotionally charged ground of Prescott Memorial. Of all the members of the Prescott Memorial board, the hospital’s chief of staff was the one with whom I was least well acquainted. He was also the one I’d heard the best things about. I thought about how he’d managed to diffuse the animosity that had crackled between McDermott and Farah Davis at the Founders Ball, and crossed my fingers. With any luck I was finally about to find myself face-to-face with a reasonable man.

Normally I avoid the freeway by force of habit. Before the Jaguar, I drove an ancient and unreliable Volvo that wheezed dangerously whenever I ventured above fifty and shuddered through every pothole. But today, almost without thinking, I found myself hopping on the interchange that would get me onto the Eisenhower Expressway, eager to avoid passing by McCormack Place, whose hulking presence now conjured up visceral memories of Bill Delius’s heart attack.

Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center is an amalgam of merged hospitals that were cobbled together during the last crisis in medical care. It lay directly west of downtown and encompassed the west-side VA and Cook County Hospital, home of the world’s largest and busiest emergency department. Like Prescott Memorial to the south, it was a refuge and a lifeline for the city’s poorest of the poor.

Rush-St. Luke’s sprawling medical campus was confusing to all but the initiated, and enormously difficult to find your way around. Cheryl had drawn me a map and typed out instructions to Laffer’s office. They were so detailed they read like directions for finding the Holy Grail. Once I’d parked the car, I did my best to follow them as I tried not to think about what would become of me once Cheryl graduated.

I navigated the endless string of white-coated corridors, eventually ending up at Carl Laffer’s office almost as much by accident as design. Like McDermott, Dr. Laffer was talking on the phone when his secretary showed me in. But he not only hung up as soon as I was through the door, he also apologized, rising to his feet to bid me welcome and to take my hand in his mighty grip.

Laffer was a tall man, tall enough to make me feel short. If his altitude weren’t enough of a tip-off—he was at least six inches over six feet—his office made no secret of his passion for basketball. The way that Laffer liked to tell it, if he had been a half a step faster, medicine would have lost a compassionate physician and the NBA would have gained a mediocre center. He was, according to Claudia, passionate about three things: opera, Hoosier basketball, and surgery—not necessarily in that order. I smiled and took my seat, wishing I’d had the time to bone up on Bobby Knight’s biography. Claudia reported that Laffer believed that the Indiana University basketball coach was the greatest strategic thinker of the twentieth century. On second thought, maybe he wasn’t as reasonable as I’d hoped.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make time to see you sooner,” Laffer began, pushing aside a pile of patient charts eerily similar to the ones in the trunk of my car. “But between teaching, seeing patients, and my administrative duties at Prescott Memorial, my days get pretty full.”

“I appreciate your making the time to see me at all,” I replied. “It gives me the opportunity to thank you in person.”

“For what?” he asked. From the look on his face I knew that at least I wasn’t going to have to juggle to get his attention.

“You saved my client’s life Friday night.”

“Your client?”

“A man by the name of Bill Delius who came into the emergency room with a heart attack.” While I knew it violated my agreement with Claudia about keeping our friendship in the background, I told myself that circumstances had changed. Not only might Laffer listen more closely to what I had to say if he knew that Claudia and I were friends, but at this point it couldn’t hurt Claudia for the hospital to know that she had friends in high places.

“So you’re the lady lawyer Dr. Stein was talking about,” he observed with a strange look of enlightenment. “As I recall, Claudia lectured me that I’d better save Mr. Delius or her roommate was going to sue us. I knew she lived with a lawyer, I just didn’t know that the lawyer was you. So how do you two know each other?“

“We were roommates at Bryn Mawr,” I explained. “We’ve been friends ever since.”

“She’s a gifted physician. Your client was lucky she was on trauma call the night his heart decided to act up. At any other hospital they probably would have pronounced him DOA.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s one of the reasons I came to see you today.”

“Oh?” he inquired warily, no doubt wondering if I’d come to pressure him to intercede on Claudia’s behalf in the matter of Mrs. Estrada’s death.

“I must confess that when my mother first asked me to help her stop the sale of Prescott Memorial, I had never given much thought to the hospital. Even when Claudia began her rotation and started telling me about her cases, I didn’t really realize how unique it is as an institution and how important a job it does, not just in caring for patients but in training doctors.”

Laffer looked surprised. “I thought all lawyers were pragmatists,” he said.

“And I thought all doctors were altruists.”

“It looks like we’re both wrong.” He chuckled dryly. “Medicine has changed. There isn’t a lot of altruism left these days.”

“Is that why you think the HCC deal is a good thing?“

“Good for whom? A hospital is a complex organization operating in a rapidly changing environment. Are we talking about what is best for the hospital? The patient? The doctor? As a physician, naturally I am committed to treating my patient to the very best of my ability. But what is my responsibility as chief of staff of the hospital? I cast my vote in favor of the sale because Gavin McDermott and Kyle Massius did a better job of convincing me that by selling to HCC we would keep Prescott Memorial in the business of serving the underprivileged. Your mother and her brother didn’t have any concrete ideas except that we should keep on doing things as we’ve always done.”

“What would make you change your mind?”

“Let’s see—” Laffer chuckled, mischievously. “—how about a Learjet and season tickets for the Met?”

“I was thinking more in terms of a well-reasoned appeal to your better judgment, but maybe I could throw in a boxed set of Maria Callas CDs.”

“I see you know all about my weakness for sopranos. What else has your roommate been telling you, I wonder? „

“She tells me that you’re an able administrator and a good teacher,” I replied truthfully. “She also told me that if you have a weakness, it’s that you tend to think the best of everyone.”

“Until proved otherwise.”

“Then what if I told you that I could prove that HCC has no interest in continuing to serve Prescott Memorial’s current patient population? That as soon as they take over, they plan on dismantling the residency and fellowship programs—”

“HCC has given us every assurance—” protested Dr. Laffer.

“In writing?” I demanded. “Anything that they can later be held to?” Laffer did not reply, and I knew from his silence that they had not. “Because even though I can’t speak for the world of medicine, I can tell you for a fact that in the world of business, assurances are cheap, and as you very well know, providing high-quality medical care is expensive. HCC may be paying lip service to the idea of continuing the mission of Prescott Memorial, but do you know what kind of people we’re really dealing with? In every market that HCC has moved into, they’ve attempted to control the number of patient beds by closing hospitals. If they succeed in making a move into Chicago, which hospital do you think they’ll end up closing first?”

“It’s as easy for you to say that as it is for Packman to make promises he doesn’t intend to keep,” pointed out Laffer.

“What if I can prove it?”

“Prove what? How can you prove what someone will or will not do in the future?”

“What if I can prove that Packman isn’t playing by the rules? What if I can prove that he’s cut a secret deal with someone on your staff—information now in exchange for a piece of the action later?”

“You have proof?”

“I can get it. All I want to know is yes or no. If I can prove that HCC has been dealing under the table, would you reconsider selling the hospital to them?”

Carl Laffer leveled his gray eyes at me. The expression on his face remained impassive. “You bring me hard evidence that HCC isn’t playing by the rules or that they don’t intend to keep their promises regarding continuing the work of the hospital,” he said quietly, “and you have my word that I’ll change my vote.”

I stood on the sidewalk after my meeting with Carl Laffer, filled with hope and fear. Hope that I might be able to make enough of a case for HCC’s perfidy that I would be able to convince Laffer to change his vote, and fear that I wouldn’t be able to get the proof in time.

I also knew that there was very little that HCC wouldn’t stoop to. From the suit they’d filed against my mother, I knew that HCC liked to play rough, and from what Elliott had told me, they didn’t have any qualms about playing dirty. If they found out about what I was trying to do, what might they be willing to do to stop me? I was so preoccupied by the question that I didn’t see Julia Gordon until I practically ran right into her.