Doc in the Box (26 page)

“Okay, I was going to die. I thought I could take it like a man. The one thing that bothered me was my son, Billy Junior. His mother and I are divorced, but I’m crazy about that kid. We had shared custody until I got too sick to take care of him. I’ll never see him graduate from high school. Never watch him go to the prom, or dance at his wedding, or hold my grandchild. All that was taken away from me by a lazy, greedy, incompetent doctor.

“But I thought I could live with that, too. I was going to sue old Dr. Jolley, and I knew I’d win, and I’d leave Billy enough money for a good life. He could go to college someday. His mother could stay home and care for him instead of working as a secretary and hiring sitters. I had it all planned out. There was no future for me, maybe, but at least my son had a future.

“Dr. Boltz ruined that. My lawyer talked to him about testifying. Boltz said that it really wasn’t Dr. Jolley’s fault. When my lawyer pressed him, he said, well, Dr. Jolley did wrong, but the extent of the damage couldn’t be proved. To me, it seemed so clear-cut. But Boltz hemmed and hawed and excused and justified and explained it away. My own surgeon. He wouldn’t testify against Dr. Jolley. He wouldn’t break the code of silence. He knew that his colleague had screwed up. But Boltz said he had to work in this community. The other doctors, who were either friends of Jolley or Boltz, followed his lead. My lawyer said the suit wasn’t worth pursuing if my own surgeon wouldn’t testify for me. Maybe, if I wanted to spend two thousand dollars for an outside expert … but where does a bus mechanic with child support payments get that kind of money?

“Now I had nothing. No future. No money for my son. All I had left was revenge. I decided this wasn’t going to happen to anyone else. I made sure no one else would go through what I did. I started killing the bastards. I began with the radiation oncology department because they were the worst.”

“Been there,” I interrupted. “They were mean.”

I could hear people running up the garage stairs on the other side, and I wanted to move him on. Help was on the way, but I had to hear the rest.

“My oncologist, Brentmoor, was another one. He wouldn’t testify for me, either. Said it was against hospital policy. But that’s not why I killed him. He didn’t have an ounce of compassion for his patients. I called his office early one morning, screaming in pain, and he never bothered calling me back. Not for eight hours. When I called again, after four o’clock, he’d left for the day. The doctor on call didn’t get to me until five-thirty. This didn’t happen once—it happened often. He was heartless.”

“His other patients agreed with you,” I said. I could hear the stairwell door open. Bill didn’t seem to notice. He was still talking.

“Dr. Boltz was the last name on my list, but he really started it all. He ruined my hopes, you know. If he’d testified, none of this would have happened. I would have …”

I heard shouts and a commanding voice said, “Man with a gun. Drop it! Drop it now!” I saw two uniformed police officers running toward us and figured there must be more out of sight.

“Shoot me,” Bill said to them. He never moved off the wall and he never dropped the gun. “It would be a
kindness. Please kill me. Make it quick. It hurts too much to live.”

I couldn’t bear to watch this, or see him hurt anymore. “Put your guns down, officers,” I said. “He won’t shoot.”

Bill looked at me, then looked at them.

“You’re right,” he said, “I won’t,” and he went over backward off the top of the garage.

I stared at the empty space on the wall where Bill had been sitting. There was nothing. No sign he’d been there. He’d simply tipped himself backward and gone over. The only sound I heard was the terrible wet thud when he landed. My Aunt Marie used to crack grocery store coconuts by dropping them out a window onto the sidewalk, two stories below. It was that sound.

I stood there, barefoot, my ridiculous scarf turban half off my head, unable to make a sound. Someone was speaking to me. “Francesca,” I heard. “Francesca, it’s me.”

It was detective Mark Mayhew. “Talk to me, Francesca,” he said, gently. “Tell me what happened.”

“He—he—I—I.” I made some kind of squeaky noise, like a rusty door opening, and then I started crying. I hoped I was crying for Bill, but I thought I was crying for myself. I wanted so badly to stop. I didn’t want to cry in front of these people, in front of the police, in front of Mayhew. I never cried, not even when Lyle left me, but now I couldn’t turn off the
tears. Mayhew reached in his pocket for a handkerchief and came up empty. “A gentleman always carries one,” he said, “but I guess I’m no gentleman. I forgot it.”

“That’s okay,” I said, still sniffing a bit, my voice wobbly. I rubbed my eyes and my hands came up black with eyeliner. My scarf turban was now hanging limply around my neck like a bad fur stole. I whipped it off, dried my eyes and blew my nose.

“That’s disgusting,” he said, but he sounded amused.

“You want disgusting, you should have seen it on me,” I said, and set the scarf on the parking garage wall. A spring breeze grabbed the scarf. It billowed out like a sail, then wafted over the side. It was gone, too, but I didn’t look. I didn’t want to look down ten stories. I knew I’d see the people swarming frantically around Bill’s body, like ants on a piece of meat.

Mayhew took me to the elevator and out the front entrance of the garage, so I wouldn’t have to see Bill’s body. I heard the sirens and saw some of the police cars, but that’s all. We crossed the street into Moorton. Someone gave us an empty office and a couple of cold sodas. I sat down on a chair, and the questioning started. I told my story, many times. The only part I left out was Katie’s role. But no matter how often I repeated it, I couldn’t quite make it real. When I finished, and Mayhew had his signed statement, all I wanted to do was sleep for a thousand years. But I couldn’t. I had to write Bill’s story. I was in no shape to drive, so Mayhew dropped me off at the
Gazette
. I showed up in the newsroom, barefoot and half-drunk with shock, but I wrote one hell of a story. I don’t give myself much credit for it. I didn’t have to do anything
but write down what Bill said. No fancy flourishes, no witty remarks, just straightforward reporting. The strange thing is that I can’t remember most of what he said now—I have to reread my own story. But I still remember how he went backward off the wall. I still remember the long silence as he fell. And most of all, I remember that empty wall, with nothing there.

Everyone told me Bill’s death was for the best, it was over quick, he didn’t suffer. They were wrong. He did suffer. He’d suffered for three long years. I was sorry he didn’t get to say good-bye to his son. I was sorry Billy Junior would see his father branded as a murderer. That’s what Bill was. But I made sure everyone knew what made him that way. I told the story of what happened to the man who did everything right and died anyway.

Did I approve of what Bill did? No. But I understood it. Oh, yes I did.

So did most of my readers. There was a real outburst of sympathy for Bill. Many of them had had cancer, or they loved someone who had, and all too often the sick person had been treated like Bill. Some had been treated worse.

A few readers chewed me out for not having more sympathy for the victims. They were right. I usually do. And I tried this time, I really tried. But I didn’t like them. I didn’t like the sadistic receptionist, who used her little bit of power to torment sick people. I didn’t like the unfeeling radiation oncologist and the tech who worked with him, cracking jokes over the surgically maimed bodies of hurting people. I didn’t like Dr. Tachman, who used the easiest and roughest means to examine patients, because it was convenient for him. If Tachman had spent a little more
time with his patients, if Tachman hadn’t been so eager for a quickie with a secretary, Bill might be alive today. So might Tachman, for that matter.

But Tachman’s faults were at least human.

It was Dr. Brentmoor who made me the angriest. Brentmoor, who didn’t bother to call back patients writhing in pain. Brentmoor, who was too arrogant to answer the questions of a frightened patient. The worst part was that Brentmoor wasn’t unusual. Georgia’s oncologist did the same thing. A cancer doctor without compassion was a shell of a human, in my book. When Bill shot Brentmoor, I thought he had killed a dead man.

Dr. Jolley was the one I almost felt sorry for. Almost. He was growing old and careless and he neglected a basic exam. But at least his patients loved him, and he seemed to sympathize with them. Except where that HMO incentive bonus came in. Dr. Jolley held the line on those costly visits to specialists, and made sure they didn’t cut into his nice little bonus. His greed killed Bill, just as surely as if Jolley had put a gun to his head. But a gun would have been quicker and kinder.

Of course, as the doctors’ defenders liked to point out, the victims weren’t there to speak for themselves, and that was true. But I knew Bill was telling the truth. Katie had seen his medical records, and they confirmed his sorry story. I’d talked to other patients of the dead doctors and heard their stories. And I’d been there with Georgia. I knew Bill wasn’t exaggerating.

I did call the one survivor, Dr. Boltz, and ask him for a comment about what Bill said for my story. Boltz said he didn’t want to talk. That’s what nearly
got him killed, but it made a nice counterpoint in my story. His own silence condemned him. I wondered if Boltz felt any guilt about not testifying for Bill. His peers, like Katie, were in awe of his medical mastery. But he was one of the good doctors who kept silent and allowed the bad ones to flourish.

Georgia drove me home that night, when I finished the story. She also lent me enough cash for a cab the next morning. I took the cab to Moorton to pick up my purse and car. I found my purse at Dr. Boltz’s office, and no money or credit cards were missing, a minor miracle. Boltz’s assistant, Kristine, saw it on the waiting room floor after Bill’s dramatic run, and put it away in the safe for me. I asked after Mrs. Kaffee, the woman who got knocked flat on her fanny when I bolted after Bill. Kristine assured me she was fine. In fact, she was basking in her new celebrity status. Mrs. Kaffee was interviewed on TV that night. She told the reporter that she knew Bill was a killer. She could tell by his eyes.

Kristine thanked me for saving the doctor. Boltz never bothered.

My car was gone when I got to the garage. At first I thought Ralph was stolen, but he had been ticketed and towed for parking in a Doctors Only zone. The hospital said it was sorry, but the parking garage was a private concession, and they couldn’t do anything about the ticket or the towing costs. The
Gazette
wouldn’t pay for them, either. They came to one hundred fifty dollars, total. I paid them and put them on my expense account at the rate of three dollars a week, for almost a year. I put them under parking.

• • •

I took Katie out for a thank-you lunch, and this time it wasn’t at McDonald’s. She was back in her healthy mode again, and munched a salad at O’Connell’s Pub. She seemed pleased with how her efforts turned out. “You know,” she said, “Boltz was the only doctor out of that bunch worth saving.”

“His gratitude has been touching,” I said, sarcastically.

Katie shrugged. “I don’t care about that,” she said. “I just want him around in case I ever need a surgeon.”

She had the right attitude—surgeons existed for her, and not the other way around.

I wanted to get Katie something for all she did, some acknowledgment of her help. After all, she risked the most to save Dr. Boltz’s ungrateful neck. But what do you get a country girl who liked dogs and guns and pickup trucks? A box of bullets? A new set of mudflaps? Finally, I heard her talking about a medical society banquet she was going to attend. It was a formal affair, and she was getting some kind of honor. I saw just the gift for her in a Tiffany’s catalogue and ordered it. She called me the day she got it.

“It’s perfect,” she said. “Fits right in my little beaded bag. Sterling silver, too. It’s the evening accessory every woman should have.”

No woman should be without a formal pocket knife.

I saw Jack, the former Leo D. Nardo, in the Clayton Schnucks’ supermarket, wearing a wedding ring and about six hundred dollars worth of Ralph Lauren. He was pushing a shopping cart and looked very happy. He and his bride went through a tough
spell with her children after they came back from their honeymoon. Rutherford and Althea—those are the kids—didn’t like the prenuptial agreement that gave Leo a million dollars. The rest of Nancy’s fourteen-million-dollar fortune was theirs, but it wasn’t enough for them.

Rutherford, a real prune, declared that his mother must be crazy to marry a common stripper. His sister Althea was shocked that her stepfather was half a century younger than her mother. I wondered how someone as lively as Nancy produced such a pair of prigs.

Rutherford and Althea hired a bunch of lawyers. Their mother, Nancy, hired a bunch more. At the sanity hearing, Althea and Rutherford’s shrinks testified that their mother was batty as a barn owl. Nancy’s shrinks said she was sane.