Every Fifteen Minutes (28 page)

“Eric, thanks for coming.” Tom cleared his throat, easing back in his chair in the center seat. “We would like to begin by making a statement on behalf of the committee. We want to make clear, at the outset, that we appreciate your hard work for the past fifteen years.”

“Thank you.” Eric kept a smile on his face, but it unnerved him to look into Tom's chilly gray eyes, so he shifted his attention to the whiteboard on the back wall. Underneath the title were various columns and notations, written in thick black Sharpie.

“We appreciate your cooperation in this meeting, which we hope you understand is a formality.”

“Understood.” Eric read the whiteboard's left side, which was headed Employee Injury Report, and under that, a column of Last Splash Exposure, Last Stick Exposure, Last Physical Injury to Employee by Patient, and Last Slip/Fall. There were June dates written in Sharpie next to each category except for Last Slip/Fall, so evidently May had been a good month for hospital employees' staying upright.

“Let me briefly explain the procedure, which is informal. There will be no audio or video recording of this meeting, though we may take notes.” Tom gestured at the legal pad sitting before each of them. “If you would like to take some notes, too, we can get you a pad.”

“No, thanks.” Eric kept his eyes on the whiteboard and read a column that had no heading: Last Mislabeled Specimen, Last Preventable Harm Event, Last Fall with Injury, Last Serious Event, Last Sentinel, Last CLABS, Last CAUTI, Last C.DIFF. There was a date written next to each one, and he realized midway through that he was reading a list of employee mistakes, which made him wonder if this was the Liability Conference Room. If so, he'd come to the right place.

“This meeting will last about an hour, and during it, we'll be exploring the allegations made in a sexual harassment claim filed against you by Kristine Malin, a medical student on rotation in your service.”

Eric cringed inwardly, to hear the words said aloud in Sam's presence. If his attending didn't know about it before, he knew it now, and it would probably explain Eric's wacky behavior in the staff meeting this morning.

“I'll be asking the questions here. It's not as if you have to field questions from the three of us, as if we were a Roman triumvirate. You won't be sworn in. We know you are honest and we trust you to tell us the truth.”

“Thank you.” Eric forced himself to look away from the whiteboard in case it made him look false, like an actor reading cue cards.

“Finally, you should feel free to ask any questions you have. This isn't an inquisition, it's a discussion. Do you have any questions about procedure, before we move on?”

“Yes.” Eric told himself to remain calm. “What happens after this? You listen to me, then you decide if I'm credible or not? The three of you make a judgment?”

Tom nodded. “Generally, that's true, but that's only part of the decision. The investigator will meet with the complainant, Ms. Malin, and he will make a recommendation as to the veracity of her allegations. We will review his recommendation and reach a final decision within the week.”

Eric saw his opening. “Is Kristine, uh, Ms. Malin, being interviewed today?”

“Yes, I believe she is, this afternoon.”

“I knew it!” Eric leaned forward, urgent. “Look, I don't know why she's telling these lies about me, but she looks completely different today than she's ever looked during her entire rotation. She usually wears contacts and dresses up, lots of makeup and skirts, but today, she's wearing glasses, pants, a blazer. Her hair is back in a ponytail. She's not wearing any makeup.”

“What's your point, Eric?” Tom frowned, recoiling.

“I think she's trying to fake it for the interviewer today. I think she's trying to create a false impression that she doesn't dress nice or is overly attractive.” Eric knew it sounded like he was blaming the victim, so he tried to explain. “Not that the way she dresses would excuse any harassment on my part, but I swear to you, I didn't harass her.” Eric faced Sam. “Sam, you work with Kristine every day. Don't you know what I'm talking about? Didn't she look different today in the staff meeting?”

“Honestly, she did.” Sam nodded, turning to Tom. “Tom, Eric is completely right. I never saw Kristine look like that before. Not that that would justify harassing her or anything, don't get me wrong, but Eric is totally right. Kristine's very cute, if I'm allowed to say that…” Sam hesitated. “I can say that, right, Tom?”

“Yes,” Tom answered.

“Okay,” Sam continued, “she's pretty and she dresses up every day. All the nurses talk about her, they all think she wears her skirts too short. Anybody in the unit would tell you the same thing. But today, she was definitely dressed down. In fact, I thought she was sick when she walked into the meeting, like she had the flu.”

“Thank you!” Eric blurted out. “Sam, thanks, that's
exactly
what I mean.” Eric turned to Tom, in appeal. “Tom, you hear that? That's
proof.
I swear to you, I did not harass her. I would never—”

Tom raised a palm like a traffic cop. “Eric. You made your point, and Sam, thank you for the corroboration.” Tom nodded in Sam's direction, then returned his attention to Eric. “But we haven't gotten to that point yet, and Eric, you're mistaking the purpose of this meeting. This is to determine and discuss, in a collegial way, whether you have any impairment issues. The procedure begins with the drug testing this morning. None of us was surprised to learn that you tested negative for alcohol or drugs in your system.”

“Of course I did. I'm not impaired in any way.”

Suddenly the mechanical crackle of the loudspeaker filled the conference room. “Code Gray, Drs. Parrish and Ward to Wright. Code Gray, Drs. Parrish and Ward to Wright.”

“Oh no.” Eric jumped to his feet just as his pager went off, and in the next second, so did Sam's, beeping simultaneously. Eric reached for his pager on the fly, but Sam beat him do it, with a gasp.

“Chief, they called police to the unit. Must be Perino.” Sam got up and headed around the table toward the door, but Eric was closer and he reached the door first, flinging it open.

Brad frowned, rising. “Code Gray, that's a security issue, right? Is it an elopement? It'd better not be, and they shouldn't have called the police. That's not procedure.”

“Tom, Brad, we have to go!” Eric called over his shoulder, with Sam on his heels.

“Sure, go.” Tom rose, startled. “We can do this later.”

Eric hustled down the hallway, his thoughts racing. He prayed to God Perino hadn't hurt one of the nurses. “What's the matter with Perino, Sam?”

“Sorry, Chief, I'll figure it out.” Sam hustled through the double doors leading to the Wright Wing.

“Let's take the stairs.” Eric took a left turn to the stairwell, pressed open the door, and took the stairs two-by-two with Sam at his side. They reached the first landing, and Eric heard the stairwell door opening downstairs behind them, followed by voices. “Is that Brad and Tom?”

“Yes,” Sam muttered under his breath. “Somebody has to make sure we follow procedure.”

“I hear you, brother.” Eric didn't have to say another word. The last thing they needed during a crisis were two bigwigs trying to prove they knew what was going on in the trenches.

“Eric, Sam!” Tom hollered up the stairwell, his voice echoing. “Right behind you!”

“See you up there!” Eric hollered back, and he picked up the pace as they passed the third floor, then the fourth, and finally burst through the door on five, which emptied them next to the elevator bank outside the unit. They could see through the glass airlock that a cadre of blue-uniformed security guards and two men in suits stood with Amaka, who looked stricken. A ring of nurses and residents stood behind her, uniformly concerned, and Kristine stood, faking a frown, but Eric didn't have time for her games because everything happened at once.

“Oh God.” Sam swiped his lanyard ID for them both, and Eric got out his key ring and unlocked the outer door.

Brad and Tom caught up with them. “What the hell is going on?”

Eric rushed to Amaka. “What happened? Is it Perino?”

Sam craned his head over the crowd. “Did he hurt somebody?”

“Dr. Parrish, hello, I'm Detective Rhoades,” said one of the men in a dark suit, stepping forward. He was a tall beefy man about Eric's age, with brown eyes and a wide, fleshy face. His hair was shorn close, so his scalp showed. “Dr. Parrish, we're sorry to interrupt you, but it can't wait. This is my partner, Detective Pagano.” He gestured to a skinnier, younger man who stood behind him.

“Yes, what is it?” Eric asked, alarmed. “What's happening?”

“We'd like you to come down to the administration building and talk with us. We think you might have some information that can aid a current investigation.”

“What investigation?”

“It's regarding the murder of Ren
é
e Bevilacqua.”

 

Chapter Thirty-three

“Ren
é
e is … dead?” Eric stood, stunned. He couldn't believe it. It couldn't be true. He felt shaken to his very marrow.

“Who's Ren
é
e, Eric?” Brad asked, surprised. “Is Ren
é
e a patient on the unit?”

“No, it's about one of my private patients.” Eric was reeling. His heart banged against his chest wall as if it were trying to escape.

“Dr. Parrish,” Detective Rhoades said. “Will you come help us out?”

Amaka touched his arm. “Eric, go if you have to. We can hold the fort.”

“Okay, then, yes.” Eric tried to collect his agonized thoughts. Guilt overwhelmed him. His first clear thought was that Max must have done it, and Eric had made the wrong decision in not warning Ren
é
e or the police. But in the next moment, Eric felt torn by profound confusion and ambivalence. He still couldn't really believe that Max would do Ren
é
e harm, or that Max was capable of murder.

“Thanks, let's go.” Detective Rhoades went to the door, and Eric numbly left the unit with the detectives, then got into an elevator and they rode downstairs in silence. The elevator doors opened onto the hospital lobby, and they hustled through the crowd of employees with HGH lanyards and visitors carrying Mylar balloons and gift-shop stuffed animals. They left the hospital, and Eric went outside with them, where the bright sunlight brought him from his reverie and the questions started to come.

“Detective, how was Ren
é
e killed? When did this happen? Where was she found?”

“We'll discuss that when we get there, Dr. Parrish, if you don't mind.” Detective Rhoades motioned him to a gray Taurus sedan with darkened windows, parked in the no-parking zone in front of the hospital entrance. When they reached the Taurus, Detective Pagano opened the back door, and Eric slid into the backseat, surprised to see the stainless-steel divider between the front and the back. There were no inside locks on the doors. The detectives got into the front seat, and the car lurched off.

Eric sat in the backseat, stricken. The awful news begin to sink in. So Ren
é
e, that adorable curly-haired redhead, was dead, so young. Murdered. It didn't seem possible. Eric did and didn't believe it. He wanted to know how it had happened, even as he couldn't believe it had happened. He prayed she wasn't strangled. He didn't know if that would make it more likely that Max had killed her; Eric still couldn't believe that Max would do such a thing. He knew from his experience and training that OCD sufferers rarely acted on their fantasies, and even Arthur had agreed with him. So what had happened to Ren
é
e?

He looked out the window at the passing traffic, but all he could see was Ren
é
e's fresh face, how cute she was, how bright her eyes, and how sweet her manner. He mentally gathered the few facts he knew about her; she wanted better SAT scores, she lived in a nice house on a cul-de-sac, she talked on the phone too much when she drove, she had a lot of friends, she was popular.

Eric felt confounded. He didn't know enough about Ren
é
e to begin to answer who would have killed her, if not Max. Her boyfriend? Someone else at school? Someone in her family? Or was it a random act of violence? How had she died? Eric realized he didn't have to guess. He slid his iPhone from his pocket and scrolled to the Internet. He started to type Ren
é
e Bevilacqua into the search window, but the signal was bad. His eyes filmed. He stopped. He didn't have the heart for it right now.

The car was nearing the police station, and Eric had to compose himself. He assumed that Max hadn't been found yet, because if he had, the police or Marie would have called him. Ironically, whether Max had killed Ren
é
e or not, the boy would be in agony—if Max killed her he would want to die, and if somebody else had killed her, he would still want to die.

Eric felt more fearful than ever that Max would kill himself; the boy had nothing left, neither his beloved grandmother nor the girl he was fixated on, the one he had worried so much about, the one he feared he would kill, the one that he had actually killed. If he had.

Eric wasn't sure that Max had committed murder, so he didn't know what justice would mean right now, but he was a psychiatrist and a physician. As such, he could do no harm. He had taken an oath. It clarified his next steps. He had to do what he could to save Max. He had to help the police find him and he would have to tell them what they needed to find him, but
only
what they needed to find him, because Eric's communications with Max were confidential. Eric was permitted to breach his confidentiality only that much, if it would save Max's life.