Flashback (1988) (49 page)

He took his list and carefully added:
Check with A.D. re: tonight
.

Perfect, he thought. Annette Dolan was the ideal choice to help celebrate the remarkable turn of events.

He keyed the intercom. Moments later, Annette knocked softly and slipped into his office. She was wearing a tight plaid
skirt and a beige, short-sleeved angora sweater that seemed to be straining to cover her breasts.

“G’morning,” he said.

“Morning, yourself.”

She stood primly beside his desk, her hands folded in front of her skirt, her arms pulled tightly downward, lifting her breasts together in a way that made them look even more spectacular.

“I … um … I have some Xeroxing I need done,” Frank managed.

He passed some papers across to her.

“Twenty copies. No, make that thirty. You … ah … that’s a great sweater.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you think you might be able to wear it to work tonight? Say at eight?”

“Oh, Frank, I don’t know. My mom’s not feeling too well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that …”

He hesitated, and then reached into his desk and brought out the diamond necklace he had planned to give Lisette for her birthday.

“… because I was kind of hoping you’d wear this at the same time.”

Annette’s eyes widened.

“Oh, Frankie, it’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s the most beautiful necklace I’ve ever seen. You’re so good to me.”

“That’s because you’re so good to me. About tonight? …”

She ran her fingers over the piece.

“How could I say no?”

“I don’t know.… How could you?”

He pulled her to him and kissed her, sliding his hand over her skirt and then up to her breast.

“Annette, honey, I don’t want to wait until tonight. Just a little. Right here. Right now.”

“Fra-ank, please,” she said. “You’ve
got
to wait. I have work to do, and all that Xeroxing, and that door isn’t locked. And besides, he might hear us.”

“Who might hear us?”

“Why, your brother, of course. Didn’t I …?” She held her hand to her mouth and looked at him sheepishly. “Oh my. I was about to tell you.”

Frank’s expression darkened.

“How long has he been out there?”

“Just a few minutes. I’m sorry, Frank.”

“Hey, no need to apologize,” he said, giving her breast a squeeze. “Just wear that sweater tonight … and your necklace. Okay?”

“S-Sure.”

“Perfect. Tell my brother I know he’s here, and I’ll be with him shortly.”

“Okay. Im sorry.

“Actually, now that I think about it, he couldn’t have come at a better time.”

The receptionist brightened noticeably. “Really?”

“Really,” Frank said. “This will be the icing on the cake.”

He patted her behind as she turned to leave, and followed it with his eyes as she sashayed from his office. Then he added another item to his list in the same, perfect block print as all the others:
Fire Z.I.

He paused, studying the notation thoughtfully, and then drew a small happy face next to it.

30

“Dr. Iverson, Mr. Iverson said to tell you that he knows you’re here and will be with you as soon as he can. Are you sure I can’t get you something?”

“No, no, thank you.”

Zack managed to prevent himself, at the last possible instant, from augmenting his response with a shake of his head. Actually, the tympani that had been rehearsing in his brain had given way to the French horn section, and the tempest in his stomach had been downgraded to mere queasiness. Physically, it appeared, he was on the mend.

With a little assistance from Cheapdog, he had awakened well before the time set on his clock radio by Suzanne. On the coffee table beside him was a glass of water, a packet of Bromo Seltzer, and his old copy of Davenport, held open by his stethoscope and marked with a note from Suzanne which said, simply,
Be strong
.

Now, as he waited for his brother to decide that he had been kept waiting long enough, Zack withdrew the monograph from his briefcase and reread the passage.

Zack had been especially grateful for those words when he’d arrived at the hospital that morning and been informed by his father’s private duty nurse that except for his wife, the Judge was seeing no visitors, and that he had specifically included his sons in that group.

Even Annie Doucette, facing surgery on her hip in twenty-four hours, was less than cordial to him. After being barred by the Judges nurse, Zack had gone directly to her room, hoping—naively, it turned out—to be the first to tell her of what had happened.

“I am not pleased with you, young man,” she had said. “You save an old lady like me, who wants to die, and then let something like this happen to a man like your father. What kind of doctor is that?”

Zack had started to respond, but then had simply shrugged and left. Another time, perhaps.

Nor was the hospital staff any more amiable. Wherever he went, eyes were averted; greetings of any kind were mumbled or withheld altogether. Nurses and other physicians hurried in the opposite direction as he approached.

He had decided to stick things out at Davis, but reestablishing himself was clearly going to be an uphill struggle.

Be strong.… Be strong.… Be—

“Annette,” Franks voice crackled over the intercom, “would you please ask Dr. Iverson to come on in? And hold all calls—unless they’re regarding our fathers condition. Thank you.”

Zack walked into his brothers office, wishing he were anyplace else.

“Have a seat, Bro,” Frank said. “I was wondering when you were going to show up here again. Where’ve you been?”

“Oh, here and there. Mostly on the floor or on the toilet.”

“I know.”

Zack looked at him curiously.

“John Burris told me,” Frank explained. “Apparently he called to give you a progress report on the Judge. He says you were obviously intoxicated and totally incoherent.”

“Aw, he was just being kind.”

“Zack, this isn’t funny. Burris said something about it to one nurse, and already the whole hospital knows. Once they’re lost, reputations around hospitals don’t get found again very often. Ask Guy Beaulieu.”

“Now who’s being funny, Frank?”

“You know what I meant.”

“Well, one of the reasons I stopped by was to tell you that I was sorry for causing so much disruption around this place. I see now that I’ve got to back off a little if I’m going to get by here, even though I’ve only been doing what I thought was right.”

“Have you?”

“Dammit, Frank, you’re an excellent administrator, but that doesn’t mean you’re on top of everything that’s going on around here.”

“For instance?”

“For instance, that sleazy anesthesiologist, Pearl, and his sidekick, Mainwaring. They’re up to something, Frank. They’re using something other than what they say they are in the operating room. I swear it.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I have proof.”

“Do you?”

“Well, not exactly. But I have some data about recovery times that are pretty damn suggestive. And I’ve learned some things about Mainwaring’s past that even you might not be aware of. I’m telling you, there’s a connection between that poor Nelms kid’s seizures and whatever the two of them have been giving patients in the O.R. Frank, this hospital could be headed for terrible trouble. We’ve got to find out what’s going on.”

“No, we don’t, Zack-o,” Frank said simply.

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, first of all, we’re not going to find out because there’s nothing to find out. Those two men worked here for two years before you arrived, and there was not so much as a whisper of anything but praise for either of them. How do you explain that?”

“I … I can’t really. At least not yet. But I’m right, Frank. I just know I am. Mainwaring’s got a past that involves testing drugs illegally, and Pearl’s hiding something. Couldn’t you tell that from the way he behaved last night? He’s so frightened of being found out that he was willing to put that kid to sleep with anesthetics he had never used on him in the first place. Something’s going on, and dammit, I’m going to find out what.”

“No, you’re not,” Frank said again. “You’re not going to find out because you’re not going to be stirring up any more trouble around here. And you’re not going to be stirring up trouble because you’re through … finished … fired. You’re done at this hospital as of right now.”

Zack stared at him in disbelief. Frank looked back at him, smiling placidly.

“Frank, that’s crazy. I’m a physician on the staff. You can’t fire
me. Only the medical staff can do that, and then only after due process.”

‘Oh, really? Here, Doctor. Here are the corporate bylaws. You don’t work for the medical staff. It’s on page seven. Check it out. You work for Ultramed. And Ultramed can fire anyone they goddamn well please. And I’m Ultramed, and you’re fired.”

He held his hands out palms up.
“C’est tout, mon frère.”

Be strong.…
Suzanne’s encouragement was growing hollower by the moment.

“Frank, you can’t do this.”

“I can, and I did. You see, Bro, that’s been your big mistake all along—not understanding that this is my hospital and that I can do whatever the hell I want to. I wanted Beaulieu out, and he was out. And now I want you out.”

“Frank, you forget that even though you might not have wanted Beaulieu here, you didn’t fire him. He was being systematically and deliberately driven out by—”

“By who?”

Zack hesitated, remembering his promise to Maureen Banas. Then he decided that she would simply have to understand His situation was too desperate.

“It was Ultramed, Frank. He was being driven out by Ultramed. Just look at that letter from Maureen Banas. That’s proof you don’t know everything that’s going on around here. Do you think she wrote that of her own free will? She was coerced, Frank, by that company we work for. By Ultramed.”

“Was she?”

“Yes, she received a copy of that letter along with a note that—”

“That said if she told me about receiving it, both she
and
I would be fired?” Frank’s gloating leer was at once disgusting and terrifying.

“Jesus,” Zack muttered.

“Nice touch, don’t you think?”

“Oh, Frank. You are really sad. Why didn’t you just fire him like you’re trying to do to me?”

“He was an obstreperous sonofabitch, that’s why. I didn’t want him making a big stink. I was just learning the ropes then, Zack-o, learning how far I could go. I know them now, and they tell me that it’s okay to fire you, so … you’re fired. God, I really love hearing that.”

“You’re crazy, Frank. Do you know that? You are absolutely nuts.”

“Maybe,” Frank said. “But I am also employed. Which is more than can be said for you.”

“I’m going to fight you.”

Frank shrugged.

“Do whatever you want. As far as the company or the medical staff is concerned, you’re a drunken, disloyal troublemaker. I doubt that even your little cardiology fluff will stick up for you.”

“Frank, Guy Beaulieu died because of what you did to him.
Died!
Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“You have a good day, now, Zack.”

“And don’t you even care that it’s possible some madmen are poisoning patients in the operating room of this hospital? What are you?”

“I’ll be speaking with the folks at Pine Bough Realty. I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to give you, oh, two or three days at least to get out of their house.”

“Jesus. I’m coming to that board meeting, Frank. I’m coming, and I’m going to tell the board and Ultramed what’s going on here. The Judge may be paralyzed, but he saw what Ultramed and its policies did to Annie. He’s had time to review Beaulieu’s evidence and to convince people how to vote. I’m going to be there to reinforce his position.”