Noble Vision (46 page)

The secretary’s limousine stopped in front of the medical building next door to Riverview Hospital. Warren composed himself before entering. He traveled a familiar path to a simple wooden door with a translucent glass window, a place laden with memories. Black letters on the glass announced
David Lang, MD, Neurosurgeon
. Warren recalled his immense pride on opening that door for the first time, when David had begun his practice. Back then the father had entered with the brisk walk of a welcomed visitor. Now he almost tiptoed.

By virtue of CareFree’s decree, the bustling office of his memory was now a ghost town. The front desk and waiting area were lifeless. He walked further, past a dormant examining room to the half-opened door of an office. Sounds from a radio floated into the corridor, with an announcer introducing a sonata.

He knocked gently. “David?”

David had learned from Mrs. Trimbell that his exhausted patient was still sleeping. He was awaiting a call from the nurse to tell him that Nicole awakened, at which time he would visit her to relate the outcome of the trial.

“What are you doing here?” David looked up from a newspaper spread open on his desk. Blank eyes and a toneless voice did not offer Warren the benefit of anger.

“I want to explain why I had to do what I did today. May I please come in?”

“No.” The face that used to brighten whenever Warren entered a room was expressionless.

Warren cautiously opened the door wider while remaining outside. “I had to punish you for your own good, to save your license. Yes, I saved your license today! I want you to know that.”

Warren stepped in gently and waited to be offered a seat. The offer did not come, so he remained standing.

“There was a beautiful letter that you wrote to Nicole. It was unsigned, but in your handwriting.”

“How would you know about that?”

“Mack Burrow had it.”

A faint raise of the eyebrows was the only response Warren received.

“I don’t know how Mack got it.”

“I do.” David’s mind made two stops: on the letter’s disappearance the day Commissioner Wellington Ames had visited Nicole in the hospital, and on the news report the previous evening of the promotion Ames had received from Burrow.

“That letter could be very damaging to you.”

“Why?”

“Because Mack was going to leak it to the press!”

“So?” The son looked at his father blankly.

“David, really,” Warren admonished gently. “You know it’s improper to be having an affair with a patient, especially in such a controversial case. Mack was going to make a scandal out of it that would have cost you your license. By threatening to leak the letter, he forced me to punish you, and I gave in to save your career. You’re suspended for a year, but you still have your license, thanks to
me
!”

Warren waited for words of gratitude but heard only the sonata on the radio.

“Well, David?”

“I’m not having an affair with my patient. She doesn’t know who sent her the letter. I admired her from a distance and wrote to her anonymously. That’s all. There’s no scandal to threaten my license.” David frowned thoughtfully. “If your decision to punish me was based on that letter, then why didn’t you ask me about it beforehand?”

“But Mack was going to say there was a scandal. With his smear campaign—”

“The truth is my defense. Let him say what he pleases.”

“But he could make the letter public!”

“So let him.”

“But the letter would hurt Marie. Surely you’d want to spare her feelings.”

“Not really.”

“I can get that letter back to you, so it will never be made public.” Warren acted as if Burrow still had the letter.

David looked at his father suspiciously.

Warren eagerly pulled a chair up to his son’s desk and sat facing him. “All you have to do is cancel your appearance on
Insight,
and I can get that letter into your hands. You can save yourself from a smear campaign run by expert mudslingers!”

David burst out laughing. “And what will
you
get, Mr. Secretary? Is this the last hoop for you to jump through to become Mack the Blackmailer’s running mate? Forget it.” The amusement in his laugh never reached his eyes.

“I’m only thinking of you!”

“Then why didn’t you ask me about the letter and find out the truth before making your decision?”

Warren looked away from eyes that were too intelligent. David leaned back, cocking his head as if contemplating a puzzle.

“The letter is innocuous. I’m not having an affair. I could probably demonstrate the truth if I had to. Why were you so . . . quick to . . .” The son studied the pathetic, fidgeting entity that used to be his idol. “You were
eager
to accept Burrow’s accusations, weren’t you?”

“That’s not true!”

“Because you
wanted
to punish me, and the letter gave you grounds. That must be it.” David’s expression changed from grappling with a problem to solving it. “You wanted to punish me so that you could please Burrow and get on his ticket. It might have been hard to keep from yourself the knowledge that you sold Nicole and me down the river to get your nomination. But with the letter, you could tell yourself that you punished me for my own good, to save my license and spare me from a scandal.”

“That’s not the way it was!”

David eyes narrowed as if he was piecing the rest of the puzzle together. “And if you made a deal with your boss to punish me in exchange for the letter, then you’d have it yourself. You would have
bought
the letter with your decision against me. I’ll bet you
do
have it!”

“But . . . but . . . David . . . ” The thought of the letter in the drawer of his study choked Warren’s denial.

“I guess you didn’t do enough to please your boss, so he sent you out to squeeze the noose around my neck tighter. And you obliged. Tell me, Mr. Secretary, if CareFree is as great as you and your boss say it is, then why are you two scared silly of me talking about it on television?”

The sonata on the radio ended, leaving the question to linger in the silence. Warren was too petrified to say more, David too revolted.

Just then the radio announcer reviewed the day’s news: “Today Governor Burrow will announce his running mate for the gubernatorial election. Sources are now doubtful that he will choose Secretary of Medicine Warren Lang, once the leading contender, because of the secretary’s ongoing family disputes. The charges of corruption that his son made against CareFree are said to be an embarrassment to the governor.”

“So that’s it,” David said with certainty. “Burrow is about to spit you out. You need to shut my mouth, so I won’t cause ‘family disputes’ or make embarrassing ‘charges of corruption’ to keep you off Burrow’s slate. So you’re blackmailing me with a letter that you yourself already have and could burn if you were really concerned about it hurting me. I’ll tell Nicole that I won’t appear on TV to fight for her surgery after all. I decided to let her rot in a world of darkness so that my ex-father can practice his new line of work: lying, blackmail, backstabbing, and abusing power.”

Warren’s face twisted into a soundless scream. He had found no welcome in Burrow’s parlor, only disapprobation. He now found only contempt in the office of a son who had once given him the only hero worship that he had ever known.

“But David, you make me sound terrible. It’s not like that. I just try to help people.” Warren was unconvincing, even to himself. “I was the hero of your childhood. Don’t you want to patch things up between us?”

“You never were the man I thought you were,” David said quietly, as if talking to himself. “You enjoyed medicine for a while, but you never loved it the way I do. You craved something else more than medicine, more than me . . . more than anything. I was wrong about you.”

“I don’t crave . . . what Mack does! I couldn’t stand to be like him. It can’t be true. You’re just being difficult. Why won’t you try to make up with me?” Warren cried desperately. “I’m losing everything!”

“So you want Nicole and me to lose everything instead. Get out of here.”

“But—”

“No buts. Just go.”

David walked to the door, politely holding the knob the way he would for a salesman overstaying his visit. Two terrified eyes looked into two unyielding ones, and Warren knew that he had lost forever David’s admiration, the greatest gift that anyone had ever given him.

*
  
*
  
*
  
*
  
*

The secretary walked into the building next door, tracing another familiar path, this one to the glass and chrome executive offices of Riverview Hospital. An inner voice, cultivated over years as a public official, recited lines for him automatically: He was furthering a noble cause; therefore, it was permissible to bend the truth on occasion. However, he could no longer remember a cause other than his own political ambition.

After being refused admittance, Warren pushed his way past a receptionist into the office of his other son. The father expected to be thrown out, but Randy remained seated at his desk, as if the intruder were not worth the effort of evicting.

Warren pleaded the same case: He wanted to protect David’s license from a scandal cooked up by Burrow. Would Randall help save his brother by convincing him not to speak against CareFree on television?

“No,” Randy said flatly.

“David trusts you. You’re the only one who can save him from a terrible scandal that will cost him his license.”

“No.”

“Don’t you want to save David?”

“By collaborating with his enemies?”

“But this is for a worthy cause, Randall.”

“Your only cause is you and Burrow.”

“Won’t you hear me out?”

“No.”

“But the situation is urgent!”

“No.”

“Once I’m elected, I can help you and David.”

“Get out.”

Warren felt as significant as a fly on the wall.

*
  
*
  
*
  
*
  
*

Frantic with fear, he returned to the limousine. He had only one option left. If it worked, he could not only win a place on the governor’s ticket but also make amends with his sons, he told himself. “The Rutledge Hotel, please,” he directed the chauffeur.

Moments later, Warren beseeched the governor in his parlor suite. “Mack, the only way to stop David from talking on television is to allow him to finish Nicole’s treatment.”

“We closed that door, Warren,” Burrow said impatiently.

“But David doesn’t care about anything else, not even his license.”

“He’s grounded and stays grounded.”

“We can find a loophole for him to appeal the case, Mack. Then we can reinstate him and allow the new treatment because it’s in the public interest. David’s on the verge of a medical breakthrough, and the public needs new discoveries. CareFree must support these efforts.”

“Warren, you tire me,” Burrow said, sitting at the antique desk in the expansive room, reading his messages and glancing at the newspaper headlines while Warren stood over him, pleading for his life. “The public needs a lot of things. You decided what they needed seven weeks ago when you told me you couldn’t make your payroll, and you told the doctors they had to limit their tests and treatments. How can you blatantly contradict yourself?”

“But you contradict yourself all the time, Mack. I mean, you change your mind on issues constantly. So we can say that I changed my mind. The public interest lies in new treatments and cures.”

“The public interest lies in limiting treatment, so we can meet CareFree’s payroll.”

“The public interest lies in nerve repair, Mack.”

“The public interest lies in vaccinations for kids.”

“The public interest lies in crossing new frontiers.”

“The public interest lies in keeping up with our old frontiers.”

“The public interest lies in David’s work!”

Burrow smiled slyly, like a card player holding the better hand. “Warren, you silly man. Don’t you know that human desires and needs are unlimited? Is it good to cure baldness? Yes. Is it good for mommies to rest in the hospital after having their babies? Yes. Is it good for people to get expensive brain scans every time they bang their heads, just to be safe? Yes. Is nerve repair good? Is it better than curing cancer? Better than fixing bad hearts? Better than kidney transplants?”

“David’s research has to have a place in all that. You can’t decide it doesn’t, Mack.”

“Grow up, man! I
do
decide. The public elects me to decide these things. Right now I’ve got to win in November, otherwise there won’t be any CareFree, so it’s definitely in the public interest for me to get votes. And that’s not gonna happen if we cave in to the doctors. Your son broke the law, and you clipped his wings. If we backed down now, the press would cremate you for favoritism. I can’t have
another
running mate embroiled in scandal. Case closed.”