Oath of Office (2 page)

Even though Lou had ultimately won that round, he had to admit that as usual, Renee had a point, and he had told her so when he apologized for sounding like a jerk. For whatever reason, he had been feeling sorry for himself on the day the forms were due back to the Carlisle School. And despite some misgivings of his own about exposing Em to the raw underbelly of D.C., he had decided to turn Take Your Student to Work Day into Little Bighorn.

Two hours and thirty-five minutes to go.

So far, so good.

Despite a steady stream of patients, Gerhard Schultz was about as challenging a trauma case as the Eisenhower Annex typically saw. Lou missed the action in the main ER, but in his past life, he had squirreled away enough action points to star in a video game. For now, part-time shifts at the old Annex would do just fine.

Not surprisingly, the patients and the staff loved Emily to pieces. There was a grace and composure surrounding her that won people over almost as quickly as did her dark, unassuming beauty. Thirteen going on thirty. People loved to say that about their kids—especially their daughters. But the old saw, though true in Emily’s case, invariably brought Lou a pang. It was hard not to believe that in many ways he had robbed those seventeen years from her.

“Okay, Mr. Schultz,” he said, “one of the nurses will be in to dress your arm in just a few minutes. No work until next Monday. If you need a note, the nurse will put one together and I’ll sign it. Last tetanus shot?”

“A year or so ago. I … um … tend to bump into sharp things.”

“Sharp,
rusty
things,” Lou corrected. “We’ll give you a wound-care sheet.”

“Your dad’s a good man,” the roofer said again. “I been around a lot of doctors. I can tell.”

“I’ve been around a lot of fathers, and I can tell, too,” Emily said.

Lou wouldn’t have been surprised if her smile had healed Schultz’s nasty gash then and there, in addition to curing any illness that might have been lurking inside him.

Looking utterly perfect in her sky blue scrubs, she walked back to the doctor’s lounge, shoulder to shoulder with her father.

“Well, that was fun,” she said when he had settled her in on the sofa, around a cup of hot chocolate from the Keurig machine.

“You think you might like to be a doctor?” Lou asked, remembering that he could have answered that question in the affirmative when he was four.

“I suppose anything’s possible. You and Mom are certainly good role models.”

“She’s a terrific shrink.”

“It’s hard for you, isn’t it.”

“What’s hard?” Lou asked, knowing perfectly well what she was talking about.

“The divorce.”

“It wasn’t what I wanted, if that’s what you mean.”

“People get remarried to their exes. It happens on TV all the time.”

“Em, Mom
is
remarried. You got that, bucko? Add me to the mix, and you get a sitcom that would compete with
Modern Family.
”

Emily chewed on her lip and picked at a fingernail. “I’m glad you won out and brought me in with you today,” she said finally.

“I didn’t win anything. It’s Take Your Kid to Work Day, and you’re my kid. You always were, and you always will be.”

Lou crossed to the door and glanced over at the two new arrivals in the waiting room—a Latina woman and the extremely ancient man he assumed was her father. The fellow’s color was poor, and he was working for each breath.

“Check an oh-two sat on him, Roz,” he said to the nurse, “and have Gordon start going over him right away.”

“Thanks. I’m glad you feel that way,” Emily was saying. “What would you say if I told you I was losing interest in school?”

Lou narrowly missed spraying out his coffee. “You’re, like, tops in your class. You get all A’s.”

“I’m looking out the window and daydreaming a lot. That can’t be anyone’s idea of an education.”

“You don’t go to school to get an education.”

Emily immediately perked up. “What do you mean?”

“Call it Welcome’s Law. You go to school for the degree. Anything you learn while you’re there is gravy.

Her eyes were sparkling now. “Go on.”

“Every single day that you manage to stay in school translates into ten thousand people in the world that you won’t have to take BS from in your life. The more degrees you have, the fewer little, small-minded people there will be who have big power over you. I stayed in school long enough to get an M.D. degree. Now, nobody can boss me around.”

“What about Dr. Filstrup at the Physician Wellness Office?”

Lou groaned. In terms of insight and verbal sparring, Emily was her mother’s daughter.

So much for Welcome’s Law.

Lou’s affiliation with the PWO went back nine years—to the day when his medical license was suspended for self-prescribing amphetamines. He had always been a heavier-than-average drinker, but speed, which he took to handle the sleep-deprivation of working two moonlighting jobs, quickly brought him to his knees. Enter the PWO, an organization devoted to helping doctors with mental illness, physical illness, substance abuse, and behavioral problems. The PWO director arranged for an immediate admission to a rehab facility in Georgia, and kept in close contact with Lou’s caseworkers and counselors until his discharge six months later. After that, a PWO monitor met with him weekly, then monthly, and supervised his recovery and urine screens for alcohol and other drugs of abuse. After a spotless year, his license was restored and he returned to work at Eisenhower Memorial. Three years after that, he was hired as the second of two PWO monitors. For the next year, things went perfectly. Then Walter Filstrup was brought in by the PWO board to head up the program.

“You know, bucko,” Lou said to his daughter, “sometimes you’re too smart for your own good.”

Although he seldom went out of his way to discuss his job frustrations with his child, neither was Lou ever one to measure his words. And the kid was a sponge.

“All right,” he said. “Consider my current position with PWO the exception that proves the law. Now, let’s get out there and see some patients. You ready to stay in school?”

Emily cocked her head thoughtfully. “For the moment,” she said.

“That’s all I can ask for. So, let’s not fall behind. In the ER business, you never know when something’s going to come out of left field and slam you against the wall.”

CHAPTER 2

With a nurse, the licensed nurse’s aide, and the resident busy with the old man in one of the back examining rooms, Lou handled an ear infection in a toddler, an upper respiratory virus in an elderly woman, and a cracked finger bone in a fifteen-year-old high school shortstop, who was dangerously close to losing an entire limb if he didn’t stop leering at the doctor’s daughter.

Sixty minutes to go.

It may have been a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason, but Take Your Kid to Work Day was proving to be a total success.

The nurse clinician, a newlywed named Barbara Waldman, appeared behind a wheelchair at the door to the treatment room. The man in the chair was someone Lou knew well—a sixty-two-year-old who lived in various doorways near the Annex.

“Desmond!” Lou exclaimed, helping the man onto the examining table and out of his tattered air force jacket. “That gang again?”

Desmond Carter dabbed at his bleeding nostrils with a rag and nodded.

For most of the homeless in the area, being beaten for sport by any of several gangs who roamed the neighborhood was routine. Usually, though, the attacks occurred at night. Desmond, though black, was known for playing Irish tunes on a battered pennywhistle. When the music business was slow, he cashed in bottles. A Vietnam vet, he was rail thin, but with eyes that never betrayed the hardship of his life. Today, his face was swollen and bruised, with a split lip and the bloody nose. His oily trousers were shredded at the knees, revealing deep abrasions. One shoe was missing.

“Good to see you, Dr. Lou,” Desmond said.

“Sorry this keeps happening, my friend. Want us to send for the police?”

“Ain’t worth it. Just some bandages and fix my nose if it’s broken. How you been?”

“Doing fine.”

“Still at the gym?”

“When I have time. A little sparring, some training when one of the up-and-comers asks for it. Listen, we got to get you undressed and cleaned up. Then we’ll check you over and get an X-ray of your nose and any other part that needs it. Desmond, that gorgeous young woman over there is my daughter, Emily. She’s here helping us out for the day.”

“Ms. Emily,” Desmond said, nodding and managing a weak, toothless grin. “It’s fine with me if you want to stay.”

Lou considered the situation and shook his head.

“Yeah,” Emily said. “You walk around your apartment all the time in your boxers.”

Had Barbara Waldman been chewing gum, she would have swallowed it.

“You have your hands full with that one, Dr. Welcome,” she managed.

“Listen, Em,” Lou said, “I don’t think so. Why don’t you wait in the lounge until we get Desmond taken care of.”

He missed his daughter’s glare as she left the room.

Nurse and doc gently stripped the vet down and helped him into a pair of disposable scrub pants and a johnny. He had absorbed a pounding, but it was hardly the first time. His abdominal wall was a road map of scars—the result of wounds, Lou had learned, that had led to two Purple Hearts.

Lou clenched his jaw. He had encountered more than enough violence and depravity to have developed something of an immunity, but in truth, he knew he would never be inured—especially when the victim was a guy like Desmond Carter.

He was preparing to examine the man when he heard the soft clearing of a throat from the doorway. Emily was standing there, hands on her hips, looking incredibly like her mother.

“Dad, you know how much I hate being treated like a baby,” she said. “I’ve seen street people before and black people, and even hurt people. It’s okay for me to watch—I promise you. You’re not protecting me from anything.”

Lou looked up at the ceiling and then the wall—anyplace but at his daughter’s wonderful face. He had been outmatched by her from the day she was born. Besides, exposing her to Desmond Carter this way seemed right. Still, it was probably something he should discuss with Renee. He envisioned his ex after the fact, arms folded, tapping her foot in exasperation, and heard her reminding him that she did, in fact, have a cell phone.

Better to ask forgiveness than permission, he decided.

“Barbara, does Desmond have a record of an HIV test?”

“Negative test drawn here four months ago,” she said.

“Em, you can come in,” he heard himself say. “But stand over there by the wall. Barbara, how about getting her into double gloves and a gown. Might as well give her a face shield as well.”

Swimming in her gown and looking like a teenager from outer space, Emily inched forward and watched as Lou packed both Desmond’s nostrils and explained what he was searching for in each segment of his physical exam. He could see her eyes widen at the man’s scars.

“Desmond, are you sure about no police?” Lou asked.

“Next time, maybe. I got a caseworker. I’ll tell her.”

Sure.

“Barbara,” Lou said, turning to the nurse, “how about ordering a chest film and nasal bones? Maybe get a CBC as well. Then we’ll do whatever we have to, to fix that schnoz.”

“Okay. Then I’m going to stop in the back and see if Gordo and Roz are all right with that poor old man. I think they’re going to transfer him.”

“No problem,” Lou said.

Moments later, the receptionist appeared at the doorway.

“Dr. Welcome, there’s a Dr. Filstrup on the line for you—he says it’s urgent.”

Lou suppressed a smile.

An urgent call from Walter Filstrup.
That had to be an absolute first. He probably wanted Lou to pick up some tuna on his way home and drop it off at the office.

Largely because of the documented strength of his recovery, and the way he related to clients, Lou was well regarded by the PWO board. But he was hardly ready to take over as director. And the truth was, there were few beside Filstrup who seemed interested in the job.

From day one, he and Filstrup were like a cobra and a mongoose—actually, more like a cobra and a
baby
goose. The wellness office was a small one as physician health programs went, leaving the opinionated, bombastic therapist with only a couple of minions to boss around … chief among them, Lou.

“Em,” Lou said, “Barbara will be right back. Linda, please patch Dr. Filstrup over to the doctors’ lounge. I’ll talk to him there.”

The phone was ringing as Lou entered the lounge.

“Welcome? It’s me.”

Lou cringed at the sound of his boss’s voice. “I’m a little busy right—”

“Welcome, listen. You’ve really blown it this time.”

“I left the seat up in the office men’s room?”

“You’re not funny. In fact, you’re never funny.”

“Walter, what is this all about?”

“It’s about your darling client, John Meacham, the man whose license you single-handedly got restored.”

“He’s a terrific guy and a terrific doc. I had coffee with him the day before yesterday. He’s doing fine.”

“Well, today he shot seven people to death in his office and then turned the gun on himself.”

Lou sank onto the arm of the worn leather sofa, unable to take in a breath. “If you’re messing with me, Walter,” he managed finally, “I swear, I’m going to hang you by your thumbs.”

“Turn on the news. Any news.”

“You sure it’s our client?”

“
Your
client. In case you forget, I never thought he was too tightly wrapped, and I told you that on more than one occasion. I kept pushing to get rid of that touchy-feely social worker therapist you were using, and to get him to a psychiatrist. But no.”

“Walter, stop it! This isn’t the time. Tell me again. John killed seven people in his office and then killed himself?”

“Not exactly. They’re all dead. He isn’t.”

“Where did they take him?”

“DeLand Regional.”

“As soon as I can get relief here, I’m going out there. I can’t believe this.”