Suzy's Case: A Novel (42 page)

“I knew Rosie wouldn’t give us up.”

“Yes you did, June. I knew it, too.”

June and Suzy come back to my office to wait for Trace to take them home. I begin to explain the terms of the settlement in plain English. This is something I normally do beforehand, but I wasn’t sure the Weasel was going to show. “First of all, the monies that both you and Suzy are going to receive are tax-free. You see, this is not income. You’re being compensated for a loss sustained, so technically there’s no gain, capital or otherwise. Most of Suzy’s money is going to be placed in a financial vehicle known as a structured settlement. It’s like an annuity. The hospital is going to purchase a payment plan that will make monthly payments directly into an account for Suzy’s benefit, maintained jointly by you and an officer of the bank. She’ll receive great big lump sums scattered throughout the payment schedule, which will also be placed in this same account. The first big lump will occur when the initial settlement check is issued and the others will be paid at time periods throughout the rest of Suzy’s life. Usually, the schedule correlates with an expected event such as college, which is clearly inapplicable here.”

“I always thought my baby would be smart enough to go to college, but I’d be unable to afford it. Now, just the opposite is true. I guess this money will make our lives easier, but it really doesn’t change things. I’ll never have my baby back.”

“June, that’s the bittersweet reality of what I do. None of my clients are ever made whole.” I quickly continue my explanation of the settlement to avoid June’s final realization of this merciless truth. “One reason we use structured settlements is because there’s guaranteed return over the life of the payout, with annual built-in three percent adjustments for cost-of-living increases. Another reason we use a structure is so Suzy receives her money plus the money she
earns
on her money tax-free. If we took her settlement all at once in one big lump sum and invested it, reaping the same return as a structure, we’d only receive half that money because our profits would be taxable. You follow?”

“Yep.” She sighs. Who can blame her?

“The last thing you need to know is that this money is guaranteed for the next thirty years, even in the event Suzy has a premature death. I hate to talk about anyone dying, especially someone I’ve come to care about like Suzy, but you have to know about this provision. In the event she predeceases you, they still must make all the payments over the next thirty years. That means, God forbid, if she dies six months from now, they still have to make payments for the next twenty-nine and a half years directly to you, June, as her sole heir and beneficiary under the Trusts and Estates laws of New York.”

“I understand completely.” Her cell rings. “It’s Trace.” She flips it open. “Yeah, baby … okay, baby … the case settled, baby … we don’t need it anymore, baby …”

“We don’t need what anymore, June?” I ask.

“Hold on, Trace,” she tells him, then looks at me. “Trace got some documents from the Fidge’s people inside the hospital.”

“Tell him to bring them up! Tell him to bring them up!” I yell twice for good measure.

“Chill, chill. You don’t have to scream.” She turns her attention back to Trace. “Heard that? Good. See you soon.” She flips shut her phone. “He’s around the corner and will be right up.”

In ten minutes, I hear my office entry door bang closed with authority. Trace enters and I reach for the beaten-up folder he hands me. I open it and there are two pieces of paper. The top one is just as I expected. It’s a copy of the letter from Toledo to the hospital. The same exact one Toledo sent me a copy of, identifying the dangerous condition, with Engineersafe’s instructions to apply the enclosed adapter as a remedy. Only this copy is date-stamped
RECEIVED: HOSPITAL RISK MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT
. I hand it over to June and she looks at it.

“That’s the date for which Toledo has the certified signed receipt from the hospital, as described in the letter they sent to me. The
Weasel’d be in big trouble if I let this out, since she verified in her D and I response the hospital had no documentation.”

“Let her slide,” June says. “She did the right thing in the end.”

“That’s the proper attitude. It’s of no consequence to us now. We knew the Weasel was attempting to pervert the course of justice. Here we have concrete proof.”

The other piece of paper in the folder is a document titled “Work Order” on a preprinted form. The heading reads: “Brooklyn Catholic Hospital, Department of Risk Management.” It’s dated February 14, two days after the receipt of Engineersafe’s “Notification of Defect” letter and instruction to apply the adapter. The body reads:

To:
Department of Cardiology; Department of Engineering, Maintenance Division

From:
Brooklyn Catholic Hospital, Department of Risk Management

Work Order Number:
00139

Purpose of Work Order:
Our contract heart monitor vendor, Toledo, has identified a potentially dangerous condition with a heart-monitoring machine we have in the hospital bearing a manufacture identification number beginning CBE. We have only one of these “defective” machines from Toledo, which is a replacement monitor. The male pins on the end of the electrode lead wires have been misapplied by a medical professional into the female receptor socket of an extension cord connected with live current, causing bodily harm to a patient in another hospital facility. Toledo has provided the Department of Risk Management with a plastic adapter to remedy the potentially dangerous condition. See copy of Toledo letter attached hereto with schematic diagram instructing how to place the adapter.

Action Required:
A member of the Engineering Department, Maintenance Division, together with a member of the Cardiology
Department are to place the male ends (prongs) of the lead wires used with that machine into the provided adapter to prevent the potential danger to a patient from an accidental misapplication.

Deadline for Completion:
Within twenty-four hours from the date of this Work Order.

Verification of Work Order Completion:
I, _________________, am a member of the Department of Engineering, Maintenance Division, and hereby affirm I have completed the “Action Required” by this Work Order.

Date: ______________ Signature: __________________________________

Verification of Work Order Completion:
I, _________________, am a member of the Department of Cardiology, and hereby affirm I have completed the “Action Required” by this Work Order.

Date: ______________ Signature: __________________________________

Verification of Work Order Completion:
I, _________________, am the Risk Manager of the Brooklyn Catholic Hospital, and hereby affirm I have verified that the above members of the Department of Engineering and the Department of Cardiology have successfully completed the “Action Required” by this Work Order by personally inspecting the work performed.

Date: ______________Signature: __________________________________

I take the Work Order and hold it up to June, Suzy, and Trace. “This paper is a Work Order requiring two people from the hospital to put the Toledo adapter on and for a third person to make sure the work was performed. It’s dated two years and nine months prior to Suzy’s injury. I’m not surprised it’s not signed by anyone in the “Verification of Work Order Completion” sections because had the adapter been plugged on, Suzy never would’ve been electrocuted.”

“So what are you going to do with
this
information?” asks June.

“Nothing.”

“But this shit ain’t right.”

“It’s criminal negligence, if you ask me.”

“So what are you going to do?” June eggs me on.

“I told you already. Nothing. There’s nothing to gain from it. We can’t give Suzy her life back and we’ve accomplished the only thing we can by getting her money for an improved quality of life. You and Suzy are now taken care of and can live each day without a financial care in the world. There’s great value in that, I promise, and Suzy definitely likes to have fun. You guys deserve to enjoy each minute after what you’ve been through since Suzy’s injury.”

June is quiet for several seconds. “I think you’re right. Suzy may be brain damaged, but she definitely does enjoy doing fun things. I think the first stop is that trip to Vegas.”

“That’s wise, June. Some scholar whose name I’m having difficulty retrieving from my long-term memory once said, ‘The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.’ If we seek action based on this, it’ll just put us right smack back into the middle of things. Stuck in the system again. Overlook it, I say, and move forward with your new life.”

I turn to Trace. “Thank you for all you’ve done. You’re a good friend to June and Suzy, and you’ve helped me out greatly on this case. There’s something I’ve got to ask you, though. Was it you who saved me when I was run off the road? And was it you, again, who saved me from inside the trunk of that car?”

“Na, man. Wasn’t me,” Trace answers in his deep voice.

“You sure you’re not just being humble about taking credit for your good deeds?”

“Na, man. I’m telling you. It wasn’t me.”

“Okay. I thought it might have been you who saved me at the crash, although I had my doubts about you being my rescuer from the trunk because he didn’t have your giant arms. Was it the Fidge that rescued me?”

“Wasn’t the Fidge, either, I’m certain,” Trace answers. This makes no sense.

I address the group. “I guess we’re done here. Trace, please get my favorite clients home safely and take it easy on those rubber-burning
peel-outs. Suzy, after her money is placed in a structured settlement, is now the thirty-five-million-dollar girl. My next stop is the emergency room uptown.”

I walk into the ER at Lenox Hill Hospital and immediately begin arguing with the chief of emergency medicine to call the chief of plastic. “Sir,” he tells me, “you don’t need the chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery to come here to close your scrotum. It’s not an anatomical area requiring the aesthetic skill of the chief of the department.”

“Says you. I’ll have you know I have the balls of a twenty-year-old, and I don’t want anything done to compromise their youthful appearance. It’s not like I want him to Botox the wrinkles out of my sac. My condition is a medically necessary procedure and I just want your most qualified doctor.” I settle for the one with the second-most seniority in plastic.

As far as my ankle is concerned, I allow a second-year resident to do the closed reduction and recasting, but I experience a brief encounter with the attending after seeing the postreduction X-ray films. With the films up on the view box, I make myself heard. “Your resident hasn’t achieved satisfactory anatomical alignment of my medial malleolus,” I tell him. “There’s some external rotation of the fracture fragment.” I point to the spot.

The attending, being protective of his resident, initially resists. “When ossification begins, it’ll mold itself into proper alignment as it heals.”

“Why should I rely on chance when you can get it right now with a little more effort? Besides, you know as well as I do the healing process can’t remedy rotation. What’s wrong is wrong. Just cut this cast off and re-reduce it.” That is exactly what happens.

Just before discharge the attending finds me and apologizes for what he called “an error in judgment” concerning the rotated fragment.

“At least you didn’t assert risk or complication,” I tell him, but it only makes him smile uncertainly.

I take a car service home and sleep like a baby during the ride. Having been given crutches this time despite my pleading for a walking boot, I crutch my way into my house at close to four in the morning.

I quietly make my way upstairs, feeling woozy from the Percocets. I stumble into my smallish walk-in closet, which was three times bigger on the blueprints but was downsized by my wife’s intervention between framing and drywall. The secret change order made her adjoining closet 50 percent bigger, but the builder’s profit ten thousand less for his indiscretion.

All I can think about as I slowly get undressed is taking tomorrow off and smoking a cigar. I cautiously take down my underwear, then inspect my intact sutures. Next I take my watch off and set it on the shelf where it always goes. To my surprise, on this same shelf is a piece of folded paper.

The only time paper makes its way there is when our housekeeper, the New Marcolina, finds it during a pre–dry cleaning pocket frisk. The neatly folded rectangle looks familiar. I decide to play the “I’m not going to look at it until I remember what it is” game, but a few seconds later it hits me. It’s Dr. Laura Smith’s curriculum vitae.

Instead of dropping the CV into the wastebasket, I allow my curiosity to compel me to unfold it. Reading it, I quickly get to the part that lays out her education. And there it is.

Dr. Laura was a first-year resident at the Brooklyn Catholic Hospital when Toledo sent the adapter to Risk Management and a third-year resident when Suzy got electrocuted. She undoubtedly didn’t want the case to go forward because it was being brought against the hospital at which she trained.

I go to the last page of her CV. It gives her maiden name. How do I know it? I’ve seen that name before. It suddenly occurs to me where. So much for a day of cigar smoking. There’s more to this, and I need to know.