The Second Opinion, page 23
“. . . Thea, tell me something before you go,” Niko was saying.
“Yes?”
“Both Selene and I feel as if you’ve been acting rather distant toward us for a while now. Is it because we advocated for Petros to be let go?”
“I hadn’t really realized that I’ve been distant. If I have, then I’m sorry. You know how I feel about him, and I know how you feel. For now, that’s the way it is.”
“Yes,” Niko said, “that’s the way it is. . . . Well, if you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go. Marie’s upstairs making sure the kids are tucked in. I’ll convey your regrets that you couldn’t stay longer. Want me to have someone put a dessert plate together for you?”
“No, no. I’ll be fine.”
“Have you been talking to Dimitri much? Is that it?”
“I’m fine, Niko. I’m sorry you guys think I’ve been acting distant, but I’m fine—really. Besides, whatever Dimitri says I tend to take with a grain of salt, just like you probably do.”
“You’d best do that, Thea. Our big brother has nothing to do cooped up in that carriage house of his except to make trouble. And he’s extremely adept at doing that.”
“Thank you again,” Thea said.
She felt more anxious than ever to get away, but not home to Wellesley, she decided. At that moment, she wanted no more of Dimitri than she did of the twins. It was still early enough to go back into the hospital for a final check of Petros and some time with Hay-ley. Terrible things were going on at the Beaumont. She felt almost certain of it. The problem was that without her father’s help, there seemed little she could do about them. Her allies were in precious short supply.
Like a servant taking her leave from a potentate, Thea backed away from her brother for several steps before finally turning and heading toward her car. Of all the unpleasant events since her return home, this party was the worst. She felt as if she had somehow swum into a whirlpool, and was being sucked helplessly into its vortex.
Her assault on Lydia Thibideau’s office had provided nothing tangible. Hartnett was a dead end. Musgrave and Selene, and apparently any number of others, were annoyed or even furious with her. She could handle failures, but there had to be something she could do to increase the pressure on whoever was responsible for her father’s condition, without putting him in even greater danger than he was already.
“Thea, wait!”
She was crossing the broad, arcing driveway heading toward the spot on the street where she had parked, when Scott Hartnett called to her from behind.
“Oh, hi, Scott.”
As done wanting to speak with any of her brother’s guests as she could possibly be, she considered simply ignoring the man and dashing away to her car, but instead turned and took a step back toward him. Trim and dapper in white suit and shirt, with a crimson handkerchief folded perfectly in his jacket pocket, Hartnett looked a little unsteady on his feet and, as he drew closer, somewhat glassy- eyed as well.
“I . . . just wanted to officially welcome you to the hospital fraternity—I mean sorority, I mean, well, you know what I mean—and . . . and to touch base with you after . . . what happened earlier today.”
“Thank you, Scott. I’m certainly . . . honored to be a member of the club—even with the lingering restrictions that have been imposed on me.”
“Yes, well . . . I heard about those from Sharon. We’ll see what we can do about them.”
He moved closer, listed to the right, and was forced to brace himself, full palm, against the highly polished hood of a black BMW.
“I’d appreciate that,” Thea said.
“I . . . um . . . was certainly startled and upset by what you were thinking about me . . . doing anything to harm your father. He was . . . is my friend.”
Thea felt uncomfortable talking to the man, who seemed barely in control of his speech. His eyes were bloodshot, and close up, through the evening gloom, his urbane good looks seemed worn and haggard.
“Well,” she said, “with all that has happened, you understand why I might have been a little concerned.”
“I was worried about that, yes. . . . So I brought this to show you. It’s the description of the course I lectured at with Boris Adamov at the Moscow Institute of Coagulation.”
He fumbled for a folded paper in his right front pants pocket, opened it, made a largely unsuccessful attempt to smooth the longitudinal crease, and passed it over. Despite the location of the course, the program was in English. One of the talks, “Recent Advances in Platelet Medicine,” was given by Hartnett himself. Several others, including “Use of Low-Dose Mixed Anticoagulants in Posttraumatic Patients,” were presented by Boris Adamov, whom Thea had heard of.
“This is very interesting, Scott,” she said, handing it back. “But it really wasn’t necessary to bring this here to night. I believed you. In fact, I believed you to the extent that I had decided just to dispose of the syringe you gave me, and not even to bother having the contents analyzed.”
Hartnett was nodding, his lips pulled back in something of a smile, as he shakily replaced the course program in his pocket.
“As I said, your father means a great deal to me,” he said deliberately, pronouncing said as shed. “I am glad you saw fit to trust me as far as analyzing the contents of the syringe goes, but either way would have been fine.”
“That’s great you feel that way.”
“What . . . do you mean?”
“Well, I have a friend who’s a former Boston policeman with connections in the state lab. Even though I completely trust that you were giving my father exactly what you said you were, he doesn’t know you as I do, and he’s not as trusting as I am. I’ve got the syringe you gave me packed away in ice. Tomorrow I’m going to give the mixture to him, and he’s going to have it analyzed. That’ll remove any question, right?”
There was a silence lasting several seconds.
“Right you are, Doctor,” Hartnett said finally. “Let’s get this business put behind us.”
“I knew you’d feel that way, too. Listen, Scott, I want to stop by the hospital and see my father before it gets too late, and you have dessert to take care of. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah,” Hartnett replied, his eyes narrow, the muscles in his face tense. “Tomorrow.”
Petros emerged from darkness slowly. He knew his eyes were closed, and that he could not open them, but light from above him was filtering through his lids. He had been having hallucinations—vivid, mostly pleasant hallucinations—although he had no sense of why they had been happening or how long they had lasted. He also knew that so long as he was hallucinating, he was virtually without pain. The nurses had to be giving him something, some sort of powerful narcotic.
He knew now. He knew that he had locked-in syndrome. He knew that the chances for any useful improvement were small. But according to studies, according to the experts in the field, the chances did exist. He knew that his older son didn’t care. He knew that his twins, his pride for so many years, wished, for selfish reasons, to see him just die.
God knows I did right by them. I sent them to the best schools, guided them into medicine, provided for Niko’s children during the lean years. Okay, so they had chosen to become surgeons, not internists; mechanics, not thinkers. I forgave them for that—I’ve said so any number of times to anyone who would listen. How could they care so little about me now?
Have I done something wrong?
My dear kouklitsa, my Thea. She wants to help. She wants to communicate with me. She should never have left her place here to go off to the jungle, but she’s back now. So intelligent. Such a fine doctor. Together we’ll get to the bottom of whatever it is Hartnett is doing. Together we’ll figure things out.
CHAPTER 40
It was after eleven when Thea, using her electronic pass, pulled into the parking lot outside the Petros Sperelakis Institute for Diagnostic Medicine. Seeing her father’s name on the façade of such an elegant building and such a renowned center of medicine brought a small jet of energy to what had otherwise been an absolutely discouraging and exhausting evening. Her brother’s and sister’s angry words, Scott Hartnett’s alcohol- driven anxiety, and Amy Musgrave’s allegations about a man incapable of defending himself were simply more than she wanted to deal with.
If only she had come away from Lydia Thibideau’s office with the two different films with Hayley’s name on them. With Dan’s help, she might have chanced taking them to the police, and turning the investigation over to them. Maybe now she should consider going to a lawyer—seeing if there could be some sort of charges brought against Thibideau or even trying for a court order allowing a specialist to have access to the MRIs of Samuel Blackman and the late Warren Grigsby. But what would that accomplish? There would always be a logical explanation, and the whole matter could take months or even years to sort out.
Was Thibideau responsible for the hit-and- run accident? Was her cheating on her clinical research the secret Petros had uncovered—the secret that seemed to have cost him so much of his life?
Thea used the pass to open the door to a largely deserted lobby, and headed directly down to the tunnels and across to the building housing the step- down unit. The gleaming passageways were largely deserted, save for laundry trains, a janitor rhythmically swinging his massive buffer from side to side, and some haggard house officers. Thea flashed back to her own residency. It was a period of amazing growth for her, and one that established her ability to look beyond what others thought was best for her to what she herself thought was best.
At the moment, what was best was to put Niko’s party behind her and spend some time with their father; and after that, a visit and maybe some tea with Hayley. Someone knew, she kept thinking. Someone knew what had happened to the Lion, and why. She just had to keep the pressure on without putting the poor guy in anyone’s crosshairs.
The nurses working in the step-down unit weren’t the least bit surprised to see Thea at such an hour. One of them had quipped that she was like a ghost who haunted the hospital at night. The private-duty nurse, a young grad named Tiff any, seemed superfluous given the lack of activity in the unit and the paucity of visitors, probably due to the barbecue. She was working on Petros’s legs when Thea arrived.
“Anything?” Thea asked, moving in across from the nurse and massaging her father’s quadriceps muscle.
“Not really. A little while ago, I was cleaning the corners of his eyes with a Q-tip and I could swear his lid twitched. But he didn’t do it again.”
Thea felt herself react to the nurse’s words, but forced a calm response.
“If it’s significant, it’ll happen again.”
She sent Tiff any on a break, then wiped the lotion from her hands and did a quick exam, talking softly to the man as she did.
“Hang in there. . . . Your skin looks great. . . . The nurses are doing a terrific job. . . . Niko had a barbecue tonight for about a zillion people. . . . They all asked about you. . . . Terrific food. . . . The kids send their love.”
His joints seemed stiff er, especially at the wrists and ankles—not such a good sign.
Gag reflex: none.
Extremity reflexes: all absent.
Belly: soft.
Cardiovascular system: stable.
Lungs: scattered wheezes, pops, and other indicators of alveolar sac fluid. Not such a good finding, but not surprising, either.
Thea made a mental note to have his bronchial tubes suctioned out more frequently. When he was awake, the procedure had to be very unpleasant for him, but it was a vital, lifesaving maneuver, and besides, unless Tiff any’s observation was legitimate, he wasn’t awake anymore. Anticipating another nonresponse, she removed the paper tape from each of his lids and lubricated the inside of the lower ones.
“Dad, give me a sign. Give me a sign you can hear me. Come on, Dad. I love you. Show me you can hear me.”
With agonizing slowness, Petros’s left eye flicked upward, then returned to neutral.
“Yes!” Thea whispered, pumping her fist below the bed. “You’re back!”
Intensely, she tried sorting out what might have happened to cause this improvement, and what Petros might be capable of in terms of communication. Looking upward, even a millimeter, seemed like such a consummate effort for him—quite a bit more difficult, it seemed, than the movement described by locked-in victim Bauby in his memoir.
There had been no arrivals recorded by Tiff any or her predecessor since Sharon Karsten’s visit from three to three thirty. The last appearance by Hartnett was for ten minutes at two thirty. If he had been administering regular doses of a tranquillizer and a long- acting muscle relaxant like pancuronium, he might have assumed that with Niko’s party, Thea would not be returning to the hospital this night, so he could wait until morning to give the next dose.
His mistake.
“I need to find a way to communicate with you without tiring you out. Look up if you understand me. . . . Excellent!”
The movement was faint, little more than an upward flicker, but it was definite. Thea added a tiny bit of lubricant. She felt determined this night to push to the limit Petros could handle. She needed to know what to do next, and with her father and Dimitri both convinced the accident had really been attempted murder, and with the grisly warning from the man in the parking lot, she needed to know quickly.
“Dad, I know this is difficult for you,” she said to the motionless figure below her, his chest rising and falling eerily in response to the mechanical demands of his ventilator; the overhead monitor validating that within the shell of his body, his heartbeat was strong and regular. “I’m going to ask you some questions. All you have to do is look upward if the answer to my question is yes. Otherwise, don’t move at all and I’ll figure things out. Do you understand? . . . Please, do you understand?”
A flicker of movement.
“Oh, thank God . . . Okay. You figured out that Jack Kalishar never had cancer of the pancreas. That’s why you gave me his name.”
The upward movement of Petros’s eye was tenuous but definite.
“Wonderful.”
Through the glass door, Thea saw the nurse, Tiff any, asking silently if she was needed, and waved her away.
“Okay, let’s try again. Is Lydia Thibideau behind all this? . . . Come on, Dad. Is she? . . . I take that as a no.”
How could she not be involved? Thea wondered. How could she not know?
“Have many patients in the Beaumont been cured of illness that they don’t actually have?”
Again, a positive response.
“Patients with diseases other than just pancreatic cancer?”
More slight movement.
“That’s it. Good. Keep at it, Dad. Keep trying. Scott Hartnett is involved, isn’t he? . . . Yes! I knew he was. He has some way of convincing patients and their physicians that the patients have a serious illness. They get treated and cured, and then they donate large amounts of money to the Beaumont out of gratitude. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Petros’s eye movement this time was barely detectable. He had tried valiantly. Now it seemed as if he was running down.
But how? Thea’s mind was screaming. How could Hartnett work such deception?
“One more. Just one more question. Do you know who is responsible for hurting you?”
Nothing.
“Dad, does that mean no? Move your eye if you mean no.”
Again, nothing. Whether he was answering her question or not, the Lion was done—at least for the moment.
“You did great, Dad. You did terrific.” Thea kissed him on the forehead. “S’agapo, Mpampa,” she said. “I love you very much.”
CHAPTER 41
One issue clarified, many more to deal with.
Thea left the step-down unit well after midnight, feeling at once saddened and buoyed. There could be no doubt that Scott Hartnett, brilliant internist and a family friend for many years, was at the center of a medical scam that had added hundreds of millions of dollars to the treasure trove that was the massive endowment of the Beaumont Clinic. Nearly every building at the hospital, and most of the floors within those buildings, were named for someone, to say nothing of the individual rooms and pieces of equipment—even some of the individual furnishings.
Brass Plaques Are Us, she thought, smiling savagely to herself.
Creating, then subsequently curing illness, where none existed.
Remarkable.
Thea headed back into the tunnel on her way to Hayley’s room, wondering just how many patients were involved. Certainly, Hayley Long was one of them. She and Jack Kalishar had to be among the wealthiest patients of the hospital. How many others were there? How many different illnesses?
Then, there were the doctors.
Assuming a complex, pervasive medical scam was going on at the Beaumont, how many others besides Hartnett were part of it? Were the primary care docs and oncologists and various specialists aware of what they were dealing with? The answer, for the vast majority of them, had to be no. If the scheme had been going on for as long as it seemed, someone almost certainly would have caved in and spoken up as Petros had apparently done.
As she entered the elevator in the basement of the building named for her father, Thea couldn’t help but wonder if he was part of the deception. She found it nearly impossible to believe so principled a man, with more money than he was likely able to spend over the rest of his lifetime, and a worldwide reputation, would risk his legacy—risk everything that mattered—to pile up donations and add brass plaques to the walls of his hospital. Had he been involved and finally decided that enough was enough? Would he ever tell her if he were?
