Nothing Personal (4 page)

“I really didn’t mean it,” she insisted. I just wanted somebody to listen to me.”

B.J. shook his head. Somehow he’d gotten a second cigarette over that left ear. “The Bagel Man is still trying to figure out how you managed it on so much Tubarine.”

“Determination.”

“That’s what Administration is probably afraid you’d say.”

“How old was she, Beej?”

His eyes clouded briefly, and Kate saw what the rest of the world wouldn’t. “Thirty-four.”

“I didn’t mean it,” she said again, her voice even smaller.

B.J. actually patted her hand. “I know it, pogue. I know it.”

This time, Kate did cry.

“
WHAT ARE YOU
gonna do,” Kate demanded some seven days later, “throw me out?”

They were all there: Kate; Phyl, her supervisor; Mrs. Warner; even the hospital lawyer, an unctuous, well-dressed yuppie whose specialty was real estate. Considering how much land Serious Money had taken over in the last five years, he was probably the most important man on the board. Right now he was raising Kate’s blood pressure.

“I’m sure this is distressing for you,” he soothed, as if she were a witness he’d just exposed in full view of the jury box.

Kate leaned a little across the big conference table, her eyes rabid. “No,” she disagreed gently. “Having a little boy die because this hospital dicked around with a transfer
distresses
me. Knowing that two very good paramedics died because of the way we were forced to transfer that little boy
distresses
me. This
disgusts
me.”

He just shrugged, his thousand-dollar suit shimmering slightly in the expensive lighting they saved for the executive offices. “I’m afraid you don’t leave us any alternatives here, Kate.”

They had lain in wait, letting her gain her strength, murmuring platitudes about taking care of their own, sending their messages of support and comfort through the fifth person at the table, who was at this moment staring at the rather large picture of Sister Maria Goretti Simmons, the founder of the hospital, as if hearing her sonorous tones right through the fifty years since the good sister had died.

Kate wondered what Sister Goretti, who had founded St. Simon’s, would think of this. Especially since the woman watching her was the last of their community to grace the hospital grounds, Sister Ann Francis, a vague, sweet, ineffective ex-pharmacologist the staff called Sister Mary Polyester. A hand-patter of the first order with an apple-doll face, the little woman had for the last five years been semiretired into pastoral care and general goodwill, where she wandered the hospital holding hands and dispensing doctrine like Pez.

It was a real hanging jury, if Kate had ever seen one, all gathered to teach her the facts of life about hospital bills, insurance, and workmen’s compensation. According to them, Kate so far only qualified for the first.

They’d had a volunteer sweep her from her room in a wheelchair and deposit her in the executive suite so fast Kate shouldn’t have been able to bring along any help. Fortunately for her, they’d passed Tim in the hall. He had invited himself along without hesitation.

“Now let me get this straight,” Tim said evenly,
his handsome blond features arranged in a professional mask, his Virginia drawl bored, his attention on the elegant surgeon’s hands he’d folded before him rather than on the people arrayed across the table. “You’re saying Kate isn’t qualified for workmen’s compensation for her injuries because, a, there was a question about the transfer and, b, she was off hospital property at the time she was injured. And because her injuries left her with retrograde amnesia about the incident, she can’t defend herself or enlighten you. Now since her hospital insurance policy only covers eighty percent of costs, she now owes you all in excess of ten thousand dollars.”

“We simply need to clarify matters,” the lawyer said with a sympathetic frown. “The hospital can’t be held liable in the matter, since it was something Ms. Manion took on at her own risk. Surely you can see that. But I think we’re making her a most generous offer. We’ll cover another five percent of her bill if she signs a release from responsibility right now.”

“And what about her job?” Tim turned to Phyl.

Phyl sputtered, her jowls quivering. “Well…well,” she offered in a high, thin voice that sounded like a bad violin over the intercom. “Kate is entitled to four full weeks of accrued sick leave. But we can’t guarantee her a return to the emergency department. I can’t wait that long to fill her position.”

Kate rubbed her head. “If I could look at the chart,” she suggested, even knowing better, “it might help me remember something pertinent.”

The lawyer—what was his name: Furly, Hurly,
Curly?—was already shaking his head before Kate finished. “That’s not possible, and you know it. That chart is confidential material.”

Kate laughed before she could stop herself. “It is for anybody trying to argue with you.”

Stop, she commanded herself. Take a breath. You can get the chart some other way. It was just that they were penalizing her for a giant hole in her memory, so she couldn’t fight, couldn’t even agree if their action was really called for. She couldn’t do anything, and Kate didn’t take forced inactivity well.

“Mr. Gunn could have had you fired for jeopardizing the lives of Billy Rashad and the crew of that ambulance,” Phyl snapped in her most aggrieved voice. “There wasn’t any reason the regular transfer crew couldn’t have been used to transport that little boy. Be thankful you still have your job.”

Another sympathetic voice heard from. Kate fought the edges of black rage by clamping her hands around the armrests of the wheelchair until her chest hurt. She still couldn’t remember what had happened, but she knew one thing. There had to have been a damn good reason for her to coerce the crew from Lindbergh into helping her. Either the transfer ambulance hadn’t had a full life-support team or they would have taken too long to show up. That little boy must have been real bad.

“I’ll tell you what,” she managed to say. “I’m not signing anything. I’m not agreeing to anything until I talk to my lawyer.”

Lawyers again. She’d pay somebody just to tell her there was nothing he could do. But she had no choice. She couldn’t simply let them win.

There was an uncomfortable silence on the other side of the table. Kate should have stared them all down. But she couldn’t do it without opening her mouth, and that would have sealed her fate on the spot. So she held still, willing herself to silence, and stoked herself on the simple support of Tim’s hand on her arm.

“I don’t think Mr. Gunn will allow me to make this offer again, Kate,” the lawyer said, as if instructing a very slow child. “And Mrs. Warner will be more than happy to show you just how fast your bill is mounting up.”

That brought Kate’s head up and her eyes open. “I’m sure she would.” There was nursing care and the long round of IV antibiotics she’d needed to counteract a hospital-acquired strep infection. There were daily chest X rays at a hundred dollars a pop to make sure her lung had remained inflated, physical therapy for her broken leg, and echocardiograms to watch out for any problems from her surgery. There was pain medicine and dressings and lab work and IV fluids. And after today there would undoubtedly be sedatives. She was furious. There was nothing Kate hated more than being trapped, and they had her by the short hairs. Both sets.

Not only that, but the orders had come right from the top. Leo Gunn, the chief administrator, CEO, and camp commandant of St. Serious Money. Gunn’s only concern in the matter would
have been that keeping-the-blame-from-the-hospital business. Kate could be a pain in the ass, but she wouldn’t be as inclined to complain in the millions of dollars as the family of that little boy. Therefore, if they were going to do it, Gunn would rather they do it to Kate.

“I think Kate told you what she wants to do,” Tim announced, the scrape of his chair almost lost in the carpet as he got to his feet. “Now I’m going to get her back to her room—unless you plan to transfer her to Regional.”

Regional. The city and county hospital where all indigent patients ended up. The gun-and-knife club, the city’s AIDS center, where they’d undoubtedly told her to send Billy Rashad in the first place. The temple of desperation.

“Don’t be melodramatic, Doctor Peterson,” the lawyer said evenly. “Kate’s one of our nurses. She stays here, where she belongs.” And with that, he also got up.

Everybody else scraped right alongside. Even Sister managed to find her feet, smiling vaguely at everyone.

Tim unlocked the wheelchair and backed Kate away from the table.

“I need a decision by tomorrow,” the lawyer said.

Kate ignored him. Tim ignored him. Only Sister moved to hold the door open.

“God bless you, dear,” she said with a beatific smile to Kate. “And remember, everything will be taken care of. You do look so much better.”

Kate couldn’t help smiling back. “Thanks, Sister.”

She didn’t bother to say good-bye to her supervisor, who stood alongside like a rather lumpish guard dog.

“There has to be something I can do,” Tim insisted as they headed down the carpeted hall.

Kate shook her head. “And let them get their claws into you? Forget it. You only have another year to go on your residency. Keep your nose clean.”

“But Kate—”

This time she tilted her head back so she could look straight up at those classically chiseled features, the soft, sweet blue eyes. The frustration that twisted it all into familiar agony. God, she loved him. If only things were different. If only she could give back half of what he’d given her.

“But Kate, nothing. You’re vulnerable, Tim, and believe me, they wouldn’t hesitate a minute to go for the kill if they found out.”

So intent were they that neither heard the door open to the other conference room.

“Why, Kate Manion, isn’t it?”

Kate swung around even faster than Tim, her heart thudding with the possibility that they’d been overheard. But from the expression on the face of the approaching gentleman, they were safe.

“It is,” he said with a big smile, a pile of files in his arms, his posture bent forward just a little to take in Kate in the wheelchair. “Hello there, Doctor Peterson.”

Tim nodded. “Mr. Fellows.”

Mr. Fellows’s attention was already back on
Kate, his pleasantly patrician features folded into concern. “This is wonderful. I didn’t think you’d be up and around so soon. Says a lot for the talent around here, doesn’t it?”

Kate didn’t quite manage a smile for the senior vice president of Serious Money. She didn’t know much about him except that he’d personally convinced some very top-notch physicians to join the team in the last few months, and he was rumored to be a closet Barry Manilow fan.

“I was just discussing my health-care benefits,” Kate said.

Fellows looked up in time to see the door open down the hall and Mrs. Warner step out.

He gave a funny little shake of his head without looking back to Kate. “They should have waited.” Another shake, and his attention was hers again. “Don’t worry about it. You just get better. And don’t worry about Frances. We all understand perfectly.”

Kate would have loved to have felt reassured, but she’d been in the business too long. As the staff was fond of saying, a free pregnancy test should come with every physical.

“Thank you,” she said instead, knowing anything else would come out shrill and accusing.

Tim damn near attained warp speed with that wheelchair to get them away from the administrators before anybody else caught up. “You’re not going through this alone,” he insisted yet again as they swung off the elevator onto the fourth floor: post-op, rehab, and ladies’ lingerie.

“How can I?” Kate asked. “None of you will let
me. I’m just not going to have you throw yourself on a grenade to save me. I always manage to float to the surface in these things.”

They didn’t stop, didn’t even slow, as the world of the hospital went on around them on the surgical floor. Central-supply techs restocked Nurseservers, and nurses bent over charts. Secretaries fondled phones, and patients trailing IV lines and pushing poles tried to remember how to walk and breathe at the same time.

Kate and Tim, so long inured to the sights, didn’t even notice, like background music in a movie. Their focus was on each other. Anyone who saw them might have thought they were sharing the silent communication of people in love.

“I’ll call Steve,” Tim said with a quick nod, as if punctuating the end of the discussion. “You can’t say no to that.”

Steve Peterson, lawyer to movers and shakers, schmoozer with the elite. Hot, hungry, and carnivorous. Tim’s brother and the only other holder of Tim’s secrets.

“Thank you.” Kate acknowledged his help with a big grin and was relieved when Tim smiled back. “That would be defense enough. Now put me to bed and get back down to the unit where you belong.”

Kate turned to find the door of her room open and groaned. There was an ambulance cart inside. That could only mean one thing: she had company. Damn. She didn’t want to be social, especially with somebody she didn’t know. She wanted to
curl into fetal position and curse. Steadily. Fluently. And she didn’t feel like doing it in front of people.

“Where the hell have you been?”

It wasn’t people. It was Jules. Jules and Sticks and Parker from the emergency room, all in scrubs and wearing big silly grins. And right behind them were McMillan and Kramer from the Lindbergh Fire District, decked out in full uniform, as if they’d just swept in with a new victim. Only there was no one else in the room.

Kate took another look around as Tim brought her to a halt just inside. McMillan, a balding, skinny black guy with a taste for English Leather, promptly closed the door behind them as if this were a clandestine meeting of a new fraternity.

“Didn’t I get the invitation?” Kate asked dryly.

Jules just kept grinning from her great height, like Buddha in scrubs. “Word is out that you were just downstairs being taught the difference between a valued employee and a pain in the ass.”

“Wanna see the rack marks?”

“Well, then, that explains why you forgot what today was.”

Kate took another look around, saw more silly grins. “I’m sure you’ll remind me.”

Jules just shook her head sadly. “Short-term memory still screwed up, huh? Well, that’s what happens when you do spin-the-wheel in the back of an ambulance.”

“Jules…”

Jules assumed an air of solemnity Kate hadn’t seen since the day the big woman had pro
nounced the Lindbergh mayor’s mother’s favorite parakeet dead after these same paramedics had brought the poor thing in with breathing problems. The breathing hadn’t been the problem by then; the broken neck had, from where the men, in an effort to reassure the distraught old woman, had applied pressurized oxygen to the pet and proceeded to shoot it across the room into the far wall. Four times.