With Every Breath (33 page)

Andrew stopped pacing, and Trevor heard more footsteps slicing through the overgrown grass outside the window. He held his breath, hoping for more time.

“I understand your concerns,” Trevor said.

Surprise lit Andrew’s expression. “Then you’ll quit?”

Medicine would never advance unless someone was able to
step into the arena, armed with knowledge, hope, and the fortitude to make tough decisions. It was a grueling road to walk and very few people could do it. Trevor had been slogging toward a cure for years, and the weight of the responsibility pressed down on him, sapping his energy.

“No. I won’t quit,” Trevor said in a tired voice. “The cure for tuberculosis won’t be found in a mortuary or a university library. It’s going to be found in a laboratory, and I won’t let anything stop me from that work. Not a hostile press or threats of professional sanctions.”
Or the tears of a woman he loved more than
life itself.

“Then I won’t stop trying to take you down,” Andrew said, his voice vibrating with quiet intensity.

Behind Andrew’s back there was a movement in the window. Tick peered through an opening in the flimsy cotton drapes, a question in his eyes. Trevor sent him an infinitesimal shake of his head, warning him to keep his distance. Given enough time, perhaps Trevor could still find the spark of scientific reason inside the young man who wanted to destroy him.

“Andrew, we want the same thing. The Baltimore study was the biggest failure of my career. It’s a regret I will carry for the rest of my life, but at least we know mercury is not the answer. I published the results of that study, and now all the physicians studying this disease can turn their efforts to the next possible solution. It wasn’t a pointless test. Rose’s death was not in vain.”

“Six human beings died a miserable death because of you.”

They would have died anyway, but they gave their lives to help better understand a disease that was almost always fatal.

“Andrew, you and I are brothers in arms. I understand the stress you’ve been under. The avalanche of hope and doubt and fear. But if you choose to fight me in this . . .”

The memory of carrying Amy Collison to the top of that mountain flashed in his mind. The weight of her on his back as he carried her those final steps, her brother beside them, and hope surging in the air as they reached the crest of the mountaintop was as clear as if it had happened just yesterday. Amy and her brother had been dead for nine years, but that memory would shine forever. He’d been diverted for too long by a mentally unstable man. He gave the signal.

“Andrew, I’m sorry, but I’m taking you out of the battle.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Footsteps sounded outside the door, and then a second later Tick led half a dozen men inside, their booted feet thudding heavily on the wooden floor. A sharply dressed man in a formal suit loitered in the doorway while three policemen took position at the corners of the room and Tick stepped forward, astounding maturity on his eighteen-year-old face. “Sir, I’m Private Timothy Norton, and I’ve been standing guard at the hospital. I have authorization to detain anyone who has breached the hospital’s security. I’ve brought the metropolitan police to search the premises.”

Dumbstruck, Andrew looked at Trevor. Finally he found his voice and stepped closer to Tick. “You can’t invade the privacy of my business. I haven’t done anything illegal.”

“We have a warrant, sir.” Tick produced the document, and Andrew’s eyes narrowed in contempt. “We have evidence you are creating a duplicate set of records in an attempt to frame Dr. Kendall. A judge has agreed with our proof.”

“You won’t find anything. Everything I’ve done is perfectly legal.”

Two police officers headed to Andrew’s desk and began pulling out drawers and rifling though papers. Tick went and stood over them, scanning every document as it was pulled out. It didn’t take long to find what they were looking for.

Tick flipped through a stack of papers, lifting the top page for everyone to see. “Do you have any explanation for this form, sir?”

It was a blank laboratory form, identical to the one Trevor and Kate used in their study. There was no reason for Andrew to have hundreds of blank forms unless he was using them to forge a second set of documents like the ones planted in Kate’s house.

“It’s no crime to have blank medical forms,” Andrew said.

“Perhaps not,” Tick said. “But these didn’t come from Washington Memorial Hospital. They were commissioned at Steigler’s shop on Twenty-Third Street. The owner verified you ordered five hundred blank copies based on a single blank form your mother took from the hospital. He made copies of the forms used in the Baltimore study too. There’s no reason for you to order those forms unless you were creating a second set of records that would imply Dr. Kendall was falsifying his research.”

Despite the chill, a sheen of perspiration gleamed on Andrew’s skin as he glanced back at Trevor. “You know this is playing into my hands, don’t you? The publicity I’ll garner from this will put everything else I’ve accomplished in the shade.”

Trevor motioned to one of the nattily dressed gentlemen standing in the corner. “I asked Dr. Josiah Mason to be here today. I could tell from the newspaper articles you sent me that your ultimate aim was the revocation of my medical license. Dr. Mason oversees the board of physician licensure for the state of Virginia. He will be a witness to your campaign to manufacture a record of medical fraud to use against me.”

In all the years of watching his patients succumb to disease, the pain of watching Andrew Doyle being handcuffed was a unique sort of misery. The victims of tuberculosis could not help their condition, but Andrew chose to walk this path. He’d once been a kind and sensitive man, before he was driven over
the edge by witnessing the death of a woman he loved. And Trevor had played a part in that downfall.

The Baltimore study had just claimed its final victim.

* * * *

Kate sat at the staff table, anxiously scanning the newspaper advertisements for available positions. Perhaps she’d been foolish to quit her hospital job before securing another position, but the faster she could get away from Trevor, the better. She loved him too much to linger.

The door banged open, and the midday brigade of attendants wheeled in meal carts loaded down with covered trays, the metal wheels squeaking in steady rhythm as the carts rolled forward. She wasn’t hungry but should force herself to eat something. Pushing the newspaper to the side of the table, she glanced up at Nurse Ackerman.

“Do you know of any decent job prospects?” she asked. “I shudder at the thought of another clerical job. Or worse, getting stuck in my mother’s kitchen slinging out meals three times a day. I want to do something
meaningful
with my life.”

Bridget Kelly, the Irish attendant who once flirted with Trevor about milking cows, stopped her cart in its tracks. “Are you suggesting my work isn’t meaningful?” she asked in her pretty Irish lilt.

Kate straightened. “Of course not.” But the other two attendants looked at Kate with similar wounded expressions.

Bridget put her hands on her hips and raised her chin. “Because I think what I do is very meaningful. And what about the cooks who trudge in at four o’clock every morning to make sure the sick people get their breakfast on time? Or Howard Radowitz, who mops the floors of the hospital every night without fail when you’re safe at home in your bed? This hospital would grind to a halt if we weren’t here to do our
meaningless
work.”

Kate was speechless, but every one of Bridget’s words struck home. After all, weren’t her parents the sort of people who worked with their hands so that others in Washington could pursue more glamorous work? She stood to apologize, but Nurse Ackerman beat her to the punch.

“How dare you go mouthing off like that,” the nurse said. “Mrs. Livingston is a valued professional, and we could get any Irish girl fresh off the boat to take your place if you can’t show proper respect.”

Bridget grabbed a plate off the cart and plunked it in front of Kate, the metal cover clanging on the table. “Here’s your lunch, ma’am. I’m sure you’ll show it proper respect, since I haven’t got any left.”

A group of the male patients were playing cards in the sitting area. One of them hid an amused smile behind his hand of cards, but Kate was mortified. Most of the patients in this clinic came from gritty working-class neighborhoods, and she wanted to sink into the floor and disappear.

Bridget was about to push her cart into motion again when the door swung open and Trevor marched inside. Tick and three police officers followed.

“Nurse Ackerman, you’re fired,” Trevor said.

The nurse gasped. “For speaking harshly to Bridget? The girl deserved it!”

Kate stepped forward, ready to defend Nurse Ackerman, but Tick’s firm shake of his head made her think better of it.

“No, it’s for siphoning off hospital supplies, leaking information to the press, manufacturing fraudulent records, and spilling mercury across my desk. For a start.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nurse Ackerman sputtered. “I’ve only been doing my job.” But the color dropped from her face, and her lips quivered and turned white.

Kate was in shock, unable to comprehend the scene unfolding before her.

Trevor’s eyes glittered with anger. “The new patients have been making a careful observation of your behavior in the wards,” he continued. He nodded to the other side of the room, where Oskar Holtzmann emerged from the men’s ward. A housecoat hung from his thin frame, but a look of anticipation lit up his face.

“You replace each patient’s bar of soap with a fresh one every day,” Oskar said. “The patients all think this is for cleanliness, but Dr. Kendall didn’t know anything about it until I told him. He says it’s a waste of money. You told the attendants to throw away everyone’s bedsheets each week for fear of contamination and ordered up new ones instead of washing them.” He folded his arms across his chest. It looked as though he was enjoying this.

“Nonsense!” Nurse Ackerman cried.

“You’ve been running through supplies like a madwoman, and then reporting the waste to Superintendent Lambrecht,” Trevor said. “No wonder he was suspicious of all our expenditures.”

“Are you begrudging dying people a bar of soap? Or fresh sheets?” Nurse Ackerman’s voice was outraged, but her hands twitched and fluttered like a moth trapped in a corner. She stilled as Trevor moved to the supply closet, a fat ring of keys jangling in his hand.

“You can’t go in there!” Nurse Ackerman said in a panicked voice.

It always seemed odd how territorial she was about the supply closet, but Kate thought it was a sign of her frugal diligence. Apparently there was more to the story. It didn’t take Trevor long to emerge from the supply closet with a raft of papers in his hands.

“And what are these?” he asked coldly.

“All I did was make a second copy of the reports,” she said.
Nurse Ackerman sent a heated glare at Kate. “I didn’t trust that woman to keep accurate statistics. You hired Mrs. Livingston because you fancied her, no other reason.”

Kate sucked in a breath at the insult, but there was no time to voice her outrage. Trevor remained impassive as he handed the forms to one of the policemen.

“Both Oskar and Marlene have watched you come into the wards each morning after Kate and I leave. You make duplicate copies of what’s on the charts hanging from the patient beds. I expect those will be used to manufacture a set of fraudulent records to accuse me of falsifying my research.”

Kate turned to see how Nurse Ackerman would respond. The look of offended innocence was gone now, replaced by steely-eyed resolve.

“You killed all those people in Baltimore with an unproven cure. What right do you have to use human patients like that?”

Before Trevor could reply, Oskar said, “I want those unproven cures! Every day I feel my lungs fill with more fluid. I am
drowning
for want of an unproven cure! I won’t let you try to stop doctors who are searching for those cures.”

His voice choked off in a fit of coughing. Tick stepped back, reaching for his mask. The others did the same. The horror of this disease was that men like Oskar were probably going to die before the cure could be found, and it was going to take an army of doctors willing to undertake the demoralizing quest, year after year. Perhaps decade after decade.

Nurse Ackerman refused to back down. “Maybe the people who died in Baltimore were willing to run the risk, but you destroyed my son! He would have been a good doctor if you hadn’t made him feel like a murderer.”

Without warning she stepped toward Trevor and slapped him across the face. “You ruined my son. Ruined him!”

Two policemen pulled her away, but not before she spat at Trevor. Nurse Ackerman was pressed against the wall and handcuffed while Trevor wiped his jacket with a handkerchief. The red imprint of the nurse’s hand was already appearing on his face.

Kate saw a combination of anger and regret simmering in Trevor’s dark eyes as the policemen hustled Nurse Ackerman out the door of the clinic.

* * * *

The news of Nurse Ackerman’s arrest spread like wildfire through the hospital wards. All the patients were stunned, and those healthy enough to leave their beds gathered around Tick in the sitting area as he recounted what happened.

“They probably won’t get more than a slap on the wrist, since everything is considered a misdemeanor,” he said.

Kate stared at the empty nurses’ station. It was hard to believe Nurse Ackerman’s grumpy attitude masked such seething hatred. In addition to training a new statistical assistant, Trevor now needed to hire another receiving nurse.

Henry was even more upset than Kate. “I can’t believe it,” Henry said as he scrubbed his hand across his face. “Andrew Doyle and I were a team. He was one of the nicest men I ever met. How could he attack Dr. Kendall like that?”

Kate never met Andrew Doyle, but given Henry’s bewildered expression, it was obvious the sense of betrayal ran deep. She could only imagine how unnerved Trevor must be feeling. He’d been alone in his office ever since the police took Nurse Ackerman away over an hour ago. When he finally emerged, he was unreadable as he walked toward her in the sitting area.