Healed to Death, page 15
“What is it?”
“It’s about the—you should come see.”
Kenzie followed him to the living room, irritated that he couldn’t just tell her what it was about. If it was a new pizza joint that offered delivery, she was going to be really upset.
Kenzie positioned herself in front of the TV and looked at the news story that was running. A yellow-on-red ticker declared “Investigation into local charity,” and a woman stood under a streetlight on the dark street, the microphone clutched close to her face as she told the viewing audience in dramatic tones that she was looking into the untimely death of a homeless man.
“The gruesome death of a man who had been treated by the mobile clinic is under investigation by the police and the medical examiner’s office. Sources say that he had been seen only days before his death by the outreach program spearheaded by Dr. Eric Simon, and indeed may have been seen by Dr. Simon himself.”
She widened her eyes at the camera and clutched her coat against her throat as if an icy wind had just raced through the street.
“In another twist, I am told that the investigation by Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Kenzie Kirsch may be tainted by the fact that her family foundation is one of the sponsors of the mobile clinic.”
Zachary looked at Kenzie to see what her reaction was to this report. She swallowed and shook her head, unable to respond.
“Dr. Kirsch, once a student of Dr. Simon, would be unlikely to be an unbiased investigator into anything touching on Simon’s brainchild, the mobile clinic.”
Kenzie sat down on the couch, her knees weak. A “graphic content” warning flashed at the top of the screen.
“Suspicions were raised by friends of Jack Lane, a homeless man who died after being treated by the mobile clinic. Witnesses say that he was vomiting large quantities of blood and died horrifically in a pool of his own bloody vomit.”
Kenzie swore aloud. Zachary sat down beside her and rested his hand on her back. “Where did they get this?”
“I don’t know. They got someone to talk.”
“The circumstances of Mr. Lane’s death lead to questions about the efficacy of the mobile clinic, a volunteer-led program that takes patients away from the hospital and legitimate emergency clinics. The mobile clinic does not have the equipment required for emergency situations. They have no sterile surgery, no X-ray machines, and very few medications or supplies on hand. As the mobile clinic travels from town to town, there is no continuity of care, no monitoring of adverse effects or medication schedules. It is a hit-and-run approach designed to treat as many people as possible in a short period of time. They are only equipped to treat minor illnesses and injuries, not serious conditions like Mr. Lane suffered, which should have been treated at the hospital.”
“They make it sound like the mobile clinic is trying to provide substandard services,” Kenzie said, shaking her head. “Like they’re trying to take people away from the hospital instead of treating people who can’t or won’t get treated there! Simon is implicated in Lane’s death because he tried to help him? He must have done something wrong because Lane died? They have no idea what they’re talking about.”
“I know.”
“And I can’t even talk to them!” Kenzie seethed, pounding the arm of the couch in frustration. “I can’t talk to the media about an ongoing investigation. They must know that!”
The reporter went on:
“Should Dr. Kirsch have declared a conflict of interest in this case, knowing that her family foundation funds the mobile clinic? The Kirsch family foundation has been known to be changing their focus from kidney disease research and other physical diseases that have long been their central interest, to projects related to mental illness and addiction, the homeless, and human trafficking. This new focus is believed to have been at the behest of Dr. Kirsch herself, heir of Walter Kirsch’s and Lisa Cole Kirsch’s considerable fortunes. Is this the result we can expect? A departure from hard science to half-developed ventures like the mobile clinic, which has been the subject of considerable controversy ever since its launch?”
Kenzie rubbed her eyes and the ridge of her brow, swearing to herself. Her phone started to ring. Texts were coming in at the same time as emails and phone calls, notification after notification flashing across the screen. It would appear that everyone who had seen the report was now reaching out to her.
She didn’t know how many would be words of support and how many would be questions of how much of what the reporter had said was true. Surely anyone who knew her would understand that she wasn’t involved in some nefarious plot to kill off all of the homeless people who desperately needed care.
She had already felt some backlash from some of the organizations the foundation had cut the funding to. In some cases, the foundation had dropped the donation amount significantly; in others, they had cut off altogether. Kenzie always felt guilty in these situations, but they had to spend the money where they thought it would do the most good, and they had funded kidney research for years. Other causes were desperately in need of the most basic funding.
Kenzie had not called for the new focus on mental health and addiction, but Walter and Lisa had seen how important it was to Kenzie and Zachary. Mental health and addiction issues affected so many people; it was time for those programs to get more attention and for the money to go where it would make the most difference.
Kenzie just stared at her phone for a minute as it buzzed, dinged, and chirped, banners scrolling across the top one after another. She held down the power button until it shut down. She looked at Zachary.
He shook his head. “I’m so sorry!”
“You didn’t have anything to do with this, did you?” A knot of dread grew in her stomach. If he had been asking questions or had tipped off the media, and this had been the result…
“No!” Color rushed to Zachary’s face. “No, I would never do anything that would hurt you. I just mean I’m sorry it happened to you. You must feel like you got punched in the gut.”
“Pretty much,” Kenzie nodded and held her arms over said gut. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to throw up or to have a big drink. She had anxiety pills and sleeping aids from Dr. Boyle that she had refused to take except when she had been at her very worst. If she took those with a nice glass of wine, she could just crawl into bed, pull the covers over her head, and shut out the world for eight to ten hours. Maybe by that time, things would have settled down.
Of course, they were not supposed to be taken with alcohol, so she would have to forego the glass of wine.
“What do you want to do?” Zachary asked. He muted the TV but did not turn it off. The woman kept standing there talking into her big microphone, her eyes wide with the shock and horror of the story, even though it was nearly a week old.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to look at Bambi there anymore.”
He turned the TV to another channel. Kenzie would have just turned it off, but maybe he was right to look for something else that might interest them and distract them from what had just happened.
Kenzie didn’t want to think about it, but she immediately started calculating the impact that news report would have on her life.
She might lose her job.
They had told her before that she needed to be careful that nothing that the foundation did impacted any part of her job as a medical examiner. She needed to be aware of possible conflicts of interest and manage them proactively, giving her boss and her boss’s bosses a heads-up so that they could handle things before they hit the news.
This was a major foul-up.
She had been vaguely aware that the foundation gave some money to the mobile clinic, as it did to a number of other charities for mental health, homelessness, and other similar and crossover issues. But she hadn’t known until the night before about Simon and the Night Doctor being associated with the mobile clinic, or that the mobile clinic had treated Jack Lane in the days before his death.
It wasn’t surprising, but she had not anticipated all of those facts coming together and making it look like she might be involved in something she had nothing to do with.
There was no conflict with the foundation helping the homeless. There was no plot between Kenzie and Simon. Simon hadn’t done anything to harm Mr. Lane. He had not been the person who had caused Mr. Lane’s death.
How had the Night Doctor and his name not been mentioned in the news report? The reporter seemed to know everything else that related to the case. But nothing about Evan Hartfield.
Now that was interesting, wasn’t it?
33
Kenzie left her phone turned off for the rest of the night. Technically, she wasn’t allowed to do that. She needed to be available for callouts if Dr. Cook was not available.
But a callout wasn’t an emergency. Roxboro was a small town, and a cop could come to her door if something urgent came up. Or they could look at her personnel record to find her emergency contact and get ahold of Zachary on his phone.
She did not want to talk to anyone. She was unavailable for comment, no matter what the question, until things blew over.
She did not sleep well. But since her phone was turned off, once she fell asleep, she stayed asleep and did not wake up until mid-morning. Looking at the clock, her heart started thumping in panic and anger. Panic because she was so late getting into the office and anger because Zachary had known what time it was and hadn’t woken her up. She knew he was awake and knew what time it was, because Zachary never slept that late, even if he hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours.
Zachary could clearly see Kenzie’s blazing eyes and heavy, barely controlled breaths when she entered the kitchen, where he was refilling his mug of coffee.
“Whoa.” He held both his hands up as if she might haul off and punch him. She had never done anything violent around him and didn’t think she deserved that reaction. But she knew how he had grown up. He had been in abusive situations for years, so of course his first reaction was that she was going to hit him.
He lowered his hands. “It’s okay,” he told her. “Everything is okay. I talked to Dr. Cook. You’re taking a mental health day. He said he didn’t want you to come in. He’d rather stay under the radar for a few days until things settle down. We have our couple’s session with Dr. B this afternoon, and if you want to talk through any of this stuff, we can.”
“What made you think it was okay to talk to Dr. Cook about me?” Kenzie demanded, barely able to keep her voice in an even, controlled tone.
“Because… you barely slept and were finally asleep. And you need sleep more than anything. I was going to ask Dr. Cook if he wanted me to make sure you were up and into the office as usual, but he didn’t even let me ask. He told me right out that you were to take a mental health day today.”
“He thinks I’m a nut case. He doesn’t think I can handle this.”
“No. He doesn’t want you in the spotlight. He said things are quiet at the office right now and you can afford to take a few days. If anything important comes up and he needs help, he will call. He has my number, so if he can’t get you on yours, he’ll call mine.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t wake me up. You should have let me make the decision myself.”
“If I woke you up, you wouldn’t have been able to go back to sleep even if you wanted to. I was trying to help. You and Heather help me with my ADHD and anxiety. You worry about my sleep. Why can’t I worry about yours?”
“Because me working at the medical examiner’s office isn’t the same as you working for yourself. I have to look good in front of my boss. That isn’t something you have to worry about.”
“I have to look good in front of my clients.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Would you like coffee?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer; he just poured her a cup anyway and handed it to her. Kenzie was still mad and would have liked to throw it back in his face or at least dump it into the sink, but the fact was, she needed it and knew that her anger was out of proportion to what he had done. She had woken up in fight-or-flight mode, and was spitting mad.
Kenzie forced herself to sip the coffee slowly so as not to burn herself. Zachary watched her anxiously, his eyes darting back and forth as he watched for danger and tried to figure out the best way to deal with her.
“Thank you for the coffee,” Kenzie said in a controlled voice.
“You’re welcome.”
“And thank you for the sleep. And for dealing with Dr. Cook. Though I should have done that myself.”
“I didn’t mind being your secretary for one day.”
“If I don’t have any obligations, maybe I’ll start with a soak in the tub. See if I can calm myself down.”
Zachary nodded his approval. “Do you want breakfast before or after your bath?”
“After. And I want waffles.”
Zachary’s eyes widened. Kenzie always had toast and marmalade for breakfast. Although that had become a much more strict routine since he had moved in. Before that, she had toast and marmalade some mornings, but not all. Zachary had assumed that since it was her usual breakfast, it was what she wanted to eat every day.
“Waffles?” he repeated.
Kenzie could see that he was thinking of homemade waffles cooked in the waffle iron, which would be quite an undertaking for someone who didn’t cook.
“Frozen waffles. In the freezer. You stick them in the toaster.”
“Oh,” Zachary sighed loudly in relief. “I can probably manage that.”
“Syrup instead of marmalade. And some strawberries would be nice. Also from the freezer.”
He saluted. “Waffles, syrup, and strawberries. Check.”
She should have known that the peace and quiet wouldn’t last. She didn’t get reporters at the door, which she was grateful for. They respected her privacy and simply left polite messages on her voicemail. The call that came through for her on Zachary’s phone was not from Dr. Cook, but from her mother. Kenzie had been lucky to avoid her up until then. She would have predicted that Lisa would call her as soon as the news story had aired. She probably had, and it hadn’t occurred to her until the next morning that Kenzie wasn’t going to turn her phone back on and she should try Zachary’s number instead.
“Are you okay, Mackenzie?” she asked, her voice louder and higher than usual. “I imagine you are being harassed by reporters and people asking for money or outraged that a man died.”
“I haven’t been answering any calls,” Kenzie said, “so I don’t know who has been calling or what they wanted to say to me. It’s much better this way.”
“I agree. That was very wise. But you’re okay? I have been very worried.”
“I probably should have called you last night, but I really wasn’t in any shape to talk to anyone. Not even Zachary. I was just a mess.”
“I can certainly understand that.” Lisa’s voice took on a confidential tone. “I have found it very difficult myself. And I have been dealing with this kind of thing for a lot more years than you have.”
“Are you okay, Mom? Have you been talking to anyone?”
It must be just as hard for her to defend the choices the foundation had made, even if the changes had been necessary and well-thought-out. Even though Lisa had experience with this, that didn’t mean it was easy or that she enjoyed it.
“An emergency meeting of the board of the foundation was called this morning,” Lisa said with a sigh. The board consisted of a number of very competent people, only three of whom were Kirsch family members. Walter, Lisa, and Kenzie herself. Obviously, Kenzie had not gotten the notice or made it to the meeting. “I had to account for the changes that have been made, even though they were all discussed at the board level before they were implemented. And I had to explain the mobile clinic in particular and to assure them that it was a necessary service and was helpful, not detrimental, to those who use it. They are hoping that when you are cleared to do so, you will be able to tell them about Mr. Lane’s death, and whether we need to talk to our insurers about liability in his death.”
“No,” Kenzie assured her. “Mr. Lane refused to go to the hospital. No one could have made him go. He was a long-term, heavy alcoholic, and no one could have saved him. And… there is more I will tell you when I can, when I have the evidence in place. I can promise you that Dr. Simon and the mobile clinic had nothing to do with his death.”
“That is good to hear. I was sure that was the case, but it is good to hear it confirmed. When you are able to speak officially on the matter, I look forward to seeing your full report.”
“So you’re okay?” Kenzie asked. “That must have been tough, being called on the carpet like that.”
“Yes, of course it was difficult. These things are. And many people are not happy with the new direction our funding is going. But even more are calling to thank us and say how much the funding is needed in these areas.”
“And Dad’s okay?”
“He is fine. I can get him if you want to speak to him. But he is putting.”
“Putting?”
“Golf. It’s like meditation. I don’t like to interrupt it.”
“Oh,” Kenzie laughed. “Okay. That’s fine. I just wanted to make sure he was okay with this. It is his family name, after all.”
“He has a much thicker skin about these things than you or I. And… you’re okay? You’re not at work today.”
“No. Decided to take a few days off until this blows over.”
Or it had been decided for her.
“That’s an excellent idea, dear. I’m sure it will only be a few days, and then you will be able to get back to the routine.”
34
It seemed like the morning was gone before Kenzie had had a chance to do anything to take advantage of the day off. She had spent longer on the phone with her mother than she had expected and, between the call, her long soak in the bath, and a late, lazy breakfast of waffles, the morning was gone, and time was marching on toward their couple’s therapy appointment with Dr. Boyle.
