Hard To Breathe, page 12
part #2 of Drake Cody Series
As the technology grew, so did her expertise and importance.
It surprised her that the administration did not recognize how dependent the hospital was on her. Even the giant software vendors and support staff were only posturing when they pretended to question the system alterations she suggested. They did what she said.
Most of the administrative and medical personnel had an uneasy alliance with the technology. Even among the IT staff, there was no one who fully understood the intricacies of her network. None of the doctors had anything but a rudimentary grasp. It was beyond them. Beyond everyone. When problems arose, they sought out Clara like hikers lost in a hostile wilderness. She was the system's undisputed master.
Clara liked it that way.
Clara had tried to impress Dan with her knowledge and skills. It did not seem to matter to him. In their short but magical time together, she'd come to understand that his love for her transcended their daily lives.
She noted the time. A change into scrubs and a new white coat, then she'd make her visits to the wards and ICUs. Unlike most laboratory and IT people, Clara liked leaving her office and spending time in the hospital patient care areas. She said it helped her do her job better. People were impressed.
The truth was that putting on the white coat and providing information that influenced patient care decisions was the closest she could get to where she deserved to be. She decided to visit the surgical ICU first.
***
As Clara sat at a computer monitor in the nurses’ station of the surgical ICU a grating voice arose from behind her. She winced, recognizing the staff physician she hated more than any other.
“Hey lab-girl, how about you get moving on the culture results, huh?” Every time Dr. Bart Rainey opened his mouth, people flinched.
“Hey, you hear me, lab-lady?” the giant surgeon practically hollered as he scanned a chart. “I've been waiting on sensitivities on bed eight's infection forever. What's the hold up?”
“Black Bart,” as the nurses secretly called the almost seven-foot-tall, black-haired surgeon, talked to non-doctors like he was addressing lower life forms. He was notorious for having made nurses cry.
He made a special effort to put Clara down in front of others. She had a PhD and requested that people address her as “doctor.” Most physicians and hospital personnel did. Bart Rainey scoffed and seemed to take pleasure in demeaning her.
“It's an anaerobic bacteria, Dr. Rainey,” Clara said. “Meticulous culture requirements and very slow growth. We'll have the sensitivities as fast as is possible.” The fawning manner that her position demanded made her want to retch. “I think meropenem would be the best antibiotic choice pending results. The organism is certain to be multi-resistant.”
“Well, little missy, I know it's multi-resistant—that's why I need the sensitivities. Why don't you just get the tests done and leave the thinking and decision-making to those of us who are doctors?”
Clara kept her head hidden behind one of the unit’s computer consoles. Her heart pounded in her throat, flame stoked her core. She imagined herself a stick of dynamite with the fuse burning.
The secretary paged Rainey to the phone. Clara sensed his giant mass moving away. He hadn’t gotten within five feet of her, yet she could smell the cologne he used to cover the smell of his brutish carcass.
How had such a middle-of-the-road intellect been judged to be the right stuff? Him and so many others.
Forty-five medical schools. Forty-five selection committees. Each had said she wasn't good enough. Instead they'd selected cretins like Bart Rainey.
The selection committees were imbecilic, sexist, corrupt bastards. A bitter taste visited her tongue.
Rainey left the nursing station. Her muscles relaxed. One day she would explode on one of these unworthy physician pretenders.
Despite all the years that had passed, her resentment still burned. The fire of her outrage had an endless fuel supply. Not good enough!
She'd been valedictorian of both her high school and NYU class. Her I.Q. made MENSA geeks self-conscious. She'd blown the Medical College Admission test out of the water. She'd even volunteered with sick kids at the Children's Hospital during high school and college, documenting the boo-hoo, look-how-caring-I-am crap the selection committees loved.
Her application materials glistened. On paper she'd been the perfect candidate.
Health records, counseling, and her personal problems were all privileged information and by law could not be accessed—or so she'd naively believed.
She'd been granted interviews at every medical school she'd applied to, and that only happened for the very best candidates.
Then the actual visits. She met face-to-face with physicians, psychologists, and counselors. Clara knew just what they wanted to hear. She'd laid it all out for them. There'd been awkward moments but there'd been no doubt in her mind that she ranked among the strongest of applicants.
And then the inexplicable...
After months of waiting, the letters had arrived on medical school letterheads. “We regret to report...,” “more qualified candidates than positions...,” “Unfortunately...,” blah, blah. Rejected by all—even the schools that were not remotely worthy of her.
She'd tried a second year—humiliating as it was. Again the rigged system chose losers.
Dr. “Black Bart” Rainey and others like him proved her point. Assholes or middling intellects that had somehow been judged among “the best and brightest,” while she was not.
He'd played on a championship collegiate basketball team. Clara knew that was the difference. Somehow the jock-sniffing old-boys' club thought that meant something.
Selection committees seemed to base their decisions on sex, physical attractiveness, quotas, political correctness, insider favoritism, or their ridiculous notions of character.
As head of Information Technology for the hospital, Claire had access to the data for every physician on the hospital staff. Very few had been anywhere near her as a candidate. She measured herself against Rainey and every MD she met—rarely was it a contest.
Even some of those who seemed decent did not belong. The startling news about that ER doctor, Drake Cody, meant he'd lied on his application. He'd cheated someone such as herself out of their deserved opportunity to be a physician—stolen someone's life dream.
Her failure to become a doctor was a wound that would not heal. The rejections as “not good enough” had affected her like exposure to a lethal dose of radiation. The toxicity had penetrated to her marrow.
Because she hadn’t been allowed to obtain the MD title she deserved, she had to take shit from assholes like Bart Rainey.
Because she'd been denied, she had to live forever with the patronizing conceit and condescension of her loathsome parents.
Dr. Carl Zeitman, head of the department of Medicine, international chair of Endocrinology at Duke—her father and a jerk of the first order.
Dr. Freida Zeitman, staff pathologist also at Duke, international bridge champion—Clara's mother and a partner in a marriage of careers and egos that left no room for anything else.
Medicine was the only career worthy of a Zeitman.
Physician, attorney, or scientist were the only careers anyone in her mother’s family would accept. Prestige and self-importance were the air her parents breathed.
Her parents’ superiority to Clara had been affirmed for them by the medical school rejections. Their condescension and transparently false sympathy continued to this day. Nothing Clara had ever done had made them happier than her failure to equal or surpass them.
They'd used their power and contacts in a way opposite that of other parents. She believed they'd used their influence to keep their daughter out of medical school.
She'd been cheated—by her parents, by the medical establishment, by every person with an MD degree that was not her equal.
Bart Rainey. Drake Cody. So many others. They'd all stolen from her.
They owed her. They should pay. She'd started to collect but nowhere near enough—
Her cell phone vibrated. She retrieved it and scanned the number. Dan! Never before had he called her in the daytime.
Last night so special. In trouble he'd reached out to her—her passion erasing his pain. Now a call in the day—their love expanding!
She wondered if Dan could get Bart Rainey thrown off the hospital's staff. Her man had power beyond that of his magnificent body. He'd do anything for her.
He cared more about her than himself.
Their love was like no other...
Chapter 24
Mesh exited the Normandale Racquet Club doors, then stopped and held them open as a young blond woman with Spandex-clad legs and a puffy parka scampered toward him. Her breath fogged in the freezing air. She did not acknowledge him or his manners. He recognized her as she passed. One of many women he'd seen with Dan. He pulled his coat tight as the sub-zero wind chill bit.
Had he convinced Dan? Did Dan believe that an abuse conviction was unavoidable? Did he accept that if Beth divorced him, he'd lose everything and be sent to jail?
Reading Dan had never been easy. He didn't react to things like normal people.
Anyone else would be a quivering mess, but not Dan. He never showed fear. When they'd first met, that was one of the things Mesh had admired.
Mesh beeped his car open and climbed in. He started the car and waited for it to warm up.
“Big Dan” Ogren, Dan's father, had given Mesh a job as a lot boy for Ogren Automotive in high school. He and Dan junior had shared job duties. They were both seventeen, but Dan looked twenty-one. Tall, muscular, a natural athlete and, Mesh felt embarrassed noticing, strikingly handsome. Mesh attended South High School but knew of Dan from media coverage of his hockey stardom at Edina High School.
They'd both lost a parent to cancer four years earlier but had little else in common. Mesh missed his father every day. Dan's loss of his mother didn't seem to affect him at all. It was another of many things that had initially impressed Mesh.
The dealership job involved washing the cars, ferrying new and used vehicles, running parts, cleaning asphalt, hauling tires, and dozens of other tasks.
Mesh's dad, a bookkeeper for Ogren Automotive, had died when Mesh was in grade school. Before the cancer took him, his dad had worked for the man everyone called Big Dan.
After his dad's death, Mesh's mother worked in a dry cleaning shop. Money was tight and Mr. Ogren sometimes helped out. Mesh recognized his kindness. Mesh's job was one more thing Mr. Ogren did for them.
Mesh worked as hard as he could.
Dan screwed off continuously. They were not closely supervised, as the job often involved moving cars from one dealership to another, running parts, or giving rides to customers whose cars were being repaired.
Dan grabbed the driving jobs while Mesh covered by doing the grunt work.
While Mesh took care of the car lot chores, Dan sometimes “borrowed” vehicles and picked up whichever of several girls he was currently seeing. He had sexual adventures in the dealership cars while “on the clock.”
Mesh had kissed one girl in his life. Dan had been sexually active since the ninth grade.
Mesh was amazed and envious.
Dan started drinking and smoking weed on the job. Just knowing what Dan was up to made Mesh a nervous wreck.
Dan never showed any stress.
One day Dan gave a repair customer a ride home and didn't return for over two hours. The lot manager confronted him when he returned. Mesh could tell Dan was high but he never blinked. He spun a yarn about the customer insisting he take her to the bank and having to wait for her. They'd been stuck in traffic. He told the manager to call her and confirm. He stared the manager down and the matter was dropped.
Dan later told Mesh what had happened when the lady customer invited him in to her house after the ten-minute drive.
Mesh found it hard to breathe just hearing about things he'd only read about or imagined. Dan just shrugged his shoulders and laughed. Cooler than cool.
Mesh had found everything about Dan compelling. Fearless, unshakable, a star athlete, a woman-killer-—all the things Mesh thought mattered. For years Mesh admired Dan.
Mesh's cell phone rang. Dan's name on the display. He'd likely not left the locker room yet. He liked lounging naked about the showers and whirlpool area. So damn proud of his huge package. Mesh triggered his earpiece. “Yes, Dan.”
“If I get ownership of Ogren Auto before the June payments are due, would that affect my, er, situation. You know, regarding the financial stuff you mentioned?”
“Your father's not compos mentis. He can't understand, so he can't participate in a legal action. That's why you have power of attorney. His will is solid—you'll gain ownership through inheritance. Ownership now would give us options but no silver bullet. Besides, there's nothing that can be done to speed it up.”
“What about from the senior home money? It was a buy-in deal, right?”
“When your father dies, ninety percent of his buy-in at Noble Village goes to his estate. Again, there's no way to get that beforehand. Besides, you are already fully debt-leveraged. You can thank listening to Kline for that.”
Kline, the accountant who’d somehow made it to CEO of the hospital. Mesh didn’t think the guy was competent. He’d steered Dan into several deals that had gone belly up—a big part of Dan's losses.
“Business-wise, things have to take their course,” Mesh said. “Your inheritance and the Noble Village money will not be enough to solve your problems. It's already accounted for. If you have more questions, let's meet later. This is not for the phone. I'm headed to a meeting with the finance guys now.”
“Email me an update on where things stand after the meeting.”
Mesh heard a click and the connection ended.
He'd explained all this to Dan several times. The guy wasn't dumb, but nothing about business ever seemed to stick.
Mesh pulled out of the parking lot onto France Avenue. He had fifteen minutes to make the meeting. Ogren Automotive now had an umbrella of six dealerships, a lease company, a parts company, and a finance operation. The business had become huge and administratively complex.
Dan had poor judgment, access to the company’s money, and zero discipline. He’d pissed away hundreds of thousands of misappropriated company dollars in drugs, gambling, and ill-advised investments. Mesh had worked hard to pound home the message that even a simple audit of the company would lead to Dan being criminally prosecuted.
Dan had few inhibitions, no scruples, and rarely listened. From the days of the car lot Mesh had been linked to Dan. First it had been due to Dan’s magnetism. Later it was obligation. It was a link Mesh wished had never been forged.
***
Homicide/Major Crimes office
Aki Hamada found Farley focused on the computer screen.
“What have you found on Ogren?” Aki asked, as he sat at his desk alongside Farley’s.
“Not much for convictions but he’s no stranger to trouble. Been arrested and questioned but other than a couple DUIs nothing has ever stuck.” Farley turned to Aki. “I have more for you but I have a question. Why did we get assigned this case? The captain said someone higher up requested you. I know it’s high profile but it still seems weird.”
“Good instincts, partner.” Aki rolled his chair closer and lowered his voice. “I’m still on probation following a complaint from last spring. An asshole with a restraining order broke his wife’s jaw and got off with nothing. He claimed that after he was released I smashed his head against a car and threatened him. I was there but the weird thing was the bastard fell—just like he said his wife had. So now someone requests me for the Ogren domestic abuse case. Does that make sense?”
“Sounds like a defense attorney’s dream,” Farley said. “That high-up someone must think you’re so good that won’t matter.”
“Yeah, and OJ never hurt anyone.”
Farley cocked his head. “So what gives?”
“There’s been outside influence stinking up this case from the start.” He paused. “I hate to poison you with my cynical take but consider this. Maybe we weren’t picked because we have the best chance of getting Ogren convicted. It might be because we have the worst.”
Chapter 25
RV Campground, suburb
The image in the mirror scared Beth. The ER doctor had told her to expect to look and feel worse before starting to improve. She looked hideous. And felt terrible.
Something struck the side of the RV and Beth jumped, her heart in her throat. She crouched and peered out the windows. A dead limb lay against the RV. Her breathing slowed and her hands steadied. The strong wind battered the naked trees and made the cattail marsh to the north ripple and thrash.
The attorney had first connected with Beth two hours earlier. The wait for the lawyer’s follow-up call seemed an eternity.
The lawyer had been businesslike and she'd emphasized Beth's safety. She'd advised Beth to avoid any contact with Dan and not to let him or others know her whereabouts. Beth had already removed the battery from her old phone and purchased a replacement on her way to the RV park. Her new phone could not be tracked.
The lawyer recommended they file for a “restraining order” against Dan.
“Abusers often escalate when divorce is threatened,” the attorney warned. “Women are killed by abusive husbands every day. A third of the women murdered in the U.S. are killed by their husband or partner.” It wasn't the first time she'd heard this.
Beth’s voice had cracked as she’d given the okay to file the restraining order against Dan.
The attorney didn't pretend that money didn't matter to her. She’d admitted that the prospect of a big money settlement had appeal. Her retainer was startlingly high and she wanted payment immediately.
After being lied to for so long, the lawyer's honesty held appeal. Beth had emailed the prenuptial document and used PayPal to deliver the pricey retainer. Dan was reckless and loose with money, which had made it easy for Beth to build up a nest egg of her own. The attorney promised to review the prenuptial document, initiate the protective order process, and call Beth back.
