he knew how costly those could be “—why don’t you have Henry Weisfield put together one of his fund-raisers? He’s still not leaving for another three months or so. He could do it easily.”
“That’s your answer?” Bethany demanded, her voice rising. “A fund-raiser?”
The angrier she seemed to get, the calmer he became. “It’s worked so far.”
“And when we need to modernize the operating rooms?” she posed. “What then? Another fundraiser? Just how many of these things do you think we can swing before we wind up losing donors altogether?” she asked.
“We’ll tackle that when it comes,” he said, smiling.
Was he laughing at her? “If NHC oversaw us, we wouldn’t have to tackle anything. We would just make the request in writing.”
He looked at her, stunned, not really sure she believed what she was saying. Was she just saying it to convince the others?
“Are you really that naive? Don’t you realize that a company big enough to give you everything, is also big enough to take everything away if you don’t dance to the tune they play?” He was tired of this. He was beginning to understand why Henry felt the way he did, why he wanted to retire. “If I’m going to have my strings pulled, I want to be able to see who’s pulling them.” He addressed his words to Wallace, not Bethany. With Wallace he had some hope of getting through. “Not having some conglomerate versed in buck-passing doing it.”
Just then, his pager went off. Glancing down at the device clipped to his belt, Peter angled it so that he could read the message that had just come in. “Sorry, Wallace.” He rose to his feet. “There’s been a car accident. I’m wanted in the E.R.”
Wallace nodded. “Of course.”
As he left, Peter couldn’t help thinking that the chairman sounded rather relieved to see him go.
“Talk to me,” Peter urged the E.R.’s head nurse, Simone Garner, a slender woman with brown hair and a ready smile, when he arrived in the emergency room several minutes later. As he questioned Simone, one of the other nurses helped him on with the disposable yellow paper gowns they all donned in an effort to minimize the risk of spreading infections amid the E.R. trauma patients.
The paramedics had left less than two minutes before, so Simone quickly recited the vital signs for the three patients, then added, “It was a two-car collision. The police said the brakes failed on the SUV and it plowed into the other car at an intersection.”
“Where did it happen?” he asked as he took out his stethoscope.
“Less than two miles away. The paramedics got them here quickly. Those two were the drivers.” She indicated the first two gurneys. “The little boy was a passenger. Sitting in the front, I gather.” The little boy was crying loudly. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist and leaned in closer. “It’s going to be all right, honey,” she told him, then raised her eyes to Peter’s face. “No child seat in the car,” she said. It was obvious what she thought of the driver’s negligence. “I think the little guy got the worst of it. He’s pretty banged up. There might be internal bleeding.”
“Get him to X-ray as fast as you can,” Peter instructed. She motioned to an orderly and, between them, they took the gurney away.
Peter turned his attention to the other two victims. Before he could say anything, the man on the gurney closest to him grabbed his forearm.
“My little boy,” the man implored hoarsely.
Peter looked down into a face that was badly cut up and bruised. One of the man’s eyes was swollen shut and he looked as if he was barely able to see with his other one.
“Your son’s going to be all right,” he said with the conviction he knew the patient needed to hear. Long ago he’d been told not to make promises he might not be able to keep, but he knew the good a positive frame of mind could do. “Now let’s make sure that you are.” He pointed to the first empty bed he saw. “Put him in trauma room two.”
He’d had to remove the boy’s spleen. Then he’d gone back to the boy’s father to explain at length everything that had been done. It had taken a lot to make the man believe his son was going to make a full recovery. Peter had never seen such concern, such guilt, displayed by anyone the way it was by Ned Farmer.
Farmer, a self-employed auto mechanic and former racer, berated himself over and over again for being so busy working on other people’s cars that he’d neglected to check out his own.
“My fault, my fault, it’s all my fault,” Farmer kept saying over and over again, working himself up almost into a frenzy. It got to the point that Peter finally authorized an injection of diazepam be given in order to calm Farmer down.
The other driver, it turned out, had some traumatic bruising to his spine. So much so that the swelling was pinching his spinal cord, causing his lower extremities to become numb and unresponsive.
He called Ella and asked her to come down for a consultation. He thought his sister’s soft voice and gentle manner might help quell the second driver’s fears. She was there within the quarter hour.
The last he’d seen, Ella was at the man’s bedside, calmly reassuring him. “In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the victim walks as soon as the swelling on his spine subsides. You just have to be patient.”
The man looked anything but that. “But I’ll walk again?”
“Most likely, as soon as the swelling there goes down,” she repeated.
“But what if it doesn’t?” he pressed nervously. “What if it doesn’t go down?”
She took his hand in hers and said without wavering. “We’ll do everything we can.”
Peter smiled to himself and thought how proud his father would be if he could see her.
NHC, Peter was certain, would never approve of all this handholding on the part of their doctors. The patient would be swiftly examined, given his diagnosis and then sent home to recuperate. And to nurse fears of never being able to walk again. Who knew how much damage that would ultimately create?
It made him more determined than ever to block the takeover.
All in all, Peter thought as he changed back into his street clothes in his dimly lit office, this had been one of the worst Januarys he’d ever experienced.
He remembered Bethany saying it had snowed, and wondered if he was going to have to shovel his driveway when he got home that night. It wasn’t a heartening thought. Despite having lived in Walnut River his whole life, Peter was definitely not a fan of the white stuff.
He paused just long enough to locate some lab and radiology reports and place them in his briefcase. When he stepped into the elevator car, it was empty. He continued to have it to himself all the way down. The doors opened again on the first floor and he walked out, then made his way down the corridor leading to the parking lot.
As he opened one of the double doors and emerged into the frigid night air, he was in time to hear a woman exclaim, “Oh damn,” and then see Bethany Holloway suddenly disappear from view as she slid down the icy stairs.
Chapter Seven
Working triage in the E.R. had honed Peter’s reflexes. Instinct just took over.
Holding on to the banister, he sailed down the steps and grabbed Bethany’s arm just before her body came in ungraceful contact with the icy ground.
With her feet sliding in one direction and her body being jerked in another, Bethany overcompensated. In an effort to regain her balance, she threw her weight forward.
The next second, instead of keeping her steady, Peter found himself going down. He landed flat on his back. Since he was still holding on to her arm, he wound up pulling her down