Dead Certain

center. Like the other physicians at Prescott Memorial, McDermott conducted the bulk of his practice elsewhere, devoting only a handful of days a month to charitable cases. In addition to a faculty appointment at the Northwestern University Medical School, he was also a partner in a lucrative North Shore surgical practice whose patients and their problems were light-years away from those he treated at Prescott Memorial.
    According to Claudia, Gavin McDermott, like the other private-practice surgeons who rotated through the hospital, saw their time there as a chance to practice real medicine uncomplicated by the intrusion of insurers’ restrictions and the demands of operating a practice. Instead, they relished the opportunity to revisit the things that attracted them to medicine in the first place—the challenges of surgery and the chance to be a healer as opposed to a service provider.
    I don’t know what I expected when I got to Dr. McDermott’s office, but it certainly wasn’t to wait on a vinyl couch surrounded by people in bandages and surgical drains. While I realized that doctors delight in making lawyers wait—it is part of the petty friction played out between antagonistic professions—I hadn’t expected to be treated this way by McDermott.
    For one thing, Prescott Memorial’s chief of surgery was a personal friend of my parents, who had endowed his teaching chair at Northwestern. Not only that, but his latest wife was a girlhood friend of mine. His marriage to Patsy placed us both within the claustrophobic confines of the same social circle. Even if he was a relative newcomer, Gavin knew as well as anybody how the game was played.
    From Claudia, I was also well aware that McDermott was a man whose every action was the product of deliberation. While most OR personnel tied their face masks in quick bows, McDermott knotted his a half beat quicker and then broke it with a snap when he was done. Instead of wearing the paper booties everyone else wore to protect their shoes from blood, McDermott wore one of three identical pairs of dark red clogs, silicone treated and thus washable. If I was being made to wait, it was for a reason.
    Eventually a nurse called my name and reverently ushered me into the great man’s office. Under the circumstances I felt lucky that at least I wasn’t being shown into an examining room and told to get undressed. The fact that McDermott was on the phone and didn’t even look up when I entered merely reinforced my suspicions.
    Prescott Memorial’s chief of surgery was a theatrically handsome man in his late forties, though he looked a full decade younger. Tan and fit, even after a Chicago winter, it was only since his marriage to Patsy that his dark hair had turned the corner toward gray. His hair was one of his many affectations. He wore it combed straight back from his high forehead like the more pretentious variety of orchestra conductor. He had a beak of a nose, prominent and thin, and piercing blue eyes that Pm sure his patients thought of as all-knowing. But what was really remarkable about him were his hands—slim, expressive, and with sensitive fingers that seemed to measure everything they touched.
    As I waited I listened to him describe in great detail the various ways that an elderly woman’s bladder might be surgically enlarged. I couldn’t help but wonder if he would have been half as rude if he knew that I was aware of how many patients he’d lost recently. As the conversation dragged on about the poor woman’s bladder, I cast my eyes around the room. It was not a warm place. Diplomas and awards covered the walls. Duke, Indiana University, Columbia Presbyterian, and the University of Chicago had all contributed to Gavin McDermott’s education, while a constellation of other institutions including the American College of Surgeons, the American Medical Association, and Prescott Memorial Hospital had all conferred awards on him. There were no family photos, no handmade tributes from grateful patients, no mementos of hobbies or outside interests.
    The scary part was that in some ways his office was almost the duplicate of mine. Patient charts replaced case files, but there were Post-it notes everywhere, and a small tape recorder for dictation lay close at hand. Outside the window there was no view to speak of, just the red brick facade of another medical center building. The only objects approaching decoration were a series of plastic anatomical models