Dead Certain

lined up along the front edge of his desk to be used as visual aids for explaining procedures to patients.
    As McDermott droned on I became increasingly restless. Almost without thinking, I picked one of the models up and turned it over in my hand. Automatically, I gave it a little toss, subconsciously registering its weight. Propelled as much by McDermott’s arrogance as by my own boredom, I reached for a second model.
    When I was in college, some guy at a party bet one of his buddies that he could teach anybody, no matter how inebriated, how to juggle. While I’m a little fuzzy on the details, I am a living testament to the efficacy of his teaching methods. Of course, when my mother said that every woman should be able to do some kind of handiwork, she was talking about needlepoint, not juggling. On the other hand, I doubted it would have had the same impact if I’d whipped my embroidery thread out of my bag as it did when I got a plastic set of tonsils, a sinus, and the cochlea circling each other neatly in the air.
    McDermott hung up the receiver and looked at me with something very close to astonishment.
    “I didn’t know you could juggle,” he observed.
    “And I didn’t know you could make someone’s bladder bigger,” I replied, catching the body parts one by one and carefully setting them back down on his desk.
    “So, what are you still doing in the city this late on a Friday afternoon?” he demanded, no doubt forgetting that unlike my parents, I didn’t live in the suburbs. “I thought that by now all the lawyers were out on the golf course.”
    “Oh, there are one or two of us still at work at this late hour,” I replied with a smile. “We take turns staying at the office as a public service. We want to make sure there are enough tee times available for all the doctors who want them.”
    “Touché. I take it you’ve been sent to twist my arm about Prescott Memorial.”
    “I hadn’t thought of that. I’d certainly be willing to give it a try if you thought that giving it a twist would work. Are you a righty or a lefty?”
    “A lefty. But I’m afraid it’s going to take more than brute force, no matter how prettily applied, to get me to change my mind.”
    “I was hoping that moral suasion and an appeal to your higher nature would do the trick.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I’m serious, Gavin. I want to know why you think it’s a good idea to sell Prescott Memorial to a for-profit chain like HCC.”
    “Maybe I think it’s best to just take the money when it’s offered,” he answered simply. “Who knows if we’ll ever get offered this kind of money again? In my opinion it’s a simple and straightforward business decision.”
    “In my experience very few business decisions are either simple or straightforward,” I countered.
    “Well, as far as I’m concerned, this one is. The handwriting’s on the wall, Kate. It’s either HCC or somebody else. Places like Prescott Memorial are dinosaurs, an aging facility at the mercy of a bunch of ignorant millionaires— no offense.”
    “None taken,” I replied dryly. “But I confess I am curious how you arrived at this sudden revelation.”
    “Marrying Patsy was a big part of it. Seeing that whole crowd up close made me think about how truly vulnerable the hospital is.”
    “To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t thought of it as vulnerable at all,” I replied, “not until you voted to sell it to HCC.”
    “That’s not what I meant. Have you ever thought of what would happen if your parents got divorced, or your Uncle Edwin decided to use his money to set up retirement homes for aging hookers?”
    “And what if there’s a cure for cancer, or an asteroid hits Chicago?” I countered. “You can play the game of what-if forever and make it come out however you want. It doesn’t mean anything.”
    “That’s easy for you to say. What do you know about the day-to-day workings of the hospital beyond writing checks and going to parties?”
    I was tempted to tell him that I knew he liked to work only with pretty nurses and his operating room profanity had earned him the nickname Dr. McDamnit, but I knew it would do little to advance my case.
    “Medicine has changed in the last couple of years. It’s hardly the same profession as when I first started out. Back then, I spent my time in the operating room. Now I spend it in here, arguing on the phone with insurance companies. Pretty soon we’ll be doing operations in the parking lot