Dead Certain

may have met before,” remarked Elliott as he took her hand in his, “but for the life of me I can’t think where.”
    “Pm sorry I can’t help you—” Dr. Davies smiled warmly. “—but I see so many people that when I run into someone in a different context, I have the hardest time placing them.”
    “Ten to one he isn’t a patient,” McDermott chortled as he traded his empty champagne glass for another from a passing waiter’s proffered tray.
    “Thanks for the tip, professor,” replied Farah dryly. “I don’t know how any of us would ever manage to get along without you.”
    At this, McDermott’s face darkened dangerously, and his wife laid a restraining hand on his arm.
    “You might want to ask yourself that same question the next time one of your patients starts bleeding out on you,” he snapped.
    Farah Davies cast her mismatched eyes heavenward as if entreating the lord for patience. “Don’t even think of trying to lay what happened to your patient at my door,” she warned. “All I needed was an extra pair of hands. I could just as easily have asked one of the fellows to scrub in. The trouble with you prima donnas is that you always think you’re rushing in to save the day, but when things go wrong, you look for someone else to blame.“
    “And the trouble with you gynecologists is that you think that just because they let you have a scalpel, you know how to use it.”
    I work in an arena filled with blunt talk and big egos, but not like this. The tension between the two physicians sang like a high-voltage wire. Good manners dictated that someone change the subject, but good breeding aside, I had absolutely no interest in making things easier for McDermott. Besides, I was enjoying seeing him pick a fight with someone who was in a position to fight back.
    “Children, children,” admonished Carl Laffer, stepping in to spoil the fun, “let’s save these petty disagreements for the operating room where there are plenty of sharp instruments at hand.”
    Carl Laffer was a very tall man who had played basketball in college. In spite of his gray hair and bifocals, he still maintained the look of a center about him, one that had retired and become a particularly good-natured coach. He was the hospital’s white-haired elder spokesman, a pragmatist inside the operating room and out. He was genial and endlessly diplomatic, and his appointment as chief of staff had required him to tap into deep personal reserves of goodwill. While long on responsibility and short on remuneration, the chief of staff post at Prescott Memorial was considered one of the most prestigious in the country. Both Farah Davies and Gavin McDermott had lobbied furiously for the appointment, fomenting divisiveness among the medical staff that had taken Laffer the better part of the last year to repair.
    Through Claudia over the years, I had come to see the unromantic side of medicine. While few patients pause to consider it, there are more good physicians in every subspecialty of medicine than good positions. Competition is intense and promotions are often based on considerations other than ability. In medicine, like any other high-stakes profession, personal animosities can infest professional relationships and ruin careers—something that Claudia’s recent run-in with McDermott had brought sharply into focus.
    I had long suspected that the same traits that drove people to excel in highly competitive professions like law or medicine—relentless perfectionism, intolerance of failure, and almost manic compulsion—were the ones that also made them assholes. I remembered asking Claudia about the surgeons she’d worked with at Prescott Memorial. She told me that if she’d had to pick, Carl Laffer was her favorite to scrub with, but if she were the one on the operating table, she’d choose Gavin McDermott every time. Of course, that was before his patients had started inexplicably going into respiratory arrest.
    A white-gloved waiter sounded the gong for dinner, and like two fighters sparring in the ring, Gavin McDermott and Farah Davies separated as if on cue. Elliott and I let the tide of partygoers slowly carry us in to dinner. I was in no hurry. As soon as we sat down, we would be trapped at the family table through dessert. I was also reluctant to bump into Stephen on the way into the dining room.
    “I don’t think those two like each other much,” I whispered to Elliott, meaning Drs. Davies and McDermott. “I