Dead Certain

yourself that if you show doubt or hesitation, even for a second, then it affects the entire team and hurts the patient. You actually start believing that there’s nothing you can’t fix, nothing you can’t cure. But do you want to know what the worst part is?”
    “What?”
    “Somebody has to die before you realize that you were wrong.”
     

CHAPTER 17
     
    The next morning I got up early hoping to catch Claudia before she left for the hospital. Even though I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, I knew that I needed to talk to her. I’d gone to bed feeling uneasy, overwhelmed by the sense that with both Claudia’s and my worlds thrust into turmoil over Prescott Memorial, events were moving too fast to be understood. I had gone to bed with the nagging feeling that I was missing something central, something important.
    But when I woke up, I realized that what was really worrying me was Carlos. Just the fact that Claudia, the least alarmist woman on the planet, had gone to Security about him spoke volumes about the magnitude of the threat. I was glad that she’d taken it seriously. Having spent the better part of the last four years in emergency rooms, Claudia knew firsthand that more women seek treatment for injuries caused by their husbands or boyfriends than from car accidents, robberies, and rapes combined. It seemed worse than ironic that a hospital security officer, of all people, would choose to do nothing about a female doctor clearly at risk.
    But when I got up and went looking for her, Claudia had already gone. In her place in the dining room was the neatly packed carton that contained the Prescott Memorial files. Beside it, with a surgeon’s customary economy of effort, was a one-word note in my roommate’s draftsmanlike print. All it said was “thanks.”
    Disappointed, I went into the kitchen and made coffee. As I waited for the hot water to hiss and chug through the filter into the pot, I watched the changing of the guard. Outside the window, the street people and the scavengers roused themselves with the first light of the morning and got to their feet. They folded up their greasy blankets and moved on to the park or, if the police were already finished with their late-night sweeps, the relative warmth of the train station. No sooner had the last of them slipped from view than my neighbors began trickling from the building, clutching their commuter cups against the chill, unlocking the Club from their steering wheels, and heading off to work.
    When the coffee had finished brewing, I poured myself a cup and made my way back down the long hall to my bedroom. I spent much longer than usual rooting through my closet trying to decide what to wear. As I pushed through dark suit after dark suit it seemed as if my entire wardrobe consisted of garments designed to either intimidate or impress. The only problem with that was that today what I wanted to do was persuade.
    I settled on a gray wool suit with a blouse of pinkish silk, and in a radical departure—for me at least—I elected to wear my hair down. I brushed it carefully, pulling it back off my face with a velvet band. Then I forced myself to take my time with my makeup, extending my usually slapdash routine of mascara and lipstick with eye shadow and blush. So far my usual tactics had gotten me nowhere with the first two Prescott trustees. With only one more pitch ahead of me, it was time to try a different approach.
    Cheryl had set up the meeting with Dr. Carl Laffer at his medical school office, away from the distraction of patients and the emotionally charged ground of Prescott Memorial. Of all the members of the Prescott Memorial board, the hospital’s chief of staff was the one with whom I was least well acquainted. He was also the one I’d heard the best things about. I thought about how he’d managed to diffuse the animosity that had crackled between McDermott and Farah Davis at the Founders Ball, and crossed my fingers. With any luck I was finally about to find myself face-to-face with a reasonable man.
     
    Normally I avoid the freeway by force of habit. Before the Jaguar, I drove an ancient and unreliable Volvo that wheezed dangerously whenever I ventured above fifty and shuddered through every pothole. But today, almost without thinking, I found myself hopping on the interchange that would get me onto the Eisenhower Expressway, eager to avoid passing by McCormack Place, whose hulking presence now conjured up visceral memories of