Last Dance, Last Chance

shudder. “It was terrible,” she said. “It looked as if someone had opened her abdomen with one of those old-fashioned can openers; it was all jagged and infected. I’ll never forget it.”
    On Friday, August 8, Dr. Anthony Pignataro visited Connie in the hospital. He appeared to be his usual blithely confident self. But he looked at her with surprise and asked, “What happened? ” as if he couldn’t understand why she’d gone to the hospital.
    Before she could protest, he examined the incision.
    “There’s nothing medically wrong with you,” he said firmly. He picked up her chart and wrote that she should be discharged.
    Nurses watched him and summoned doctors who did have privileges at Buffalo Mercy. They asked Pignataro to leave.
    But he was back again on Saturday morning at 6:30, asking Connie, “What are you still doing here?”
    She stared back at him as if he were crazy. You didn’t have to be a doctor to see she was sick. He picked up her chart again and studied it, telling her that she had no fever and her blood work was perfectly O.K.
    Once more, Anthony Pignataro was asked to leave the hospital. His visit had not been sought by the patient, and he had no authorization whatsoever to be in her room, to be reading her chart, or even to be in the hospital.
    *  *  *
    Later, Dr. K., the physician who was treating Connie Vinetti, placed a phone call to Dr. Anthony Pignataro. Eventually, the call was returned.
    “I hear you’re seeing one of my patients,” Pignataro began smoothly. “What seems to be the problem?”
    Dr. K. explained the problems he had noted in the acutely ill patient.
    “That’s nothing,” Pignataro scoffed. “There’s nothing wrong with her. I’ve seen worse.”
    Dr. K. was stunned. “This is bad, Doctor,” he said. “You shouldn’t be doing these procedures in your office.”
    “It isn’t an office. It’s a surgery center,” Pignataro countered huffily.
    Dr. K. tried once more to convey how very ill Connie Vinetti was and to describe the extent of her infection. He suggested that Pignataro was hurting people with his heedless approach. He was blunt.
    “Well,” Anthony Pignataro said, “I’m sorry you feel that way. Maybe we could have lunch and talk this over, before things get out of hand.”
    It was akin to a conversation out of Alice in Wonderland. How could any medical doctor be so oblivious to the dangers of septic infection in a terrible stomach wound? Dr. K. hung up, shaking his head.
    Connie Vinetti spent another five or six days in the hospital, taking strong antibiotics to fight her raging infection. She survived, but she would never again want to wear a bikini.
     
    Anthony Pignataro had another black mark against him, but it really didn’t matter to him. He still believed that he was a superior surgeon and that other people had simply overreacted to the occasional medical mishaps that could happen to any doctor.
    He was in denial. Some might say he was having a breakdown, that he was overwhelmed with grief at the loss of his father nine months earlier. Those less charitable would lay it squarely upon his narcissism, a personality disorder, enhanced by drug use and alcohol.
    There were four people in the world, however, who genuinely cared about the future of Anthony Pignataro, despite the times he had disappointed and betrayed them: his mother, Lena; his children, Ralph and Lauren; and his wife, Debbie. They all loved him.
    But that wasn’t enough. Anthony plunged into more office surgeries. He had learned nothing from the disastrous operation on Connie Vinetti.
     
    To reassure himself, perhaps, Anthony’s writing alias, “Debbie,” added more validation of his skills to his manuscript:
    “For better or for worse, how many of us have spoken these vows with the sincere belief that it will, for the most part, always be for the better?” “Debbie” wrote. “For me, there was no reason to believe that it would be anything but glorious. As a third-generation Italian American, of humble but virtuous means, all I ever desired was to marry a decent man who loved me and provided me with the emotional support I needed. If good fortune were to bestow on me any more than middle-class fare, this would not matter.
    “Anthony S. Pignataro, M.D., my husband, found genuine success and fulfillment in his career as a Cosmetic Surgeon. It was his sixth year in private practice and we had just begun to see the light at the end of the long and arduous