Angels on the Night Shift (19 page)

“I’m comin’ as fast as I can!”

It was Amy Connors, hurrying up the hallway from the staff lounge.

“I got here as quick as I could,” she said, walking around the counter and waiting for Susan to get up out of her chair. “Wouldn’t you know it? A brand-new truck, and the battery’s dead.”

The phone rang and Susan picked it up. She listened for a moment, then handed it to Amy.

“It’s for you,” she told her. “Walter Stevens.”

A
my looked up at me. There was a cold resolution in her eyes, and I nodded my head, understanding her need to get this over with.

Susan reached under the desk, grabbed her purse, and stood up.

“It’s all yours,” she told Amy, oblivious to the emotional turmoil surrounding her.

“Do you want me to stay over tonight?” Amy asked her. “I really appreciate you hanging around for me.”

“No, don’t worry about that,” Susan answered, smiling. “You’ve done it for me enough times. And probably will again.”

She walked around the counter and down the hallway, leaving me alone with Amy.

“Any advice?” she asked me.

“Just what Virginia always tells me,” I answered. “Let him do the talking. If you wait long enough, he’ll show all his cards and then you can respond. You don’t need to tell him much of anything ’cause he doesn’t have much of anything. And try to keep your cool.”

Once again, we were a lot alike, and I knew this last request would be difficult for her.

“I’ll do my best,” she said, moving around the counter and stepping over in front of room 5. “I’ll be back as fast as I can. And if you hear a Code Blue, well…it won’t be
me
needin’ CPR.”

I chuckled at this, knowing she was right, but a little worried because she
was
right. As she disappeared down the hall, Virginia stepped out of her office and over to the nurses’ station.

“Is she going to be okay?” she asked, nodding her head in the direction of the now empty corridor, but not really expecting an answer.

“This whole thing makes me sick,” I told her. “I just wish one of us could be there with her. Stevens can be overbearing, as you well know.”

“I’m just glad her husband didn’t come with her,” Virginia mused. “I actually had that thought as I was driving in this morning. Now
that
would be fireworks! But I don’t think she said anything to him, because knowing Charlie, he wouldn’t let her be doing this on her own if he knew about it. And then there would be trouble.”

Jeff Ryan walked out of triage, leading a middle-aged man dressed in the garb of one of the city’s utility workers. He was holding a bloody bandage to his right eyebrow, and the two of them headed toward minor trauma.

“Looks like you’ve got work to do,” Virginia said, turning and walking back to her office.

Forty-five minutes later, Amy returned to the ER. I was standing at the nurses’ station, talking with one of our surgeons about a ten-year-old in room 4 with a probable hot appendix. He would be heading to the OR shortly, and when I saw Amy coming up the hallway, I cut short my conversation. I could tell she was upset.

“Thanks, Robert,” the surgeon said to me. “I’ll let you know what we find.”

He walked back over to room 4 as Amy passed behind him and over to her chair. Instead of sitting down, she reached under the counter and grabbed her book bag. Her face was flushed and she hadn’t looked at me yet.

“Amy,” I said tentatively. There was no response, and I repeated myself. “Amy?”

She raised her hand to silence me, and still wouldn’t meet my eyes. Without saying a word, she stepped around the counter and headed for the ambulance entrance.

“Amy,” I said again, trying to stop her or at least get her attention. She didn’t answer and kept walking toward the exit.

Virginia Granger stepped out of the medicine room and saw Amy disappear through the automatic doors. The look on her face changed quickly from one of questioning to one of determination. She gestured with her head, indicating I was to follow Amy. I did, with Virginia right behind me.

Amy was walking quickly, almost running, and we were having trouble keeping up with her.

“Amy!” I called out. “Hold on a minute!”

She kept right on walking and didn’t turn around.

“Amy, I need to talk with you!”

It was Virginia, and I had never heard this tone in her voice. She wasn’t ordering her, or directing her secretary to do something. She was pleading with her to stop.

Amy did. And with her back still to us, she dropped her head to her chest. We caught up with her and she slowly turned around to face us.

“Amy, tell us what happened,” the head nurse asked, coming up beside her. “What’s the matter?”

She was staring down at the cracked pavement, silent and brooding. Then she looked up, first at me, then at Virginia.

“He fired me, that’s what happened.” She was blunt, almost accusatory.

“He did what?” I exclaimed, not believing what I had just heard.

Virginia reached out and put a hand on Amy’s arm. She didn’t pull away.

“Tell us what happened with Walter Stevens.”

She recoiled at the sound of his name, and it took a moment or two for her to collect herself.

“I went in his office and sat down, and he immediately started in on me,” she began, anger rising in her voice.

Virginia crossed her arms and started tapping her right foot, trying to control her own boiling emotions. “Take your time, Amy. Just take a deep breath and take your time.”

She took a deep breath, blew it out, and looked straight into my eyes.

“He didn’t waste any time,” she began to tell us. “He told me he knew I had been stealing the drugs in the ER and he had proof. He wanted me to confess and get it over with.”

“What kind of proof did he have?” I asked her, becoming angrier myself.

“He didn’t have
any
, of course,” Amy answered tersely. “I asked him the same thing, but he just hemmed and hawed and said I needed to confess and clear things up. I told him to go jump and that I hadn’t done anything. That really teed him off, ’cause he got up out of his chair and started pacin’ around the room.”

“Amy,” I interrupted her. “I told you to try to keep quiet and let him talk.”

Virginia shot me a disapproving glance.

“I tried, Dr. Lesslie, but he’s such an arrogant…an arrogant…” She glanced over at Virginia, not wanting to offend her.

“He’s an arrogant jerk,” Virginia said, finishing her sentence. “Go on.”

“Then he pulled out a notepad and started going down some list he had made. He knew about our new truck and asked where we had got the money to buy it. I told him we had a car loan and that we were probably goin’ to lose it, but he just blew that off. And he knew about Charlie losing his job.”

“Charlie lost his job?” Virginia exclaimed, surprised by this news. “Amy, you didn’t tell me about that.”

Amy looked down at the pavement again and said, “It happened a couple of weeks ago. There were some layoffs at the plant, and Charlie was one of them. They promised he would be hired back on once things got better. But it’s been tough, and I didn’t want anybody to know about it. I didn’t want you guys to worry about us.”

“Amy…” Virginia said quietly.

“And he knew about us takin’ Benji out of the private school. I don’t know how he found out about that, but it really ticked me off. We wanted him to go out to Westminster and be with some of his friends, but when things got tight, we just couldn’t…we couldn’t afford it. Stevens said all those things pointed to ‘motive’ or something like that. He started talkin’ about ‘need’ and ‘opportunity’ and about rationalizin’ stuff, and I wanted to slug him.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t,” I told her, trying to lighten the mood a little.

“How do you know I didn’t?” she asked, staring straight at me with a serious expression on her face.

I flinched a little and she said, “Don’t worry. I didn’t slug him. Wanted to, but I didn’t.”

“You said he fired you,” Virginia asked her. “How did that come about?”

“Well, first he told me to resign and be done with it,” Amy began again. “When I told him that wasn’t happenin’, he told me that South Carolina was a ‘hire at will’ state, or somethin’ like that, and that he could fire me for no cause. Just like that. Then he kept tryin’ to get me to resign, telling me that it would look better on my record, and I would have a better chance of gettin’ another job, and stuff like that. But I kept tellin’ him I wasn’t goin’ to resign because I hadn’t done anything wrong. That set him off all over again, and he started poundin’ on his desk. I wanted to pound it with his head, but I didn’t. Then all of a sudden, he stood up straight, took a deep breath, and got real calm. That’s when I got nervous. Then he started talkin’ about some
bus
and how I didn’t need to be on it.”

I glanced over at Virginia. She was shaking her head.

Amy stopped talking and looked again at each of us.

“Then he told me you two knew all about this and that you agreed with everything he was saying, and that you wanted me to resign too.”

There was hurt in her voice and in her eyes.

“That’s absurd!” Virginia snapped out, stepping closer to Amy. “We knew about this—that’s why we talked with you yesterday. But neither of us believes a word of what Walter Stevens is saying, and we certainly don’t want you to resign!”

“Well, it’s too late for that,” she said, pulling back a little from Virginia. “Like I said, he fired me. When I refused to resign, he said, ‘Fine, then. Have it your way. You’re fired and you are to leave the premises immediately.’ Just like that. Then he told me to leave his office. I had more to say to him, but he said ‘Just get out,’ and that’s what I did. I’m done with this place,” she said, looking over at the hospital and shaking her head.

“Done with it,” she repeated. Then she turned and started off again toward her truck.

“Amy!” I called after her.

She raised her hand in the air and kept walking. I looked over at Virginia and she shook her head, silencing me.

“We have to give her some time,” she said quietly. “A little space is what she needs right now.”

“Well, she might need some space, Virginia,” I told her. “But I’m going to see Bill Chalmers.”

Once again, Virginia Granger would prove to be right. When I had a break, I went to the administration offices and asked the secretary there if I could speak with Bill Chalmers. The waiting area was surrounded by four or five offices, one for the CEO and the others for various vice presidents. The door to Walter Stevens’s office was the only one open and I could see him sitting behind his desk. He was looking away from me, leaning back in his chair with his feet up on his desk, talking on the phone. He was animated, and he was smiling. That almost did it for me. It was all I could do to keep from charging into his office and letting him have it, but that wouldn’t do Amy any good. I took a deep breath and looked away.

“Mr. Chalmers will see you now, Dr. Lesslie,” his secretary politely told me.

“Thanks,” I said, then walked over to his closed door.

I rapped on the paneled wood, and then stepped into his office. Chalmers was sitting behind his desk. He stood up, walked over to me, and shook my hand.

“Have a seat, Robert,” he told me, gesturing to a couple of chairs clustered around a small coffee table. I could tell he had been expecting this visit. I sat down and he took the chair beside me.

Bill Chalmers and I had always gotten along. I respected him, even liked him, which was a little unusual, considering the constant potential for conflict between a hospital administrator and his medical staff.

Bill was a businessman and he knew the importance of the bottom line, and of keeping the hospital operating in the black. But unlike too many hospital administrators, he also knew the importance of providing the best medical care possible. We had talked about that—how you can’t have one without the other. I had come to believe he was committed to making Rock Hill General the best hospital in the area, and that he understood it didn’t start in the business office.

He also understood that my job was to see that the patients who came through the ER got the best care possible and that the staff was taken care of. So far, that had never been a source of conflict for the two of us. So far.

Bill was aware of the situation with Amy Connors, and I explained my position. He listened patiently, not saying anything, and occasionally nodded his head in seeming agreement.

Finally, I said, “Bill, we need to do something here.
You
need to do something here. Amy Connors doesn’t have anything to do with this—I’m sure of it. She’s a solid woman and the best secretary you’ve got. I don’t know why Walter Stevens has personally convicted her, but he’s dead wrong. She’s been singled out for some unknown reason, and she’s being harmed. I’m asking you to step in and help her. Tell Stevens to back off, and if he needs more time to investigate…well, what’s the sudden rush?”

Chalmers sat quietly, studying the back of his hands.

“Robert, I hear everything you’ve said, and I completely understand your position in this matter. But let me explain where I am in this. I’ve given Walter the assignment of solving this trouble—actually, he asked for it and I agreed—and I have to support him in his findings. If I don’t do that, it will undermine his position in this administration and cause irreparable harm. I’m sure that as the director of the ER, you can understand that.”

“But what about Amy?” I asked him. “What about the irreparable harm done to her?”

He started rubbing his hands together, and there was a look of concern on his face.

“Robert, I know how close you are to Amy Connors. I hear you, and believe me, I understand what you’re having to deal with.”

This seemed genuinely painful for him, and I waited as he began stroking his chin.

Finally, he took a deep breath, sighed, and said, “I know how you feel about Walter Stevens. And I know you think he’s misguided with the way he’s handling this. In fact, I probably feel the same way. But I see a different side of him. He’s determined to help make Rock Hill General the best it can be, and I have to admire that.”