Dead Certain (11 page)

“Then tell me, how do you propose we do it?”

For a minute I wondered if I was out of my mind. Then I took a deep breath. “Let’s start by getting a few things out on the table so that we’re sure we understand each other. The first thing you have to realize is that if we do this, it isn’t going to be like anything you’ve ever done before. HCC is a big company and they have a tremendous amount riding on this transaction. I guarantee they’re not going to back away from it without a big, ugly fight—the kind of fight you can’t win between bridge and lunch.“

“There’s no need to be insulting about it,” said Mother. “You’ve made your point.”

“Good, because if we commit to doing this, being insulted is going to be the easy part. HCC is not only aggressive, but they’re used to winning. I’m willing to take them on because I think what they’re doing is wrong and there has to be a way to use the law to stop them. But that still doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to beat them without an all-out fight, and I can’t do that alone. You’re the one who’s going to have to marshal the political support, you’re the one who’s going to have to get into the media spotlight and put the weight of your social position behind this thing.”

“You make it sound as if doing this wasn’t my idea in the first place,” protested my mother, “and I resent the suggestion that I’m not serious about seeing it through.“

“Serious enough to use your connections?” I demanded. “Serious enough to risk not only finding yourself bearing the brunt of unfavorable publicity, but also seeing lies and rumors about you, your family, and friends in print? Are you serious enough about beating HCC to ask favors of people you normally wouldn’t even think of entertaining in your woodshed?”

“I am prepared to do whatever it takes to preserve Prescott Memorial Hospital as a nonprofit institution,” declared my mother firmly. “The question now is, are you?”

CHAPTER 8

As soon as I got back to the office I proceeded to launch my own personal jihad against HCC. Of course, not everyone in my little universe was necessarily delighted by this development. For a second I actually thought Cheryl was going to kill me. With final exams approaching and a Day Runner already crammed with job interviews, the last thing she needed was for me to start tilting at windmills. Even so, she took down in her own peculiar brand of shorthand the long list of things I needed her to do, and when I was finished, she stomped off in search of Sherman Whitehead, muttering something under her breath about misery loving company. I had no doubt she was already counting the days until she had a secretary of her own to push around.

Sherman showed up a few minutes later, bobbing and shuffling in the doorway his usual Saint Vitus’ dance of nerdy ticks. At Callahan Ross, Sherman was considered a special breed of pariah. Having been deemed NPM (not Partnership material) on account of his profound and terminal geekiness, he had confirmed everyone’s fears by refusing to have the good sense to shuffle off, tail between his legs, to a smaller firm. Instead, he appeared content to stay on at Callahan Ross indefinitely, relegated to the purgatorial role of “counsel.” The sad part was that he was not only brighter but more able than most of the partners put together. However, I was one of the few people who could get past the dandruff and greasy hair i to see it.

As I outlined the situation with Prescott Memorial and HCC, Sherman honed in on the key issues before I even had a chance to articulate them. Inside of five minutes he outlined his plan to hunt down any legal precedent that could potentially be used to block or, at the very least, f delay the sale. He also promised to dig up any other relevant information about HCC: for example, the outcome of any other attempted purchase of a charity hospital or whether in the company’s six-year history they’d ever been sued.

What I didn’t tell Sherman was that these efforts merely constituted a backup plan. With three out of five trustees voting in favor of the sale, the easiest way to thwart HCC wasn’t going to be to sue them, but simply to convince one of the trustees to change their vote. I even had my candidate for “most likely to be swayed” picked out. By the time Sherman departed for the library, Cheryl was already on the phone trying to set up an appointment for me to see Prescott Memorial’s chief of surgery, the famous Dr. Gavin McDermott.

In the meantime I put in a call to Denise Dempsey. Denise was one of the city’s top PR specialists. Highly professional and extremely well connected, she also made no secret of the fact that she preferred social rather than business issues. The rap against her was that in her heart of heart she was antibusiness. In short, she was perfect.

I spent a little over a half an hour on the phone with Denise, selling her on the idea of stopping HCC and explaining what I was trying to do. When I was done, she offered up a thumbnail sketch of a public relations battle plan. Listening to her, I had the fleeting sense that all of this just might work. Then I reminded myself that plausibility and persuasiveness were the PR expert’s stock in trade.

It wasn’t until we got down to talking about money that I started getting nervous. I must confess that I was shocked to learn that Denise charged even more an hour than I did—likability obviously being in much shorter supply than legal acumen. I wondered what Mother had been thinking when she said that she would do whatever it took to fight HCC. Well, I thought to myself as I said good-bye to Denise, I was definitely giving her the chance to put her money where her mouth was.

For the rest of the afternoon things pretty much went downhill—particularly when it came to Delirium. First I called the hospital to find out how Bill Delius was doing, but all they would tell me was that he was still in the cardiac intensive care unit and listed in stable condition. Then I tried to get in touch with Claudia, only to be told by the page operator that my roommate was seeing clinic patients all afternoon and was taking only emergency calls. To make matters even worse, I was convinced that Mark Millman was deliberately avoiding me. I left messages at every number I had for him, but my only reward was a profound and persistent silence.

Gabriel Hurt and everyone else from Icon were equally uncommunicative. In between calls to people who were not there, were on the other line, or whose cell phones Were switched off, I checked my e-mail at ever shortening intervals, going so far as to read the day’s list of firm birthdays and a memo outlining the partnership’s Policy on personal use of frequent-flyer miles. Jeff Tannenbaum, the associate who’d carried the heaviest load on Delirium, stopped in for an update and ended up moping around my office because I felt too guilty to tell him to get lost.

His yearly review was coming up, and his name was going to be considered for partnership. Closing the deal with Icon would have clinched the matter for him. While he didn’t say it, I knew what he was thinking. It was easy for me, a partner with fuck-you money in the bank, to ride out the ups and downs of a difficult transaction, but it was Jeff’s future on the line as much as it was Delirium’s. Hunched inconsolably at the end of my couch, his presence was a physical reminder that I should be spending my energy getting talks with Icon back on track instead of letting myself be drawn into a futile and self-indulgent pissing contest with HCC.

By four o’clock I was more than happy to get out of the office in order to go see Gavin McDermott who had grudgingly agreed to squeeze me in between patients at his office at the Northwestern Memorial medical center. Like the other physicians at Prescott Memorial, McDermott conducted the bulk of his practice elsewhere, devoting only a handful of days a month to charitable cases. In addition to a faculty appointment at the Northwestern University Medical School, he was also a partner in a lucrative North Shore surgical practice whose patients and their problems were light-years away from those he treated at Prescott Memorial.

According to Claudia, Gavin McDermott, like the other private-practice surgeons who rotated through the hospital, saw their time there as a chance to practice real medicine uncomplicated by the intrusion of insurers’ restrictions and the demands of operating a practice. Instead, they relished the opportunity to revisit the things that attracted them to medicine in the first place—the challenges of surgery and the chance to be a healer as opposed to a service provider.

I don’t know what I expected when I got to Dr. McDermott’s office, but it certainly wasn’t to wait on a vinyl couch surrounded by people in bandages and surgical drains. While I realized that doctors delight in making lawyers wait—it is part of the petty friction played out between antagonistic professions—I hadn’t expected to be treated this way by McDermott.

For one thing, Prescott Memorial’s chief of surgery was a personal friend of my parents, who had endowed his teaching chair at Northwestern. Not only that, but his latest wife was a girlhood friend of mine. His marriage to Patsy placed us both within the claustrophobic confines of the same social circle. Even if he was a relative newcomer, Gavin knew as well as anybody how the game was played.

From Claudia, I was also well aware that McDermott was a man whose every action was the product of deliberation. While most OR personnel tied their face masks in quick bows, McDermott knotted his a half beat quicker and then broke it with a snap when he was done. Instead of wearing the paper booties everyone else wore to protect their shoes from blood, McDermott wore one of three identical pairs of dark red clogs, silicone treated and thus washable. If I was being made to wait, it was for a reason.

Eventually a nurse called my name and reverently ushered me into the great man’s office. Under the circumstances I felt lucky that at least I wasn’t being shown into an examining room and told to get undressed. The fact that McDermott was on the phone and didn’t even look up when I entered merely reinforced my suspicions.

Prescott Memorial’s chief of surgery was a theatrically handsome man in his late forties, though he looked a full decade younger. Tan and fit, even after a Chicago winter, it was only since his marriage to Patsy that his dark hair had turned the corner toward gray. His hair was one of his many affectations. He wore it combed straight back from his high forehead like the more pretentious variety of orchestra conductor. He had a beak of a nose, prominent and thin, and piercing blue eyes that Pm sure his patients thought of as all-knowing. But what was really remarkable about him were his hands—slim, expressive, and with sensitive fingers that seemed to measure everything they touched.

As I waited I listened to him describe in great detail the various ways that an elderly woman’s bladder might be surgically enlarged. I couldn’t help but wonder if he would have been half as rude if he knew that I was aware of how many patients he’d lost recently. As the conversation dragged on about the poor woman’s bladder, I cast my eyes around the room. It was not a warm place. Diplomas and awards covered the walls. Duke, Indiana University, Columbia Presbyterian, and the University of Chicago had all contributed to Gavin McDermott’s education, while a constellation of other institutions including the American College of Surgeons, the American Medical Association, and Prescott Memorial Hospital had all conferred awards on him. There were no family photos, no handmade tributes from grateful patients, no mementos of hobbies or outside interests.

The scary part was that in some ways his office was almost the duplicate of mine. Patient charts replaced case files, but there were Post-it notes everywhere, and a small tape recorder for dictation lay close at hand. Outside the window there was no view to speak of, just the red brick facade of another medical center building. The only objects approaching decoration were a series of plastic anatomical models 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.”