Flashback (1988) (38 page)

“Sorry,” Zack mumbled. “If I’m touchy, I guess it’s that I just wish things were different between me and Frank.”

“Well?”

“Suzanne, I can’t help it if Frank thinks it’s my fault that the Judge is pushing the board of trustees to buy back the hospital from Ultramed.”

It was clearly the first she had heard of that development.

“My God, Zack, you can’t let him do that.”

“First of all,” he said. “I have no more control over that man than Frank or anybody else does. And second, why not?”

“Well … well because,” she stammered. “If the board threw Ultramed out, Frank would be ruined.”

“Nonsense. He knows his job. He could do it just as well for a community corporation as he could for an operation like Ultramed. Better, probably. Suzanne, listen to me. Something’s wrong around here. Something’s terribly wrong.”

“Dammit, Zachary, what is the matter with you? Don’t you have regard for anyone but yourself? I come here to ask you to let up on a man who is partly responsible for saving my career, to say nothing of his being your brother, and all you can do is … is tear down his hospital.”

“It’s not
his
hospital. Look, I don’t want to get into a fight. I have too much on my mind.”

“Like what?”

Every instinct was clamoring for him to change the subject, to keep his theories to himself—at least as long as they were no more than that. He stared down at his hands. Darryl Tarberry’s revelations about Jason Mainwaring were too fresh in his mind.

“Suzanne,” he said slowly, “I have reason—good reason—to believe that human experimentation is being conducted at this hospital.”

“Now that is the wildest—”

“And,” he cut in, “I have just as much reason to believe that you might have been one of the subjects.”

Suzanne listened in wide-eyed disbelief as he recounted his experiences with Toby Nelms and Jack Pearl, his brief study of the gallbladder surgery performed by Mainwaring and Greg Ormesby, and finally, his conversation with Tarberry.

“Apparently, a woman died of an anaphylactic reaction to a local anesthetic she received in Mainwaring’s office. Mainwaring claimed it was Xylocaine, but there was plenty of documentation that the woman had received that drug on numerous occasions with no problems. A nurse of his, who was very upset with what happened, charged that Mainwaring had been testing something out that wasn’t Xylocaine. Although investigators could never prove that was true, they did apparently discover that our friend Jason was part owner of a pharmaceutical house somewhere in the South.”

“This is crazy!” Suzanne said. “Did that man you talked to at Hopkins happen to know what company this might have been?”

“He couldn’t remember.”

“He … couldn’t … remember … Zack, this is exactly the sort of thing Frank was protesting. These are terrible, disruptive charges you’re making on very little hard evidence.”

“I’m not making any charges,” he said, feeling his composure beginning to slip. “I’m snaring a disturbing theory with a friend whose clinical judgment I value and trust. I would think you’d be frantic at the thought that someone might have been fooling around with your body while you were asleep.”

“Well, I’m not frantic, I’m worried—about you. Zack, you’ve only been here a couple of weeks. In that time, you’ve clashed with Wil Marshfield, had words with Jason, fought with Don Norman, upset your brother, fostered a move to buy back the hospital, and now, on nothing more than the flimsiest circumstantial evidence, you’re accusing the finest surgeon and anesthesiologist on the staff of a terrible crime.”

Zack pushed back his chair.

“Suzanne, listen to me—”

“No, you listen. How do you explain the fact that there hasn’t been one other case like Toby Nelms’s?”

“I … I don’t know. Maybe it’s a rare complication of whatever it is they’re using. Maybe people have had episodes like his but they’ve happened in other places, or haven’t been brought to a doctor’s attention. Maybe there’s some sort of sensory trigger involved that just doesn’t happen to everyone.
You told me yourself that you hadn’t been feeling right since your operation.”

“I’ve been tired. That’s a far cry from having a psychotic seizure.”

“What about that episode in the field?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You went blank.”

“I did nothing of the sort.”

“You did. It was as if someone threw a switch, and all of a sudden you weren’t there.”

“Zack, this is crazy. You’ve got to back off. You’ve hit this place like an earthquake.”

“Suzanne, that child is dying.”

“Maybe so. But it’s not from something Jason or Jack Pearl did to him. One other case, Zachary. Just find me one other case like Toby Nelms and I’ll listen. Even then I may not believe you, but I’ll listen. In the meantime, I think you owe your brother, and all the rest of us for that matter, a little breathing room.” She stood up. “Back off, Zack. Please. Do what you can to keep your father from destroying what your brother has worked so hard to build, and give us all a rest.”

She snatched up her handbag and, without waiting for a response, raced from the office.

For a time, Zack sat numbly, staring out the window at the waning afternoon.
A trigger, or a sequence of triggers
. Perhaps that was the key. Suzanne had no recollection of the episode at the Meadows during their picnic, but something weird had happened to her. A switch
had
been thrown. But what? A word? A sound? A smell?

Zack drummed his long fingers on the desk. He felt his thoughts darting out at the answer again and again, like the tongue of a snake. But each time not quite far enough … not quite far enough.…

Finally, he slid Toby Nelms’s file back in front of him and opened it, once again, to the first page

“They’re not going to get you, kid,” he whispered. “I swear, they’re not going to get you.”

Even among the best of the old New England inns, the Granite House was special. The slanting, hardwood floors, beamed ceilings, and oddly shaped rooms, each with a stone hearth, were rated by the guides as only slightly less wonderful than the cuisine and service.

Frank Iverson had chosen the spot carefully for his first encounter with the Davis Regional trustees; specifically, this night, a successful banker named Bill Crook, and Whitey Bourque, the rotund, often outspoken manager of the local A & P.

The evening had gone well—better than he had dared hope.

He had orchestrated the conversation beautifully, weaving accounts of Ultramed’s successes and plans in with reminiscences of some golf games he had shared with Crook, and some interested queries about Bourque’s daughter, Renée, one of the finest young horsewomen in the area.

Now, as they sat in the otherwise deserted Colonial Room, sipping cognac and smoking after-dinner cigars, he felt ready to nail the two men down.

There were twenty-one members of the board. Frank considered six of them to be all but in the bag either because of their relationship with him or because of business they would lose if Ultramed was forced out of Sterling. Allowing for two no-shows at the meeting—and given the boards track record, that was a conservative estimate—he would need only three or four more votes to block the buyback regardless of the Judges position.

And at least half of those votes were right there at the table, sitting, it seemed, in the palm of his hand. All he needed to do, ever so carefully, was close his fingers.

Unlimited potential …

Frank allowed himself the flicker of a smile.

Don’t go too far away, Ms. Baron
, he thought, eyeing the two men over his snifter.
I’m coming
.

“They sure know how to do it right here, don’t they,” he began.

Bill Crook, logy from the meal and the drinks, mumbled agreement. He was a slap-on-the-back Ivy Leaguer with a reputation for enthusiastically supporting the ideas of others while never coming up with an original one of any substance.

Whitey Bourque belched and dabbed at his lips with the corner of his napkin. Frank noticed the tangles of fine veins reddening his cheeks.

“Good beef,” he humphed. “Nothing we don’t have at the store, but good.”

“Lisette always said yours is the only place in town to buy meat, Whitey,” Frank said. “As a matter of fact, I think I’ll have her stop by tomorrow and stock up our freezer.… So,
now, before we break up and head home to our families, I want to be sure I’ve answered all the questions either of you might have about just what Ultramed has on the drawing board for our hospital. Bill?”

The banker thought for a moment, and then shook his head.

“Sounds like a pretty ambitious and exciting set of objectives to me, Frank,” he said.

“And don’t forget for a moment that Ultramed plans to finance every one of these projects with local money. Sterling National Bank money, if I have my way. Whitey?”

Bourque shook three sugars into a cup of coffee and drank it in one gulp.

“No questions,” he said.

“I’ll have details of our proposal for competitive bidding on our dietary service in your hands by the end of the month.”

“That’ll be fine, Frank. Fine.”

“Excellent.” Frank glanced at the check, and then handed it and his Gold Card to the waitress. “Bring us a few more of those little mints, honey,” he said. He cleared his throat and turned back to the table. “So, gentlemen, I’ve enjoyed sharing this meal with you both, and I presume Ultramed and I can count on your support at the board meeting Friday.”

The two men looked at one another, silently selecting a spokesman. Whitey Bourque was chosen.

“Well, Frank,” he said, “all we can tell you at this time is: that depends.”

Frank felt suddenly cold. “Depends on what?”

“On what your father comes up with these next couple of days. He called us yesterday, Frank, and asked us to keep our minds open on this business until he had checked up on a few things. I felt that considering how much help he was to me during last years fund raiser for the new parish house, that was the least I could do.”

“And I owe him for the way he stepped in when my boy Ted experimented with that damn dago red wine and had that accident,” Crook chimed in. “He saved the kid’s buns for sure.”

“Gentlemen, please,” Frank said, struggling to keep any note of desperation from his voice. “I’m not arguing against the good works the Judge does around this town. For goodness sakes, that’s a given. And I’m proud to be his son. But it’s apples and oranges. What we’re talking about here is support for your hospital and the good works
we’ve
been doing. Renée’s
broken wrist, Whitey. Remember that? Or … or how about that coronary your mother had last year, Bill? People say that if it weren’t for our new unit and our new cardiologist, she would have died.”

“I … I understand,” Crook said, staring down into his empty glass.

“Well?”

Whitey Bourque sighed.

“Frank, we’re sorry,” he said. “We’d like to help you out, but we gave the Judge our word we’d wait and follow his recommendation. He’s the chairman of the board, and he’s doin’ all the legwork on this thing. All we want is what’s best for Sterling. Since we’re all too busy to do in-depth research of any kind, we’re sort of counting on him to steer us in the right direction. I hope things work out. And whatever happens, I intend to help you and the hospital in any way I can.”

“Ditto for ine, Frank,” Crook said.

“Well, then … I guess there’s nothing more I can say, is there.”

“You gave a good presentation, Frank,” Bourque said, standing. “A damn good presentation. Your father’d be proud.”

“Hey, what the heck. We’ll work it out, Whitey. I’m sure of it.”

Frank forced the words through a noose of anger and frustration tightening about his throat.

He walked the two men to the dirt parking lot, shook their hands amiably, and watched until their taillights had disappeared into the night. Then he turned and landed a vicious kick on the door of the Porsche, leaving a dent and a small scrape.

Heedless of the damage, he leapt behind the wheel and skidded from the lot, spraying a retired salesman and his wife with sand and stones.

From the moment she had heard the Porsche screech into the drive and the screen door slam, Lisette knew it was going to be another one of those nights.

With a mumbled greeting and not so much as a peck on the cheek, Frank stormed past her and into his den. She stood in the darkened hallway, waiting for the clink of ice in his glass. Frank did not disappoint her.

Now, as she brewed a pot of the herbal tea that Frank had
once introduced to her as “the only drink I ever touch after ten,” she battled the urge to bury herself in bed.

She set the pot, two cups, some sliced lemon, and some sugar wafers on a tray and carried them to the study. Frank was standing in one corner, his back to her, reading.

“Hi, what’s the book?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

He shoved the volume back into the bookcase and turned to her, but she had caught enough of a glimpse to know. It was his high school yearbook.

“Frank, are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure, I’m great. Do me a favor and just leave me alone, will you?” His words were already beginning to slur.

“I brought you some tea.”

“I don’t want any fucking tea.”

“Frank, please.”

“I said I don’t want any goddamn tea!”

He swiped his arm across hers, sending the tray spinning across the room. Tea splattered on the wall. The fine china, a wedding gift from her mother, shattered.

Stunned, she stared at the mess.

“Frank, somethings wrong with you,” she said as calmly as she could. “You need help. Please, honey. I love you. The girls love you. For our sake, you’ve got to get some help.” She stepped toward him, her arms extended.

“I don’t need any help!” he screamed. “What I need is to be left alone!”

“Please.”

She took one more tentative step forward, and he hit her—a swift, backhand slap to the side of the face that sent her reeling against a chair.

“I don’t need you. I don’t need my fucking father. I don’t need goddamn Ultramed. I don’t need anyone! I’m going to make it, and nothing any of you can do is—”