The Last Word (6 page)

Mark was in his mid-sixties. He could retire and still have a long life ahead of him. But then what would he do? How would he occupy his time? How would he keep his mind sharp? Could he walk away from a life devoted to medicine and homicide investigation? And even if he could, was that what he wanted?

That was the real problem. He didn’t know what he wanted.

Maybe he was just lonely.

Wasn’t that really why he’d bought this house after his wife, Katherine, died, all those years ago, as a way to keep Steve from leaving him alone?

No, he couldn’t possibly be that selfish or manipulative. It wasn’t in his character. It wasn’t who he was. Or who he thought he was anyway.

Maybe the only change he needed in his life was to find a new woman to love. He hadn’t made much of an effort in that regard in the decades since Katherine died. Sure, he’d had some relationships, but the women all ended up moving on. They grew tired of competing with the hospital and the LAPD for his attention and losing.

He couldn’t blame them for leaving him. He’d refused to change. Perhaps he always would.

Mark glanced at his watch. It was time to go to the hospital—it always was when his thoughts started taking him down roads he’d rather not travel.

Jesse was on his way to the ICU to check on Corinne Adams when Mark caught up with him in the hallway. The young surgeon looked terrible.

“Have you slept at all since I last saw you?” Mark asked.

“Susan and I managed to sneak into one of the new maternity suites for a couple of hours,” Jesse said and then winced with regret. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

The maternity suites were part of a new initiative by Hollyworld International, the owners of the hospital, to lure upscale couples to Community General for their maternity needs.

Hollyworld owned several amusement parks and resorts and brought that design expertise to the lushly appointed maternity suites, which looked like upscale hotel rooms and offered well-heeled couples the opportunity to, as the advertisements put it, “enjoy the birth of your child in a relaxing environment of unsurpassed comfort, luxury, and style for mother, father, and newborn.”

The theory was that couples would check in to the maternity ward as if it were a Ritz-Carlton, staying a few days before and after the birth of their child for a “maternity vacation that you will enjoy so much, you’ll start thinking of having another child before you leave.”

But few couples could afford the daily rates, which looked more like monthly mortgage payments. It was a poorly kept secret that the only couples taking advantage of the plush new suites were doctors and nurses sneaking away for a few intimate moments in the middle of their long, grueling shifts.

“You need your sleep,” Mark said. “As long as you don’t nod off while you’re behind the wheel of a car or operating on a patient, why should I care where you get your rest?”

“Because you’re an administrator here and we’re supposed to sleep alone on the hard, narrow cots in the doctors’ lounge,” Jesse said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Not with our wives in the comfy king-sized beds with the four-hundred-thread-count sheets and heavy comforters that they’ve got up in the maternity suites. Those rooms are a lot nicer than our apartment. It’s almost pointless to go home.”

“Did you change the sheets?” Mark asked.

“Of course we did.”

Mark shrugged.

“What matters to me is that you’re at the top of your game and providing the best possible care to our patients. You need to be rested and undistracted by problems in your personal life to do that. If sleeping with your wife in an empty maternity suite is what it takes to maintain that level of quality care, then so be it. No one is getting hurt. If anything, the patients and the hospital are benefiting.”

“I like your enlightened attitude,” Jesse said.

“The hospital doesn’t.”

“So what else is new? Speaking of which, Clarke Trotter has been looking for you.”

Mark made it a habit to avoid Trotter, the hospital’s legal counsel and hatchet man.

Trotter did whatever he could to limit the hospital’s legal exposure in any given situation. But that was Trotter’s job, and Mark could respect that. What Mark couldn’t abide was Trotter’s unwillingness to factor the medical and human consequences of his actions into his decisions.

“I’ll stay on the lookout for him,” Mark said. “Where do things stand with Corinne Adams?”

Jesse stopped outside the doors to the ICU and turned towards Mark.

“She’s stable. I’ve sent out her lab work to all the hospitals that have patients at the top of the various waiting lists for organs. They’re getting back to me with their tissue samples and lab results to match with the donor. I’d like to see the donor on the table by the end of the week.”

Mark noticed that Jesse was referring to Corinne not by name but as “the donor.” It was a subtle shift, but he knew it was a necessary one for someone in Jesse’s position. It was an act of emotional self-preservation.

Jesse had to stop thinking of her as a person. Otherwise the complex task of arranging for and performing her organ removal would be too emotionally difficult, even for someone who’d intellectually accepted that she was already dead.

“Any takers yet?” Mark asked, knowing that it could be days before the right candidates with the same compatibility antigens as Corinne, were found.

And the longer the wait, the greater the chances that her physical condition could change for the worse, putting her organs at risk.

“Just one. We’ve got a thirty-five-year-old patient right here with Eisenmenger’s syndrome. His name is Ken Hoffman. He’s at the top of the list for a heart-lung transplant and happens to be compatible with the donor.”

That was a lucky break, Mark thought.

The heart and lungs would stay viable for only two to four hours after harvesting, so the best possible situation was to perform the extremely delicate organ removal and transplanting at the same hospital, preferably in adjoining operating rooms.

Corinne’s heart and lungs would be the last organs removed from her body in order to keep the other organs viable for as long as possible. The kidneys and liver could last for up to twenty-four hours with proper packing and care after removal, which meant they could be sent just about anywhere in the United States.

“Have you lined up the heart surgeons?”

“David Carren is on deck for the removal and Larry Carroll is coming over from Cedars-Sinai for the implant.”

They were both excellent surgeons, though Carroll was known as a risk junkie. When he wasn’t in the operating room he liked to climb mountains, jump out of airplanes, and swim with sharks. Mark worried that anyone who enjoyed gambling with his life might be more likely to gamble with someone else’s. Then again, it often took a personality like that to excel at the kind of delicate surgeries Carroll took on.

“Are the other organs going to local patients?”

“I’m still working on that, but it looks like at least one kidney is headed to Houston. We’ll probably be dividing up the liver among three or four people, though I’m not sure who or where yet.”

Mark wasn’t surprised. A healthy liver was often divided among several patients, and there were undoubtedly many, many desperate people vying for a piece of this one.

“It sounds like you’ve got everything under control,” Mark said.

“It’s a big relief to hear you say that, Mark. Because if I’ve got you fooled, there’s a chance everyone else will be, too.”

They entered the ICU. The practice of medicine had become so high-tech that the unit looked less like a hospital ward than a Best Buy that happened to have a few people on gurneys plugged into the computers, cameras, TVs, and PlayStations on sale. The bright colors on the walls and the blue scrubs worn by the staff only added to the effect.

There was a nurse at Corinne’s bedside, reviewing her chart, when Mark and Jesse entered. She had a scowl of dissatisfaction on her face. Her name was Mercy Reynolds and she was one of the hordes of utilization nurses that descended on Community General not long after Hollyworld International took over. The utilization nurses had free run of the hospital, roaming every floor and department, ostensibly to review the treatment of patients to ensure that they were receiving appropriate care.

In truth, the utilization nurses were tasked with finding ways to save the hospital money and maximize resources, which meant second-guessing doctors and suggesting cutbacks in care whenever possible.

“What is she still doing here?” Mercy asked.

“Does she look like she’s ready to be released to you?” Jesse replied.

“She looks dead to me,” Mercy said.

She was in her early thirties, about the same age as Jesse, but she didn’t have one-tenth of his medical experience or knowledge. She was an accountant with a stethoscope, in Mark’s opinion.

Mark wondered if she was truly as arrogant and confident as she acted or if it was all a cover for her insecurity and incompetence. It didn’t matter. Hollyworld had given her the authority to challenge doctors far more qualified than she was, under the guise of being an objective advocate for the patients. She reported to the chief of staff, a Hollyworld bureaucrat who usually sided with the utilization nurses over the frequent objections of the doctors.

“She’s an organ donor,” Mark said. “We’re in the process of arranging for the transplant surgery.”

“How long will that take?” she asked.

Mark glanced at Jesse, who shrugged.

“Another day or two,” Jesse said.

“Is that the best you can do?” Mercy demanded, impatience oozing from every word. “Every day this patient is in the ICU means there is one less bed available for someone else.”

“You mean someone who can pay,” Mark said. “I’m guessing that Corinne Adams isn’t adequately covered by her insurance for catastrophic injury.”

“She isn’t covered at all,” Mercy said. “She’s uninsured, which means she’s costing us money we’ll never recover, money that could go towards bettering patient care throughout the hospital.”

“What about the money the hospital is going to make off the transplant surgery?” Jesse asked.

“At best, we’ll break even,” Mercy said. “We aren’t allowed by law to profit financially from the organs themselves.”

“What counts is that this surgery will save half a dozen lives,” Mark said.

“Only one of those patients is at this hospital,” Mercy said. “If the others were here, too, we might see some profit from this.”

“We’re in the business of saving lives,” Mark said. “That’s how we measure profit and loss.”

“Last time I checked, Dr. Sloan, you were drawing a salary, and a sizable one at that,” Mercy said. “Where do you think that money comes from?”

“Money is not my primary motivation for being a doctor,” Mark said.

“And it’s not mine for being a nurse either,” Mercy said. “I’m not your enemy. I wish you’d stop treating me that way.”

“You want to hustle this patient out of the ICU because she can’t pay for the treatment she’s getting,” Jesse said. “How do you expect us to take that?”

“It’s about more than the money to me and this hospital,” Mercy said. “Look at her, Dr. Travis. Is this a dignified way to die? Do you think being kept alive as a brainless sack of flesh is what she had in mind when she agreed to donate her organs? Do you think her family wants to see her like this any longer than absolutely necessary? The sooner we get her out of here, the sooner we end her suffering and theirs.”

“And ours,” Mark said. “Financially speaking.”

“Yes,” Mercy said, studying Mark’s face. “You seem shocked that I’d say that, Dr. Sloan. Does acknowledging the truth make me the bad guy or just the only honest person in the room?”

She walked away without waiting for either one of them to answer.

Jesse looked after her and shook his head in dismay. “What possessed her parents to name her Mercy?”

Technically, Steve’s job was done.

He’d apprehended Teeg Cantrell, the shooter responsible for killing a bystander in a drive-by shooting and for gunning down the cashier during a robbery at a West Hills convenience store.

Forensic evidence irrefutably connected Teeg to the murder weapon. Ballistic experts matched the bullets recovered from the victims with the semi-automatic weapon found at the home where Teeg was apprehended. Teeg’s fingerprints were all over the weapon, and his clothing tested positive for gunpowder residue.

On top of that evidence, Steve could place Teeg at the scene of both murders. The CSI unit matched Teeg’s smashed truck to paint chips recovered from the car he collided with while speeding away from the scene. And Steve had surveillance camera footage of Teeg shooting the 7-Eleven cashier.

Case closed. Teeg was on his way to death row. It was time for Steve to move on to the next homicide investigation that came along.

But he couldn’t. Not quite yet.

He was still wondering why Teeg was hiding out with the desperate housewives on Wisteria Lane. Teeg didn’t exactly fit in with the soccer moms and dads.

The easy way to find out was to ask Teeg about it. But Steve doubted Teeg would be very forthcoming with the guy who’d punched him in the mouth. Twice.

So while Teeg was busy being booked and processed for his lifetime in the prison system, Steve sat at his computer researching the ownership of the Simi Valley house.

It took only a couple of minutes to get the information from the county tax assessor. The house was owned by Gold Mountain Investment Partners, who, based on their history of frequent property purchases and quick sales, were playing the housing market. They’d buy a home, make some minor cosmetic changes, then resell it a couple of months later, cashing in on the increased property value since their purchase, a practice known as flipping. When the housing market was soft, they’d hold on to the home as a rental property and then sell it the moment the market upticked again.