Michael Palmer - Natural Causes

"I can explain about room four twenty-one," he said softly.

"I couldn't care less," she responded. "Except that you should have been more alert after you got down here. If you hadn't been… sleeping, I suspect you would have checked those chems before you took him to the OR."

"I suspect you're right."

"Good," Sarah said, easing past him and into the hallway. "I love being right."

"Thanks for saving my bacon," he called out after her. "You're a hell of a doctor."

Sarah considered some sort of response, then just shook her head and continued on. Her pager sounded just as she reached the OB/Gyn floor. She responded, expecting to hear Andrew, anxious to continue mending fences. Instead, the voice on the line was Annalee Ettinger's.

Sarah sat on the edge of the bed in the small resident's call room, listening sadly to Annalee's account of what had transpired with her father.

"I couldn't tell what upset him more," Annalee said, "my going to see any M.D. at all, or my going to see you in particular."

"I'm the least important factor in this equation. I know an obstetrician in Worcester who would be happy to do a home birth for you."

"Peter's insisting on no M.D.s. Midwives only. He's even talking about flying some in from Mali."

"How do you feel about all this?"

"I feel sorry for you for what's being written in the papers. But that stuff hasn't influenced me one way or the other."

"Good."

"And even the things Peter promised-the money, and the recording chance for Taylor and all. But no matter how hard I try, I can't get past all the things Peter's done for me-from the very beginning."

"I understand."

"I know he's not perfect, but-"

"Annalee, you don't have to explain. I understand. Besides, you're a healthy young woman in great shape. I have no reason to think there'll be any problems. I'll send you the name of the obstetrician in Worcester, just in case you want his help in any way."

"Thanks for not making this any harder for me, Sarah."

"Nonsense."

There was a prolonged, uncomfortable silence.

"Sarah, there's something else," Annalee said finally. "Peter insisted I sit in on part of a meeting in his office."

"Go on."

"Four men and Peter. They want to hire him to check into the composition of that herbal supplement of yours and to check up on someone named Kwang or Kwok or something. Do you know who that is?"

Sarah was beginning to feel queasy.

"Yes, I know who that is," she said. "Who were the men?"

"Two were suits from New York-lawyers. They were there with this guy, Willis Grayson, the father of the girl you saved. The dude must be big stuff, because Peter was like a puppy around him. He acted as if I was supposed to know who he was, too, but I didn't."

"Who was the other man?" Sarah asked. Her hands felt like ice around the receiver.

"Another lawyer. Oilier than the others, if you know what I mean. His name's Mallon."

"Unfortunately, I know him, too."

"Sarah, Peter said some pretty unkind things about you. I think that's what he wanted me to hear. He said you were never as good an herbalist or acupuncturist as you liked to believe. I was on the edge of telling him to stop, or just walking out, but I just couldn't do either one. I'm-I'm sorry."

"Annalee, don't be sorry," Sarah said. "Just do what feels right, and don't lose touch with me. I appreciate your calling me like this."

"I'm sorry," Annalee said again.

Sarah hung up without another reply. She felt there was a chance that if she tried to speak, she would begin to cry. And Annalee did not deserve that sort of additional stress. How crazy. When they were together-at work and as lovers-Peter had told her and anyone else who would listen that she was one of the finest American herbal therapists and acupuncturists he had ever known. Now, suddenly, she was an inept fraud.

Sarah bunched the pillow beneath her head and stared wearily at the ceiling. The truth was that in becoming an M.D., in trying to blend the best of eastern and western medicine, she had become a threat to practitioners on both sides. That Andrew and Peter, the two practitioners attacking her now, both happened to be male may or may not have had significance. But she suspected it did.

For a time, blanketed by a pall of loneliness and isolation, she wept. Soon, though, she felt her spirit begin to regroup within a nidus of anger. Beyond tweaking two bulbous egos, she had done nothing wrong. If it was a fight they wanted, it was a fight they would get. She picked up the phone and paged Eli Blankenship. Within a minute he returned her call.

"Dr. Blankenship," she said. "I don't know exactly who I'm supposed to talk to, or what I'm supposed to do, but I'd like to meet with you as soon as possible. I think I'm about to be sued."

July 20

Sarah was certain that at times in her life she must have felt as conspicuous and ill-at-ease as she did tonight, but she could not remember when. The Milsap Board Room at MCB was long and fairly narrow, with a plush Oriental carpet, floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the city, and a massive walnut table surrounded by twenty high-backed oxblood leather chairs. Although Sarah had never actually seen the room before, she had heard about it, mostly through doctors' litanies of the medical equipment that Glenn Paris elected not to purchase so that it might be built.

Five men-Paris, Drs. Snyder and Blankenship, chief financial officer Colin Smith, and a prissy attorney named Arnold Hayden-sat at one end of the table, sipping drinks from a mirrored wet bar and chatting amicably. Sarah paced at the other end, alternately gazing out at the sheets of windblown rain and checking her watch.

Several days before, a letter from attorney Jeremy Mallon to Sarah's insurance carrier, the Mutual Medical Protective Organization, had made it official. Sarah was being sued for malpractice by Lisa Grayson. Two days after that, the claims adjuster at the MMPO assigned an attorney named Matthew Daniels to her case. The meeting tonight had been requested by him.

Sarah had spoken with her new attorney by phone for almost an hour, but had come away from that conversation with little sense of the man other than that he was southern and most economical with his words. The hazy image she had formed of him sprang more, she suspected, from the balding, potbellied, perspiring Hollywood stereotype than from anything Daniels actually said.

"Sarah," Paris called out, "come on down here and have a glass of this Chablis. We're all getting nervous just watching you stalk around over there."

Sarah hesitated, then took the path of least resistance and accepted the offer. Paris, like the two department heads, had been cordial enough toward her since the news of her suit, but she could tell that each of them had doubts.

"I wonder why this Daniels wanted us to get together here at the hospital and not at his office," Arnold Hayden blustered. "Irregular. Highly irregular."

"Arnold, have you ever heard of him?" Smith asked.

"No. I started doing some checking, but I haven't gotten too far. He's an Essex Law grad."

"Not exactly Harvard."

"Not exactly law school," Hayden corrected snidely. "His firm is Daniels, Hannigan and Goldstein. I've never heard of them, but I have someone making inquiries."

"I'm certain the insurance company wouldn't assign someone to my case who wasn't good," Sarah said. "It's their money. Besides, I don't think it will take any Clarence Darrow to prove that I'm not guilty of malpractice. All Mallon has to base his case on is that the three women happened to have taken my supplement. We can produce many others who also took it and had perfectly normal deliveries."

"True," Blankenship said. "What we really need to close the circle, though, is a case of DIC like the others, but in a woman who never took anything other than standard prenatal vitamins."