Arthur Hailey: The Final Diagnosis

“But?” Now that he knew what it was about, O’Donnell wanted to get this over with.

“Pearson took eight days to make the surgical report. By the time I got it the patient had been discharged.”

“I see.” This was bad all right, O’Donnell thought. He couldn’t duck this one.

“It isn’t easy,” Rufus was saying quietly, “to call a woman back and tell her you were wrong—that she does have cancer after all, and that you’ll have to operate again.”

No, it wasn’t easy; O’Donnell knew that too well. Once, before he had come to Three Counties, he had had to do the same thing himself. He hoped he never would again.

“Bill, will you let me handle this my way?” O’Donnell was glad it was Rufus. Some of the other surgeons might have made things more difficult.

“Sure. As long as something definite is done.” Rufus was within his rights to be emphatic. “This isn’t just an isolated case, you know. It just happens to be a bad one.”

Again O’Donnell knew this was true. The trouble was, Rufus was not aware of some of the other problems which went with it.

“I’ll talk to Joe Pearson this afternoon,” he promised. “After the surgical-mortality conference. You’ll be there?”

Rufus nodded. “I’ll be there.”

“See you then, Bill. Thanks for letting me know about this. Something will be done, I promise you.”

Something, O’Donnell reflected as he moved down the corridor. But what exactly? He was still thinking about it as he turned into the Administration suite and opened the door to Harry Tomaselli’s office.

O’Donnell did not see Tomaselli at first, then the administrator called to him. “Over here, Kent.” On the far side of the birch-paneled room, away from the desk at which he spent most of his working hours, Tomaselli was leaning over a table. Unrolled before him were whiteprints and sketches. O’Donnell crossed the thick pile carpet and looked down at them too.

“Daydreaming, Harry?” He touched one of the sketches. “You know, I’m sure we could put you a fancy penthouse there—on top of the East Wing.”

Tomaselli smiled. “I’m agreeable, providing you’ll convince the board it’s necessary.” He took off his rimless glasses and began to polish them. “Well, there it is—the New Jerusalem.”

O’Donnell studied the architect’s profile of Three Counties Hospital as it would appear with the magnificent new extension, now in the advanced stages of planning. The new buildings were to comprise an entire wing and a new nurses’ home. “Any more news?” He turned to Tomaselli.

The administrator had replaced his glasses. “I talked with Orden again this morning.” Orden Brown, president of the second largest steel mill in Burlington, was chairman of the hospital’s board of directors.

“So?”

“He’s sure we can count on half a million dollars in the building fund by January. That means we’ll be able to break ground in March.”

“And the other half million? Last week Orden told me he thought it would take until December.” Even at that, O’Donnell reflected, he had considered the chairman to be erring toward optimism.

“I know,” Tomaselli said. “But he asked me to tell you that he’s changed his mind. He had another session with the mayor yesterday. They’re convinced they can get the second half million by next summer and wind up the campaign by fall.”

“That is good news.” O’Donnell decided to shelve his earlier doubts. If Orden Brown had gone out on a limb like that, he would come through all right.

“Oh, and by the way,” Tomaselli said with elaborate casualness, “Orden and the mayor have an appointment with the governor next Wednesday. Looks like we may get that increased state grant after all.”

“Anything else?” O’Donnell snapped at the administrator in mock sharpness.

“I thought you’d be pleased,” Tomaselli said.

More than pleased, O’Donnell reflected. In a way you might call all of this the first step toward fulfillment of a vision. It was a vision which had had its beginnings at the time of his own arrival at Three Counties three and a half years ago. Funny how you could get used to a place, O’Donnell thought. If someone had told him at Harvard Medical School, or later when he was chief surgical resident at Columbia Presbyterian, that he would wind up in a backwater hospital like Three Counties, he would have scoffed. Even when he had gone to Bart’s in London to round out his surgical experience, he had fully intended to come back and join the staff of one of the big-name hospitals like Johns Hopkins or Massachusetts General. With the background he had he could pretty well have taken his choice. But before there was time to decide Orden Brown had come to meet him in New York and persuaded him to visit Burlington and Three Counties.

What he had seen there had appalled him. The hospital was run down physically, its organization slack, its medical standards—with a few exceptions—low. The chiefs of surgery and medicine had held their posts for years; O’Donnell had sensed that their objective in life was to preserve an amiable status quo. The administrator—key man in the relationship between the hospital’s lay board of directors and its medical staff—was a doddering incompetent. The hospital’s intern and resident training program had fallen into disrepute. There was no budget for research. Conditions under which nurses lived and worked were almost medieval. Orden Brown had shown him everything, concealed nothing. Then they had gone together to the chairman’s home. O’Donnell had agreed to remain for dinner but afterward planned to catch a night flight back to New York. Disgusted, he never wanted to see Burlington or Three Counties Hospital again.

Over dinner in the quiet, tapestried dining room of Orden Brown’s home on a hillside high above Burlington he had been told the story. It was not an unfamiliar one. Three Counties Hospital, once progressive, modern, and rated high in the state, had fallen prey to complacency and lassitude. The chairman of the board had been an aging industrialist who most of the time had delegated responsibility to someone else, appearing at the hospital only for the occasional social function. The lack of leadership had permeated downward. Heads of divisions had mostly held their posts for many years and were averse to change. Younger men beneath them had at first fretted, then, becoming frustrated, had moved elsewhere. Finally the hospital’s reputation became such that young, highly qualified graduates no longer sought to join the staff. Because of this others with lesser qualifications had been allowed in. This was the situation at the time O’Donnell had come on the scene.

The only change had come with the appointment of Orden Brown himself. Three months earlier the aged chairman had died. A group of influential citizens had persuaded Brown to succeed him. The choice had not been unanimous; a section of the old guard on the hospital board had wanted the chair for a nominee of their own—a long-time board member named Eustace Swayne. But Brown had been chosen by a majority, and now he was trying to persuade other board members to adopt some of his own ideas for modernization of Three Counties.

It was proving an uphill fight. There was an alliance between a conservative element on the board, for whom Eustace Swayne was spokesman, and a group among the senior medical staff. Together they resisted change. Brown was having to tread warily and to be diplomatic.

One of the things he wanted was authority to increase the size of the hospital board and bring in new, more active members. He had planned to recruit some of the younger executives and professional men from Burlington’s business community. But so far the board had not been unanimous and temporarily the plan was shelved.