Michael Palmer - Side Effects

"Besides, the woman's got friends around here. I don't know why, but she does. Even after that letter, she's got supporters. Shit, I'd kill to make sure she didn't…" His voice trailed away. His eyes narrowed.

Paquette followed the man's train of thought. "The answer is no, Norton,

" he said. "Absolutely not. We wish her discredited, not eliminated, for God's sake. We want people to lose interest in her, not to canonize her.

She has already involved Dr. Zimmermann, a chemist at the state lab, and a resident here named Engleson. There may be others, but as far as we can tell, the situation is not yet out of control. We are doing what we can do to ensure it remains that way. Dr. Bennett's father-in-law does some business with our company. I believe our friend has already called him and enlisted his aid. There are other steps being taken as well." He rose and reached across the desk to shake Reese's hand. "I know we can count on you. If you need advice or a sounding board, you can reach me at the Ritz."

"Thank you, " Reese said numbly. His bulk seemed melted into his chair.

Paquette walked slowly to the door, then turned. "Our friend has suggested Thursday as a time by which he wants something to have been done."

"Thursday? " Reese croaked. Paquette nodded, smiled blankly, and was gone. Half an hour later, his shirt changed and his composure nearly regained, Reese sat opposite Sheila Pierce, straightening one paper clip after another and thinking much more than he wanted to at that particular moment of the chief technician's breasts. "How're things going down there in pathology? " he asked, wondering if she would take off her lab coat and then reminding himself to concentrate on business.

The woman was going to require delicate handling if she was going to put her neck on the line to save his ass. "You mean with Bennett? " Sheila shrugged. "She's getting some letters and a few crank phone calls every day, but otherwise things seem pretty much back to normal. It's been..

amusing."

"Well, " Reese said, "I know for a fact that the Bobby Geary business is hardly a dead issue."

"Oh?"

"I've heard the matter's going to the Medical School Ethics Committee."

"Good, " Sheila said. "That will serve her right, going to the newspapers about that poor boy the way she did." They laughed. "Do you think, " she went on, "that it will be enough to keep her from becoming chief of our department?"

Inwardly, Reese smiled. The question was just the opening he needed.

"Doubtful, " he said grimly. "Very doubtful."

"Too bad."

"You don't know the half of it."

"What do you mean?"

"Well…" He tapped a pencil eraser on his desk. He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. He chewed at his lower lip. "I got a call this morning from Dr. Willoughby. He requested a meeting with the finance and budget committee of the board, at which time he and Kate Bennett are going to present the results of a computer study she's just completed. They plan to ask for six months worth of emergency funding until a sweeping departmental reorganization can be completed."

Sheila Pierce paled. "Sweeping departmental reorganization?"

"That's what the man said."

"Did he say anything about… you know."

Reese sighed. "As a matter of fact, baby, he did. He said that by the time of the meeting next week, Bennett will have presented him with a complete list of lost revenues, including the misappropriation of funds by several department members."

"But she promised."

"I guess a few brownie points with the boss and the board of trustees outweigh her promise to a plain old technician."

"Chief technician, " she corrected. "Damn her. Did it seem as if she had already said something about me to Willoughby?"

The bait taken, Reese set the hook. "Definitely not. I probed as much as I could about you without making Willoughby suspicious. She hasn't told him anything specific… yet."

"Norty, we've got to stop her. I can't afford to lose my job. Dammit, I've been here longer than she has. Much longer." Her hands were clenched white, her jaw set in anger and frustration. "Well, " Reese said with exaggerated reason, "we've got two days, three at the most.

Any ideas?"

"Ideas?"

"I don't work with the woman, baby, you do. Doesn't she ever fuck up?

Blow a case? Christ, the rest of the MD's in this place do it all the time."

"She's a pathologist, Norty. Her cases are all dead to begin with.

There's nothing for her to blow except…" She stopped in mid-sentence and pulled a typed sheet from her lab coat pocket. "What is it?"

"It's the surgical path schedule for tomorrow. Bennett and Dr. Huang are doing frozen sections this month." She scanned the entries. "Well?"

Sheila hesitated, uncertainty darkening her eyes. "Are you sure she's going to report me to Willoughby?"

"Baby, all I can say is that Dr. Willoughby asked me for a copy of the union contract, expressly for the part dealing with justifiable causes for termination."

"She has no right to do that to me after she promised not to."

"You know about people with MD degrees, Sheila. They think they're better and smarter than the rest of us. They think they can just walk all over people." Sheila's eyes told him that the battle-this phase of it at any rate-was won. "We'll see who's smarter, " she muttered, tapping the schedule thoughtfully. "Maybe it's time Bennett found out that there are a few people with brains around who couldn't go to medical school."

"Make it good, baby, " Reese urged, "because if she's in, you're out."

"No way, " she said. "There's no way I'm going to let that happen.

Here, look at this."

"What?"

"Well, you can see it's a pretty busy schedule. There's a lung biopsy, a thyroid biopsy, a colon, and two breast biopsies. Bennett will be working almost all day in the small cryostat lab next to the operating rooms. Usually, she goes into the OR, picks up a specimen, freezes it in the cryostat, sections it, stains it, and reads it, all without leaving the surgical suite."

"And?"

"Well, there are a lot of ifs, " Sheila said in an even, almost singsong voice. "But if we could disable the surgical cryostat and force Bennett to use the backup unit down in the histology lab, I might be able somehow to switch a specimen. All I would need is about three or four minutes."

"What would that do?"

Sheila smiled the smile of a child. "Well, with any luck, depending on the actual pathology, we can have the great Dr. Bennett read a benign condition as a malignancy. Then, when the whole specimen is taken and examined the next day, her mistake will become apparent."

"Would a pathologist make a mistake like that? " Reese asked. Again Sheila smiled. "Only once, " she said serenely. "Only once." + Louisburg Square, a score of tall, brick townhouses surrounding a raggedy, wrought-iron-fenced green on the west side of Beacon Hill, had been the address in Boston for generations. Levi Morton lived there after his four years as vice president under Benjamin Harrison. Jennie Lind was married there in 1852. Cabots and Saltonstalls, Lodges and Alcotts-alll had drawn from and given to the mystique of Louisburg Square. Kate had the cab drop her off at the foot of Mount Vernon Street, she used the steep two-block walk to Louisburg Square to stretch her legs and clear her thoughts of what had been a long and trying day at the hospital. Two committee meetings, several surgical specimens, and a lecture at the medical school, combined with half a dozen malicious phone calls and an equal number of hate letters, all relating to her callous treatment of Bobby Geary and his family. Ellen's nose had begun bleeding again-just a slow trickle from one nostril, but enough to require Pete Colangelo to recauterize it. Her clotting parameters were continuing to take a significant drop each day, and the unencouraging news was beginning to take a toll on her spirit. Late that afternoon, the National Institutes of Health library computer search had arrived. There were many articles listed in the bibliography dealing with sclerosing diseases of the ovaries, and a goodly number on clotting disorders similar to the Boston cases. There were none, however, describing their coexistence in a single patient. Expecting little, Kate had begun the tedious process of locating each article, photocopying it, and finally studying it. The project would take days to complete, if not longer, but there was a chance at least that something, anything, might turn up that could help Ellen. At the turnoff from Mount Vernon Street, Kate propped herself against a gaslight lamp post and through the mist of her own breath, reflected on the marvelous Christmas card that was Louisburg Square.