Michael Palmer - Flashback

"Uniform cell type, uniform pattern, no obvious foci of necrosis, " he said. "I can't put a name on it, but I can say that it sure as hell looks benign."

Yoshimura nodded. "Should you ever tire of neurosurgery, Dr. Iverson, I would say you have quite a future as a pathologist."

He picked up the phone and dialed the operating room. "This is Dr.

Yoshimura calling from pathology, " he said. "You may inform Dr.

Mainwaring that he has excised a totally benign, fibrous adenoma. Thank you."

Zack pumped the man's hand as if he had been the cause of the tumor being noncancerous, rather than merely its interpreter. Before it had really even begun, Suzanne's nightmare was over. Anxious to be at the bedside when she awoke, Zack hurried to the recovery room. One story above, in operating room 3, Jason Mainwaring received the news of the biopsy impassively, and then looked over at his anesthesiologist. "So, Jack, " he said, "if it's all right with you, we are ready to close."

Jack Pearl, a ferret-like man in his mid-forties, smiled at the surgeon from beneath his mask. Then he glanced down at the serene face of their patient. "Everything is better than all right, Dr. Mainwaring, " he said. "In fact, it's perfect. As always. Absolutely perfect."

Subtly, unnoticed by anyone else in the room, Jason Mainwaring returned the smile and nodded his approval. At that moment, both men were focused on precisely the same thought, Four hundred ninet-one down. Only nine to go.

Over the more than thirteen years that Zack had spent as a medical student and surgeon, Suzanne represented, without doubt, the most striking recovery from general anesthesia he had ever encountered. He was already in the recovery room, waiting by the nurse's station, when she was wheeled in from the surgical suite. She was awake, smiling, and totally alert. Her jubilant thumbs-up sign to him made clear that she was also well aware of the results of her operation. "That is the most amazing wake-up I've ever seen, " Zack commented to one of the recovery room nurses as Suzanne, with very little help, transferred herself from the litter to her hospital bed. "It's hard to believe she was ever really asleep."

The nurse, an animated young redhead whom Zack knew only as Kara, beamed with pride. "Oh, she was out, all right, " she said. "Isn't it wonderful?

Almost all of Dr. Pearl's cases come out of the operating room looking like that."

"Mine didn't, " Zack said, recalling the prolonged, but quite typical recovery of his cervical disc case. "Pardon?"

"Nothing. I'm just really impressed, that's all."

"Every one around here is, " the woman said. "Part of it may be Dr.

Mainwaring, too. He demands that his patients be anesthetized just so, and Dr. Pearl is the only one he'll allow to work with him. I used to scrub before I got the job in here, and I tell you, they are quite a pair. Things have really taken a turn for the better at this place since they teamed up."

Across the recovery room, Zack saw Jack Pearl peering through an ophthalmoscope, examining the nerves and vessels on Suzanne's retinae while one of the nurses checked her vital signs. He was a slight, sallow man with a pencil-thin moustache and a broad, high forehead that dominated his nondescript eyes. "What do you mean, a turn for the better'? " Zack asked, knowing he was fishing for some opinion on Guy Beaulieu. "I grew up in Sterling and then did an externship here. I always thought we were pretty fortunate with the surgeons we had."

The nurse eyed him warily, suddenly uncertain as to whether she might have said too much to a virtual stranger. Zack tried his best to appear only marginally interested in her response. After a beat or two, she shrugged and brushed a wisp of hair from her brow. "Ormesby's okay," she said, "at least for routine things. But I think it might be time for Dr.

Beaulieu to retire, especially with all the trouble he's been having, and with someone as good as Dr. Mainwaring around."

"Is that the general feeling of the nurses? " Zack ventured. Again, she appraised him. "Dunno, " she said finally, although her eyes told him otherwise. "But they like you. I can tell you that much. And we all like having a neurosurgeon on the staff. It makes Ultramed-Davis seem more-I don't know-special."

"Thanks, Kara. Thanks for telling me that."

The young nurse blushed. "Well, I've got to get back to work, " she said. "See you."

"See you."

Zack watched as the woman returned to her patient. Her opinion of Guy Beaulieu was, he suspected, typical of what he would encounter from most of the other nurses on the staff. Whether justifiably or not, the man's reputation at Ultramed-Davis was shot. And Zack knew that given the nature of medicine, gossip, and the intense microcosm of hospitals, there was probably nothing on God's earth that Beaulieu could do to reverse the situation. Still, despite all the rumors and innuendoes, despite Frank's vehemence and the damning letter from Maureen Banas, Zack could not shake the belief that Guy was the victim of some sort of calculated effort to drive him from practice. The thought was so sad, so pathetic, that it almost defied comprehension. On some level, Zack realized, he was half hoping the charges against Beaulieu would prove true. At least then he could make some sense of it all. Jack Pearl had finished his evaluation of Suzanne and was headed back toward the operating room when he noticed Zack. "Morning, Iverson, " he said.

"Jack." Zack nodded. "How goes it?"

"No. I just stopped by to see how Suzanne was making out. She looks great."

Pearl glanced back at her. "Pretty routine business, " he said. "What did you use?"

For the fraction of a second, the anesthesiologist's expression seemed to tighten. Then, just as quickly, it relaxed. "The usual, " he said. "A little Pentothal, a little gas. Mainwaring likes his patients really light."

"I guess. She doesn't look as if she's even been asleep."

Again, tension flickered across Pearl's face. "Well, she was, " he said simply. He glanced at the clock over the nurse's station. "Got to go, Iverson. You have a good day, now."

"Yeah, Jack. You, too."

As the taciturn little man shuffled away, Zack realized that during this and all their previous encounters, Pearl had not once made direct eye contact with him. The trait was not that surprising, he acknowledged, given the nature of the breed. Although the exceptions were far too numerous for any generalization, many of the anesthesiologists he had known were introspective loners, skilled more in biochemistry and physiology than in the more subjective arts of clinical medicine, and committed to one of the specialties where conversation and interaction with patients-awake patients at least-was at a minimum. Still, there was something unusual about Jack Pearl, something furtive and arcane, that Zack found both curious and disconcerting. He wondered if perhaps the man had a past-trouble somewhere along the line-and he made a mental note to ask Frank about him sometime. Then he turned and headed to Suzanne's bedside. Though a bit pale, she was still smiling, radiant and wide awake.

"Hi, lady, " he said. "What's new?"

"Oh, nothing." She feigned a yawn. "A little this, a little that. You know. Just another routine, humdrum day."

"Yeah, my day, too."

"That's quite obvious from those dark circles around your eyes," she said. "Hey, before I forget to mention it, thanks for your note. It meant a lot."

"You look fine. Are you in any pain?"

"Not really. At least not compared to what I would have been in if that biopsy had been positive."

"It does seem a bit easier to deal with this way, " Zack said. "I thought I'd have the chance to break the good news to you, or at least to remind you of it, but you came out of the O. R. as if you'd never been asleep. It's absolutely incredible how light you are so soon after general anesthesia."