Michael Palmer - Flashback

She averted her gaze and peered around the corner into Stacy's room.

"Well, " she said, "I guess I'd better check on my niece and get back to the emergency ward. Thank you again, Doctor."

"Mrs. Banas, wait, please, " Zack said. The woman stopped, her back still to him, her posture rigid. "Please? " he said again. Slowly, she turned to face him. Her arms were folded grimly across her chest. "Yes?"

"Mrs. Banas, I… I read the letter you wrote about Guy."

What little color there was drained from the nurse's face. "Your brother had no right to go passing that around," she said. The woman looked about restlessly. "Dr. Iverson, I think I'd better go."

"Mrs. Banas, just a minute ago you said that you owed me a great deal for what I did for Stacy. Well, I don't usually call in markers like this, but I need to know about Guy-what he's been like these past two years, what he did that prompted you to write those charges. Please.

It's terribly important to me… and to his family."

Maureen Banas's reaction was far from the anger or defensiveness Zack would have anticipated. She began to tremble, and quickly grew close to tears. "I… please, I don't want to talk about it. Your brother said he would speak with me before showing that note to anyone. He had no right to give it to you."

"Look, " Zack said. "I didn't mean to upset you. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of things-to the truth."

It took several breaths before the nurse began to regain her composure.

"Dr. Iverson, I've got three children, one of them retarded, and an ex-husband who hasn't sent a dime of support in ten years. I'm sorry I wrote that letter, but… but I had to. I had to. Now, you've got to leave it alone. For my sake. For my family. Leave it alone. I beg you."

"I can't, Mrs. Banas… Maureen, I don't want to cause trouble for you or for anyone, but I've got to know if that letter contained the truth about Guy… Please." The woman said nothing. "What is it? " he asked.

"Did someone pressure you to write it? Threaten to take your job away?"

The nurse bit her lower lip. Her eyes had filled with tears. She glanced nervously about. Two nurses were approaching down the hall. "Come with me, " she said softly. There was a small sitting area at the end of the corridor-a colonial-style maple settee and two matching chairs arranged beneath a huge picture window that faced southwest, toward the mountains. Maureen Banas took one of the chairs and motioned Zack to the edge of the settee closest to her. "Dr. Iverson, I meant what I said about my family, " she began in a hoarse whisper. "If you speak of this conversation to anyone and I lose MY job, you will have hurt a number of people who do not deserve to be hurt."

"You have my word."

"I… I'm terrified about doing this."

"Please…"

"At the beginning of the summer, I qu'tteled with Dr. Beaulieu in the E.

R. We never got along all that well to begin with, but I think we more or less respected one another. It doesn't make any difference what we fought about. The whole incident was actually pretty mitd. But there were a number of witnesses. "A week or so later, there was an envelope stuck under my door at home. In it were ten one-hundred-dollar bills, a copy of the note you saw, and instructions that when I copied the note over in my own hand and sent it to Mr. Iverson, I would receive a second, equal payment."

"No hint of who the note was from?"

Once again, the nurse seemed close to breaking down. "None. "Well, did the note say what would happen if you refused?"

"It said that trouble would start happening in my life, and that I could count on being fired. Dr. Iverson, I know what I did was awful, but… but I had been doing so poorly with the kids, and the damn bills just keep coming in, and-"

"Please, Maureen. You don't have to explain, " Zack said. "I understand that you did what you had to do. Do you still have the note?"

The nurse shook her head. "I. I was afraid to keep it."

"Any sense at all as to who sent it? Do you think it was my brother?"

Zack felt sick at the thought. "I… I don't believe so," she said.

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, whoever wrote me added at the end that if Frank Iverson learned my note wasn't really my idea, he would be tired just as quickly as I would be…"

She began to cry. "You see why you can't say anything to anyone about this?"

"Yes, Maureen. I see. Telling me what you did was a very brave thing to do. I promise you that I'll honor your confidence,"

"Th-Thank you."

She dabbed at her eyes with her uniform sleeve and then hurried back down the corridor. Feeling more sadness toward the woman than anger, Zack propped his foot on one of the chairs and gazed across at the Presidential Range. Hikine,… climbing… camping… unique challenges in the office and in the O. R… The projected life that had drawn him back to Sterling suddenly seemed so remote, so naive. Guy, it appeared, had been right all along. Someone at Ultramed was committed to driving him from practice-and in the ugliest of ways. Zack was grateful that that someone did not appear to be Frank. But in the end, would it really matter? In Sterling, at least, Frank was Ultramed. And when push came to shove, it was hard to imagine him lining up against the company.

The situation was so crazy, so far removed from a patient needing help and a physician trained and ready to render it. But for better or worse, Zack acknowledged, he was in It to stay.

He had chosen this town and this hospital. And now, if he had to do battle with Ultramed to justify that decision, then battle there would be. All he needed to complete the circle, to place himself once and for all squarely where Guy Beaulieu had stood, was proof-if not proof from Maureen Banas, then perhaps from the Ultramed system itself. If Guy was right, if the policies and the climate created by the corporation were so ruthless and self-serving, if compromises were being made and corners cut in the name of profit, then somewhere there was the medical tragedy such a philosophy must inevitably bring. Somewhere, there was that emotional focal point that would translate possibilities and abstract concerns into flesh and blood.

And if such a tragedy existed, Zack vowed, sooner or later he would find it. From his position at the nurses' station on West 2, Donald Norman, MD, propped Annie Doucette's chart on his ample lap and peered over the top of it at a Rubenesque young nurse named Doreen Lavalley. She was standing on tiptoes atop a small stool, stretching over her head for a bag of IV solution. The skirt of her uniform was at her mid-thigh and rising. Doreen was the sexiest, most desirable woman in the hospital, at least to the Ultramed-Davis Chief of Staff. For months he had been cultivating her with small talk, friendly pats on the shoulder, an arm about the waist, and impromptu teaching sessions. Since his arrival at the hospital four years before, Norman had gone out of his way to keep his reputation spotless and to portray the perfect, responsible family man and community servant. The powers at Ultramed rewarded such behavior just as vigorously as they punished actions that brought negative publicity down upon their house. But after four consecutive yearly merit awards, he believed that the company would tolerate a few slips. And with his wife gaining weight and growing more involved with her school committees and steadily less involved with their physical relationship, Doreen Lavalley had become worth the risk. Besides, Norman reasoned, Frank Iverson was rumored to have made it with half the decent-looking women in the hospital, and he had been made a member of the Golden Circle and had twice won the highest administrator's award that Ultramed offered. Just as her skirt was about to reach the base of her panties, Doreen located the right IV solution and hopped down from the stool.