Michael Palmer - Flashback

Darryl Tarberry asked finally. From his recollection of the man, Yoshimura had guessed that Tarberry was in his mid-sixties by now. But from the harsh crackle in his voice, Zack wondered if he might be years older than that. "My name's Iverson. Zachary Iverson, " he repeated.

"I'm a neurosurgeon, and I'm on the credentials committee here."

Again there was a pause. "Mainwaring's applying for surgical privileges at your place?"

"That's right."

"Well, I'll be," Tarberry said. "Where did you say that hospital of yours was?"

"New Hampshire, sir. Listen, I don't want to put you on the spot, Dr.

Tarberry, but we would certainly appreciate any information you can give us."

"This call being recorded?"

Zack groaned. "No, I promise you it isn't."

"I'm not putting anything on paper, now."

"That's fine."

"Mainwaring and his lawyers had this place tied up in knots for I don't know how long. Damn lawyers. Ended up costing the hospital a small fortune to settle even though we were one hundred percent in the right as far as I'm concerned. One of my colleagues got ulcers from it. I swear he did. I don't want that happening to me. I'm too damn old for that kind of nonsense."

"You have my word."

"Your word… Iverson, huh. That Swedish?"

"English. It's English, " Zack said, staring upward for some sort of celestial help. "Well, Iverson, I don't know all the details."

"That's okay."

"And as far as I'm concerned, we never had this conversation."

"Promise."

"Well, " the man said, drawing out every letter of the word, "let me tell you first that Mainwaring may be the most ambitious sonofabitch God ever put in a mask and gown, but he is one fine surgeon. Maybe the best I've seen, and I've seen plenty."

"Go on, " Zack said… After fifteen minutes of prodding and cajoling, Zack felt he had extracted as much from Darryl Tarberry as he was likely to-at least over the phone. There was more to the story, he knew.

Probably much more. But even so, a huge piece had fallen into place in the puzzle of Toby Nelms. Zack was just finishing writing a synopsis of the interrogation when the door to his waiting room opened and closed.

"I'm here," he called out. "What a coincidence. So am I" Suzanne appeared at his office door, wearing a lab coat over an ivory blouse and ankle-length, madras skirt. "Got a minute? " she asked. "For you?

Years." He set the Tarberry notes in Toby Nelms's folder and pushed it to one side of the desk. "Trouble with Annie?

"

"No, no. Nothing like that. She's doing amazingly well. I think Sam Christian's going to do her hip tomorrow."

"Excellent. I'm so pissed off about what's happened to her. Every time I think about what Don Norman did, I want to hunt him down and flatten that pudgy little nose of his."

"Zack, I'm as upset as you are about Annie, but I don't see how you can lay all the blame on Don. He didn't do anything with malicious intent."

"That depends on your definition of malicious. He was sedating her so that she wouldn't object to being sent to a nursing home, so that Ultramed could continue to rake in profits from her care. If that's not malicious, I don't know what is."

"Hey, easy does it, okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"that's your opinion. But it happens not to be everyone's. Couldn't YOU just let up on this place a bit?"

"Huh?"

"Zack, Frank just left my office."

"So, that's where he's been. I've been trying to reach him."

"He's really upset with you."

"I know. Is that why he went to see you?"

"As a matter of fact, it is. He… he wanted me to talk to you-to ask you to let up on your criticism of this place."

"He could have come and asked me himself."

"He says he tried."

"He was drunk. He threatened me. That's not what I would call the Optimal approach… So, now he's chosen to involve you. I can't believe this place."

"Zachary, I didn't come up here to pick a fight. I just wanted to do what I could to smooth things over between you two. I owe Frank a lot. I thought you understood that from all I told you of what happened to me."

"Sorry, " Zack mumbled. "If I'm touchy, I guess it's that I just wish things were different between me and Frank."

"Well?"

"Suzanne, I can't help it if Frank thinks it's my fault that the Judge is pushing the board of trustees to buy back the hospital from Ultramed."

It was clearly the first she had heard of that development. "My God, Zack, you can't let him do that."

"First of all, " he said.

"I have no more control over that man than Frank or anybody else does.

And second, why not?"

"Well… well because, " she stammered. "If the board threw Ultramed out, Frank would be ruined."

"Nonsense. He knows his job. He could do it just as well for a community corporation as he could for an operation like Ultramed. Better, probably. Suzanne, listen to me. Something's wrong around here.

Something's terribly wrong."

"Dammit, Zachary, what is the matter with you? Don't you have regard for anyone but yourself? I come here to ask you to let up on a man who is partly responsible for saving my career, to say nothing of his being your brother, and all you can do is… is tear down his hospital."

"It's not his hospital. Look, I don't want to get into a fight. I have too much on my mind."

"Like what?"

Every instinct was clamoring for him to change the subject, to keep his theories to himself-at least as long as they were no more than that. He stared down at his hands. Darryl Tarberry's revelations about Jason Mainwaring were too fresh in his mind. "Suzanne, " he said slowly. "I have reason-good reason-to believe that human experimentation is being conducted at this hospital."

"Now that is the wildest-"

"And, " he cut in, "I have just as much reason to believe that you might have been one of the subjects."

Suzanne listened in wide-eyed disbelief as he recounted his experiences with Toby Nelms and Jack Pearl, his brief study of the gallbladder surgery performed by Mainwaring and Greg Ormesby, and finally, his conversation with Tarberry. "Apparently, a woman died of an anaphylactic reaction to a local anesthe ic she received in Mainwaring's office.

Mainwaring claimed it was Xylocaine, but there was plenty of documentation that the woman had received that drug on numerous occasions with no problems. A nurse of his, who was very upset with what happened, charged that Mainwaring had been testing something out that wasn't Xylocaine. Although investigators could never prove that was true, they did apparently discover that our friend Jason was part owner of a pharmaceutical house somewhere in the South."

"This is crazy!" Suzanne said. "Did that man you talked to at Hopkins happen to know what company this might have been?"

Te couldn't remember." He… couldn't… remember… Zack, this is exactly the sort of thing Frank was protesting. These are terrible, disruptive charges you're making on very little hard evidence."

"I'm not making any charges, " he said, feeling his composure beginning to slip. "I'm sharing a disturbing theory with a friend whose clinical judgment I value and trust. I would think you'd be frantic at the thought that someone might have been fooling around with your body while you were asleep."

"Well, I'm not frantic, I'm worried-about you. Zack, you've only been here a couple of weeks.

In that time, you've clashed with Wil Marshfield, had words with Jason, fought with Don Norman, upset your brother, fostered a move to buy back the hospital, and now, on nothing more than the flimsiest circumstantial evidence, you're accusing the finest surgeon and anesthesiologist on the staff of a terrible crime."

Zack pushed back his chair. "Suzanne, listen to ine-"

"No, you listen. How do you explain the fact that there hasn't been one other case like Toby Nelins's?"