Peter Clement - The Inquisitor

Earl felt more uneasy than ever. Part of him had hoped she would dismiss his concerns about Stewart. Time to once more change the topic. "What about supper tonight? Remember, I invited Thomas over. Are you going to be up for working on stats with him?"

She arched her back into a stretch and gave a big yawn. "He already told me to expect him."

Earl felt a flash of annoyance. "Really? You look exhausted."

"Don't worry. After I look in on a few patients, I'll sign out and go home to bed. Brendan will get another surprise treat when he comes back from school and finds me there, and we'll make the meal together."

"From what you said, I would have thought Thomas might want to be with J.S."

"There's that too. But seems he's more determined than ever to discover what's going on in Palliative Care. I got the impression he'd totally changed his mind about Stewart and wants to help clear his name, all because Stewart saved J.S. Ain't love grand?"

Earl frowned. "Wait a minute. He can't turn this into some damn personal crusade."

Janet got up to leave. "Don't worry. I'll keep Thomas in line. Besides, I already explained to him that a profile on Stewart's presence in the hospital wouldn't work. Trouble with a guy who has no life is that he's always here, so a cluster study on him wouldn't be valid."

Earl had an idea. "It might be if you look at when he's not here."

"What?"

Minutes later he stood leaning over her shoulder as she sat in front of her office computer screen and clicked up some of the Palliative Care statistics they'd been scrutinizing the last few days. "Locate the initial numbers that showed the first jump in the mortality rate six months ago, then go to the second increase, last

April, just after the SARS outbreak," he told her.

She brought them up on the screen. The first three columns showed a rise of eleven deaths a month that held steady, and the last three indicated the second increase of fourteen patients a month.

"Now break down the data so we see it by the week."

Six big columns of figures became twenty-six shorter lists. Within any given month, the numbers held steady week to week.

"Now," he said, "you remember those media junkets Stewart went off on?"

"Oh, my God, yes."

"One was at the beginning of the year. Believe me, I remember, because ER is always hell without his help."

"Then let's see…" She clicked up the mortality figures in Palliative Care for that period and broke them down according to days.

Sure enough, while Stewart had been in New York, Chicago, and LA gabbing with Connie, Larry, Letterman, Oprah, and Jay, the numbers of people dying in palliative care held more or less steady at the then new high of 25.6 patients a week, or 3.6 per twenty-four hours.

"At least we can forget about him having anything directly to do with the first overall rise," she said.

Earl thought a moment. "It doesn't rule out the possibility that he had an accomplice, and it sheds no light at all on whether he had anything to do with silencing five patients a few days ago."

7:56 a.m.

ICU, St. Paul's Hospital

Jane Simmons felt the darkness. It pressed into her nose, into her mouth, and down her throat, suffocating her the way black earth would if someone had buried her alive.

In a panic, she clawed her way to the surface, back aboveground, until a hand grabbed hers and pulled her toward the light. "Jimmy?" she tried to say, opening her eyes, but choked on what felt like a hose down her throat.

Thomas's dark brown gaze greeted her. "Hi, love," he said, his voice very soft. "Welcome back."

For an instant the sight of him confused her, and the beeping sounds from behind her head, though familiar, seemed totally out of place. It took a second more to realize she had a half dozen IVs sticking into her, a tube in the left part of her chest, and a respirator hooked up to her lungs.

Then she remembered.

The pain, the blood, ER… Jimmy holding her hand. His had been the last voice she'd heard. It felt odd to come to and find Thomas in his place.

Nevertheless, she was glad to see him.

"Jimmy had to leave but said he'd be back," he told her. Undoing his mask, he leaned over to give her a kiss. "The important thing is, you're doing fantastic and are going to be fine. Dr. Deloram found it amazing, but he thinks they'll get you off the respirator and extubate you by this afternoon. That's a powerful set of lungs you have."

His breath s me I led of toothpaste. Glancing at the drawn curtains around her cubicle as his lips pressed on her cheek, she could tell by the powder blue color that they were in ICU. Obviously he'd gotten over his being barely able to look at her in ER. You aren't afraid of someone catching us? she wanted to ask him, surprised at the intensity of her sudden annoyance with his behavior.

He must have sensed her anger, because he pulled back and studied her, a puzzled look creeping onto his face, only to be dispelled in the flash of a smile. "Hey, I wasn't about to stay away at a time like this, so our secret's out. But who cares? I've been silly about that. Now I want to shout from the rooftops that I love you."

Too little, too late, she would have said if she could, just to make the goof suffer. Even Daisy Mae had her limits.

Then she felt empty inside.

Probably all the drugs they'd given her and everything she'd been through.

He squeezed her hand.

She tried to smile in return, a tough feat around a tube, and drifted back to sleep.

8:35 a.m.

Before SARS hit, at the start of each day Earl had routinely sipped a cappuccino in the privacy of his office and glanced through the morning's New York Herald.

Thanks to his own rules that banned the removal of masks anywhere in ER but the designated lunchroom, he had only the paper now. Without a hit of caffeine to propel him through the headlines, more often than not he leaned back in his chair and stared at his window, the opaque light a reminder that sun and fresh air still existed.

What Janet had said about Stewart hiding in his work bugged him. She hadn't revealed anything the whole hospital didn't already know, but what could be dismissed for over a decade as the quirk of a gifted physician, as long as he performed his daily high-wire act in ICU, had become a flaw demanding a harder look.

Hiding from what? Earl wondered.

An old evasion suggested where the answer might lie.

He leaned forward, picked up his phone, and dialed a 212 exchange that had branded itself on his brain nearly three decades ago.

"New York City Hospital."

"Yes, I wonder if I could speak to the director of clinical research."

"That would be Dr. Cheryl Branagh. One moment please."

The name didn't ring any bells. Good, he thought. NYCH and he had history, big time. He'd probably get further with someone who didn't know him.

Ten minutes later, after talking with a dozen secretaries, an officious female voice said, "Dr. Branagh here."

"Dr. Branagh, my name is Earl Garnet. I'm calling from St. Paul's-"

"I know who you are, Dr. Garnet. There's hardly anyone around here who doesn't. You turned this place inside out a few years back."

Oh, boy, Earl thought. She was referring to a nest of dark secrets he'd uncovered at NYCH while investigating the death of a former classmate. uUh, yes, well, this is entirely another matter-"

Her hearty chuckle interrupted him. "Hey, it needed doing. That makes you a good guy in my book. How can I help today?"

Well, that's a break, he thought. "I don't know if you can. This involves ancient history as well, and has to be kept completely confidential."

"Now I am intrigued."

"We may have a problem with one of our staff members. He's a clinical researcher who came to us in eighty-nine, highly regarded, but I never got a good answer from him as to why he left NYCH."