Michael Crichton - A Case of Need

“I know.”

“They say A. R. prowls the third floor like a wounded vulture. Can’t believe anybody’d oppose his majestic self.”

“I can imagine,” I said.

“He’s been in a terrible state,” Hammond said. “He even chewed out Sam Carlson. You know Sam? He’s a resident up there, working under A. R., rooting about in the nether regions of surgical politics. Sam is A.R.‘s golden boy. A.R. loves him, and nobody can figure out why. Some say it’s because he is stupid, Sam is, blindingly stupid. Crushingly, awesomely stupid.”

“Is he?” I said.

“Beyond description,” Hammond said. “But Sam got chewed out yesterday. He was in the cafeteria, eating a chicken-salad sandwich—no doubt after asking the serving ladies what a chicken was—when Randall came in, and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ And Sam said, ‘Eating a chicken-salad sandwich.’ And A. R. said, ‘What the hell for?’ ”

“What did Sam say?”

Hammond grinned broadly. “I have it on good authority, that Sam said, ‘I don’t know, sir.’ And he put aside the sandwich and walked out of the cafeteria.”

“Hungry,” I said.

Hammond laughed. “Probably.” He shook his head. “But you can’t really blame A. R. He’s lived in the Mem for a hundred years or so, and never had a problem. Now, with the headhunt, and then his daughter…”

“Headhunt?” Judith said.

“My, my, the grapevine is collapsing. The wives are usually the first to know. All hell’s broken out at the Mem over the Clinic pharmacy.”

I said, “They lose something?”

“You bet.”

“What?”

“A gross of morphine ampoules. Hydromorphine hydrochloride. That’s three to five times more powerful on a weight basis than morphine sulfate.”

“When?”

“Last week. The pharmacist nearly got the ax—he was off hustling a nurse when it happened. It was lunchtime.”

“They haven’t found the stuff?”

“No. Turned the hospital upside down, but nothing.”

“Has this ever happened before?” I said.

“Apparently it has, a few years back. But only a couple of ampoules were taken then. This was a major haul.”

I said, “Paramedical?”

Hammond shrugged. “Could be anybody. Personally, I think it must have been a commercial move. They took too much. The risk was too great: can you imagine yourself waltzing into the Mem outpatient clinic and waltzing out with a box of morphine bottles under your arm?”

“Not really.”

“Guts.”

“But surely that’s too much for one person,” I said.

“Of course. That’s why I think it was commercial. I think it was a robbery, carefully planned.”

“By somebody outside?”

“Ah,” he said. “Now you get down to the question.”

“Well?”

“The thinking is that somebody did it from the inside.”

“Any evidence?”

“No. Nothing.”

We walked up the stairs to the wooden frame house. I said, “That’s very interesting, Norton.”

“You bet your ass it’s interesting.”

“Know anybody who’s up?”

“On the staff? No. The word is that one of the girls in cardiac cath used to shoot speeds, [39] Injected amphetamines, such as methedrene, intravenously. but she kicked it a year ago. Anyhow, they went over her pretty hard. Stripped her down, checked for needle marks. She was clean.”

I said, “How about—”

“Doctors?”

I nodded. Doctors and drugs are a taboo subject. A reasonable number of doctors are addicts; that’s no secret, any more than it’s a secret that doctors have a high suicide rate. [40] Psychiatrists have the highest suicide rate of all, more than ten times that of the GP. Less widely known is a classic psychiatric syndrome involving a doctor and his son, in which the son becomes an addict and the doctor supplies his needs, to the mutual satisfaction of both. But nobody talks about these things.

“The doctors are clean,” Hammond said, “as far as I know.”

“Anybody quit their job? Nurse, secretary, anybody?”

He smiled. “You’re really hot on this, aren’t you?”

I shrugged.

“Why? Think it’s related to the girl?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s no reason to connect the two,” Hammond said. “But it would be interesting.”

“Yes.”

“Purely speculative.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll call you,” Hammond said, “if anything turns up.”

“Do that,” I said.

We came to the door. Inside, we could hear party sounds: tinkling glasses, talk, laughter.

“Good luck with your war,” Hammond said. “I hope to hell you win.”

“So do I.”

“You will,” Hammond said. “Just don’t take any prisoners.”

I smiled. “That’s against Geneva Conventions.”

“This,” Hammond said, “is a very limited war.”

THE PARTY WAS HELD BY GEORGE MORRIS, chief resident in medicine at the Lincoln. Morris was about to finish his residency and begin private practice, so it was a kind of coming-out party, given for himself. It was done very well, with an understated comfortability that must have cost him more than he could afford. I was reminded of those lavish parties given by manufacturers to launch a new product, or a new line. In a sense, that was what it was.

George Morris, twenty-eight, with a wife and two children, was deeply in debt: any doctor in his position would be. Now he was about to start burrowing out from under, and to do that he needed patients. Referrals. Consults. In short, he needed the good will and help of established physicians in the area, and that was why he had invited 200 of them to his home and filled them to the neck with the best booze he could buy and the best canapes the caterers could provide.

As a pathologist, I was flattered to have received an invitation. I couldn’t do anything for Morris; pathologists deal with corpses and corpses don’t need referrals. Morris had invited Judith and me because we were friends.

I think we were his only friends at the party that night.

I looked around the room: the chiefs of service from most of the big hospitals were there. So were the residents, and so were the wives. The wives had clustered in a corner, talking babies; the doctors were clustered into smaller groups, by hospital or by specialty. It was a kind of occupational division, very striking to see.

In one corner, Emery was arguing the therapeutic advantage of lower I 131doses in hyperthyroidism; in another, Johnston was talking about hepatic pressures in porto caval shunts; in still another, Lewiston could be heard muttering his usual line about the inhumanity of electroshock therapy for depressives. From the wives, occasional words like “IUD” and “chickenpox” drifted out.

Judith stood next to me, looking sweet and rather young in a blue A-line. She was drinking her Scotch quickly—she’s a gulper—and obviously preparing to plunge into the group of wives.

“I sometimes wish,” she said, “that they’d talk about politics or something. Anything but medicine.”

I smiled, remembering Art’s line about doctors being illpolitical. He meant it the way you used words like illiterate. Art always said doctors not only held no real political views, but also were incapable of them. “It’s like the military,” he had once said. “Political views are considered unprofessional.” As usual, Art was exaggerating, but there was something to what he said.

I think Art likes to overstate his case, to shock and irritate and goad people. It is a characteristic of his. But I think he is also fascinated by the thin line that separates truth from untruth, statement from overstatement. It is a characteristic of his to constantly throw out his comments and see who picks them up and how they react to them. He does this particularly when he is drunk.