Sidney Sheldon - Nothing lasts forever

Honey stood there, frowning, silent.

“Well?”

“Well,” Honey said thoughtfully, “I would say she probably has psittacosis—parrot fever.”

Dr. Allison was looking at her in surprise. “What … what makes you say that?”

“Her symptoms are typical of psittacosis, and I noticed that she works part-time as a clerk in a pet shop. Psittacosis is transmitted by infected parrots.”

Allison nodded slowly. “That's … that's very good. Do you know what the treatment is?”

“Yes. Tetracycline for ten days, strict bed rest, and plenty of fluids.”

Dr. Allison turned to the group, “Did you all hear that? Dr. Taft is absolutely right.”

They moved on to the next patient.

Dr. Allison said, “If you'll examine his chart, you'll find that he has mesothelial tumors, bloody effusion, and fatigue. What's the diagnosis?”

One of the residents said, hopefully, “It sounds like some form of pneumonia.”

A second resident spoke up. “It could be cancer.”

Dr. Allison turned to Honey. “What is your diagnosis, doctor?”

Honey looked thoughtful. “Offhand, I'd say it was fibrous pneumoconiosis, a form of asbestos poisoning. His chart shows that he works in a carpet mill.”

Ted Allison could not conceal his admiration. “Excellent! Excellent! Do you happen to know what the therapy is?”

“Unfortunately, no specific therapy is available yet.”

It became even more impressive. In the next two hours, Honey diagnosed a rare case of Reiter's syndrome, osteitis deformans polycythemia, and malaria.

When the rounds were over, Dr. Allison shook Honey's hand. “I'm not easily impressed, doctor, but I want to tell you that you have a tremendous future!”

Honey blushed. “Thank you, Dr. Allison.”

“And I intend to tell Ben Wallace so,” he said as he walked away.

Tom Benson, Allison's senior assistant, looked at Honey and smiled. “I'll meet you in half an hour, baby.”

Paige tried to stay out of the way of Dr. Arthur Kane—007. But at every opportunity, Kane asked for Paige to assist him with operations. And each time, he would become more offensive.

“What do you mean, you won't go out with me? You must be getting it from someone else.”

And, “I may be short, honey, but not everywhere. You know what I mean?”

She came to dread the occasions she had to work with him. Time after time, Paige watched Kane perform unnecessary surgery and take out organs that were healthy.

One day, as Paige and Kane were walking toward the operating room, Paige asked, “What are we going to operate on, doctor?”

“His wallet!” He saw the look on Paige's face. “Just kidding, honey.”

“He should be working in a butcher shop,” Paige later said angrily to Kat. “He has no right to be operating on people.”

After a particularly inept liver operation, Dr. Kane turned to Paige and shook his head. “Too bad. I don't know if he's going to make it.”

It was all Paige could do to contain her anger. She decided to have a talk with Tom Chang.

“Someone should report Dr. Kane,” Paige said. “He's murdering his patients!”

“Take it easy.”

“I can't! It's not right that they let a man like that operate. It's criminal. He should be brought up before the credentials committee.”

“What good would it do? You'd have to get other doctors to testify against him, and no one would be willing to do that. This is a close community, and we all have to live in it, Paige. It's almost impossible to get one doctor to testify against another. We're all vulnerable and we need each other too much. Calm down. I'll take you out and buy you lunch.”

Paige sighed. “All right, but it's a lousy system.”

At lunch, Paige asked, “How are you and Sye doing?”

He took a moment to answer. “I … we're having problems. My work is destroying our marriage. I don't know what to do.”

“I'm sure it will work out,” Paige said.

Chang said fiercely, “It had better.”

Paige looked up at him.

“I would kill myself if she left me.”

The following morning, Arthur Kane was scheduled to perform a kidney operation. The chief of surgery said to Paige, “Dr. Kane asked for you to assist him in OR Four.”

Paige's mouth was suddenly dry. She hated the thought of being near him.

Paige said, “Couldn't you get someone else to …?”

“He's waiting for you, doctor.”

Paige sighed. “Right.”

By the time Paige had scrubbed up, the operation was already in progress.

“Give me a hand here, darling,” Kane said to Paige.

The patient's abdomen had been painted with an iodine solution and an incision had been made in the right upper quadrant of the abdomen, just below the rib cage. So far, so good, Paige thought.

“Scalpel!”

The scrub nurse handed Dr. Kane a scalpel.

He looked up. “Put some music on.”

A moment later a CD began to play.

Dr. Kane kept cutting. “Let's have something a little peppier.” He looked over at Paige. “Start the bovie, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart. Paige gritted her teeth and picked up a bovie—an electric cautery tool. She began to cauterize the arteries to reduce the amount of blood in the abdomen. The operation was going well.

Thank God, Paige thought.

“Sponge.”

The scrub nurse handed Kane a sponge.

“Good. Let's have some suction.” He cut around the kidney until it was exposed. “There's the little devil,” Dr. Kane said. “More suction.” He lifted up the kidney with forceps. “Right. Let's sew him back up.”

For once, everything had gone well, yet something was bothering Paige. She took a closer look at the kidney. It looked healthy. She frowned, wondering if …

As Dr. Kane began sewing up the patient, Paige hurried over to the X-ray in the lighted wall frame. She studied it for a moment and said softly, “Oh, my God!”

The X-ray had been put up backward. Dr. Kane had removed the wrong kidney.

Thirty minutes later, Paige was in Ben Wallace's office.

“He took out a healthy kidney and left in a diseased one!” Paige's voice was trembling. “The man should be put in jail!”

Benjamin Wallace said soothingly, “Paige, I agree with you that it's regrettable. But it certainly wasn't intentional. It was a mistake, and—”

“A mistake'? That patient is going to have to live on dialysis for the rest of his life. Someone should pay for that!”

“Believe me, we're going to have a peer review evaluation.”

Paige knew what that meant: a group of physicians would review what had happened, but it would be done in confidence. The information would be withheld from the public and the patient.

“Dr. Wallace …”

“You're part of our team, Paige. You've got to be a team player.”

“He has no business working in this hospital. Or any other hospital.”

“You've got to look at the whole picture. If he were removed, there would be bad publicity and the reputation of the hospital would be hurt. We'd probably face a lot of malpractice suits.”

“What about the patients?”

“We'll keep a closer eye on Dr. Kane.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I'm going to give you some advice. When you get into private practice, you're going j to need the goodwill of other doctors for referrals. With-1 out that, you'll go nowhere, and if you get the reputation! of being a maverick and blowing the whistle on your: fellow doctors, you won't get any referrals. I can promise you that.”

Paige rose. “So you aren't going to do anything?”

“I told you, we're going to do a peer review evaluation.”

“And that's it?” “That's it.”

“It's not fair,” Paige said. She was in the cafeteria having lunch with Kat and Honey.