18. Carter
18
CARTER
“ I t’s nothing but the flu, Mr. Heath, I assure you. You’re going to be absolutely fine. Just take the cough medicine and make sure you’re hydrating. If your heart rate goes up again, I suggest going to the hospital. Dehydration can be serious with this strain.” I smiled at the older man whose hands still shook even though I’d tried to reassure him. He came in with a racing heart thinking it was a heart attack, and it was nothing but a bit of dehydration. I gave him an IV for fluids and some prescriptions.
“Thank you so much, Dr. Price,” he said before another coughing fit. I helped him off the exam table, offered a tissue to cover his mouth, then ushered him out and promptly used hand sanitizer to clear my hands of the germs.
Sunny had been out for two days now, calling in sick before I arrived both days. Jackson took the calls and told me she was suffering from the flu, like half the people coming in. I wasn’t surprised. After the weekend and seeing how ill she was at my house, then getting the shocking news of Kira Baker’s cause of death, I figured she’d have a rough week. I just didn’t think she’d ignore my texts and calls the way she was, which told me she was probably sicker than either of us thought. I was surprised I had no symptoms.
Following Mr. Heath out, I let him into the reception area to pay his bill with our volunteer receptionist and walked on toward the break room. I needed five minutes to myself after seeing so many patients this morning. Jackson was in a room with another, and at least five more sat in the waiting area, which I noticed as Mr. Heath walked out. The day promised to be insane again. We could really use Sunny’s help, but if she was truly sick, she was in the right place at home.
I sat at the break table and dialed her number for the third time in two days, only to get her voicemail again. I was worried, but not just about whether she was feeling well. The news about Kira was shocking, and then I’d gone and dropped a bombshell in Rick’s lap. His outrage at my announcement shocked me. I knew he’d be perturbed, but I didn’t figure he’d have thrown me out of his house over it. We were adults; we should’ve been able to sit down and talk things out.
So, when a fourth call to Sunny’s phone went unanswered, I decided to do the next best thing. I dialed Rick’s number and waited as it rang through.
“Now’s not a good time, Price,” Rick said as a gruff answer. He hadn’t called me by my last name in years, which was a testament to how angry he was about this whole situation.
“Hello to you too, Rick. I’m calling to ask you a sincere question, and I hope you can at least give me a straight answer.” I was shocked he even answered at all. Perhaps our friendship wasn’t entirely dismantled by my profession of affection for his daughter.
Rick didn’t say anything. I heard a vacuum running in the background and assumed he was at home. He had to have been aware that Sunny wasn’t feeling well since she lived with him, but to what extent he’d give details was a mystery.
“Sunny hasn’t come to work since last week. I knew on Saturday morning she was feeling ill, and I was calling to check on her, as her boss.” I added that last part to remind him that I did have official reasons for calling to check, that not everything was about the relationship.
He grunted in a very unhappy sound, but said, “Soleil is sick. She’s been in bed for days now. Melanie is caring for her, and we don’t need your concern. I don’t know if she’s returning to work.” The last bit shocked me. After the intimate moment we shared in the bath Friday night, I figured she’d have felt differently about things. If this was Rick’s attempt at controlling her by not allowing her to return to work, I was going to be furious.
“Why do you have such a hard time understanding that we’re two consenting adults who actually care about one another? Rick, you’re a smart man. She’s grown up. You don’t have to protect her from me. You know me?—”
“Well, you don’t exactly have a child, now do you? So how would you know what a father might feel if his daughter dates a man twenty years older than her?”
His words were a slap to the face. Rage flushed my body making my cheeks burn. I bit my tongue and pulled the phone away from my ear, but I couldn’t respond. If I did, it wasn’t going to be pretty at all, so I hung up instead, choosing to take the high road.
Tears pricked my eyes. What I wouldn’t have done to have my little girl here, to fiercely protect her the way Rick was guarding Sunny’s heart and mind, thinking I was bad for her. The jab hit me right where it hurt; he had intended it to do that. I wondered how long it took him to think that up, but stewing on it was only going to make me go mad with frustration.
I rubbed my forehead and jerked my sleeves down into place, then dialed Sunny’s number again, only for it to go directly to voicemail again. This time, I left a message.
“Sunny, babe, call me. I know you’re sick, but I just need to know you’re okay and that you’re doing alright with this news…” I paused, thinking of what else I could say to her to help her come out of this shell she’d hidden in, but I had nothing except, “I love you.” Maybe it was dumb of me to say that on a voicemail and not in person, but I felt it, and I learned the hard way to never let anything go unexpressed because life was too short.
“Doc!” Jackson called, looking for me, and I sighed. It was time to get back to work, but I’d carry the weight of that interaction with Rick the rest of the day.
I rose and slid my phone into my pocket to return to work, but it started buzzing, an incoming call. As I strolled back toward the reception area, I pulled it out, thinking it might be Sunny calling me back finally, but the number and caller ID were from Joseph. I looked up at Jackson, who had a haul of patients headed for exam room one.
Narrowing my eyes at him in question, I cocked my head and he said, “Family—same symptoms.”
“Ah,” I told him as he ushered them into the room. He stood in the hallway looking back at me.
“One sec,” I told him, then answered the call. “Yeah, it’s Price.”
“Carter, I need you to come down here. Just drop everything you’re doing. I have the two doctors who’ve been doing the baiting, and I want you here when I talk to them.” Joseph sounded rushed, almost out of breath, and it made my heart jump.
“Crap,” I hissed, knowing the work load we were already under. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
Jackson cast a doubtful look my way and asked, “What is it?”
I moved toward him, already feeling bad for what I was about to ask him, but this couldn’t wait. We’d been looking into this for weeks now, and with the development happening in our branch in Florida, we had to move on this when we could. The last thing we needed were more patients being poorly screened and having issues. These people were sometimes desperate to make a little extra cash.
“Remember what I told you about those doctors in other clinics baiting patients to join trials?” My eyebrows rose as I pocketed my phone again, already wondering what traffic would be like.
“Yeah, what’s going on?”
“Well, Joe needs me at headquarters. We’re gonna talk to them in person. I gotta go man. I’ll be back as fast as I can, but this is super important.” I loosened my tie and ran a hand through my hair, and he nodded.
“Yeah, yeah…go, man. I got this. No problem.”
Another glance through the pane glass window at the waiting area told me he most definitely didn’t have this, but I had no choice. “You’re a lifesaver, man.”
I rushed out and into my car. In fifteen minutes, I was exiting the elevator sending Joseph a message that I was there. He met me down the hall from the conference room. His hair was disheveled like he’d been pulling it, and I felt just as frazzled as he looked.
“So have you been in to see them? What did you tell them they were here for?” My words were rushed, and I understood why he was flustered. I felt flustered too—confronting them wouldn’t be easy.
“I just asked them to come down. They don’t know. And no. I haven’t been in to see them at all. I was waiting for you. I’m not sure how to approach this all.” He stuck a finger in his collar and tugged on it.
These guys probably thought they were doing the company a service, and they’d be shocked to learn that we weren’t so happy about what was happening. They were part of the problem, but not the whole of it though, and we had to find out who was at the top of this to put an end to it. If we punished the doctors and not the recruiters in charge of the payouts, we’d have to come back to this situation in different clinics with different physicians later on.
“Let’s go in then,” I told him, sucking in a breath to help myself remain calm. The frustration over Rick’s insult was still swirling in my chest. I wanted to be levelheaded about this and not go off the rails because my friend was a total jerk. PTSD triggers aside, this was a challenging conversation to have.
Joseph opened the door and we breezed in. I’d never met these two doctors, didn’t know them from Adam, but they both knew me. I was certain of that. There was recognition on their faces as they stood and extended their hands in greeting.
“Thank you for coming in,” Joe told them as we shook hands, and then we all sat down around the oblong table. Waters had been set out by someone, condensation clinging to the glasses. I massaged the bridge of my nose before beginning what might be a very heated conversation.
“Gentlemen, I appreciate you coming in to have a discussion with us. I’m sure you are probably wondering why you’re here.” My phone buzzed in my pocket, but I ignored it in favor of getting to the truth. “It’s come to our attention that both of you have been working with our recruitment team to invite people to join our recent drug trials.”
The men exchanged confused and nervous glances. One of them, whose name tag read Dr. Peters , said, “Yes, that’s right.”
I cleared my throat; it felt constricted like a snake had coiled around it choking me. “We are concerned about the ethics of inviting low-income patients into paid drug trials. We feel it’s unethical and that we are putting patients’ lives at risk by not carefully considering them.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Price,” the other man, Dr. Wilkinson, said, “It’s not our job to vet the people for the trials. We’re just paid to tell them about it.” His eyes were firm, but the man next to him looked a little squeamish.
“You’re not in trouble here,” I told them, though I didn’t care for how he disrespected me by not using my proper title. “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this so we can improve our methods and ensure every person in the trial is qualified and not at risk.” Sunny’s words about Kira not being screened properly ate away at my conscience. That never should’ve happened, but it was a whole different problem. We shouldn’t have been preying on low-income individuals and their need for financial stability with untested drugs.
“What Dr. Price is trying to say, gentlemen, is that we’re doing our own internal process for quality assurance.” I hated how Joseph boiled it down to how business was run, but that was his job. Make the business run smoothly. “We’d like the name of the men you are working with. Nothing more.”
The true test was if they’d cough up the names. Now that they knew we were looking into things, they probably could deduce that we were cutting off the cash flow and their moneymaker would go up in smoke. Both of them stared at us, tight-lipped and silent.
“We’re not on a witch hunt to punish anyone; we just want to do what’s right,” I told them, but I could tell by their expressions they weren’t going to give up information so easily. I settled in for what could be a very long conversation and pulled my phone out to see what notification I’d missed.
It was a message from Sunny, so I opened it immediately.
Sunny 11:47 AM: I’m feeling a bit better. Have dinner with me?
My chest released like a bowstring firing an arrow, the tension coiling outward until I could breathe again. One thing at a time, my life felt like it was correcting itself slowly, hopefully. I didn’t respond, choosing to focus on the meeting, but I was glad she had made an effort to reach out. I was beginning to think Rick had brainwashed her into thinking I was evil.
Right now, I had to get through this meeting, then I could go have a very hard discussion with her. I had to tell her what was going on before someone else did. It was the only way to salvage the relationship because I knew how upset she would be.