12. Jack
12
JACK
T he small cafe was quiet, not too many people here. Dr. Fisher, board chairman, sat across from me with both hands hugging his steaming mug of coffee. His silver hair was loose today, different from his normally perfectly coiffed look on the clock. When he called me with "big news" and made it seem like it had to be spoken about in private, there was no way I was missing it.
"A second one, though.” Nick shook his head and stared into his cup. "The autopsy revealed poisoning, Jack. That's scary and relieving in the same breath."
"How so?" I asked, trying to not let my hands shake as I lifted my coffee cup to my lips and sipped. Things would only get crazier if they believed that I had poisoned my own patient. This was insane to me, that someone could walk into a patient's room and poison them right under our noses.
"Potassium chloride injection. The patient's heart stopped before fully recovering from anesthesia." Nick gave me a stern look. "And we can hopefully trace who took it from the pharmacy and maybe even who administered it."
The gravity of that was almost paralyzing, but he was right. It was a relief. I hadn't ever prescribed potassium chloride to any patient of mine. I knew how dangerous it was, though at times, it was necessary.
"So how is the second patient's death related?" My cup rested on the table but I, too, kept my palms wrapped around it. The chilling news had shaken me, and anxiety had me feeling cold.
"Well, we have to wait for an autopsy, but if it shows the same thing, the DA will start looking into things. As it is, they have a heap of paperwork to go through right now to make sure the injection wasn't prescribed by an attending or just a mistake… But the police are definitely involved now."
Deep in my gut, I'd known something was amiss from very early on. Nothing I did should ever have caused a patient to die, and while spontaneous cardiac infarction following a surgery like that was possible, it was so rare, I'd never seen a case of it in my nearly twenty years of practice and thousands of surgeries.
"I appreciate your taking time to talk to me about this." The news meant Ashley was off the case. She would only get in trouble for snooping around if cops were investigating. They'd call it witness tampering or tampering with evidence. I didn’t want her to risk her career or reputation for me. But I also didn't want to let her go. She was actually a great fit for my team and genuinely helped me with my workload.
"I'm under a gag order, but you're a friend. I thought you'd want to know. Take some stress off, you know?"
For a split second, I considered telling Nick right then and there about Ashley—about how she was a licensed surgeon, not a first-year resident. About the fling and how I felt about her. But the words got caught in my throat. Ashley was an amazing surgeon, but she was my best friend's daughter and I had promised to do right by her, which meant letting her move on to another position or hospital where her career would flourish. It meant not shaming her in front of the board because Nick would have to take this to the board. He alone wouldn't be the one to decide whether she got to stay or go. And it meant chasing away any man who was bad for her.
Seeing her eating lunch with Sam Gooding was a knife to my gut that I couldn't pull out, but even more so, I knew he was bad for her. He had hurt her once before and he'd do it again. Men like him didn't change. So while I was deeply resentful and jealous, I was just as adamantly opposed to the idea of those two together based on integrity and my promise to Calvin. I had to chase him off, not so I could have her, but so he wouldn’t hurt her. My feelings were irrelevant now, anyway. It was obvious she wasn't ready for commitment. As much as she protested liking Sam, I saw it in her eyes.
"I should get back," I told Nick, feeling my grumpiness coming on. Last thing I needed was for him to see me have a mental breakdown after he gave me the best news I'd heard in months.
"Sure… I'll let you know if I hear anything else."
"Thanks, Nick."
I left the cafe and returned to the hospital to work. Bumping into Ashley a few times made me more irritable, only because I remembered seeing her talking so happily with Sam. The fact that she invited him to snoop around with her irked me. It was my insecurity and jealousy rearing its head, but for good reason. The little private investigation we had going was just that—private. It was between me and her, and now she'd brought him into it.
The rest of the day was miserable, but I tried to focus on the good news of the lawsuit's potential for being dropped. If it was a criminal investigation, they'd find a suspect and my part in any of it would be disproved, which meant no grounds for the suit. So when I sat across from Calvin at our weekly poker night, I felt a bit lighter.
"Just don't give Jack any knives or he'll end up sewing them up inside you and your family will have to sue." Marty Evans cracked yet another bad doctor joke, and the guys were rolling.
"Hey," I protested in fun. "I never left my scalpel inside the patient. You're just being cruel now." I laughed along with them. When I told them the developments, the entire game night had devolved into laughter and joking at my expense. I didn't mind. It felt like being with the guys again, and after a few months of so much emotional torment, I needed it.
"So, you are off the hook then?" Calvin asked as he dealt our next hand. "Does that mean your arrangement with Ashley is finished?"
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I picked up the cards he dealt one by one to arrange them in my hand as I formulated a response.
"Uh, yeah, well now that the cops are involved, I don't think it's a good idea for her to keep snooping around." I kept my answer as political as possible. I didn't want to get into another conversation about her on a personal level. I hated lying, though now I felt like telling him we weren't involved was less of a lie than before.
I didn't know if I wanted to be involved with her anymore. Every time she got around me, I melted because I was in love with her. But every time I saw her talking to Sam Gooding, I was enraged and wanted to tear that man's throat out.
"So she's good? The two of you work well together?" His question stung because when he asked, I wasn't thinking about her as a doctor. I was thinking of her as a partner. I was thinking how much I wanted her to work well with me in life and love and everything.
"She's actually amazing," I told him, hoping he didn't catch the hint of emotion in my tone. "We work really well together." My heart sank as I said the words, but I tried to play it off as having a bad hand. My poker face was gone, anyway. I was losing badly, and I didn't care as long as I didn’t have to lie in bed alone thinking of how to make her stop thinking about Sam.
"Well, good.” Calvin drew his card and stared at his hand. "I was beginning to think the two of you weren't compatible."
His comment struck me as odd, but Marty and the gang started taking their turns. It felt like Calvin was assessing me as a potential suitor for his daughter, and at the same time, I was terrified to even ask him what his question was intended to mean. I never thought in a billion years that he'd be accepting of me and Ashley, and anxiety about upsetting him kept me from finding out what he might think.
I turned my attention to the game, but my mind still sifted through painful thoughts about Ashley and Sam. She told me a little bit about what he'd done to her, and I couldn't even fathom why she'd want to talk to him, let alone befriend him again. It made me think long and hard about Barbra and if I'd take her back, which I'd firmly decided that I definitely would not. I still cared about her, but the risk of being hurt again, brought up by my fears of Ashley cheating on me, cemented that decision. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. And Ashley shouldn’t either. It boggled my mind as to why she was.
But maybe Sam had something I didn't. He was her age, and he was desiring a family. My comments at Calvin's barbecue probably pushed Ashley away, made her think I wasn't interested, but I was, so very much. Maybe it was I who had shoved her headfirst into Sam's arms because she wanted more with me, and I ruined it by putting up that same wall I'd been constructing for years.
My phone rang just as I folded, and I excused myself from the table to take it. I saw that it was Nick again, and my heart fluttered. Every time he called, I got a little anxious. This time was no different.
"Yeah, Nick?"
"Jackson, my boy, you're off the hook." His proud announcement sent a zing of relief through my constricting chest.
"What happened?" I asked, slipping out of Calvin's game room into the dark hallway. I wanted to be off the hook. But I wanted Ashley to keep working with me.
"Well, they found traces of potassium chloride in the second patient. I guess when the first autopsy came back foul play, they pushed the second one through right away. It's a full investigation now. The patient will definitely drop the suit." I stood there in the dark by myself, stunned to silence.
It was such a good thing, and such a difficult thing in the same breath. I had to let her go. She had to move on from working with me, which meant not seeing her daily anymore. My heart broke, but it was for the best. I couldn't sit back and watch her fall in love with Sam all over again. But I could warn Calvin. I just need to figure out how to do that without betraying my own emotions to him.
I hated this…