Chapter 30 RONAN
Ronan
Sadie’s car isn’t off the property before I’m in the study.
Frank picks up on the second ring.
“Ronan. Everything all right?”
“No. I need a lawyer. The best licensing defense attorney in New England, working tonight.”
I can hear him set down whatever he was holding. “What’s going on?”
“Tessa’s got a hearing. Maine Board of Nursing, Portland, Friday at ten. She’s walking in with one lawyer and the hospital’s bringing a firm.”
“Jesus Christ.” I hear him stand up. “What happened? Since when? Does she know you’re—”
“Frank. I’ll tell you all of it when there’s time to tell it. Tonight I need the name.”
“Whitaker. Boston. She did the Mass General thing two years ago. She’s expensive and she’s mean.”
“Send me her number.”
“Do you need me up there?”
“No,” I say, and hang up.
The number comes through before I’ve set the phone down.
“Ronan Sinclair,” Whitaker says. “Well. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Ms. Whitaker. Thank you for picking up. There’s a licensing hearing Friday morning—Maine Board of Nursing, Portland. The nurse is Tessa Quinn.”
“What did she do?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Mr. Sinclair. I defend nurses for a living. Everybody’s client did nothing.”
“A patient died on her shift and the complaint puts it on her. I found out an hour ago and I haven’t seen their file. I know it isn’t true.”
“You don’t know the case, but you know she’s innocent.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because I know her.”
A short silence. I’ve just given a defense attorney the worst answer there is, and I don’t take it back.
“Then give me a starting point,” she says finally. “A name. A department. Anything.”
I start to say I don’t have one.
Then I stop.
A call she declined at my bedside, early on. The look on her face when she turned the phone over. I saw the name and decided not to ask.
“Mercer,” I say. “Dr. Mercer. Portland.”
I’d forgotten the name. I shouldn’t have. He’s been in my house since the beginning.
“That’s a start. It’s still not a lot of time, Mr. Sinclair. It’s going to cost you.”
“I didn’t ask what it costs.”
“I’ll have people in Portland by morning,” she says. “One more question—does the nurse know you’re doing this?”
“No. And she doesn’t find out until it’s done.”
“Then let’s be precise about what you’re buying, Mr. Sinclair, because I can’t represent a woman who doesn’t know I exist. She has counsel. I’m not allowed within a mile of her without consent.”
“You’re not representing her. You’re working for me, and the job is Mercer.
” I’m on my feet without deciding to be.
“He looked at the best nurse in his hospital and decided she’d be the one to carry it.
My investigator will have everything he’s buried by Thursday night.
Your job is to turn it into something a board will act on.
And I want him watching when she walks out of that room with her name.
If she wants you at that table, be at that table. ”
“That I can do.” Paper moves on her end. “Who’s representing her?”
“I don’t know. One lawyer. That’s all I have.”
A pause I don’t like. “Then the hospital will have brought a team. Send me everything the moment you have it, Mr. Sinclair. I’ll be in Portland Thursday night.”
I make the third call, to a private investigator whose number isn’t saved under any name. He finds things nobody else can find.
He picks up on the sixth ring and says nothing. That’s how I know it’s him.
“I’m sending you a name,” I say.
“Go ahead.”
“Mercer. Physician, Portland. Find out what he’s hiding. Everything lands Thursday night with a lawyer named Whitaker.”
“On it,” he says, and hangs up.
The last thing I do tonight is look him up, because that’s what I do with a problem. I learn it. The hospital’s site gives me a portrait and a paragraph. Silver hair, good teeth, a face built for the donors’ dinner. Board-certified twice over, twenty-something years. A man institutions believe.
I sit with that face on my screen.
I want to drive to that hospital and take him apart with my bare hands.
That’s the version of this where he wins.
I’ll know what he did by Thursday. I already know what he chose.
He picked the nurse who spent eight weeks putting me back together.
He picked the wrong fucking nurse.
* * *
She calls the next night at nine.
I look at her name on the screen for three rings before I answer, because I don’t trust my voice yet. Then I answer, because not answering would tell her something.
“Hey, you.” Tired. Sweet. Forty minutes away, fighting for her life.
“Hey yourself.”
She tells me about her day. Paperwork. A leaky faucet in the apartment. Nothing, wrapped around nothing. I listen to the woman I love lie to me in that gentle voice and I say that’s good and I don’t ask a single question I know the answer to.
“You’re quiet,” she says.
“Long day of behaving myself.”
She laughs, small. “Miss you.”
“Miss you too.”
Both of us holding a door shut with everything we have. We’re even now, and she doesn’t know it.
I don’t tell her I know. I don’t tell her about Whitaker, or the man I’ve put on Mercer, or where I’ll be when she walks into that hearing room.
* * *
Friday morning I put on a suit for the first time since the collapse.
I drive myself. Haven’t been behind a wheel since a drunk driver came through my door. Funny what the body forgets when it’s got somewhere to be.
I’m not going for a reunion. I’m going because she’s alone and outnumbered, and outnumbered I can fix without asking. I’ll put her life back in her hands where it belongs. What happens to us after, I haven’t decided. I’m the only one of us who didn’t get a vote.
That can wait.
The board offices are gray stone and bad windows. I pull up across the street at nine-forty.
One week, I told her. Then I’m coming to get you myself.
I’m early.