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CHAPTER FOUR
AFTER HE’D TRIED TWICE to reach the boy’s mother and got Zany Zoe’s recorded message, Phillip decided he’d talk to Molly before he tried the number again. He reached her from his office, between surgeries.
“Hello?” a young, female voice responded.
“Hi.” Was this Molly? Embarrassing, but he couldn’t be sure. “Moll?”
“Dad?” It was Molly. “Something wrong?”
“No,” he said. “Why would you think that?”
“Uh, duh, Dad. Why do you usually call me?”
Phillip exhaled through this mouth, slumped in his chair. In his peripheral vision, he saw Eileen motioning to him. He covered the receiver. “Eileen?”
“Hospital administration on line two.”
“I’ll call right back.” He spoke into the receiver. “What’s up?”
“You called me, Dad.”
“I know I called you, Molly, I—”
“Well, you’re making it sound like I called you.”
“I’m not making it sound like anything.” He forced himself to relax. Exactly when they’d gone from being friends to adversaries, he couldn’t say, but lately every conversation with Molly seemed to go this way. “I just called—”
“What time is it?” Molly demanded. “I was still asleep.”
“It’s after noon, Molly.”
“So?”
“You were sleeping when I came to take you out to lunch last week.”
“So what?” Her voice had escalated a notch. “I was tired.”
“You don’t have school?” he asked, looking up as Eileen tapped on his door. “Hold on a minute, Moll. Yes?”
“That reporter from the Tribune. He has a follow-up question.”
“Tell him I’ll call him back.”
“He asked me to interrupt you. He said he’s on a deadline.”
“Hold on again, Moll.” He clicked the hold button and pressed the other line. “I have a question for you,” he said to the reporter. “What if you’d caught me in the middle of surgery?”
The reporter laughed. “I’m tenacious.”
“Okay,” Phillip said. “So what’s the question?”
“Confirmation really. You said on a typical day, you usually do four surgeries.
“Scheduled surgeries. There could be one or two emergency surgeries.”
“But not after-hours?”
“We’ve suspended twenty-four-hour coverage.” Phillip repeated the statement he’d given to every press query received since he and his partner had made the decision. Repetition didn’t make it any easier. Tonight, if there was a head-on crash in or around Seacliff, he didn’t say, or the gun and knife contingent went on a rampage, head or spinal injuries needing neurosurgery services would be airlifted to a center to the north, a potentially deadly delay. Worse, they’d be taken to the nearest E.R. where the chances of being misdiagnosed or undertreated by a sleep-deprived second-year resident…he stopped the thought.
“Any chance you’ll be starting up again?”
“Not until we find a third partner,” Phillip said. The green hold light had gone out; Molly had hung up. He finished with the reporter and redialed her number. It rang four times before she answered.
“Sorry, Moll.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Molly…”
“Well, it’s not like I’m used to having your undivided attention. Like I’m suddenly thinking, ‘Whoa what’s with Dad? Omigod, his mind doesn’t seem to be on what I’m saying. I wonder what’s wrong—’”
“Knock it off, Molly. Let’s talk about you running up your mother’s American Express card.”
She sighed noisily. “I needed stuff, Dad. That’s why Mom said I could use the card in the first place.”
“Fifteen hundred dollars buys a lot of stuff. What stuff did you need?”
“Fine, forget it. I won’t use the damn card again. I don’t want to go through some stupid inquisition.”
“This isn’t an inquisition, Molly. I’m just asking you to account for the fifteen hundred dollars you charged this month.”
“I’m buying drugs.”
“Drugs?”
“You know, cocaine, heroin. Whatever I can get my hands on.”
“Very funny.” It was a joke, right? He might reject the psychiatrist’s diagnosis, but Molly frequently baffled him: her mercurial moods, the sudden and inexplicable obsessions—was it last month that she’d gone on, endlessly it seemed, about wheat grass? And before that, fasting as the cure to any medical problem. That one had driven him nuts. But, as Deanna had pointed out, whacky ideas were part of being seventeen. Drugs, though, hadn’t really occurred to him as a serious possibility. Molly wasn’t losing weight, she had no needle marks, and her eyes didn’t show any signs of drug use.
Denial? The psychiatrist smirked. Phillip pushed away the image.
“Anyway, fifteen hundred dollars,” Molly was saying now. “Big deal. Mom spends that on her facials.”
“We’re talking about you.”
“I needed clothes, Dad.”
“For yourself?”
“Of course for myself. What d’you think?”
“Your mother said something about a boy.”
“What boy?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
Silence on the line.
“Moll?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now, Dad.”
“Is there a time you would feel like talking about it?”
More silence. “We could get something to eat at Swaami’s.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, like in an hour.”
“I’ll be in surgery in an hour, Molly.”
“Whatever,” she said.
The line went dead. In the outer office, he heard a phone ringing, then Eileen’s voice. “Next Thursday? Mmm…let me take a quick look at his schedule, but Thursdays are really booked tight.” He heard the tap of computer keys and then Eileen laughed. “True, Dr. Barry’s one busy man.”
“Dr. Barry.” Eileen’s voice now came through on the intercom. “Mrs. Barry on line two.”
He picked up the phone. “Yes, Deanna?”
“Tell Deanna she can wait,” said a voice from the doorway.
“Hold on,” Phillip told his ex-wife. The woman who’d just spoken was now walking into his office. He stared, slightly stunned, as she seated herself in the chair opposite his desk, watching him with a faint smile as though perhaps she knew him. He was quite sure he didn’t know her. He wasn’t in the habit of thinking in artistic or literary terms, but the term Rubenesque came to mind. Needs to lose a few pounds, Deanna would have sniffed. Voluptuous, he thought. High color, a great deal of fair hair and…breasts. Full and white, they seemed in imminent danger of tumbling from the low neck of the yellow blouse she wore. Not perky, twenty-year-old breasts, but full, lush, sensuous breasts. He mentally shook his head.
She crossed her legs. She wore sandals with thin leather straps that tied around the ankles. The hem of her long yellow-and-red skirt brushed the top of her left ankle. Beads and bracelets circling both arms created a constant small symphony of sound.
In his peripheral vision, he could see Eileen frowning in the doorway.
“I couldn’t stop her,” she explained.
“Phillip,” his ex-wife said. “I don’t have all day.”
“Just a second.” He addressed the woman. “What’s the problem?”
“Hi.” She gave him a long look. “How are you?”
He waved a hand, dismissing the formalities. “Do we have an appointment?”
“No.” She looked mildly amused, as if she knew something that he didn’t. “I guess that’s the acceptable way to gain access to your inner sanctum, huh? An appointment. Kind of weeds out the crazies. Sorry, I’ve never been very good at that kind of formality.
“Dr. Barry.” Eileen motioned from the doorway, and pantomimed dialing a phone. Security? she inquired, silently mouthing the word.
Phillip shook his head. As soon as he learned what she thought she was doing here, he’d send her on her way.
The woman pulled a newspaper from her bag, slapped the front page on his desk. Did Jenny Have To Die? the headline read. “I don’t know what kind of whitewash job you did on this reporter, but we both know this doesn’t even come close to telling the real story.”
He looked at her. So this was the problem—the Todd Bowen article about Jenny Dixon. “And, what in your opinion, is the real story?”
“Okay, so you closed the emergency neurology services, but you didn’t stop being a neurosurgeon, right? You could have come in.” She nodded her head toward the newspaper he had just moved out of her reach. “I’m sure you had some terrific reason, I just thought maybe you’d do me a favor and share it with me.”
Phillip could hear his ex-wife calling his name. “I’ll call you back,” he told Deanna, and put down the phone.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the woman. “You’ll need to talk to someone in administration.” She didn’t appear convinced, so he stood up. “Look ma’am—”
“Ma’am. God, I hate being called ‘ma’am.’”
And he hated the fact that he was having the damnedest time keeping his eyes off her breasts. Words he’d long forgotten he ever knew ran through his brain. Wench. Moll Flanders. He forced himself to look up at her face. Amber eyes and a full mouth. Her clothes, he thought, would just slip off. Her breasts already appeared in danger of escape.
She noticed his focus and tugged at her blouse. As he marshaled his thoughts, it occurred to him that perhaps she was part of a gag perpetrated by one of his partners. Last year, on April first, he’d walked in to his office to find a temporary secretary in a fringed buckskin jacket sitting at Eileen’s desk, snapping gum and filing her nails. Eileen was sick, she’d told him. After several hours of horrendous inefficiency, he’d finally asked for the name of her temporary agency so that he could send her back. Just then, his partner, Stu, an inveterate prankster, had walked into the office, laughing uproariously as he confessed to the joke. Later, Eileen confessed, too; Stu had roped her into it. Stu might have struck again. Frankly, he would prefer that she was the latest of Stu’s jokes, rather than someone completely on the level.
“I didn’t catch your name,” he finally said.
“I didn’t throw it to you,” she said.
He folded his arms across his chest and waited.
“Defensive posture,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Arms crossed like that.” She folded hers in the same way. “Denotes guardedness. Keep out, that’s what it says.”
He looked beyond her shoulder, hoping to spot Eileen. “So your name is…” he prompted.
“Um…” She appeared to be thinking about the question. “You don’t know, huh?”
“Should I?”
“Course not.” Another pause while she seemed to be thinking things over. “Anyway, my name isn’t important. I’m here on behalf of Jenny. The girl who died in the ambulance. All the Jennys and all their parents and families, who assume that if they need emergency room services, they’ll receive appropriate medical care.”
“Are you a relative?”
She looked at him. “Not relevant. Jenny could be a perfect stranger and her death would still be tragic and unnecessary.”
Phillip said nothing. He couldn’t. After the Bowen article, the hospital’s legal team had been crystal clear—he couldn’t discuss Jenny Dixon. Maybe he should send the woman down to legal.
“As if it isn’t awful enough to lose a child,” she said, “but then to know that this child didn’t have to die. You want to know my name? I’ll tell you what. You can call me Concerned. Frustrated. Mad as Hell.”
Or Crazy. Phillip reconsidered calling security. Last week in L.A., an angry family member of a former patient had walked into administration and fatally shot the assistant hospital administrator. The woman sitting across from him had a large yellow straw bag at her feet. Could be a gun inside for all he knew.
She leaned forward and jabbed at the newspaper on his desk. “How would you feel if this were your daughter?”
Caught off guard by the question, he felt a moment of panic. Did this woman know Molly? Just then his secretary appeared behind the woman’s shoulder. “Dr. Samuels on line one, Dr. Barry. Administration on line two and you need to get down to conference—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” The woman nodded her head. “We get the idea, Dr. Barry is one busy dude. But I think, we, the Jennys of the world, deserve some answers. Why wouldn’t you come in that night—”
He needed to stop her questions. Now. “First of all, this isn’t about me. The trauma-system problem is a nationwide issue…” He wanted her to leave. The mild curiosity he’d initially felt had subsided along with his patience. She was, he was certain now, just another run-of-the mill crackpot. Her concern was probably genuine enough, but her methods needed work. “Second, unless you understand all the facts—”
“Exactly why I’m here.” She settled into the chair in a way that clearly meant to say she had all day. “What I want to understand is this. As Jenny was riding around in the ambulance, what exactly prevented someone, anyone, from coming in to save her? Really, I’m trying to imagine. You, Dr. Neurosurgeon, are asleep in your multimillion-dollar oceanfront house when the phone rings. A girl will die unless you come in to save her. What do you say? ‘Too bad, that’s the breaks,’ and just roll over and go back to sleep?”
The arrival of a security guard, apparently summoned by Eileen, saved him from having to answer the question, but not from feeling the bite of her anger.
“Brilliant solution,” the woman said as a blue-uniformed guard, who probably outweighed her by two hundred pounds or so, took her arm. “But you haven’t heard the last from me.”
SOMETIMES BRETT FELT he was surrounded by crazies. Like his mom, for instance, when she made him go sit in the car like he was some little kid while she ragged to his dad about taking him surfing.
Or like last week, when he got home from school and she was reading this magazine article.
“Watcha reading, Mom?” Like he cared, but he was trying to be nice. So she gives him this guilty look like he’s caught her doing something wrong.
Just because she looked so sneaky, he took a look over her shoulder to check out what she was reading. A full-page ad.
“It’s a moment all parents dread. The first time they hand over the car keys to their teen driver.” He read some more. ‘’Drivers in the sixteen-to-twenty-two-year-old age group are involved in more accidents and fatalities than…”
Then he figured out what the ad was all about and stopped reading.
“Jeez, Mom.”
“What?”
“See, that’s what I mean about you making a big deal out of everything. Roger’s folks are buying him a car—”
“And you can use the truck…”
“To go to the store. Big deal.” As soon as he said it, he knew he’d made a mistake. A few weeks ago, he’d driven the truck to pick up some stuff for her from the market and then, just because it felt so cool to be sitting behind the wheel, even if the truck was kind of a dump, he’d driven over to Roger’s, which was only three blocks from the market, but then Roger wasn’t home so he’d driven to another friend’s house and hung out there for a while. His mom had climbed all over him for that. She’d been standing at the door waiting as he pulled up.
“Three hours for a five-minute trip to the market?”
“Come on, Mom. I was just hanging out at—”
“Just hanging out. How did I know you hadn’t had an accident? How did I know you weren’t lying in an emergency room somewhere?”
He’d been grounded for a week, which he pretty much expected but then when she didn’t mention it again, he thought she’d forgotten all about it. Right.
“It’s a tracking device.” She was looking at the ad again. “When you’re driving, it will send me reports on your location, whether you’re speeding…”
Yep, his mom was definitely crazy, all right. And now, today, he walks in and she’s in the kitchen, standing over a screeching kettle. Just standing there, her back to him, with the kettle hissing and screeching away. Screech…rattle…hssssssssss. Standing there, like she had no idea it was practically falling off the stove, it was shaking so hard.
He coughed so she would know he was there, but she didn’t turn around.
“Mom?”
Finally. She turned off the gas, banged a mug on the counter and dropped a tea bag in it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“The world.” She poured water into the mug. “Skewed priorities, inequity.” With her thumb and finger, she fished the tea bag out of the mug and threw it toward the trash can. Missed.
He bent down, scooped it up and tossed it. That’s how his mom talked: big words, big concepts. “Gotta overcome that genetic predisposition,” she’d say if she came in and caught him watching TV. Genetic predisposition. Translation. Don’t be like your father. “Skewed priorities” meant she’d probably been to see Rhea and got all fired up about Jenny dying while doctors played golf or something.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said now. “I’m just in a very bad mood. Give me a few minutes, okay?”
“Sure.” He wondered what was for dinner.
“Getting people to pay attention,” his mom said. She was sitting at the table now, staring into her mug of tea like it was a crystal ball or something. “That’s the first step to creating change.”
Sure, Mom, he thought. Whatever you say. If anyone could make people pay attention, it was his mom. Sometimes she made him feel tired, like he’d been caught up in a hurricane and pushed around by all the noise and movement. Once Hurricane Zoe got rolling, no one thought for a minute she wouldn’t do what she’d set out to do. She’d get on these kicks…like right now it was getting the trauma services started again. The last one was getting a stop-light put in on this street where some little kid got run over, and before that it was getting a new trial for this black guy who was in jail for murdering a girl. Now the guy was out, back to working as a schoolteacher and telling everyone that he owed it all to Zoe McCann.
She’d even gotten herself arrested once for protesting against something. He couldn’t remember what it was now, but they’d shown her on TV being dragged across the street by a couple of cops. That’s how she was. Grandma said her own mother had led some kind of protest about women not being allowed into this bar where all the men were playing darts. Grandma and Aunt Courtney weren’t like that, though, but Grandma said these things sometimes skipped generations.
All he knew was that he didn’t want that gene, or whatever it was, lurking inside him waiting for a chance to make him act obnoxious. Not that his mom would call it obnoxious though, she’d say it was standing up for herself. Don’t let anyone push you around, ever, she was always telling him. You’re as good as anyone. Just remember that.
Like he could forget when she reminded him practically every day? Not that he wasn’t kind of proud of his mom, even though she sometimes drove him nuts the way she sucked him into all her energy. Like she was so big on him being a doctor, he even told the school counselor that’s what he wanted, too. Except that he didn’t know what he wanted to be, maybe a carpenter or something, like his dad—not that he’d ever tell her that. Plus, he hated chemistry and the other science stuff.
He watched her, still sitting there looking into her mug of tea. Uh, Mom? Dinner? I’m only like starving to death. He had a secret stash of burritos behind his mom’s bags of frozen whatever it was that she was always digging up from the garden, but with her in the kitchen there was no way he could get to it without her making this big, humongous deal about it. She’d grab the burrito box from him and start reading the list of ingredients. Picking out these long words that didn’t even sound like something you should put in your mouth. “Where did you get this disgusting thing from anyway?”
Then she’d fix him with a look that said she knew damn well where they’d come from. Pam, his father’s new wife, who looked more like a cheerleader than a stepmom and couldn’t cook to save her life, was always giving him stuff to take home with him. He knew she did it mostly to bug his mom, but, hey, he liked frozen burritos. When his mom made Mexican food, she always tried to put in stuff like zucchini.
“I am so furious at myself.” She brought her fists down so hard on the table that the mug jumped and the tea splashed all over the place. “God, I’m an idiot.”
He stopped thinking about how he could get a burrito from the freezer and microwave it without her noticing, and sat down at the table. “Why? Granny Janny?” His grandma always put his mom in a bad mood. Aunt Courtney this and Aunt Courtney that, he mimicked his mom’s voice in his head. Once he’d asked his mom if she was jealous of Aunt Courtney and then she’d really blown up.
“No. I told you, I’m mad at myself.”
“What’s for dinner, Mom?”
“Dinner?” She looked up as though she’d suddenly noticed he was sitting there. “Oh, honey…I’m sorry, I got so caught up in…I’m so sorry, sweetie.” Now she had her arm around his shoulder. “God, I didn’t realize the time, you must be starving—”
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