Clear And Convincing Proof

Thomas had heard the story of how David had signed the order to discontinue life support for his mother, and then had gone straight into surgery. Had his hand trembled, his vision blurred?

Thomas felt he could almost understand David, not entirely, but somewhat. His mother had had a good life and had lived to be eighty with no major health problems. She had been happy most of her life, and her end had been merciful. A fulfilled life. An enviable one. David was merely accepting of the fact of death, and perhaps even grateful that it had been merciful. He was a scientist, a doctor. He understood and accepted death in a way that a layperson could not.

But he should weep for his mother, Thomas added to himself. He should not order her death one minute and draw blood with his scalpel the next.

He did not go to the cemetery, or to David’s house after the funeral. Instead, he went home, but his own house seemed oppressive, too silent, too empty. That afternoon the silence and emptiness were more like a vacuum than ever, like a low-pressure area where there was not enough air. The silence was that of holding one’s breath, not simply the lack of sound.

He left the house and sat in his car for a minute or two, tracing the pattern of wear on the steering wheel cover. He had worn it down to nothing in spots. Realizing what he was doing, he stopped. The salesman had said nine out of ten Volvos ever sold were still on the road. Twenty years ago? Twenty-two? Now and then he thought he might trade it in on a new model, then he forgot until the next time he noticed that it was old. He shook himself and drove to the clinic.

He parked in Greg’s driveway, walked the path to the alley, across it, and into the garden, where he made his way to the waterfall and sat on a bench in the shade, listening to the splashing water, watching the koi swim back and forth effortlessly. There, listening to the music of the water, he let his grief fill his eyes with tears. Grieving for his wife, for Joyce and William McIvey, grieving for the clinic. They had shared a vision, the four of them. Now he was the only one left, and the vision was fading.

He had not yet moved when he heard a girl’s voice. “You bastard, you moved the chair farther away!”

“Maybe a little farther,” Darren said. “And does your mama know you use such language?”

“Who the fuck do you think taught me?”

Darren laughed. “The deal still goes. You walk to the chair and earn a ride back.”

Thomas could see them when they rounded a curve, Darren and a teenage black girl. Sweat was running down her face. She was using two canes, learning how to walk with a prosthetic, an artificial leg from the knee down. They rounded the curve and were heading out of sight again when she began to sway.

“I can’t feel it! Darren, I’m falling!” Her voice rose in a wail.

“No, you’re not. You’re fine.” He had his arm around her before she finished speaking, and for a time neither of them moved. “See, what happens is that something in your head wakes up and says, ‘Hey, I don’t have a foot down there,’ and you feel like you’re going to fall. What we have to do is convince that something in your head that it’s okay, there’s a working leg and foot, and it’s yours, so get used to it. Ready? Just a few more steps now. Here we go.”

Thomas watched them out of sight, then he realized his hands were clenched into tight fists, and he relaxed them and flexed his fingers.

“I’ll fight you, David,” he said under his breath. “I’ll fight you every inch of the way.”

Everything was muted at the clinic that afternoon. A few appointments had been canceled. Some of the therapists and nurses had taken time off for the funeral, and some of the volunteers had excused themselves. Greg and Naomi were gone for the day.

In desperation Bernie had called Erica. “If you can just sit at the reception desk for an hour or so, I’ll help out in the kitchen. Stephanie’s gone to the funeral.”

Due to the reduced staff and cancellations, traffic was light that afternoon. The two interns working under Darren’s supervision had their patients as usual, and Winnie Bok, the speech therapist, was on duty. A few others were there with their own flow of patients arriving, leaving. But Erica was not rushed, and she daydreamed that she had trained in physical therapy instead of education, that she now worked full-time here, consulting with Darren, joking with him in the lounge, walking home with him at the end of the day….

She chided herself for indulging in romantic schoolgirl fantasies, but they persisted. In fact, she seldom even saw him. He left the clinic every day before she finished reading, and he didn’t walk; he rode a bicycle. She had not seen it the day he saved her life, but she had been too shaken to notice much of anything. Sometimes she could hear him in the upper apartment, and one time she had made dinner for two, only to find that he had already left by the time she went up the stairs to invite him to share it. It would be different, she told herself, after he moved in. They would be neighbors, and how much closer could neighbors be, separated by a floor, a ceiling? He would drop in for a chat, for a cup of coffee; she would invite him to dinner; they would have long talks. They would find the key, or simply remove the lock on the upper door of the inside stairs.

Bernie returned a little before four-thirty. “They’re back,” she said. “Stephanie chased me out of the kitchen. She’s in a temper.”

“Why? What did you do?” Erica got up from the chair and moved aside as Bernie took her usual place.

“Me? Nothing. Stephanie said that Dr. McIvey plans to take over running the clinic. Believe me, if that happens, this place will clear out like the plague swept through.”

“Why? What’s wrong with him?”

Bernie looked past Erica and smiled. “Hi, Shawn. How’s it going?”

A tall youth had entered with a woman, his mother probably, Erica thought. The boy was wearing a neck brace and had his arm in a sling.

“Okay,” he said.

Bernie buzzed Tony Kranz and the boy started to walk toward the therapy rooms while his mother went to the waiting room. Tony met the boy halfway down the hall and they walked on together. Tony didn’t look very much older than his patient. He was one of the interns who had come for his clinical practice, and to work under the direction of Darren Halvord. The interns, Erica had learned, worked for peanuts, but they would have paid for the chance to work under Darren for a year or two. After this apprenticeship, they were considered to be prizes by other institutions.

Bernie did not have a chance to answer Erica’s question. A couple of patients were arriving for their four-thirty appointments, and others were leaving, some of them stopping by the desk to arrange appointment times or just to chat a moment.

Erica picked up her purse and the book she was reading, The Canterville Ghost, and wandered off to the lounge. She had started coming every weekday to read and knew there would be other chances to quiz Bernie, or one of the kitchen aides, a nurse, someone. She had not met Dr. McIvey, had not even caught a glimpse of him, but every time she heard the name David McIvey, or most often, Dr. McIvey, it was with that same tone of dislike, distrust, whatever it was. Yet, Annie had married him, and apparently planned to stay with him. Curious, she thought. It was very curious.

A week later Thomas Kelso advised David that the bylaws of the corporation required a reorganization of the governing board of directors. They met in the directors’ office at the clinic immediately after David left his surgical office.

The directors’ office was a pleasant room with a leather-covered sofa, good upholstered chairs, a round table with straight chairs and windows that looked out on the garden. In the past, the four directors had sat in the easy chairs, or on the sofa, not at the table, but that day Thomas had left his briefcase, a legal pad, pencils, water glasses and a tape recorder on the table as if to signify that this was not the companionable get-together of old friends who seldom disagreed. He was already at the table, scanning notes he had made over the past day or two when David entered.

After their greeting, which Thomas likened to a meaningless tribal ritual, he got straight to the point. “Since we have no secretary present, I’ll tape our meeting. We are required to keep a record of all meetings, you see.” He turned on the tape recorder. “Now, our bylaws demand that we have four directors’ positions filled at all times. After your father’s death, Joyce assumed his function as vice president, along with her own duties as secretary, of course. Those two positions now have to be filled.”

David watched him with narrowed eyes. He was tired. He had been in surgery for six hours that day, and he had seen patients in the office as well as in the hospital. He shook his head. “I don’t know what Mother did exactly, but whatever it was, it ran her ragged. I don’t have that kind of time, as you well know. I’m a working doctor. Hire someone to do whatever she was responsible for.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Thomas said. “Have you read the bylaws, David?” When he shook his head again, Thomas said, “Well, you should. But I’ll tell you now what’s in them. We set this up as a nonprofit clinic, of course, and we agreed that the directors would receive no compensation for the work they did relating to it. We can hire people like Greg and Naomi to run it, therapists, nurses, other staff, but we, the shareholders, receive no pay. Only the shareholders can hold office, and, in fact, are required to hold office and fulfill the duties of the office or else relinquish their shares. In that event the relinquished shares shall be evenly divided among the other shareholders.”

“That’s insane,” David said.

“Maybe so. But that’s how we set it up, and for fifty-two years that’s how it’s worked.” He pulled out a folder from his briefcase and handed it to David. “The bylaws and our mission statement, our charter,” he said. “We kept it as simple as the law allowed. Why don’t you look it over? It’s short. Won’t take you long.”

When David started to read, Thomas got up and crossed the room to stand at the window gazing out at the garden. Chrysanthemums were beginning to bloom—bright red, yellow, bronze. End of summer, he thought, that’s what chrysanthemums meant. Another season, another year winding down.

When he heard the papers slap down on the table, he turned to regard David, who was scowling fiercely. Thomas knew exactly what was in those bylaws. He and William McIvey had spent a great deal of time on them, and he had reviewed them all thoroughly during the past few days.

“What exactly was Mother responsible for?” David asked in a tightly controlled voice. No emotion was visible on his handsome face, no anger, no disdain, no disbelief. Nothing.

“As vice president, she was in charge of fund-raising. We have three major campaigns annually, as you probably know. She wrote letters to contributors, donors, escorted them on tours of the facility, a garden tea party every June, an annual auction, things of that sort. As secretary she kept notes at all our meetings and put them in order for the annual audit, as required by law. It wasn’t too onerous, but exacting. There are formulas, rules that must be followed.”

“Annette could do those things,” David said after a moment.

“Not unless she’s a shareholder and is elected to office by a majority vote.” Thomas returned to the table and sat down.

“David, there’s no money in this clinic. In fact, for years we ploughed money back into it from our practices. We never intended to make money with the clinic, and we wrote those bylaws in such a way as to ensure that our mission would remain true to itself if one or more of us became incapacitated, or just wanted out.”

“I could assign some of my shares to Annette, let her assume those duties that way. Another husband and wife team. You’d have no grounds to oppose that.”

“You would have to give her the shares outright,” Thomas said. “No strings attached. And she would have to abide by the bylaws just like everyone else. No, I would not oppose that.” He sipped his water, then asked, “Why do you want to stay in, David? This is far removed from your field.”

“Exactly,” David said. “What I can see here is a surgical facility, neurosurgery, cardiovascular surgery. You have fifteen beds upstairs, and room for twenty more, room to expand, rooms to convert to surgery.” He leaned forward, and for the first time ever, Thomas saw a flare of passion in his eyes, heard it in his voice. “Thomas, I’m the best neurosurgeon on the West Coast. We would have people come here from all over the world. A specialist’s specialty, dedicated to those two areas. We could do it together, you and I.”

Thomas realized how seriously he had misjudged the young surgeon. He had thought David wanted control in order to sell out to one of the health organizations, or to change to a for profit facility. This had not occurred to him, that David had his own compelling vision. Time was on David’s side, he thought with a pang. At that moment David looked almost exactly the same as William McIvey had years ago, when he and Thomas first conceived of the idea of the rehabilitation clinic. They had been driven by the plight of their young patients ravaged by polio. After the vaccine came along, they had changed to a general rehabilitation clinic. But he remembered with startling clarity the fierce passion that had seized them both, remembered the determination William McIvey had demonstrated, the not-to-be-denied drive that had compelled them both. Now he was seeing that same determined look on David’s face, in his eyes.

David was still talking. “Rehab can happen anywhere. It doesn’t need a special clinic. You could rent space in a dozen different buildings tomorrow and be set to go. It’s insignificant compared to what surgery demands. That’s one thing. The other thing to consider is what you do here and what I propose. You see people in wheelchairs, people on crutches all the time. They don’t get special care. They learn to manage without all the trimmings you give them. You tinker with them, a little bit better is good enough, but I go in and fix them. I cure them. That’s the big difference.”

When Erica finished reading that day she found a group of people in the staff lounge: Greg Boardman, Naomi, Annie, Darren, another therapist, Stephanie…Naomi motioned her in. “We’re having a high tea,” she said. “Of sorts. Crackers and cheese and punch, at least. Have some.”

Her gaiety was forced, and Greg wasn’t even pretending this was a party. Stephanie held out a glass to Erica and said, “Now I’m off and running. Feeding time upstairs.”

She hurried out and a moment later David McIvey stood in the doorway. “Annette, let’s go.” He didn’t wait for any response, didn’t speak to anyone else, turned and left. With hardly a pause, Annie put down the glass she had lifted to her lips, picked up her purse and followed him without a word. Her cheeks flared with color, and she held her head unnaturally high.

Erica, facing Darren, was startled at the expression that crossed his face and vanished. Stricken, furious, but more, he had looked deeply hurt for that brief moment.

5

The week before Labor Day Darren moved into the apartment, and parked his truck in the newly cleared garage. His son, he said, would bring some things over during the Labor Day holiday.

“Usually we go camping or something when I have a couple of days off, but he’s excited about having his own room. He wants to pick out the color and paint it himself, hang his posters, make it his room.”

Erica straightened up from weeding a flagstone patio outside the kitchen door. Finding it had been another surprise, hidden as it had been under a layer of dirt, weeds and spreading grass. Sometimes she felt that a miracle had taken place: the house was in decent shape, and they were starting to tackle the job of taming the jungle in the yard. It was turning into a real home. She rubbed her back.

“You said he’s eleven?” she asked.

“Twelve in February. He has a half brother, who is six, and a creep, according to Todd. They share a room. And there’s a half sister, who is ten, and a spoiled brat, again according to Todd. He’s looking forward to his own room, his junk left wherever he puts it down.”

Erica laughed. “The mess on the floor will be his mess. That’s different.”

“Right. Anyway, we’ll be in and out, around, all weekend.” He took a step or two, then paused. “I heard that you asked Bernie to give a copy of the book you’ve been reading to Glory. That was good of you.”

Feeling awkward and even a little embarrassed, Erica said, “Just a cheap paperback, used. Glory mentioned that she would be leaving before we finished The Canterville Ghost and she’d never know how it came out. Sort of like following a serial for nine episodes and missing the tenth and final one.”

“Yeah. And I bet no one in her house has ever owned a book before. Anyway, that was good of you. We’re going to grill salmon tomorrow. Want to come?”

She caught her breath and nodded. “I’d love to. I can make a pretty good potato salad.”

“Deal,” he said, and moved on around to the side of the house and the stairs to the upper apartment.

Trembling, she returned to her weeding with renewed energy. She could finish before dark, tidy up for a cookout. Later she would make the potato salad; it was better if made a day ahead of time. Maybe a cake. She didn’t know if the oven worked; she had not tried it. If it worked, she would bake a cake. She would have to go shopping for ingredients; she knew she had no chocolate, little butter. Cake pans? No matter, the stores were open late. Her thoughts raced, making plans, making a mental list of what to buy. Napkins. Paper plates. Ice cream. They were having a cookout, she, Darren, his child. They were having a cookout on the patio. She was too self-conscious to sing out loud, but under her breath she was singing.

Years before, as a new teacher, she had learned to make a long-range school-year plan, nothing too specific, then a more detailed monthly plan and, finally, a very detailed weekly plan. Year after year the plans had served her well. She laughed to herself when she realized she was still doing it. She was now planning to bake a cake although she had never baked a cake in her life. No matter. She would buy a mix. Even her fifth graders had been able to make cakes with mixes.

Greg and Thomas were in Sid Blankenship’s office the Friday after the holiday. Sid was shorter than either of them, and rounder, fifty years old, with a pink face as smooth as an egg. He had gone to work for his father years ago, and when his father retired, he had inherited the office, furnishings and many of the clients, including Thomas Kelso, who to Sid’s eyes looked to be a hundred years old or older.

They had just concluded the transfer of Thomas’s shares to Greg, which left him out in the cold, Thomas thought morosely. But that was step one.

Sid had filed the petition for a change of the power of acceptance, and they had to wait for the court to get around to it. It was out of their hands, Sid told them.

Now Thomas leaned back in his chair and said, “I keep thinking that what I can’t afford to do is wait around very long. David will have his own attorney go over the bylaws and search for loopholes, of course. Sid, are all court orders open to public scrutiny? Is the power of attorney I have open to scrutiny? Is the power of acceptance?”

He was not reassured by the guarded look that came over Sid’s face as he considered the questions.

“One more,” Thomas said. “Is there anything in the bylaws that would prevent us from forming a nonprofit foundation to ensure a succession of directors without altering our mission statement?”

Sid gazed into space with a thoughtful expression, then said, “Most people assume the power of attorney gives you absolute control, to vote, sell, dispose of, whatever. Likely, David McIvey has assumed that. But you’re right, if an attorney goes digging, he’ll find the documents. As for the foundation idea, I’d have to do a little research. It might require another petition to the court, but off the top of my head, I think it can be done. It would adhere to the original intent of the founders, but it would probably take a majority vote, Thomas, and you don’t have it. Fifty-fifty. Remember? McIvey could simply say no, and that would be it.”

“David can’t handle the workload and has no intention of trying,” Thomas said. “He’ll turn a few shares over to his wife and hang the work around her neck. And the minute he does that he won’t have fifty percent of the shares to vote.”

Sid regarded him soberly for a moment, then said, “I may have limited experience in such matters, but it seems to me that wives generally go along with what their husbands demand unless they’re engaged in a custody battle or a messy divorce.”

Thomas looked at Greg. “You tell him about Annie.”

“Well,” Greg said, groping for a starting place, “she’s pretty special to us, to Naomi and me, I mean. Almost like a daughter. I feel as if I know her pretty well. She grew up on a dairy farm over at Tillamook, then went to college in Monmouth and got out when she was still only twenty-one. She answered an ad in the newspaper for a job at the clinic. Very shy, a little afraid of Eugene, the biggest city she ever lived in, pretty…She was so innocent, not like most kids her age. Anyway, we gave her the job and let her stay in the guest room at the residence for a couple of months. She loves the clinic, the patients, what we do there. After she got married, she began coming as a volunteer. She’s there most days for several hours. I don’t think she’d want the clinic to be turned into a surgical center for wealthy clients.”

Although Sid thought that was a naive view, one which did not answer the question of whether she would cross her husband, he did not voice this opinion. “Okay,” he said. “Let me look into the foundation idea. I think it’s a good one if you can get the majority vote for it. And I think the court would agree. The law approves of an orderly succession of directors, maintaining the status quo. Let me get back to you in a week or two. McIvey isn’t going to do anything until he consults his own attorney. Then you’ll have to have another board meeting to elect Annie McIvey to office. Say she’s in by mid-October. You’ll have to allow another month for McIvey to consider your proposal before you can insist on a vote. Mid-November. Hang on, Thomas. Everything takes time. That’s just the way it is.” He put aside his usual caution then and added, “I think you’ve got him, Thomas. I think you’ve come up with the way out.”

Erica sat in the clinic kitchen with Stephanie one afternoon sipping coffee while Stephanie kept an eye on her prep cooks and the two volunteers.

“So what’s with this Dr. McIvey?” Erica asked. “Every time his name comes up it’s as if a cold front has passed through.”

“That’s good,” Stephanie said. “That’s what it feels like, all right. I’ll give you a couple of examples why he’s loved by all. A few years ago, five or six maybe, this kid comes in with McIvey’s referral for hydrotherapy. She was on the basketball team at the U of O and began having terrible leg pains. Diagnosis—stress fractures, shin splints. Hydrotherapy ordered. And if that didn’t work, McIvey was going to operate on her back, a disk problem or something. Anyway, that isn’t how it works here. Darren and Greg examine every new patient, take a history, do a complete workup, and if they decide therapy is needed, they decide what kind, schedule it, everything. If they decide they can’t help a prospective patient, they say so. Darren said no for that girl. Her mother protested, and he advised her to get a second opinion. Well, McIvey hit the ceiling. He said Greg was a medical hack who couldn’t make it in private practice, a know-nothing who should be turned out to pasture, God alone knows what all. And he called Darren a voodoo doctor, a shaman, an ignorant, superstitious laying-on-of-hands fraud who should practice in a tent at revivals or something.”