Clear And Convincing Proof

6

“Bernie, what’s going on around here?” Erica and Bernie were having coffee in the staff lounge. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing. Greg looks ill and Naomi is snapping like a turtle. What’s up?”

“I wish to God I knew,” Bernie said after a brief hesitation. She helped herself to leftover Halloween candy. “Something is. All at once Annie’s a shareholder and Dr. McIvey is spending time going through the personnel files while Naomi stews and paces. Teri—you know Teri Crusak in the office?—she said that McIvey demanded the keys to the locked files, all the personnel records, and Naomi said to give them to him.”

“I didn’t even know there were locked files,” Erica said.

“Yeah, there are. Confidential stuff about the staff. Not me. I’ve got no secrets. But others.” She shook her head. “Anyway, whatever’s in there, he’s got now.” She lowered her voice. “Stephanie said she wishes he’d eat something here. She’d season it with arsenic.”

Erica remembered something else Stephanie had said, that McIvey was out to get Darren, that he had tried to get his personnel records a few years back and had not been allowed access. Now he had them, or could easily get them.

Keeping her voice as low as Bernie’s, she said, “Stephanie thinks he’s targeted Darren. Do you?”

“Sure. And now that Annie’s going to be around even more, doing some of the stuff McIvey’s mother did, it’s like he’s stoking the fire.”

Annie and Darren? Erica lifted her cup, then put it down again. Annie and Darren. She had seen his expression that one time, the hurt and anger.

“Nothing to it,” Bernie continued, “but you put kindling on a spark and fan it a little, lo and behold! you get a blaze. Maybe he’s counting on something like that, to use as an excuse to get Darren out. Or else he’s just plain stupid, and I don’t think anyone ever accused David McIvey of stupidity.”

“Were they…? I mean before she got married, were they going out?”

“How it was,” Bernie said, “she came here when she was still just a kid, and he treated her like a kid for about a year. But she was sort of in a hero-worshiping phase, and he was the hero. Gradually he seemed to notice that she wasn’t just a kid. He backed off. He thought he was too old for her. He’s what, about thirty-eight now? I think that’s right. Anyway, we were all watching to see how long it would take for her to get through to him. About a year, a little more. Well, McIvey came along and spotted her and said, I want that, and what David McIvey wants, David McIvey gets. Like David and Bathsheba. You know the story?”

Erica nodded. Her lips felt stiff, her mouth dry. She took a sip of coffee, then said, “I can’t believe there’s anything going on now.”

“But she’ll be around a lot more, not stuck back in the office. Old Mrs. McIvey was here all hours when it was fund-raising time, showing people around, having talks with Darren.” She shrugged. “We’ll see.”

That afternoon Annie dropped in on Naomi in her office. “Are you busy? Can we talk?”

Naomi closed a folder on her desk and stood up. “Let’s go to the house. No one will disturb us there. And I could use a cup of coffee.”

They walked out together. It was a cold, sunny day, with thin cirrus clouds streaking the sky in the west. Annie stopped to sniff the air. “It’s going to rain. Back home I used to go out to the bay and watch the sky move in. I thought of it as the sky eating the ocean, moving in to eat the land. The first gale of the season was always exciting. I never got over that excitement when the first gale blew in. Our lower pasture flooded every year,” she added. A sharp memory surfaced and she saw herself as a little girl, her hair wild in the wind, saw how the cattle—black-and-white like picture-book cows—all turned to smell the ocean, the approaching storm front. She shook herself. “Not quite the same here, but I like the first storms of the season.”

They entered the house through the back door into the kitchen, and while Naomi was busy with the coffee, Annie wandered about the room, as if checking to make certain it was how she remembered from when she had lived there. The same silly salt and pepper shakers—Jack Sprat and his plump wife; the same African violets in bloom on a windowsill—they were never out of bloom, it seemed; the same yellow vase with fresh flowers…

As Naomi waited for Annie to begin, she got out mugs, sugar and half-and-half. Annie always used enough cream to turn her coffee nearly white.

Annie had come to a stop at the back door where she stood gazing out at the herb garden: rosemary, thyme, silvery-green sage, feathery fennel and dill, dark-purple basil, bright-green basil…It was like an illustration from a book about medieval convent gardens. Annie could imagine the cloaked and hooded figures out there with cutting baskets. The coffee was ready. She turned back to the room, to the table where Naomi had already taken a chair and was pouring.

Annie liked the fragrance of coffee more than the taste, she thought, as she took a seat opposite Naomi. Then without preamble she said, “Why did David give me five shares?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“He said it was a formality.”

Naomi nodded. “In a sense it is, I suppose, but there’s more to it than that. As a member of the board of governors, you certainly have a right to know the issues.” She told her most of it, leaving out only the part about Donna Kelso’s will and how her death before a court decision was handed down would change the equation. “So it was fifty percent versus fifty percent in favor of, or opposed to, a nonprofit foundation. Eventually he’ll try to find a way to force a vote for a change of mission, to turn the clinic into a surgical facility. That’s what he really wants.”

“But he gave up some of his voting power by giving me shares,” Annie said.

“He had to give up shares or take on a workload that he couldn’t possibly handle. He had no choice.”

“There’s something else,” Annie said after a moment. “He said to be sure to ask you how Mrs. Kelso is doing. Why? What does that mean?”

Naomi drew in a breath. He knew, she thought. He was letting them know he was aware of Donna Kelso’s will. His attorney might have tricks of his own to use to string out everything until the matter was settled by the death of Donna Kelso. And until then he would use Annie to maintain the impasse the equality had created.

Hesitantly, uncertain for the first time, she told Annie about the terms of Donna Kelso’s will.

“He’ll win,” Annie said when Naomi became silent. “He’ll have the McIvey Surgical Institute.” She tasted her coffee, put it down again. “It isn’t even for the money,” she said. “He really doesn’t care about money.” Abruptly she stood up. “Thanks, Naomi. I have to go. See you tomorrow.”

Naomi watched her rush away, then continued to sit at the table thinking she had never hated anyone in her life the way she hated David McIvey. She had seen Annie change from a happy, laughter-loving child into a woman with shadows in her eyes, with a strained expression when her husband’s name was mentioned and an almost total withdrawal into some other space when he was present. David McIvey had marked her. And he would drive Greg out without a moment’s hesitation, destroy Darren, destroy the clinic. All in a day’s work, inconsequential. Collateral damage, she thought bitterly. That’s what he would bring about on his march to where he was driven to go.

She agreed with Annie—it was not for the money. As a surgeon he was making a lot of money already, and apparently spending little. No yacht, no private plane, no palatial mansion. He didn’t collect art. Annie had said the condo was almost sterile, and neither of them wore expensive jewelry, except for her wedding ring. What was driving him was more compelling than money. Power? In the operating room he was a god, power enough. She stood up and took the coffee mugs to the sink where she poured out Annie’s coffee, rinsed both mugs. She picked up a wooden spoon from the counter, then became still again, looking out the back window, over the herb garden, past the screening hedge, to the upper floor of the clinic.

“God wants a larger domain,” she said under her breath. “He wants people to come from all over the world to seek the healing touch of his magic wand, the scalpel, to pay homage….” She heard a snapping sound and looked down in surprise at her hands. She had broken the spoon handle in two.

The anticipated storm moved in that evening with gusting winds and driving rain. Annie stood at a window in the living room of the condo watching the fir trees dance in the rain. When David came into the room after changing his clothes, she said, without turning to look at him, “I’m going to vote for the foundation.”

“Annette, don’t be a fool,” David said. “You will vote exactly the way I tell you to. That’s a given.”

She shook her head. “I think the foundation is a good idea, the continuity is important.” She turned to face him. He was not even looking at her, but at the mail.

“The court will not agree to such a change when one board member is incompetent and another, with majority shares, is opposed,” he said, opening an envelope. “That isn’t how the system works. There’s no point in delaying the inevitable.”

“You could have a surgical clinic somewhere else,” she said. “You could build it to suit yourself, do it that way.” He didn’t ask her how she had learned about the surgical clinic. He had not told her, and he didn’t care who had any more than he cared what she thought about it. He never asked her anything.

“I already have a facility.” He threw the mail down on the coffee table. “My father built it with every intention of leaving it to me, and I intend to use it. I played second fiddle to that clinic all my life, and now I’m moving into the first fiddler’s chair. Period.”

For a moment his face was transformed by fury like that of a thwarted child, or a wronged youth, neglected and vengeful. The expression was fleeting, and once again his expression became as unreadable as that of a Greek statue. “Annette, listen carefully because I won’t repeat this. Greg and Naomi will be out of there in three months, and Darren sooner than that. How they leave is still open. With the unanimous highest recommendations of the board of governors, or with a serious reservation included in a report by a major shareholder? Greg is incompetent, and Naomi has no training in bookkeeping or anything else as far as I can tell. And Darren has a criminal record. He’s an ex-con, a drug addict who, I am afraid, has reverted to his old habit.”

She stared at him, then started to walk across the room, toward the hall and the foyer.

“Where are you going? Dinner is just about ready.”

“I don’t know where I’m going. Out.”

Annie had been driving aimlessly for hours when she pulled in and stopped at the parking lot of the clinic, although she had no intention of running to Naomi and Greg, or of entering the building. The rain was so hard that the windshield wipers had not been able to keep the glass clear enough to continue driving.

When the rain eased, and it probably would in another hour or two, fog would form, she thought. The earth, buildings, pavement, trees, all still warm from summer’s heat, chilled by the first real rain of the season brought dense fogs here in the valley. She was thinking again of her father’s milk cows, placidly grazing as water crept up into the lower pasture, until Molly Bee, the matriarch of the herd, started to move in a leisurely way toward higher ground, and all the others left off cropping grass to follow her. “Who elected her queen of the cattle?” Annie had asked her father a very long time ago, almost too distant a time to recall. “I think she’s self-appointed,” her father had said. “But no one questions her authority.”

She would give the shares to someone else, she thought suddenly, and shook her head even as the thought formed. David never made idle threats. He would smear Darren, Greg and Naomi, and in the end he would still have the clinic. She didn’t doubt that for a second. He would have the clinic. Her cell phone rang and she ignored it just as she had before. It would be David ordering her to come back home. Even if she gave the shares to Naomi and Greg, it wouldn’t stop David….

They both knew what was happening. If they couldn’t save the clinic, they could protect themselves one way or another, or retire. Greg was old enough to retire, or go to a small town and practice medicine.

Then she thought, what if Darren leaves first? She knew he had been offered a position in one of the biggest rehabilitation centers in Los Angeles. Or he could go to Seattle. Or Portland. He could go almost anywhere, make better money, still do the work he loved and had been born to do…. If he handed in his resignation now, he would leave with excellent references, no smear, no blot on his record.

She didn’t know whether he would accept that idea, and chances were good that he wouldn’t, but he had to have the choice. He had to know what was going on. Leave now, or stay and be forced out later, and possibly be destroyed professionally…He had to know. She called his number on her cell phone.

When Darren agreed to meet her, she quickly said, “No. I’ll come to your place. Where do you live now?”

The storm had made Erica restless, unable to concentrate on a book, or the television, or anything else. What if the shingles blew off, or the new roof leaked, or a tree blew down? She heard the car in the driveway and went to a front window to see who was coming this late. She knew that Darren was home. She always knew if he was in the apartment. When she saw Annie leave the car, look at the house uncertainly, then go around to the outside stairs, she burned with resentment, with an ache that started some place she had no name for.

“We have the next board meeting on Thursday,” Annie said. “I’ll try to stall, but I’ll probably have to vote. Think about it, Darren. He’s going to win, one way or the other. He will. He always does. He’s…he’s like the storm, unstoppable until he gets his way.”

“We’ll find something to do,” Darren said. “Greg, Dr. Kelso, I…we’re pretty formidable, too, you know. We’ll think of something.”

“Is it true, what he said? Drugs, prison?”

“It’s true. One day, over a double chocolate malted milk, I’ll tell you about it. Now you go on home. And thanks, Annie.”

“Oh, God! I haven’t had a chocolate malted milk in years. Not since…”

Erica was in the kitchen when she heard the car leave. Darren was pacing back and forth, back and forth. Neither of them slept much that night. Darren paced and Erica listened to his footsteps while the rain beat on the house.

David was in bed when Annie got home a little after ten-thirty. David always went to bed at ten-thirty.

7

The low pressure front came in waves. The rain eased, fog formed and was very heavy in the morning. Then the sun came out and burned away the fog and brought up steam from roofs and pavement. A few hours later a new wave of rain rolled in and the sequence began again. Annie loved it. The front carried the smell of the ocean inland.

At lunch on Monday Annie toyed with her salad. David ate his with a good appetite. Neither of them had mentioned again the discussion about her vote. He had said, “Period.” That meant no more discussion, no compromise; the matter was settled.

David was saying, “I need those studies before two o’clock tomorrow. You’ll have to leave as soon as you drop me at Greg’s house in the morning. I’ll have Naomi take me to the hospital.”

She nodded. It often happened that patients from an outlying area, Pleasant Hill, or Cottage Grove, someplace closer to Eugene than to Portland, were sent to the University Hospital in Portland for a diagnosis. If surgery was decided upon, they frequently opted to have it done in Eugene, where it was less of a burden on family members and patients alike. It also often happened that the Portland hospital failed to send the required lab results or X-ray studies to the doctor in Eugene. Several times each year Annie drove to Portland herself to collect them.

“It’s going to be foggy again, and probably raining,” David said. “We’ll get an early start. I’ll sign Dwyer out at seven-thirty.”

He had to see his patient at the clinic, sign him out, leave follow-up orders with the nurse and then be at the hospital to make his own rounds by eight.

Annie nodded again. She was looking forward to the drive to Portland; she needed time alone to think. She felt as if her brain had been on strike for days, and no matter how resolutely she started, she kept stopping in frustration, unable to reach any decision.

When Erica arrived at the clinic that afternoon, she saw Annie outside one of the therapy rooms. Annie looked up guiltily, then motioned her closer to the door, holding her finger to her lips.

A woman was saying in a harsh furious voice, “I’m paralyzed, goddamn it! Don’t give me any of that crap!”

“I know you are,” Darren said calmly. “And you’re mad as hell and don’t intend to take it any longer, so get out of the way, world. Right? Well, see, I’m pretty sore myself. You’re too young, for one thing. It isn’t fair. Lightning bolt stroke and zap, you can’t move. But we accepted you as a patient, and we don’t take anyone unless we can help. We’re going to help you, and you’re going to work harder than you thought you could.”

“Oh, Jesus! Just tell me what I’m supposed to when I can’t do a fucking thing!”

“First thing every day will be hydrotherapy. Nice warm water, and you wear angel wings. It’s really a flotation device. You couldn’t sink or flip over if you tried. And Tony will put you through a series of exercises. That’s to regain muscle tone, strength building, in the nearest thing to weightlessness we can come up with. You’ll see. After that a little snack, and then Chris will guide you through an imaging session, meditation, self-hypnosis, whatever you decide to call it. That’s hard, but it works. Lunch next, and in the afternoon I’ll help you parachute jump.” He laughed, a low rumbling sound. “We omit the plane and chute, there’s just the harness. That’s to bear your weight. And underfoot a moving walkway, to remind your legs how to work.”

He paused a moment, then said, “You can see that you have a busy schedule lined up. After all that you might want to listen to our Rikki read. Most folks upstairs do. Her name’s Erica but some of the kids started calling her Rikki—you know, like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi—and I guess we mostly all do now.”

Erica gave Annie a startled look; Annie raised her eyebrows and nodded.

“And if at any time during the day you feel like screaming,” Darren said, “do it. Or if you need a little something, say a margarita or a slug of gin, say so. Not that we can give you a liquid painkiller, but a magic pill or something will have the same effect.” His voice dropped lower, and no longer sounded amused or playful when he said, “Connie, we’re going to make you walk again, and use your hand and arm, and control your body. We are. Any other questions?”