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Authors: Frank W Abagnale

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Catch Me If You Can (9 page)

BOOK: Catch Me If You Can
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“I can’t use an intern. The law requires a general practitioner or a specialist in one of the medical fields be the supervising resident of a hospital like this. Do you follow me?”

I nodded. I was following him, but in the same manner a jackal follows a tiger. Way back.

Colter plunged on. “Now, Dr. Granger tells me you’re pretty well unencumbered here, that you spend a lot of time around your apartment, just taking it easy and playing with the girls.” He held up a hand and smiled. “No offense, Doctor. I envy you.”

His voice became pleading. “Dr. Williams, could you come up here and just sit around for ten days from midnight to eight? You won’t have to do anything, I assure you. Just be here, so I can meet the state’s requirements. I need you, Doctor. We’ll pay you well, Doctor. Hell, as a bonus, I’ll even put Nurse Strong on the shift for the ten days. I tell you, Doctor, I’m in a bind. If you refuse me, I don’t know what the hell I can do.”

The request astonished me, and I promptly objected. “Mr. Colter, I’d like to help you, but there’s no way I could agree,” I protested.

“Oh, why not?” Colter asked.

“Well, in the first place, I don’t have a license to practice medicine in Georgia,” I began, but Colter silenced me with an emphatic shake of his head.

“Well, you wouldn’t really be doing anything,” said Colter. “I’m not asking that you actually treat patients. I’m just asking that you act in a stand-in capacity. As for a license, you don’t really need one. You have a California license, and California standards are as high as, if not higher than, Georgia standards, and recognized by our medical association. All I have to do, Doctor, is to bring you before a panel of five doctors, licensed by this state and members of this hospital’s staff, for an interview conference, and they have the authority to ask the state for a temporary medical certificate that will allow you to practice in Georgia. Doctor, I’d like to have that conference in the morning. What do you say?”

Reason told me to refuse. There were too many hazards to my posture involved. Any one of the questions that might be asked me on the morrow could strip me of my pretense and expose me for the “doctor” I was in reality. A snake-oil specialist.

But I was challenged. “Well, if there’s not that much difficulty involved, and if it won’t take a lot of my time, I’ll be happy to help you out,” I agreed. “Now, specifically, what will be my duties? Mine has been an office practice only, you know. Save for calling on patients that I’ve had to admit for one reason or another, I know nothing of hospital routines.“

Colter laughed. He was obviously relieved and happy. “Hot dog! Your duty? Just be here, Doctor. Walk around. Show yourself. Play poker with the interns. Play grab-ass with the nurses. Hell, Frank-I’m gonna call you Frank because you’re a friend of mine, now-do anything you want to do. Just be here!”

I did have misgivings when I walked into the conference room the next morning to face the five doctors. I knew all of them from my frequent visits to the hospital, and Granger headed up the panel. He flashed me a conspiratorial grin as I walked in.

The interview was a farce, much to my delight. I was asked only basic questions. Where’d I go to medical school? Where’d I intern? My age? Where did I practice? How long had I been a practicing pediatrician? Not one of the doctors posed a question that would have tested any medical knowledge I might have possessed. I walked out of the conference with a letter appointing me temporary resident supervisor on the staff of the hospital, and the next day Granger brought me another letter from the state medical board authorizing me to use my California medical certificate to practice in Georgia for a period of one year.

One of my favorite television programs is “M*A*S*H,” the seriocomic story of a fictional Army medical unit on the Korean War front. I never see a “M*A*S*H” segment without recalling my “medical career” at Smithers. I imagine there are several doctors in Georgia today who also can’t view the program without memories of a certain resident supervisor.

My first shift set the tone for all my subsequent “duty tours.” I was aware from the moment I accepted Colter’s plea that there was only one way I could carry out my monumental bluff. If I was going to fake out seven interns, forty nurses and literally dozens of support personnel, I was going to have to give the impression that I was something of a buffoon of the medical profession.

I decided I’d have to project the image of a happy-go-lucky, easygoing, always-joking rascal who couldn’t care less whether the rules learned in medical school were kept or not. I put my act on the road the minute I arrived for duty the first night and was met by Brenda in the R.S.‘s office. Colter had not been jesting, it seemed. She was smiling.

“Here you are, Doctor, your smock and your stethoscope,” she said, handing them to me. “Hey, you don’t have to work this dog shift,” I said, shrugging into the white garment. “When Colter said he’d assign you to this shift, I thought he was kidding. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

She flashed an impish look. “He didn’t assign me,” she said. “I asked the head nurse to put me on this shift for the duration-your duration.”

I promptly donned the earpieces of the stethoscope and reached inside her blouse to apply the disk to her left breast. “I always knew your heart was in the right place, Nurse Strong,” I said. “What’s the first order of business tonight?”

“Not that,” she said, pulling my hand away. “I suggest you make a floor check before you start thinking about a bed check.”

The pediatrics ward took in the entire sixth floor of the hospital. It included the nursery, with about a dozen newborn babies, and three wings for children convalescing from illness, injury or surgery, or children admitted for diagnosis or treatment. There were about twenty children, ranging in age from two to twelve, in my charge. Fortunately, they weren’t technically under my care, since each was in the care of his or her own pediatrician who prescribed all treatment and medication.

Mine was strictly a supervisor’s or observer’s role, although I was expected to be the medical doctor available for any emergencies. I hoped there wouldn’t be any emergencies, but I had a plan for such a contingency. I spent the first night cultivating the interns, who were actually the guardians of the patients. All of them wanted to be pediatricians, and the sixth floor was an excellent proving ground. They seemed to me, after several hours of watching them, to be as competent and capable as some of the staff doctors, but I wasn’t really in a position to pass judgment. It would have been akin to an illiterate certifying Einstein’s theory of relativity.

But I sensed before morning that the interns, to a man, liked me as a supervisor and weren’t likely to cause a flap.

The first shift was lazy, pleasant and uneventful until about 7 a.m., when the nurse in charge of the sixth-floor station contacted me. “Doctor, don’t forget before you go off duty that you need to write charts for me,” she said.

“Uh, yeah, okay, get them ready for me,” I said. I went up to the station and looked over the stack of charts she had ready for me. There was one for each patient, noting medication given, times, the names of the nurses and interns involved and instructions from the attending physician. “That’s your space,” said the nurse, pointing to a blank area on the chart opposite the heading supervising

RESIDENT’S COMMENTS.

I noticed the other doctors involved had written in Latin. Or Greek. Or maybe it was just their normal handwriting. I sure couldn’t read it.

I sure as hell didn’t want anyone reading what I wrote, either. So I scribbled some hieroglyphics all over each chart and signed my name in the same indecipherable manner in each instance.

“There you go, Miss Murphy,” I said, handing back the charts. “You’ll note I gave you an A.”

She laughed. I got a lot of laughs during the following shifts with my wisecracking manner, seeming irreverence for serious subjects and zany actions. For example, an obstetrician came in early one morning with one of his patients, a woman in the last throes of labor. “You want to scrub up and look in on this? I think it’s going to be triplets,” he asked.

“No, but I’ll see you have plenty of boiling water and lots of clean rags,” I quipped. Even he thought it was hilarious.

But I knew I was treading on thin ice, and about 2:30 a.m. at the end of my first week, the ice started cracking.
“Dr. Williams! To Emergency, please. Dr. Williams! To Emergency, please.”

I had so far avoided the emergency ward, and it was my understanding with Colter that I wouldn’t have to handle emergency cases. There was supposed to be a staff doctor manning the emergency ward. I presumed there was. I hate the sight of blood. I can’t stand the sight of blood. Even a little blood makes me ill. I once passed near the emergency ward and saw them bringing in an accident victim. He was all bloody and moaning, and I hurried to the nearest toilet and vomited.

Now here I was being summoned to the emergency room. I knew I couldn’t say I hadn’t heard the announcement-two nurses were talking to me when the loudspeaker blared the message-but I dawdled as much as possible en route.

I used the toilet first. Then I used the stairs instead of the elevator. I knew my delay might be harmful to whomever needed a doctor, but it would be just as harmful if I rushed to the emergency ward. I wouldn’t know what to do once I got there. Especially if the patient was bleeding.

This one wasn’t, fortunately. It was a kid of about thirteen, white-faced, propped up on his elbows on the table and looking at the three interns grouped around him. The interns looked at me as I stopped inside the door.

“Well, what do we have here?” I asked.

“A simple fracture of the tibia, about five inches below the patella, it looks like,” said the senior intern, Dr. Hollis Carter. “We were just getting ready to take some X rays. Unless we find something more severe, I’d say put him in a walking cast and send him home.”

I looked at Carl Farnsworth and Sam Bice, the other two interns. “Dr. Farnsworth?” He nodded. “I concur, Doctor. It may not even be broken.”

“How about you, Dr. Bice?”

“I think that’s all we’ve got here, if that much,” he said.

“Well, gentlemen, you don’t seem to have much need of me. Carry on,” I said and left. I learned later the kid had a broken shin bone, but at the time he could have needed eyeglasses for all I knew.

I had other emergency-ward calls in ensuing nights, and each time I let the interns handle the situation. I would go in, question one of them as to the nature of the illness or injury and then ask him how he would treat the patient. On being told, I’d confer with one or both of the other interns who were usually present. If he or they concurred, I’d nod authoritatively and say, “All right, Doctor. Have at it.”

I didn’t know how well my attitude set with the interns concerning such incidents, but I soon found out. They loved it. “They think you’re great, Frank,” said Brenda.

“Young Dr. Carter especially thinks you’re terrific. I heard him telling some friends of his visiting from Macon how you let him get real practice, that you just come in, get his comments on the situation and let him proceed. He says you make him feel like a practicing doctor.”

I smiled. “I’m just lazy,” I replied.

But I realized after the first shift that I needed some help. I located a pocket dictionary of medical terms, and thereafter when I’d hear the interns or nurses mention a word or phrase, the meaning of which I didn’t know, I’d slip upstairs to the unfinished seventh floor, go into one of the empty linen closets and look up the word or words. Sometimes I’d spend fifteen or twenty minutes in the closet just leafing through the dictionary.

On what I thought would be my last night in the guise of resident supervisor, Colter sought me out. “Frank, I know I’ve got no right to ask this, but I have to. Dr. Jessup isn’t coming back. He’s decided to stay and practice in California. Now, I’m pretty sure I can find a replacement within a couple of weeks, so could I presume on you to stay that long?” He waited, a pleading look on his face.

He caught me at the right time. I was in love with my role as doctor. I was enjoying it almost as much as my pretense of airline pilot. And it was much more relaxing. I hadn’t written a bad check since assuming the pose of pediatrician. In fact, since taking the temporary position at Smithers, I hadn’t even thought about passing any worthless paper. The hospital was paying me a $125-a-day “consultant’s” fee, payable weekly.

I clapped Colter on the back. “Sure, John,” I agreed. “Why not? I’ve got nothing else I’d rather do at the moment.”

I was confident I could carry the scam for another two weeks, and I did, but then the two weeks became a month and the month became two months, and Colter still hadn’t found a replacement for Jessup. Some of the confidence began to wane, and at times I was nagged by the thought that Colter, or some doctor on the staff, even Granger, maybe, might start checking into my medical credentials, especially if a sticky situation developed on my shift.

I maintained my cocky, to-hell-with-rules-and-regula-tions demeanor with the interns, nurses and others under my nominal command, and the midnight-to-eight shift staff continued to support me loyally. The nurses thought I was a darling kook and appreciated the fact that I never tried to corner them in an unoccupied room. The interns were proud to be on my shift. We’d developed a real camaraderie, and the young doctors respected me. They thought I was wacky, but competent. “You don’t treat us like the other staff doctors, Dr. Williams,” Carter confided. “When they walk in while we’re treating a patient, they say ‘Move aside/ and just take over. You don’t. You let us go ahead and handle the case. You let us be real doctors.”

I sure as hell did. I didn’t know a damned thing about medicine. Those young doctors didn’t know it until years later, but they were the sole reason I was able to keep up my medical masquerade. When things got tough-at least tough for me, and a headache was too stout for my medical knowledge- I’d leave it to the interns and flee to my linen closet on the seventh floor.

BOOK: Catch Me If You Can
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