Deadly Errors (28 page)

A left hand turn and twenty-five feet of oriental runner brought him to closed double doors. Inside, heavy organ chords accompanied a female’s soprano lilt. Careful to not attract attention, Tyler pushed open one side and slipped into the back of a room crammed with parallel rows of blond oak pews. The air smelled of the Tiger Lillies arranged around the podium in front. The room was packed, which surprised him. Friends of the family, he decided. Larry Childs had not been the kind of young man to garner sympathy, not be popular.

He stood along the back wall, drifting into thoughts about the series of bizarre events this past week, when a sudden vibration against his left hip jerked him back to the funeral. He plucked the beeper from his belt and checked the display. A number he didn’t recognize, but the exchange was for the hospital.

He slipped out the door into the deserted hallway. Twenty feet away a single glass door exited to a wheelchair ramp and the parking lot.

Outside now, pulling his cell phone from his suit pocket, a voice demanded, “Doctor Mathews, what are you doing here?”

He spun around. Leslie Childs held something out to him. “Want a hit?”

He recognized a roach proffered between chewed, unpainted nails. Her choice of the “layered look”—a hand embroidered amateur crafts vest, untucked dress shirt over a tee shirt—couldn’t hide her unhealthy thinness. Bulimia or a bad macrobiotic diet? An eating disorder either way, he decided.

“No thanks.”

“Whatever.” She shrugged, prepared to take another toke, but paused. “You didn’t answer my first question. Why are you here?”

He wanted to ask why she was out here getting loaded while her brother was inside being laid to rest, but instead replied, “Came to pay my respects to Larry.”

Lips in a tight o, she held the marijuana smoke deep in her lungs, a raised index finger delaying her response. Finally, she exhaled with a phlegmy cough. “Sure it’s not out of guilt?”

He met her incriminating stare. “Perhaps a bit. Larry was my patient. I always feel guilty when a patient dies. I wish I could’ve done more to save him.”

Her eyes softened. “Even if there is nothing you could do to save him?”

“Especially then.”

When she didn’t respond he felt compelled to justify his answer. “Makes me feel useless as a doctor.”

“You knew Larry didn’t have a chance when you took him to surgery, didn’t you?”

Once more he saw no good answer, one that would end the conversation. He remembered the reason he’d come out here. “Excuse me,” holding up his cell phone, “I have to call the hospital.”

Without waiting for an answer he turned and moved a few feet away, staying under the eves of the roof to keep off the heavy drizzle, his back to her.

“Doctor Mathews, Christine Dikmen. Sorry to bother you on a Saturday, but this is important. You have a moment?”

He glanced at the building, thought about the service in progress and decided to stay outside. “Yeah, sure.”

“You don’t know me. I’m a nurse up on peds.” She paused as if searching for the right words. “There’s this kiddy up here, his name’s Toby Warner. He’s been diagnosed with agranulocytosis.”

Tyler tried to remember what he’d learned about that in med school. No granulocytes, or white cells. Could be caused by medications. That was about it. “You sure I’m the person you want to talk to about this? I’m a neurosurgeon.”

“I guess I’m not making much sense. Okay, here’s the story. This kid’s studies show his bone marrow is completely wiped out. I mean fried. His hematologist, Norton Sprague, you know him?”

“No.”

“Well, he’s placed Toby in protective isolation and is socking it to him with some big time bug killers. But that’s not all. Sprague wants the kid to have a bone marrow transplant and the parents aren’t buying into it.”

Marrow transplant?
“Why not? Admittedly, it’s a major procedure with a lot of risks, but if it’s indicated it’s indicated. What, they have some religious issue with that?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s they just don’t believe the diagnosis.”

“And the reason you’re telling me all this is?”

“Hold on a second, let me close the door to this office.”

Tyler watched two-way traffic zip by on Broadway, the cars’ windshield wipers slapping clear arcs across windshields. A moment later, “There’s a rumor going around the hospital that you think there might be something wrong with the medical record system. Is that right?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Is it true?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you come up here and take a look at Toby?”

Tyler decided he couldn’t just walk away from Leslie Childs without saying goodbye, so he turned.

She was gone. So was the smell of marijuana.

“N
ANCY FAN?”

Gary Ferguson stood in the open doorway to a laboratory of black counter tops and scientific instruments he couldn’t even begin to name, looking in at an attractive Asian woman hunched over a microscope. She wore a knee length white lab coat with her lustrous black hair rubber-banded into a pony-tail. Her large glasses did nothing to hide or detract from her intrinsic beauty.

Her head jerked up. “Yes?” She glanced nervously around the room, perhaps looking for the familiar face of a colleague, her right hand delicately touching the base of her throat.

“No need to be frightened.” He pulled his ID wallet from his blazer inside pocket. “Here,” offering it to her for inspection. “Special Agent Gary Ferguson, FBI.”

She tentatively accepted the ID but handed it back immediately as if contaminated. “Is something wrong?”

“Sorry to startle you. I tried your apartment but your roommate said you were here working.”

“Is this about Tyler?”

“What makes you ask that?”

She blushed, glanced around the room again, tense. “Nothing … I mean … nothing.”

He returned the ID to blazer pocket. “You’re Tyler Mathews’s wife, correct?”

She seemed to consider her answer. “Yes?”

“May I?” Ferguson pointed to another counter-high lab stool and accepted his own offer. He leaned an elbow on the counter. “Yes, Doctor Fan, this is about Tyler. I need your help with something.”

“What?”

“What has he told you about the problems he’s having at work?”

She hesitated. “That’s a leading question, Mr. Ferguson. What did you have in mind specifically?”

“He tell you we—the FBI—suspect there’s a problem with their computerized record system? That it may be responsible for a recent death of one of his patients?”

She frowned. “He mentioned something about a problem, but we’ve not seen that much of each other. We’re separated.”

Ferguson nodded. “Yes. That’s part of the problem. You see we were notified of the complication through the NIH. For reasons I won’t bore you with, we’re investigating any leads that suggest a software bug in the system. Because it involved your husband’s patient I contacted him but because of his past encounter with the Bureau, he has been unwilling to assist us.”

“What does this have to do with me?’

“I’m hoping you’ll help me convince him to help us.”

“I don’t know if I can. We’re not seeing each other right now.”

Ferguson studied her a moment, wondering if she too blamed the FBI for the disastrous outcome of Tyler’s last encounter with federal law enforcement. “I understand the feeling you and Tyler have about how the California debacle ended up, but if it’s any consolation, I know Tyler didn’t steal those drugs.”

She stared back at him. “What did you just say? He didn’t make up that story … the drug thing, it wasn’t true?”

He wasn’t sure if she just referred to the forged prescriptions or not. “I’m not sure I follow. What drug thing?”

She flashed a look of confused relief. “He didn’t tell you about the drugs in his locker?”

“No. Tell me about them.”

S
OON AS FERGUSON was out the door, Nancy went straight to the wall phone, a mixture of guilt and anger tugging at her heart. Anger at herself for not believing Tyler. She dialed his number and listened to it ring. By the tenth ring she thought it strange his answering machine hadn’t picked up.

Too upset to work now, she decided to go home and continue unpacking. She’d try again later.

C
HRISTINE DIKMAN CLOSED the door to the Charge Nurse’s office and said to Tyler, “Thanks for coming, Dr. Mathews. I know you didn’t have to.” She wore purple scrubs, a stethoscope draped around her neck, and chestnut hair ponytailed with a rubber band. She was tall and skinny with a thin, attractive face he estimated had at least 15 years of nursing stress etched into it. She folded herself into a black task chair behind a utilitarian desk with a glowing LCD monitor. He took the only other chair, a simple maple one.

She looked at him. “Here’s the rest of the story I didn’t tell you over the phone. As I mentioned before, the parents don’t buy into the diagnosis. And after I finish telling you the whole story I want you to take a look at Toby.”

“But I’m not a hematologist.”

“You don’t have to be. Just take a look at him. You’ll see what I’m concerned about. I’ve taken care of a ton of leukemia kids and I know what the ones with their marrow shot to hell look like. He’s not one of them.” She glanced at the fingers of her right hand with a hint of regret he’d seen in nurses who scrub to often. “The parents rejected Sprague’s push for a bone marrow transplant and asked for a second opinion. Sprague felt the risk to Toby of leaving protective isolation was too great to have him obtain that from outside the hospital so another hematologist was brought in. Of course, all she did was look at the lab studies and agree with Sprague.” She opened a desk drawer, removed a plastic tube and squirted a dollop of white lotion on her palm.

“When it turned into a standoff Sprague contacted our in-house attorney who’s gotten a judge to issue an order for the transplant.”

“Oh Jesus. When is it going to take place?”

“Soon as Toby’s strep throat clears up. At least that’s the plan as it now stands.”

T
YLER STOOD IN the entrance to his apartment building, and swiped the key fob over the security sensor. The front door lock responded with a metallic snap. He pulled open the glass door and entered the deserted lobby. The rain had picked up since leaving the funeral and the run from the parking lot across Third Avenue to his apartment building had drenched him, washing clumped strands of brown hair over his forehead. With a brisk swipe he pushed them straight back then headed to the wall of mailboxes.

“You should invest in a piece of property. A small house or condominium. Otherwise you are throwing away good money. Build up some equity,”
his father had advised when hearing he’d rented an apartment in Seattle. The senior Mathews fancied himself Tyler’s personal financial advisor based on his status as department Chairman.

“But I don’t plan on staying there more than two years, Dad. You know that.”
They’d discussed that particular strategy too. Numerous times. The MMC job would be Tyler’s ticket back into academic medicine. Or so he hoped. Now that hung in the balance.

Ignoring the elevators, he headed for the paneled exit door to the stairwell. Only four flights up to his floor and he needed the exercise. Starting up the bare concrete stairs he thought of Nancy again. Could Ferguson somehow help salvage the situation? He still hadn’t been able to reach him to negotiate a deal.

As usual, the hallway to his unit was deserted. Rarely did he see other tenants. He pushed open his apartment door, stepped inside and stopped, his hand frozen on the key still in the lock. Something felt wrong, out of place.

After folding the key back into the wallet, he slowly closed the door and stood very still searching his senses for what seemed odd. A deep sense of foreboding mushroomed beneath his diaphragm making it difficult to suck in a full breath. His heart accelerated.

“Trust no one.” “Sergio Vericelli was found dead in bed. We’re looking into a needle mark on his arm.”