The Family Doctor

“I can’t believe you’re suggesting nondisclosure just to avoid a lawsuit, Tony.”

Undaunted, Kate went on. “That error was intentionally concealed. And not a single person has apologized.”

Tony felt his temper begin to simmer. She couldn’t be accusing him of unethical behavior, could she?

“I’m not trying to avoid a lawsuit and I resent that you’re even suggesting I am. What I’m saying is that you’re overstepping hospital boundaries….”

“I’m not laying blame here, Tony. All I’m saying is that when a mistake has been made an apology is in order.”

The frustration he was feeling pushed him over the edge. “For God’s sake, Kate, stop being a bleeding heart and get practical about your job or you’ll lose it,” he thundered.

She looked up at him with huge, wounded eyes. “Are you threatening me, Dr. O’Connor?”

“Of course I’m not,” he growled. “We’re simply having a discussion.”

“No, we aren’t. We’re having a fight.”

The pain in her voice made him ashamed of himself, but this had gone way too far for him to back down now. “I’m sorry, Kate, but the fact is I think you’re wrong.”

Dear Reader,

Families! We love them, but there are times they make us crazy. What always intrigues me about families is the myriad ways they force us to grow, to adapt, to reluctantly accept traits in them that we’d reject in acquaintances. Family members have the capacity to push all our buttons, to make us question our belief systems, reevaluate our boundaries. If life is a school, maybe they’re our best teachers.

Always, I learn from each book I write. It’s as if the people I create are actually my teachers, saying with a smile, “C’mon, Bobby, you’ve avoided looking at this part of your personality. It’s time you took a peek, uncomfortable as it might be.” This book taught me a lot about anger, and forgiveness, and the unlimited number of ways there are to live a life. I hope it makes you laugh—and maybe cry a little, the way it did me.

Thank you, readers, for trusting me enough to take you on another journey from beginning to end.

With my love and gratitude,

Bobby

The Family Doctor

Bobby Hutchinson

This book is for Patricia Gibson,

dear wise friend and mentor, who teaches by example

that for every problem there is a solution, and we get there

by giving up blame. For your constant encouragement

and assistance, I am humbly grateful.

Thank you to a charming young lady, McKensy Balch,

for the use of her beautiful name.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

DR. ANTONY O’CONNOR’S mother was making him crazy.

The shouting match they’d had before he left the house this morning was also making him late for the 7:00 a.m. meeting of the ethics committee, which was embarrassing because he was the one who’d insisted the committee convene at that early hour. Tony had only been chief of staff for four months, and punctuality was something he prided himself on.

The meeting was being held in the main boardroom at St. Joseph’s Medical Center, just off the lobby. He jogged in from the parking lot, squinting irritably in the glare of the rising sun. He ignored the softness of the June morning, and he was oblivious to the slight breeze that carried the salt tang of the sea up from Vancouver’s inner harbor. Shouldering his way through the revolving doors he hit the lobby at full, impatient stride.

“Morning, Doctor. Nice day, huh?”

The cheerful greeting came from his left, and he turned in mid stride to see who it was. The leather sole of his right loafer hit something slippery on the linoleum and he stumbled. Flailing wildly, he twisted to catch his balance, and felt his ankle turn painfully in the instant before he hit the floor. Instinct from years of playing rugby made him break the fall with his shoulder, but the wind was knocked out of him. For a dazed and breathless moment he lay prone, watching assorted feet rush toward him.

“Hey, Doc, you okay?” The news vendor from the lobby kiosk, in peacock blue trainers, was the first on the scene. Tony could hear exclamations of alarm from the elderly volunteers behind a nearby desk, and he sensed the beginnings of a general stampede.

To avoid it, he rolled to one side, got up on his knees, then pushed smoothly to his feet, ignoring the bolt of red-hot pain that shot from his ankle to his groin. On the floor was the foil candy wrapper he’d slipped on. He bent and picked it up, swearing under his breath, and shoved it into his jacket pocket.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he assured two nurses and a clerk who’d joined the kiosk attendant. “Twisted my ankle a bit, nothing serious.”

Before anyone could dispute that, he brushed off his trousers and straightened his jacket, and in spite of the pain that streaked through his leg and made him catch his breath, he headed down the corridor.

ST. JOE’S ER WAS HAVING a memorable morning, and triage nurse Leslie Yates was doing her personal best to sort out sufferers in the order in which they needed treatment when the admitting clerk called, “Les, line three’s for you. I think it’s your mother.”

She hurried to the desk and snatched the phone. “Hi, Mom, thanks for calling back. Listen, I won’t be able to break off at noon to take you to your doctor’s appointment. You’ll have to call a cab. You wouldn’t believe the scene down here this morning. Think Shriners convention and food poisoning. Yeah, I will. You, too. Talk to you later, Mom. Bye.”

As Leslie hung up, she glanced around and shook her head in utter amazement. It was barely nine in the morning, and the place resembled a war zone. Stretchers were lined up, every cubicle and examining room was filled, and men with urgent, utter desperation etched on their faces stood in front of every bathroom.

Sounds of retching and moaning filled the air, and the putrid odors of feces and vomit hung over the area like a pall. Nurses trying to get the attention of overworked ER doctors raised their voices as they hurried from one bed to another, keeping a wary eye out for puddles on the floor.

“Bed four has a pacemaker and he’s hyperventilating.”

“Did you get the antiemetic into seven?”

“Where are the commodes we asked Geriatrics for? Marvin, get on to Housekeeping and tell them we’re frantic down here, they have to send more staff to clean up this mess. Oh, and, Marvin, try the rehab ward again. They must have commodes we could use.”

Technicians drawing blood cultures and taking stool samples bumped into one another as they hurried from one sufferer to the next while doctors searched for veins and nurses hung more and more IVs of Ringer’s Lactate.

As if elderly Shriners with gastroenteritis weren’t enough, the ER would have to be short staffed. It was late June, and many of the medical staff were already on holiday, while others had succumbed to a particularly vicious strain of bronchial flu currently doing the rounds.

Leslie questioned still another suffering Shriner who’d attended the annual banquet the day before, filling in information as she listened carefully to the all-too-familiar recounting of symptoms. She slotted him in the lineup for treatment. It was days like this, she muttered under her breath, that reminded her she was fifty-three years old, twenty-two pounds overweight, and had bunions.

“Excuse me, nurse? Leslie? Leslie, I need an X ray on this ankle, and I need it immediately.”

The imperious and irritable male voice got Leslie’s full attention because it belonged to Dr. Antony O’Connor, St. Joe’s chief of staff.

Leslie usually saw his tall, vigorous figure striding down hallways, vanishing into some meeting room or another. She knew him well enough to exchange a polite good-morning, and she’d attended staff meetings where he was present, but she certainly wasn’t on intimate terms with him.

Not that she and her friend Kate Lewis hadn’t wickedly speculated about O’Connor and intimacy. Leslie surmised there wasn’t a red-blooded heterosexual female at St. Joe’s who hadn’t had lascivious thoughts about Tony O’Connor. Physically, at least, he was a prime specimen.

This morning, however, he wasn’t looking as hunky as usual. He was seated in a wheelchair in her admitting area, one hugely swollen bare ankle propped high on the chair’s footrest, with a good six inches of well-shaped hairy calf peeking out from under the cuff of his gray trousers.

The volunteer pushing O’Connor was an elderly man named Harold, whom Leslie knew well. Harold rolled his rheumy eyes at the ceiling and made a face, warning Leslie that his passenger wasn’t in the best of moods.

Maintaining the same tranquil expression she’d perfected from seventeen years of dealing with every variety of calamity the universe could devise, Leslie hurried over to the wheelchair, but her serenity was a facade. All the ER needed this morning to top the utter chaos was this—St. Joe’s chief of staff requiring medical attention.

“What’s happened to you, Tony?” She was pleased that her voice didn’t betray any of her inner tumult.

“Fractured ankle—I’d think that was pretty obvious,” he snapped in a querulous tone, jabbing a finger in the direction of his swollen foot. “Call the radiologist. I need an X ray just to confirm that the damn thing’s broken. And then get hold of Jensen—he’ll deal with it from there.”

Leslie’s heart sank. She knew from long and painful experience that a doctor with an injury was like a bear with a sore tooth—unreasonable, irascible, impossible to deal with and ready to maul the first person in his path.

“First let’s get you into an examining room.” Which, Leslie knew, would take a miracle. All the examining rooms were overflowing with vomiting Shriners. But at that moment an orderly whisked a stretcher out of number three, and Leslie breathed a prayer of thanks and hurriedly wheeled O’Connor in. The room stank, so she located a can of air freshener and sprayed it around in liberal doses.

He made a disgusted sound, but she ignored it. In her books, freshener was preferable to the alternative.

“Now, what happened exactly?” Leslie put the can down and poised her pen above a clipboard. Usually this information was taken by a clerk, but she didn’t have to glance in that direction to know that a long line of moaning Shriners and a few poor unfortunate walk-ins were waiting for the harassed clerks to get to them. It wouldn’t do at all to send O’Connor over to sit in line and wait his turn.

“How did the accident occur, Tony?”

“Candy wrapper,” O’Connor growled, his face flushing. “I slipped on the foil from a stupid roll of candies. Damn thing was on the floor in the lobby. What’s with the cleaning staff, leaving junk like that lying around?”

“You slipped on a candy wrapper?” She was simply confirming information, but he glared at her from angry brown eyes as if she’d said something insulting.

“Yes, nurse, as ridiculous as it sounds, that’s exactly what I did.” His tone was not only sarcastic but strident. “And now I’d appreciate it if you’d call the radiologist immediately. I have another meeting, which I’m already late for.”

Leslie struggled with the impulse, developed over her years as a triage nurse, to inform O’Connor that bullying would get him nowhere, and he was going to have to wait his turn. Good sense overcame impetuosity, however, as she reminded herself that this guy was the Big Kahuna, and she and her mother enjoyed living well on what Leslie earned at St. Joe’s.

She knew that Antony O’Connor had been chief of staff for only four months. Leslie had seen him around before that, of course; he had a busy family practice and admitting privileges at St. Joe’s.

During these last four months, however, he’d established a formidable reputation. The general consensus was that he was meticulous, impatient, critical of anything he deemed unnecessary, and willing to go to extreme lengths to correct whatever he saw as a waste of the medical center’s time and money. It was rumored that his iron fist bore no sign of a velvet glove. He had energy to burn and had maintained a busy general practice after his appointment as chief, seeing his patients in the afternoon and spending his mornings at St. Joe’s. Leslie knew he had a great rep as a GP. She didn’t know him well enough to guess whether or not he had a sense of humor, though. She suspected not.

The wisest thing she could do, she decided, was to summon one of the doctors and let him or her deal with O’Connor.

After she finished this damned medical history. Pen poised over the clipboard, she began again.

“Have you been a patient here before, Tony?”

“Of course not.” His tone was beyond edgy. “You know who I am, Leslie. Surely you’d know if I’d been seen in Emerg.”

“Not necessarily.” She didn’t exactly spend twenty-four hours a day here. Although this morning it felt as if she had already, and she was only three hours into her shift.

“Age?”

“Forty-three.”

“What medications are you on?”

“None. Well, I did take four Tylenol to ease the pain after I did this, but nothing on a regular basis.”

“And what time did the accident occur?”

“Seven-fifteen. I was on my way to an early meeting.”

It was now nine-thirty. The time lapse accounted for the extreme swelling evident in his ankle.

“So you walked on it right away?”

“Yeah, of course I did. It didn’t get really painful and start swelling until afterward.”

“You didn’t try icing it?”

“There wasn’t ice available.”

Leslie thought that was a crock, but she didn’t say so.

“Allergies?”

“Eggs. Look, is this really necessary? All this stuff is on record with the hospital already.”

“In your personnel file, perhaps, but not here in Emerg.” She kept her voice impersonal. “Next of kin?”

“Next of kin? I’ve got a broken ankle, not a broken neck. Damn it all, this is ridiculous.” His brow furrowed and the flash of temper that darkened his thick-lashed eyes might have cowed a younger, less confident nurse. At her age, Leslie wasn’t about to let him intimidate her. She’d seen it all, and she’d learned how best to deal with irate patients.

He glanced at her and recognized relentless determination. His tone took on a pleading note. “Leslie, I’ve got a sore ankle, for cripes’ sake. Next of kin isn’t relevant. This is a total waste of time, in my opinion.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s standard procedure.” She wanted to remind him of his own insistence on procedure, but she bit her tongue and added, “We find this the fastest and most beneficial way to proceed. Now, next of kin would be…?”

His lips thinned and he scowled. “My mother, Dorothy O’Connor.” In an exasperated tone he rhymed off address and phone number before she could ask, and as quickly as she could, Leslie finished the rest of the questions on the form.

“I’ll send Alf right in.”

She closed the examining room door gently behind her, took a deep breath before she remembered about the stench, and hurried over to Alf Jensen, who was treating a Shriner who’d gone into defib.

“We got trouble,” she said in a low voice.

“You’re telling me.” Jensen applied the paddles and everyone stood back. When the monitor registered a heartbeat and the patient was stable, he sighed and turned to Leslie. “What’s up?”

“Chief of staff’s in three, suspected fracture of the ankle. He’s mad as a hornet and wants an X ray stat.”

“He’ll have to wait his turn. There’s only me and Sorenson and those new med students who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.” Jensen was noted for his colorful vocabulary. “And most of these Shriners are a hell of a lot worse off than somebody with a sore ankle.”

“I know, but he’s the chief of staff, and he’s not in a waiting mood. Can you go in and have a word with him? Please?”

With a short expletive, Jensen jogged over to three.

An aide pushing a gurney said, “The patient rep is looking for you, Leslie. She’s over there at admitting.”

Leslie saw Kate and waved a hand, conscious all of a sudden of the nasty stains on her green scrub suit and the fact that her hair was escaping from the clip on the back of her head. As always, Kate was perfectly groomed, her mass of auburn hair gleaming, a sky-blue summer shirtwaist skimming a slender but curvaceous body.

Kate’s eyes, green as new summer leaves, took in the chaos. “Wow, looks like you’re having a busy morning down here.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Leslie grinned. Despite the difference in their ages—Kate was a mere thirty-six—and the fact that Leslie would kill for such cheekbones and long legs, they’d become friends.

Six months before, Kate had been an enormous help with a problem Leslie had had with one of the ER staff, another nurse who Leslie was sure was drinking on the job. During the meetings that Kate had set up to resolve the difficulty, it became obvious that she was an expert at conflict resolution. Leslie had discovered that she and Kate had the same irreverent sense of humor. They were both divorced, though neither lived alone. Kate had her stepdaughter, Eliza, and Leslie had her mother, Galina.

“Phew, what a stench.” Kate wrinkled her nose at the smell that no amount of air freshener could disguise. “I thought you might have time for coffee, Les, but it looks like you’re swamped. Give me a call when it slows down and you can get away for a minute. I want to talk to you about a patient who was treated in Emerg last week.”

“I’ll buzz you when it happens. Right now we’re up to our hips in alligators. Shriners with food poisoning and—” Leslie lowered her voice “—the chief in with what he insists is a fractured ankle. Slipped on a candy wrapper in the lobby, no less. Bet the cleaning staff are gonna get reamed out for that one.”

“Tony O’Connor?” Kate’s eyebrows arched, and her green eyes widened. Leslie knew that Kate had had her problems with O’Connor.

“The very one,” Leslie confirmed.

Kate pursed her lips and gave a silent whistle as she glanced around at the loaded stretchers. “Lousy timing.”

“You got that right.”

“Did you get him to take his clothes off?” Kate asked in a whisper.

“Damn.” Leslie snapped her fingers. “I knew I forgot something. What was I thinking?”

“You weren’t thinking of me, that’s for sure. The laughter dancing in Kate’s eyes made Leslie smile. “How many times have I told you I’d like to know what’s really under those Italian suits?”

“And how many times have I told you to just walk up to him and make a formal request?”

Kate grinned and shook her head. “Tempting, but I’m chicken.”

“Rubbish. You’re the bravest woman I know.” Leslie wasn’t joking about that. Where her job was concerned, Kate constantly and willingly put herself into the midst of conflicts that would have made Leslie run fast and far. “I’ve always thought you and Tony would make a striking couple.”

Kate laughed. “I hope it wouldn’t get to the striking stage, but you never know.”

They were giggling when a clerk came hurrying over. “Leslie, paramedics are arriving with an MVA, ETA seven minutes.”

“It’s been such a quiet morning, it’ll be nice to see some action for a change.” Leslie rolled her eyes and waved a hand at Kate as she hurried off.

CHAPTER TWO

KATE LEFT EMERG AND HEADED back to her cubbyhole of an office on the second floor, thinking about Tony O’Connor and his injured ankle. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but she found it difficult to feel any real sympathy for the man, and her lack of compassion embarrassed her. She’d been a nurse before she became an administrator, and she never wanted to lose her empathy for anyone in pain, be it emotional or physical.

As patient rep, her job involved the resolution of conflict—she was the bridge between the system and the individual. She dealt with anger every day, she even gave seminars on anger management, and still she couldn’t entirely resolve the ambivalent feelings she had toward O’Connor.

One of his first campaigns when he came to St. Joe’s last February was to try to do away with her position. She understood that budget cuts by the government were at the root of his reasoning, but he’d been unsupportive in the extreme, suggesting that having an employee whose sole function was to resolve patient and staff problems was both frivolous and unnecessary. Her salary was a waste of money, he declared openly at one meeting where she was present.

Fortunately, she had powerful support on the hospital board as a result of a dispute she’d resolved just before Christmas that had saved St. Joseph’s from what might have become a lengthy and expensive lawsuit.

When he learned of it, O’Connor had grudgingly withdrawn his objections to her position. He no longer actively opposed her, but neither had she felt any positive support from him.

At the time, she’d felt betrayed and deeply angry. She’d tried to let it go, but it was there, just under the surface, whenever she was around him, which was often. She saw him regularly at staff meetings, and they were on several committees together. It had been necessary many times to meet with him and discuss various concerns that had been brought to her attention involving patients and staff. Although he’d always been fair, he’d certainly never gone out of his way to be understanding, and she resented him for it.

Why, then, was she so powerfully, physically aware of the damned man? Sometimes he had a way of looking at her from those unreadable brown eyes, as if there was no one but the two of them in the room. She was all too conscious of the graceful, athletic way he moved, and she’d noticed that his unruly dark hair curled a little above his collar, and his hands were big and muscular.

It was such a waste. In Kate’s opinion, Tony O’Connor had been richly blessed with compelling good looks, and he’d gone and sabotaged the package with a personality that could only be described as unsympathetic. Offputting, she amended. Downright objectionable? Yup, at times he could be a proper pain in the butt.

She certainly didn’t want O’Connor to suffer any real pain from his injury, she assured herself as she closed the door of her windowless office and sank into the comfortable chair behind her narrow desk. Clicking on her answering machine, she started listening to the dozen messages that had accrued that morning, making careful note of the ones that required immediate responses.

Pain, no. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But a dose of what it felt like to be caught up as a patient in the machinery of a big hospital wouldn’t hurt Dr. Tony O’Connor one tiny bit.

FOR THE FOURTH TIME in ten minutes, Tony glanced at his watch. He’d now been in Emerg for one hour, twelve minutes and forty seconds. He’d had to ask a nurse to call and make his apologies for the ten o’clock meeting he’d missed. His cell phone was in his pocket, but when he’d tried to use it, a nursing aide had snatched it from him.

“Pacemakers, Doctor. The man in the very next cubicle has a pacemaker. You know you aren’t allowed to use a cell phone in Emerg.”