She reached out to touch my arm but I pulled back. “You gonna fuck me again to make me feel better?”
Her hand jerked back like I’d slapped it. “Why are you being an asshole?”
I closed my eyes, knowing she was right and hating that I had totally lost control of my sanity. “Sorry. Did you need me for something?”
She huffed out a breath. “I want to know why the tests on Ms. Mason weren’t done.”
12
Mia
After working on one of the vendor contracts first thing in the morning, Dick had called me into his office. He wanted to know what I’d learned so far about Ms. Mason’s death.
“We’ve gotten calls from the local paper wanting to know what happened. Of course, I told them we’d done all we could. But we’ve also gotten some calls from residents asking if Dr. Foster was negligent.”
I flinched. “There’s no evidence that he did anything wrong.”
“Good. Tell me what you do have.”
I explained to him what the pathologist had said about it might have been too late for her even if the diagnosis had been made sooner.
“That’s hard to prove though, isn’t it?”
“Nick … er … Dr. Foster ordered tests that would have found the problem, but they hadn’t been done.”
“Do we know why?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“Are you sure they were ordered? Did Dr. Foster just write it down in the notes or d
id he actually send up the order?”
I frowned. “He sent up the order. I haven’t verified that it was received yet, though.”
He waved a hand. “If he sent it, they received it. The more common problem is a doctor not hitting the final send button. If they do that, then the order is sent.”
There was a tone in his voice that had me thinking he needed to believe what he’d just said. Or actually, that I needed to believe what he said. That the error was on the doctor’s side, not the lab or the software.
“We need to find out why the tests weren’t done sooner,” I said.
He nodded. “See what you can learn. But we need to keep this all on the downlow until we have answers.”
“I know the drill,” I said sardonically.
“I know it sounds callous, but we can’t have false accusations hurt this facility. If Dr. Foster is to blame, we’ll take action, but right now, we have no proof that anything he did or didn’t do lead to her death.”
“Or the lab?” I asked, a little concerned that he seemed to be focused on Nick being in error.
“Or the lab,” he agreed.
I left Dick’s office and headed down to the emergency room. When I didn’t see Nick there, I found Peggy. “Have you seen, Dr. Foster?”
“Ah … no. I think he was with the guy Dr. Balding is with now.”
Why the switch in doctors? I went over to Dr. Balding and motioned for his nurse to come to me. “Have you seen Dr. Foster?”
She made a strange face. “He took off. This patient made a comment about Dr. Foster killing Ms. Mason and he got all shaky. I’ve never seen him like that.”