I stood. “I’m not going to let them keep me from doing my job.”
She nodded. “Okay then.” But she said it in a way that suggested she thought I was a ticking time bomb.
“I’m going back to work.” I stalked out of the staff lounge. As I made my way up the hall to the ER, there was a loud crash. My heart shot to my throat, and I jumped back, pressing myself into the wall like a scared baby. Had one of the picketers come in to find me? A second later, I recognized that thought was ridiculous. Or was it? Someone had already broken my windshield. I was getting disturbing messages on my voicemail. I knew from my residency, that violence could happen in an ER.
I looked around, and thankfully, no one was in the hall to notice me. Taking a breath, I continued up the hall. Coming around the corner, a CNA was crouched on the ground picking up a tray of food that had been dropped. Now I felt like an idiot for thinking I was in danger over a dropped tray of food. Maybe I was losing it.
I was able to get through the day, and once home, I was having my now usual vodka straight up. I wondered how long before this habit veered into a drinking problem. But fuck, after a day of being on alert from emergencies to imagined danger, I needed something to sooth the raw edges.
Wh
at I couldn’t decide was if I was just paranoid or did I really need to worry about someone making good on their threat? Because I didn’t know, I stayed away from Jim and Mia in my off-hours. I didn’t want to put a target on their backs.
Mia didn’t balk, which I suspected was because she didn’t want to risk her job. Instead of seeing each other, we texted and one night had phone sex, a first for both of us.
Jim and I talked on the phone too. I didn’t tell him the truth about why I wasn’t coming over. I simply told him work was busy and I needed to rest. He said he understood, but I think I heard the disappointment in his voice. I had to hope he didn’t think I was losing interest, or that Eli had something to do with it.
And so, I went my life. During my waking hours, I constantly tried to have one eye looking behind me for some nut case wanting to get at me for Ms. Mason’s death, and at night, haunted by the dead. It was a fucked-up way to live, but what choice did I have? My only saving grace was the hope that when the lawsuit was over, I’d be vindicated and life would go back as usual. How long would that take? A year? Two? I could do that. If I didn’t go fucking crazy before then.
24
Mia
The growing tension in the community began to concern me even before someone broke the window of Nick’s car. In talking with the staff that answered the phones, I discovered that the hospital was getting threatening phone calls. Most were targeting Nick as the physician in charge of her care, but a few were generic complaints about the hospital not being forthcoming in what had happened to Ms. Mason.
“We need to make a statement to calm them down,” I told Dick one morning when I showed up to a slightly larger group of people outside the hospital demanding answers to Ms. Mason’s death. It was still only a handful, but if it continued to grow, it would be difficult for people to feel comfortable about getting treatment.
“They’re just looking for someone to blame,” he said, looking at reports instead of me as I sat in front of his desk.
“You’re making it easy for them by acting like the hospital doesn’t care.”
He finally looked up. “What would you have me do?”
“Make an official statement.”
“Saying what? We’re in the middle of a lawsuit. You know I can’t say anything that could hurt our case.”
“You could say that, and assure them that an internal review showed everything was done properly.”
“Do we know that?”
My eyes narrowed as I studied him. “Yes. The only thing that seems to have failed was receiving the order of the chest x-ray.”
His jaw tightened. “Which I told you was likely human error. Do you want to put a bigger target on Dr. Foster’s back?”
My heart clenched in my chest. “There’s no indication that he did anything wrong.”
“But they won’t see it like that, will they? He was in charge of her care and left her to treat another patient.” He shook his head. “I wonder if I should put him on leave. Perhaps that would calm them down.”
Inside my head, I was screaming at him to stop blaming Nick.
“The only problem with that is we’re a small hospital. Without Nick, we’re understaffed.”
“Why do you want to blame him?” I asked, hoping my voice sounded indifferent to the answer.
“I don’t want to blame him. The town blames him. He was her physician, and if anything went wrong, it’s on him, is it not?”
“Not necessarily.”