The Society

“Ouch! So, do you know what this meeting is about?”

“Just that it has to do with Jim and you. Listen, Will, I need to tell you that I’m really sorry I haven’t been in better touch. Things have been so hectic around here without you that I haven’t called to see how you were doing.”

“Nonsense. I’ve been far too busy living the high life to make time for anyone.”

“Well, it may not seem it, but I have been thinking about you.”

“Duly noted and appreciated.”

“Thanks. Now, what are you doing down here in the bowels of the hospital?”

“I’ve run into an interesting problem with a film. Rick Pizzi’s going to go over it with me.”

“The only suspended doctor in the history of the hospital who manages to run into an interesting problem with a film. Now, that’s what I call devotion to the profession. Want company in there? We can’t start this meeting without you anyway.”

“Come along.”

Pizzi, stocky and higher strung than most radiologists, had come to FGH at almost the same time as Will. However, their career paths, as least from an economic standpoint, then quickly diverged. Radiology, without much patient contact, wasn’t a specialty Will would have chosen, but it certainly had things to recommend it. An avid pilot, Pizzi now owned a pressurized Cessna, as well as a snazzy fishing boat and a Porsche. He also was still in his first marriage and spent most of his infrequent on-call nights asleep at home.

Two sets of Grace’s chest X-rays, taken a day apart, were in place in four panels of the ten that filled the wall behind Pizzi’s desk.

“So,” he asked, “were you able to get ahold of Mrs. Davis’s mammograms?”

“Not yet. They’re at the mammography center of her HMO. I will, though, I can promise you that.”

“And you feel certain there was nothing like this in any of the views?”

“As you may have heard, Rick, I’ve been under a little stress lately, so I’m not going to claim to be one hundred percent certain about anything. But I did look at the mammograms carefully when Mrs. Davis first came to my office, and I never noticed anything like this. Her husband doesn’t remember seeing anything in her films, either. He’s a teacher, not a doc, but he claims to have an unusually sharp eye for details. The question is,” Will said, “is it possible for every one of the views of a standard mammogram series to miss this?”

Pizzi considered the question, then shook his head.

“I don’t believe so,” he said. “Depending on technique, it would be present in three standard views, maybe four.”

“And if it wasn’t?”

Rick Pizzi’s expression darkened.

“Then,” he said, “I would have to adopt the position that the mammograms weren’t hers.”

“Mammograms that weren’t hers. Mother of God, Will, what have you gotten yourself into?” Cameron asked as they trudged up four stories from the basement.

“This time.”

“Pardon?”

“You mean what have I gotten myself into this time. This is the woman who almost died from an anaphylactic reaction to her first dose of chemotherapy.”

“I heard about this case. The rescue-squad paramedic did a trach on her, yes?”

“Exactly. Saved her life from all I can tell.”

“Fascinating.”

“Actually, she’s a patient of our practice. Susan did the biopsy and excision.”

“So the woman really has breast cancer.”

“Had, I hope. The cancer was about two and a half centimeters, but the sentinel lymph node Susan took was negative. The thing is, the cancer that was removed might not be the one depicted on her mammogram.”

Cameron stopped after three floors to catch his breath.

“Tsk, tsk, Gordo,” Will said, “too many doughnuts, not enough treadmill.”

He was pleased with the doughnut reference even though it had been unintentional.

“Ach, laddie, you couldn’t be more wrong. It’s nothing I do wrong, it’s just my hereditary, familial, inherited, genetic bronchitis. It acts up every year on precisely this day. There, it’s already better. So,” he went on as they headed up the last flight, “let me get this straight. The radiologist mixed up her films with someone else’s, but that person happened to have a cancer in the same quadrant of the same breast as our patient.”

“I think that about sums it up.”

“That’s one lucky radiologist.”

“I should say.”

Cameron paused outside the Sears Conference Room.

“So what do you make of it all?” he asked.

“Don’t know. But I do know I’m not done thinking about it.”

Or about whether you’re the one.

The chairs in the conference room, which were normally set up in rows, were stacked along the walls, except for those dozen or so that were spaced around a large cherry-wood table. Hospital president Sid Silverman was seated on the far side, flanked by cardiologist Dr. Hans Gehringer and an attractive, conservatively dressed brunette who just had to be a lawyer. Silverman inadvertently caught Will’s gaze and nodded a weak greeting, his expression that of a man about to be sick. To Gehringer’s left were Susan Hollister and Jim Katz. Cameron took the chair between Katz and Patty’s nemesis, Wayne Brasco.

Occupying the two seats to Brasco’s left were bookend women in business suits-also attorneys, Will guessed. He suspected they might be connected with the Board of Registration in Medicine. He hesitated briefly, then took the middle of the three remaining empty chairs. There was no sense in even trying not to stand out in this group.

Apparently it had been decided that Silverman was going to run the show.

“Well, thank you all for coming on such short notice,” he began. “I assure you we are confronting an emergency of the highest order and that every one of us needs to be here.”

He then asked for introductions around the table.

“Hans Gehringer, medical chief of staff here at FGH.”

“I’m Susan Hollister, a surgeon in the same practice as Will Grant. I am also a supporter and long-standing friend of his.”

“James Katz, also a member of the practice and the reason for this meeting.”

“Gordon Cameron. What Susan said goes double for me. I know Will Grant is a good man and a great surgeon, and I feel we should do whatever we can to help him get through this mess.”

“Detective Lieutenant Wayne Brasco, Massachusetts State Police. I’ve been directing the team assigned to the managed-care killings. We expect to bring this criminal to justice, and quickly.” He looked directly at Will. “His reign of terror and death will be brought to an end one way or the other.”

Will’s dislike for the man, already fully formed, mushroomed. Brasco was arrogant, self-serving, and violent-a man to be feared. It was no wonder Patty had had such a difficult time with him.

As he suspected, the two women to his right were both from the Board of Registration in Medicine. One, Jane Weiss, introduced herself as the chief counsel, and the other, Diana Emspak, was the head of the investigation and enforcement unit-process server Sam Rogers’s boss, Will supposed.

“I’m Will Grant,” he said when it was his turn. “I never willingly took any drugs. I haven’t done anything wrong. I have never wanted to be anything other than a good doctor. I understand your needs to protect the patients of this hospital and the people of the state, but terrible action has been taken against me without consideration of the lack of any corroborating behavior in my past.”

“We appreciate your feelings,” Silverman said, his tone patronizing and insincere enough to knot the muscles in Will’s neck.

At that moment, Tom Lemm, the president of the Hippocrates Society, entered the room, wearing a navy sports coat and perfectly knotted iridescent blue bow tie. It seemed that Lemm took too long searching for a seat before he realized that both of the two available chairs were next to Will. He settled into one, shook Will’s hand