Silent Treatment

had offered then to put him in touch with atop-notch attorney, but Harry had decided to wait.

'You been watching TV?' Phil asked.

'Yeah.'

'You okay?'

'Would you be?'

'When did you know for sure about thatdrug being in Evie?'

'Yesterday afternoon. They came andsearched the office for it. Then last night they searched my apartment.'

'I take it they didn't find anything.Harry, you should have called me when the cops showed up at your office. Youhave rights. You should have let me call my friend Mel. He's an animal. Mostobnoxious son of a bitch I've ever known. I mean that as a compliment, ofcourse. You want me to call him now?'

'How do you know him, Phil?'

'How do you think? He's bought a newMercedes from me every year since I went into the business. This year it's a600 SEL — the big one. Black. That's the first thing you gotta check when youget a lawyer. Not his law school or his bar exam score. The car he drives.Course, he'd cost you. You're probably looking at a twenty — ortwenty- five-thousand-dollar retainer.'

Harry was shocked. 'Let me think about it,okay?'

'Don't take too long. Oh, and Harry — '

'Yes?'

'Happy birthday.'

Mary Tobin was the next to call. Harry hadmade the front page of two papers. He assured her he'd be in for a full day atthe office and told her not to argue with anyone who wanted to cancel anappointment or even change doctors. Rocky, then Phil, now Mary — and it wasjust half past six. He said a silent thanks to Evie for insisting their numberbe unlisted.

He stripped out of his sweats and waswaiting for the shower water to heat up when the phone again began ringing.This time, he decided, the machine could answer it. He hovered close enough tohear the caller.

'Hello, you have reached the phone of Evieand Harry. .'

The voice was Evie's. It was bothbittersweet and somewhat ghoulish to hear her speaking this way. Before he leftfor work, he told himself, he had to remember to record a new greeting.

'Dr. Corbett, Samuel Rennick speaking. I'mchief counsel for the hospital. If you're screening calls, could you pleasepick up …'

Harry leaned against the bathroom doorframe. Steam from the shower had begun to fill the small room. GoddamnDickinson, he was thinking.

'. . Okay, then. I guess I'll leave amessage and then try to reach you at the hospital. .' The lawyer pausedagain. It was as if he knew Harry was listening. '. . Dr. Erdman would liketo meet with you about the developments this morning. His office, ten o'clock.If there's a problem with that time, please call his secretary. Dr. Erdman hasasked that I be there, as well as Dr. Lord from the medical staff, Dr.Josephson, who is acting chief of your department, and Mr. Atwater fromManhattan Health. I'll be at Dr. Erdman's office beginning at eight. You canreach me there if need be. Thank you.'

Owen Erdman, a highly political,Harvard-educated-and-trained endocrinologist, had been president of MMC fornearly a decade, during which time he had overseen the physical transformationof a shabby institution and a turnaround of its shaky reputation. The jewel inthe crown of his reformation had been the affiliation with Manhattan Health.But Harry knew that with the new federal health policies, alliances between caregiverswere as fragile as spring ice, and an allegiance meant something only so longas it was profitable. Any piece of negative publicity for MMC had to beworrisome to the CEO.

Harry had heard via the hospital grapevinethat his minor victory against the edicts of the Sidonis committee did not sitwell with Erdman. Now he was responsible for more soot falling on the man'shouse. Harry showered quickly and then called his brother.

'Phil, I've decided to take you up on youroffer about that lawyer,' he said.

'Smart move, bro.'

'If so, it will be the first one I've madein a while.'

Attorney Mel Wetstone's retainer, 'markeddown twenty-five percent because Phil's such a good friend,' was indeed $20,000against an hourly rate of $350. And here the President was, Harry thought,knocking himself out and pitting brother against brother across the country toeffect health care reform. Perhaps a bit of attention was due the legalsystem as well.

Harry decided to borrow the $20,000against his pension plan, rather than wipe out a large portion of his savings.He met with his new lawyer in the family medicine conference room on theseventh floor of the Alexander Building at MMC. Wetstone was a prosperousfortyish, a dozen or so pounds overweight, with thinning dark hair that lookedas if it had been surgically augmented. There was a slight wheeze to hisbreathing. Hard-pressed at times to forget that the meter was running at $350an hour, Harry reviewed his complete story in detail for the first time,including the encounter in the Village with his apparent nemesis. Wetstone wasa sympathetic listener and only rarely interrupted the narrative with aquestion.

'So,' Wetstone said after Harry hadfinished, 'what it boils down to is that you didn't do anything wrong, andpeople think you did. In my business that's the norm. My job will be to keepanyone from hurting you. Now, what do you think this meeting at ten is allabout?'

'I don't know for certain. I've taken somestands on issues lately that haven't been too popular with the administration.Now I'm publicly giving them a black eye. I don't think they'd just boot me offthe staff at this point, although I guess they could. More likely they'll wantto ask me to take a voluntary leave from the hospital until the situation isironed out.'

'You want to do that?'

'No. Of course not.'

'Then that'll be our goal. You told me whothis Erdman is, and I know Sam Rennick. Who are the other guys?'

'Bob Lord is the chief of staff. He's anorthopedic surgeon. He resents that I led the fight to continue to allow GPs toput simple, nondisplaced fractures in casts without referring our patients to aspecialist. He's very much into who's got the power and who doesn't, and Ithink he's pretty tight with the surgeon Evie was involved with. I can'timagine him siding with me on anything. Josephson and Atwater are a differentstory. They're about the best friends I have around here. Steve — that'sJosephson — is the acting head of the family medicine department until GraceSegal gets back from a maternity leave. Atwater and I are both jazz nuts. We goto clubs together once in a while, and sometimes he comes to hear me play.'

Harry expected the usual questions, like 'Oh,what instrument do you play?' or You play professionally? Where?' Instead,Wetstone straightened his notes and stood up.

'I want to see if I can speak with SamRennick before we go in there,' he said. 'I left a message for him to call mypager, but he hasn't.'

'You said you knew him. Perhaps he'safraid of you.'

Wetstone grinned, but his small, dark eyeswere cold — all business.

'I don't know,' he said, 'but he shouldbe.'

There were fifteen floors in the AlexanderBuilding. The elevator down was nearly full when it reached the seventh floor.By the time it reached the lobby, it was packed. A sign on the wall of the carwarned passengers to guard their valuables against pickpockets. After thousandsof trips, Harry had already reflexively shifted his wallet from his hip pocketto the front. He thought about what it would be like to work in a scrubbedlittle rural hospital with no crushes of people and no pickpocket warnings. Hedoubted that there was a single scrubbed little rural hospital this side ofBora Bora that would take him, should he be removed from the MMC staff.

The conference room adjacent to OwenErdman's office featured a long, highly polished cherrywood table with roundedcorners and an inlay of the MMC crest at the center. The twelve matching,high-backed chairs each had an identical crest in miniature inlaid at the top.Harry had been in the room once some years before, but was certain the remarkableset had not been there. He tried briefly to guess its value, then gave up whenhe realized he had absolutely no reference point. Evie would have known, hethought. Possibly to