'Right, Frank.'
'So, Zack-o… Speaking of houses, how's your place?'
Oh, for crying out loud, Zack wanted to shout, this isn't some sleazeball business adversary you have to play cat and mouse with. This is your brother. Just say what in the hell it is you want, and let's get it over with. Instead, he folded his hands together, crossed his legs, and settled back in his chair. It was Frank's show. 'The house is beautiful, Frank, ' he said mechanically. 'I don't know how you stumbled onto the place, but I'm certainly glad you did.'
He wondered where Suzanne was at that moment, what she was doing, how she was feeling. 'Great, ' Frank said. 'Remember what I said about the basement full of extra furniture we have. Just come by and take what you want until you get your own stuff, okay?'
'Sure.'
Zack reminded himself that his brother, for all of his straight-up the-middle-with-power athletic skill, had always been an expert at hidden agendas. It was an art he had studied at the feet of a master, their father. If Frank was operating true to form, this small talk was anything but casual. 'The rent's pretty decent for a place like that, yes?'
Zack laughed. Decent was far too tame a word. The rent for his tiny apartment in Boston had been three times what it was for the house, which had a huge, wooded lot, two fireplaces, and several times as much space as the apartment. 'Don't tell the realty company that owns it,'
Zack said, 'but they're getting killed on this deal. I sleep with my lease under my pillow for fear someone will sneak in and take it away.'
'Oh, we won't, ' Frank said calmly. 'We?'
Zack realized that the hidden agenda was about to surface.
'Ultramed-Davis, Zack. You see, Pine Bough Realty Trust is a sort Of, well, convenient way for the hospital to administer some property it owns hereabouts. We're your landlord.'
Frank beamed, obviously delighted with the way he had delivered the news. 'You know, ' Zack said, now consciously working to keep his cynicism in check, 'somehow that little piece of information doesn't altogether surprise me. Not that it would have made any difference, Frank, but you could have told me when I rented the place that in addition to my salary, my office, my equipment, and my insurance, Ultramed was providing the roof over my head.'
Frank shrugged. 'This seemed like a more appropriate time.'
'Tell me, is it customary for a hospital to have such a-how should I say-proprietary role in a community?'
'I would use the word progressive.' Frank smiled and winked. 'You see, Zack, the bottom line of this or any other business is money. Dinero.
The big D.' As he became immersed in his rhetoric, he grew more excited and animated, his gestures more professorial. 'That's what the administrators and boards of directors of hospitals all over the country are just beginning to realize. Fortunately, Ultramed recognized it years ago. Eliminate nonprofitable programs and deadwood, increase receivables and collections. Change the red ink to black, no matter how, and the rest takes care of itself. If it's real estate, then it's real estate.
If it's other investments, then it's other investments. Colleges like Harvard and Dartmouth have some of the biggest stock portfolios and real estate holdings around. Why shouldn't hospitals follow their example?'
'I… I don't know why they shouldn't, ' Zack said. But give me time, he was thinking, and I'm sure I can come up with something.
The wedding of business and medicine was one with which he was simply not comfortable-at least not yet. He reflected on the new CT scanner..
the incredible opportunity he had been given by Ultramed to set up a private practice. The marriage, he acknowledged, deserved, if not his blessing, at least his open mind. Perhaps that was what his brother needed to hear. 'You know, Frank, ' he went on, 'if I seem uncomfortable with some of this corporate-medicine stuff, you've got to remember that I've spent the last eight years in a hospital where everything was always in incredibly short supply. Everything, that is, except for the dedication of the nurses and the doctors, and the love-I guess there really isn't any better word for it-that they had for their patients.
'I'm grateful to be in a situation like this. Believe me, I am. But there are some parts of those years I spent at Muni that are hard to get out of my system. Frank, I tell you, there was something so pure about the kind of caring that went on in that grimy old place, something so..
I don't know, holy, that many times patients seemed to get better when every medical fact-all the odds-said they shouldn't. Does that make any sense?' Frank held up his hands. 'Hey, Zack-o, ' he said, 'that makes all the sense in the world. That's what makes you such a valuable addition to the staff here. So, you just do the doctoring and let me worry about the politics and the CT scanners and such. That way everyone benefits, right?'
Dignity, Zack was thinking, still immersed in his years at Boston Muni.
That's what it all boiled down to. The dignity that came from being cared for with love and respect, from being treated as something more than a credit or debit on a balance sheet. He flashed on the tears glistening in the eyes of Chris Gow at the realization that someone cared enough to stand up for him, regardless of the cost. 'Right?' Frank asked again. 'Huh? Oh, yes, exactly.'
'Good, ' Frank said. 'Then I can assume you'll leave this Beaulieu business to me?'
'What? ' Again, Zack warned himself not to drop his guard too low. Frank was, and probably always would be, the fiercest of competitors.
'Beaulieu, sport. Hey, are we on the same wavelength or not?'
'Frank, you haven't said one word about-'
'Well, what in the hell else do you think we've been talking about?
I've let that business with the old man and Wil Marshfield slide by because I knew that you hadn't had time to learn the system around here.
But Beaulieu is another story. Zack, that man is on a vendetta because he thinks the hospital's to blame for his inability to maintain a surgical practice. Have you heard that kind of paranoid talk from anyone else around here?'
'No, but-'
'Every time someone new has come on the staff over the last few years, Beaulieu buttonholes him with wild claims and stories about how we're railroading him out of business and how we forced Richard Coulombe to sell his pharmacy in order to pay his hospital bills. Christ, I'm surprised he hasn't tried to tie us in with the fucking famine in Ethiopia. Let me tell you something, Zack. No one has to try and force Guy Beaulieu into retirement. He's doing a perfectly adequate job of that all by himself. 'And as for that Coulombe crap of his, ours wasn't the only debt the man had, believe me. He was in it up to here with everyone in town. Check it out yourself. Coulombe either sold that store or he spent the rest of his days in a courtroom.'
'But-' Zack stopped himself at the last moment from breaking his promise to Beaulieu by bringing up the connection between Ultramed-Davis and Eagle Pharmaceuticals and Surgical Supply. He also found himself wondering if the former owner of the house he was Ig renting had ever been a patient at the hospital. 'But what? ' Frank demanded. There was a sudden hardness in his eyes, an edge to his voice. 'Nothing, ' Zack said. 'Forget it.'
With his thoughts focused on Suzanne and on problems at the office, he was willing to do almost anything to avoid a clash. 'Forget it.'
Frank shook his head. 'You're holding out on me, Zack-o. It's written all over your face. Now, what's going on?'
'I said, nothing' Zack felt the skin tighten across the back of his neck. Some of what is happening is simply wrong Some of it is evil…
Guy Beaulieu's words, his anger and his sadness, took hold. Your old friend Beaulieu is a little short of allies in this place 'All right, Frank, ' Zack suddenly heard himself saying. 'You want to know what's wrong? I'll tell you what. I believe Guy, that's what. I listened to him, and I looked in his eyes, and I know he's telling the truth. That's what's wrong. I don't know if it's Ultramed, or that pompous ass Mainwaring, or what. And I sure as hell don't know why. But I think Beaulieu is being railroaded out of practice, just like he says. And if that's true, then it pisses me off. It pisses me off a lot, and it makes me want to do whatever I can to help the man out. There, is that what i you wanted to hear?'
