When I explained that I was writing Arthur Davenport’s obit, Fred said he’d be happy to talk to me.
“Losing Arthur,” he said solemnly, “especially in this way, has been quite a shock to the entire Tuttle General family.”
“I’m sure it has,” I said. “Can you tell me a little bit about his place in the hospital system?”
“He consistently received the highest ratings from patients. In recent years, we’ve been focusing on collecting data about all aspects of the patient experience here, and when it came to bedside manner, Dr. Davenport consistently ranked near the top. His patients loved him. And not only that,” he added, “but his complication and death rates were far below average.”
“Meaning that most of his patients did well after their procedures?”
“All surgery involves risk, and even the best practitioners have patients whose outcomes are less than ideal—sometimes related to the procedure, sometimes because of other underlying conditions. But Dr. Davenport’s patients did better, on balance, after their procedures than patients who saw other doctors. Even within our own system.”
That was interesting. “Were any of his colleagues jealous? Did they feel threatened by Dr. Davenport’s success rate and likability?”
Fred sounded surprised at the question. “If any of his colleagues had a problem with him for any reason, no one told me about it. Arthur was really looked up to around here. He mentored many of our younger physicians. He focused on his patients, on the work. He led by example. Always the first one in and the last one out. Just a great doctor overall.”
“How did he handle it when the outcome wasn’t good?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how did Dr. Davenport handle those people who had complications or didn’t survive? I would imagine that in thirty-plus years of practicing medicine, that scenario had to come up more than few times.”
“Of course,” Fred said, now a hint of defensiveness crept into his tone. “Cardiac patients are often very sick people, and no doctor is able to make every patient better.”
“Right. So how did Dr. Davenport, specifically, handle those sorts of cases?”
“Always with the utmost compassion. He was invested in his patients’ lives—he often attended their funerals or made donations in their names after they passed. It was quite touching.”
Now there was a great angle! I needed a story about that to open the obit. “Really? Tell me more about that.”
“Just last month Arthur made a very generous donation in the name of one of his patients, the mother of one of our employees, who died rather unexpectedly after a procedure. She was a lifelong smoker—from what Arthur said, that was probably the root of her health issues. Anyway, Arthur made a donation to the Foundation for a Smokefree America in her name. He said he felt that was one way he could bring meaning to her death.”
“Can you share the name of the patient with me? I’d love to talk to her family and maybe get a quote from them for the piece.”
“Sorry. The privacy laws around here are very strict, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
Of course. HIPAA privacy regulations were really cramping my style. And then the thought hit me like a lightening bolt: I did have access to one place that kept a listing of people in Tuttle County who died, the family members they left behind, and even where they’d like contributions sent to in their name. I was an obituary writer after all. And it was time to hit up the morgue.
CHAPTER 27
I’m not sure what you’re looking for.” Flick stood over me, frowning.
Back in the day, the name for the storage room in most newspaper offices where they kept back issues was “the morgue.” Nowadays, most of the information, at least in the recent past, could be accessed online. The Times, seeking to straddle the old world in which print journalism was a thriving part of the community and the new one in which technology ruled, had both. In the basement room that had been used for years as our morgue, you could still find eons of old print editions and files crammed with clippings and photos—plus, Kay Jackson had added a dedicated computer that could digitally access more recent content from the archives.
“I thought I might be able to find the patient of Dr. Davenport’s that Kander mentioned if I searched the obits for women who died last month of a cardiac-related illness, and those that listed Foundation for a Smokefree America as their charity of choice.”
“But you don’t even know if this woman was from Tuttle County,” said Flick. “The hospital draws from a four-county area.”
I ignored him. This would be a great lead for Arthur’s obit, and it was worth doing some research to find it. I typed in another barrage of search terms hoping the computer would bring up something useful.
“Besides, the obit often won’t give the cause of death. Are you going to search every woman who has died in Tuttle over the past two months, call their families, and ask who their doctor was?”
I kept on looking. If Flick was going to be negative, I would just ignore him. I was able to isolate the death notices and obits for the month of September in Tuttle County. While it was true that this wasn’t a comprehensive list of everyone who had died, it was probably pretty close.
After watching me click through story after story, Flick finally said, “There might be a smarter way to go about doing this.”
“Flick,” I said, my frustration finally getting the best of me. “You’ve been pushing me to dig deep, to work harder in the writing of this obit, and here I am doing that. I know you aren’t a big fan of technology, but this is how people do research these days. This machine here,” I tapped the side of the
