'miracle.'
'Well put,' Wittenberg said. 'But if what the hospital drums are pounding out is true, you were a most significant reason. The story made both the Globe and the Herald. And whoever has been leaking all those negative MCB stories to Axel Devlin really blew it this time. Devlin happened to have written another of his Down with MCB columns for today. So page three has this glowing article about East meets West to save a life at the Medical Center of Boston, and Devlin sounds like a fool for not at least acknowledging the event. Have you seen the paper?'
'No. No, I haven't.'
'Here,' Wittenberg said, handing over his copy. 'I'm done reading this, and I just changed my parakeet's cage, so I have no further use for it.'
'Thanks.'
'No problem. You know, I'm not exactly on Devlin's wavelength, but I am one of those who's been skeptical of being associated with a place that tenures an Indian Ayurvedic physician and has a chiropractor working in the orthopedic clinic. But after what you accomplished yesterday, I've resolved to keep a more open mind and to learn more about alternative medicine.'
He shook her hand warmly and headed off. Sarah spread the paper on her table and skimmed the sensationalized, but reasonably factual, account on page three. A pro-MCB article in the Herald-maybe there had been a miracle after all. Then she folded the paper open to Axel Devlin's column.
TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
by Axel Devlin
July 2
… And finally, I give you Axel's Axe, absent from this column for a few days, but always poised to take a good chop at the tires of those who would try to take us all for a ride.
Today, the ol' blade swishes through the air and once again thwacks into your favorite hospital and mine, Crunchy Granola General, otherwise known as the Medical Center of Boston. Hospital president Glenn Paris, a.k.a. California Glenn, presented his state-of-the-hospital message yesterday at the annual residents' change day assembly. That's when the new residents start their training and the old ones move up a notch.
And although the hospital shogun didn't come up with any innovations as spectacular (or embarrassing) as his breast implant raffle or his free crystallography clinic, he did pledge that nothing was going to stop the resurgence of his hospital back to the topmost ranks of academia. 'And,' he blustered, 'you can take that to the bank!'
Well, at that moment, at that very moment, the power-and all the lights-went out in the entire hospital. Get the message, Glenn? Your approach might have worked in San Diego. But here in Boston we like our doctors to do it by the book, not by the alignment of the planets.
'I don't believe it.'
'Don't believe what?' Andrew Truscott slid a plate of watery scrambled eggs and suspect hash browns onto the table and took a seat catty-cornered from Sarah.
'This-this vicious, unprincipled… crap.'
'I gather that's a copy of the Herald there before you.'
'Why's Devlin got it in for this place so badly?'
'You don't know?'
'I guess not.'
'Five years ago-I know because it was right after I started here-his wife needed gallbladder surgery. Devlin wanted her to go to White Memorial, but she liked Bill Gardner and the newly ordained, touchy-feely atmosphere here. Two days after Gardner did the operation, she had a massive pulmonary embolism and croaked on the spot.'
'That's terrible, but it could happen to anyone at any hospital.'
'Apparently that's what the malpractice lawyers told Devlin. So he set about getting retribution his own way.'
'How sad.'
'Maybe not. For some people vendettas of one kind or another are therapeutic. Don't get mad-get even. Lashing out at MCB like he does probably helps to keep him going.'
'And how do you think he gets his information? This article sounds almost as if he was sitting in that amphitheater when the lights went out.'
'Sarah, I hope this doesn't come as too much of a shock, but not everybody is as gung ho about this place as you are. But enough about Devlin. I thirst for knowledge.'
'Knowledge about what?'
'Don't be coy now. You are currently the doc of the hour around here, and I want to know exactly what you did in there yesterday.'
Sarah smiled.
'Just what you saw,' she said. 'The only way I could think of to stop her bleeding was to slow Lisa's heart rate and circulatory speed while she was mentally doing what she could to seal off the bleeding points in her body.'
'Excuse me for saying so, but Lisa Summer mentally stopping an arterial pumper is a bit hard for this swag- man to swallow.'
'Except that you saw her do it, Andrew. Listen, a good hypnotist can tell a hypnotized subject that he is going to be touched on the arm by a hot poker. When the subject is touched with a pencil eraser instead, he raises a welt, then a blister on that spot. How do you explain that? You know, the real problem is that western physicians are taught about the autonomic nervous system by physiologists and anatomists. If we were taught by yogis or acupuncturists as well, our concepts of what humans can and cannot control in their bodies would be quite different.'
'Believe in your limitations and they are yours, huh? Well, I for one am certainly impressed. Maybe you can ask young Miss Summer to look inside her body and tell us exactly what in the hell happened-how she got into this pickle to begin with. Does she know she's not the first?'
'I don't think so.'
'Well, she ought to. Maybe if she knew how lucky she was to survive this at all, she'd perk up a bit.'
'There's plenty of time for her to perk up. She just lost her baby and her arm. Andrew, do you have any idea what might be going on? Did you ever see that other girl as a patient?'
'No. Et tu?'
'I haven't a clue as to what's going on, and I was on vacation when the other woman came in and died. But I did see her in the clinic.'
'And?'
'And she was a healthy young woman with an uncomplicated pregnancy. Just like Lisa. I put her on the herbal supplement I like to use and wished her well with her delivery. That was the only time I saw her.'
'Herbal supplement?'
'Yes. Almost all pregnant women are given some kind of prenatal vitamins by their doctors. In our OB clinic, it's standard fare. Well, in the mountain villages where I worked in Thailand, the women all took prenatal supplements as well-a combination of roots and herbs, crushed and taken as a tea twice a week. The only study done of these women showed higher birthweights and better infant survival than in women who delivered in the teaching hospital in Chiang Mai. And believe me, the nutrition in the Meo villages was not very good, and the hygiene even worse. I helped conduct that study with an M.D. from the public health service and the herbalist who taught me most of what I know.'
'Remarkable.'
'It was, actually.'
Sarah was excited to have the chance to talk about the Thai study and her work with the Meo and Akha tribes. It had been a wondrously happy and peaceful time in her life. She might still be working and studying there
