The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [24]
“Then you go ahead and do it if that’s your judgment. I’m leaving you in complete charge,” Huttner said somewhat testily.
No more questions, David resolved. Whatever you want to know, figure it out for yourself. Just get through this night.
But already another potential problem was becoming obvious. He tried to reason it through, but quickly realized that only Huttner could supply the answer. His resolve stretched, then snapped.
“If she should arrest?” he asked softly.
“Dammit, man, she’s not going to arrest,” Huttner snapped with startling vehemence. Then, sensing the inappropriateness of his outburst, he took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and added, “At least, I hope she doesn’t arrest. If she should, I want a full Code Ninety-nine called on her, including tracheal intubation and a respirator if need be. Clear?”
“Clear,” David said. He looked down at the chart again. Whatever criticisms might be leveled at Wallace Huttner, undertreating Charlotte Thomas certainly could not be one of them. Thousands of dollars in laboratory work, hospital care, and radiologic studies had already been done. Still, at least on paper, the woman appeared far from “turning the corner.”
“Shall we go see the patient?” Huttner’s tone was more order than request.
David was about to comply when he noticed the report of Charlotte’s liver scan. The words burst from the page: “Multiple filling defects consistent with tumor.” Numbness crept over him as he stared at the reading. Rarely had he heard of a patient surviving long with the spread of rectal cancer to the liver. Certainly, with this kind of disseminated disease, there could be no way to justify the aggressive therapy being given Charlotte Thomas. If, as in the Merchado case, this report had somehow been overlooked, whatever remained of his relationship with Huttner was about to disappear with the finality of a nuclear explosion.
“What is it this time, doctor?” Huttner asked acidly.
“Oh … probably nothing,” David said, wishing he were anyplace else. “I … ah … I was just reading this liver scan report.”
“Hah!” Huttner’s exclamation cut him short. “Multiple defects consistent with tumor, right?” He suddenly looked happier than he had all evening. “Look at the name of the radiologist who gave us that report. G. Rybicki, M.D., the living Polish joke of radiologic medicine. He read the same thing on a scan that we did preoperatively, so I checked her liver out carefully in the O.R. Even sent off a biopsy. They are cysts, David. Multiple, congenital, totally benign cysts.
“I even went to the trouble of sending Rybicki a copy of the pathology report,” Huttner continued. “He probably never even looked at it, as witnessed by this repetition of his initial misreading. Maybe we’d better just tear the report out of the chart.” He crumpled the sheet in a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket. “Now, if you have no further questions, shall we go in to see the woman?”
“No further questions, your honor.” David shook his head in amazement and smiled, grateful to be allowed off the hook. There was something about Huttner’s broad grin that went far toward dispelling the misgivings David had developed about the man.
Shoulder to shoulder, they walked down the corridor of Four South and into Room 412.
CHAPTER IV
The only light in Room 412 came from a gooseneck treatment lamp directed at an area just above Charlotte Thomas’s exposed buttocks. Huttner strode to that side of the bed with David close behind and moved the lamp back a foot. He stiffened, then forced a more relaxed pose. Bewildered and somewhat amused, David stifled a smile at the man’s reaction; then he looked down at the reason for it. The bedsore Huttner had described as “nasty” was far worse than that. It was a gaping hole six inches