The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [58]
“I have had the chance, Dr. Shelton, to speak briefly with some of the other physicians and nurses who were with you in Charlotte Thomas’s room. Like you, several of them were concerned that something was not completely right. Apparently the problem was obvious enough for others besides you to pick up on it. Whether or not they would have gone so far as to ask for blood tests on this woman, we’ll never know because you did. At least, for the potassium you did.”
“And you’re trying to say I did that to cover myself and to insure that nobody thought about anything like morphine?” Dockerty shrugged. “This is ridiculous! I mean this is really crazy,” David cried.
“Dr. Shelton,” Dockerty said calmly. “Please get hold of yourself. I am not accusing you or anyone else of anything.”
“Yet,” David spat out.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. Are you finished with me?”
“Yes, thank you.” Once again Dockerty appeared as mechanical as he had throughout most of the inquiry. As David stalked back to his seat, he noticed that halfway up the center aisle Wallace Huttner sat staring at him with icy, metallic eyes. Involuntarily, he shuddered.
Dockerty whispered with Dr. Armstrong for several seconds, then called Dorothy Dalrymple. The nursing director extracted herself from her seat with the side-to-side movements of a cork coming free from its bottle. Once released from her chair, she glided down the aisle steps with paradoxical grace. A feminine handshake with Dockerty, then she adjusted herself on the oak chair and smiled that she was ready.
Dockerty led her through a description of Charlotte Thomas’s appearance over the day prior to her death as summarized in the nurses’ notes. “The nurses’ notes are generally written at the end of each shift,” Dalrymple explained. “Therefore, the notes from the October second evening shift were not done until after the patient’s death. However, the nurse who cared for Mrs. Thomas that night, Miss Christine Beall, saw her at seven o’clock, approximately two hours before her death. Her excellent note states that the patient was—and I quote now—‘alert, oriented, and somewhat less depressed than she has been recently.’ Miss Beall further writes that her vital signs—pulse, respiration, temperature, and blood pressure—were all stable.” Dalrymple swung her massive shoulders and head toward the audience and peered up to where the nurses were grouped. “Miss Beall,” she called out, “do you have anything to add to what I have told the lieutenant?”
Christine, who had been totally depressed and distracted since David’s outburst, was not paying attention. She had learned about the discovery of morphine in Charlotte’s body less than twenty-four hours before. The information had come via a telephone call from Peg, the nurse who had asked her to evaluate Charlotte Thomas in the first place. “Christine, I want to keep you abreast of as much as we know of what is going on here without worrying you unduly,” the woman had said. “There is going to be some kind of inquiry on the case tomorrow night, I’ve been told. A policeman will be there. However, your Sister, Janet Poulos, has reviewed your notes in the patient’s chart. There is nothing there, she feels, that will in any way implicate you. It is our belief that the investigation will be a short-lived and fruitless one, and that Charlotte Thomas’s death will be attributed to the work of an individual whose name and motives will never be discovered. All Sisterhood operations at your hospital will be curtailed indefinitely, and before long the entire matter should just blow over. You are in no danger whatsoever, Christine—please believe that.”
Christine, lips pressed tightly together, was staring up