Silent Treatment Read Online Free Page B

a few people along the way, develop an interest or two outside of work, and sooner or later, things would make sense. Sooner or later, the big questions would be answered.
    Well, lately things weren’t making much sense at all. The big answers were just as elusive as ever. More so. His marriage was shaky. The kids he had always wanted just never happened. The financial security that he had expected would gradually develop over the years was tied to a brand of medicine he was not willing to practice. He never allowed his office to become a medical mill. He never sent a collection agency after anyone. He never refused anyone care because the patient couldn’t pay. He never moved to the suburbs. He never went back for the training that would have made him a subspecialist. The result was a car that was seven years old and a retirement fund that would last indefinitely—as long as he didn’t try to retire.
    Now, his professional stature was being hauled up on the block, his wife was facing a neurosurgeon’s scalpel, and just four weeks from the first of September in his fifty-first year, he had experienced pain in his chest.
    • • •
    The hastily called family medicine departmental meeting accomplished little. Each physician who spoke during the emotional forty-five-minute session seemed to have different information about what the findings of the Sidonis committee were going to be. In the end, no motions were passed, no actions of protest approved. Aside from presenting a unified front at the amphitheater, there was nothing to do until the specifics of the task force’s recommendations were known.
    “Harry, you didn’t say a word in there,” Steve Josephson said as they left.
    “There was nothing to say.”
    “Sidonis and his vigilantes are on a witch hunt, and you know it. Everyone’s scared. You could have calmed them down. You’re … you’re sort of the leader of the pack. The unofficial kahuna.”
    “A kind way of saying I’m older than most of the others.”
    “That’s hardly what I mean. I deliver babies. Sandy Porter strips veins and does other stuff in the OR. The Kornetsky brothers are better in the CCU than most of the cardiologists. Almost every one of us does some procedure or activity that might be taken away today. You’re about the only one who does all of them.”
    “So? Steve, what are we going to do? Challenge the specialists to a medical Olympics?”
    “Oh, this is crazy. Harry, I don’t know what’s come over you lately. I just hope it’s not permanent.”
    Harry started to respond that he didn’t know what Josephson was talking about. Instead, he mumbled an apology. He had never been a fiery orator, but over the years his directness and commonsense approach to resolving conflicts had earned him respect in the hospital. And he certainly had never backed away from a fight. He could have—
should
have—said something. Members of the department, especially the younger ones, were genuinely worried about their futures.
    The crisis at MMC was the direct result of the hospitalbeing named as codefendant in three successive malpractice suits over a period of a few months. All three suits involved GPs. Harry felt the epidemic of litigation was nothing more than coincidence. In the new medical order of sue first, ask questions later, similar numbers could probably be produced to show that specialists were equally vulnerable. But the medical staff had panicked and the Committee on Non-Specialty Practice had been created. Caspar Sidonis, a charismatic, widely known cardiac surgeon, had been made its chairman.
    Sidonis and Harry had never hit it off, although Harry never really understood why. Now they were on opposite sides of the table, playing a high-stakes game for a pot that was of value only to the GPs. And Sidonis held all the cards.
    “Steve, I’m sorry,” Harry said again as they turned down the passageway that cut through the emergency room, “I guess I
have
been down lately.