The Queen of Hearts(58)

I looked over his latest EKG and echo, then placed my stethoscope on his chest. My ears, long attuned to the subtle gradations of the heart’s gray noise, registered no changes from last week. “You’re doing great, Chris,” I said. “Tell me what questions you have.”

He nodded seriously, his eyes a little cloudy. “I just want it to be over with.”

Deborah stirred. “Go change clothes, honey,” she said, waving toward the door of the exam room. I realized she was trembling.

After Chris left, she raised her head and looked at me. I abandoned my professional remove and gathered her into my arms, where she began to weep. “I can’t. I can’t . . .” She sobbed quietly, clutching my back.

“Oh, Deborah,” I said. “I know.”

There was a knock on the door. One of the front desk girls sidled in and whispered to me that I had a phone call, to which I naturally responded that phone calls were not my most pressing priority at the moment. The desk girl nodded but persisted: “I think it’s a doctor from Finland.”

This was perplexing. “See if he can call me back,” I said.

“She says it’s urgent.”

I sighed. “Okay. I’ll be there in one minute.”

—

On the way to my desk to answer the call, I suddenly realized who it must be. Emma was attending a conference in Helsinki; it had to be her, or possibly someone calling on her behalf. I sped up.

I pressed the blinking button on my office phone. “Hello?” I said.

Emma’s voice, imbued with the same flat melancholy I’d heard in Betsy’s this morning: “Hi. Sorry to bother you at work.”

“Oh, that’s fine!” I chirped. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen Emma since Eleanor’s death a few months ago. She avoided our morning coffees with one lame excuse after another, responding to most texts with the digital equivalent of monosyllabic grunting. I wanted desperately to comfort her.

“Do you have a second to talk?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” I said. I would give Deborah a few minutes alone and would return soon. “What’s going on?”

Emma exhaled a long, stiff sigh. “I got off the plane in Finland and checked my phone. And I have all these e-mails from my lawyer.”

“I guess that’s not good.”

“No. No, it’s bad. Boyd Packard’s attorneys are revving up. Tons of subpoenas, discovery materials—they’re interviewing people I work with.” Her voice dropped another notch. “They filed an affidavit called ‘intent to sue.’”

I waited. If she didn’t know that Boyd was also gunning to have her fired, I certainly wasn’t going to tell her. Suing an individual physician is one thing, but most lawsuits also name the hospital system, which has considerably deeper pockets. But the potential of a bigger payout comes at a cost; hospitals are prepared to defend themselves. They have in-house legal counsel and the resources to dig in and ride it out. Aligning oneself with a hospital in a suit isn’t always in a doctor’s best interest—sometimes they force you to settle, even if you’re in the right—but it adds protection. If Nestor Connolly decided to throw Emma under the bus, it could make things exponentially worse for her: it’s hard to win a case if your own employer won’t stand behind you.

This was premature, but I couldn’t stand the despair in her tone. “Emma, I . . . I talked to Betsy this morning about it.”

“You did?” An unmistakable note of hope.

“Yes. She’s about how you’d expect her to be: depressed. Grieving. But there was one positive thing. Em, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you deserve to hear something hopeful.”

Cautiously: “What is it?”

“She asked me to talk to Boyd. Despite her grief, I don’t think she wants to go after you; maybe I can persuade them to drop the suit.”

I could hear the sharp intake of her breath over a hum of many voices. She must have been calling on a break at her conference. “Are you . . . ? Will you do it?”

“Emma! Of course I will. Of course. I would do anything to help you. And I hope you can find some comfort in the fact that Betsy asked me about it. She doesn’t hate you, Emma.”

This was a stretch. Betsy’s feelings regarding Emma were unknown to me; owing to time constraints, her whispered request this morning led to minimal discussion. But surely she wouldn’t have talked about interceding with Boyd if she wanted retribution.

Emma made a noise. “Thank you.”

“Well, don’t thank me ye—”

Emma cleared her throat. “There will never be a way for me to thank you enough, Zadie. I just— This isn’t even why I called, actually. It was something else.”

“Okay. What?”

When she spoke, her voice struck a different note of caution. “When I checked my phone, I also had a bunch of texts from Nick.”

I made a noise registering somewhere between disgust and alarm. I knew Nick had assimilated into Emma’s large surgical group with ease. Through the grapevine, I’d heard he lavished the office girls with good-natured teasing, so they were hopelessly charmed within minutes of meeting him. He was particularly attentive to the scheduler, who adored him; she’d begun giving him better call days and OR times than he probably deserved.