Do No Harm

Chapter 41

Clyde's pate, visible through his thin veil of hair, glistened with sweat. With a final glance to the quiet upstairs window, he stepped from his car onto the curb. He kept his head lowered and moved swiftly to the apartment building entrance.

A kid with a deficient mustache and a blaring Walkman cleaned the floor with imprecise swipes of a mop. He'd propped open the front door, enabling a breeze through the lobby. Clyde waited until the kid made a dancing half turn toward the far wall, then scurried through the lobby and into the stairwell.

Flattening himself against the wall, he caught his breath, the redness slowly draining from his face. He mopped the sweat from his forehead with his T-shirt, leaving a crescent stain on the collar.

He turned and headed upstairs.

David called Diane in the ER on his way back to the hospital and filled her in as best he could. One of her college friends worked at the Drug Enforcement Agency, so Diane promised to follow up the prescription route before meeting David at Carson's.

David stopped off in the cafeteria to grab a sandwich and a Coke. As he waited in line at the cash register, he was acutely aware of the murmuring that seemed to follow him, the quick glances in his direction. The cashier's newspaper was pinned beneath a half-eaten, browning apple on the counter at her side, awaiting the next customer lull. The photograph on the cover was of David, sitting in the backseat of Jenkins's patrol car, looking as if he'd been arrested. The headline: TENSIONS BETWEEN SPIER AND LAPD ESCALATE. The fact that he'd joined the list of nefarious LA last names-Menendez, Furhman, Fleiss-elicited in him a mixture of embarrassment and alarm. It was as if he'd passed some point of no return and found himself suddenly lost.

David paid and went into the adjoining courtyard to eat in peace. A group of male nurses were playing pickup basketball on a worn wooden backboard someone had hammered up. David wolfed down the sandwich and was just on his way to the NPI when he noticed Peter wobbling across the courtyard and waving, holding a lunch tray in his other hand.

David caught up to Peter and walked patiently beside him, resisting the urge to offer to carry his tray. "How are you?" David asked.

"Oh, you know. I'm moving my procedure suite from across the street to upstairs from my office. Getting the damn thing up and running again has been something of a hassle, but aside from that- " Peter misstepped and grimaced, setting down his tray on a nearby picnic table. An empty wrapper blew from his tray, but he pretended not to notice. "Would you mind resting a moment?"

"No," David said. "Not at all."

Peter released his leg braces and they sat at the table, watching the men leap and pivot and shoot. One of the nurses took a low pass, biceps flexing beneath the cut sleeves of his scrub top, and shot a turn-around jumper from ten feet out. The ball missed wide and a flurry of legs and arms fought for it beneath the basket.

Peter watched the athletic melee. "Magnificent," he said. "So magnificent."

David cleared his throat uncomfortably. Peter waited patiently for David to find the words he was looking for. "You know how much I dislike being told what to do… "

"I do."

"With this business with Clyde and the escape… Was that a classic example of my going too far over an ethical point?"

"You Spiers are prone to inflation," Peter replied. "But I think I know you well enough to say that wasn't the case here. From what I've pieced together, you perceived there were some real risks."

David rubbed his eyes hard and it felt divine.

"When your back is really to the wall, you rely on instinct," Peter said. "It's all you have left. I've had to do it countless times. Hour eight of a procedure. Combat surgery in Vietnam. You let go and you trust that your instincts are good." He reached out with an oversized hand and hooked the back of David's head. He shook it once, roughly, an avuncular gesture. "You have good instincts," he said. "You know that as well as I. Don't pick yourself to death."

David exhaled deeply, the tightness in his chest dissipating by degrees. "I just wish I'd handled him better. Clyde. Kept him secured and gotten him the treatment he needs."

A hard foul at the hoop led to shouting among the nurses.

"There's not always something helpful to be done for people," Peter said.

"I'm a scientist," David said. "I believe people can be fixed."

"People can't always be fixed, David. They're not machines."

"No, but they can be analyzed like machines. Their posture and affect, blood work, and vitals. A good eye draws it together, finds what's broken, comes up with a protocol."

Peter laughed, a touch derisively. "You're so much like your mother in certain regards. Your instinct is there, your ethic, your proficiency. But not always empathy."

David recoiled. "What's that mean?"

"It means you're extraordinarily skilled and talented-God knows, more so than I-but occasionally you lose yourself in ethics and science. Sometimes it's better to feel your patients' pain and fear. Get dirty."

"You know," David said, "in this case, that's precisely what I did."

The nurses scrambled after a loose ball.

"People are wonderfully complicated, flawed creatures, David. Don't oversimplify them-for good or for bad."

A tall black nurse knocked the ball out of bounds, and it bounced over to Peter. He caught it easily and held it a moment too long before throwing it back.

He turned a wistful smile to David. "We're more than the sum of our parts."