I also didn’t tell Clara that I sneaked into her Facebook account when she was fast asleep, and pulled up the same group account. There was a poll running, about which doctors and dentists the ladies of town most preferred. Of the twenty-plus dentists listed, I was ranked number eleven. This didn’t bode well for a successful business.
The top-ranking position went, of course, to Dr. Shepherd.
In the middle of the night while she was sleeping, I managed to figure out how to hide these group posts from Clara’s newsfeed.
And now, standing there in an empty exam room, Connor asks, “What are you going to do about this, Boss?” asThe Viewbreaks for commercial and the TV screen fills with an ad for some revolutionary cleaning product, which promises to get through even the most uncompromising mildew and mold. Daytime TV. He sits upright in the chair, idle, waiting for me to reply.What are you going to do about this, Boss?
Boss.The very word galls me. When business is going well, Connor and I are partners, but when it’s not, I’m the boss and it’s my problem to solve. That’s why my name is on the front door. I cut the checks, I pay the bills. I’m the one who put my entire life on the line for this, the one who stands to lose it all.
I sit down on the hygienist stool and sigh. “I don’t know,” I admit, rubbing my forehead and asking, “What do you think we should do?”
He admires himself in the mirror. “That’s what I asked you.”
The problem with Connor is that he hasn’t changed a bit since he was twenty-three; he’s still the same guy I met in dental school, often moseying through the office doors ten minutes late, bleating about the enormity of his hangover and how much he had to drink the night before. He’s a loose cannon, which, at twenty-three, made for a good time, but at this point in my life makes him a liability. Our friendship has been petering out lately, many heated conversations ruining what was once a strong bond—another thing Clara doesn’t know about, because I don’t want her to worry, and also because Clara loves Connor almost as much as she loves me. Almost.
The days have begun stretching longer, whole chunks of time where Connor—Dr. C, as he’s favorably known by the clients and staff—and I sit twiddling our thumbs, watching daytime TV. I’ve dropped an innuendo here and there about how stupid it is having two dentists around with nothing to do. I’ve made comments about how these days, there’s really only enough work for one dentist, not two. I hoped that Connor would catch my drift and start looking for a new job, but so far he hasn’t taken the bait. Instead he’s said something useless like, “You’ll figure it out,” or, “I’m sure the answer will come to you,” and even though it frustrates me to no end, I’m not sure I have it in me to lay him off, if that’s what I need to do.
Clara adores him. Maisie, too. He’s on his best behavior any time he sees them, fawning over Clara’s latest hairstyle or Maisie’s new dress, presenting them with gifts. But Connor also has a temper and a habit of drinking too much. I could easily fire him for a whole host of things, but there’s a part of me that’s worried it might throw him off the deep end if I do. I’ve watched Connor give a crippling uppercut to some guy, all because he’d taken his stool at a bar when Connor was gone three minutes to piss. It had nothing to do with the stool itself, but the girl on the other side of it, five foot nine with long brunette hair, eyes like chocolate and a skirt so short she might as well have left it at home. Connor’s date who some other guy dared to flirt with while he was gone. At twenty-three, I might have watched on, applauding, but, now, instead I heaved Connor out of the bar before they could call the police.
He’s a loose cannon.
And I never want to be on the receiving end of that uppercut.
I brought Connor on board when business was booming and I had a ton of new clients, who I barely had time to see. I did it as a favor to him, and also to me. I’d tried expanding my hours to accommodate patients with long workdays like mine, but it took its toll. I was tired, grouchy and only saw Clara for about an hour a day when one or the other of us wasn’t asleep. I wanted better for our marriage. Her father had been a workaholic when she was a girl. Mine had, too. They were the kind of men who were home for dinner—sometimes—and around on the weekends on occasion. Clara and I hardly ate dinners together, and conversations were limited to the essentials:Can you pick up milk on your way home? Did you mail the mortgage payment?I didn’t want my children growing up wondering all the time when I’d be home, whether or not I’d be at their soccer games or school plays. I wanted them to know I’d be there.
And so I hired Connor, and we divvied up the work. Connor took half of the patients, and the practice continued to expand. Now, I could be home more for Clara and Maisie, and be the husband and father I always wanted to be.
Until Melinda Grey and Dr. Jeremy Shepherd walked into my life, whether purposefully or inadvertently. Then everything changed.
I knew there was a problem when some medical malpractice attorney inquired about records for Melinda Grey shortly after we’d submitted her unpaid bills to claims. Months had gone by since that emergency tooth extraction. She never returned to me for follow-up care, nor did she pay the bills that Stacy sent her, not the first, the second or the final notices. And so Stacy sent it along to a claims agent to collect the couple hundred dollars we were due. This was protocol; it’s what we did when a bill wasn’t paid on time. But when a lawyer started fishing around for medical records, I wasn’t surprised. Sooner or later a complaint would arrive, asserting negligence.
I did my due diligence and discovered that Ms. Grey incurred a severe infection after that tooth extraction, one which sent her to the hospital with a face so swollen she could hardly breathe. Thousands of people are hospitalized for dental infections each year and, of these, a few dozen die. Thankfully Melinda Grey didn’t die, though her problem was exacerbated by the fact that she didn’t come in for her follow-up appointment or call me when symptoms began to appear: the discharge, the swelling, the pain. I would have put her on an antibiotic and cleared it up right away, but that wasn’t in Ms. Grey’s plan. She claimed that she didn’t know the risks involved with the procedure—proved by the fact that there was no informed consent on file—and that I was negligent by not prescribing antibiotics on the day the surgery was performed.
Other doctors might have prescribed antibiotics not because she needed them but as a precaution. But it wasn’t an egregious mistake; it wasn’t even a mistake. In my professional opinion, I did the right thing.
There was a part of me that knew what was coming all along, a malpractice suit, though I couldn’t bring myself to admit it to Clara, who, at six and then seven months into a grueling pregnancy, didn’t need to be bothered with bad news. There was also the fact that in some ways I was ashamed by the imminent suit, this assertion of negligence that marred everything I’ve tried to do, to provide the best possible care for my patients. I’d always tried to be a decent human being, but this suit made me less than that, turning me into one who was inattentive and sloppy. It made me look bad.
In the days and weeks that followed, I began prescribing blanket antibiotics to my patients anytime I so much as made them bleed. Evidence of my own guilt. When the time came, the offense would eat this up, I knew, but I couldn’t resist. The last thing I wanted was another one of my patients to end up in the ER with an infection headed to the brain, swelling that cuts off the airway.
Sooner or later I knew that Ms. Grey would sue me and that we’d settle, though the question of wherein the settlement demand would lie was something that started keeping me awake at night, little dollar signs floating before my eyes.
I lay in bed, estimating the cost of Melinda’s hospital stay, IV antibiotics, pain management, emergency room fees, not even taking into account pain and suffering. I wondered what her monetary demand would be, twenty-five thousand, fifty thousand. I don’t know. I have malpractice insurance, but wondered still what a malpractice suit would do to my reputation and practice. I saw Melinda’s face when I closed my eyes, her sweet, genuine eyes, and sometimes I wanted to strike her with a fierce uppercut. I’ve spent my nights thinking of that, me beating the life out of Melinda Grey, so that when I woke up in the morning I was exhausted from not sleeping and from all of the exertion, from pummeling the woman who’s trying to ruin my happy life.
I started Googling things. Strange things. I’m not sure why. Like how to get myself out of this mess. I came across some message boards, practitioners in similar positions that I now found myself in. Apologizing to the victim, some said, was paramount. Vital. I came across all sorts of statistics online that said malpractice suits were often dropped when a practitioner apologized for his or her error. But the fact of the matter was that I hadn’t made an error. And admitting that I had would make me look bad.
And so I started looking at other options, wondering what would happen if I’d have done away with Melinda Grey’s records when her lawyer first asked for them, if I’d have taken a match to the practice and watched the whole thing burn, records and all.
But it was too late for that now.
Other avenues of escape crossed my mind as well, like running away or faking my own death. It seemed extreme, and yet as I lay there in bed at night—Clara spread out beside me, me wishing the gentle purr of her breath would be enough to lull me to dreamland, as well—I pictured myself living in Dubai, on the coast of the Persian Gulf where, as far as I knew, they couldn’t extradite me to the United States. When the time came I’d send word to Clara, Maisie and the baby, and they’d join me in Dubai. How to do it, I didn’t know. It was all just a fantasy, one that grew more elaborate in time so that on those strung-out nights that I couldn’t sleep, I started thinking about just how I’d do it, how I’d disappear, and I came up with this: leaving my car abandoned somewhere, with blood at the scene. My blood. Not too much to bleed out, but enough to cause concern—and then catching a red-eye to Dubai.
CLARA
I sit in the back seat with Felix pressed to my chest, the both of us draped in a black-and-white houndstooth blanket so that passersby can’t see as he tries in vain to siphon milk from my breast. I do it as a force of habit, though I couldn’t care less what bystanders see. My eyes are focused on the black car, which has sat inactively in the parking lot now for eighteen minutes since I watched Emily, Teddy and Maisie climb into Emily’s own sedan and drive away.
Aluminum wheels, black with chrome accents, a three bar grille. Illinois license plates, though not the standard Illinois plates but rather specialty plates, the H and the I embossed on the aluminum plate for the hearing impaired. The hubcap is missing on one of the wheels, the left rear tire, which I convince myself over the next ten minutes—as Felix and I begin to bake in the unventilated car—is from where that car sideswiped Nick, elbowing the car from the road and into a tree. I reach for my phone from the diaper bag and start snapping photos of the vehicle from where I roost: the color of the car, a close-up of the license plate, the missing hubcap.
There’s something about this car that frightened Maisie, and I have to know what it is. Does this car belong to thebad man? I’d ruled the idea out already—Maisie’s suggestion that someone intentionally killed Nick—but now I wasn’t so sure.
