Chapter Fifteen
“HYPOTHETICALLY,” TAGsaid as he set a Starbucks latte down on the desk in front of Ned.
“Ah, no,” Ned said sharply as he looked up from his computer. He waved his hands in the air. “That’s always a trap. Peoplesay‘hypothetically’ when they mean, ‘I fell in the shit, and I want to pull you in too.’ Never answer a question that starts withhypothetically. There should be a class on that in med school.”
Tag pulled out the chair on the other side of the desk and folded himself into it. It wasn’t much of an office. Most of it was given over to filing cabinets, and the only window was an envelope of glass high on the wall behind Ned that let in nicotine-yellowed light. A box of tissues was set prominently on the table, and there was a dent in the wall that building management hadn’t spackled over yet.
Pediatric oncologists gave out a lot of bad news. Tag would have assumed the trade-off was that they didn’t get asked for as much bad advice.
“I would have thought I’d get that more in the ER,” he said. “I figured peds would be more… upfront.”
Ned laughed at him. “You’re joking, right?” he said. “No. When kids are involved, everyone lies more. The parents gave the kid a ‘hypothetical’ McMuffin before surgery, or a nurse ‘hypothetically’ let it slip to a parent that there was no hope. It’s a rich tapestry up here, Taggart.”
“So hypothetically,” Tag said as he ignored Ned’s groan, “if a baby were wheezy, quiet, and not thriving, what would your diagnosis be?”
Ned sucked down a hot mouthful of coffee. “Cancer,” he said with a shrug. “But that’s confirmation bias. By the time a case makes it up here, eight times out of ten, the doctor that referred them was right to do so.”
“What if you were the first doctor to lay eyes on him?” Tag asked.
Ned squinted at him. “Why ask me?” he said. “That’s more your wheelhouse, isn’t it? If this kid was brought into the ER, what would your first thought be?”
“That I could order tests,” Tag said. “There’s a girl in my apartment with a newborn, or close as. It cried a lot when I first moved in, but now the baby has respiratory difficulty, bad color, and is too listless to cry.”
The chair creaked as Ned sat back in it. His tie slid to the side, under his arm. “Never good. Tell her to go to her pediatrician. Or bring the baby to the ER.”
Tag leaned forward and rested his elbows on the edge of the desk. “I tried that. Even if she understood, and I don’t know how much English she speaks, I don’t think she will. Most likely diagnosis is bronchitis, right?”
“Uh-uh,” Ned said. “Hypothetically, Tag, you’re heading for thin ice here. If you treat that baby outside the hospital, what if something happens? You won’t have access to an OR, equipment, medication. You won’t be covered by the hospital’s insurance either, and trust me, I don’t care how little English this girl speaks, there will be a malpractice lawyer with a phrasebook on her doorstep before you can say ‘hypothetically.’”
“I know.”
Ned shook his head. “I thought you would have learned your lesson after what happened with that”—He glanced at the door and dropped his voice to a mutter—“guy and the bikers. That could have been real trouble, and censure from the hospital would have been the least of it. They could have killed you, you know, and dumped you in a shallow grave. Jesus, Tag, I know that you’re not from Plenty, so you don’t understand, but it isnota good idea to get involved with those people.”
The thought of Bass sprawled on the bed, sheet tangled around his thighs and his clothes slung over a chair, made Tag shift uncomfortably. It wasn’t the sort of involvement that Ned meant, not anymore, but it was still an unwelcome reminder that it probably was a bad idea. No matter what it felt like.
“I think I managed to pick that up from context,” Tag said.
Ned snorted and chugged his coffee. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand as he finished. “You should ask Nate about context.”
“Who?”
Ned grimaced as he dropped the cup over the edge of the desk into the trash. The milky dregs of liquid spilled over the torn envelopes and sandwich wrappers.
“Nathan Cochrane,” he said. “Dr. Cochrane. Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
After the last few months, Tag knew he should be sick of gossip. He was when it was about him. But this was someone whose wife he’d treated a few days ago. He couldn’t help but be intrigued at the idea there was some connection.
“You probably shouldn’t have told Kieran about me either,” Tag pointed out. “Yet he said you did.”
Guilt made Ned’s ears go red. He scratched his head. “I…. Sorry…. It wasn’t like that, though. I told Jenny, and she told Kieran because she thought he should know that something had happened to you. I mean, maybe she thought it would, you know, remind him of when he…. How he used to feel.”
Back when he cared about Tag, that was what Ned was trying not to say. Tag appreciated the effort, but it actually didn’t hurt anymore. It didn’t feel great, but it was more odd than awful. That “Oh, right” feeling when you reached for something and then remembered that it had broken last week.
“How was Cochrane involved with the Corpse Brothers?” Tag pushed. “He doesn’t seem like a biker.”
“He wasn’t. It’s nothing like that.” Ned hesitated. It took a second as he struggled between his good intentions and his desire to gossip. He finally leaned forward as though someone were going to burst through the door and hear them. “Look, don’t repeat this. Nate used to have a fondness for the, ahh….”
Ned put his finger against his nose and snorted noisily.
