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 closeup of the license plate, the missing hubcap.