It's Nothing Personal Page 13

  “That’s the most encouraging news I’ve heard all day,” said Jenna, with a hint of optimism.

  Exhausted, Jenna swiveled her chair around and stole a glance out the window. Only then did she realize the sun had set. At least six hours had passed since Jenna first arrived. Her stomach grumbled, and her eyes burned.

  Jenna retrieved her purse and stood to leave. She was almost out the door when she heard Nancy say, “We’ll be in touch.”

  Unfortunately, Jenna knew they would.

  CHAPTER 29

  Jenna drove home with the music blasting at full volume, hoping to drown out her thoughts. Although she wanted to cry and release her emotions, she could not. She was completely spent.

  Reviewing the events of the day, Jenna could not comprehend how such horrific allegations could be attached to her name. Heartless words replayed in Jenna’s head. In spite of the music booming from the speakers, all Jenna could hear was Jim’s voice as he read the complaint:

  “If it weren’t for the carelessness of Dr. Reiner, Michelle Hollings would not have contracted hepatitis C.”

  “Had Dr. Reiner shown diligence in her duties to protect her patient by detecting the syringe of Fentanyl had been tampered with, Ms. Hollings would not have been infected with the hepatitis C virus.”

  “It was the ultimate act of Dr. Reiner injecting a syringe contaminated with hepatitis C into Ms. Hollings’ bloodstream that resulted in her infection.”

  Driving drove down the highway, Jenna started to doubt herself. Maybe it was her fault. What if she had ruined Michelle Hollings’ life? What if Michelle Hollings ended up dying from end-stage liver disease? What if every day of the rest of her patient’s life was spent in pain, fear, and uncertainty? It would all be a result of what was in that syringe – the very syringe Jenna had held in her own hands.

  Rolling down the window, Jenna allowed an arctic gust of December air to enter the car. It was painfully refreshing.

  In an instant, Jenna’s emotions shifted to ire and repugnance. She was outraged at Allison Anders’ characterization of her as a careless and incompetent doctor. How could someone write such vile statements about somebody else? What would possess someone to be so ruthless and cruel?

  Jenna could not shake the words, “Michelle Hollings prays . . .” from her mind.

  “Give me a break!” Jenna shouted into the dark emptiness of her car.

  Before Jenna knew it, she had arrived home. She pulled into the garage and rolled up the window. Her cheeks were icy, and her hair was a tangled mess.

  Jenna had not yet reached the door of her house, when Mia flung it open and ran toward her yelling, “Mommy, Mommy! You’re home!” Mia flung herself into the arms of her mother. “Where have you been, anyway?”

  She released herself from Mia’s embrace and kissed the top of her head. “Mia, I’m so sorry. Can you give me a minute to change clothes and settle down? Then I’ll explain things to you.”

  “I guess,” said Mia, not sure what to make of the bizarre expression on her mother’s face.

  Jenna walked inside. The scent of garlic permeated the air, and Jenna knew instinctively that Tom had spaghetti cooking on the stove. She strolled into the kitchen, grateful he had been considerate enough to have dinner waiting. Tom heard her come in and looked up as he stirred the sauce. For a moment he barely recognized his wife. Dropping the spoon on the counter, Tom came over to Jenna and wrapped his arms around her. His act of kindness was all it took for Jenna to crumble.

  With their daughter staring at them with concern, Tom held Jenna as she buried her head into his chest and wept. Soon, Mia came up and wiggled her way into the mix.

  “Mommy, please don’t cry,” Mia begged. “Everything will be okay. Daddy and I promise. Don’t we, Daddy?”

  Tom looked at their precious child. At only eleven, Mia possessed wisdom and compassion well beyond her years.

  “Yes, Mia,” said Tom, as he looked at his wife and back at Mia. “We promise. Let’s take care of Mom tonight, okay?”

  Mia tenderly took her mother’s hand and said, “Come on, Mom. Let’s get you changed and out of those icky scrubs.”

  Jenna blindly followed her daughter into the bedroom. For Mia’s sake, Jenna let her pick out a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. In a reversal of roles, Mia helped Jenna pull her cotton scrub top over her head and tossed it into the hamper. Jenna pulled the T-shirt on and changed into the sweatpants. She was deeply touched when Mia emerged from the closet, carrying her slippers. Jenna sat on the edge of the bed, allowing her daughter to slip the footwear on her feet. Indulging her daughter was the best thing that had happened to Jenna all day.

  Mother and daughter walked back into the kitchen, hand-in-hand, to find dinner waiting for them on the table. Tom handed Jenna a generous glass of Merlot, which she gratefully accepted. The three of them sat down at the table, and Mia immediately asked, “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

  Jenna took an oversized gulp of her wine. The warmth of the spirits slid down her throat and hit her stomach.

  “Mia,” Jenna began, “remember how there was that awful lady at my hospital who stole drugs?”

  “Yes.” Mia’s expression grew more intense. She maintained laser-beam focus on her mother.

  “And remember how I explained to you that she had a really bad disease, called hepatitis C?”

  Mia nodded.

  “Well, it turns out that woman may have stolen one of my syringes that was meant for one of my patients. Then, so I wouldn’t catch her stealing, she put a dirty syringe in its place. The dirty syringe had her disease in it, but it looked exactly like the real medicine. I didn’t know it, but I gave the dirty medicine to my patient, and my patient got the disease.”

  Jenna took another large drink of wine. She could feel dampness trickling from her eyes. “Does that make sense so far?”

  “Yeah, Mom. It makes sense. So are you crying because you feel bad for the patient?”

  “Partly. And partly because I feel bad for me. My patient got hurt, and now she wants somebody to be punished for what happened to her.”

  “Well then, they should punish the lady who stole the drugs. She’s the one who did the bad thing,” replied Mia, with her very astute eleven-year-old logic.

  “They did punish her,” Jenna explained. “They sent her to jail for fifty years. But that’s not all the patient and her lawyers want. When people get hurt, especially at the hospital, they want someone to make up for it by paying them money. They file a lawsuit against hospitals or doctors or whomever they think they can blame for what happened to them. My patient filed a lawsuit against me.”

  A rancid lump surfaced in Jenna’s throat as she heard the word “lawsuit” slip past her lips.

  Mia’s face turned blotchy, and her arms flung violently as she spoke. “How can they do that? You didn’t do anything wrong! It was that stupid lady. Why don’t they get money from her?”

  Explaining the lawsuit to her daughter allowed Jenna to see things more clearly. She realized this was a big money grab and nothing else. Her newfound clarity did not take the sting out of the accusations leveled against her, but it did offer her new focus.

  “Well,” said Jenna, “that lady who stole my drugs is a loser. She doesn’t have any money. If she did, maybe they would have left me alone and gone after her. As it turns out, I have something called malpractice insurance. I pay an insurance company a bunch of money every year. Then, if I get sued, they pay the patient for me. My patient wants to get that money. In order to do so, my patient has to prove that I was at least partly responsible for her getting the disease.”

  “You’re a good doctor,” said Mia, defensively. “It wasn’t your fault! How much money does she want you to give her?”

  Jenna replied sorrowfully, “As much as she can get. My insurance company will pay up to a million dollars.”

  “Wow!” exclaimed Mia. “That’s a lot. It’s totally unfair. She doesn’t deserve a million dollars from you or you
r insurance company.”

  “I don’t think so, either. But now, I have to meet with lawyers, and we have to figure out a way to show that I’m not the one to blame. If we can do that, she’ll get nothing. We just found out about the lawsuit today, and I had to meet with my attorneys all afternoon. I’m so sorry I missed out on time with you.”

  “It’s okay,” Mia said sympathetically. “Will you have to go to court, like on TV?”

  Jenna studied her plate of cold spaghetti and inhaled the last bit of her wine. Tom automatically refilled her glass. Sadly, she confessed the ugly details of her future to her daughter.

  “Maybe. Probably. But that won’t happen for a long time. In the meantime, the patient and her lawyers are going to try to make me look like a bad doctor and a bad person. They are going to say a lot of mean things about me. And sometimes, it might hurt my feelings and make me cry.”

  Mia stood and hugged her mother. “Mommy, I’m so sorry for you. Daddy and I will take care of you. Don’t let those people make you sad. It’s like when people say bad things to me at school. You tell me to ignore them. So now, you have to do the same.”

  “I know, baby,” said Jenna, choking on tears. She was surprised and touched by her daughter’s insight and guidance. “But, just like with you, sometimes the words still hurt, no matter how hard you try to pretend they don’t.”

  Tom sat in silence, watching the exchange between the two loves of his life.

  Softly, he said, “Jenna, eat. I’m going to get Mia to bed, and then we can talk.”

  Mia resisted. “I want to stay with Mommy.” Her eyes welled up.

  Jenna looked at her daughter compassionately and said, “Mia, it’s getting late. Why not let Daddy put you to bed, and I’ll come up and snuggle with you later?”

  “Okay,” Mia said reluctantly, refusing to release her hold on her mother. Jenna kissed her daughter’s curly locks and took in the scent of her skin. Tom gently peeled their daughter away from Jenna. Both of his girls had tears running down their checks.

  CHAPTER 30

  It took Tom over half an hour before he was finally able to get Mia to sleep. Returning downstairs, he found his wife sitting at the table with her bowl of spaghetti barely touched and pushed off to the side. Jenna’s head was buried in her hands, and her body was wracked with sobs.

  Tom pulled up a kitchen chair and scooted it close to his wife. Lifting Jenna’s chin, Tom forced her to look at him. Her eyes were swollen. He poured them both another glass of wine.

  “Do you feel like talking?” asked Tom cautiously.

  Jenna sighed, pushed her chair back, and rested her feet in Tom’s lap.

  She said miserably, “Well, I guess it’s official. No more wondering when it’s going to happen. I have formally been sued.”

  “Yeah,” replied Tom, with a serious tone. “So, what did you guys talk about for six hours?”

  “Pretty much everything. It took three hours just to get through the twenty-six-page complaint. Jim read it aloud, line by line, and clarified all the legal terminology.”

  “Sounds excruciating,” said Tom.

  “Yeah, but it was necessary. I don’t think I would have understood half of it if Jim hadn’t decoded it for me. You should see the things they wrote about me. It was awful.”

  “How so?”

  On her third glass of wine, Jenna was slurring her words, and her voice was high-pitched and edgy.

  “They came right out and said that if it hadn’t been for my negligence, Michelle Hollings wouldn’t be a victim with a deadly virus.”

  “Jenna, you can’t buy into that bullshit. You are not responsible. You are being sued because they think you’re a rich doctor who has deep pockets, plain and simple, nothing more. I assume they are suing St. Augustine, too?”

  “Yep! Get this, we’re co-defendants! How great is that? The big, powerful corporation all lawyered up sitting side-by-side with the dispensable, little doctor – both trying to escape blame. I’m sure that will go well. Nancy already told me they’d probably serve me up as a scapegoat to save their own greedy hides. At least she’s honest.”

  Jenna took another swallow of wine. She clumsily sloshed her glass around as she spoke. Tom was relieved she had drained most of it, or else it would have spilled by now.

  “What exactly are you being sued for?” Tom asked, as gently as possible.

  A shiver coursed through Jenna. If seeing the lawsuit in print had not made it real, articulating it to her husband most certainly did.

  “There are two claims against me. I guess I should feel lucky. St. Augustine got nailed with eight. The first one is medical malpractice. You know, basically I’m a rotten doctor, sub-par, I suck. The second one is negligence per se. That means I’m also a terrible person who doesn’t obey the law.”

  “Jenna, did they say how much they want? What kind of demands are they making?”

  “Apparently, the sky’s the limit.”

  “They didn’t specify an amount?” Tom asked, trying to keep Jenna on track.

  “Nope. I guess that’s up for the jury to decide.”

  “So what did you spend the remainder of the time discussing?”

  Tom could tell his wife’s level of coherency was fading fast, but he was not about to take her glass of wine away from her. If Tom were in Jenna’s shoes, he’d most certainly be drinking himself into oblivion right now, too. Yet, he also wanted to get as many details as possible from Jenna before her drunken haze clouded her memory.

  Jenna relaxed a little, grateful to be off the topic of the complaint itself. “Jim and Nancy wanted me to go over my pre-op assessment and anesthesia record for Michelle Hollings. I basically had to do for them what they did for me – translate my world into something they could understand. It was uneventful.”

  “Did they ask you what you did with your drugs?” asked Tom.

  “Yes.”

  “And,” Tom pried, “what did you tell them?”

  Jenna hung her head. In hindsight, she felt so foolish for thinking her drugs were safe.

  “I told them the truth.”

  Tom was rubbing Jenna’s feet. Between that and the wine, she started to feel relaxed and groggy.

  Tom asked her, “Jenna, do you feel guilty?”

  Jenna thought for a minute. Fresh tears came to her eyes.

  “I don’t know. What kills me is I actually held that syringe in my hand. The very syringe Hillary Martin had used to get high. I pushed a deadly virus into my patient.”

  “Jenna?”

  “Yes?”

  “Never admit that to anyone else. Not even your lawyers, okay?”

  “I’m not stupid,” Jenna replied defensively.

  Jenna drained the last of her wine and stumbled across the kitchen to the cupboard. Tom watched her swallow a couple of sleeping pills.

  “Are you going to be okay to work tomorrow?” Tom asked, worried about her impending hangover and her current emotional state.

  “No, and maybe not the next day, either. I’m not going in.”

  Tom looked at his wife. Not having the heart to judge her, he did not say a word.

  CHAPTER 31

  June 22, 2011

  It was a warm, sunny Wednesday afternoon. Over six months had passed since Jenna first learned she was being sued, yet the intensity and pain of the situation never seemed to ease. Today was no exception. In two days, Allison Anders would do her best to destroy Jenna. She had precious little time to learn how to keep that from happening.

  Jenna arrived early for her pre-deposition meeting with Jim and Nancy. With an hour to kill, she decided to stroll the streets of the downtown shopping district. She hoped that some fresh air would help calm her nerves.

  The outdoor mall was active with professionals on their lunch breaks, women shopping, tourists taking pictures, and panhandlers begging for change. It felt good to be lost among them, simply another unknown face in the crowd. Jenna wandered around for blocks, savoring the afternoon sun
as it beat down upon her tan skin. Sensing her reprieve was close to an end, Jenna checked her phone for the time. Her hour of freedom was nearly over. She had ten minutes to make it back to the steel skyscraper where her unpleasant fate awaited.

  Jenna entered the lobby to find Jim and Nancy waiting for her. After exchanging hellos, they led her back to the all-too-familiar conference room.

  Consumed by anxiety and dread, Jenna reminded herself to focus. This meeting was survival training. It was imperative that she absorbed every bit of advice her lawyers offered.

  Jim spoke with fatherly concern, “Jenna, we know this is your first deposition. We don’t want anything to surprise you, so we are going to prepare you for the worst.”

  Nancy interjected, “The thing you need to know about Anders is that her objective is to ruin you. She will search for your weaknesses and shamelessly exploit them. She will use intimidation, degradation, deceptive kindness – anything that she thinks will successfully lure you into her den.”

  “She sounds lovely,” replied Jenna mockingly. “What specifically will she do to trap me?”

  Jenna sat up straight, pen in hand, ready to take notes on every detail. Nancy was encouraged to see Jenna so attentive. So far, Jenna did not seem to be cowering. It was a positive sign.

  Nancy elaborated, “One of Anders’ favorite tactics is to ask the same basic question repeatedly, until she finally gets the answer she wants. She’ll tweak the question by changing a couple of words, but it will be essentially unchanged. Listen carefully to what she’s asking you, and stay consistent in your responses. It’s critical that you don’t contradict yourself.

  “Anders also likes to ask long-winded questions. Don’t let the length of her questions confuse you. Often, Jim and I have a hard time remembering the first part of her question by the time she gets to the end, and we’re used to it. If you can’t follow, ask her to repeat the question. If it’s still too long and confusing, ask her to break it down. Whatever you do, don’t answer anything that is not completely clear.