Читать книгу Clear And Convincing Proof - Kate Wilhelm - Страница 9

“What it means,” Greg Boardman told Naomi on Thursday night, “is that it’s a legal tangle, a nightmare. When the court granted the power of attorney to Thomas, there was another document, a power of acceptance. Since Donna had a will, the court ruled that her intentions were perfectly clear, and the terms of the will had to be satisfied. Her shares will go to their kids when she dies. Thomas said that when they wrote their wills they were still trying to get the kids interested in the clinic, and had hopes that Lawrence, at least, would get involved. It seemed a good idea, I guess, to bequeath them shares. And now that old will is the determining factor in who will control the clinic.”

Thomas Kelso’s kids were middle-aged, and none of them, as far as Naomi could tell, gave a damn about the clinic. Lawrence was a molecular biologist at Princeton; the twin daughters were both married to well-to-do businessmen in Los Angeles.

“I thought Thomas had the authority to vote her shares, even to sell them,” she said.

“He does. But if he wanted to sell them, he would have to prove it was a real sale with a bona fide buyer. There would have to be an evaluation with a real market value, and then the proceeds of the sale would have to be used for her care, and when she dies, anything left over would go to the kids. He can’t sell them to me for a buck.” Very bitterly he added, “Thomas is beaten, and he knows it. He’s plenty pissed.”

“Not just Thomas,” she said after a moment. Greg’s craggy face was drawn and he looked tired. She knew he had not been sleeping well. His face always revealed his inner self: conflicts, concern, love, whatever emotion was uppermost was as visible to her as if written in script on his features. It was not only that he was close to his sixtieth birthday, she also knew, although that was a factor. Where he could go at his age was problematic. But he cared deeply about the work at the clinic. Everyone who went to work there and stayed cared deeply. Maybe that was a mistake, getting personally involved, caring so much. It was a disturbing thought. She pulled her attention back to what Greg was saying.

“He’ll try to get the power of acceptance changed, but it will take time, and if the judge doesn’t agree to the change, David McIvey will end up in charge.”

More and more often during the past few years Thomas Kelso had found himself pondering the unanswerable questions that he should have put behind him as a youth. When did life begin and, more important these past months, when did it end? Joyce McIvey had been brain-dead for forty-eight hours when they disconnected her life support; her body had resisted death for another forty-eight hours. When did she die? Brain-dead? Heart-dead? Which was the final death? When? If there was a soul, when did it depart? At the funeral service for Joyce, sitting apart from the family, he had regarded them soberly: David with his pretty little wife on one side of him, his two children on the other, Lorraine, his first wife, at the end of the row. The two wives and the grandchildren had all wept for Joyce, but David had been like a statue among them, untouchable, unmovable, remote.

Thomas had heard the story of how David had signed the order to discontinue life support for his mother, and then had gone straight into surgery. Had his hand trembled, his vision blurred?

Thomas felt he could almost understand David, not entirely, but somewhat. His mother had had a good life and had lived to be eighty with no major health problems. She had been happy most of her life, and her end had been merciful. A fulfilled life. An enviable one. David was merely accepting of the fact of death, and perhaps even grateful that it had been merciful. He was a scientist, a doctor. He understood and accepted death in a way that a layperson could not.

But he should weep for his mother, Thomas added to himself. He should not order her death one minute and draw blood with his scalpel the next.

He did not go to the cemetery, or to David’s house after the funeral. Instead, he went home, but his own house seemed oppressive, too silent, too empty. That afternoon the silence and emptiness were more like a vacuum than ever, like a low-pressure area where there was not enough air. The silence was that of holding one’s breath, not simply the lack of sound.

He left the house and sat in his car for a minute or two, tracing the pattern of wear on the steering wheel cover. He had worn it down to nothing in spots. Realizing what he was doing, he stopped. The salesman had said nine out of ten Volvos ever sold were still on the road. Twenty years ago? Twenty-two? Now and then he thought he might trade it in on a new model, then he forgot until the next time he noticed that it was old. He shook himself and drove to the clinic.

He parked in Greg’s driveway, walked the path to the alley, across it, and into the garden, where he made his way to the waterfall and sat on a bench in the shade, listening to the splashing water, watching the koi swim back and forth effortlessly. There, listening to the music of the water, he let his grief fill his eyes with tears. Grieving for his wife, for Joyce and William McIvey, grieving for the clinic. They had shared a vision, the four of them. Now he was the only one left, and the vision was fading.

He had not yet moved when he heard a girl’s voice. “You bastard, you moved the chair farther away!”

“Maybe a little farther,” Darren said. “And does your mama know you use such language?”

“Who the fuck do you think taught me?”

Darren laughed. “The deal still goes. You walk to the chair and earn a ride back.”

Thomas could see them when they rounded a curve, Darren and a teenage black girl. Sweat was running down her face. She was using two canes, learning how to walk with a prosthetic, an artificial leg from the knee down. They rounded the curve and were heading out of sight again when she began to sway.

“I can’t feel it! Darren, I’m falling!” Her voice rose in a wail.

“No, you’re not. You’re fine.” He had his arm around her before she finished speaking, and for a time neither of them moved. “See, what happens is that something in your head wakes up and says, ‘Hey, I don’t have a foot down there,’ and you feel like you’re going to fall. What we have to do is convince that something in your head that it’s okay, there’s a working leg and foot, and it’s yours, so get used to it. Ready? Just a few more steps now. Here we go.”

Thomas watched them out of sight, then he realized his hands were clenched into tight fists, and he relaxed them and flexed his fingers.

“I’ll fight you, David,” he said under his breath. “I’ll fight you every inch of the way.”

Everything was muted at the clinic that afternoon. A few appointments had been canceled. Some of the therapists and nurses had taken time off for the funeral, and some of the volunteers had excused themselves. Greg and Naomi were gone for the day.

In desperation Bernie had called Erica. “If you can just sit at the reception desk for an hour or so, I’ll help out in the kitchen. Stephanie’s gone to the funeral.”

Due to the reduced staff and cancellations, traffic was light that afternoon. The two interns working under Darren’s supervision had their patients as usual, and Winnie Bok, the speech therapist, was on duty. A few others were there with their own flow of patients arriving, leaving. But Erica was not rushed, and she daydreamed that she had trained in physical therapy instead of education, that she now worked full-time here, consulting with Darren, joking with him in the lounge, walking home with him at the end of the day….

She chided herself for indulging in romantic schoolgirl fantasies, but they persisted. In fact, she seldom even saw him. He left the clinic every day before she finished reading, and he didn’t walk; he rode a bicycle. She had not seen it the day he saved her life, but she had been too shaken to notice much of anything. Sometimes she could hear him in the upper apartment, and one time she had made dinner for two, only to find that he had already left by the time she went up the stairs to invite him to share it. It would be different, she told herself, after he moved in. They would be neighbors, and how much closer could neighbors be, separated by a floor, a ceiling? He would drop in for a chat, for a cup of coffee; she would invite him to dinner; they would have long talks. They would find the key, or simply remove the lock on the upper door of the inside stairs.

Bernie returned a little before four-thirty. “They’re back,” she said. “Stephanie chased me out of the kitchen. She’s in a temper.”

“Why? What did you do?” Erica got up from the chair and moved aside as Bernie took her usual place.

“Me? Nothing. Stephanie said that Dr. McIvey plans to take over running the clinic. Believe me, if that happens, this place will clear out like the plague swept through.”

“Why? What’s wrong with him?”

Bernie looked past Erica and smiled. “Hi, Shawn. How’s it going?”

A tall youth had entered with a woman, his mother probably, Erica thought. The boy was wearing a neck brace and had his arm in a sling.

“Okay,” he said.

Bernie buzzed Tony Kranz and the boy started to walk toward the therapy rooms while his mother went to the waiting room. Tony met the boy halfway down the hall and they walked on together. Tony didn’t look very much older than his patient. He was one of the interns who had come for his clinical practice, and to work under the direction of Darren Halvord. The interns, Erica had learned, worked for peanuts, but they would have paid for the chance to work under Darren for a year or two. After this apprenticeship, they were considered to be prizes by other institutions.

Bernie did not have a chance to answer Erica’s question. A couple of patients were arriving for their four-thirty appointments, and others were leaving, some of them stopping by the desk to arrange appointment times or just to chat a moment.

Erica picked up her purse and the book she was reading, The Canterville Ghost, and wandered off to the lounge. She had started coming every weekday to read and knew there would be other chances to quiz Bernie, or one of the kitchen aides, a nurse, someone. She had not met Dr. McIvey, had not even caught a glimpse of him, but every time she heard the name David McIvey, or most often, Dr. McIvey, it was with that same tone of dislike, distrust, whatever it was. Yet, Annie had married him, and apparently planned to stay with him. Curious, she thought. It was very curious.

A week later Thomas Kelso advised David that the bylaws of the corporation required a reorganization of the governing board of directors. They met in the directors’ office at the clinic immediately after David left his surgical office.

The directors’ office was a pleasant room with a leather-covered sofa, good upholstered chairs, a round table with straight chairs and windows that looked out on the garden. In the past, the four directors had sat in the easy chairs, or on the sofa, not at the table, but that day Thomas had left his briefcase, a legal pad, pencils, water glasses and a tape recorder on the table as if to signify that this was not the companionable get-together of old friends who seldom disagreed. He was already at the table, scanning notes he had made over the past day or two when David entered.

After their greeting, which Thomas likened to a meaningless tribal ritual, he got straight to the point. “Since we have no secretary present, I’ll tape our meeting. We are required to keep a record of all meetings, you see.” He turned on the tape recorder. “Now, our bylaws demand that we have four directors’ positions filled at all times. After your father’s death, Joyce assumed his function as vice president, along with her own duties as secretary, of course. Those two positions now have to be filled.”

David watched him with narrowed eyes. He was tired. He had been in surgery for six hours that day, and he had seen patients in the office as well as in the hospital. He shook his head. “I don’t know what Mother did exactly, but whatever it was, it ran her ragged. I don’t have that kind of time, as you well know. I’m a working doctor. Hire someone to do whatever she was responsible for.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Thomas said. “Have you read the bylaws, David?” When he shook his head again, Thomas said, “Well, you should. But I’ll tell you now what’s in them. We set this up as a nonprofit clinic, of course, and we agreed that the directors would receive no compensation for the work they did relating to it. We can hire people like Greg and Naomi to run it, therapists, nurses, other staff, but we, the shareholders, receive no pay. Only the shareholders can hold office, and, in fact, are required to hold office and fulfill the duties of the office or else relinquish their shares. In that event the relinquished shares shall be evenly divided among the other shareholders.”

“That’s insane,” David said.

“Maybe so. But that’s how we set it up, and for fifty-two years that’s how it’s worked.” He pulled out a folder from his briefcase and handed it to David. “The bylaws and our mission statement, our charter,” he said. “We kept it as simple as the law allowed. Why don’t you look it over? It’s short. Won’t take you long.”

When David started to read, Thomas got up and crossed the room to stand at the window gazing out at the garden. Chrysanthemums were beginning to bloom—bright red, yellow, bronze. End of summer, he thought, that’s what chrysanthemums meant. Another season, another year winding down.

When he heard the papers slap down on the table, he turned to regard David, who was scowling fiercely. Thomas knew exactly what was in those bylaws. He and William McIvey had spent a great deal of time on them, and he had reviewed them all thoroughly during the past few days.

“What exactly was Mother responsible for?” David asked in a tightly controlled voice. No emotion was visible on his handsome face, no anger, no disdain, no disbelief. Nothing.

“As vice president, she was in charge of fund-raising. We have three major campaigns annually, as you probably know. She wrote letters to contributors, donors, escorted them on tours of the facility, a garden tea party every June, an annual auction, things of that sort. As secretary she kept notes at all our meetings and put them in order for the annual audit, as required by law. It wasn’t too onerous, but exacting. There are formulas, rules that must be followed.”

“Annette could do those things,” David said after a moment.

“Not unless she’s a shareholder and is elected to office by a majority vote.” Thomas returned to the table and sat down.

“David, there’s no money in this clinic. In fact, for years we ploughed money back into it from our practices. We never intended to make money with the clinic, and we wrote those bylaws in such a way as to ensure that our mission would remain true to itself if one or more of us became incapacitated, or just wanted out.”

“I could assign some of my shares to Annette, let her assume those duties that way. Another husband and wife team. You’d have no grounds to oppose that.”

“You would have to give her the shares outright,” Thomas said. “No strings attached. And she would have to abide by the bylaws just like everyone else. No, I would not oppose that.” He sipped his water, then asked, “Why do you want to stay in, David? This is far removed from your field.”

“Exactly,” David said. “What I can see here is a surgical facility, neurosurgery, cardiovascular surgery. You have fifteen beds upstairs, and room for twenty more, room to expand, rooms to convert to surgery.” He leaned forward, and for the first time ever, Thomas saw a flare of passion in his eyes, heard it in his voice. “Thomas, I’m the best neurosurgeon on the West Coast. We would have people come here from all over the world. A specialist’s specialty, dedicated to those two areas. We could do it together, you and I.”

Thomas realized how seriously he had misjudged the young surgeon. He had thought David wanted control in order to sell out to one of the health organizations, or to change to a for profit facility. This had not occurred to him, that David had his own compelling vision. Time was on David’s side, he thought with a pang. At that moment David looked almost exactly the same as William McIvey had years ago, when he and Thomas first conceived of the idea of the rehabilitation clinic. They had been driven by the plight of their young patients ravaged by polio. After the vaccine came along, they had changed to a general rehabilitation clinic. But he remembered with startling clarity the fierce passion that had seized them both, remembered the determination William McIvey had demonstrated, the not-to-be-denied drive that had compelled them both. Now he was seeing that same determined look on David’s face, in his eyes.

David was still talking. “Rehab can happen anywhere. It doesn’t need a special clinic. You could rent space in a dozen different buildings tomorrow and be set to go. It’s insignificant compared to what surgery demands. That’s one thing. The other thing to consider is what you do here and what I propose. You see people in wheelchairs, people on crutches all the time. They don’t get special care. They learn to manage without all the trimmings you give them. You tinker with them, a little bit better is good enough, but I go in and fix them. I cure them. That’s the big difference.”

When Erica finished reading that day she found a group of people in the staff lounge: Greg Boardman, Naomi, Annie, Darren, another therapist, Stephanie…Naomi motioned her in. “We’re having a high tea,” she said. “Of sorts. Crackers and cheese and punch, at least. Have some.”

Her gaiety was forced, and Greg wasn’t even pretending this was a party. Stephanie held out a glass to Erica and said, “Now I’m off and running. Feeding time upstairs.”

She hurried out and a moment later David McIvey stood in the doorway. “Annette, let’s go.” He didn’t wait for any response, didn’t speak to anyone else, turned and left. With hardly a pause, Annie put down the glass she had lifted to her lips, picked up her purse and followed him without a word. Her cheeks flared with color, and she held her head unnaturally high.

Erica, facing Darren, was startled at the expression that crossed his face and vanished. Stricken, furious, but more, he had looked deeply hurt for that brief moment.