“I want to see you later in my office,” Wadley said. He winked.
Angela nodded, ignoring the wink. She turned away and was about to sit down again when she felt Wadley’s hand brush across her buttocks.
“Don’t work too hard, honey!” he called out. And with that, he slipped out the door.
The episode had happened so fast that Angela had not been able to respond. But she knew it had not been inadvertent, and now she knew for certain that the thigh-touching the day before had not been an innocent oversight.
For a few minutes Angela sat in the tiny lab and trembled with indignation and confusion. She wondered what was encouraging this sudden boldness. She certainly had not changed her behavior over the last few days. And what should she do? She couldn’t just idly sit by and allow it to go on. That would be an open invitation.
Angela decided she had two possibilities. She could confront Wadley directly or she could go to the medical director, Michael Caldwell. But then she thought about Dr. Cantor, the current chief of staff. Maybe she should go to him.
Angela sighed. Neither Caldwell nor Cantor struck her as ideal authorities to turn to in a case of sexual harassment. Both were macho types, and Angela remembered their responses when she’d first met them. Caldwell had seemed shocked that women were actually pathologists while Cantor had offered that ignorant remark about the few women in his medical school class being “dogs.”
She thought again about confronting Wadley herself, but she didn’t like that alternative any better.
The raucous buzz of static coming over the intercom shocked Angela back to reality. The static preceded the voice of the head nurse. “Dr. Wilson,” she said. “They are waiting on the biopsy results down in OR three.”
David found concentrating on his patients’ problems harder that morning than the previous afternoon. Not only was he still upset about his review with Kelley, now he had Marjorie Kleber’s worsening condition to worry about.
Midmorning, David saw another of his frequent visitors, John Tarlow, the leukemia patient. John didn’t have an appointment; David had Susan squeeze him in as a semi-emergency after he’d called that morning. Only the day before David would have directed John to the ER, but feeling chastened by Kelley’s lecture, he felt obliged to see the man himself.
John was feeling poorly. Following a meal of raw shellfish the night before, he’d developed severe GI problems with both vomiting and diarrhea. He was dehydrated and in acute discomfort with colicky abdominal pain.
Seeing how bad John was and remembering his leukemic history, David hospitalized him immediately. He ordered a number of tests to try to determine the cause of John’s symptoms. He also started intravenous fluid to rehydrate him. For the moment he held off on antibiotics, preferring to wait until he had some idea of what he was dealing with. It could have been a bacterial infection or it could have been merely a response to toxins: food poisoning, in the vernacular.
Just before eleven in the morning Traynor was told the bad news by his secretary, Collette. She’d just been informed by phone that Jeb Wiggins had again carried the Board of Selectmen. The final vote on the hospital parking garage, which Traynor had managed once more to get on the agenda, had been thumbs down. Now there probably wasn’t even a way to get it on the ballot again before spring.
“Goddamn it,” Traynor raged. He pummeled the surface of his desk with both hands. Collette didn’t flinch. She was accustomed to Traynor’s outbursts. “I’d love to grab Wiggins around that fat neck of his and choke him until he turns blue.”
Collette discreetly left the room. Traynor paced the area in front of his desk. The lack of support he had to deal with when it came to running the hospital galled him. He could not understand how the Board of Selectmen could be so shortsighted. It was obvious that the hospital was the most important enterprise in the entire town. It was equally obvious that the hospital needed the parking garage.
Unable to work, Traynor grabbed his raincoat, hat, and umbrella and stormed out of his office. Climbing into his car he drove up to the hospital. If there was to be no parking garage, he would at least personally inspect the lighting. He didn’t want to risk any more rapes in the hospital parking lot.