“I understand you had a difficult experience in Bartlet, Vermont,” Bradley said.
Both David and Angela chuckled nervously.
“It was a nightmare,” Angela said.
“How did it start?” Bradley asked.
David and Angela looked at each other, unsure of who should begin.
“Why don’t you start, David?” Bradley said.
“My part of it started when a number of my patients began to die unexpectedly,” David said. “They were patients with histories of serious illnesses like cancer.”
David looked at Angela.
“It started for me when I began to be sexually harassed by my immediate superior,” Angela said. “Then we discovered the body of a homicide victim entombed under our cellar steps. His name was Dr. Dennis Hodges, and he’d been the administrator of the hospital for a number of years.”
With his usual clever questioning, Ed Bradley pulled out the whole sordid story.
“Were these unexpected patient deaths instances of euthanasia?” he asked David.
“That’s what we thought initially,” David said. “But these people were actually being murdered not through some misguided gesture of mercy, but to improve the hospital’s bottom line. Patients with potentially terminal illness often use hospital facilities intensively. That translates to high costs. So to eliminate those expenses, the patients themselves were eliminated.”
“In other words, the motivation for the whole affair was economic,” Bradley said.
“Exactly,” David replied. “The hospital was losing money, and they had to do something to stem the red ink. This was their solution.”
“Why was the hospital losing money?” Bradley asked.
“The hospital had been forced to capitate,” David explained. “That means furnish hospitalization for the major HMO in the area for a fixed fee per subscriber per month. Unfortunately, the hospital had estimated utilization at too low a cost. The money coming in was much less than the money going out.”
“Why did the hospital agree to capitate in the first place?” Bradley asked.
“As I said, it was forced,” David said. “It had to do with the new competition in medicine. But it’s not real competition. In this case the HMO dictated the terms. The hospital had to capitate if it wanted to compete for the HMO’s business. It didn’t have any choice.”
Bradley nodded as he consulted his notes. Then he looked back at David and Angela. “The new and current administrator of the Bartlet Community Hospital says that the allegations you’re making are, in his words, ‘pure rubbish.’ ”
“We’ve heard that,” David said.
“The same administrator went on to say that if any patients had been murdered, it would have been the work of a single deranged individual.”
“We’ve heard that as well,” David said.
“But you don’t buy it?”
“No, we don’t.”
“How did the patients die?” Bradley asked.
“From full-body radiation,” Angela said. “The patients received overwhelming doses of gamma rays from a cobalt-60 source.”
“Is that the same material that is used so successfully for treating some tumors?” Bradley asked.
“In very carefully targeted areas with carefully controlled doses,” Angela said. “David’s patients were getting uncontrolled full-body exposure.”
“How was this radiation administered?” Bradley asked.
“An orthopedic bed was fitted with a heavily lead-shielded box,” Angela said. “It was mounted under the bed and contained the source. The box had a remotely controlled window that was operated by a garage door opener with radio waves. Whenever the port was open the patient was irradiated through the bed. So were some of the nurses tending to these patients.”
“And both of you saw this bed?” Bradley asked.
David and Angela nodded.
“After we found the source and shielded it as best we could,” David explained, “I tried to figure out how my patients had been irradiated. I remembered that many of my patients had been in hospital beds that malfunctioned. They’d wound up being transferred to an orthopedic bed. So after we left the conference room we went looking for a special orthopedic bed. We found it in the maintenance shop.”
“And now you contend that this bed was destroyed,” Bradley said.
“The bed was never seen again after that night,” Angela said.
“How could that have happened?” Bradley asked.
“The people responsible for the bed’s use got rid of it,” David said.
“And you believe the hospital executive committee was responsible?” Bradley said.