“At least some of them,” David said. “Certainly the chairman of the board, the administrator, and the chief of the medical staff. We believe the operation was the brainchild of the chief of the medical staff. He was the only person who had the background necessary to dream up such a diabolical yet effective scheme. If they hadn’t used it so often, it never would have been discovered.”
“Regrettably, none of these people can defend themselves,” Ed Bradley said. “I understand that all of them died of severe radiation sickness despite some heroic measures to save them.”
“Unfortunately,” David admitted.
“If they were so sick how could they have destroyed the bed?” Bradley asked.
“Unless the dose of radiation is so great that it is immediately lethal, there is a variable latent period before the onset of symptoms. In this case, there would have been plenty of time to get rid of the bed.”
“Is there any way to substantiate these allegations?” Bradley asked.
“We both saw the bed,” David said.
“Anything else?” Bradley asked.
“We found the source,” Angela said.
“You found the source,” Bradley said. “That’s true. But it was in the conference room and not near any patients.”
“Werner Van Slyke essentially confessed to us both,” David said.
“Werner Van Slyke is the man you believe was the worker bee behind this operation,” Bradley said.
“That’s correct,” David said. “He’d had nuclear technician training in the navy, so he knew something about handling radioactive materials.”
“This is the same Werner Van Slyke who is schizophrenic and is now hospitalized with severe radiation sickness,” Bradley said. “He’s also the same Werner Van Slyke who’s been in a psychotic state since the night the hospital executive committee got irradiated, who refuses to talk with anyone, and who is expected to die.”
“He’s the one,” David admitted.
“Needless to say, he’s hardly the most reliable corroborating witness,” Bradley said. “Do you have any other proof?”
“I treated a number of nurses with mild radiation sickness,” David said. “They had all been around my patients.”
“But you thought that they had the flu at the time,” Bradley said. “And there is no way to prove that they didn’t.”
“That’s true,” David admitted.
Bradley turned to Angela. “I understand you autopsied one of your husband’s patients?” he asked.
Angela nodded.
“Did you suspect radiation sickness after the autopsy?” Bradley asked. “And if you didn’t, why not?”
“I didn’t because she’d died too quickly to manifest many of the symptoms that would have suggested radiation,” Angela said. “She’d received so much radiation that it affected her central nervous system on a molecular level. If she’d had less radiation she might have lived long enough to develop ulceration of her digestive tract. Then I might have added radiation to the differential diagnosis.”
“What I’m hearing is that neither of you has any hard evidence,” Bradley said.
“I suppose that’s true,” David said reluctantly.
“Why haven’t either of you been called to testify?” Bradley asked.
“We know there have been some civil suits,” Angela said. “But all of them were quickly settled out of court. There have been no criminal charges.”
“With the kind of accusations you’ve made it’s incredible there have been no criminal charges,” Ed Bradley said. “Why do you think there haven’t been any?”
Angela and David looked at each other. Finally David spoke: “Basically we think there are two reasons. First, we think that everybody is afraid of this affair. If it all came out, it would probably shut the hospital, and that would be disastrous for the community. The hospital pumps a lot of money into the town, it employs a lot of people, and it serves the people medically. Secondly, there’s the fact that in this case, the guilty, in a sense, have been punished. Van Slyke took care of that when he put the cobalt-60 cylinder on the conference table.”
“That might explain why there hasn’t been any local response,” Bradley said. “But what about at the state level? What about the state’s attorney?”
“Nationally, this episode cuts to the quick of the direction of health-care reform,” Angela said. “If this story were to get out, people might begin to reevaluate their thinking on the route we seem to be taking. Good business decisions don’t always equate with good medical decisions. Patient care is bound to suffer when the powers that be are too focused on the bottom line. Our experience at Bartlet Community Hospital may be an extreme example of medical bureaucrats run amok. Yet it happened. It could happen again.”