Free Patient by Michael Palmer Page B

Marci to be having this surgery?”
    “It is certainly one of the best. We have a great deal of significant research going on, and we do a lot of brain tumor surgery.”
    “We?”
    “The department, I mean.”
    “And where do you rate in that department?”
    “Mother!” Marci exclaimed. “Give her a break.”
    “I will not. This isn’t exactly deciding who is going to do your nails.”
    “If I’ve got to have an operation, I think she’ll do fine.”
    “I’ll tell you what, Marci. When it’s your child’s head someone wants to operate on, I’ll let you decide whether they should or not, and who should do it.
    “Look,” Jessie said, “there are forty or fifty neurosurgeons in Boston. Any one of them would be happy to give you a second opinion, and also a second choice. I want you to be totally confident in me or whoever does this surgery. Having this kind of operation is frightening enough without your having doubts about the surgeon.”
    “If you did the procedure, when would you do it?” Barbara asked, not acknowledging Jessie’s words of reassurance.
    “This is a benign tumor in that it doesn’t spread to other sites in the body,” Jessie replied. “And as I pointed out, it appears to be the kind of meningioma that is the easiest for us to remove. But the skull is a closed container, and there is pressure building up. The episode tonight was a pretty strident warning.”
    “So you’re saying soon.”
    “Two days, three. I wouldn’t wait much longer than a week.”
    “And are there other treatment possibilities? Radiation? Chemo?”
    Jessie shook her head.
    “Barb, Dr. Copeland sounds pretty confident in herself,” Paul ventured.
    Barbara Sheprow never had the opportunity to tell her husband to keep his thoughts to himself. For at that moment, lacking only a flourish of trumpets, Carl Gilbride swept into the room followed by two residents. He was as impeccably dressed as Jessie was rumpled, and he exuded stature and confidence.
    “Mrs. Sheprow, Mr. Sheprow, Marci, I’m Dr. Gilbride, the chief of neurosurgery here at EMMC,” he said, shaking hands with the parents, while cutting Barbara off from Jessie like a champion wrangler. “I had just stopped by the hospital to check on a post-op patient, and heard you were here.”
    What post-op patient? Jessie wanted to scream. A news flash on TV, a call from the orthopedist or from someone else—those were possibilities. But not a nine o’clock drop-in to check on a post-op. Give me a break!
    The passing of the surgical baton took just five minutes. If only Gilbride were as masterful in the OR as he was in situations such as this one, Jessie thought, Sara Devereau might never have needed two re-operations.
    “Dr. Copeland is one of our finest young surgeons,” Gilbride said after his cursory exam and glance at the MRI. “I assume it was her opinion that an operation is necessary on this meningioma, and fairly soon.”
    Finest young surgeons . Jessie swallowed back a jet of bile. Gilbride was only six or seven years older than she was, if that.
    “We’d be pleased to have the chief of neurosurgery handle this,” Barbara said, carefully avoiding eye contact with her.
    Jessie could see Gilbride’s chest puff like a pigeon’s.
    “Well,” he said, “I’m certain that for someone who has brought such glory to us all, we can free up an OR whenever we need one. There is some danger in waiting, and it’s been my experience that people are much happier just getting this sort of thing over with.”
    “I agree with you there,” Barbara said.
    “Good. My recommendation is the day after tomorrow. I’m scheduled to present a lecture at the Midwest neurosurgical meeting in Chicago that day, but the topic is research that Dr. Copeland has been assisting me on. I’m sure you won’t mind standing in for me there, Jessie, yes?”
    “Well, actually, I have Sara Devereau in the ICU right now and—”
    “You can fly out tomorrow, give the talk at