Free A Case of Need: A Novel by Michael Crichton, Jeffery Hudson Page B

S.”
    “Where is he now?”
    “At home, probably. He went off at eight this morning.” Carr frowned and fiddled once more with his stethoscope. “John,” he said, “are you sure you want to get involved in this?”
    “I don’t want anything to do with it,” I said. “If I had my choice, I’d be back in my lab now. But I don’t see any choice.”
    “The trouble is,” Carr said slowly, “that this thing has gotten out of control. J. D. is very upset.”
    “You said that before.”
    “I’m just trying to help you understand how things are.” Carr rearranged things on his desk and did not look at me. Finally he said, “The case is in the proper hands. And I understand Lee has a good lawyer.”
    “There are a lot of dangling questions. I want to be sure they’re all cleaned up.”
    “It’s in the proper hands,” Carr said again.
    “Whose hands? The Randalls? The goons I saw down at the police station?”
    “We have an excellent police force in Boston,” Carr said.
    “Bullshit.”
    He sighed patiently and said, “What can you hope to prove?”
    “That Lee didn’t do it.”
    Carr shook his head. “That’s not the point.”
    “It seems to me that’s precisely the point.”
    “No,” Carr said. “The point is that the daughter of J. D. Randall was killed by an abortionist, and somebody has to pay. Lee’s an abortionist—that won’t be hard to prove in court. In a Boston court, the jury is likely to be more than half Catholic. They’ll convict him on general principles.”
    “On general principles?”
    “You know what I mean,” Carr said, shifting in his chair.
    “You mean Lee’s the goat.”
    “That’s right. Lee’s the goat.”
    “Is that the official word?”
    “More or less,” Carr said.
    “And what are your feelings about it?”
    “A man who performs abortions puts himself in danger. He’s breaking the law. When he aborts the daughter of a famous Boston physician—”
    “Lee says he didn’t do it.”
    Carr gave a sad smile. “Does it matter?”
    1 Thirst is an important symptom in shock. For unknown reasons, it appears only in severe shock due to fluid loss, and is regarded as an ominous sign.
    2 White count and hematocrit.
    3 Five percent dextrose in water, used to replace lost fluid volume.
    4 Penicillin reactions occur in 9-10 percent of normal patients.
    5 Intramuscularly.
    6 Blue.
    7 See Appendix II: Cops and Doctors .

EIGHT
    I T TAKES THIRTEEN YEARS from the time you leave college to the time you become a cardiac surgeon. You have four years of medical school, a year of internship, three of general surgery, two of thoracic surgery, two of cardiac surgery. Somewhere along the line, you spend two years working for Uncle Sam. 1
    It takes a certain kind of man to assume this burden, to set his sights on such a distant goal. By the time he is ready to begin surgery on his own, he has become another person, almost a new breed, estranged by his experience and his dedication from other men. In a sense, that is part of the training: surgeons are lonely men.
    I thought of this as I looked down through the glass-overhead viewing booth into OR 9. The booth was built into the ceiling, allowing you a good view of the entire room, the staff, and the procedure. Students and residents often sat up here and watched. There was a microphone in the OR, so that you heard everything—the clink of instruments, the rhythmic hiss of the respirator, the quiet voices—and there was a button you could press to talk to the people below. Otherwise they could not hear you.
    I had come to this room after going to J. D. Randall’s office. I had wanted to see the chart on Karen, but Randall’s secretary said she didn’t have it. J. D. had it, and J. D. was in surgery now. That had surprised me. I had thought he would have taken the day off, considering. But apparently it had not entered his mind.
    The secretary said the operation was probably almost over, but one look through the glass told me