Free Sisterhood by Michael Palmer

tumor, right?” He suddenly looked happier than he had all evening. “Look at the name of the radiologist who gave us that report. G. Rybicki, M.D., the living Polish joke of radiologic medicine. He read the same thing on a scan that we did preoperatively, so I checked her liver out carefully in the O.R. Even sent off a biopsy. They are cysts, David. Multiple, congenital, totally benign cysts.
    “I even went to the trouble of sending Rybicki a copy of the pathology report,” Huttner continued. “He probably never even looked at it, as witnessed by this repetition of his initial misreading. Maybe we’d better just tear the report out of the chart.” He crumpled the sheet in a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket. “Now, if you have no further questions, shall we go in to see the woman?”
    “No further questions, your honor.” David shook his head in amazement and smiled, grateful to be allowed off the hook. There was something about Huttner’s broad grin that went far toward dispelling the misgivings David had developed about the man.
    Shoulder to shoulder, they walked down the corridor of Four South and into Room 412.

CHAPTER IV
    T he only light in Room 412 came from a gooseneck treatment lamp directed at an area just above Charlotte Thomas’s exposed buttocks. Huttner strode to that side of the bed with David close behind and moved the lamp back a foot. He stiffened, then forced a more relaxed pose. Bewildered and somewhat amused, David stifled a smile at the man’s reaction; then he looked down at the reason for it. The bedsore Huttner had described as “nasty” was far worse than that. It was a gaping hole six inches wide. The walls of the cavity were raw muscle, stained white by a drying poultice. A quarter-sized eye of sacral bone stared sightlessly outward from the center.
    Huttner gave the kind of shrug that said, “Nothing worse than other things we’ve dealt with, right?”
    David tried to respond, but could manage only a shake of his head. He had seen sores and wounds countless times from every conceivable source. But this …
    “It’s Dr. Huttner, Charlotte,” Huttner announced as he flicked off the lamp and turned on the dim fluorescent light set in a cornice over her bed. He drew the sheet up above her waist and stepped to the other sideof the bed. David followed, glancing at the I.V. bags and the restraints that held her on her side, at the urinary catheter snaking from beneath the sheet, at the oxygen and suction tubes. He understood the need for them and accepted their presence without a second thought. They were all as much tools of his trade as were the giant saucer lights and variegated steel instruments of the operating room.
    However, in those first few seconds the one thing he noticed most about Mrs. Thomas was the emptiness in her face—a static soulless aura centering about her eyes, which were watching him through the dim light with a moist flatness. Even the sound of her breathing—soft, rhythmic cries—was empty.
    Charlotte Thomas had The Look, as David had come to label it. She had lost the will to live, lost that extra bit of energy essential to surviving a life-threatening illness. The spark that was often the single difference between a medical miracle and a mortality statistic was gone.
    David wondered if Huttner saw the same things he did, felt the same emptiness. Then, as if in answer to his question, the tall surgeon knelt by the bed, slipping his hand under Charlotte’s head and cradling it to one side so that she could look directly at his face. For nearly a minute they remained that way, doctor and patient frozen in a silent tableau. David stood several feet away, swallowing against the heaviness that was building in his throat. Huttner’s tenderness was as genuine as it was surprising—another facet had shown itself in this strange kaleidoscope of a man.
    “Not exactly feeling on top of the world, huh?” Huttner said finally.
    Charlotte forced her lips