Free Godplayer by Robin Cook

arms with hands spread out as if to quiet a crowd, “I want to be sure that everyone has seen the article in this week’s Time magazine rating the Boston Memorial as the center for cardiac bypass surgery. I think we deserve it, and I want to thank each and every one of you for helping us reach this position.” Ballantine clapped, followed by George and a smattering of others.
    Thomas, who’d sat near the door in case he was called to the recovery room, glowered. Ballantine and the other doctors were taking credit for something that was due largely to Thomas and to a lesser extent to two other private surgeons who happened to be absent. When he had gone into surgery, Thomas thought he would avoid the bullshit that surrounded most other professions. It was going to be him and the patient against disease! But as Thomas looked around the room, he realized that almost everyone at the meeting could interfere with his work because of one aggravating problem—the limited number of cardiac surgical beds and associated OR time. The Memorial had become so famous that it seemed as if everyone wanted to have their bypass there. People literally had to wait in line. Especially in Thomas’s practice. He had been limited to nineteen OR slots a week and he had a backlog of more than a month.
    “While George passes out the schedule for next week,” said Dr. Ballantine, extending a stack of stapled papers to George, “I’d like to recap this week.”
    He droned on as Thomas turned his attention to the schedule. His own patients were scheduled by his nurse, who collated the necessary information and got it over to Ballantine’s secretary, who typed it up. It contained a capsule medical history of each patient, a listing of significant diagnostic data, and an explanation of the need for surgery. The idea was that everyone at the conference would go over each patient and make sure that the operation was needed or advisable. But in reality it rarely happened, except if you missed the meeting.
    Once when Thomas had been absent, the anesthesiology department had canceled several of his cases, resulting in a row no one was likely to forget. Thomas continued reviewing the sheets until Ballantine mentioned something about deaths. Thomas looked up.
    “Unfortunately there were two surgical deaths this week,” said Dr. Ballantine. “The first was a case on the teaching service, Albert Bigelow, an eighty-two-year-old gentleman who could not be weaned from the pump after a double-valve replacement. He’d been scheduled as an emergency. Is there word on the autopsy yet, George?”
    “Not yet,” said George. “I must point out that Mr. Bigelow was a very sick cookie. His alcoholism had seriously affected his liver. We knew we were taking a risk going to surgery. You win some and you lose some.”
    There was a silence. Thomas commented sarcastically to himself that Mr. Bigelow’s untimely demise had prompted a stimulating discussion. The galling part was that it was this kind of patient that was keeping Thomas’s patients waiting.
    Ballantine glanced around, and when no one spoke he continued: “The second death was a patient of mine, Mr. Wilkinson. He died last night. He was autopsied this morning.”
    Thomas saw Ballantine look over at George, who shook his head almost imperceptibly.
    Ballantine cleared his throat and said that both cases would be discussed at the next death conference.
    Thomas wondered at the silent communication. It brought to mind the weird comment George had made up in the lounge. Thomas shook his head.
    Something was going on between Ballantine and George, and Thomas felt a twinge of uneasiness. Ballantine had a unique position in the medical center.
    As chief of cardiac surgery, he held an endowed chair with the university and was paid a salary. But Ballantine also had a private practice. Ballantine was a holdover from the past, bridging as he did the full-time salaried men like George and the private staff, like