Free Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away With Murder by James B. Stewart Page A

graduated from SIU a year earlier than he did. But now, troubled by the negative report from Ferguson and other comments about Swango’s odd behavior, Dr. Hunt got on the phone to SIU’s Howard Barrows, the associate dean for medical education. Barrows was in charge of student recommendations, including the dean’s letters signed by Moy, and had helped draft Swango’s. With an edge ofannoyance, Hunt asked about Swango. “What kind of guy did you send us?”
    Barrows said that Hunt should have seen plenty of warning flags in Swango’s dean’s letter. “Well,” Hunt retorted, “I don’t read dean’s letters.”
    Barrows asked him if he’d kept the dean’s letter in Swango’s file, and Hunt said he’d check. Soon after, Hunt called back: he’d found the letter.
    “Oh, my God,” Hunt said. “You’re right. You did tell me.”
    Still, no consideration seems to have been given to terminating Swango’s internship. On January 14, 1984, Hunt met with Swango and warned him that he had received a failing evaluation from Dr. Ferguson that might threaten his residency. He reminded Swango that the offer of a residency in neurosurgery was contingent on successful completion of the one-year internship. Swango took the news calmly; he seemed suitably concerned and sincere in his desire to improve. He was sufficiently charming and contrite that Hunt helped him plot strategies for overcoming the negative review and continuing with his residency. Hunt recommended that Swango appeal Ferguson’s evaluation to the Residency Review Committee, made up of doctors from the surgery department. Swango took him up on the suggestion, and the committee met later that month to reevaluate him.
    R ITCHIE and Swango didn’t have much contact after their initial meeting, when she had examined his name tag, though she did talk fairly often to his new girlfriend: a fellow nurse named Rita Dumas, who also often worked in Rhodes Hall. The relationship surprised many on the nursing staff, because Dumas hardly seemed a catch for a promising and handsome young intern. She was reasonably attractive, but her personality had caused some of the other nurses to keep their distance. Divorced a few years before, with three young children, she was always complaining about something. She worked the night shift, returning home at seven in the morning, just as the children were awakening. She said she was never able to get enough sleep, which might have accounted for her often surly mood.
    But she seemed transformed by the romance with Swango. Though she still kept mostly to herself, she acquired a new glow ofconfidence, and her attitude toward life seemed to improve. A few of the other nurses noted the changes with a touch of envy. Dumas had been going through a difficult period. Swango had been tender and supportive. He was wonderful with her children, and they loved it when he performed feats of juggling for them. She later said, “I do not think that I would have survived had Swango not been there for me.”
    On February 6, Anne Ritchie reported to Rhodes Hall for the morning shift, and was assigned to a neurosurgery patient in Room 968, named Ruth Barrick. Barrick was a pleasant, elderly woman who had been admitted to the hospital on January 17. She had fallen and hit her head at home ten days earlier and suffered a cerebral hematoma. Though her condition was serious, it had never been considered life-threatening until she suffered respiratory arrest and nearly died on January 31—just after Swango’s appeal of his negative evaluation was rejected.
    No one told Ritchie what had happened. But on January 31, another nurse, Deborah Kennedy, had given Barrick her breakfast and assessed her condition. The patient seemed to be doing well. She was sitting up in bed, talking, and responding to directions. At about 9:45 A.M ., Dr. Swango had come into Barrick’s room and told Kennedy, “I’m going to check on her.” Kennedy thought this was peculiar,