Free Lethal Practice by Peter Clement

She got them in bits and pieces as she made up the schedule. She knew who was in love, whose marriage was ending, who’d just been dumped, who had a sick child. All of it, even joy, could distract a physician and sabotage patient care. So we watched who wanted more time off, who wanted less, and why. From these requests and the reasons for them—revealed to Carole, not to me—we knew who I could ask to do what and when. Brusque at times, efficient always, Carole had a soft shoulder that was obvious nonetheless and encouraged people to confide in her.
    “You heard?” I asked when she came back in the door, unencumbered by paper.
    “About the bed closures, yes. About Kingsly, a bit. Is it true what they’re saying?”
    “What’s that?”
    She lowered her voice. “That he was murdered?”
    The gossip network had finally gotten through.
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “How?”
    After my recent encounter with Bufort, I felt no compunction about defying the pompous jerk’s previous order not to discuss the case—it was pointless now anyway—so I told her what I knew. But I left out Bufort’s little visit I didn’t want her worrying about me.
    We got down to business. Although most of the chiefs had agreed to attend the meeting, Carole told me that some of them had complained about the short notice. I thought this over for a minute. “Before you leave for lunch, please tell them to meet me in the center classroom. I want them to walk through the mess out front.”
    She smiled. We both knew it would save me a few hundred words. I also hoped it would soften their reflexes to resist.
    I was wrong on both counts. After I’d told the chiefs my plan, three-quarters of them thought I was as nuts as the scene out front they’d just been made to witness.
    “Dr. Garnet, you can’t close emergency!” declared Arnold Pinter, a new and very insecure chief of medicine. Usually he slouched; now he was sitting bolt upright, looking nervously around the table. There were murmurs and nods of agreement from most of the others, but a few weren’t so quick to react. Arnold seemed puzzled by the lack of unanimity. “Can he close emergency?” he asked.
    “I don’t know,” Sean Carrington said, “but maybe he should.” Sean was chief of surgery and had come straight from the OR, still in greens. He was peering at Arnold over the operating bifocals he used while performing delicate procedures.
    “He can’t stop emergencies!” Hector Saswald insisted. As always, he was looking for approval. When it didn’t come, he moved to protect himself from being politically incorrect. “And I want it in the minutes that I said you can’t close,” he declared piously, jabbing his forefinger at me.
    “There are no minutes, Sas,” I said.
    This seemed to upset him even more than closing the ER.
    “What exactly do you hope to achieve?” asked the chief of geriatrics. He was a rather humorless man, though brilliant at assessing mental competence. The doubtful frown on his face made me feel he was checking my capacity to develop even the vestige of a plan.
    “Look,” I answered, “we all know how closing beds is crap, dangerous crap. I just had another cardiac go sour because we were playing ICU down here, and I’m not willing to go along anymore. Besides, it’s the goddamn idiots upstairs who need shutting down. They don’t seem to know their budget for carfare let alone for running the hospital. What I’m after is a complete review of the finances of this loony bin and an end to these clowns shutting down care every time they screw up.”
    “You can’t do that!” It was Arnold Pinter again. This time his voice cracked. The thought of bucking administration seemed to terrify him.
    “One of the real problems, Arnold,” I said, trying to control my impatience with this annoying little man, “is that you allow your guys to fill up the beds with soft admissions who are on fee-for-service plans, and then your department dawdles with