I’m struggling to find a lead as a new government watchdog investigator in a Chicago firm. It seems that I may have underestimated the difficulty in uncovering another front-page story, even though I’m working where cadavers vote for presidents and governors retire to penitentiaries. Little did I know that my father, Nathan, or Papa as I like to call him, is about to lose his healthcare businesses to a massive corporation that’s scamming the very citizens supporting it with their donations and tax dollars.
On the verge of financial ruin, Papa pleads for me to look into the multi-billion dollar scandal. Without hesitation, I, along with my new assistant and best friend, Jerome, tackle the lead head-on. My love and passion for the truth drive me, even when our lives are threatened by powerful and dangerous people.
During our quest, Jerome—a gay black man in a biracial marriage—and I discover that family doesn’t have to mean blood. We forge an unbreakable bond exploring all we have in common, all the while embracing our differences of race, upbringing, and sexual orientation.
– Walter Cronkite –
What an egomaniacal prick. Short, bald and carries a chip on his shoulder. Kendrick’s the CEO of Idaho Healthcare System and believes healthcare is the next Microsoft or Apple, just ripe for the picking.
“Ms. Durbin,” the Radiology Technician called.
Louise Durbin embodied the adage: rode hard and put up wet. Likely an attractive woman in another time and place, the strain of questionable genetics and a propensity for instant gratification and self-destruction caused her daily life to be a lonely struggle. Tall, thick, and close-cropped, thinning strawberry blonde hair, her fifty-five-year-old, heavily make-upped face wore the lines of someone at least ten years older.
Louise started her career at Peru Hospital as a secretary and worked her way up the hierarchy with a willingness to do things that were not all that business or ladylike. Her inclinations paid off as she finagled her way into the position of Executive Director of Hospitality—a position created by the hospital’s already-married Chief Operating Officer.
Kendrick summoned Louise for a meeting during a routine visit to Peru two years before. He’d heard about her reputation and assigned her a task for which she was uniquely qualified. All Louise had to do was accuse Nathan Vaughn of unwanted advances, which had to be a credible showing. Even if he were found innocent, the controversy surrounding the accusation would be enough to damage Nathan’s reputation and standing in the business community.
Louise accepted the opportunity to advance but botched the assignment when her story about the encounter was found to be incredible by investigators. For her failure, Kendrick chose not to let her go. He needed assurances she wouldn’t talk, so instead, he decided to deal with her in his own way.
Louise’s morning had begun at the hospital’s diagnostic center, where she was getting a magnetic resonance image, or MRI, of her left shoulder. She’d hurt it while enjoying another night of hard choices a couple of weeks before after taking a tumble when her thong snagged the heel of her stiletto while trying to dismount a new acquaintance and his Fat Boy in a biker bar parking lot.
The technologist had prepared the room and reviewed all the safety checks. For the procedure, all metallic objects were forbidden in the area. If they weren’t cleared, the magnetic field of the machine’s ten-ton magnet would suck them in. A ballpoint pen, hairclip, or a reflex hammer would become a lethal projectile, traveling thirty feet per second and slamming into the patient lying in the tube.
At 8:05, Louise was ushered into the MRI room in her hospital gown. Resting on the table, she was maneuvered in a conveyor-like fashion into the tube. She wore headphones to listen to music and held a panic button if she became claustrophobic or needed to abort the test for another reason. Through the music in the headphones, she heard the machine’s loud, rhythmic electronic rumblings as it took its pictures. She relaxed and tried to sleep during the forty-five-minute test and finally dozed.
Permanently.
The technologist was distraught and inconsolable. Crying, he told the safety officer he’d assessed the testing area, following the established safety procedures and protocols. There was nothing of concern in the area, so he thought, and he never thought to inspect the linens stacked on a plastic cart against the wall at one end of the tube. Why would he? Why would someone put a one-liter oxygen tank on the middle shelf inside a stack of folded sheets?
Once the magnet pulled the torpedo from the shelf and shot it toward Louise, it was too late, as it disappeared into the tube.
The rad tech heard the vicious crashing of the tank against the sides of the magnet and saw Louise’s legs shake and stiffen before falling limp.
The valve on the oxygen tank fractured her skull and embedded itself only a few millimeters from her brainstem.
