Read Critical Judgment (1996) for Free Online Page B

match began in room one.
    “You know, you shouldn’t be marching into town looking like you do,” Martin Bartholomew was saying. “You scare the kids half to death.”
    “You probably scare quite a few of them, yourself,” Ives countered.
    “People like you feel society owes them,” the surgeon ranted on. “Feed me, clothe me, educate my children, take care of me when I’m sick.”
    “I don’t have any children to educate.”
    “And you don’t have any insurance, either. Do you think I’m going to get paid for sewing up these cuts of yours? Twenty years of school and training, my family’s home waiting dinner, and I’m here suturing this … this person who hasn’t taken a bath in months.”
    “Years,” Ives said. “Listen, why don’t you just stop and go home? That’s what I’m going to do.”
    “Hey, lie still! Dammit, lie still before I stick myself!”
    “I’m getting out of here.”
    Abby apologized to the girl and her mother, set the silver nitrate stick aside, and hurried to the door.
    “Bud, would you please get them to stop this right away? Call security if you have to.”
    She turned back to the child.
    “These stitches need to come out in a week,” Bartholomew bellowed. “Come to the ER to have it done. I’m finished with you.”
    Abby heard him storm out of the room. He had been with Ives for only twenty minutes, yet he was done. Sheturned as he reached the doorway of room three. His puffed face was crimson, his eyes froglike.
    “I’ll be home or on my beeper,” he said icily. “Thank you for the referral.”
    He stalked off without waiting for a reply. Abby was reasonably sure, however, that
he
wouldn’t be called on the carpet in George Oleander’s office for his brusqueness to a colleague.
    She put the finishing touches on a Vaseline pack in the six-year-old’s nose, went over the nosebleed instruction sheet with the mother, and discharged them to the waiting room for a precautionary half hour. Then she went into room one. Samuel Ives was off the litter, his back to her. He was gathering his things.
    “Mr. Ives?” she said softly.
    He turned, and instantly Abby felt her temper reach boiling point.
    The sutures, probably 3-0 thickness rather than the much finer 6-0 or even 7-0 used for faces, were carelessly placed and tied in such a way that Ives’s skin was bunched. Why hadn’t the nurses let her know what was going on?
    She took a deep, calming breath. Not only had Martin Bartholomew done a sophomoric job of suturing, but it appeared that no one had bothered undressing Ives to examine him for signs of less apparent injury.
    Until we know someone, the
way
they say things is as important as what they have to say.… Practice being a little gentler on the staff.…
    The world according to George Oleander. Abby forced herself to focus on the many kind, compassionate, intelligent, and professional things she had seen the nursing staff do over the weeks she had worked with them. It was really Bartholomew’s fault. He had set the tone in room one. He had invited the staff to bring in their distaste for people like Samuel Ives. She closed the door behind her.
    “Mr. Ives, could you please lie back down?” she said. “I want to examine you a little bit more, and then I want to suture your face over again.”
    For the second time Ives allowed his gaze to meet hers.
    “No X rays,” he said.
    She peeked out at the treatment bays. Another patient was being brought in. She closed the door again, got Lew Alvarez’s number from her clinic book, and called him. If he was free, could he possibly come in an hour early? She was already behind and was facing a complex suturing job. By their eight o’clock changeover, the place could be bedlam.
    “Fifteen minutes,” Alvarez said, no questions asked.
    Abby next called Bud Perlow at the nurses’ station. She would be in room one and did not need any help except for him to hold down the fort until Dr. Alvarez arrived. Oh, and one