Part 9
Alexis and Quinn were at the Outback for dinner.
"You have to eat more than popcorn," Jerry was saying, "I may have the staff deliver three solid meals a day to you."
"That would be great, Jerry," Quinn said, enthusiastically. "I can even get a good menu from the hospital that covers all the vitamins and minerals."
"Don't you dare!" Alexis laughed and took a small paperback book from Quinn and starting skimming it over. "OK, so this is the Nursing Ethics Code."
"I marked there, the parts that seem to apply," Quinn said, anxiously.
"OK. – confidentiality - need for health care does not warrant unwanted intrusion into the patient's life. Unnecessary disclosure of data. Rights, well being of patient and safety of patient should be the primary factors in the exercise of judgment about what information to disclose. Share only with members of the health care team that have a real need to know. Not absolute – can be modified to protect the patient, innocent third parties, etc. etc."
"That part bothers me. Joanna, and I was the instigator, told the details to V."
"They maybe only mean making sure the files aren't out for just anybody to read. Or that you don't share the medical file with just anybody. Only people who need to see it for health care reasons. And it isn't absolute, either. For example, you can make an exception if there is an innocent third party to protect. I wonder what they mean by that?"
"Probably that has something to do with people who might be infected with something the patient has," Quinn suggested.
"Which is a medical issue. Also the public. It should be protected from drunk drivers, shouldn't it? See, none of this really addresses evidence of a crime, which, when you come down to it, is what you revealed. If you were her lawyer and noticed her bruises, it would be a breach of lawyer-client confidentiality. I would think the more likely case for a nurse might be the opposite. Say someone else had gotten killed in that crash, you saw the evidence, and you didn't tell anyone, and later got charged with obstruction of justice - you could defend by saying you thought this meant you shouldn't reveal it."
"It is kind of an unwarranted intrusion to her life."
"Unwanted intrusion. That's the word it says here. But if course someone who committed a crime would say it was unwanted."
"True. You know, that part - I came closer to crossing the line there with Zander."
"No, there you for sure had this protection of the patient thing."
"Yeah. That's a good thought. But look at this section."
"Professional boundaries," Alexis read – "practice of nursing has an inherently personal component. Purpose is preventing illness, alleviating suffering, protecting, promoting and restoring health of patients. Intimate nature of, and involvement in very important and stressful life events, risks blurring limits."
"There I wonder about Zander's case. But you could say promoting the health of the patient there, too, I guess. I wasn't so really involved with him personally until he had been discharged. I did get really involved with taking care of Peter, but he went straight to my family and I wasn't pumping Peter for information or anything."
Alexis was looking at her, smiling. "But even if that all violated the ethics rules - "
"I'd have to do it the same way again!" Quinn's face lit up.
"You're just the one, you know," Alexis said, with a grin, "that I would have picked out for him. If I had been of a matchmaking type."
"Really? Thank you. But I really wonder if I would've noticed those bruises, or at least, their significance, if she was just an ordinary patient I'd never met before. Knew nothing about."
"On the other hand, say somebody wanted to call you on the carpet about it, what are they going to say? She should have got away with drunk driving in the interests of her health?"
"Does sound sensible when you put it that way, Alexis. If I ever need a lawyer, I think you're it."
"I would hope so!"
"OK," Quinn laughed.
"Then there are also the doctors too," Alexis said. "They must have ethical rules just like this, probably along the same lines, even stricter. I could look those up too. See if there's a case on it somewhere."
"Only if it interests, you, Alexis. I mean, you've already given me enough. I feel better."
"If you ended up having to testify, and some lawyer for Emily were to start in on it," Alexis said, "they would not be doing it to get you into trouble with some ethics board. They'd only be doing it to try to cast doubt on your credibility. Even then it doesn't follow that – even if you think she's about to steal your boyfriend - she still had the bruises. And you still saw them. You saw what you saw. Never let some lawyer shake what you saw with your very eyes."
"OK. Whew! I hadn't thought of all that. If I have to testify, I'll think I'll die of nervousness!"
"No, you won't," Alexis said. "You'll live."
"I'll try."
Jerry was there then with dinner. "Right from Australia!" he said, triumphantly! "Lobster!"
"You're going to spoil us!" Quinn said.
"I try," he said.
"Tell me this, Emily," Sean said, sitting at a table at the Outback, noticing Alexis Davis sitting with Quinn on the other side, deep in conversation over a book. "How can you so constantly maintain you were in love with someone you knew so little about? Real name, siblings, parents, past, education, medical history - "
"OK, OK. I get your point, Sean!"
"But how can you be?"
Emily shrugged. "You can."
Sean sighed, and took a sip of water. Here was another brick wall.
He tried anyway.
"But people just talk. Look how we just talk. And naturally, things come up. It must have come up repeatedly."
"It didn't."
"What did you talk about?"
"I don't remember now."
"Your family?"
"Yes. Usually one of my family members was saying or doing something to break us up."
"Oh, OK. So merely maintaining the relationship at its current level took up all your time."
"Yeah. We were in love."
"How can you say that about somebody you don't know?"
Emily shrugged again. "I knew him."
"You must know me 10 times better, though, still. You know me and about my family. I don't think you know a lot about them, but that you generally know where they are, by your standards, you know them really, really well."
"I don't think I do know you better."
"How is that, by what I've just said?"
"It's you. I don't know you as well as I knew Zander."
"How does that work out when you never knew who he really was?"
"I knew who he really was."
Sean was becoming highly amused. "Are you saying this was a physical thing? You had a tremendous physical attraction and that meant you knew him?"
"It was love."
"Which is the same as physical attraction."
"No."
"What's the difference?"
"I don't know. What do you mean?"
"I mean, say you are really having the hots for some guy and you think he's cute but you know he's not for you. Would that be physical attraction - you like the idea of touching him, but you don't love him - at least, not right now?"
"OK. I had a physical attraction to Zander, and I loved him."
"Both."
"Yes."
"OK, but I'm still perplexed. I can see where you might have a physical attraction to someone you don't know, but I don't yet understand how you can love someone you don't know."
"I knew him. It was his family I didn't know. I don't have to love his family to love him. He knew my family and he didn't love them."
"It's one thing to not be acquainted with his family," Sean answered. "Like you aren't acquainted with mine. But I would tell you their names and where they live and about things that happened while I was growing up. I might tell you about how my sister and I took riding lessons. Anything. How can you have a conversation with someone, or many conversations with someone, and nothing like that come up?"
"You can. You're talking about all these details. Like I don't have to know his father's middle name to know him."
"I understand that. I'm only saying how do you get to know someone well enough to love them unless you've talked to them long enough for all those details to happen to come up?"
"Why would they come up if you are talking about something else? Especially if he didn't want to talk about it."
"I'd still have to wonder why he didn't want to talk about it."
"Would you tell me all those details about yourself?"
"Sure. They just come up! But if you asked me, of course I would tell you."
"Who have you dated in the past?"
"OK, I'll tell you. In high school in Kentucky - I went out with Lynn. It lasted all the way through college until my junior year. When I was a junior I met Quinn, and by the end of that year, I was with Quinn. All the way up to the end of my senior year and through my first two years of law school. When she graduated, I asked her to marry me. She said no. In my third year of law school, I wasn't seriously involved with anybody. My first two years as a lawyer I feel like all I do is work. See how easy that was? I already know you went out with a guy who became a singer, Zander and Vinnie, who is a student at UK. And why would either of us refuse to talk about it?"
"Zander told me he never had anybody serious before."
"Well, even though I wasn't seriously involved, I remember, my third year of law school, dating Laurie, who had two little sisters who visited her at law school from time to time. I know her parents lived in Illinois with these two little sisters. And I would only have said I was in love with Lynn and Quinn, maybe even only Quinn. Before I ever met Quinn's family I knew that her brothers were named Brad and Tim and they were younger and still in school, I knew her father was an engineer, that she had a godfather she was close to, that her mother was a teacher named Kathleen and that they all lived in Port Charles, New York. Eventually I met them when they visited school. She dated Scott in high school. I can do better. She dated Scott Jankowski in high school. She dated him the first semester of her freshman year and was always writing home to him and calling him and he called her, it was just like me and Lynn. I even remember that later, when Quinn and I were dating, Scott was now dating someone else and we met them at one of the restaurants here. Even girls I wasn't seriously involved with I knew something about, and Lynn and Quinn I knew a lot about. And of course, Lynn was from Lexington and her family knew my family anyway, and still does. But Quinn knew, and may even remember, that my father's name is James and my mother's name if Betty, and my sister is Debbie and that Debbie is two years older than I am and that Debbie showed me where there was an old tree house in the woods and that Debbie and I played cards there and met our friends there and their names, even, she might remember some of those. In fact, you already know most of that! Not to mention that I went to college at Notre Dame and to Law School at the University of Kentucky and what firm I worked for. And I'm sorry if that story if that's long and if I think it is way more typical of ordinary experience. Doesn't make it better. Just more ordinary. And that I think it's your experience that is strange - and therefore more interesting."
"I think you are trying to prove I was never in love with Zander, but you aren't proving it to me."
"OK, OK! Still, grant me I may have proved that it was unusual!"
"What difference would that make?" Emily asked.
"Eat your dessert, Emily" Sean said, laughing and shaking his head.