May 2033: Dalton in Mourning Part III.
Thad had a new respect for his eldest brother the moment that the stout wooden doors of the boardroom were flung open without a knock, and he marched into the room with his head held high, a look of determination on his face. He was dressed in a well-tailored black suit, white shirt and black tie and carrying a large document box. His expression told everyone around the boardroom table that he was there to do business and that nobody was going to stop him doing just that. At his side was Zoe, also dressed in black, carrying another document box and with a similar expression on her face. Behind them were at least a dozen other people, most of them in medical scrubs; on their faces was a look which was a mixture of the same determination as the two Harwood siblings displayed and fear, because they were putting their necks on the line in theory by even being in the room, especially without knocking…
The chairman of the board looked stunned at first, unused to such an intrusion, but then he regained his composure. "What on earth is the meaning of this intrusion into a private meeting? I would have expected much better from the two eldest children of…"
"I will stop you right there, sir," interjected Benji, "before you use such words as talented, illustrious and renowned to describe my parents. We have come here this morning to disabuse you all of that notion, which has largely been propagated by the people in question, and instead expose the truth about Dr Benjamin Harwood Snr and his wife, my father and mother. For a start, we knew that when we entered, our father would not be present; that he would, as always, have been unable to remain for the full board meeting, as he should by the terms of his contract with yourselves, as he had too many operations to perform, most of them emergency procedures. You are all intelligent people, so I find it strange that it never occurred to any of you to question why there were always so many emergency procedures to be carried out at the same time every Monday. To ask why the busiest time of the week always coincided with this weekly board meeting…"
He paused, noting the realisation on some of the faces as his words hit home. "I would suggest that you dial down to the operating theatres and ask him, but you would find that he is not there, and if you check the records, you would see that he is never there on a Monday at this time. Now, if you placed a call to the Medallion Club, you would find him, as he will currently be, as he is every Monday at this time, on the course with one of the leading figures in the Republican Party in Ohio. You all treat him with such awe and respect, believe his every word and he treats all of you with the utmost contempt, ignoring these meeting to play gold with his political cronies. I always thought that attendance at these meetings was a contractual requirement, but maybe when drawing up the next one you should put attendance for entire duration in with that. The way it is now he knows that he fulfils that requirement by popping in for five minutes before he runs off to enjoy himself. Hardly the behaviour of a man that deserves to be situated on the pedestal you have created for him, now is it?"
There was an uncomfortable silence in the room then, but whilst Benji had been speaking, one of the deputy chairs had quietly made a phone call down to the OR. He came off the phone and grim-faced, he announced to the room, "There are no surgeries currently taking place, let alone any by Dr Harwood Snr; in fact, he isn't even scheduled for any routine work today…"
As the board members glanced at each other in surprise, given how much their senior surgeon spoke of his non-stop schedule, Zoe spoke. "You would not find our mother on the premises at the moment either; our other sister was to be with her, ensuring she would not come up here, but Marcia arrived to be told that mom is not coming in this morning, as she has a private clinic. Sounds fair enough, but these private clinics are in fact cover words for her little special sideline. She will right now be in the home of one of the leading socialites of the Republican circuit in Ohio, performing a discrete abortion for either one of them or one of their daughters. She will be alone, carrying it out in an ordinary bedroom. Let that sink in. She is performing an abortion with no medical assistance, crude instruments and quite possibly very little in the way of correct sterile precautions. It might well be the 2030s, but she is akin to the backstreet abortionists of the 1930s. Now, have there been deaths? Not that I am aware of. Have there been lasting injuries and permanent damage? Highly likely, but that doesn't matter to mother given the amount of cash she is given for her services…"
There was a murmur of disquiet in the room now, a sense of unease at what they were hearing. Benji now spoke again. "Now at this point you are probably thinking that we are just two unhappy children, overshadowed by our parents, seeking revenge. You will be asking where our evidence is that our claims are of long-term abuses of trust. Well, that evidence is in the document boxes that my sister and I brought into the room. Some of you are probably thinking that if the worst thing my father has ever done is play hooky from these meetings every Monday, then it isn't quite so bad, because given the chance, you would do the same thing! Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, his absenteeism each Monday morning is but the tip of a very large iceberg. When he is here, things are much worse…"
"We know that there have been some clashes of personality with other staff…" began the chairman, then seeing the look on Benji's face, he fell silent again.
"His relationship with any member of staff that dares to challenge his God-like status has always been fraught; I learnt as a teenager that it was better not to speak in his presence. That quiet acquiescence is the reason why I am still here, and why I am usually at his side during every operation he undertakes. Now you might think that the fact that I assist him in the OR is a sign of a strong bond between father and son, and maybe when it began there was an element of that. Well, not now. Now my presence at his side is probably more down to the fact that he thinks that I, as his son, will not challenge him or indeed report him. He knows that I am a competent enough surgeon to be able to correct his mistakes, of which these days there are many, when he walks out of the room with the words 'Sew them up, I'm done here' and not so much as a backward glance… Frankly, I am tired of being the fixer…"
"All surgeons are entitled to an off day," came the response of one board member, who Benji realised was loyal to his father. He also sported a pin on his lapel which bore the words Make America Great Again even now.
"Oh, I agree, but the problem is that for the last couple of years, nearly every day has been an off day. I think that the time has come for the board to reassess the fitness of their senior surgeon for the job, particularly when it is often a case of life and death that we are talking about as a result of his errors. I have in the last month alone had to swiftly repairs arteries and veins, including a jugular vein that he nicked with a scalpel and just ignored. I have had to remove half of a tumour that he himself said was impossible to remove; I performed that procedure in under ten minutes, but he needed time to ready himself for a lunch at the Republican Club downtown. I have had to remove swabs and in one case one of his surgical gloves from a patient's wound that he had already sewn up. The worst example of that was when he sewed up a patient and left inside a six-inch metal retractor. If that had been left unnoticed within the elderly female patient, then we would have been looking at infection as the best-case scenario, with death at the other end of the spectrum…"
Benji paused as he was now watching as two of the theatre nurses that had come up with him were distributing a printed dossier that detailed all of the errors for the last two years in full detail, a dossier that was nearly an inch thick, that alone eliciting gasps from board members. "Of course, such medical errors can extend the time that a patient remains in the hospital, but perhaps father sees that as a bonus, as it increases the potential cash flow into the business from both the patient and their insurance company. To dad, maximising income is the number one priority, and the same can be said of my dear mother. In the opinion of my sister, myself and the majority of our colleagues, that is not the hallmark of a great, dedicated medical professional. However, I am sure that to some of you, income and cash are primary factors, so let me put it this way. The more mistakes that he makes, the more chance there is of there being a lawsuit against the hospital. With the way dad is now, it is not a case of if that damaging lawsuit will happen, it is a case of when it will happen…"
Up until that moment, Thad had been watching the scene before him with an increasing amount of despair, as the majority of the board members in the room had seemed unconcerned by what they were being told by his eldest siblings. However, the hint of an expensive lawsuit had caught the attention of them all, and in particular two members of the board that Thad could actually vaguely recall from his last visit here when he had been a sophomore at Dalton; the two main lawyers for the hospital. The prospect of numerous claims for compensation for medical negligence, which could total millions of dollars had them scared and one of them now had a razor-sharp focus on the document box that Benji had placed before him whilst he spoke to them all.
His brother seemed to have noticed that too, as he now said, "This box contains my personal case records for each operation that I have been in attendance at, either with my father or indeed alone afterwards, for the past eighteen months. I have documented everything that occurred or that I discovered in detail. Behind me stand the people that are willing to testify as witnesses to the events in this box. There had been a climate of fear in the operating rooms of this hospital for some time now; none of us are prepared to put up with that any longer. I put it to you that the time has come for both of my parents to stand aside and enjoy their retirement. We all know that they will not like that suggestion at all, but you as the board have the right to terminate their contracts and retire them at any time, without giving notice; I would suggest that you do so…"
He paused for a moment, then went on, "Of course, you can choose not to do so, in which case I will resign and leave my father to operate alone; none of the other surgeons in this establishment are prepared to assist him. I would say that the first incidents which will generate lawsuits will probably occur with the first week. I would also, free of my contractual obligations to the hospital, become a whistleblower, and ensure that the media were made fully aware both of the incompetence of my father and the fact that you had been made aware of it but did nothing. Reputation, after all, is everything and I would not cease until the reputations of every member of the board were as trashed as my parents..."
Zoe smiled then as her brother fell silent, then added, "I can also guarantee that following my own resignation, the media would find out how one of the most senior female physicians at this hospital had been performing abortions for cash off the premises. That will hardly inspire the confidence of other women in this hospital as a safe environment dedicated to their care and well-being."
The chairman of the board had remained quiet as they had spoken, but now he looked at the other people around the table, taking in their expressions, before he said, "Very well; let me see what you have in your document boxes."
Benji nodded, then with a grin replied, "As there is so much in here, we took the liberty of having it summarised for you and a copy printed of said summary for you all to peruse. I think you will find, in all honesty, that should this get out then the hospital will be bankrupted within the space of a few weeks with the amount of litigation and bad press that would be forthcoming, which would give neither of us any pleasure. That is before we recall that as the board officially overseeing all of this, there could be a question of whether you could all become personally liable for some of those claims…"
Whilst her brother had been speaking, Zoe had been handing out a copy of the summary to every one of the board members; now that they all had a copy, Benji stopped speaking and took a seat as he waited for them to finish reading the short document before them…
As Thad watched, he saw the looks of despair appear on the faces of the board members as they read through the summary; the full scale of the issue that they now faced had been made completely apparent to them. They had a surgeon in the operating room that was a liability, and another doctor working outwith the hospital, in the field, with a scant regard for safety and hygiene…
"You can almost see the dollar signs in their eyes," whispered Wes, and Thad nodded in agreement. He listened as individual board members asked his brother and sister for clarification on some subjects and for more documentary evidence; that was when the other staff that had come with them stepped to the fore. Senior nurses with decades of experience in the operating room told them exactly what they had witnessed and did not leave out any of the graphic details. Indeed, they had even taken photos of some of the botched operations, showing the condition that Thad's father had left his patients in before Benji intervened.
Confronted with full colour images, they saw for themselves how bad things had become. Thad and Wes heard words like 'Simple procedure' combined with expressions like, 'impossible to botch for a competent surgeon.' Those came most often from a nurse that Thad could actually recall from visiting the hospital as a child. Having said that, she sighed and went on, "He was one of the best surgeons in the United States in his time, but I'm afraid that time has now passed. He now makes the most simple mistakes with alarming regularity and we are left to try and fix them and have to do so without him noticing; God alone could help someone that decided to call him out on something when he is in full on genius surgeon mode…"
Shaking her head sadly, she went on, "One of my longest standing colleagues did and a week later she was fired on a triviality. To be frank, the man is little more now than a menace, and if he doesn't go, then you will have a staffing crisis on your hands. Do not forget that there is a national shortage of trained operating room nurses and should any of us choose to leave, then we would quickly find alternative roles. For the sake of the patients and indeed of this hospital, he needs to be thanked for his service, then retired. He deserves more time to play golf with his Republican cronies in any case. I think that the biggest problem will actually be removing her along with him."
In the end, Benji and Zoe would have to sit and wait almost half an hour as the board perused the papers, and then watch as the two lawyers caused even more consternation amongst them when they gave them a quick estimate of the potential dollar cost to the hospital of all the possible lawsuits. The two siblings smiled as they then watched the board huddle in a corner, whispering to each other, unaware that their youngest brother was yards away, observing with his angelic husband at his side. The rest of their little group left, heading back to care for the patients that mattered to them far more than money. Thus, they missed the confirmation coming in that Dr Benjamin Harwood Snr was indeed on the golf course; the fact that the club secretary was happy to divulge that he was there every Monday without fail incensed a couple of the board members a great deal…
Eventually though the respected men and women of the board returned to their seats, the meeting now well past its usual finish time, and the chairman addressed the brother and sister directly. "Firstly, I cannot say that I approve of the methods that you have used to bring this situation to our attention; there are official channels through which such allegations should be made after all. However, I can understand that perhaps you felt those might be compromised and I can see why. We need to follow the correct processes and procedures now, but I can say that we are all agreed that we must suspend both of your parents from their roles here with immediate effect, based on what we have heard today. You have my guarantee that when we inform them, we shall not mention your part in this, or indeed that of anyone who was brave enough to speak out today. Before that, I do have one other question and that is to ask why you are both dressed in black?"
Benji nodded, then said, "I'm afraid that our youngest brother, Thad, passed away a few days ago from incurable cancer. He wasn't a doctor, but that fact probably made him the best of all five of us. I note that comment had left quite a few of you with a confused expression on your face, as you thought my parents only had four children; you had no idea Thad existed. That is not surprising, as the moment he told our parents that he was not going to medical school and was not going to be a doctor, he was effectively disowned and expelled from the family…"
The silence in the room after Benji said those words was deafening. None of the actual members of the board had known that there was a fifth Harwood sibling; indeed, some had not known that there was a fourth until Ollie had been promoted to his current role in charge of the Emergency Department in the hospital in New York. The silence was broken by the one person in the room that had known of Thad's existence, the secretary to the board, whose tenure was longer than all the rest. She had been minuting everything for almost four decades and could recall a time when Dr Benjamin Harwood Snr and his wife had been new hires on the premises…
"I recall young Thad; he was always the quiet one that his away in his own little corner of the library. He used to come and sit in my office too at times, reading a history book or a classic novel tucked inside a tome on cardiovascular disease. Then he was sent off to school in Westerville and it was almost as if he ceased to exist after that… I am so very sorry for your loss."
The chairman of the board looked sad too, before he asked, "They actually cast their youngest child out of the family because he refused to be a doctor?"
"Yes, and I am afraid to say that they also forbade us from having any contact with him, with threats of dire consequences for us if we did so. Oliver, my other brother, escaped to New York and almost immediately got back in touch with him; at that point our parents informed us that he too was no longer to be spoken to and was not a member of the family. Dad was extremely unhappy when his name was made available to you all when one of you mentioned the article about his promotion, as he had to admit his existence again. I am deeply ashamed to admit that we only reconnected with my little brother a week ago, when one of his closest friends managed to get our sister Marcia to Thad's home under false pretences. He forgave us, but I am not certain that we can ever forgive ourselves. We were already planning on bringing you all of this evidence, but Thad's passing gave it more importance and more impetus…" replied Benji.
"I have to ask if your parents are aware of your youngest brother's death?" said one of the female board members.
"No," replied Zoe, "and given that they were not even aware that he was the Head of the History Department at Dalton Academy, his old school, not to mention one of the leading figures in the world of show choir nationally, I don't suppose that the news would bother them one iota. Of course, if they were asked about their reaction to it by a journalist, or one of father's friends in the Republican Party, they would no doubt put on a performance of such grief that they would be worthy of an Oscar nomination. That would maintain the public façade that is so important to them; they would not want the world to know that they had treated him like trash…"
Watching those exchanges had been quite difficult for Thad; he knew that what his siblings were saying was true, but to hear it stated so bluntly in front of a group of people who were in close contact with his parents every day, and to discover that only one of them knew he had even existed was tough. What more than made up for it was what happened next; the chairman of the board stood up and looking at the secretary, he said, "Let the two elder Dr Harwoods know that we wish to see them in here within the hour - as they are both supposedly on the premises that should not be hard for them. Inform them that there is an Arab Shiek en route to the hospital with his chief wife, both of them in need of medical attention and with money no object. I am sure that statement will get them both to abandon what they are doing without a moment's hesitation…"
He smiled then, and said, "The expression on their faces when we inform them that there is no sheik and that we are suspending them both from duty immediately will be worth seeing. We shall say that we are investigating a series of allegations made by patients against them and leave it at that. With your permission, I would also like to pass on my condolences to them both on the death of their son and see what their reaction is to that as well. I think we can safely say that neither of them will be returning to work here; we will encourage them to retire with dignity and retain their reputations; point out that fighting it would risk them being labelled as incompetent and money grabbing has-beens. I believe that they would also be at risk of individual lawsuits for some of the things that have been mentioned to us today; I suspect that the idea of bankruptcy on a personal level does not appear to them. In the interim, I would like to ask you both…"
"Zoe and I are both happy to step up for now, but when it comes to something more long-term, the permanent replacement should be selected on the grounds of merit, not just because of what their surname is. The days when this hospital was seen as a fiefdom for the Harwood family are in the past…"
None of the Harwood siblings, in heaven or on earth would witness the scene later that day in the boardroom when two doctors that had demanded respect whilst maintaining a climate of fear in the hospital were told they were no longer required. None of them witnessed that scene where their parents, who had turned an efficient hospital into a personal dictatorship, were swept aside. Their screams and yelling could be heard across the entire administration level however, and indeed echoed down through the nearest stairwells too.
Those pretending not to listen heard them making threats against the board in general and individually, which was bad enough, but what chilled them all to the core was the response of Thad's mother to the chairman expressing his condolences to them on the death of their son. She asked him if he was an idiot, as Benji was alive; indeed, she had seen him on his way to the operating room on her own way up to the boardroom. Then she paused, and shook her had sadly, before launching into a rant about how dangerous public hospitals and the city of New York were, and that had he stayed in the bosom of his family then he would not have paid the ultimate price…
The chairman nodded, then said, "I wasn't talking about Oliver either. I am referring to the youngest of your three sons, Thad. When the news was passed on to me by an external source, I must admit that I was as confused as you appear to be, as I thought you only had two sons…"
There was a pause then, during which Thad's parents looked askance at each other, before his father replied, "He was a disgrace to the family and walked away from us all; he hurt us all so badly that we do not ever mention him to avoid the pain…"
The chairman looked right at him, and replied, "If you are saying that he was a disgrace to the family because he refused to embark on a career in medicine, then frankly I believe that you are the disgrace to the family name. Now, I believe security is outside; if you would like to give them your passes and then they can escort you from the building…"
The news that Dr Benjamin Harwood Snr and his wife had been suspended from their duties at the hospital in Columbus spread through the medical community in Ohio like wildfire. When Dr Hayden McLeod was informed by an acquaintance of his that worked in one of the other major hospitals in the city, he had the decency and sense to act as if the news was a shock to him, when he had actually been expecting to hear something of that nature all morning. Ollie had been the one to inform him first thing that morning that today was the day just after his older brother had phoned him and confirmed it was going ahead…
The fact that it was his parents' treatment of Thad and his subsequent death that had been the tipping point for the other Harwood siblings made the news all the sweeter to Ollie. He had headed up to Dalton Academy that morning with a smile on his face that would not quit and whistling a cheerful tune, then had begun to wonder if such behaviour was entirely appropriate in the circumstances, given that his little brother had just died….
"Oh, but Thaddie is smiling about it as well, so I wouldn't worry about feeling pleased about the news," came a voice and Ollie immediately stopped in his tracks on the Dalton driveway.
"I guess that would probably be true," he replied in a small voice, "given how they have mistreated him over the years. I hope that he had a ringside seat to watch the moment in happened." Ollie heard laughter then, which sounded suspiciously like… He shivered, as that was going too far; the draughts and the strange voices in his head were bad enough but thinking that he could hear his recently deceased brother laughing was a bit too far for his liking. He hurried on up the driveway, heading to the apartment that had been his brother's home. He had arranged to meet Trent there, and found him in the kitchen, going through the cabinets and drawers; they had to clear out all of the cookware, crockery and cutlery for the new housemaster…
"There is an inventory showing what was here when Thad moved in, as the housemaster's accommodation at Dalton has always come part furnished. I don't expect that there will be anything missing, but there may be things that Thad added that could well be passed on to others as mementos of him. There is a whole set of bowls and plates that he brought back from his travels to India here and they are so beautiful; I know that Michelle collects plates, so maybe you and her should have them?" Trent said as soon as Ollie stepped in. He saw him nod, but Trent could tell that his head was elsewhere. "Why don't I make us both some coffee and we can have a chat? I can see that there is something troubling you; they do say that a trouble shared is a trouble halved and well, your brother would have told you that I am very good at keeping secrets…"
Ollie accepted his coffee from Trent a few minutes later as he took a seat beside him on the sofa in the living room. "I have been feeling draughts and hearing voices," he confessed, deciding that it was best to just come clean right away. "When it began it frightened me, but when I spoke to Michelle, she told me it was just angels, something that my normally rational mind has had great difficultly processing. I would like to believe that it was true and I have more or less convinced myself of that now; I have come to terms with the idea that the draughts I feel are from their wings and that the main voice I hear might be her cousin Wes… Then on the way here today, I heard not just that voice, but a laugh too, and that laugh sounded just like Thad…"
Trent said nothing in reply for a moment as he worked out how best to deal with the situation. He could recall the days when Beats had started to complain of draughts before Nick and Jeff's wedding; how he too had heard voices and then, once he believed fully, he had started to see them too. To him it was clear that Ollie was now on the verge of that himself; given that would mean that he was soon going to be able to see his little brother in his new angelic form. He had to choose his words carefully, so as not to steer him away from something that he was confident would give Ollie pleasure and peace…
"It can be quite disconcerting at first, but in time you stop hearing those voices quite so much. The draughts, however, don't ever stop, but it usually means that you are being visited by one. I can feel those draughts and hear the voices too, just like your wife. It should scare me, because I was never one for religion and belief in all of that as a youth. It doesn't, because it is a great comfort to know that my departed friends are going on living in another place, not a curse. Trust me when I tell you that when you can say that you believe in angels and truly mean it, you will find that all the more dramatic and unusual elements of that no longer matter. You just need to ask yourself this right now; would you like to hear Thad's voice again? If you can fully accept that angels exist, then you might just score that great prize…"
"I don't know if being able to hear Thaddie again would be a good thing," Ollie replied, much to Trent's surprise. "I have got used to that other voice, the one that I think could be Wes, but that is the point I suppose; I think it could be him, but I don't know for certain, as I never met him in real life. I never met any of Thad's friends that might be in heaven now in real life, with the exception of Seth. To be honest, I don't know how I would react if I heard his voice in my ear either, but it would not be quite as bad as hearing Thad. I had a lot of time for Seth, and the courageous way he dealt with his condition, but the thing is…"
"…He isn't your baby brother, and there is therefore not quite as much of an emotional attachment to him in your heart," said Trent and he was relieved to see that this time Ollie nodded in agreement.
"I guess that I might find it easier if Thad was around if I could see him too, but such things are pushing the envelope just a little too much for me… I mean, it may be the case that some people can see angels, but I will be frank, if someone had come into my parents' hospital when I was doing my medical training and stated that they were seeing angels, then dad would have had them bundled straight off down to the psychiatric wards…." Ollie paused, then said quietly, "However, he was wrong about so much else, so maybe angels are out there and visible to the chosen few that truly believe in it. I just wish that I could believe in it all as much as all of Thad's closest friends seem to. Maybe it will come for me though; maybe one of these days I will be blessed with that gift…"