Rota Fortunae (1/?)
The wine bottle felt pleasantly cool in his hands.
Reid pulled out the stopper and raised the bottle to his lips, savoring the taste of the expensive Merlot as it made its way down his esophagus.
Washing down the tiny white pills.
He reached for the pill bottle lying next to him on the couch, opened it, and shook a few more into his mouth.
“Any idiot with a mail-order medical degree could have stood by and allowed the patient to die naturally. I explained to the patient’s parents that the procedure was experimental, but that it was the only option that offered even a marginal chance of success-and they approved the surgery with full knowledge of the risks. The surgery was unsuccessful, but the patient would not be any less dead today if I had chosen to do nothing at all.”
Would it have made a difference, he wondered, if he’d told them all how haunted he’d been by his failure? If he’d described how many sleepless nights he’d spent poring over the surgical videotapes and the thick files of test results and MRI scans, raging at himself for his imperfection and struggling to understand what went wrong-how a seemingly successful surgery could take such a terrible turn for the worse, and what he could have done differently to spare that young life from so abrupt and so untimely an ending?
But it was too late for second-guessing now.
He drank again, coughing some as the pills stuck for a moment in his throat. Phenobarbital, the anti-anxiety prescription pill du jour, casually abused all over the world by bored housewives and trust fund brats and over-indulgent Hollywood stars. In larger doses, the drug of choice for physician-assisted suicide.
He laughed at the irony.
Was it physician-assisted suicide when the physician was only assisting himself?
Was it physician-assisted when the physician was no longer a physician?
“In view of the defendant’s demonstrated history of applying untested and experimental procedures in the operating room, and the reckless indifference he has demonstrated for the safety and well-being of his patients, as a direct result of which at least one patient has expired while under his care, it is the decision of this board that the defendant, Reid Douglas Oliver, is unfit to practice medicine in the state of Texas and that his license is hereby revoked this 25th day of February, 2010.”
The slam of the gavel still rang in Reid’s ears, different and yet so much alike the whine of a heart monitor gone still, signaling the death of his medical career. In the long months that followed, he’d spent every cent of his savings on expert witnesses and trial costs, sold his beloved Porsche and mortgaged his Dallas condo to the hilt to cover his skyrocketing attorneys’ fees, called in every favor he’d earned from every patient or doctor he’d ever assisted-but all his struggles had accomplished nothing. His appeals had been rejected by every administrative judge and trial court in the state; the Licensing Board had done too thorough a job of documenting every minor infraction or procedural hiccup he had made in his career and twisting it to paint a picture of him, the brilliant Dr. Reid Oliver, as an irresponsible and dangerous fraud.
Now not only was he unemployed and a pariah in the medical community, he was about to be homeless too.
“I know I haven’t paid your last bill, but can’t you do anything to stop the foreclosure? I’m never going to be able to pay you if I lose the only thing I have left of value in this world…. You know, if you were half as good a lawyer as you said you were, you’d have got me my license back by n… Hello? Hello?!”
The pills were going down easier now, his head swimming from the mixture of barbiturates and alcohol. The bottle slipped from his glass and fell to the floor, dark liquid soaking into the plush carpet. Reid turned to stretch his legs out on the couch, laying his head against the arm and folding his hands over his chest in a suitable position for his final repose.
Let those vultures at the bank figure out what to do with the late, great Dr. Reid Oliver.
====
“Hey! Hey, you! Wake up! I got an open house starting in twenty minutes here, and the absolute last thing I need is my buyers finding some drunk-ass squatter in the unit. Wake UP!”
A finger poked at his shoulder and Reid moaned, opening his eyes briefly before bright light from the open windows sent pain stabbing through his head. “Go ‘way,” he mumbled, swatting limply at the plump, rather obnoxiously shiny-faced woman crouched over him on the floor.
Floor?
Reid opened his eyes again, carefully this time, and found that he was stretched out on the thick carpet of his living room floor. Or at least, he corrected himself, a room that-that certainly looked like his living room, at least in shape and size-except that every possession he owned, every stick of furniture or personal item that had once made his condo a bit like a home, had somehow disappeared. The room was completely and cavernously bare.
“What the hell?” Reid said, sitting up and glaring at the woman as belligerently as he could manage through his roaring headache. “Did you seriously take my couch out from under me? I thought you people would give me at least a day to move out before swarming in to pick over the remains.”
The woman gave a rude snort and stood up, straightening the ruffled tie on her silk blouse. “Darlin’, I’m sure you’re new to the squatting business and all, but you’ll have to work much harder than that if you want to put one over on me. This place has been on the market for almost a month now, and the previous owner is deceased, so there’s no way you actually live here.”
Reid Oliver pushed himself to his feet, all the long months of misery, fear, and helplessness at his situation working him up into a state of absolute rage. He had thought last night would put an end to the incompetence and indifference and even outright malice that had combined to destroy his life, but somehow all he’d managed was a brief rest before waking up to find yet another calamity around him. He took a deep breath and prepared to tear a new strip from the ample hide of his unsuspecting target.
“Listen, you brainless windbag, I am Doct… I am Reid Oliver, and this condo…”
“Reid Oliver,” the woman cut in, clearly not impressed with his furious demeanor, “died in a train crash three months ago, somewhere in Buttcrack, Iowa… or… or Indiana, or some such. His next of kin-Angus Oliver-inherited this place and he’s commissioned me to sell it. Which I aim to do, if you’ll just get your tight little buns on outta here and find someone else’s stoop to perch on.”
Reid studied the woman for a long moment. He wanted to argue the point, wanted to call her every synonym for “crazy” he knew in every one of the six languages he spoke… but the certainty in her eyes and her casual knowledge of detail-how did she know about his uncle?-left him feeling strangely uncertain of his own position at the moment.
He looked around again at the empty condo. It had never exactly been cluttered with possessions, but even still, there was no way anyone could have removed everything he owned while he slept, no matter how long the pills and the alcohol had knocked him out. Even the wine bottle and the pills were missing, and the pale carpet showed no sign of a stain from the spilled red liquid. On the breakfast bar, he noticed a small pile of business cards that on closer viewing bore the names of a dozen or more realtors, no doubt left there as a courtesy by prospective buyers who had visited the place.
On the market for almost a month? he thought dazedly. Killed in a train crash three months ago?
He’d never been to Iowa, or Indiana-or for that matter, to any place that began with the letter “I.”
But he had visited his old hospital in the middle of the night, where he’d bullied a pharmacist on staff who was clearly behind on his hospital gossip and who still knew Dr. Oliver as someone who worked there and wasn’t to be bothered with foolish questions like “why do you want such a large dose of barbiturates?” And deep down, Reid knew that he’d taken more than a lethal dose of pills that same night, even without the dangerous mixture with alcohol, yet here he was, standing (albeit shakily) on two feet and feeling little worse than he felt whenever he’d had a bit too much wine with his dinner.
He ran a hand through his tousled hair and gave his companion a baffled frown. Just what the hell was going on?
=====
Reid pulled out the stopper and raised the bottle to his lips, savoring the taste of the expensive Merlot as it made its way down his esophagus.
Washing down the tiny white pills.
He reached for the pill bottle lying next to him on the couch, opened it, and shook a few more into his mouth.
“Any idiot with a mail-order medical degree could have stood by and allowed the patient to die naturally. I explained to the patient’s parents that the procedure was experimental, but that it was the only option that offered even a marginal chance of success-and they approved the surgery with full knowledge of the risks. The surgery was unsuccessful, but the patient would not be any less dead today if I had chosen to do nothing at all.”
Would it have made a difference, he wondered, if he’d told them all how haunted he’d been by his failure? If he’d described how many sleepless nights he’d spent poring over the surgical videotapes and the thick files of test results and MRI scans, raging at himself for his imperfection and struggling to understand what went wrong-how a seemingly successful surgery could take such a terrible turn for the worse, and what he could have done differently to spare that young life from so abrupt and so untimely an ending?
But it was too late for second-guessing now.
He drank again, coughing some as the pills stuck for a moment in his throat. Phenobarbital, the anti-anxiety prescription pill du jour, casually abused all over the world by bored housewives and trust fund brats and over-indulgent Hollywood stars. In larger doses, the drug of choice for physician-assisted suicide.
He laughed at the irony.
Was it physician-assisted suicide when the physician was only assisting himself?
Was it physician-assisted when the physician was no longer a physician?
“In view of the defendant’s demonstrated history of applying untested and experimental procedures in the operating room, and the reckless indifference he has demonstrated for the safety and well-being of his patients, as a direct result of which at least one patient has expired while under his care, it is the decision of this board that the defendant, Reid Douglas Oliver, is unfit to practice medicine in the state of Texas and that his license is hereby revoked this 25th day of February, 2010.”
The slam of the gavel still rang in Reid’s ears, different and yet so much alike the whine of a heart monitor gone still, signaling the death of his medical career. In the long months that followed, he’d spent every cent of his savings on expert witnesses and trial costs, sold his beloved Porsche and mortgaged his Dallas condo to the hilt to cover his skyrocketing attorneys’ fees, called in every favor he’d earned from every patient or doctor he’d ever assisted-but all his struggles had accomplished nothing. His appeals had been rejected by every administrative judge and trial court in the state; the Licensing Board had done too thorough a job of documenting every minor infraction or procedural hiccup he had made in his career and twisting it to paint a picture of him, the brilliant Dr. Reid Oliver, as an irresponsible and dangerous fraud.
Now not only was he unemployed and a pariah in the medical community, he was about to be homeless too.
“I know I haven’t paid your last bill, but can’t you do anything to stop the foreclosure? I’m never going to be able to pay you if I lose the only thing I have left of value in this world…. You know, if you were half as good a lawyer as you said you were, you’d have got me my license back by n… Hello? Hello?!”
The pills were going down easier now, his head swimming from the mixture of barbiturates and alcohol. The bottle slipped from his glass and fell to the floor, dark liquid soaking into the plush carpet. Reid turned to stretch his legs out on the couch, laying his head against the arm and folding his hands over his chest in a suitable position for his final repose.
Let those vultures at the bank figure out what to do with the late, great Dr. Reid Oliver.
====
“Hey! Hey, you! Wake up! I got an open house starting in twenty minutes here, and the absolute last thing I need is my buyers finding some drunk-ass squatter in the unit. Wake UP!”
A finger poked at his shoulder and Reid moaned, opening his eyes briefly before bright light from the open windows sent pain stabbing through his head. “Go ‘way,” he mumbled, swatting limply at the plump, rather obnoxiously shiny-faced woman crouched over him on the floor.
Floor?
Reid opened his eyes again, carefully this time, and found that he was stretched out on the thick carpet of his living room floor. Or at least, he corrected himself, a room that-that certainly looked like his living room, at least in shape and size-except that every possession he owned, every stick of furniture or personal item that had once made his condo a bit like a home, had somehow disappeared. The room was completely and cavernously bare.
“What the hell?” Reid said, sitting up and glaring at the woman as belligerently as he could manage through his roaring headache. “Did you seriously take my couch out from under me? I thought you people would give me at least a day to move out before swarming in to pick over the remains.”
The woman gave a rude snort and stood up, straightening the ruffled tie on her silk blouse. “Darlin’, I’m sure you’re new to the squatting business and all, but you’ll have to work much harder than that if you want to put one over on me. This place has been on the market for almost a month now, and the previous owner is deceased, so there’s no way you actually live here.”
Reid Oliver pushed himself to his feet, all the long months of misery, fear, and helplessness at his situation working him up into a state of absolute rage. He had thought last night would put an end to the incompetence and indifference and even outright malice that had combined to destroy his life, but somehow all he’d managed was a brief rest before waking up to find yet another calamity around him. He took a deep breath and prepared to tear a new strip from the ample hide of his unsuspecting target.
“Listen, you brainless windbag, I am Doct… I am Reid Oliver, and this condo…”
“Reid Oliver,” the woman cut in, clearly not impressed with his furious demeanor, “died in a train crash three months ago, somewhere in Buttcrack, Iowa… or… or Indiana, or some such. His next of kin-Angus Oliver-inherited this place and he’s commissioned me to sell it. Which I aim to do, if you’ll just get your tight little buns on outta here and find someone else’s stoop to perch on.”
Reid studied the woman for a long moment. He wanted to argue the point, wanted to call her every synonym for “crazy” he knew in every one of the six languages he spoke… but the certainty in her eyes and her casual knowledge of detail-how did she know about his uncle?-left him feeling strangely uncertain of his own position at the moment.
He looked around again at the empty condo. It had never exactly been cluttered with possessions, but even still, there was no way anyone could have removed everything he owned while he slept, no matter how long the pills and the alcohol had knocked him out. Even the wine bottle and the pills were missing, and the pale carpet showed no sign of a stain from the spilled red liquid. On the breakfast bar, he noticed a small pile of business cards that on closer viewing bore the names of a dozen or more realtors, no doubt left there as a courtesy by prospective buyers who had visited the place.
On the market for almost a month? he thought dazedly. Killed in a train crash three months ago?
He’d never been to Iowa, or Indiana-or for that matter, to any place that began with the letter “I.”
But he had visited his old hospital in the middle of the night, where he’d bullied a pharmacist on staff who was clearly behind on his hospital gossip and who still knew Dr. Oliver as someone who worked there and wasn’t to be bothered with foolish questions like “why do you want such a large dose of barbiturates?” And deep down, Reid knew that he’d taken more than a lethal dose of pills that same night, even without the dangerous mixture with alcohol, yet here he was, standing (albeit shakily) on two feet and feeling little worse than he felt whenever he’d had a bit too much wine with his dinner.
He ran a hand through his tousled hair and gave his companion a baffled frown. Just what the hell was going on?
=====