NICK
BEFORE
It all goes wrong at the same time.
An official medical malpractice complaint from Melinda Grey arrives, delivered to me by a man who presses it into my hand and tells me I’ve been served. There’s no one around when he does it, and yet I imagine that everyone can see. I imagine that everyone knows, but in truth, only I know. My hands sweat, and my mouth turns to cotton as I take the complaint in my hands and, for whatever reason, thank the man for bringing it to me.
I squirrel myself away on a laptop in my office and get busy on the internet, researching the effects a malpractice suit has on doctors and dentists—financial and otherwise. They’re debilitating, though they don’t surprise me in the least bit because I’m already feeling every one of them. Practitioners who have been sued for malpractice have higher rates of suicide, as in my mind I think of ways to end my life. Dentists already have one of the highest rates of suicide of any profession, thanks to the self-sacrifice required and the extremely competitive nature of the job. I know; I’ve lived it firsthand. The easy access to drugs is also an advantage; sitting behind a locked storage cabinet in my office are all sorts of pharmaceuticals that could end my life if I so chose.
But a malpractice suit makes it even worse. Dental professionals lose happiness in a career they once loved, and depression ensues. Many leave the profession. For the rest, a rift forms between doctors and their patients, a wall of distrust. And then there is the financial impact, the loss of a reputation.
Soon, I think, this will be me. Depressed and suicidal, having lost enjoyment in a career I once loved.
I phone an attorney, and the discovery process begins, though we won’t go to court, the attorney tells me, because juries have been known to award upward of a million dollars for legitimate malpractice suits, whereas out-of-court settlements are usually less. I have malpractice insurance, which covers me up to a million dollars, though it doesn’t cover the cost of attorney fees, the loss of patients while I’m trying to save my reputation and practice. But whether or not to settle will be up to the insurance company to decide. If a jury awards Ms. Grey more than a million, or if the settlement demand exceeds that amount and I’m deemed to be at fault, the difference is mine to pay.
And then there’s the fact that my malpractice insurance rates will soar steadily, sky-high until I can no longer stay afloat. The fifteenth of the month draws near, meaning I owe the landlord rent. I still don’t have it, and I’m running out of time. I need to make quick decisions now, trying to turn an easy profit, and so I place the maximum I can on the Warriors in tonight’s NBA finals, though they’re in a do-or-die situation—down two games to one. I figure it’s fitting because I am, too.
More patients disappear, having caught wind of the referral giveaway across town, I tell myself, trying hard not to take it personally. It’s about the grill, not me. But maybe it is me.
Each day another poor rating appears online, and I try to convince myself that Melinda Grey and Connor are not in cahoots, putting their heads together to think of ways to ruin my life. I call Connor, once, twice, three times a week to try to talk this out, but he doesn’t answer his phone. The office ladies seem upset that the congenial Dr. C is gone. They don’t tell me directly, but I hear them talking about it when they think I’m not in the room. We never talk about the scene they observed in the hallway, me threatening to call the police on Connor if he didn’t leave. But we’re all still thinking about it, especially me. I hear them talking to clients on the phone. “No, I’m sorry,” they say to a patient who’s called to make an appointment. “Dr. Daubney is no longer with us. But I can schedule an appointment with Dr. Solberg, if you’d like,” and then inevitably the conversation drifts to quiet as the patient decides whether I’m good enough for them to see. Connor was always the more charming of us, the more witty and gregarious. The children loved him; he made dental exams fun. But not me. Sometimes these patients schedule an appointment with me, but other times I hear Nancy or Stacy explaining how they don’t know where Dr. C has gone or if, wherever he is, he’s taking new patients. There’s nothing in his contract that prevents him from usurping patients of mine, not that I could blame him if he tried.
At night, I find it harder and harder to sleep, my rest obstructed by the thoughts that fill my mind, that and Clara’s body pillow that lies between us like a third spouse. I end up spending half of my nights on the living room sofa or the floor. Halcion is my only saving grace, two pills before bedtime, swallowed secretly with a swig of water from the bathroom sink, to help cross that bridge to dreamland. I take the pills from work before I leave, not bothering to make a note on the inventory log. Since I’m the only one dispensing drugs these days, no one will know that it’s missing. It’s a lifesaver for many of my phobic patients, making them oblivious to what happens in the dental chair, and yet fairly alert by the time they go home, though someone else always has to drive them there. They’re never allowed to drive home alone.
The little pills sedate me deeply but only for a short time—creating an amnesiac effect, the hours between eleven and two lost to thin air—so that when I awaken in the middle of the night to Clara’s agonizing cries about another leg cramp, I easily come around to massage the pain away. And then, when the pain passes, I watch as she settles back in for sleep, my fingers tiptoeing down her back, slinking around her swollen midriff and along her inner thigh, in the hopes that she’ll turn to me, drawing my attention away from the thoughts of delinquent payments and professional misconduct that fill my mind. “I’m so tired,” she drones, slipping away from my advance, legs woven around the pillow instead of me. “Another time, Nick,” she purrs into the pillowcase, and like that, she’s asleep, breaths flattening, a restful snore.
And I’m left alone to think, swallowing two more pills so that I stop thinking.
One morning a few days later I receive a text from Clara while I’m at the office, hands buried deep inside a patient’s mouth. 2 cm dilated, 40% effaced, she says, and only then do I remember an appointment with the obstetrician. I told her I’d try to make it, but I didn’t make it.
You’re almost there, I type into the keypad after my appointment is through. Soon I will be a dad. Again. Though I’m debilitated by a sudden pang of guilt, seeing the world into which my baby will arrive, one that is clearly not up to snuff.
I don’t have much time left to get this right.
And then later in the afternoon my cell phone rings, and I answer the call, expecting Clara, but am surprised instead by the melodious voice on the other end of the line.
“Nick,” she says, “it’s me. Kat.” My heart rises and falls all at the same time. I had hoped I’d heard the last of Kat, and have the sudden sense of swimming upstream, of digging myself into a deeper and darker hole. It isn’t about Kat, but right now I don’t need any more complications in my life.
“Hi, Kat,” I say, and it’s then that her voice catches, and she says, “I need to see you, Nick,” and I know I’m in a jam here, having seen Kat two times now without ever telling Clara. I try to put it off, to tell her I’m swamped at work, that I don’t have the time. But Kat, oddly reminiscent of eighteen-year-old Kat, begins to cry.
“Please,” she begs over the phone. “Just for a few minutes, Nick. There was something I should have said the other day,” she says, her words hard to hear through the tears.
And so I say okay. I say it so that she’ll stop crying. I tell her that I can meet for one quick drink, but then I have to split. We make plans to meet at a little bar down the block after my last patient is through, and after I apply sealants to a seven-year-old’s teeth, I make haste and leave. I don’t want Clara sitting at home, wondering where I am. From the parking lot, I send a text to Clara that I’ll be home soon. Be there in an hour, I say, and scurry in to join Kat, wishing and hoping that I could wake up from this nightmare of mine, and that it would all be a dream. A bad dream, but still a dream. I wish that I could forget somehow—the sad state of my finances, the feud with Connor, the medical malpractice suit. I wish that I could get away from it for a while, that I could take a breather. Drown my sorrows in a bottle of booze or find something else to take my mind off of this shit storm that is now my life, if only for a while.
And that’s when I spot Kat sitting all alone in a corner booth, waiting for me.
She looks stunning as always, and for one split second she takes my breath away, there in the dim bar lights, wearing this gauzy pale pink dress that, in combination with the blond hair and fair skin, makes her look angelic. A tress of hair falls across a single eye, and she leaves it there, a lock of hair that is undeniably sexy and appealing.
My knees buckle for one quick moment, and just like that we’re eighteen years old again, wild and reckless, living only for the moment, not caring what tomorrow may bring.