The Side of the Angels (37 page)

Winslow had begun this practice a week before. He'd descend from his office periodically and attempt to make conversation for a few minutes with the picketing nurses, asking them how they and their families were doing, giving news bulletins about doings inside the hospital. The nurses met his overtures with stony silence. He'd give it the old college try, and retreat upstairs again.

I pitied Winslow. He had never wanted to draw lines in the sand or be portrayed on the evening news as the man who was snatching the Christmas toys out of the hands of Winsack's tots. He'd much rather be the guy who made the toast when the ribbon was cut on a new hospital wing, the guy who led the fund drive for the children's burn unit, the guy who had the considerate thought of taking all of his secretaries to the best restaurant in Providence on Secretaries Day. Given his true druthers, he'd probably have preferred that the strike end in victory for the nurses, so that more people would smile at him when he walked down the halls.

It was a cold day, so cold that despite my heavy cabled turtleneck, my thickest corduroys, two pairs of tights, and fleece-lined snow boots, I was beginning to be chilled, a deep chill that would still be lingering after hours inside. Soon I'd begin to shake all over with the cold, like a dog that's just been in the water. To think I'd ever complained about winters back in D.C.

“I can't believe this is our last time,” I said to Kate, as we approached the line.

“Will you and Tony stay in touch?”

“God knows.”

“You should.”

“You seem to forget he's Suzanne's property. They're very well suited. I'll watch their future progress with interest.”

Kate peered out at me from the enormous puffy hood of her down coat.

“Pride goeth before a fall.”

“Are you suggesting that I should be a credulous fool twice for that man?”

“Do you have anything better to do?”

I pushed her shoulder lightly, and she pushed mine. We were giddy with despair. Up on the line, anticipating Winslow's entrance on the scene, Lester had begun to sing the old Woody Guthrie tune “Union Maid,” and Kate joined in, in her croaky alto.

I loved “Union Maid.” I loved how the union maid in the song “never was afraid” of company bullies, how she'd give the men around her an example of courage, how she even stood up to the National Guard. No one messed with the Union Maid.

“You can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,” Kate sang, and then Margaret chimed in, and then a few of the others, including Louise who had been taught the song at my mother's knee. I was laughing, and jumping up and down a little to keep warm. None of us was paying much attention to anything but this few blessed seconds of clowning around.

What happened next appears in my memory as a frozen tableau, everyone moving with jerky precision, like those mechanized Christmas displays in department store windows depicting elves on the assembly line. It wasn't like that, of course. It was just a series of accidents.

The mill tower clock chimed three. Louise was handing out her last few cups of coffee. Bill, the hospital security guard, had arrived, accompanied by the guard dog Punch. It amused all of us that Winslow always demanded the presence of Bill and Punch when making his visits, as if he feared these mild-mannered nurses would rise up in a body and attack him. The dog Judy, as usual, was getting her toenails polished or something. She had the day off, at any rate.

Eric had been staying away from Punch, this extraordinary obedience the result of the one-day exile imposed by Kate and some solemn threats from Bill.

But today Bill, who had a soft spot for Louise, had half turned to take a cup of coffee from her hand. His moment of distraction was long enough for Eric to seize his chance. He approached Punch with one of the sticks of beef jerky he'd gotten at the drugstore. I saw him
poke the meat toward the dog, in a fruitless attempt to get Punch to jump for it. I saw Louise, a foot away with the tray of coffee, looking suddenly alarmed, and Bill catching her expression and glancing back.

Then I saw Winslow emerging from the lobby doors, stepping toward the circle of picketers on the icy sidewalk. I saw the beef jerky jab Punch in the eye as Eric's foot slipped a few inches on that sidewalk, saw the dog's growl and instant snap at Eric's jacket. Bill ran forward, but Louise beat him to it, dropping her tray and grabbing Punch's collar. She dragged the dog away from Eric, and then Bill took over, reassuring Punch with soft words and brisk pats. Punch, thank God, was unhurt. And I saw, as one of our nurses examined the cursed child, that the nip hadn't broken Eric's skin.

What I didn't see was the stringer from the
Providence Journal,
catching the whole thing on camera.

O
UR FAVORITE HEADLINE
by unanimous vote, and the one that Winslow threatened to sue over, was, “Hospital sets canine on striker's child.”

It was a slow news week. The picture made the front page,
over
the fold, of the
Eagle-Gazette
. It made the front page,
under
the fold, of the
Providence Journal
. It made the national sections of three of the major East Coast papers. The
Globe
used it to spearhead a series about the modern hospital in a new era of public scrutiny.

“This photo couldn't have been better if we'd staged it,” said Tony.

In the picture, you couldn't see that Eric had been teasing the dog; the beef jerky wasn't visible at all. All you could see was the dog lunging at the boy, the child's terrified face, the security guard immobile, and golden-haired Louise throwing herself between husky and child. And, best of all, in the background, Bennett Winslow smiling smugly. Winslow was smiling smugly only because that was his normal expression in preparing for public appearances. But, through the camera's magic, it looked as if Winslow were smiling in approval as a small child was attacked by one of the hospital's guard dogs.

Where we'd sat in gloomy conference the morning before Eric's bite, we sat two days afterward, gloating over the press cuttings we'd been able to get our hands on so far.

“It's Bill I feel sorry for,” said Margaret, ever-thoughtful.

“Don't worry about him,” said Kate. “Mike and I are going to find him something, maybe with one of the vets around here. We owe it to him.”

Bill had been amazingly discreet when asked by reporters if Winslow's story of Eric “provoking” the dog was true. He'd said that the incident was “regrettable,” implying that the hospital was guilty as sin of, at the very least, reckless endangerment. Clare, to her credit and our annoyance, tried to give the press the plain facts about Punch's lapse into ferocity, but the photo was so damning that her explanation had little weight. Especially since even the true version indicated that Eric, angel that he was, was trying to share his beef jerky, the precious snack of a hungry little striker boy, with the dog.

“What are the odds they're going to try to ride this out, though?” I said. “It's a minor scandal. It'll be forgotten next week.”

“It might be enough,” said Tony.

“We'll wait and see, anyway,” said Clare, who looked as if she'd gotten her first good night's sleep in three months.

The media fuss over the biting of Eric might have proved to be a flash in the pan. It might not have affected the final outcome of the strike if it hadn't happened that four days after the incident, the feds announced that they were launching a major investigation into alleged Medicare fraud at three of Coventry's largest facilities, including its flagship hospital in Orlando, Florida. Shocking stories surfaced. High-level Coventry players were implicated. The
Wall Street Journal
ran a sinister pen-and-ink sketch of the Coventry CEO. Suddenly, the guys in suits were too busy trying to avoid prison terms to care much about a dragging labor dispute at one of smaller hospitals in the Coventry chain.

The company had billed what appeared, from preliminary reports, to be hundreds of thousands of dollars in services to Medicare recipients, services that had not actually been provided. As unkindly as the federal government views that sort of thing, the public views it with even less tolerance. The outcry over Coventry's defrauding of the elderly was intense, sustained, and promised to go on as long as the investigation and ensuing trials (or, more likely, plea bargains) lasted. Most of the news stories on the fraud investigation also referred to the Punch incident, with the implication that Coventry engaged in a wholesale and coordinated effort to harm the widow and the orphan, so to speak. Less than a week after Eric's historic moment in the spotlight, we knew and they knew that it was over.

“Back to the bargaining table,” said Tony. “And this time they're going to deal.”

They didn't merely deal. They rolled over. Winslow tried to put a good face on it, telling the papers that he was pleased that nurses had “finally been willing to come to a rational agreement with the hospi-tal,” but every story that covered the strike settlement noted that the agreement reached was nearly identical to the proposal Clare had brought to the bargaining table more than a year ago. Under the new contract, St. Francis nurses could each be required to work up to three hours of overtime three times a quarter, but no nurse could be required to work more than forty hours of overtime per year. The contract further stipulated that
any
nurse could refuse an overtime request, at her own discretion, if she felt that fatigue or illness would prevent her from providing adequate care.

The hospital, eating large helpings of crow, also agreed to staffing minimums that were especially specific in regard to the intensive and constant care units. A committee with an equal membership of nurses and management—an unheard-of concession—was established to come up with staffing guidelines within three months. Thereafter, staffing violations would be enforceable under the contract, with a very small amount of wriggle room for the hospital in emergency situations such as snowstorms.

The nurses also won a 3 percent raise, an increase in their dental and family coverage, and the usual “no retaliation” clause that would guarantee that the hospital would attempt no reprisals against any striking nurse.

We weren't worried about Winslow holding a grudge or permitting recriminations against our nurses by other managers. He seemed only too happy to be back in his role of genial patriarch. At the contract signing, he told Clare that she looked more lovely than ever, despite the strain of the past weeks. And Eileen informed Kate that Winslow had been stopping by the ICU every day or so, making what Eileen called “remorse visits.” When she was well enough, Eileen made a habit of beating him at gin rummy.

Eric was made much of by everyone at strike headquarters. We knew what we owed him. If we'd walked back in on the day Clare had earmarked for her deadline, chances are we'd have had a tentative agreement all mapped out, with a hundred concessions, before everything came out about the Medicare fraud. Eric bought us crucial time.

“He'll be
doing
time one of these days, if he keeps up the way he is,” said Louise. Even for her, Eric was a bit much to take, though she was glad she'd saved him from being chomped by Punch.

I knew it was time to call Jeremy. In the back of my mind, I'd been keeping him in reserve, but now this tactic seemed selfish and stingy. I couldn't recall my old, effort-ridden love for Jeremy. It's tempting fate to try to hedge your bets; as some Chinese philosopher Louise liked to quote at me said, “Leap, and the net shall appear.”

But when I heard Jeremy's voice, his low, lovely, caressing voice with its beautiful diction, its knee-weakening, murmured
a
's, I almost lost my resolve. His voice brought back unwelcome memories of desire, of that dark and riveting place we went to when his skin touched mine.

“I thought you might call,” Jeremy said. “I read about the strike's ending. Well done.”

He had never praised my work when we'd been together. The thread of hope in his voice made me feel like a cruel tease.

“It's no use, Jeremy,” I said without preamble. “We can't fix it. My heart's not in it.”

There was a long pause. I could hear him breathing, could picture him leaning against the sill of his dining room window, one leg up on a chair. I could picture his green eyes clouding gray as they did when he grew sad or angry. I would miss those changeable eyes.

“I can't believe that,” he said. “You're too tired to think clearly.”

“It's not a matter of thinking. Please, Jeremy. No more.”

His morose acceptance seeped like steam out of the receiver. I waited through the silence, feeling squirmy with guilt.

“I certainly have no one to blame but myself.”

“Jeremy, it's not that. Really, it isn't. Forgive me for putting it this
way, but I'm not maternal enough for you. What you need is some woman with backbone who will push you around and support your career untiringly. And I don't have that kind of drive. I'm not saying I was thrilled about it, but maybe Virginia happened because deep at heart, you needed someone entirely different from me.”

He said some line in French about the heart having reasons of its own, but since it always annoys me to hear English people speaking French with their blatant, the-sun-never-sets-on-the-British-Empire disregard for rules of French pronunciation, I didn't pay any attention.

“There's no question,” I said, though I didn't believe it, “that we were both at fault.”

“If you insist on being generous. Still, I don't come off as a very admirable figure in all this.”

Seeing him at a distance, I knew I was right about the kind of woman who would make him happy. Jeremy, like many beautiful and weak-willed men, didn't need a lover enthralled with his beauty and entranced with his melancholy. He needed a woman who'd take charge. A bossy, vital, confident woman who'd brook no nonsense, who'd protect him from his own vacillations, and steer him to the safety and security in which his easily jarred scholarly genius could shine.