Deadly Bargain

Peter Budetti

Description

Dr. Matthew McDonald's surgical patients are dying. Why don't their autopsies reveal what killed them? Is Alexandra Parushnikova, the voluptuous detail rep for international drug and medical device company Marquis-Herrant, an agent for the Russian mob? Can Cybersleuth Will Manningham and the FBI save more people from dying?

Sujets

• Medical thriller
• Counterfeit medications
• Russian Mafia

Informations

• Publié par: Peter Budetti
• Date de parution: 26 janvier 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781732335721
• Langue: English

Extrait

Deadly Bargain

Peter Budetti


This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters in the novel, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. No one should take offense or be pleased at thinking they are characters in this book because any resemblance to persons living or deceased is entirely coincidental. Nothing in this book is intended to depict actual events or to alter the entirely fictional character of the work.
 
 
 
Copyright © 2018 by Peter Budetti
 
All rights reserved.
 
 
 
 
 
DEDICATION
To all the good physicians who believe that taking care of patients is what matters
 
 
 
 
Deadly Bargain
Chapter 1. Just a stomach ache
Chapter 2. Acute abdomen
Chapter 3. Cybersleuth
Chapter 4. Complications
Chapter 5. Not-for-Profit
Chapter 6. Bumped Down The Pecking Order
Chapter 7. Foreign Incursion
Chapter 8. Impotence
Chapter 9. Deepening Conundrums
Chapter 10. Bargaining Positions
Chapter 11. Our Patient
Chapter 12. The Hinkel Family
Chapter 13. Resting in Peace
Chapter 14. Interesting Figure
Chapter 15. Suburban Buses
Chapter 16. Jorge Opens Up
Chapter 17. Another Informal Chat
Chapter 18. The Human Factor
Chapter 19. Ties that Bind
Chapter 20. Sons and Brothers
Chapter 21. Fall and Rise of Stephanie Sorano
Chapter 22. Last Piece
Chapter 23. Engaging Counsel
Chapter 24. Jorge’s Liberation
Chapter 25. Sweat
Chapter 26. Executioner
Chapter 27. The Insider
Chapter 28. Thrown Under The Bus
Chapter 29. Molly Sweats Again
Chapter 30. Collecting Evidence
Chapter 31. Whistleblower
Chapter 32. Listening to Molly
Chapter 33. Awaiting Redemption
Chapter 34. Make Whole Relief
Chapter 35. Self-inflicted Wounds
 

Chapter 1.  Just a stomach ache
 
“ It’s answering ,” whispered Henry Hinkel to the curled-up form of his wife huddled under their bed covers. Hearing a reassuring click he blurted into the telephone, “Hello, hello, this is Henry Hinkel, it’s my wife, Eleanore. She needs…”
But the automated greeting choked off his plea, ignoring him with programmed indifference:
“ You have reached the offices of Doctors Marlburg and Jefferson. If this is an emergency, hang up immediately and dial 9-1-1. Again, if this is an emergency, hang up immediately and dial 9-1-1. If this is not an emergency, but you believe you are in need of urgent medical care, go to the emergency room at Northeast Suburban Hospital, or to any emergency room or urgent care center of your choosing. If you are not in immediate need of medical care and you are an established patient of Dr. Marlburg or Dr. Jefferson, please call back for an appointment during our office hours, Monday through Friday, 9AM until 4:30PM. If you are not an established patient of Dr. Marlburg or Dr. Jefferson, please note that the practice is accepting very few new patients, and you will need to discuss your request with the office manager during normal office hours. Once again, if this is an emergency, hang up immediately and dial 9-1-1.”
Henry shook with irritation but suffered through the entire monologue, anticipating an invitation to leave a message after a beep at the end, but heard only a final click, then a dial tone. He threw the telephone handset at its cradle, watching with perverse satisfaction as it bounced onto the bedroom floor.
“Sonofabitch!” he murmured through clenched teeth. “How long have we been seeing Marlburg? What the hell is this now?”
Eleanore stirred at the anger in his voice. “Henry,” she said, struggling for the strength to lift her head and speak, “what’s wrong? What…what did they say? When will he see me?” The words came slowly, her voice deep and hoarse.
Distracted by the irritating shriek of the off-the-hook signal now blaring from the phone, Henry didn’t respond. He bent down, grabbed the handset, then set the phone it in its cradle to end the screeching. He felt trapped, desperate to get help for Eleanore but uncertain how to circumvent the blind loop of their doctor’s answering machine. His hands tightened into fists, digging the manicured nails at the end of his small, thick fingers into his soft palms. He could feel his teeth grinding, his normally pale cheeks glowing, his face tightening.
“I got the goddamn answering machine.”
“Oh…oh, I’m so…so sorry.”
Henry caught himself, realizing that his angry words had increased Eleanore’s distress. He strained to bring his voice under control, pursing his lips as he said, “Not you, Honey, I’m not mad at you, I’m the one who should be sorry. It’s the damn answering machine, just ‘Dial 9-1-1, or go to the ER’ The ER! We must have put two of his kids through Stanford with all the goddamn bills we’ve paid him over the years, and now we’re supposed to go to the damn ER? We’re his patients, he’s my client, they’re our friends, we play golf together – this is the way he treats us?”
Eleanore’s response came slowly through shallow breaths. “Please, Henry, don’t. It’s…it’s only a stomach ache, I’ll be OK.” But the agony in her voice belied her pained assurances.
Henry had just come home from work, never expecting to find his wife suffering in their bed at 6:15 in the evening. Still dressed in his usual dark wool business suit, the slender seventy year-old man looked around their spacious bedroom, a cavernous space with a light spruce cathedral ceiling that soared above them into what had once been the attic. Weekend mornings he and Eleanore would lie in their king-size bed and snuggle under the thick red floral duvet that was now a rumpled mass covering the lump of her body. On the wall above their heads was a memento of happier times, a poster-sized print of an endless field of bright red poppies she had photographed in the fields of Tuscany. Mutt-and-Jeff matching birch dressers stood off to one side, her long, low one with her dressing mirror facing them, his taller, slender one with six drawers standing silently nearby. The bedroom had her smell, a faint aroma of her skin creams and hairsprays, of the lavender perfume she always used.
Henry removed his suit coat and tie and draped them carefully on the valet stand next to his side of their bed. He dragged the upholstered bench from the foot of the bed up next to where Eleanore lay so he could sit as close as possible to her. Just then his eyes were drawn to the large mirror above her dresser. He shivered, feeling his heart skip several beats at the stark image in the reflection: a shriveled old woman enduring unthinkable misery. The woman he loved, the woman he had been with for more than half his life, lay on her left side in a fetal position, clutching an oversized pillow with both arms, her right knee all but drawn up to her chest. The silhouette of her face, barely visible above the top of the bedcovers, looked far older than her sixty-eight years, her eyes sunken into the creases of pale skin, her long auburn hair splayed in matted clumps across her head and onto the pillow. She lay so still that the reflection might have been a photo of a crime scene with a murder victim sprawled across a bed. The huge bedroom seemed to close in on him as he sat on the bench next to his pained wife.
“It isn’t OK, and you’re not OK.” Again he cringed at the harshness in his words and struggled to sound more like the way he felt – sympathetic, supportive, loving. Softening his voice he said, “You’ve had stomach aches plenty before, Honey, this is different. You don’t look good, you’re in real pain.”
“It might just be cramps. It…” Her attempt to speak was cut off by several short, reflexive gasps. “ Ah-ah-ah ,” she moaned as her right hand grasped her lower belly.
For much of the previous twenty years Henry might have given in to the urge to tease Eleanore that her long, slow menopause had put an end to her menstrual cramps, but not now, this was no time for humor. “It’s not cramps, not any cramps like you ever had, anyway. I think we should go to the ER.”
“No…please Henry, no. I don’t…want to move. I…”
Her words were cut short by a wave of nausea. Covering her mouth with one hand she gurgled, “ towel ….”
Henry jumped from the bench and hurried into their master bathroom, eyeing the royal blue towels and wash cloths neatly stacked on the stainless steel shelves. In his haste he grabbed a hand towel, not realizing until he had slipped it under her head that it was far too small to absorb a real blast of vomit. Her body wrenched into spasm but produced only a small puddle of drool and greenish puke that pooled harmlessly on the little cloth. He rushed back to the bathroom, threw the stained hand towel into the bathtub and snatched a handful of large bath towels and a stainless steel wastebasket. He returned to his wife’s side, set the trash can on the floor next to the bed and tossed the pile of clean towels nearby.
“Sweetheart, you really should get to a doctor. Northeast Suburban isn’t that far, we can get there in twenty minutes.”
“Please, no, no, Henry. Let me be, please.”
Henry was torn between aggravating his wife’s agony by forcing her to go the hospital or agreeing to wait out her misery to an uncertain end. Having watched her bear up through three deliveries, one time in labor for over twenty-four hours, he had admired her high tolerance for pain. And he could see that moving her would not be easy. Beyond the agony she would have to endure, he knew she would insist on being presentable before going out in public. No matter