Chapter 4 - THE PROJECT EVERYONE WAS CELEBRATING
The transplant initiative had been Marcus’s career-defining project.
International specialists.
Donor networks.
Experimental protocols.
Televised success stories.
For months, he spoke about nothing else.
He told me publication in a major journal could make him department chair before fifty.
I had been proud.
Painfully proud.
Now I looked at the project through different eyes.
As an auditor.
Five transplant patients.
Serious infections.
Marcus accessing their records.
An experimental drug mistakenly ordered for me.
A reduced antibiotic dosage on my chart.
Was I connected?
Or was I looking for patterns because my marriage had collapsed?
That question mattered.
Bias destroys audits.
So I built a timeline with no conclusions.
Patient A.
Patient B.
Patient C.
Patient D.
Patient E.
Me.
I listed dates of infection, medication changes, physician accesses, research events, and internal incident numbers available through my lawful quality role.
Something appeared within an hour.
Each transplant patient experienced an infection after a particular dosage adjustment.
Each adjustment had been entered by a research coordinator.
Not Marcus.
Coordinator name:
Dr. Elena Walsh.
I knew Elena.
Everyone did.
Thirty-six.
Brilliant.
Director of clinical research for the transplant initiative.
And Marcus’s constant collaborator.
I remembered seeing her beside him during the televised award ceremony.
She had thanked “the extraordinary doctors who sacrificed their personal lives for medicine.”
At the time, I thought nothing of it.
Now I checked the gala registry.
Marcus attended.
Elena attended.
The conference dinner.
Both.
The award banquet.
Both.
That didn’t prove anything personal.
I refused to make that leap.
Then Denise called.
“Clara, do you know Dr. Elena Walsh personally?”
“No.”
“Has she ever treated you?”
“No.”
“Consulted?”
“No.”
Denise went silent.
“What?”
“Elena accessed your chart fourteen times.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
Marcus: twenty-seven.
Elena: fourteen.
No legitimate treatment role for either of them.
“Why?”
“We’re investigating.”
Then she asked:
“Did you ever authorize your records to be reviewed for research eligibility?”
“No.”
The transplant project had a secondary research arm analyzing infection patterns in immunocompromised patients.
My ruptured appendix case should have been irrelevant.
Yet my records appeared to have been flagged.
Denise told me not to assume intentional misconduct.
I agreed.
Then I opened the access details.
Elena had viewed my chart for the first time three hours after I was admitted.
Long before anyone knew how severe my infection would become.
And one of her accesses occurred at 11:03 p.m. on the night Marcus told my mother he was unable to leave quarantine.
Hospital badge logs showed something else.
At 11:16 p.m., Marcus and Elena both exited the transplant unit.
They returned at 1:07 a.m.
Together.
The quarantine protocol allowed emergency dispensation.
May you like
Marcus had never requested one to see me.
But apparently, he had left the unit anyway.
