She was still absorbed in those gloomy thoughts when she stepped through the door and was ambushed by Dr. Jack Ross, her best friend and an extremely talented neurologist. He matched steps with her and was obviously bursting with news.
“Guess who’s just killed his last patient,” he said as they stepped into the empty elevator.
“Oh, God,” she gasped. “Not another!” They were in a hospital, and people died in hospitals. But lately, the mortality rate at Mandolin was unusually high. It happened sometimes, but it never failed to raise alarms among the people in charge. Who then went crusading around desperately looking for an answer. Or a scapegoat.
“Yup. But this time the family’s lodged a complaint and it’s been backed up by a fellow doctor.”
The elevator doors open, and before Amber could move to her office, Jack gripped her arm and steered her to a doctor’s lounge. It was thankfully empty at the moment, but that wouldn’t last. Before long, practically the whole staff would wander through looking for more gossip to dish. Amber asked the first question on her mind.
“Who died?” Was it someone she knew?
Jack shrugged. “Some woman. Mother of four. Eldest is a lawyer and making all sorts of noise.”
“A name, please.”
He responded with the diagnosis. “Uterine cancer but she died of a heart attack. Why aren’t you asking whose patient she was?”
Because she knew. There was only one doctor that Jack desperately wanted gone. The same doctor who was a pain in Amber’s backside. Dr. Bob Brickers.
“Keep your voice down,” she whispered as she leaned forward. “What happened? Exactly.”
“Remember how Bob took that long vacation last month? Well, he pushed up this woman’s radiation treatment before she was ready. He wanted to get things going before he left. Anyway, she was too weak to do radiation, so bam, last night she has a heart attack and dies.”
Amber felt her mouth go slack. Bob couldn’t be that irresponsible. Sure, everyone jostled their schedules when they wanted to take a vacation, but to endanger a patient like that? Especially one who…
Her eyes widened and her breath got short. “Wait a moment,” she breathed. “Who was the patient? What was her name?”
Jack straightened, alarm growing on his face as he realized something was up. “I don’t remember. Vera someone, I think.”
“Vera Barker?”
“I don’t know.”
But Amber did. It all made sense in the most horrible way. She closed her eyes, fighting the tears. To think that Vera was gone. That she would never trade vegetarian recipes with her again. That no one would ever hear her weird horsey laugh again. That her grandchildren would never know how absolutely special she was. The very idea made her heart break. “Not Vera,” she whispered. “Oh, God, not Vera.”
Two hours later, she was having the exact same discussion in the director’s office. Dr. Brickers was there, his face hot and his expression furious. And he was pointing a finger at her.
“Did you or did you not see my patient behind my back?” demanded Dr. Brickers.
Amber sighed and addressed her words to the director. “Vera came to me. She was incredibly weak from the chemotherapy and she had heard about some herbal teas.”
“You did!” Brickers all but screamed. “You gave her some holistic crap behind my back, and now she’s dead.”
Amber didn’t bother looking at her boss. Instead, she spoke as calmly and clearly as possible. “My treatments were working, sir. She was getting stronger. But she wasn’t ready for radiation yet. Dr. Brickers pushed up her radiation just so he could go on vacation.”
“That’s not true!” bellowed her boss. But he shut his mouth when the director held up his hand.
“That’s not relevant, Amber,” said the head of the hospital. “Did you or did you not see Dr. Brickers’s patient?”
Amber sighed but stayed with the truth. “I did.”
“And you prescribed some herbal tea?”
“And certain energy treatments, yes. And they were working!”
The director just shook his head. “You know that’s against hospital policy. You can’t see someone else’s patient behind his back. You can’t prescribe non-traditional treatments. My God, Amber, what were you thinking?”
Amber threw up her hands. “That it was working!”
“Except that she’s dead,” inserted Dr. Brickers.
“Because you pushed up her radiation before she was ready.”
The director sighed. “You can’t have it both ways, Amber. Either she was stronger or she wasn’t.”
“Sir!”
“I’m afraid my hands are tied, Amber. You broke hospital policy, you deliberately went behind your boss’s back and now a patient is dead.”
Amber took a deep breath, struggling to keep her temper in check. “You’re right, sir. I should have told Dr. Brickers that Vera contacted me. I’m sorry and it will never happen again. But you can’t blame the treatment for—”
The director held up his hand. “Who administered this so-called energy treatment?”
“I did, sir. It’s very safe. It works with the body’s qi energy—”
“Is it approved by the American Medical Association as an appropriate treatment for cancer?”
Amber grimaced. “You know it’s not.”
“Then I’ll have to ask for your resignation.”
Amber’s eyes widened in shock even though she’d known this was a possibility. “You’re firing me? Even if the treatment worked? Even if the patient got stronger and healthier because of it?”
The director just shook his head. “We can’t have doctors practicing non-traditional medicine here at Mandolin. It’s just not the way we do things.”
“Even if it works?”
“Even if. The liability is too high.” Then he leaned forward, his expression almost pleading. “Look, I know we’re all under a lot of pressure. We’re a high-profile hospital and our patients must get better.”
“That’s what I was trying to do,” she said.
“But not the right way, Amber. Still, if you’ll promise to stop with all this qi nonsense then I’ll soften this to an official reprimand. You’re a great doctor, Amber. It would be a shame to lose you.”
“The qi nonsense works, sir. I’ve done a lot of research on my own, but real statistics would be incredibly valuable. Let me do a study—”
Beside her, Dr. Brickers snorted his derision. “Oh, my God, how can you be so idiotic?”
The director also wasn’t swayed. “Stick to Western medicine, Amber, and don’t talk about Eastern voodoo.”
There it was plain as day. If she wanted to work as a doctor, she had to close her eyes to energy healing. She had to pretend that drugs were the only way to treat an illness. That nothing outside of traditional Western medicine had any value at all. She couldn’t do that. She just couldn’t.
“I can’t willingly put blinders on. I’m a healer, sir. From the core of my being, I work to heal people. So if a treatment works, I’ll