Hiss of Death: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery by Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown Read Free Book Online

you worried. There is a peculiar small mass in the back of your right breast. Let’s look at it together, and I’ll tell you what I think and what comes next. Can you make it at ten?”
    “I can. Thanks for not being evasive.”
    “I know you too well. And no one wants a call like this. Is it cancerous? I don’t know. Come in tomorrow. Let’s talk. There is a test that I’ll recommend. You’ll have to think about it.”
    “See you at ten.” Harry hung up the phone and looked at her three friends. “Dammit to hell.”

D r. MacCormack’s office, along with many other physicians’, was located along the outer road belt of the new enormous Central Virginia Hospital.
    The old hospital, the main brick building constructed in 1930, could no longer meet the demands of a wealthy county. Like the other doctors who had worked at the old hospital, Dr. MacCormack rejoiced in the new one.
    Two years ago, Central Virginia Medical Complex, west of Charlottesville, opened to great fanfare. The cost of the hospital, outbuildings, and equipment staggered the imagination and probably exceeded the gross national product of Namibia.
    Flanked by Regina and Jerome Neff, as well as the hospital administrator and the county commissioners, Dr. Isadore Wineberg, sixty-one, had cut the ribbon.
    The old-timers wondered what those who practiced at the old hospital and who had since passed away would make of the building, with its gleaming wings radiating off the main hub. In particular, Izzy and Regina thought of Larry Johnson, a general practitioner who often took vegetables and even chickens in payment for his services. It was a sure bet the doctors at Central Virginia Hospital would take no chickens. They were a different breed from Larry Johnson, a different breed from Izzy and Regina, too.
    The new generation, in thrall to technology, forgot to study the patient as an entire organism. The focus was on scans, blood tests, numbers, numbers, numbers. The flaw in this overreliance on technology was an underreliance on common sense. This misstep was most apparent in the dispensing of drugs, the ordering of batteries of unnecessary tests. The unnecessary tests covered the physician’s ass from lawsuits, mostly. Meanwhile, the bills spiraled ever upward, and if the patient wasn’t horribly sick before treatment, the depletion of funds contributed to malaise afterward.
    Rehabilitation also underlined the difference between older and younger doctors. How did the patient live? Was he or she a horseman? Not an idle question in central Virginia, for horsemen are stoics. They might hurt like hell, but they won’t tell you. And if you don’t pay attention to them, they will launch into rehabilitation in ways the young doctor never imagined. Horsemen with kidney transplants would climb up on a horse’s back three weeks after surgery. A person leading a sedentary life in front of a computer would be walking and little more at three weeks.
    This blindness to the total person drove Izzy, Regina, and the younger Jerome nuts. The older doctors took those with brilliance and common sense, like Jennifer Potter, a young surgeon, under their wings. Cory Schaeffer they left alone. To his credit, he was usually surrounded by athletes in his off-hours, kept himself in shape, and seemed to recognize another athlete when he saw one, even if it was on the operating table. But his arrogance ensured that the old guard would never invite him to learn the nuances—not just of medicine but of Virginia. They’d sit back and watch him make those mistakes that can be costly—if not in medical terms, then in social.
    After the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Izzy and Regina repaired for a drink.
    “I’m glad I’ll be retiring soon,” Izzy said as he reached for his second Scotch and soda.
    “If only we could just practice medicine,” Regina wistfully said.
    “Those days are gone, Regina, gone forever.”
    “Well, I’ll do the best I can.”
    And she did.
    Central