Informed Consent by Melissa F Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

dotted with cushioned seating arrangements. Not one of the chairs or gliders was occupied.
    They stopped in front of the leaded glass doors and smoothed their jackets and hair into place.
    “Ready?” Sasha asked, her finger hovering an inch away from the doorbell.
    “Let’s do it,” Naya answered.
    Before they’d finished announcing themselves to the receptionist, Athena Ray, the administrative director of Golden Village, materialized to whisk them along a gleaming hallway.
    “Please, sit.” She ushered them into her office and gestured toward an old-fashioned couch with scrolled legs, a curved back, and a tapestry-like pattern. “Can I offer you a drink? Tea? Water? Coffee?”
    “Nothing for me, thanks,” Sasha said as she lowered herself onto the couch and looked around the office. It was stuffed with antiques—gilded picture frames, blue-and-white ceramic vases, even a bronze statue of a boy and a horse in the corner behind the executive desk.
    “I’m fine, too,” Naya added.
    The director blinked at them from behind her oversized glasses and arranged herself in a Queen Anne chair across from the couch. “Well, do let me know if you change your mind,” she said with a wide smile.
    Sasha smiled back at her. “Thanks for agreeing to talk with us, Ms. Ray—”
    “Please, call me Athena. And it’s my pleasure. We take our guests’ concerns very seriously. So if there’s an issue with any of the research studies we participate in, I certainly want to know.”
    Naya cocked her head. “Your guests?”
    Athena nodded. “Yes, guests. The residents who live in the independent apartments are called, well, residents, but we refer to those who move into our assisted living and nursing care units as guests. Patients sounds so clinical and unpleasant. In any case, I understood from Ms. McCandless-Connelly that there’s some issue as to whether certain guests in our dementia care unit had consented to research that was performed on them posthumously. Do I have that right?”
    Sasha nodded. “You do. Although I believe the, uh, guests in question signed up to participate in Dr. Allstrom’s study when they were living independently—either as residents or possibly before they moved into the facility.”
    “Center,” the director corrected her.
    “Pardon?”
    “We don’t refer to Golden Village as a ‘facility.’ That sounds so cold, doesn’t it?”
    Sasha bit her tongue. She didn’t want to spend her entire morning playing semantic games with this woman, so she just nodded and ignored the quiet muttering of Naya beside her. “Center, then.”
    Athena beamed her approval as if she were an elementary school teacher and Sasha a diligent, if not very bright, student. “Very good. Now, did you say Dr. Allstrom’s running the study that Dr. Kayser is concerned about?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Well, I can assure you that Greta Allstrom is one of the most well-regarded genetic researchers in the city, perhaps the country. I’m certain that she wouldn’t allow anyone on her team to cut corners, particularly not with regard to consent procedures.” The woman’s matronly teacher persona evaporated and she transformed into the consummate bureaucrat. She pitched forward, leaning in toward the couch. “As you no doubt know, grant funding is tied to compliance with federal regulations. Dr. Allstrom would never do anything to jeopardize her funding.”
    Sasha felt her eyebrow arching toward her hairline and smoothed her expression. Interesting that the faux-personalized luxury resort schtick went out the window so quickly. Forget about any ethical responsibility to the guests , the researchers were worried about their funding.
    Beside her, Naya shifted on the couch, as if she, too, were uncomfortable with the woman’s sudden change in demeanor.
    Sasha held up a hand, palm facing the administrator. “Be that as it may, Athena, Dr. Kayser knows of at least four pat—er, guests—who enrolled in Dr.