Miracle Cure

Miracle Cure by Michael Palmer Read Free Book Online

Book: Miracle Cure by Michael Palmer Read Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Palmer
case when she’s presented at Grand Rounds.”
    “Of course.”
    “And if there’s ever anything I can do, please feel free to ask.”
    Pickard turned to leave, then turned back when Briansaid, “As a matter of fact, there is. I’ve been told that Dr. Jessup is the director of the Vasclear study.”
    “Correct.”
    “I wonder if you could prevail on her to take my father on as her patient.”
    “I believe I can do that. Carolyn is at home right now. I spoke to her not an hour ago. But I must caution you that I have no influence whatsoever as to who gets put in the Vasclear program and who doesn’t. That’s strictly up to Dr. Weber and Dr. Jessup.”
    “I understand.”
    “Very well, then,” Pickard said. “I’ll give Carolyn a call as soon as I’ve seen this patient of yours.”
    Again he turned to leave. Again he turned back when Brian spoke.
    “Dr. Pickard, there is one more thing,” Brian heard himself saying.
    “Yes?”
    “If it’s at all possible, I really need a job.”

 
CHAPTER FOUR
    T HE GLEAMING, STATE-OF-THE-ART CARDIAC CATHETERIZATION laboratory of the Boston Heart Institute was located on the basement level. Brian walked alongside his father’s gurney as Jack was wheeled through the corridors of White Memorial and over to Boston Heart.
    Two days had passed since Jack’s small coronary, and as his new doctor, Carolyn Jessup, had predicted, he had encountered no complications. Now it was time to take a look at the status of his coronary arteries and to make some decisions about his future treatment. The one treatment option that would not be available to them was Vasclear. Through Ernest Pickard’s intervention, Jessup had agreed to take Jack on as a patient. But the protocol for the Vasclear study, which was being followed to the letter, specifically excluded patients with a history of bypass surgery.
    “Five to two says she kills me down there,” Jack said.
    Jack groused constantly about having the catheterization, but Jessup had met surprisingly little resistance in talking him into it. It seemed to Brian that the coach might be developing something of a crush on his elegant physician. The notion made him smile.
    “Nonsense,” Brian replied. “She’s the best there is at this.”
    “I thought
you
were the best there is.”
    “That doesn’t count.”
    Although the prospect of getting Jack treated with Vasclear seemed dim at the moment, Brian’s chances for a job at BHI were getting a bit brighter. Yesterday, between his shifts at Speedy and Aphrodite, he had gone up to Ernest Pickard’s fifth-floor corner office, overlooking the Charles, and had spent nearly half an hour with the BHI chief, talking about his life, his addiction, and his recovery. In the end, Pickard gave no indication of what he was thinking, but later that evening Brian had found a message on his answering machine from his former partner Gary Gold, saying that Pickard had called to get Gary’s opinion of him.
    The man from transportation wheeled Jack to the holding area. Brian, invited to observe by Jessup, went to the carpeted locker room, changed into scrubs, and then entered the lab. Of the many areas of cardiology, he had always enjoyed catheterizations the most. There was an energy and tension in performing the procedure he had always found akin to what he used to feel playing quarterback. There was the need for steady hands and a delicate touch, plus the ability to transpose the two dimensions seen on a TV monitor into the three dimensions of a patient’s heart. And of course, there was the ever-looming specter of a cardiac crisis.
    Now, alone in the lab, he mentally walked himself through the cath that Carolyn Jessup would be performingon his father. The first step would involve local anesthesia to Jack’s right groin and the “blind” insertion through the skin of two long, thin, hollow catheters—one into his femoral vein, then up the vena cava, and into the right atrium and ventricle of the

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