“I know I should have planned this earlier. But perhaps I still have time to leave before they pull my license… With the thorough background checks of doctors everywhere these days, I’ll never be able to reciprocate my license anywhere once they take it in my state. And they are chasing me for just disliked reports! With my type of specialty, always seeing complex cases with tricky, even contentious assessments, many, unhappy parents of disturbed kids, I should have seen this coming long ago…”
“Yeah, you really should have. Perhaps you should have even de-specialized yourself and become a G.P. like me.”
“Or perhaps at least I should have been in a large group, like yours; or best, joined the teaching staff of an academic institution with other neurologists, as I did for a year down in the big City right after I finished my fellowship… I was then well placed and reasonably paid, but I was bored with the bureaucracy of the University policies, the often unneeded consultation requests I had on daily basis on in-patients. And with my teaching duties of residents and students I was constantly in meetings and evaluating trainees; plus we had frequent internal squabbles among the staff…”
“Fortunately I am all done with all that myself here in the country, away from academia -though we get every so often rotating students from Bostin- and we are almost away too from lawyers, thank god!” said Cynthia.
“After a year in the big city, I was lured to come Upstate by a former senior colleague and mentor. Receptive to the idea, I left the City… but opened a ‘solo’ practice in the outskirts of Buffarin. He got me in the associate clinical staff with admitting privileges to the University Hospital. At least my practice became more interesting and challenging even if over time it has proven more dangerous and it may be leading me to the destruction of my career and professional life.”
“The same here in Mass; or in Florida, or elsewhere. The wolves of your Health Department’s OPC are the same bad wolves and predators everywhere and they constantly look out for easy victims, especially for solo practitioners like you. And doctors are the worse critics and enemies of doctors… and worst when they are with lawyers. And when you move, don’t ever go alone again, wherever you go!”
“I hope I am not too late to escape. I have two close friends, an orthopedic woman and her husband, a State Supreme Court judge and both are giving me advice about how to extricate myself from my current mess before the State’s OPC closes in on me. They probably have already a noose ready to strangle me…”
On the second day, in the greater Bostin, she had an interview with the woman recruiting officer of the large hospital containing several multi-specialty groups that had sent her the invitation to come and take a look. The position was still open. The lady took Dr. Phillips for a walking tour of the place and then to lunch in their own restaurant of classy, rusty decor, of dark ambience, attached to the main wing. In the afternoon, Nora was scheduled for three appointments with colleagues of her own child neurology specialty and with the chief of Neurology. From all four she left with a positive impression, but did not know if they would offer her the empty position or not. She would hear from the recruiting officer within the next two weeks.
Done by five, she went to the Bostin center where she had a hotel reservation not far from the Quince Market. She still had time for a good, restful walk in the Commons area. While she saw her horizon re-opening, she still felt tense inside after a full day when she was constantly on the spot, on guard, constantly watching herself in her words, her attire, looks and general attractive appearance, in her posture, moves and etiquette dealing with all those men -inspecting, analyzing her- professionals, possible future companions. She still felt tense and nervous inside as she strolled at a fast pace from her Hotel all the way to the Ritz at the other end and back on Bington street by the place of the Marathon Bombing of September, 2012, and then on Termit St to her hotel. She would head home to Buffarin at day break.
When Nora got back to her office by noon of the 3rd day, she still had thirty-plus days before she had in court the re-scheduled Hearing to defend her Motion for the Injunction. Three days after her return from Bostin she would fly to Jasonville for a visit-with-job-interview towards a possible move to The Sunny State, as she had just done in Mass. She had already contacted by e-mail in that State the Board of Medicine in Tallseat, with just enough time to process the validation of her license in that state in case her things in Mass did not work out. The papers to apply for a license in the Sunny State were already on her desk.
She wanted to take care of this and get her Floridian license ASAP, even if she would not end up down there but still in the Northeast. Her friends had told her that she had approximately six months before she would have to appear in court to argue and defend her Motion. And if she ever had to appear in court for that, the judge in all likelihood would not be one as understanding as Kenneth Good…
For her quick trip South, flying, she took just two days off from her office and she was back at work on the third. Besides continuing to see patients, within two weeks of the new, already-delayed-once court day, she would have to come up with some other reasonable, believable excuse to delay it again hopefully for perhaps sixty more days. She probably would be allowed that second delay, but beyond that, as per her friends, the assigned judge to her Motion would not let her delay it again a third time…
6
The Case Of Dr. Anthony Lennox
Around the time when Judge Good had given his advice with judicial sense and experience to Dr. Nora Phillips to extricate herself from the State Health Department -by moving out of state before the axe fell on her neck- he, himself, began to handle another tricky case potentially contentious for his own position. It was spring.
His judicial duties were commonly tangled with medical professionals as were the many issues brought to his attention by his wife, a physician, and by his friend Dr. Phillips:
Judge Good’s new case indeed had to do also with medical issues: It was the case of another doctor, a family practitioner in his area, Dr. Anthony Lennox, already charged by a Grand Jury with 2nd degree murder for the death of his infant daughter, a 3 month old infant. Apparently the local D.A. who was taking care of the prosecution himself, had plenty of evidence, very graphic, colorful, bloody and goring photos of the dead child’s brain at autopsy and plenty of other doctors’ opinions, pediatricians from Buffarin General ER, all pointing to the poor Dr. Lennox as ‘a murderer.’
The injuries to the child’s head, with a large bleeding, an acute subdural hematoma on the surface of the brain under the skull and meninges, meant that someone, had hit her head in the middle of the night using a large force or throwing her against a hard object like the sink or the tub. The explanations Dr. Lennox, her father, gave to the hospital doctors did not add up; there was no way that the child having ‘slipped off his hands’ when he was cleaning her diarrhea in the middle of the night, could have caused the massive bleeding and brain herniation that killed her so fast.
“She would have had to be dropped from a 3rd story window to suffer such an injury to her brain,” the pediatrician-expert-in-child-abuse said. “He is lying!”
The grand jury had been shown the bloody photographs and easily charged him with 2nd degree murder. They couldn’t charge him with ‘First Degree’ as they did not have a motive, and apparently the couple, her parents, were not fighting. But of course in Grand Jury Hearings, only the state prosecutor, the DA, shows the jurors all the evidence he has and the defendant or his attorneys are not present… If there is then no admission of guilt by the defendant, then a trial is scheduled with all the evidence for both sides and witnesses and experts.
In this case, with so much evidence, and the ER doctors and one outside pediatrician,
