“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 prescribe it.”
“Western medicine works,” the director said.
“Not for everybody.” With a heavy heart, she turned and headed for the door. “You’ll have my resignation in an hour.”
2
Two years later
ROGER MARTELL stared at his doctor and tried reaching for humor. “That’s it? That’s why you dragged me in here? Geez, I thought I was dying!”
His doctor sighed. “Hypertension is a big deal. And if you don’t get it under control you will die.”
Roger flinched, a little frightened by the man’s flat, absolute tone. Sadly, he wasn’t surprised by the diagnosis. After all, he’d been fighting high blood pressure forever. His uncle and grandfather had both died from heart attacks before their fiftieth birthdays. And Roger was well on the early coronary track. But advances in medicine happened every day, right? He wasn’t desperate yet.
“Okay,” he said. “So this special new drug trial didn’t work.”
“Your pressure is higher than ever, Roger.”
“I know, I know,” he groused. This was his first drug trial, but his thirteenth medication. No matter what he did, his blood pressure kept going up and up. “There’s got to be another drug trial. Something really experimental? Seriously, Doc—”
“Seriously, you’ve got to stop relying on drugs and make some life changes. You’re three breaths away from a stroke, and before you ask…” He started flipping through Roger’s chart. “You’ve tried every medication possible, and some that I think were positively ludicrous. Looks like I’m your third doctor…”
“Fourth if you count the drug-trial people.”
His doctor sighed. “Look, I can’t even clear you to fly as a passenger in an airplane.”
Roger waved that away. “They never check that anyway.”
“Not the point.”
Roger closed his eyes and tried to remain calm. Sadly, the sight that came to his mind’s eye was his father in a treatment facility after his stroke. He hadn’t died like Roger’s uncle and grandfather, but he had lost the use of a third of his body. Roger tried to force away the panic that skated through his system. “I feel fine,” he said firmly.
“Do I need to outline all the reasons high blood pressure is called the silent killer?”
No, he didn’t need to hear that lecture again. “Okay, so what are my options?”
“Tell me about your exercise and diet.”
He knew this drill backward and forward, but he dutifully went through the litany. “I swim a mile and a half most mornings, I don’t eat red meat too often, and I know moldy bread does not count as a vegetable. Or olives in martinis.”
“Tell me about your job.”
Roger barely restrained his groan. “I love my job. I’m the CFO at a robotics firm owned by my best friend. He’s the brilliant inventor, I’m the business guy. I make sure his ideas get to market—”
“You do everything, run everything, worry about everything and the stress is killing you.”
“I’m not under pressure like those guys,” he said firmly. “They’re the geniuses who have to perform miracles every day.”
His doctor leaned back in his chair. “So you’re surrounded by geniuses under stress. No pressure there. No trying to keep up with their brilliant minds, no struggling against the melt-down of the day, no agony of trying to herd a zillion übersmart cats.”
Roger shut his mouth, fighting to keep his expression neutral. Yeah, he often felt like he was the only sane one in a freak show. Other times, he was just the dumb one in charge. His IQ was high, just not stratospheric high. Which at RFE meant he was a moron. “But I love my job,” he repeated.
The doctor sighed. “What about meditation? Yoga? There are some interesting guided prayers…”
Roger rolled his eyes. He couldn’t help himself. So his doctor switched tracks.
“Look, you’ve run out of medical options. Do you understand?
