"You generated your own negative publicity, Dr. Stanwick."
Angrily, he turned his head away, and Tiel realized she had struck a chord.
Dr. Bradley Stanwick had been an oncologist of renown, practicing in one of the most progressive cancer-treatment centers in the world. Patients came from all over the globe, usually in a last-hope attempt to save themselves from dying. His clinic couldn't save them all, of course, but it had maintained an excellent track record of staving off the ravages of the disease and prolonging life, while also providing the patient a quality of life that made living longer worthwhile.
That's why it was such a cruel irony when Bradley Stan-wick's young, beautiful, vivacious wife was stricken with inoperable pancreatic cancer.
Neither he nor his brilliant colleagues could retard its rapid spread. Within weeks of her diagnosis, she was confined to bed. She opted for aggressive chemotherapy and radiation, but the side effects were almost as lethal as the disease the treatments were intended to combat. Her immune system weakened; she developed pneumonia. One by one her systems began to falter, then fail.
Not wishing her senses to be dulled by pain-relieving drugs, she declined them. However, during the last few days of her life, her suffering became so intense that she finally consented to a painkilling drug that she could self-administer through an IV.
All this Tiel learned through background research. Dr. and Mrs. Bradley didn't become news until after her death. Until she died, they were just a sad statistic, the victims of an insidious disease.
But following her funeral, disgruntled in-laws began to make noises that perhaps their son-in-law had accelerated his wife's passing. Specifically, he had enabled her to kill herself by setting the dosage on the self-administering mechanism so high that she actually had succumbed to a lethal amount of narcotics. They alleged that her sizeable inheritance was his enticement to speed things along.
From the start, Tiel had thought the allegations were nonsense. It was a foregone conclusion that Mrs. Bradley's life expectancy was a matter of days. A man due to inherit a fortune could afford to wait until nature took its course.
Besides, Dr. Stanwick was affluent in his own right, although he put a lot of his income back into the oncology clinic to be used for research and indigent patient care.
Even if he had euthanized his wife, Tiel wasn't ready to cast the first stone. The controversy surrounding euthanasia left her in a moral quandary to which she had no satisfactory resolution. On that subject, she tended to agree with the last impassioned speaker.
But, strictly from a practical standpoint, she strongly doubted that Bradley Stanwick would risk his reputation even for his beloved wife's sake.
Unfortunately for him, his in-laws persisted until the DA's office ordered an investigation-which proved to be a waste of time and manpower. No evidence was found to substantiate the relatives' charge of criminal wrongdoing.
There was no indication that Dr. Stanwick had done anything to hasten his wife's death. The DA declined even to present the case to the grand jury, claiming there was no basis for it whatsoever.
Nevertheless, the story didn't end there. During the weeks that investigators were interrogating Dr. Stanwick, his colleagues, his staff, friends, family, and former patients, every aspect of his life was extensively examined and debated. He lived beneath a shadow of suspicion that was especially unsettling since the majority of his patients were considered terminally, irreversibly ill.
The hospital where he practiced soon found itself in the spotlight too. Rather than standing behind him, the administrators voted unanimously to revoke his privileges at the facility until he was cleared of all suspicion. No fool, Bradley Stanwick knew he would never be cleared of all suspicion. Once a seed of doubt is planted in the public's mind, it usually finds fertile ground and flourishes.
Perhaps the ultimate betrayal came from his partners at the clinic he had established. After working together for years, pooling their research and case studies, combining their knowledge, skills, and theories, forging friendships as well as professional alliances, they asked him to resign.
He sold his share of the practice to his former partners, unloaded his stately home in Highland Park for a fraction of its appraised value, and, with a "Screw you all" attitude, left Dallas for parts unknown. That's where the story ended. If Tiel hadn't lost her way and wound up in Rojo Flats, she probably would never have thought of him again.
She asked him now, "Is Sabra the first patient you've treated since you left Dallas?"
"She isn't a patient, and I didn't treat her. I was a cancer doctor, not an OB-GYN. This is an emergency situation, and I responded. Just as you did. Just as everybody has."
"That's false modesty, Doc. None of us could have done for Sabra what you did."
"Ronnie, okay if I get a drink?" he suddenly called out to the boy.
"Sure. Okay. The others could probably use some water too."
Leaning forward, Doc took a six-pack of bottled water from the shelf. After taking two of the plastic bottles for Tiel and himself, he passed the rest up to the boy, who then asked Donna to distribute them.
He drank almost half his bottle in one swallow. Tiel twisted off the cap and drank from her bottle, sighing after taking a long draft. "Good idea. Trying to change the subject?"
"Good guess."
"You don't practice medicine here in Rojo Flats?"
"I told you. I ranch."
"But they know you around here as Doc."
"Everybody in a small town knows everything about everyone."