The Pain Nurse - страница 63

Too many black men were being shot by the police. Will had investigated some of the shootings; some were righteous, some there was a question. He always tried to do those cases by the book. He knew that he hadn’t been there in that moment of terror, when a life-and-death decision had to be made. When he had been fighting with Craig Factor, before Dodds got there, Factor had been wildly reaching for Will’s gun. Another cop might have just shot the son of a bitch. Will might have, too. Then the first thing the media would have reported was that Will Borders was “a white police officer.” Nothing else would matter but race.

But some cops were racists, and Cincinnati was in many ways a Southern city, right across the river from Kentucky. The color line was hard, reinforced by the city’s makeup of Germans and briars, fierce loyalties and old grudges, built up over time like geologic sediments. Ten years ago, Robert Cecil might or might not have been aware of this history when he pulled off the interstate to eat at a White Castle. He was driving a new BMW, went through the drive-thru, and pulled into the parking lot. It was a warm May night, a little before midnight, so he rolled the driver’s side window down. That was when a white man came up behind him, produced a gun, and ordered him to get out of the car. Cecil instead dropped the car into reverse and tried to get away. The white man fired eight shots through the open window and every one connected. Robert Cecil was black and the white man was an undercover police officer named Berkowitz.

Will and Dodds had rolled in as the primary homicide team. Berkowitz claimed Cecil had been reaching for a gun even as he tried to drive away. No gun was found in the car. A witness said Berkowitz had never identified himself as a cop. Berkowitz claimed he had. Why had he approached the BMW? Berkowitz said it was suspicious. Will knew what that meant: a black man in a fancy new car. Cecil was a lawyer from Cleveland, and the city ended up paying a big settlement to his family. But somehow Berkowitz got out of it. Command wanted the problem to go away. Internal Investigations took over the case. Stan stayed on the force another three years before retiring. In a city of such long memories, some things could be easily shoved in a closet. But Will knew the Robert Cecil story wouldn’t go over well with the bosses at University Hospital, who were putting a premium on community outreach, doing the right thing. The philanthropist hospital board ladies, married to big shots at Procter, American Financial, Kroger, and Federated, might wonder about the cop who killed Robert Cecil. So might the hospital’s CEO, a black woman. Berkowitz knew it, too. He delayed his meeting “off-site” and talked to Will for another thirty minutes.

Cheryl Beth stood in the doorway, watching as Will slowly stood and stepped into the walker. Every move looked painful, but he took one step forward, then another. It made her smile when the hospital actually helped people. Then she felt her pager vibrating.

It was a new consult on the fourth floor. The nurses’ station didn’t have the chart, which wasn’t unusual, so she walked down to the room. She remembered a meeting in the fall, when the hospital brass and the people from SoftChartZ had talked about the progress on the computer project. All medical records would be on PC workstations, which would be available to nurses and doctors all over the hospital. A patient’s history, medications, and orders would be available at the touch of a key. It seemed almost too good to be true. Cheryl Beth didn’t remember the boyish CEO from SoftChartZ being at this meeting. Christine had led it and taken questions. She had worn a very attractive blue suit that day-she always wore a skirt at work, unless she was in scrubs. And she had spoken with more passion, more compassion for what this might mean for patients, than Cheryl Beth had ever seen from her. She knew Christine as prickly, icy, tightly wound, businesslike. Never caring. Cheryl Beth had broken off the affair with Gary that night.