Andrews
felt shaky and simultaneously defensive. "What do you mean by that,
Jack? You're trying to say I drugged this guy up or something?"
Tyler shook
his head. "No, Bill. Look, I'm sorry.
I shouldn't have said it that way. It was what Mrs. Waxman was
saying."
"What?"
"That's partly why I came over to talk with you personally, Bill. I don't know
what she intends to do, but she made a real scene in the ER. Seems like a decent
woman, but she lost it. She was screaming, asking how on earth you could have
done this to them. Something about how you already had jeopardized his job with
whatever it was you had prescribed for him, and now, with that death, they stood
to lose everything that they have."
"For God's sake, Jack--I didn't do anything! What on earth was she talking about?"
"That whatever it was that you gave him had been making him sleepy to the point
that she couldn't get him up any more to get to work on time--that he had already
gotten three warnings from his employer--and that he didn't seem to know what
he was doing even when he was up on his feet. And she said that you had been
the only doctor that her husband had even half-trusted."
Andrews flipped
open Waxman's chart to his last office visit. "See, Jack. That's
all I was giving him. Only new drug was the antidepressant."
"OK..." said Tyler. "Wouldn't
be likely to be causing his asystoles. I'll call and tell them
to go ahead with the pacemaker, if I can use your phone."
"Sure--but see, Jack? You wouldn't think that that drug in that dosage would
make him all that sleepy, either. Would you? Most of my other patients seem to
do fine on it."
"Yeah, you wouldn't think so in most people. I'm certainly not the one that you
might have to convince on that point, though. I hope that the final results of
the tox screen wind up providing an explanation."
They did not.
The only drugs in Waxman's system were reasonable levels
of those prescribed by Andrews and their metabolites.
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