Last Dollar in Lubbock

By Donovan Tracy and Cynthia Siokos Sheffer

Dr. Tyson Ross, a radiologist who owes his education to his country, comes home to Texas. The doctors of Memorial Hospital are doing well, but not well enough for some. There is more money to be made, if only they had their own hospital. They don't trust anyone in town to lead them but Dennis Colliera doctor from one of the old, landed families and, best of all, one of their own. Having tracked terrorists in military intelligence, Ty senses trouble and is appalled by the greed. So are Dr. Mark Russo, considered an outsider by many but like a father to Ty, and Sue Ann McGinley, the lovely but married woman who fascinates Ty more than he can admit.

The doctors need a truckload of money and Collier raises it. Then, after ground is broken, he commits an unspeakable act of betrayal. The money is gone and Collier with it. Many in the town will be ruined. The doctors can't turn to the local authorities and they all know why.

Determined not to be drawn in and with feelings he cant afford to explore, Ty moves to Dallas, leaving behind the outrage, the rumors and, reluctantly, Sue Ann. Then a series of break-ins occur back in Lubbock. Mark and the citys finest are on a not-so-legal hunt for Collier and the money trail leads to Hollywood. But making the traitor talk without violating the Hippocratic Oath? When a doctor knows not, he shall call in a colleagueone with the Skills of Another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524698171

Book preview

LAST DOLLAR IN

LUBBOCK

DONOVAN TRACY

Cover Credit to Cynthia Siokos Sheffer

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2017 Donovan Tracy. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/14/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5049-1730-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-1729-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-9817-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017910223

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgement

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Acknowledgement

Donovan Tracy is a pseudonym for the late Ronald D. Workman, MD.

This book was completed posthumously with the help of Bob McGonnagle and Chris Eagle who worked closely with the author and knew his desired spirit for the final story. Thanks to Bob for inspiring Ron to write his first book which led to the second and to Chris whose skilled editing made this work a reality to be published.

Thank you to Lubbock for inspiring a setting for the story. The Texas culture and history added great color. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

In loving memory

his wife Diana

1

T he pointed boots sticking out of the bottom of Dr. Tyson Ross’ scrubs were those of a cowboy, though he stood in the angiography suite of a modern hospital. His eyes studied the display screen in the nearly-dark room. He threaded a catheter in the woman’s ascending aorta toward its target, slowly, adjusting for the small delay of the computer as it transposed the white-line image of the radiopaque catheter, never allowing his hand to advance it before seeing the exact location. A few millimeters more, then bend the tip into a slight angle, correct the position of approach, and ease it ever so gently upward in the carotid. Each person’s anatomy slightly different, variations easily accommodated within the technique if you have performed enough of them.

A cold draft of conditioned air blew across the room. He brought his hands away and willed his right hand to be steady. He slid his toe over onto the fluoroscopy pedal and pressed it. Advancing the catheter little by little toward the cerebral arteries and periodically checking its position, he worked his way painstakingly, injecting just enough dye at the moments when the catheter was in the exact position to see the vessels of the brain and capture the images he and the neurosurgeon would need.

He saw a white, round outline off the side of the middle cerebral artery. A berry aneurysm in the Circle of Willis. This one was just under a centimeter in size, not large as these went, but there! A plume of dye escaped. So faint and so brief he could have missed it. His foot tapped to save the video-sequence images. So there was a leak. That explained the intermittent right-sided weakness. His dark blue eyes peered over the mask toward the lightly sedated woman. She was fifty-six years old. Ty Ross calculated the odds as favorable. As the overhead machines slid back, he leaned down and placed a gloved hand on the drape and touched her shoulder.

Her pupils had not changed. He watched them. Mrs. Denton? You still with me?

Yeh … yes. Her eyes sought his. Is it what you thought, Doctor?

Yes, ma’am. A leaking vessel, just needs to be clipped. Dr. Moser is very good at these. Before the angiogram, he had told her he what he suspected. Ty knew that his words would not take away the fear she would naturally have. Yet, uncertainty was at the root of fear and he could dispel much of that.

Radiology was a far piece from the life he had known.

He made sure she was stable. He stepped behind the lead-lined wall and picked up his patient’s chart. His written note was short and crisp. The DiCom images would tell all and they were already in the Picture Archiving system and available over the hospital’s network to Bryan Moser in his office.

Ty stripped off the mask and gloves, pulled a white coat over his scrubs, and strode on long legs to his office, one of several just down the hall. He would view the images there and dictate his impressions.

He kept his office lights dimmed for contrast. The furniture was utilitarian, and the ivory, gold-lettered diplomas and certificates simply framed. A series of large flat panel displays occupied much of the wall above a desk facing it.

Amy Denton. 589565. Cerebral arteriogram. Under local anesthesia with the groin prepped and draped … he began speaking into a dictation terminal, and proceeded through a lengthy technical account of the patient’s findings sprinkled with visual descriptions. He became aware of a slight commotion, which sounded like it came from out by the receptionist’s desk.

Where’s the kid? a gravelly voice barked from that direction. There were a few grunts of acknowledgement, and then a Yeah, Hi, from closer, in the hall.

Soon, quick shuffling steps found his door. A gray-tinged, short man with slumped shoulders and hands in his pockets walked through.

What’s doin’? Anything strange or startling?

Ty was accustomed to the unannounced visits of Dr. Mark Geller. He lifted his thumb and pointed to the displays. Startling, if it’s not clipped. Neuro case. Aneurysm.

Bad? The short, heavy man lowered himself into a chair beside the desk.

Small leak. Could be worse.

Show me. You can hide the name, right? I know the rules.

Wait. Ty made an adjustment and the patient’s identifying information disappeared. He started the video, in slow motion.

What am I looking for?

You’ll know when you see it.

Mark watched the monitor. I know the big meeting’s tonight. There was an unmistakable air of dread in his voice. They’re all fired up in the doctors’ lounge.

Couldn’t care less. I’m new here, remember?

So you say, Ty. But that’s—Jeez! Look! The tuft of leaking dye suddenly appeared and, magnified on the monitor, looked huge. What happens if this thing blows?

Anything from a stroke to sudden death.

Just like that! Wonder how many of these there are, walking around.

That’s the worry. They’re silent. This one gave a warning, fortunately.

Yeah. Mark hesitated a few seconds, then said, There’s all kinds of warnings.

Ty glanced at his watch. Thought you’d be starting afternoon office hours by now. It was almost two o’clock.

So you don’t want to talk. I can take a hint, Junior, but you can’t get rid of me that easy. Don’t forget, I know you. All that fancy talk, you want people to think you’re Mister Academic Radiologist. See, I know you’re just a country boy, sittin’ around with your feet up most of the time. Let me look at those boots. I’ll bet you don’t even clean the mud off.

Ty grinned and closed the monitor. Typical surgeon. Barge right in, when a man’s trying to think. Did you hear about the time God rushed to the front of the cafeteria line in heaven, wearing a white coat and a stethoscope around his neck?

Yeah, yeah. Pretending to be a surgeon. Better get some new material, if you’re going to join the act.

You were saying, about tonight? Speaking of acts.

Oh, it’ll be a spectacle. I can’t stand any of it. Let’s go together.

Don’t want to be present, let alone accounted for.

If you’re not there, it’d be noticed. So you don’t say much. You’re getting an education. See, this is why you need me.

You tell me all the time.

Well, it’s a fact. First, though, I gotta go to the house that Mark built, Dr. Mark Geller smiled proudly. Almost time to do the matinee. He had referred to his medical practice in show business terms for years. Mark had worked his way through medical school in the shoe section of a department store. There was a plaque in his private office given to him by a grateful patient—a caduceus, the symbol of medicine—beneath which was an inscription: It sure beats selling shoes.

So. Pick you up after work? Ty asked.

"I’m not ridin’ in that truck you drive. C’mon by the office, we’ll take my car. You know, it’s me who doesn’t have to go. You’re young, but I’m in the last trimester. Don’t need their bullcrap anymore. Purdy, DiMaio—the redhead. They can say whatever they want to about me. ‘His patients use a lot of blood. He doesn’t keep up, any more.’ Well, I say, hit ’em in the ass with a whiskey glass!"

Ty could not help chuckling. How many doctors, do you think?

Fifty if there’s five. Plus a few lawyers. That Collier, he’s got ’em all conned. Gives ’em all that smooth talk. Easy smile, fancy clothes, his ties just perfect. Comes from an old family with a lot of land. The other guys eat it all up. Most of them came from the wrong side of the tracks, they think just because they’ve got a degree now, they’re big shots. Always scheming. You should hear the talk in the doctors’ lounge. Real estate, stocks? Somebody’s always puttin’ together a deal. Collier’s got the big deal now.

Starting their own hospital. That’s what we’re going to hear. Damn, Mark, all I want is a place to build up my skills.

What have you been here, six months? Nine? It’s thirty years in Lubbock for me. I built my practice out of Memorial’s emergency room. People who had nowhere else to go. I had barely finished my residency at the VA in Waco and came here with nothing. Just me and the duchess. And her mother. I asked her mother for a loan once in the beginning. You know what she said?

What? Ty’s mind was moving ahead, to the doctors’ meeting that evening when doctors could be asked whose side they were on, Collier’s, or the hospital’s. It could happen quickly, like an ambush on patrol. Or a capture. Things he’d left the military to forget.

Maybe if I give you money, you won’t be a success. She actually said that to me. I hated her for that. So we scratched. We saved. Me and the duchess. We showed her, the old biddy. But, you know what? She was right. You give somebody something, they think it’s nothing. These doctors, the hospital takes them in. Hell, they even get six month’s free rent now in an office building. So how do they repay this munificence? By stealing the patients right from under our noses."

But there was no forgetting. Aloud, Ty asked, "So what does the hospital do? What can it do?" He and Mark had discussed this before. Doctor-owned hospitals were sprouting up all over Texas, taking advantage of the laissez faire laws that were still on the books. There were no certificates of need or public approval processes here like there were in other states.

If they keep this up, we’re gonna damn well find out. Mark grimaced and stood, smoothed his thinning hair back, squared his shoulders, and adjusted his cuffs. He cocked his head to one side and smiled as if to a larger audience. And now your genial host— he pointed to the door.

______

Mark Geller had been curious about the newcomer and Ty had answered his questions, up to a certain point. How he grew up in San Antonio. How his mother raised him with some help from her circle of military wives after his father died in a training accident at Fort Sam Houston—The Home of the Combat Medic. Ty was nine. One thing about the military in Texas, they never let go of their own. He spent birthdays and holidays thereafter in the company of other military families from the Fifth Army. There were other fathers to serve as role models for a young boy, while they trained soldiers to become medics, preparing them to save the lives of their fellow soldiers and, if necessary, to fight alongside them. In his last year of high school, his mother married one of these soldiers, a lieutenant colonel originally from Kentucky, with a daughter, a stepsister for Ty. His biologic father had left Ty a large library, mostly adventure novels, from the Leatherstocking tales up through Hemingway. He would read from them nightly, and to his mother, his new father, and sister.

When Ty was about to enter college, his stepfather was posted to Germany. Trinity University in San Antonio was scarcely affordable, and between an academic scholarship, army survivor benefits, and a measure of the now-colonel’s support, Ty could just about get by. The separation from his mother was abrupt, and confusing, and communications infrequent after. In this first experience of being truly alone, his grades were mediocre until he discovered rowing.

Ty saw the two sculls with crews moving fast at dawn when jogging past Olimos Basin. When he sat on the sliding seat of the scull and took the long oars in his hands, the power and the teamwork, the rhythm, the early morning air, and the coordinated strength it brought were captivating. It was rowing and the strength in his shoulders and arms that made him believe he could become whatever he set his mind to. Physics came easily to him and he changed his major from history to engineering. Money did not, and he began having to borrow in his sophomore year. He did not complain to his mother. He did not resent her new purpose. He was her only natural child and he would make her proud one day.

Ty went over to Lackland the day after graduation and joined the air force. They liked his engineering degree and that he’d studied physics and German. During basic, he excelled in small unit tactics. Their aptitude tests said officer material. His vision, though, was not quite good enough for flight school. After OCS, the air force sent him back to Lackland for Security Forces training. He emerged qualified to command Emergency Services and Close Precision Engagement teams, with his Blue Beret.

He studied advanced law enforcement at Langley in Virginia. Stakeouts and patrols were boring, but hand-to-hand combat was not. The upper body strength came in handy for close work. He could block a blow and throw his man to the ground before the man could strike again. Knives he did not like, though he learned them and learned to use the heavy stick, the edge of his hand and the leather sap, which was illegal but some of his compatriots carried one. Then came pistols, automatics and revolvers, M-16 carbines and sniper rifles, qualifying as expert in marksmanship in all but the rifle, which he could not seem to hold sufficiently steady.

Mark had sat open-mouthed, hearing these things.

Throughout the two-year assignment, he rowed. He bided his time, anticipating graduate school some day. An air force rowing club gave him access to the Potomac and other waters and to men better than him at the sport, from whom he learned. One was a doctor, a flight surgeon attending a long course in aerospace medicine. He spoke northeastern English, talked of Boston and Philadelphia, and dragged Ty to coffee shops and bars where he introduced him to women with fine dental work. They went sailing on the Chesapeake.

His name was Doug Hansen, and his aim was to return to Connecticut and practice with his father, a general surgeon. Ty told Doug of his own father, the Army medic. And, as he did, the thought of a career in medicine began to fill some of the emptiness that had followed his father’s loss—and form the outlines of an identity of his own.

Doug knew people who would recommend Ty for medical school admission. And the air force would pay his medical school tuition if he would agree to serve six more years. So Ty sent in all his application papers to Georgetown School of Medicine, executed the re-up documents in the office of the base commandant, and then the air force got their pound of flesh by posting him to Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey.

At Incirlik, he rounded up drunken F-16 pilots, broke up fights outside the base, and separated airmen from angry crowds—months of boredom punctuated by intercessions following some misbehavior or dispute.

All this, Ty told Dr. Mark Geller. He stopped the story before the part where a serious man in a rumpled suit approached him and, after two interviews and a background check, he joined the Defense Intelligence Agency. And went outside the wire.

His unit scouted in Lebanon and Iraq and they questioned captured terrorists with methods that shocked him. Once an airman got kidnapped and Ty’s rescue team had to fight its way into northern Iraq and back out again. That was where he shot a man in black clothing rushing their encampment’s perimeter. It was not their first terrorist attack. The man ignored shouts and warning rounds. Ty went to the fallen man as his patrol gathered around, pulled the mask off his face, and looked into the bright, black, terrified eyes of someone very young. An AK-47 had fallen from his clothes and lay a few yards away. He looked toward it and then back. Surprisingly, he asked Ty in accented English, Did I make it inside?

You’re outside. You are wounded. Lie still now.

I … I did not want to hurt anyone. They made me come. They would … his breath became forced, and bloody froth came from his lips. Please know that, he said.

Ty put his fingers to the young man’s lips, stilling him. I understand. Let me help you. Then the young man’s eyes closed in pain. Ty called for a medic and made him as comfortable as he could. Here was an unmotivated traveler on a journey he did not seek.

There were explosives strapped to the young man’s torso. The shooting had probably saved lives. Yet the experience shook Ty deeply. That the learned skills of which he was proud could result in his nearly taking—what he saw as—an innocent life made him angry, not with himself or his country or the world but the manipulators and the mortality they caused in it.

At the conclusion of his medical education—medical school, residency in radiology and fellowship in interventional, the minimally invasive procedures performed using image guidance—Tyson Ross was a man who could take life or give life with equal proficiency. Such was the dichotomy of the man. There was no reason for Mark Geller to know. Yet after all the medical training and most of a year of practice at Memorial Hospital, he had not put the regret and memories of the intelligence officer, the interrogations, and that shooting behind him. Sometimes he awoke at night, seeing someone strapped down, or thrashing in hand-to-hand combat, and always there were the shining, black eyes of young men.

He had returned to the open spaces of Texas seeking the straightforward ways of his youth. Memorial Hospital in Lubbock advertised for an interventional radiologist, citing the growing demand for such procedures. Its position as the regional medical center of the Panhandle was known throughout the state. Its heart program for example was superb. No doctor and certainly no patient need journey to Dallas or Houston for surgery.

He was thirty-one when he arrived.

He’d been at the hospital only a few weeks when the radiology department’s daily schedule had a patient for coronary angiography with DOCTOR printed in front of the name and whether that was out of recognition that he was a member of their staff or a warning, Ty wondered. The rest of his name was Mark Anthony Geller.

Dr. Geller turned out to be a plump, short urologist with broad face and heavy jowls, in his mid-sixties. Ty found him seated on a gurney, a hospital gown wrapped around him, barely covering his thick thighs, scowling. He looked Ty up and down. You’re the new kid.

Ty was surprised at the abrupt manner. Sir?

Heard all about you. Georgetown. Big shot. Haven’t killed anyone lately, have you? His stare was disconcerting.

No, sir! We take every precaution for our patients. He returned the staff doctor’s stare just long enough to show that he would not be intimidated. He picked up his chart.

Well, now, that’s mahty nice. Mahty nice. Put that down and look at me when I talk to you. I suppose you’re a Baptist.

No, sir. Presbyterian. He looked at the older man appraisingly.

Humph. It’s the holy rollers either way. One of my mother’s words. What’s your name?

Ross … Tyson.

Tyson? What is that, an Arkansas name? You sound like you’re from back East. You seem a little stiff. Can’t have some uptight kid with a fancy degree working on my vessels. No, Sirree. Know any jokes?

Ty’s mask of concentration slowly dissolved into a curious smile. At that, Dr. Geller searched his face. Ty laid the chart on the gurney. Jokes, huh? Maybe, he drawled. You know how a psychiatrist changes a light bulb?

Call me Mark. I’m a urologist. What do I know about psychiatry?

Very slowly. And the light bulb has to want to change.

Mark’s face lifted up with humor, and he smiled from ear to ear. Har! Har! Har! That’s a good one. Maybe you’re all right. You know people make jokes about urologists.

Ty grinned. So I’ve heard. Plumber, Drain-O, that sort of thing. I’m not about to tell one.

You damn well better not. Not when you’re about to light up my coronaries. It may be piss to you, but it’s gold to me!

"Hah! Hah! Now I know you’re all right." Ty stuck out his longer, strong hand and the shorter man took it with his stubby fingers. The contrast between them could not have been greater. Ty was a foot and a half taller, good-looking in an athletic way, with an angled jaw and narrow nose and Mark Geller was thick both front to back and side to side, a round head too large for his body, and large eyes behind black-framed glasses.

Damn straight, he barked. I don’t trust anybody unless I can get to him. So, now that I have your attention, let’s get on with this here angiogram. When this is all over with, we’ll swap stories. You’re a bachelor, right? Must be nice, women tripping all over themselves.

Now, we can’t have you thinking those kinds of thoughts. I’d better give you some Valium.

And plenty of it. Let’s go, boy.

Mark Geller turned out to have three-vessel coronary disease. Ty put stents in the worst areas, including a dangerous narrowing in the left anterior descending artery, enough to make sure nothing bad would happen prior to the surgery Mark Geller might someday need. Might. But, now, maybe not.

True to his word, Geller looked Ty Ross up a few weeks later, after he had begun working again, just half-days at first. It was the first of many visits the urologist would make to the radiology department as they continued getting to know one another and began a friendship that would seem remarkable to those who knew them, opposite in so many ways as they were. Yet they did have some things in common. Both had come to this somewhat insular community from elsewhere. They had to depend on their relationships with other physicians. Neither felt much inclined to reveal much of himself at first.

______

After Mark had left for his afternoon office hours, Ty worked on completing his dictations. It was slow going and he found himself distracted, thinking back over events since coming to this town and wondering what they would hear that evening. Mark was right, he had to go, but the meeting was away from the hospital campus and that added to his misgivings.

There was a need for Ty Ross’ interventional techniques, and soon after his arrival people in many departments knew him, the new radiologist who wore boots. Things were great for what some doctors intended. Memorial certainly was large and successful with a steel and glass atrium, brick patient towers, and surrounding blocks of medical offices—almost a community of its own. And with strong programs in the surgical and technology-oriented medical specialties, and a large cancer center attached, it had more operating rooms, procedure rooms, and intensive care beds than any acute care facility within two hundred miles. People’s grandfathers and grandmothers had been patients at Memorial.

He sometimes took his lunch with the doctors in their lounge, but just as often made his way to the employee’s cafeteria where they talked of the town and its sports teams and what was happening in the neighborhoods where they lived. He listened intently, none knew for exactly what.

It was for ideas and the people who spoke of them—books they were reading, shows they had seen, places they wanted to go. These people were quieter, usually did not wear Texas Tech or other jerseys, and often as not carried something with them to read. One of the green or purple cafeteria tables, usually a row or two back from the ground-floor windows where they could look out on the lawn, sometimes had people with ideas and most of them were women. They wore wedding rings, neutral territory for the unattached man. Except for that puzzling smile that seemed to begin with a thought.

Ty left his work and followed the smell of fresh popcorn. As hoped and expected, the group from the laboratory was there. Among them, there was Margaret the blood banker. And two others whose names he did not yet know. And Sue Ann McGinley one of the lab managers, with the bright hazel eyes and slightly-too-prominent cheekbones. And sometimes, a quick, wondrous smile. He grabbed some coffee and carried it over.

She brought a novel with her most days and they’d had a few lively discussions about them. He stopped beside her and she looked up.

Mizzz McGinley.

"Doctor Ross, Sue Ann said. There were two large bowls of popcorn on the table. She pointed to the one near him and said, Do sit and have some. You know Margaret."

I do. He took a chair, reached, and grabbed a handful. She introduced the others.

X-Rays, he said, Photographer. He pointed to the radiation badge with its yellow nuclear symbol and receiving a few chuckles in return. "Interesting day in