CHAPTER SIX.

"Charles, I'm serious about this."

Jeanette pushed away the bread pudding she hadn't wanted, but Charles had insisted she order. In fact, she hadn't felt like eating out at all, but had allowed Charles to override her desire to stay at home and eat the shrimp jambalaya she'd cooked.

She envied Brigitte and the sitter happily ensconced in front of the television, sharing the comfort food she'd prepared. Instead of that homey picture, she was here, in a crowded French Quarter restaurant, biding her time for a chance to unburden her concerns about the surgery she'd witnessed earlier that day. Worse, after she explained everything to Charles, he seemed more interested in his fruit tart than her distress.

"Jean, don't you think you're over-reacting?" Charles waved his fork at her, a kiwi precariously hanging onto the edge. "After all, research projects like this are monitored closely by all sorts of agencies. Who are you to question procedures that have probably been scrutinized by people with far more experience than you?"

Charles rescued the kiwi, then stabbed at a strawberry. "And as for the missing paperwork, you're new there. Maybe Dr. Rutherford wanted you to get your feet wet before he dumped the bulk of the work on you. My advice? Just sit back and wait. I'm sure the files are there somewhere. They'd have to be, wouldn't they? If they weren't, the project would have been shut down already. Right?"

"Don't you think I've gone over all those arguments already?"

Jeanette fought back the urge to ask him how stupid he thought she was. He hadn't heard her at all. An icy breeze of realization swept over her, clearing clouds of self-delusion from her mind -- Charles never listened to her, now or in the past. Like all narcissists, he only heard the things that pertained to his comfort and care.

God, how could she have been so stupid? How could she have allowed her hormones to choose a man who only needed a woman as a mirror for his own self-esteem? Until now, she'd overlooked all the other times he'd negated her concerns, her needs, while using her for companionship and the mothering he never had when he was a child. Between his jealousy of her daughter and now this complete disregard of her intelligence -- well, she wasn't holding back any longer. This was it. Either he took her seriously, started really listening to her, or she would tell him how she felt -- about everything.

Taking a deep breath, she let it out. She needed to present her arguments logically, not emotionally.

"Putting aside the missing documents in the patient records and the hasty rescheduling of a patient against medical protocol, let's look at just the incident with the surgical consent. Dr. Randolph had a patient under the influence of mind-altering anesthesia sign a legal consent. Trust me, Charles, that patient could have signed away his fortune under that combination of drugs and never remembered it later. If Dr. Randolph had instructed the man to sit up and bark like a dog, he would've. You have to admit that was totally unethical if not illegal."

"Okay, you got me there." Charles's face turned pink.

Uh oh, Jeanette recognized the altered tone. It was his little boy whine he reverted to when caught out in the wrong. Now, he would get all defensive. Jeanette's loss of her husband, her helpmate in all things, hit her harder than it had in years. Paul would have listened, would have offered constructive advice -- like a mature partner should.

"But you fixed that by going to the patient after he'd recovered and had him sign a new consent with a waiver, right? So, what's the problem?"

The underlying "aha, I got you" came through loud and clear. With Charles, everything was a debate, point-counterpoint. There always had to be a winner and a loser; it was never about working together toward a common goal.

So be it.

"Charles, you're missing the point!"

Red flashed before her eyes. She swore the heat was attempting to escape through her skin. Struggling to regain control, Jeanette ran her fingers through her hair, proud that she resisted the urge to throw the unwanted pudding at the thick-headed male across from her. "Yeah, I took care of it 'after the fact'. But what if the patient had refused? Then where would the project be if his graft failed?"

"Okay, okay. You're right, okay?" Charles threw his fork on the table, then leaned back in his chair, arms across his chest. "If it disturbs you so much, quit!"

Jeanette placed both hands on the table, then leaned forward, narrowing the distance between them. "No. I'm not a quitter. If I were, I wouldn't be sitting here across from you." Jeanette covered her mouth with her hand, then allowed it to drop back to the table top. "Oh, Charles, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

"Yeah, right. I think you meant it exactly as it sounded." Charles's mouth thinned, his face white with anger. "That's what this is 'really' about, isn't it? Your job concerns were just an excuse to talk about us. Go ahead, tell me what you really think about our relationship. I'm man enough to take it."

'Careful Bootsie, minefields ahead.'

"Oh, Charles." Jeanette reached across the table, seeking contact with him, but finding only tablecloth as Charles leaned further away from her beseeching fingers. "I care for you, but it seems like I'm making all the accommodations in the relationship."

"Really? Like what for instance?"

Charles was in full retreat now. She'd already gone this far, might as well get it all out.

"Okay, take this evening, for example. I wanted the three of us to stay at home after Brigitte's volleyball game and have a family dinner, but you insisted, as you have the last several times I suggested such an evening, that we hire a sitter and have dinner, just the two of us. Is this your way of getting closer to my daughter?"

"Jean, you..."

"No, let me finish." She held her hand up. "Let's really clear the air. I've told you many times I prefer Jeanette, but you insist on calling me Jean. You may hear me, but you aren't listening. You say you want a more intimate relationship, but without communication, real communication, it can never be that."

"Are you through?"

"No, I'm not. This evening is a perfect example of why I'm not ready to commit to a long term relationship with you." She paused to marshal her arguments. "I just unburdened myself about a serious problem at my job, and your response insulted my intelligence and understanding. It also indicated to me a lack of concern in general for ethics, the law and your fellow man. I'm not sure I can become serious about a man who shows such a lack of ... well ... morals."

Jeanette couldn't imagine Charles's lips narrowing anymore than they already had, but they did, to the point that all she could see was a crease in his face where his lips met. Damn, she'd pushed him too far, but it had to be said. Had needed to be said for a long, long time.

Charles pushed away from the table. Standing up, he turned, then left without looking back.

Instead of being cleared, the air was filled with the smoke of imaginary mines.

Ignoring the shocked and interested glances from the surrounding diners, Jeanette fought back tears as she called for the check. Well, that was the end of that. What a perfectly horrible day.

Jeanette paid the sitter. After checking on her sleeping daughter, she sat on the couch and stared into the cold fireplace, a glass of wine untouched at her hand.

The phone rang. She didn't have the energy to speak to anyone. Let the machine answer it.

Charles's voice came over the machine. She thought she'd turned it down before she left this evening. Obviously, Brigitte had been playing with the volume control again. Tears formed in her eyes, but she was so exhausted she couldn't even move to turn it off. So, she just sat, trying not to listen.

"...Jean, uh damn, Jeanette! Pick up, I know you're there. Please?" Silence reigned for a few seconds. "Okay, I guess you must have the sound turned down. I, uh, well, I'm sorry. I'm such an ass. I never realized how you felt. Can you blame it on me being male?" A nervous chuckle. "Give me another chance. If you can, call me -- please? I'll try harder. I promise. Love you."

Tears streaming down her face, Jeanette sat unmoving. She wanted to believe him, and knew she would give him another chance. As she so boldly told him, she wasn't a quitter. Yes, Charles was an overgrown, spoiled boy, but she saw good stuff in him -- he was hardworking, educated, and, most of the time, fun-loving. His excellent manners and interest, at least at the beginning of their relationship, in her and her career had chiseled away at the icy encasement around her grief-stricken heart. Yet, he'd disappointed her tonight. She'd thought his principles were of a higher and tougher fiber. For God's sake, he was a lawyer, a person who was supposed to uphold the law.

Before she made any decisions about her long-term relationship, he would have to prove to her that he met her standards. Not perfection. After all, he was human.

Yes, she'd give him one more chance, but only one. After today, she knew she needed a strong shoulder to lean on in troubled times. Whether or not Charles could be that shoulder, well ... if he couldn't, then she needed to move on and find the man that could give her what she needed -- a full and loving partnership, where sharing of burdens went both ways. She deserved that kind of relationship, and so did her daughter.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The Bourbon street watering hole which Alex Randolph chose for their meeting wasn't exactly in Byron Rutherford's style. It was loud, crowded, and its idea of a premium imported beer was Dos Equus, forget the lime. However, it did provide them the privacy they needed for this impromptu bull session. And, the small jazz band wasn't so bad.

Carrying two draft beers, Alex wended his way through the bodies lined two-to-three deep at the bar, then edged around the small dance floor crowded with young couples glued to one another, swaying to the bluesy notes of an alto saxophone. Setting the dripping glasses down, he plopped into the chair next to Rutherford, so they both faced the dance floor. Both sat in silence for a few moments. Rutherford checked out the female population, knew that Alex did also. They had that in common -- a love of varied and frequent female companionship. Who knew? They might both get lucky.

After a few sips, Alex gulped down a third of his beer in one swallow, then sighed. "God, I needed that. What a day!"

"Is that why you called this meeting? To editorialize your day?" Rutherford sipped his beer and made a face. He hated domestics, but the alternatives were worse. He thought longingly of Chez Paul's wine list, then braved another sip of the slightly warm, flat beer.

"I called this meeting, because I want you to explain to me again why you hired Jeanette LaFleur." Alex's eyes followed a leggy blonde, his lips pursed in a silent whistle.

Examining the girl whom Alex undressed with his eyes, Rutherford could see the upside to the establishment, bad beer notwithstanding, and vowed to make this place a regular trolling spot. He liked a nice young piece of ass as well as the next man. Which was one of the reasons he had hired Jeanette, but he wasn't going to share that info with Alex. He didn't want Alex looking at Jeanette with a less-jaundiced eye and deciding he liked what he saw. In general, Alex was still at an age when any maturity in a woman was off-putting. Rutherford, on the other hand, liked his women experienced, but not overly so. Jeanette fell into that category. He would bet his Swiss bank account, she'd only had one lover -- her husband. He was biding his time. So, what to tell Alex?

"The Institutional Review Board team told me to get my paperwork up to par or they would advise the hospital and get our grant money pulled. The facts that all the other Clinical Coordinators were barely out of high school and not trained technicians were also black marks against the project. Hiring Jeanette took care of both problems."

"Okay, okay, I know all that, but still, she's too ethical. I thought she would shit a brick today when I had the patient sign the consent while under anesthesia."

"Sometimes you're an idiot." Rutherford resisted the urge to slap the man. "She was one hundred percent correct on that one. With our graft failure rate, we could get sued. Graft failure happens. It can be justified. But a legal misstep like an improperly signed consent could get me -- or you -- a one-way trip to a suspended or revoked license. Don't make that mistake again. Follow the rules. We'll be in enough trouble if little Jeanette ever figures out we cook the stats and decides to report us."

"My point exactly. So once again, why are we keeping her around? She isn't stupid, damn her cute little Cajun tush. Eventually, she's got to realize that patient follow-up records don't match actual patients seen in the clinic. Plus, Payton and Warren are seeing some of our failures -- and letting everyone know it. Hell, I'm sure they said something to her at the training session. I saw Payton fuming clear across the room, and your little Jeanette looked flustered. It's just a matter of time until she adds two and two."

"Then I guess it's up to both of us to see that she doesn't get four."

"How? What slight of hand do we use to keep little Miss Nosey from stumbling onto the fact that over sixty percent of the grafts are failing?"

Alex's sneering voice grew louder, drawing the attention of those sitting near them. A vein in Rutherford's neck pulsed as he gritted his teeth to keep from shouting. "Keep your voice down, you idiot. Why don't you just take an ad out in the 'Times-Picayune'?" He gulped the remainder of his beer, then waited as it made its way through his anger-constricted esophagus. Why he ever took this cretin into his operation, he'd never know.

In the beginning, Rutherford had sensed that Alex was like him. Both came from humble backgrounds, both had found their way out of the slums to a better life while ignoring the finer points of law and ethics. Yet, there was one big difference between them. Rutherford knew how to survive in the long term, would fight through all odds and win, while Alex deserted the ship as soon as it sprung a leak. To Rutherford, Jeanette was a tiny leak -- one easily plugged.

"Byron! What are you going to do?" Alex snapped his fingers in front of Rutherford's face.

Pulling his attention away from a flame-haired girl walking by the table, he grabbed the offensive digits and squeezed them as hard as he could. "Don't ever do that again."

Alex winced and bit his lip so that only a slight hiss escaped.

Rutherford smiled, then released Alex's fingers. "'We' are going to go about business as usual. 'We' will follow the medical protocols to the letter up to and through the follow-up doctor's notes, but we will only do so on the successful and moderately successful grafts. The failed grafts -- those records will be shredded. She doesn't handle the follow-up scheduling, Sally does. Keeping Sally sweet is your job. There's no reason why Jeanette should ever connect the number of patients seen with the number of records kept."

Alex rubbed his sore fingers. "Okay, but what about the past patient records? The ones she's trying to organize? She's got to realize that we've seen and operated on more patients than there are records."

"Easy. We pass the blame to her predecessors. After all, Walter told me he said they were all bimbos. When she comes to me again, and she will, I'll just shake my head and play the poor doctor who is totally ignorant about business and office management. Then I'll commend her on her work, tell her she is saving the project. She'll eat it up, trust me. She's smart, but she's naive and trusting. She'll believe anything I tell her."

Rutherford's eyes followed a petite red-head with large breasts and tight round ass as she walked by the two men for the umpteenth time. Pro, he thought, but still fresh-faced. His loins stirred in interest. He gestured to the Titian-haired whore, his cock telling him it was time to go -- and he didn't intend to leave alone.

"And if she doesn't buy into this fairy tale -- what then?" Alex reached across to tug on Rutherford's arm, but stopped at the last minute, obviously recalling the earlier warning. "What if she persists in digging up the truth?"

As he stood up to meet his bed mate for the evening, Rutherford stopped, turned, then leaned down to whisper in Alex's ear, "Well, then, she'll become a problem. And you know what we do with problems, don't you?"

CHAPTER EIGHT.

'One week later.'

Jeanette stretched her neck from side-to-side to lessen the kinks that were threatening to develop into a full-blown tension headache. It was the fifth night in a row that she hadn't left her office on time. Thank God for Scott and the babysitter, or she wouldn't be able to do her job.

Her need to get the files in some semblance of order kept driving her to work on them until she was satisfied she'd done all she could. Tonight, finally, she could see a light at the end of the tunnel as far as the file organization was concerned. But, there were still serious problems. Problems that she hadn't fully disclosed to anyone, not even Dr. Rutherford.

Thanks to Dr. Rutherford's intervention, all the surgical consents since the altercation with Dr. Randolph a week ago had been properly filled out and signed before surgery. In fact, to her relief, language had been added about specific potential side effects.

Just that morning, Jeanette had thanked Dr. Rutherford for attending to the matter.

His response had been immediate and complimentary. "No, no, thank you, Jeanette, for keeping us on the up-and-up." He'd smiled and patted her shoulder in a disturbingly caressing manner. "I'm just a doctor and often forget about the need for all the legal and administrative hoopla. That's exactly why I hired you. Austin assured me you were bright and organized. You've already proven him right two-fold." Sweeping his hand over her shoulder, then down her arm, he took her hand and lifted it to his lips for a light kiss. "Keep up the good work, my dear."

Heartened by her boss's response, Jeanette worked like a fiend for the remainder of the week to get the files in order. As she worked, she had Sally keep track of patients scheduled for follow-up and enter them onto the database Jeanette had created from the partial patient files. Once the database was as complete as she could make it, she'd run it to find any other missing documents, compare patients who were seen, operated on and followed-up with, and the surgical outcomes. She should be able to run the database tomorrow. Then she would see how much more work she had to do to get things up to snuff.

Besides the records and database, Jeanette had taken to checking surgery trash at the end of each day. She wanted to pin down the exact source of corneal tissue the project was using. So far, the results were disturbing. Most of the tissue came from the Eye Bank, designated as donor tissue on the accompanying paperwork but labeled as SRP tissue on the containers. All of it was in the blue preservative Dr. Rutherford used. In his special little bottles. As a precaution, she'd locked several bottles and the accompanying paperwork in a file drawer. She wasn't sure yet for what purpose, but just in case.

Jeanette's next step -- and the reason she'd stayed extra late tonight -- was to go through the Patient Billing records to see how the tissue was being charged.

Locking up her desk, she backed up the database on a CD-ROM, then shut down her computer. Removing the CD, she slipped it into a sleeve and put it in her purse. She knew it was crazy, but she'd gotten the sense that someone was getting on her computer and checking her work. Even though she'd been changing her password every day. To be safe, she took all her work home on a CD-ROM disk every night. She'd worked too hard to lose it.

Leaving her office, she turned out the lights, then made her way to Sally's office, which she shared with Patient Billing. Looking around, Jeanette saw no one, heard nothing except her own anxious breaths. Satisfied she was alone, she entered the office and shut the door before she turned on the light. It was an inner office, so there was no way anyone passing by the building would see the light.

She placed her purse on Sally's desk, then walked over to the filing cabinets where the patient billing records were kept. Opening up the drawer for the current year, she pulled out the first ten folders, then carried them to Sally's desk. She skimmed the files. It didn't take long to find discrepancies. No one had taken the least precautions to disguise the breach of the research protocol in billing patients.

"Oh, my God." She flipped through all ten folders again, confirming what she'd seen, then sat back. Running her fingers through her hair, she rocked nervously in the desk chair. Out of ten patients, eight had been charged exorbitantly large amounts of money for the corneal tissue, exorbitant when compared to the two patients who had received donor tissue and paid a small processing fee.

Jeanette pushed herself away from the desk, then refiled the patient folders. Pulling out ten more, she checked them while standing at the filing cabinets. She repeated the process for the better part of an hour. After completing the current year drawer, she slammed it shut, then flopped into Sally's chair.

"What am I going to do?" Her muttered question echoed loudly in the empty office. She'd found more than fifty percent of the patients in the current year had paid for commercial corneal tissue, miscoded as donor. Almost all of the commercial tissue had been billed prior to her hiring, starting with the month before the annual convention six months ago. The same convention where she'd heard the Silver River Pharmaceutical salesmen brag about his company's sales to the Epi Study.

The skepticism she'd felt at the time was a distant memory now. Stu Thomas had been right. SRP was supplying a large part of the tissue for the project, and had been for quite a while. That meant from her first day on the job, both Walter and Dr. Rutherford had lied to her about the source of the tissue.

What else had they lied about? Had they lied about the Eye Bank's ongoing relationship to the Epi Study? On the day of the convention, Jeanette hadn't caught the whole conversation between Fred and the other men, but she'd seen enough to know they were doctors. She knew she would be able to recognize all three of them if she saw them again.

"Okay, Bootsie," Jeanette muttered to herself. "What do you do now?"

'Document what you've found out. Then, confirm Stu Thomas's assertions and those of the doctors you overheard.'

Tracking Stu Thomas and the doctors would be a piece of cake. She had the loquacious salesman's card, and the doctors she would find through the Medical Center photo directory. Documenting all those patient billing records she'd just skimmed was another story. It would take hours and hours to copy all the files. There had to be an easier way.

Spying the Billing clerk's computer, she smiled. "Of course, a printout of patients' billings!" Technology at its greatest.

Sitting down, she powered up the computer. First hurdle passed. The clerk had no password, something she would change -- tomorrow. Tonight it suited her purposes. The familiar Windows screen appeared carrying with it a surprise, a loud surprise. Darth Vadar's voice boomed, "What is your bidding, my Master?"

Startled, Jeanette looked around. Had anyone heard? She held her breath and listened. No sound from the outer office. Satisfied she was alone, she entered the program files and clicked on QuickBooks Pro. It opened into the patient billing database. Clicking once more on Records, she found the Accounts Receivables and double-clicked. Yes, that's what she needed.

Customizing it, she set it up for the last twelve months. It took mere seconds, but it seemed like hours. The empty clinic and her sole occupancy of it were getting to her.

After backing up the report, she exited the program and pulled the CD out of the computer. Before shutting down the system, she lowered the volume just in case her billing clerk had anymore little surprises built into her Windows program. Her nerves couldn't take another shock.

Breathing more easily now, she stood up. She'd done all she could for the evening. Tomorrow, she'd come in early and merge the data to her database.