Alex pulled into the basement parking lot early the next morning with plans to call friends outside Weiner’s sphere of political influence, which had expanded significantly since being awarded the chairmanship of such a prestigious department. Academic job hunting could be difficult and politically tricky.
This time of morning the halls were empty, something he was grateful for. At his office, he inserted the key into the lock. It wouldn’t turn. He double-checked. Yes, the correct key. Tried again. Same thing. A sick feeling rippled through his gut. He backtracked to his lab to try that key. Didn’t work either. One lock might be a mechanical error. Two locks indicated intent. Fucking Weiner.
As he turned the corner on the way back toward his office, he saw Nancy, a staff secretary, unlock the main office door. “Morning, Nancy,” he called, suppressing his anger. “Forgot my keys. Would you pleases unlock my office for me?”
She busied herself dumping her own keys into an oversized purse, avoiding eye contact. “Sorry, can’t do that.”
He nodded slowly. “What’s going on?”
Without looking him in the face, she turned and crossed the hall to unlock the two doors to the conference/break room. “Not sure what you mean.”
“The locks to my office and lab have been changed. Know anything about that?” He immediately regretted putting her in the middle of a bad situation. With no place to go, he followed her into the break room as she started the day’s first pot of coffee.
From the hall a booming voice called, “Cutter, I want to talk to you.”
He recognized the voice before looking. Weiner filled the entryway. “In my office.” Weiner headed for Dr. Waters’s empty office.
“Close the door,” Weiner ordered, his back to the windows that overlooked a massive parking lot, the football stadium in the distance. Reminding Alex of pleasanter times.
Alex closed the door but kept his hand on the knob. The conversation, he knew, would be short. With a smug expression, Weiner leaned casually against the windows, hands in the pockets of his white coat. “I reassigned your office and secretary.”
Alex didn’t want to give Weiner the satisfaction of seeing his anger.
“You have the office next to the conference room.” Weiner’s hand came out of his pocket to toss Alex a key. “Here.”
Reflexively, Alex grabbed for it and missed but made no effort to pick it up. “What office is that?”
“First door to the left of the conference room. Can’t miss it—straight out the office and across the hall.” Weiner was grinning now.
Puzzled, Alex mentally replayed the sentence, visualizing the location. “The janitorial closet?”
Weiner shot a finger gun at Alex’s head. “Bingo.”
Enough. “Why you doing this, Dick?”
“Hold on, gets better. I reassigned your priority time”—designated OR time—“to Delaney.”
Alex stopped listening. He needed to be on the phone job hunting. Dick won. Anything would be better than this.
He noticed Weiner waiting for an answer. He didn’t know what he’d asked, so Alex cleared his throat and changed tactics. “Why single me out, Dick? I supported you with the search committee. I don’t get it. Explain it to me.”
Weiner approached, poking a finger at Alex’s face. “You deaf or just fucking stupid? This is my department. And I will change it. The only way to do that is for everyone to understand I mean business. Guess what? You’re leading by example.” Weiner waved his hand dismissively. “I’m done with this conversation. But before you leave, here’s one more revelation: your patients have been reassigned to Delaney.”
Alex was dumbfounded. “Why my patients? Why not Baxter or Geoff?”
“Seriously?”
“I’m asking.”
“Jesus Christ! Think about it. News flash, Cutter: they’re harder to get rid of. Told you once and I won’t tell you again. I need your spot for Delaney.” He pointed to the door. “Out of the fucking office. Now.”
Alex was relieved to find the elevator empty, allowing him to avoid the embarrassment of a face-to-face encounter with anyone. By now everybody in the department knew he was fired, that his entire world had just been incinerated. He was left with a mortgage, two car payments, and absolutely nothing to show for all his research. The depth of his rage frightened even him, the flint and tinder sufficient to spark violent acts.
Alex drove to a large city park. There, he aimlessly strolled jogging trails while ruminating through his options. Beg for a job with one of the local groups? That’d be difficult for two reasons. A smoldering adversarial chasm historically existed between the academicians and private surgeons, fueled in part by Waters’s not-so-subtle Ivy League style. Being a state school, most faculty salaries were paid by tax dollars, causing the private surgeons to claim this represented unfair, tax-supported competition. The far right-wingers claimed it verged on communism. On the flip side, the academicians were expected to fulfill multiple academic obligations other than practice, making it impossible to devote the same amount of time to competing for patients. Of more direct economic relevance was that university physicians were required by law to accept all patients regardless of insurance—which a majority of the time came to zilch. This was the foundation for their accusation that the private surgeons cherry-picked the well-insured cases, referring to them only the unfunded or high-risk ones. Each side had valid points, but it distilled down to one thing: Alex would have difficulty finding an established group to accept him.
Starting a solo practice would be daunting. In addition to his current debt, he’d need to secure a multi-million-dollar line of credit to pay overhead—such as a fifty-thousand-dollar malpractice insurance premium—until his practice became profitable. In a city saturated with neurosurgeons, his best shot would be to find a less-desirable suburban hospital with unsophisticated operating rooms and staff. He’d have no choice but to do craniotomies in an OR used by all surgeons. He cringed at the thought of opening a head in an OR used earlier that day to remove an infected appendix.
By late morning he was walked-out, depressed, and ready to head home. He dreaded telling Lisa the bad news, but perhaps she’d help him see an overlooked possibility, maybe even be willing to help start a practice if that’s what they decided. One of her strong attributes was a rock-solid business sense.
Stop by the store and ask her to leave early?
No. He would be more productive spending the afternoon job hunting.
At his desk, thumbing absentmindedly through a medical journal, the telephone rang. He debated whether to answer it. Friends knew neither he nor Lisa would be home at this hour. Another ring.
He slapped down the journal. “Cutter here.”
“Hey Alex, Jim Reynolds.”
Who? “Yes?”
“James Reynolds,” he repeated, clarifying his position as neurosurgery chair at a southern university. “Heard you might be fixin’ to relocate.”
“How’d you hear that? Weiner tell you?”
“What? Oh, no. Was talking to Bob Chang at a meeting last week. Bob mentioned you’d interviewed in Cleveland but turned it down. We need to fill us a position, so thought I might oughta run it by you, see if you were interested.”
Suspicious, yet desperately wanting something positive, Alex leaned back in his chair. “What do you have in mind?” After hanging up, Alex opened a copy of the AANS membership list and jotted down the phone numbers of Paul Tunny and John Krause, fellow residents who, like many of Waters’s graduates, had gone on to academic careers, both friends he could trust for honest, unbiased opinions. For the first time in two days, a glimmer of hope motivated him.