| |
10 A.M., TUESDAY, JAN. 17, 2022, PSU Student Affairs office — When Ryan and Blair got to Steve Planck’s office, the two directors were already meeting with him. Steve looked grim, not unusual, since the man could do a poker-face to rival President McShane’s. The old director, Gregory Payne, was looking smug, and Kristy Gomez looked near tears. Angry tears not hurt ones, Blair thought as she looked at her. No, she thought coldly, she isn’t going to be your fall guy.
“What is a student doing here?” Payne demanded.
“It’s the Office of Student Affairs, isn’t it?” Ryan asked, emphasizing the word student. Blair just smiled at Planck and ignored Payne. The man was an asshole; she remembered him from last year during the COVID crisis. Why was he even still here?
Ryan was talking. “For the second time in a year, an EWN editor has ended up at OHSU in serious condition for a preventable condition,” he began. “I would have thought something would have been done about the doctor in question after Cage Washington had to be treated for sepsis a year ago. But that was a different vice president. So, I was dismayed to learn that the same doctor not only missed the severity of Will Bristol’s head injury, he prescribed Tylenol with codeine for it, and made the prescription renewable. Will had to have surgery to stop a brain bleed exacerbated by the codeine Saturday.”
Steve winced. He knew and liked Will. Hell, everyone knew and liked Will. Will saw to it, didn’t he? Just like she did. Like Ryan did.
“Student health insurance isn’t the greatest,” Ryan continued.
Blair was contented to let him talk. But she had to be here. She was going to be in charge one day soon — sooner than she’d expected. She wasn’t going to just let Ryan take care of things. Especially not this.
“OHSU wasn’t sure how much of the surgery will be covered by Will’s insurance,” he said. “I have been in discussion with doctors and attorneys about a potential medical malpractice suit, not against the doctor in question, although I’m sure he will be named, but against the university for failing to relieve the man from his position. I’m aware that there have been other instances. An aggressive attorney — my personal attorney is Rita Morales, for instance — could find the information needed to make the suit larger if necessary.”
“We have just been discussing Kristy Gomez’s lack of supervision of her medical faculty,” Gregory Payne began.
“Ms. Gomez doesn’t have supervisory power over personnel,” Blair interrupted. She’d covered this story. She knew this part. “You do. She doesn’t have control of her budget. You do.”
Ryan nodded at her, and added, “In fact, you got bumped up because you were too incompetent to run the Clinic and then managed to hold onto that position because of all the turmoil last spring. And you have protected the doctor in question, because he is a friend, in spite of the well-documented accusations of previous malfeasance.”
“Now wait a moment,” Payne exclaimed. “You aren’t going make this my problem!”
“It is your problem,” Ryan returned. “And in fact, there is some discussion whether you should be personally named in the suit for your failures and for your relationship with the doctor that caused you to look the other way.”
He looked at Steve. “Will is expected to be in OHSU for the rest of the week. He will be out of class for two weeks and may be out of work for a month after that. For a problem that probably would have been minor. He nearly died. He was found unconscious outside the EWN building around 2 a.m. — no one is sure why he was there, including him — and rushed to the hospital. If he’d fallen unconscious inside the building where no one would have found him until late afternoon Saturday? He probably would have died.”
Steve Planck was looking at his assistant vice president with disfavor. “Not the story I just heard.”
“Well, he’s hardly a doctor, Steve,” Payne said with a sniff.
“Neither are you,” Ryan countered. He didn’t like this bastard, Blair thought with a grin. Neither did she. “You have an EdD in student development, isn’t that right?”
“Well,” he began. He stopped. “Yes.”
Planck raised an eyebrow at that.
“So, the only one here with medical expertise is Ms. Gomez. Kristy? Would a doctor normally prescribe a codeine product for someone with a concussion? Wouldn’t someone with a concussion like that be referred up to OHSU for an MRI?”
“You have to be careful about what you prescribe until you make sure there isn’t a brain bleed,” she said. “Regular Tylenol would be the normal thing to give someone. And yes, he should have been sent up for a scan immediately.”
“And he wasn’t?” Steve Planck asked. “Are we sure that Will didn’t just ignore it?”
“Cage was there with him,” Ryan told him. “If the doctor thought he needed a scan, all he had to do was tell Cage.”
Steve nodded.
“So why are you here?” Payne blustered. “You have no standing in this case whatsoever.”
“I’m here in loco parentis,” Ryan said. “His parents have asked me to look after Will and his needs. They can’t come here for health reasons.”
Blair nodded. “And I’m Will’s fiancé,” she added. “Who better to represent his interests?” And they would keep it vague like that. She guessed loco parentis might be a bit formal for ‘you will look after him, won’t you?’ but it would do.
“Thank you for meeting with us prior to filing an intent to sue, Ryan, Blair,” Steve Planck said formally. “I think you will find this office responsive to your concerns and to Will’s needs in such a way that no formal legal action will be necessary.”
He looked at Kristy. “My apologies, Ms. Gomez. I had been misled to the situation regarding the Health Center. I’d like to discuss this further with you later in the week. But if you could escort our guests out, Dr. Payne and I have a few things to discuss.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, and walked out with the two of them.
“I’ve got to run,” Blair said. “Doctor appointment.”
Ryan nodded. “Good job,” he said, although she thought he’d done the bulk of the work. She smiled at Kristy Gomez and took off.
Ryan and Kristy made it down the stairs to the ground floor before she burst out laughing. “Oh God, Ryan,” she said. “Steve called us in 30 minutes before your meeting to brief him. And Gregory wouldn’t let me speak. It was all my fault. And I found it interesting that he knew what the problem was. Wonder who told him there was one? And in you two walk. I had no idea that he had led Steve to believe that he was a medical doctor not an academic one!”
She laughed some more. Ryan grinned at her. And this was why EWN stood by their friends, he thought. Because it took a strong person to become such a friend in the first place. EWN wasn’t for wimps. “Steve can fire him, right?” Ryan asked. “An assistant vice president serves at the pleasure of the vice president?”
“He could,” Kristy said slowly, thinking it over. “Sure sounded like he might.”
She laughed some more. “You two just made my day.” She waved as she walked off toward the Health Center. Ryan watched her go.
He smiled, and then he thought about coffee. When he turned to go toward the student union, Steve Planck was standing there. “That was fast,” Ryan observed. “I was headed for coffee.”
Steve fell in step with him. “Let’s make it Starbucks,” he said. “I need to talk off some anger, here.”
Ryan nodded.
“That should have been a higher priority unit for my review,” he said wearily. “But Kristy had things under control it seemed, and well, student development was a disaster — remember? Payne just got two weeks’ notice. He’s blustering about contesting it. But it was a made position as it was — a misuse of student fee money, if you ask me. And don’t quote me on that, OK?”
“So, he led you to believe he was a medical doctor?” Ryan asked.
Steve nodded. “Makes me look foolish doesn’t it? But seriously? We have a man whose degree is in student development running the Health Center? It didn’t occur to me.”
“Did he ever write anything that might have encouraged such an interpretation?” Ryan asked. He didn’t point out that it had been in the stories Blair had written about the Health Center a year ago. Steve had been assistant VP for Student Development then, and his policy was to keep his head down. And with a racist whacko for a boss, Ryan had a hard time blaming him. “Because then, you’d have cause, and he’s toast.”
Steve considered that. “I’ll look at the budget memos from last spring,” he promised. “Doesn’t matter. McShane is going to be even less tolerant about this than I am. I’m ending the doctor’s contract with us as of February 1. I might have to eat that until March 1, but I’ll put him on leave of absence pending review tomorrow.”
They got their coffees and started to walk back. It was wet enough that sitting wasn’t appealing. “I’m sorry, Ryan,” Steve said. “There are just so many fires. And we’re so short-handed.”
Ryan nodded. “I get that, truly I do,” he said. “But you’ve got to become more jaded. You have a tendency to assume competency unless someone proves differently. And you can’t. Anyone that Davis hired has to be suspect. And you can’t trust them to give you accurate reviews of the people they supervise either.”
“And you shouldn’t have to tell me that either,” Planck said.
“No,” Ryan agreed. Blair was more savvy than Planck. All of his students were — even the 18-year-olds. “But the notion of you as a bit gullible and a Pollyanna makes me laugh enough that I’ll overlook it. But I’ll tell you who won’t? McShane. One last piece of advice? Get this fixed and schedule an appointment to brief him on your personnel changes before the end of the day. Because if he hears about it from Payne first, or God forbid — from Contracts, when that doctor goes to complain? He’ll drill you a new one.”
“And that’s no lie,” Steve said, and he headed back toward his office. Ryan watched him walk away. He wondered what it would be like to be a trusting soul like that?