“You and I will have lunch at O’Rourke’s when I get back from Atlanta. I’ll pay the tab, and you’ll tell me all about how you’re not making any waves on my account. Deal?”

“I—”

“Deal?” Lou asked again.

“Deal,” Peterbee relented as she reluctantly plunked down a set of exit papers.

Lou accepted them and took the photo of Emily from his desk. He could do without the cheesy stapler and tin of paperclips. Smiling now, he walked past the secretary and out the office door.

“I really like John Wayne,” he heard her say.

Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

Entitlements are like a house of mirrors: the more mirrors there are the harder it becomes to find a way out.

—LANCASTER R. HILL, 100 Neighbors, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1939, P.200

Still dealing with the inner conflict of getting out from under Walter Filstrup on the one hand and being shut out from a job he loved on the other, Lou took a cab directly from the airport to the hospital. He would stop later at the hotel and remain in Atlanta for as long as Cap needed him. The department head at Eisenhower Memorial, the anti-Filstrup, had juggled the ER schedule, and had readily handed over the five days remaining in Lou’s vacation account. Lou was prepared to put his ER job on the line if he had to, but this was another of those first-things-first situations.

There was a text waiting when they touched down at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. Hospital president Win Carter had been called out of the office, and Lou should meet Dr. Ivan Puchalsky of infectious disease at the isolation suite on Baron 7. During the ride into town, Lou read up on the man. Russian-born and educated at top U.S. hospitals, his résumé was impressive, and his area of expertise was nosocomial disease.

Nosocomial.

Infection acquired in a hospital. The word, itself, sounded nasty. It had always bothered Lou that such a term even had to exist. As they weaved through the busy streets toward Arbor General, he absently tried the dictionary connected to his iPhone, and was surprised that nosocomial wasn’t in there. A nonexistent, ugly word referring to a condition that had only come into being because there were hospitals.

Nice.