"Go on."

"Well, I won't go into the details, but there was a death in the unit. An order that should never have been given, written by a surgeon who was well aware of the patient's history and should have known better. He was one of the founding partners of the group, and drank too much. He also had neglected to inform the nurses about past events with their patient. Then there was a ridiculous delay in his getting in touch with the unit after he was paged, followed by a botched attempt to open the poor woman up right there in the ICU."

"Sounds gruesome."

"Even more gruesome was the way the group railroaded blame for everything onto one of the nurses. It was done with the ruthlessness and efficiency of a commando unit. Sheets disappeared from the patient's chart; doctors came forth with blatant lies. Unfortunately for her, they picked on a nurse who was going through a bitter divorce and was on a bunch of meds for depression, and who wasn't really that clinically strong anyhow. Janie got suspended from work, and then she overdosed. She didn't die, but I think sometimes she wished she had. Eventually, her ex got their kids and she moved away."

"Were you two close?"

"Not that close, but we considered one another friends. I couldn't stand to see what they had done to her, and I was on duty when all this happened, so I decided to blow the whistle on the surgeon and those who covered up for him."

"Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh is right. They went after me the same way they went after her. It was a total mismatch. Evidence began to surface that suggested I had assisted Janie in diverting drugs and was just trying to defend my partner in crime. I began getting weird phone calls. A year before, I had broken off a three-year relationship with a man who decided that, despite what he and I had agreed upon all along, he didn't want kids. A new guy I had just started dating, who seemed very promising, without any real explanation suddenly wanted nothing to do with me. My record at work had been spotless, but out of the blue several groundless incident reports were filed against me by supervisors who had connections to the surgical group. It seemed as if the doctors were actually enjoying the challenge of systematically dismantling my life."