Yuki then sat riveted as men and women who’d lost family members at Municipal took the stand, each witness telling in wrenching testimony how he or she had lost a child, or a spouse, or a parent because of medical neglect and malpractice.
Yuki was still so raw it was all she could do to stop herself from weeping along with the witnesses. But she didn’t cry. She forced herself to look at O’Mara’s case the way a lawyer would.
It was exactly as Cindy had said at Susie’s more than a week ago.
The patients had been admitted through the emergency room, they recovered in the ICU, then something happened and the patient died.
That was exactly what had happened to her mom.
If only she could go back in time and check her mother out of that hellhole.
If only she had done that.
Yuki heard Lawrence Kramer dismiss a tearful mother on the stand. “I have no questions for this witness, thank you.”
As the poor woman choked back sobs, Yuki pressed a handkerchief hard against her own eyes with both hands.
She took deep, painful breaths as Maureen O’Mara called the next witness.
“Call Dr. Lee Chen.”
Chapter 51
YUKI LEANED FORWARD in her seat, scrutinizing the plaintiffs’ witness, Dr. Chen, who spoke with the controlled fervor of an intelligent person who didn’t want to come off as sounding too smart. She knew all too well how that felt. Hell, it was practically her life story.
Chen listed his credentials—an MD from Berkeley, followed by twelve years in the emergency room at San Francisco Municipal.
In response to O’Mara’s questioning, the serious-looking doctor in black-framed glasses told the court about a night when he was the attending physician in the ER and a thirty-year-old woman named Jessica Falk was brought in by ambulance.
“Ms. Falk had been swimming in her pool,” said Chen. “She felt woozy and dialed nine-one-one. She was in ventricular fibrillation when she came into the ER. We defibbed her, got her heart back into normal sinus rhythm so she was stabilized. She was doing just fine,” Chen told the jury. “Then she was transferred to the ICU.”
“Please go on, Dr. Chen,” said O’Mara.
“I knew Ms. Falk pretty well—our daughters go to the same day care center—so I stayed on top of her case. I looked in on Jessie about six hours later, when I was going off my shift. We talked for a while, and she was okay. She missed her little girl was all. But when I checked her chart the next day, I learned that she’d had irregular heartbeats, probably the result of conductive disturbance—and she died.”
“Doctor, did you find that unusual?”
“I thought it was unusual for a woman of Jessica’s age and physical condition.”
“And so, what did you do?”
“I called for a postmortem and a board review.”
“And what were the findings of the autopsy?”
“Somehow Jessie Falk had received epinephrine. It was not prescribed.”
“And what would be the effect of epinephrine on that type of cardiac patient?”
“Epinephrine is a synthetic form of adrenaline for God’s sake. She should have gotten lidocaine, an antiarrhythmic. That would have smoothed out her heart rate. Administering epinephrine was like giving her cocaine. It would be lethal for a cardiac patient.”
“So that’s a pretty big mistake, isn’t it, Dr. Chen? What happened when the hospital board reviewed Ms. Falk’s case?”
“Actually, no action was taken,” the doctor said, biting off his words.
“No action?”
“Well, nothing with respect to Jessie Falk, anyway. I was terminated two weeks later.”