False Positive
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Synopsis
After a woman is rushed to the ER in shock from massive blood loss, second-year medical resident Julien “Red” Richison becomes suspicious about the procedures being practiced at the nearby “VIP” abortion clinic.
Soon, with the help of Bethany Fabrazio, director of a pro-life women’s clinic, Red finds himself investigating what goes on behind closed doors at VIP. But what Bethany and Red don’t know is that some VIP doctors will stop at nothing to keep their secrets under wraps–even if it means taking Red’s life.
Addressing with sensitivity and conviction some of the most crucial moral, ethical, medical and spiritual issues of our time–including sanctity of life, bio-ethics, RU-486, ectopic pregnancy, in vitro fertilization, abortion, fetal tissue research, post-abortion emotional and spiritual recovery–False Positive take readers on a fast-paced thrill-ride ride and bring them face-to-face with the inseparable miracles of God’s forgiveness and grace.
Release date: June 16, 2010
Publisher: WaterBrook
Print pages: 336
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False Positive
William Cutrer, M.D.
PROLOGUE
Early December
“It hurts! Gimme somethin’ for the pain! I got to have somethin’—Ow!”
Red Richison clutched his stethoscope and trotted toward the sound of yelling. Wheeling into the room, he found a patient writhing on the bed.
“Oh, Doc!” She clawed at the pillow, then let out a scream.
Red turned to the nurse. “Get her some Stadol, two milligrams IV push.”
The patient cried out again, then spit out several expletives. “Oh, Mama! Mama! It hurts bad!”
Red looked around for the girl’s mother, but the nurse shook her head.
“She came alone.”
Red nodded. Just like most teen mothers I’ve seen here in the past year—crying for Mom, not for her man. So sad. He stood over the laboring girl.
“Are you the one who called to tell me your water broke?”
She groaned and nodded. “Uh-huh, that was me.” When she groaned again, the nurse gave her the IV medication.
Red sat on the side of the bed and laid his hand on her abdomen to assess the uterine size. Then he spoke in a soothing voice. “Why’d you wait so long to come in? What was that—three, four hours ago?”
“Yeah. And I kept calling the clinic, but nobody answered. I didn’t have a ride.”
What clinic? Wish I’d known. I could’ve suggested a cab.
“Doc, it hurts! ” “Hang on. You’ll feel better real soon. Now I need to ask you some questions and take a look, okay?”
She screamed again and gripped the sheets.
“All right. Give it another minute or two and the medicine will kick in. I promise.”
Red rested a hand on her shoulder. She nodded and wiped sweat from her brow.
“That doctor put in the seaweed yesterday.” She panted. “Then I started leaking. It wasn’t supposed to happen this fast. He said to come back Monday or Tuesday.”
Red stared into her eyes. “What? What doctor?”
“The one at the clinic.”
“The hospital clinic?”
“No! The abortion clinic. It was, like, Dr. Orion or something.”
“Oh.” No way! Not the VIP clinic! Red turned to the nurse. “Call Dr. Ophion. And up the dosage of Stadol. Let’s get her comfortable.” There was nothing they could do for the baby anyway.
Red did an exam and found a lone foot dangling at the vaginal opening. The patient was dilated to about four centimeters with a footling breech, and he guessed she was about fourteen weeks pregnant—months from viability. Not even big enough to call a stillbirth.
“I can feel it!” The patient screamed again. “It’s comin’! Ooooh! It wasn’t…supposed…to be like this.” She panted, then pushed. “Ugh! He said…it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Doctor, the other leg has come through,” the nurse said.
“Let’s take her to delivery.” Red wanted good lighting in case he ran into trouble with the placenta. They wouldn’t need the fetal monitors—no need for heroics.
By the time everything was set up, the sedation had taken over and the patient lay mumbling. She pushed a time or two, and Red delivered the body out to the head. He detected no pulse at the umbilical cord. A moment later, he guided the tiny head out of the birth canal.
Red gazed at the Barbie doll–size child, another tiny victim of abortion, and suddenly his throat constricted. She’s perfect. He glanced at the mother’s eyes, expecting to find some acknowledgment of her child’s beauty, but she didn’t seem to care. “The baby is here, and it’s a girl.” He cleared his throat. “I’m so sorry that she didn’t make it. Would you like to hold her?”
The girl grunted and managed an emphatic no.
Red wrapped the baby in a blanket and handed her to the nurse. She set the child in the warmer, then turned to do paperwork while Red handled the placental delivery, cleaned up the patient, and took her to recovery. As he worked, one persistent thought kept bothering him like a paper cut. How can people so devalue life?
Red was working to make the patient comfortable when he heard a voice behind him. “Dr. Richison?” Looking up, he saw the nurse standing in the doorway, motioning for him to return to the delivery room.
“What is it?” He followed her as she walked over to the warmer and pulled back the blanket. Red was taken aback. The baby lay gasping for air.
She’s alive! Red stared. I was sure she wasn’t breathing—probably depressed by the narcotic. He shook his head at the futility of the child’s desperate effort to get oxygen. I have nothing to offer her. She’s too small. She’ll die in minutes.
He turned to the nurse, a woman with many years’ experience compared to his one year of OB residency and mere months of hands-on training. “What do you usually do in these situations?”
“We just leave them for a while or put them in formalin and take them to the lab once they quit.”
Red nodded.
The nurse shrugged, got a small basin of formalin—the liquid used to transport tissue specimens to the lab—and submerged the gasping baby. Then she returned to her charting duties.
Red stood frozen, staring at the tiny infant under the fluid, watching as she struggled to breathe. I can’t believe this. A wave of nausea washed over him. Of course the infant would die in minutes, even without the fluid. But still…
I can’t believe I just let the nurse do that! He turned out the lights so the only illumination came from the hallway. After reaching a trembling hand toward the nearest chair, he pulled it up and sat down. Resting his chin in his hands, he stared at the child in the small plastic basin. The infant’s chest heaved as she struggled. What’s taking so long? What have I done?
“Well, I see I’m too late for the delivery.”
The words jarred Red out of his thoughts. He looked up to see Dr. Ophion leaning against the doorway. Red glanced at the child, then back at Dr. Ophion, and his heart pounded. Now Ophion knew what he had done!
“Where’s Dr. Damon? The nurse told me he’s the chief OB resident tonight.”
“He’s here—sleeping. Said not to bother him.” He’d told Red that calling for help was a sign of weakness, and Red fought to keep the anger he felt from showing. Truth is, he just wants a decent night’s sleep, probably so he can moonlight at your abortion clinic.
Dr. Ophion nodded, turned, and headed for the recovery room.
When Red looked back at the infant, she had stopped struggling. Relieved, he rose and stood over her, then whispered a prayer for the infant, grateful that her struggle was over. After lingering a moment, he went and found the nurse and asked her to take the baby down to the lab. Staring at his paper boots as he walked, he headed to recovery to finish the paperwork.
He found Dr. Ophion checking on the patient. When Red took out the girl’s chart, he clenched his teeth when he noticed that Dr. Ophion had already made some notations. Not only had he signed off as the attending physician, but he had also changed the age of the baby from fourteen weeks to twenty.
When Dr. Ophion exited, Red followed and caught up with him. “Excuse me!”
The doctor stopped and turned. “Yes? You need something?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Ophion, but that child was barely fifteen weeks, if that.”
The senior physician smiled. “Eighteen weeks is the Medicaid cutoff. If the baby’s older than that, we get better reimbursement.”
“But…” Red hesitated. You just falsified the record. On the heels of that thought came another: But could I prove it?
“Don’t worry. The reimbursements are so low, we all have to stretch it to make ends meet, or these patients couldn’t even get medical care.” He smiled, looking for all the world as though they were discussing their holiday plans or where to have lunch. “Hey, are you one of the residents who’ll be helping at our clinic?” His expression was open and friendly and it took all of Red’s control not to curl his lip at the suggestion that he might perform elective abortions.
Red swallowed hard. “Uh, no. Actually, I’m opposed to abortion.”
Dr. Ophion smirked. “Really?”
Red nodded, though the movement felt stiff. “I’m generally pro-life.”
“I see.” Dr. Ophion glanced toward the room where Red had watched that futile struggle for life, then back to him. The mockery in the older doctor’s eyes matched the sarcasm in his words: “Yes, and it certainly looked that way.”
With that, Ophion turned and strutted out the door.
Early December
“It hurts! Gimme somethin’ for the pain! I got to have somethin’—Ow!”
Red Richison clutched his stethoscope and trotted toward the sound of yelling. Wheeling into the room, he found a patient writhing on the bed.
“Oh, Doc!” She clawed at the pillow, then let out a scream.
Red turned to the nurse. “Get her some Stadol, two milligrams IV push.”
The patient cried out again, then spit out several expletives. “Oh, Mama! Mama! It hurts bad!”
Red looked around for the girl’s mother, but the nurse shook her head.
“She came alone.”
Red nodded. Just like most teen mothers I’ve seen here in the past year—crying for Mom, not for her man. So sad. He stood over the laboring girl.
“Are you the one who called to tell me your water broke?”
She groaned and nodded. “Uh-huh, that was me.” When she groaned again, the nurse gave her the IV medication.
Red sat on the side of the bed and laid his hand on her abdomen to assess the uterine size. Then he spoke in a soothing voice. “Why’d you wait so long to come in? What was that—three, four hours ago?”
“Yeah. And I kept calling the clinic, but nobody answered. I didn’t have a ride.”
What clinic? Wish I’d known. I could’ve suggested a cab.
“Doc, it hurts! ” “Hang on. You’ll feel better real soon. Now I need to ask you some questions and take a look, okay?”
She screamed again and gripped the sheets.
“All right. Give it another minute or two and the medicine will kick in. I promise.”
Red rested a hand on her shoulder. She nodded and wiped sweat from her brow.
“That doctor put in the seaweed yesterday.” She panted. “Then I started leaking. It wasn’t supposed to happen this fast. He said to come back Monday or Tuesday.”
Red stared into her eyes. “What? What doctor?”
“The one at the clinic.”
“The hospital clinic?”
“No! The abortion clinic. It was, like, Dr. Orion or something.”
“Oh.” No way! Not the VIP clinic! Red turned to the nurse. “Call Dr. Ophion. And up the dosage of Stadol. Let’s get her comfortable.” There was nothing they could do for the baby anyway.
Red did an exam and found a lone foot dangling at the vaginal opening. The patient was dilated to about four centimeters with a footling breech, and he guessed she was about fourteen weeks pregnant—months from viability. Not even big enough to call a stillbirth.
“I can feel it!” The patient screamed again. “It’s comin’! Ooooh! It wasn’t…supposed…to be like this.” She panted, then pushed. “Ugh! He said…it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Doctor, the other leg has come through,” the nurse said.
“Let’s take her to delivery.” Red wanted good lighting in case he ran into trouble with the placenta. They wouldn’t need the fetal monitors—no need for heroics.
By the time everything was set up, the sedation had taken over and the patient lay mumbling. She pushed a time or two, and Red delivered the body out to the head. He detected no pulse at the umbilical cord. A moment later, he guided the tiny head out of the birth canal.
Red gazed at the Barbie doll–size child, another tiny victim of abortion, and suddenly his throat constricted. She’s perfect. He glanced at the mother’s eyes, expecting to find some acknowledgment of her child’s beauty, but she didn’t seem to care. “The baby is here, and it’s a girl.” He cleared his throat. “I’m so sorry that she didn’t make it. Would you like to hold her?”
The girl grunted and managed an emphatic no.
Red wrapped the baby in a blanket and handed her to the nurse. She set the child in the warmer, then turned to do paperwork while Red handled the placental delivery, cleaned up the patient, and took her to recovery. As he worked, one persistent thought kept bothering him like a paper cut. How can people so devalue life?
Red was working to make the patient comfortable when he heard a voice behind him. “Dr. Richison?” Looking up, he saw the nurse standing in the doorway, motioning for him to return to the delivery room.
“What is it?” He followed her as she walked over to the warmer and pulled back the blanket. Red was taken aback. The baby lay gasping for air.
She’s alive! Red stared. I was sure she wasn’t breathing—probably depressed by the narcotic. He shook his head at the futility of the child’s desperate effort to get oxygen. I have nothing to offer her. She’s too small. She’ll die in minutes.
He turned to the nurse, a woman with many years’ experience compared to his one year of OB residency and mere months of hands-on training. “What do you usually do in these situations?”
“We just leave them for a while or put them in formalin and take them to the lab once they quit.”
Red nodded.
The nurse shrugged, got a small basin of formalin—the liquid used to transport tissue specimens to the lab—and submerged the gasping baby. Then she returned to her charting duties.
Red stood frozen, staring at the tiny infant under the fluid, watching as she struggled to breathe. I can’t believe this. A wave of nausea washed over him. Of course the infant would die in minutes, even without the fluid. But still…
I can’t believe I just let the nurse do that! He turned out the lights so the only illumination came from the hallway. After reaching a trembling hand toward the nearest chair, he pulled it up and sat down. Resting his chin in his hands, he stared at the child in the small plastic basin. The infant’s chest heaved as she struggled. What’s taking so long? What have I done?
“Well, I see I’m too late for the delivery.”
The words jarred Red out of his thoughts. He looked up to see Dr. Ophion leaning against the doorway. Red glanced at the child, then back at Dr. Ophion, and his heart pounded. Now Ophion knew what he had done!
“Where’s Dr. Damon? The nurse told me he’s the chief OB resident tonight.”
“He’s here—sleeping. Said not to bother him.” He’d told Red that calling for help was a sign of weakness, and Red fought to keep the anger he felt from showing. Truth is, he just wants a decent night’s sleep, probably so he can moonlight at your abortion clinic.
Dr. Ophion nodded, turned, and headed for the recovery room.
When Red looked back at the infant, she had stopped struggling. Relieved, he rose and stood over her, then whispered a prayer for the infant, grateful that her struggle was over. After lingering a moment, he went and found the nurse and asked her to take the baby down to the lab. Staring at his paper boots as he walked, he headed to recovery to finish the paperwork.
He found Dr. Ophion checking on the patient. When Red took out the girl’s chart, he clenched his teeth when he noticed that Dr. Ophion had already made some notations. Not only had he signed off as the attending physician, but he had also changed the age of the baby from fourteen weeks to twenty.
When Dr. Ophion exited, Red followed and caught up with him. “Excuse me!”
The doctor stopped and turned. “Yes? You need something?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Ophion, but that child was barely fifteen weeks, if that.”
The senior physician smiled. “Eighteen weeks is the Medicaid cutoff. If the baby’s older than that, we get better reimbursement.”
“But…” Red hesitated. You just falsified the record. On the heels of that thought came another: But could I prove it?
“Don’t worry. The reimbursements are so low, we all have to stretch it to make ends meet, or these patients couldn’t even get medical care.” He smiled, looking for all the world as though they were discussing their holiday plans or where to have lunch. “Hey, are you one of the residents who’ll be helping at our clinic?” His expression was open and friendly and it took all of Red’s control not to curl his lip at the suggestion that he might perform elective abortions.
Red swallowed hard. “Uh, no. Actually, I’m opposed to abortion.”
Dr. Ophion smirked. “Really?”
Red nodded, though the movement felt stiff. “I’m generally pro-life.”
“I see.” Dr. Ophion glanced toward the room where Red had watched that futile struggle for life, then back to him. The mockery in the older doctor’s eyes matched the sarcasm in his words: “Yes, and it certainly looked that way.”
With that, Ophion turned and strutted out the door.
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False Positive
William Cutrer, M.D.
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