Guilty Until Proven Innocent by Alida van den Bos

Author:Alida van den Bos
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612046907
Publisher: Publish on Demand Global LLC
Published: 2010-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

JONATHAN COULDN’T UNDERSTAND WHY, when he tried to talk to Ally, she’d always just left or wasn’t available. After he’d come back from Germany he used to call her about twice a week for at least three months, and she always happily responded.

For the last six weeks or so he had not been able to talk to her, it was always Albert answering the phone. He’d sent her flowers and little presents such as a book with Australian scenery to tempt her to come back to no avail.

He was almost ready to take time off to go and see her when he was told a Miss Julie Lions was suing the hospital for mistreating her mother, Mrs Beverly Lions. She claimed that Doctor Carbine left her mother in agony alone in the room knowing she could die any minute. That hit him hard.

He remembered resisting the temptation giving her a needle to end her misery. Thank God she died just in time. It would have ruined his career. The trouble was the only witness was the claimant, Miss Julie Lions, and perhaps nurse Lucy Fields who’d been in the room briefly to see if she was all right.

He couldn’t understand how she could sue the hospital when everything humanly possible, had been done to make her pain bearable and if they failed it was only because ethics prevented them from ending her life peacefully. Euthanasia was still against the law in Australia.

He’d already notified his insurance Company and Lucy promised to back him up if needed. After Mrs Lions died he’d left the room as her daughter asked. Then a little later he asked Lucy to bring the daughter a cup of tea to comfort her, which she did. He thought she had little hope of succeeding with her claim, but it was still a nuisance. It was something he, or the hospital had to handle.

She must have had the idea because of the greedy lawyers who advertised everyday on the television, something like, ‘If you have a complaint, come in for a free consultation, you want a fighter on your side.’

She probably had seen ads like that dozens of times, then found a two-bit lawyer after telling him a lot of lies, to take the case. Didn’t she realise somebody had to pay? Jonathan knew lawyers don’t work for nothing. And because of this, people suing for every little thing, his and other doctor’s insurances had gone through the roof. Hoping it would turn out to be just a fizzer, he put his mind on other things.

He calculated that the difference in time between Germany and Australia was now eight hours as since for the last few months they’d returned to normal time with Germany now on summer time.

Because of that, he’d always been ringing her late, and Albert always answered the phone. This time he’d planned to ring early, hoping Albert wouldn’t be there as he’d be most likely visiting his widow. So for once he dialled

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