Chapter 9 - The Trap Springs
Commander Marcus Whitfield was charged on the eleventh day of the Article 32 hearing.
He was charged with falsifying federal medical records, obstruction of justice, and conduct unbecoming an officer. The charge of falsifying federal medical records was later expanded to include 412 separate counts. The charge of obstruction of justice was expanded to include the use of a master token to impersonate 412 signatures.
He was placed in pretrial confinement at the Naval Consolidated Brig in Miramar, where he remained until his court-martial began the following September.
His court-martial lasted eleven days.
The prosecution called thirty-four witnesses.
Lieutenant Commander Ann Howard testified for four hours. She testified about the notebook. She testified about the 412 uses of the master token. She testified about the moment when she had realized, in June, that she could no longer pretend that the charts were not being altered. She testified about the fact that she had not gone to the admiral. She testified about the fact that she had spent three years watching a man falsify medical records and had not said a word.
She was cross-examined for two hours.
At the end of the cross-examination, the defense attorney asked her one question.
"Lieutenant Commander Howard," he said, "you have testified that you kept a notebook of the alterations. You have testified that you did not report them. You have testified that you watched the alterations happen for three years and said nothing. Why should this court believe a single word you say?"
Howard looked at him.
"Because, sir," she said, "I am not asking you to believe me. I am asking you to look at the notebook. The notebook is not my word. The notebook is a document. It is dated. It has patient initials. It has dates. It has the specific alterations. And when you cross-reference the notebook with the 412 uses of the master token, every single entry matches. That is not my word. That is the record. And the record is the only thing in this courtroom that has never lied."
Commander Marcus Whitfield was convicted on all counts.
He was sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison. He was dismissed from the Navy. He was required to forfeit all pay and allowances. He was ordered to pay restitution to the government in the amount of $240,000, which was the cost of the investigation and the cost of the review of 412 patient records.
He appealed. The appeal was denied.
He is currently serving his sentence at a federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. He will be eligible for parole in 2036.
Commander Victor Reed — the hospital administrator who had torn Grace's badge off her scrubs — was not charged with a crime. He had signed a chart that had been altered by someone else and had acted in good faith on a document that was, on its face, the official record. He was, however, relieved of his position as the hospital administrator of the pediatric ward and reassigned to a position in medical logistics in Bethesda. He retired from the Navy two years later, at twenty-two years of service, without ever having been selected for promotion to captain.
Before he retired, he wrote Grace a letter.
It was two pages long, in longhand, and it arrived at her apartment in Chula Vista on a Tuesday in October.
"Lieutenant Holloway," it said.
"I do not expect you to forgive me. I am not writing to ask for forgiveness. I am writing to tell you that I know what I did and I have to live with it.
I signed a chart that I did not read carefully. I trusted the department head. I trusted the official record. I trusted the system that I had spent twenty years serving. And when a nurse told me that the chart did not match the bedside record, I did not listen. I tore her badge off her scrubs in front of a sailor and his son and a charge nurse and I told her she was done.
I have thought about that moment every day since. I did not just embarrass you. I did what Marcus Whitfield needed me to do. I was the instrument of his cover-up. I was the man who was supposed to make the problem go away, and I tried to make it go away by making you the problem.
I am not writing to ask you to forgive me. I am writing to tell you that I have requested retirement. I am forty-seven years old. I will spend the rest of my life thinking about what I did.
I am sorry, Lieutenant Holloway. I am sorry that I did not read the chart carefully. I am sorry that I did not listen to you when you told me that the chart did not match the record. I am sorry that I tore your badge off your scrubs.
If you ever want to tell me what I should have done, I will listen. I do not expect you to want to. But I will listen.
Victor Reed"
Grace read the letter four times.
Then she put it in a shoebox in her closet where she kept the second chart and the dinosaur drawing and the photograph of her mother.
May you like
She did not answer it. She was not ready to. She was not sure she would ever be ready to.
But she kept it.
