Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away With Murder by James B. Stewart

stared at him in disbelief. “You jerk!” she shouted, before returning frantically to the patient. Other nurses and doctors rushed in and began chest compression, to no avail.
    Ruth Barrick was dead.
    The last entry in Barrick’s “physician progress notes” was made by Swango and dated February 6 at eleven A.M .:
PT [patient] suffered apparent respiratory arrest witnessed by R.N. No pulse present, Code Blue called at 10:25 hrs. PT did not respond to resuscitative measures . . . pronounced dead at 10:49. Dr. Joseph Goodman and family notified per Dr. Arlo Brakel.
    Swango.
    The death certificate cited the cause of death as “a. Cardiopulmonary arrest, due to, b. Cerebrovascular accident,” a stroke in lay terms.
    Ritchie was astounded and appalled when Swango insisted he wanted personally to convey the news of Barrick’s death to her family members. (She later saw him leading relatives into a private room.) And she could hardly believe what she had witnessed. She was almost certain that something Swango had done had killed Barrick. Still, it never crossed her mind that he might have killed her deliberately. She assumed that he had accidentally allowed an air pocket to enter the central line, causing a fatal embolism in the bloodstream. Such accidents did sometimes happen, which was one of the reasons only doctors were allowed to adjust central lines. But why hadn’t Swango acknowledged the error? Why had he acted as he did? And what was he doing with those syringes?
    These troubling questions were still swirling in Ritchie’s mindthat afternoon when she responded to an urgent call in another room. The head nurse, Amy Moore, was with a patient who was having serious trouble breathing. Ritchie was alarmed to see that Swango was also in the room. With the patient gasping for breath, he ordered Ritchie to fetch a heart monitor.
    Moore seemed incredulous: Using a heart monitor would take valuable time. “We don’t need a heart monitor to check her lungs!” she exclaimed. It was rare for a nurse to defy a doctor, but the patient’s condition plainly suggested blood clots in the lungs. She needed to be rushed to another floor for testing.
    Swango was insistent. “She has to have a heart monitor.”
    “No she doesn’t!” Ritchie interjected, fearing that the patient would die while they delayed dealing with an obvious condition.
    But Swango was adamant. Moore said she could handle the situation, and told the visibly upset Ritchie she could leave. Moore got the patient to the other floor in time to save her life.
    After her shift ended that day, Ritchie was driving home on Route 315 to the northwest suburbs where she lived. She couldn’t get the day’s disturbing events out of her mind. Barrick’s death, Swango’s unfeeling reaction to it, and his jeopardizing another patient made her consider the possibility that his actions had been deliberate. Her heart started racing; her head felt light; and she feared she would faint. She pulled over to the side of the busy highway to collect herself, but she still felt waves of anxiety. As soon as she could, she got off the highway and drove to her sister’s house, where she broke down in tears. She told her sister about Ruth Barrick, and then about the other patient. Her sister called their father, the doctor, who said he’d check on Anne as soon as he could. Meanwhile, she did deep breathing exercises in an effort to stem the anxiety and calm herself. Surely she was wrong about Swango; Barrick’s death was an accident. Eventually her pulse returned to normal, she regained her strength, and she was able to drive home.
    The next day, in line with the hospital protocol that any irregular incidents should be reported to one’s immediate superior, Ritchie told Amy Moore her suspicions that Swango had caused Barrick’s death. She also talked with several other nurses about what had happened. Given hospital practice, she didn’t dare say anythingto any doctors. And in