Virtual American Gothic - Second Season Episode Seven The Raze and Fall of Billy Peale by Jeff Gilson <jgilson@scott.skidmore.edu> ********************************************* NOT TO BE ARCHIVED TO A WEB PAGE WITHOUT THE AUTHOR'S PRIOR CONSENT. Special guest stars Chicago Hospital Administrator: Alan Arkin Dr. Thomas Baker: Sylvester McCoy Dr. Gray Coleman: Scott Bakula ********************************************* Dr. Billy Peele was the sort of man we expected to fall a long time ago. So when we found out about his firing, none of us was surprised, except at how long it actually took. It was happening about the time when that reporter from Charleston stopped making all that trouble for Sheriff Lucas Buck and started dying. When Billy Peele went to the Sheriff for help, that didn't surprise us either; in fact, we'd been waiting for him to crumble. No one gets away with pride in Trinity, not if our Sheriff has any say in the matter, and he always does; like when he dispatched those boys from up North, the prideful have a way of disappearing from our lovely town, and Dr. Peele was no different. Upon hearing of the firing, he retired back to the house he'd been renting to look over his future. It was a square house, a Victorian townhouse with a brick base and white top that looked, quite frankly and to the unadjusted eye, like most other Victorian townhouses in the area, except that this one had a swing on the front porch that hadn't been used since Billy had moved in nine months prior; the younger generation just doesn't appreciate the fine points of sipping juleps on the porch swing on a hot night in the old Confederacy. The telephone was busy that night as Dr. Peele attempted to reclaim his past and his career from the brink of disaster; he called old friends, colleagues, professors, all the names he could remember from the Centers for Disease Control. He sank into the upholstered chair as one by one he was found to have no ties left to the medical world. He called his roommate from the days in medical school, and got a similar response. "I can't talk to you, Billy." "Why not? What's wrong?" "Don't you realize what you did? If anyone knows I talked to you..." "What the hell are you talking about?" "I mean, my God, all of them?" "All what?" There was a click on the other end and the conversation ended. II The Sheriff's office in Trinity is one of the busiest places, despite our very low crime rate. The reason for this activity is, of course, Lucas Buck. Nothing escapes his gaze; if crimes happen, Sheriff Buck knows about them before they're finished, sometimes before they begin. He can usually spot any incoming disaster and avert it. That's why, when the plague hit, it caught us all off guard. That's when Dr. Crower, currently indisposed, called in the Centers for Disease Control; in came Billy Peele, with a bull- headed attitude toward our town. He started off in Lucas' face, had his way with the preacher's daughter, and was accused of trying to murder the Sheriff; all in all, not the best way to get well known in Trinity. Dr. Crower, when he left, we were sad to see him go, though we knew that it was for the best; Dr. Peele's departure will more likely produce relief. It wasn't very long before Dr. Peele came to his senses and appealed to the Sheriff for help. Some of us expected and even wanted him to approach the office on his knees, but that, we figured, would be too pathetic; Billy Peale was nothing if not proud. The day was its usual cheerfully sunny, as always out of place. "Did you do it?" was the first thing Lucas asked him. "Yes. But it wasn't my fault. I didn't mean to-" "Yeah, you had the best intentions, didn't you? You know what they say about good intentions. Therein lies the way to true greatness." "I thought that was the road to Hell." "You say potato.... Listen, Billy. I don't like you. I don't want to help you. I help the people of my town because I know them and helping them gives me pleasure. If they don't want to be helped, I leave them alone. Let them stew in their own troubles." "I want your help." "What can you give me? You're allegiance? I doubt it. You know what you can give me?" "I want to leave." "Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe we have a winner." III Billy Peele was a virus chaser; that was what he did, that's what brought him to Trinity, that was his nickname in med-school when his fellow students found out he was into viro-immunology. It was a career that naturally took him to the wilds of the world on humanitarian aid missions. The love of discovering cures took him all over Africa; the love of seeing his name in print was among the things that brought him home. Home, though, was not as he left it, and he went back to Atlanta looking for adventure at the home offices of the Centers for Disease Control. He handled a few domestic cases, chief among them the flesh-eating streptococcus, before the unexplained bleeding brought him to our fair town. He took up residency in our hospital, first while still in the employ of the CDC, and later while working for the hospital. When he resigned from the CDC, he was told that the door was open for him to return, but the door shut suddenly when he needed it. That betrayal began Billy's fear, and that fear led him to Sheriff Buck. The fact that Lucas decided to help him did nothing to quell Billy's fears; Lucas' help had left enough people in pain that he was wary, though it was their own fault that anything bad happened to them. Billy knew how Lucas worked; he'd seen similar people, or so he thought. He even had a suspicion that Buck had set the rumor going, though how the Sheriff might have found out about something he'd kept completely to himself and the investigator who'd cleared him of any wrongdoing, Billy had no idea. It was five years ago and half a world away until someone found out, and once dirt like this got out, it rivaled a brush fire for how it spread. In search of any scrap of a career, Billy called one of his professors from med school, now the administrator of a hospital in Chicago; the man had always told Billy he was headed for greatness, and Billy agreed. Now, he was calling on the verge of having to take up another vocation. "Billy, these are serious allegations. Are you fighting them?" "I did it." "Rule number one, Billy, don't admit when you make a mistake. That's what malpractice insurance is for. Rule number two, when facing a possible career-ending rumor, fight it tooth and nail, even if it is true, because no matter how true it is, it's not true. I thought I taught you all of this." "My conscience won't let me duck out of this." "Billy, you killed a lot of people because you were young and impetuous.You know better, now, and that makes you a better doctor. Now fight to stay a doctor." "Do you have any positions open?" "What do I need with a virus chaser? Go on back to the CDC, that's where you want to be." "They won't rehire me because of what happened." "Of course they won't. You need to make it so it didn't happen." "How?" "That's for you to work out." IV The South lives by its secrets. You never tell anyone the whole truth; about the family, you tell even less. For Selena Coombs, school teacher at Trinity Elementary, this was more the case than anyone else. Growing up in the house of Reverend Coombs was hard on the young girl, and it wasn't surprising when she went into the arms of Sheriff Buck. When Billy Peele came to town, she was looking for someone to deliver her from the life she'd chosen; when he refused to do the honors, she dumped him like yesterdays compost. Now she was involved with Kane, with the hopes he'd deliver her, too. Her involvement with the Mayor-elect didn't stop her from trolling the bars, which was where she saw Billy Peele stewing in his own juices, not to mention some very fine single malt scotch. "Why, Billy, what brings you to this fine state?" "South Carolina?" "Oblivion." "The end of one career, the start of another." "Giving up doctoring? As I recall, you had some rather fine hands." "Selena, if I didn't know better, I'd guess that you were sent by Lucas to tempt me from the deal." "Oh, boy. You been dealing with the devil, Billy? You ready to pay?" "I didn't have any choice, Selena." "Now, that's where you're confused." "Talkin' about your Magic Man?" "What do you know about that?" she asked, suddenly defensive. "I heard Kane dances a mean soft-shoe. How'd he dance into your heart? Oh, yeah, that's right. He's going to sweep away Buck. Sorry, sister, only one devil at a time for me." V The deal was simple: all Billy had to do was take care of one person for Buck. The person seemed totally inconsequential. Gail Emory was dead, by her own hand, which exonerated Peele from their last deal, the one Buck had called in and made Billy think Buck owed him, though in his heart he knew better. The patient Billy had to take care of was around thirty years old, a former nurse and former mental patient who had taken ill. Billy's diagnosis was poison; Lucas wouldn't hear of that and said that the taking care of the patient included lying in the medical reports. He made Billy change it to food poisoning. This didn't sit well with Billy; along with being proud, he was honest. He made the point of telling Buck that. "Honest?" came the Sheriff's disbelieving reply. "Yes, honest." "Honest enough to tell the world about--" "Well, I'm paying for that, now, aren't I?" "Are you going to go half-way on me, Doc? That's usually a mistake." "Who are you protecting? That Gallagher woman, what's your connection to her?" "Let's just say I owe her one. Her mother, too. But this isn't about me. It's about you. Your future. You won't have one if you go against me. Now, to that, I have someone for you to meet. Ben," he said into the intercom, "show in Dr. Baker." A man walked into the Sheriff's office, carrying an umbrella and wearing a silk scarf. "Doctor Billy Peele, Doctor Thomas Baker, World Health Organization." "Hello, Dr. Peele. Pleased to make your acquaintance." "WHO? Of course. Dr. Baker, nice to meet you. I take it this is an informal job interview." "You could put it like that, yes. You do realize the work that WHO entails?" "I've worked with the CDC for more than six years." "Hmm. Yes. Well, why was your employment with them terminated?" "I decided to work at the hospital here in Trinity." "I see. What has made you decided to go back to travelling?" "The hospital doesn't need a viro-immunologist, so they fired me. Effective in one month." "Ah, so why don't you go back to the CDC?" Billy was quiet. He looked to Buck, who was impassive. "I did something foolish." VI That was that; Billy would never work as a doctor again. At the end of the month, he'd leave Trinity and disappear for a while. At least, that's what he'd do if his last ditch effort didn't work. That's what he was doing in Doctor Coleman's office. Gray Coleman was the hospital administrator, a young man hired away from a hospital in Charleston to take over our suddenly lackluster Trinity Memorial Hospital after the suicide of Dr. Narrone who misdiagnosed our Sheriff as dead. "Billy, we decided not to renew your contract because we wanted you to find work more in tune with your knowledge. If no one is hiring, I'm sure we could extend your contract until you find somewhere to go." "Thank you," a humble Billy Peele said. "So, why is it that no one will take you?" "It was 1992, a small village in Africa. At that point, we didn't have to know geography, so I can't tell you where it was, exactly. We had been called in because of a case of what looked like Small Pox. "When we got there, we cultured some of the virus, and it wasn't Small Pox. I still don't know what it was. We worked up what we thought was a lead-virus vaccine. We didn't know whether it would work. I was the one in charge, and the decision was mine. "We vaccinated the village with what we had. I guess the virus wasn't dead, because the villagers started dying left and right. The NP who was with me also contracted the disease. By the time the clean-up crew arrived, I was the only one still alive." "You killed an entire village with an untested vaccine?" "Yes." "Well, I don't see how you could do that here. You'll stay on. I'll make sure of it. This hospital has lost too many doctors lately." "Thank you." "Don't thank me. I have a feeling you'll be doing penance for a long time. Now, about that Gallagher woman, I see you've changed your mind on the diagnosis." Billy Peele had fallen, and thought that he'd gotten out unscathed. Like many who make that assumption, he was wrong; he'd gone against the Sheriff's wishes in the middle of a deal, and that was always a bad idea. He would pay; sooner or later, what he did would catch up with him. You don't get away with pride in our town, not with Lucas Buck watching. The End Disclaimer: Any Story/episode that is a part of Virtual AG - SeasonTwo is based upon the television Show, "American Gothic", which is the property of Shaun Cassidy, Renaissance Productions, and CBS... any characters/storyline added to support this concept is the property of the author acknowledged as such...Please, Don't Sue Us!**