Chapter 8: The Case Against Voss
Carol Briggs was smaller than I'd imagined — a woman in her late fifties with reading glasses pushed up on her head and a canvas tote bag full of folders that she set on our kitchen table like she'd been carrying it for years, which she had.
She shook Tyler's hand first, then mine.
"Thank you for having me," she said.
"Thank you for what you did," I said.
She sat down and opened her bag.
"Let me show you where we are."
Over the next two hours, she walked us through everything.
The six confirmed cases.
The billing irregularities she'd flagged before she left the clinic.
The internal complaint she'd filed that had been quietly closed.
The Oregon suspension, which had been triggered by a similar pattern three years earlier before Voss relocated and reapplied for licensure in a new state.
"He passed the reinstatement review," she said.
"I don't know how.
The board here didn't request the full Oregon file."
"Can they get it now?" Tyler asked.
"That's what the attorney is working on." She pulled out a separate folder.
"I found a lawyer three weeks ago — she works medical malpractice and licensing cases.
She's the one who told me to stop collecting and start formalizing.
Everything I have is now in a structured complaint to the state medical board." She looked at Tyler.
"Your case is the seventh.
With your permission, I'd like to add it."
"You have it," he said.
She nodded and made a note.
"What happens to him?" I asked.
"If the board acts — and with seven cases and documented billing fraud, the attorney believes they will — his license gets suspended pending investigation.
Possibly revoked permanently if the fraud charges hold." She took off her glasses and set them on the table.
"The clinic itself may face liability.
They employed him after Oregon.
That's a problem for them."
"And the patients who went through with treatment?" Tyler said.
"The ones who didn't get a second opinion?"
Carol's expression didn't change, but something behind it did.
"That's the part that keeps me up at night," she said.
"Some of them may have undergone procedures they didn't need.
We're trying to identify them.
The attorney has a process for that." She looked at him directly.
"That's partly why your case matters.
You're the first one who got a clean second opinion fast enough to document the gap between what Voss said and what a qualified doctor found.
That comparison is evidence."
Tyler was quiet for a moment.
"So the fact that Jess pushed us to move quickly—"
"Made your case the clearest one we have," Carol said.
I thought about Jess at 1 a.m.
finishing a folder of printed research.
I thought about her calling Tyler instead of me, trying to protect me from fear she wasn't sure was real yet.
I thought about her sitting across from him at a coffee shop, making a list of questions for a doctor's appointment she didn't know would be with the wrong doctor.
She'd been running interference for us before we knew we needed it.
"There's one more thing," Carol said.
She pulled out a single sheet.
"Voss knows the complaint has been filed.
His attorney contacted the board yesterday requesting a delay on procedural grounds." She set the paper down.
"He's going to fight this."
"Of course he is," Tyler said.
"I want you to be prepared for that to take time.
These processes aren't fast."
"How long?"
"Six to eighteen months for a full board decision.
Possibly longer if he appeals." She looked at us both.
"But the suspension can come faster.
The attorney is pushing for an emergency interim suspension given the active patient risk.
That decision could come in weeks."
Tyler nodded slowly.
"And in the meantime, he keeps practicing?"
"For now.
Yes." Carol folded her hands on the table.
"I'm sorry.
I know that's hard to hear."
"It is," he said.
"But it's not a reason to stop."
She looked at him for a moment.
Then she picked up her pen and made another note.
May you like
Outside, it had started to rain.
I got up and put the kettle on, and the three of us sat in the kitchen while the rain came down, talking through what came next.
