11 JANUARY 26-FEBRUARY 1, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. This phrase is a comic highlight of 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. It’s sputtered by the sup- posed wizard after he’s revealed to be not a great sorcerer, but a stranded showman gifted in humbug. But when the line is applied to Christo- pher Lambros, a nurse whose arrest last fall for sexually assaulting unconscious patients spurred a class-action lawsuit targeting St. Mary’s Medical Center in Grand Junction, where he worked, the humor turns to horror. In July 2021, a woman known as K.M. (like all of the victims referenced in this story, she’s identifi ed by her initials only) was admitted to St. Mary’s after another local hospital was unable to properly treat the severe injuries she sustained in an ac- cident involving one of her beloved horses. St. Mary’s is both the largest medical facility between Denver and Salt Lake City and the only Level I trauma center in the area, and K.M.’s husband credits the team of doctors assigned to the case with saving her life. Following major surgery, K.M. was trans- ferred to a standard room, and her husband was allowed to spend the rest of the day with her — still a relative rarity at the time, given protocols in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. She was heavily sedated and would stay that way for days, but her hus- band was impressed by the care she received — at fi rst, anyway. Upon his arrival early the next morning, however, the curtains were drawn around his wife’s bed, “and I could hear somebody on the other side of them,” he says. “I hesitated a minute — I thought they needed privacy. But then this guy comes out, and he acted kind of startled and strange. And around midday, I had another encounter with him. This time, the door wasn’t closed, but the curtains were pulled, and he came out again.” During that moment, he recalls, “I thought, ‘You’re a weird bastard’ — and when I asked my wife what happened, she was really out of it. But later in the afternoon, she woke up, and I asked about him. And she said, ‘I don’t have any guy nurses.’” These memories resurfaced on November 1, when news broke continued on page 12 GETT Y IMAGES/JAY VOLLMAR