After the Fall

by Patricia Gussin

  “What about you, Laura? You’ve always been there for your kids. But what about you? You and me? You must know I’ve loved you for a long, long time. Maybe since that trip to Montreal when we were surgery students.”

  “You were dating my best friend back then,” she reminded him. “And I was married.”

  “Yes,” Tim said.

  Laura wondered whether he knew more about what else happened to her on that fateful trip to Montreal. The falling snow outside, now huge flakes, reminded her of that snowbound experience twenty-three years ago.

  In silence, they stared at the window, the ledge covered with white fluff. Tim took her left hand and gently rubbed her ring finger. She’d put away the ring long ago, without regret. What would it be like, married to Tim?

  “I love your kids, Laura, and I think they like me, but it’s not about them. This is about you and me. Do you love me? There, I’ve asked you. The question that scares the life out of me.”

  Tim, the entrenched bachelor, scared? Scared that I might say “no?”

  In the silence, she wondered, Do I love him? Truthfully, she didn’t know. She’d never allowed herself to indulge in thoughts of love. Maybe she did. But one thing was sure. She couldn’t hurt him. Tim had been there for her whenever she needed him. Back when her son Patrick had needed heart surgery. Back when her daughter Natalie had nearly died. She had to say something. “Yes, Tim, I do love you. I really do.”

  “Then marry me.”

  “Can you give me some time to think about it? I mean, you caught me by surprise. I’m a little overwhelmed.”

  “Let’s finish our brandy and then go to bed.”

  Yes, go to bed. Over the past few years, Laura had gradually slipped into an intimate relationship with Tim. When she visited him in Philly. When he visited her in Tampa. They never slept in separate beds anymore. Yes, sleeping with Tim every night would be beyond wonderful. But marriage? Giving up her freedom? Giving up her surgical practice in Tampa? Giving up the department chair she’d worked and fought for?

  Nestled in the crook of Tim’s arm, hearing his soft, regular breathing, Laura tried to relax, to just give herself time to consider Tim’s proposal. Tomorrow she’d be back on her own in Tampa, facing the usual round of problems that crept up in her absence. One problem, especially. That message from Lonnie Greenwood.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16

  Jake had planned to return to his home in Rockville, Maryland, after he sped away from what was left of the old man in Philadelphia. Lights off, he’d park the Jeep in his driveway, let himself inside, and hunker down. His wife was away and, for all appearances, he’d have spent the night home alone. But as Jake got closer, he found himself diverting off course. With Karolee away, he could spend what was left of the night with Addie. Tonight, of all nights, he needed her. Reaching Addie’s apartment in nearby Bethesda, he took the elevator to the fourth floor of the high-rise. He tapped on her door with his fingertips. Tonight was not a night to draw attention to himself. Open the door, Addie.

  No response. Should have made a key for himself. Jake knocked and waited, knocked again. Addie was a light sleeper. Certainly she’d hear him.

  The door across the hall opened a crack. “What’s going on?” The voice was cranky and he couldn’t tell if it was male or female. “It’s the middle of the night. Give it up. Go away.”

  “Shit,” he muttered, turning, keeping his back to the crack.

  Then Addie’s door opened. Her hand grabbed his coat sleeve and pulled him inside.

  “It’s me, Addie,” he said. Unnecessary. Who else would it be? “I tried not to wake you.”

  “What are you doing here?” Her eyes blazed and her words sounded cold, unwelcoming. “You woke my neighbors. I don’t need anybody gossiping about my night life. You know that—”

  “I couldn’t sleep, I needed you.” Jake held out his arms for her, but she backed away. Her lustrous black hair hung wild and wavy, her skin a rosy bronze, her breasts peeking out from under a flimsy pink negligé. Jake could not resist a grin. When it came to sexy and expensive adornments, Addie definitely enjoyed Western culture. How could she go back to a burka, covering her beautiful face, exposing only those soulful, dark eyes.

  “What about your wife?” Addie took another step backward. Normally, his wife worked late into the evenings with Jake needing to leave Addie to be home when Karolee returned.

  Tonight Jake didn’t want to discuss his wife. Not at this hour. Not after what he’d just executed.

  “Karolee went to Florida to see the granddaughter. Baby’s two weeks old already.”

  “I can’t believe you’re a grandfather. And not a good one. You should have gone with your wife.”

  “I want to be with you. She’ll be gone for two days. We’ll have two days and two nights.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? What time is it, anyway?” She answered her own question. “Two-thirty in the morning.”

  Addie’s English was near perfect, her voice naturally husky, and with her lingering hint of an Arabic accent, she sounded very sexy. He hadn’t planned to have her tonight, but—

  “I’m awake now,” she announced. “I need to talk to you. You didn’t call me after the Advisory Committee on Friday. I waited all day yesterday and today. But no call. Why? Is something wrong? I expected you to call and tell me what the FDA decided to do, and when.”

  “Addie, not tonight. I’m beat.” Jake took off his coat, hung it in her entry closet, and started toward her bedroom. “Let’s—”

  “Something must be wrong.” Addie edged in front of him, blocking the doorway. “I know the committee voted to approve Immunone. So what’s happening? I need to know when the approval will come through. My family wants me back in Iraq, but I want to wait for the approval, to collect my share of the money Replica will owe me.”

  “Addie, please, let’s get some sleep.” Jake squeezed past her, brushing against her breasts. Maybe more than just sleep, he thought, starting to unbutton his shirt.

  “Things are getting worse for my country every day. The United Nations just sent the ninth inspection team in. This time looking for centrifuge components to produce enriched uranium. What if they find something bad? Could I be deported?” Addie paused to take a breath. “Immunone’s approval is so important to me.”

  “It’s important to me too,” Jake said, now undressed, moving toward the bed. Addie followed him, and he took her hand, eased her down beside him, stroking her thigh as they sat, waiting for her to stop her rant so he could kiss her.

  Addie sat beside him, but did not stop. “Despite tearing the country apart, they haven’t found anything, have they? Now they’re focusing on this centrifuge bullshit.”

  “Addie, would your father approve of your crude language?” Jake wanted to distract her from the return-to-Iraq theme.

  “Bullshit?” she said. “No, and he wouldn’t like ‘fuck’ any better, and if he knew that you and I were fucking, he’d have to kill you, and maybe me too. That’s why you cannot be careless like this. You could have called. Not good that you woke the old lady across the hall. Everyone knows I’m a Muslim. I’m expected to live up to Muslim standards.”

  “Standards?” Did Addie seriously think she could go back to Baghdad, live like a Sunni woman, stripped of her basic human rights and all the Western privileges and conveniences and independence she enjoyed here?

  Addie stood up, facing him. “Yes, Jake, standards. And one of them is respect. And when you ignore my questions, you are not giving me respect.”

  And she actually was talking about returning to the Muslim culture, where respect for women was nonexistent?

  “I ask you again: where is the FDA with Immunone’s approval? Tell me.”

  Jake stood to face her. “Addie, you know I can’t reveal—”

  “What? Your precious confidentiality is more important than me?” She turned her back on him, her thin shoulders hunched over. “I thought y
ou loved me, Jake.”

  I do love you, Addie. I am doing this all for you. So we can be together.

  Once the Immunone NDA—New Drug Application—was approved, Addie would return to her family and her Muslim culture. Unless she was a married woman. But first, he needed a divorce from Karolee. And that would be most unpleasant. So much better for Karolee to meet an untimely death. A death he’d been contemplating, a death now critical to his plan.

  Jake had first met Adawia Abdul when she’d represented her pharmaceutical company, Replica, at an FDA meeting to discuss the approval of the drug Immunone. As a project manager at the FDA for twenty-five years, he’d heard hundreds of pharmaceutical pitches, but never one so stunningly brilliant, and never one delivered by a woman so overwhelmingly beautiful. As soon as the Replica entourage had left, he’d run her credentials. PhD in molecular biology, University of Michigan, Iraqi national, age thirty-four.

  A project manager at the FDA is responsible for pulling together the components of a New Drug Application. You could do his admin-type job adequately with a bachelor’s degree, but Jake was not adequate, he was damn good. Easy for him to make an excuse to contact Dr. Adawia Abdul to ask for data clarification and so forth. Initially, he suggested they meet for coffee so he could explain the FDA process. Of course, fraternizing with employees of the pharmaceutical industry was forbidden, he knew—an inherent conflict of interest. After that first coffee, listening to her scientific rationale for the drug’s mechanism of action—not understanding that much of the complex biotechnology—listening to her talk of her country, her Iraqi family, he fell under her spell—magically, immediately, passionately. This was the woman he’d dreamed of, needed, must have at all costs.

  Jake stepped to Addie, gently turned her around, led her back toward the bed, sat her down, and blotted her tears with the hem of the sheet. “Okay,” he said, sitting next to her, taking her hand, “even though it’s late. I will…”

  Adawia Abdul had grown up in Baghdad, the daughter of a medical researcher with prominent political connections to the Iraqi regime. She had a younger sister Farrah, married now with two little boys. Despite Islam’s restrictive position on women, Adawia had been sent to America to get a PhD with the key condition that she return to Iraq to work in a government laboratory. But after graduate school, Adawia had convinced her father she needed more experience, and she headed off to Bethesda as a scientist in a start-up pharmaceutical company, Replica. While there, she discovered the mechanism of action of Immunone and its chemical analogs. In appreciation of her contribution and to entice her to stay, the cash-poor start-up gave her 5 percent of the company. It wasn’t worth much back then, but now that Keystone Pharma had acquired Immunone, the value of Replica stock had skyrocketed. The good news: when Adawia was able to cash out, she’d collect $7.5 million. The bad news: she’d return to Iraq.

  Jake grabbed a pillow, stuck it behind his head, and pulled Addie over, curving his arm around her. “Addie, you know FDA Advisory Committees are just that, they advise. They don’t approve. I can tell you the FDA still has a lot of questions. Mostly about safety. They’re talking about more data. More clinical trials.” This was all a lie, but he had to quell the elation that predicted the 100 percent positive vote of the Advisory Committee would translate into a speedy approval. Certainly, the loss of Dr. Fred Minn would slow the company down as they struggled to address the drug safety questions he would manufacture for them. Jake may not have the clout of a medical review officer, but he controlled the project data; it would be no big deal for him to misplace or even tamper with the files.

  “No, we don’t need more trials,” Addie stated, removing her hand from his. “Dr. Nelson presented all 500 patients receiving Immunone and another 500 on the placebo control. Double-blind. The patients treated with Immunone had a 70 percent reduction in rejection. Seventy percent. That’s huge, Jake. You know that. And no side effects.”

  “The FDA is always leery of results that look too good to be true, Addie.”

  Jake felt her edge away from him.

  “Maybe they think someone cheated? Or they just don’t believe the data?”

  “Look, it’s late,” Jake said. “I’ll find out more when I go in tomorrow. We have to get some sleep.” He reached for her, pulling her down next to him, pressing his body to hers, breathing in her exotic scent. “Everything will work out.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17

  The beep of Tim’s alarm clock woke Laura at 5:30 a.m. She hadn’t slept well, her mind doing flip-flops, one moment dwelling on Tim’s proposal—how it would feel being married—did she want to be married—did she love Tim enough to spend the rest of her life with him? The next minute trying to imagine herself directing pharmaceutical research, walking away from the surgical career she loved—would it be possible to work for Keystone Pharma and still do surgery on the side? Her answer to that, a clear no. Surgery required total focus, at least the way she practiced it. There’d be no having it both ways. What would she tell Tim?

  He had leaned over to turn off the alarm and, when he rolled back, he pulled her into the crook of his arm. “Get any sleep, babe?”

  “Not much. Too much to think about.” But, she could have Tim and surgery. That is, if she moved to Philadelphia. Or, if he moved to Tampa. Would he be willing to do that for her? Would she be willing to move for him? Maybe. She’d lived in Tampa for twenty years, raised her children there, but they’d all moved. Her son Mike, a lawyer in Philadelphia, and her twin daughters, med students at the University of Pennsylvania. What was left for her in Tampa?

  “What about you?”

  “No. I think I’ve always known I would ask you to marry me. I just never knew when. Should have done it years ago. But you know what? I’m glad I blurted it out last night.”

  “Tim, I still can’t wrap my mind around getting married. You took me by surprise. I mean…”

  “You promised me you’d think about it, Laura. But right now, I’ve got to get you up and out of here or you’ll miss your plane. Or can I convince you to stay?”

  Laura snuggled closer to Tim’s warm, inviting body, placed a light, playful kiss on the curly auburn hairs on his chest, and pushed herself to a sitting position. “Wish I could stay longer,” she said, glancing out the window. “Not looking forward to facing the elements out there. I believe you call that white stuff snow.”

  “Looks like we got a good three inches during the night. Treacherous driving conditions on top of that ice. Just one more reason to delay your flight.” Tim was sitting now, and he grabbed both of her hands in his. “We have a lot to talk about, Laura. Could you delay going back until later in the day? Even better, tomorrow?”

  Laura considered her day. She did not have a case on today’s operating room schedule, but she did need to prepare for tomorrow’s hospital staff meeting. As usual, she’d be presenting the surgical department’s morbidity and mortality statistics. Maybe she could get a colleague to pull the report together for her.

  Another look out the window told her: too risky. If this weather continued, she might not be able to get out of Philadelphia.

  “I know that look of yours, Laura. I’ll go make coffee. You take a shower and get dressed, but I’m coming to Tampa next weekend, and it won’t be for the weather, it’ll be for you.”

  Laura had stepped out of Tim’s shower, a very manly one, devoid of the myriad of hair products she kept stashed in hers, when she heard Tim’s voice at the door.

  “Come in,” she said, not bothering to pull the towel around her naked body. What a difference a marriage proposal makes, she thought with a sly smile.

  “Mike,” Tim said, holding out the phone. “Wants to know if you’d like him to pick you up, drive you to the airport. I told him I have a town car on its way, but if he wants to see you off…”

  Laura took the phone. “Hi, Mike.” She listened as her son repeated his offer. He could swing by Tim’s, pick her up, take her to th
e airport, all in time for him to arrive at his Center City law office.

  “Too complicated, honey,” she said. “I’m exhausted just listening to the itinerary. Not that I don’t want to see you. I have some interesting stuff to tell you.” Laura glanced up at Tim, winked at him. “Some personal; some professional. But it can wait.”

  “Mom, what’s going on? Now you have me curious.”

  “Tell you next time. Okay, honey? And thanks for the offer to pick me up. I really appreciate it, especially in this crappy weather. Gotta go. Don’t forget to check in with your sisters every few days.”

  “Those girls are twenty-four years old, Mom. But you know I will. Love you.”

  As Laura handed the phone back to Tim, he beamed. “You going to tell your kids about us getting married, or do you want me to ask their permission?”

  That look worried Laura. It seemed too optimistic, too final. Final was nowhere near her reality yet.

  “Neither,” she said before the chime of the bell interrupted.

  Tim partially closed the bathroom door and went to answer the front door. “Came a bit early for your passenger, Dr. Robinson.” Laura could hear a man’s voice. “Conditions are slippery out there. I’ll wait in the car, just wanted you to know I was here.”

  “Be down as soon as I can,” Laura called. “Can I have that coffee to go?”

  Laura emerged from the bedroom dressed in a red-and-gray-patterned wool dress cinched at the waist with a gray belt, and wearing three-inch red heels with the Ferragamo emblem. Her blond hair hung collar length, and she’d made no attempt to tame the waves. She chose to wear glasses; no time today to deal with her contacts.

  Tim was waiting by the door, her red winter coat in one hand, coffee container in another. “Lady in red,” he said, glancing at her feet. “But not too practical for a day like today.”

  “Before you say, ‘I told you so,’ next time I come to Philly, I’m investing in some boots.”

  “Babe, you should take off those heels. Change into your sneakers.”