Organized to Death

by Jan Christensen

  “Ask who?” Laura said as she came down the back stairway and into the kitchen.

  “Dr. Stevenson,” Tina said. “He was my doctor, after all, and I have a right to know everything that’s in my file.”

  Laura shrugged. “He’s far into Alzheimer’s, Tina. Whatever he tells you is suspect.”

  Tina’s shoulders slumped. Then she perked up. “But he might have the file.”

  “He’d have to remember where he put it.” Laura poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down.

  Her mother seemed so sure of herself. Unconcerned. Alzheimer’s patients had moments of lucidity. All Tina had to do was catch him in one.

  “Well, I’m going to see him,” Tina said.

  “You’d better eat something first,” Laura said. “You’ll be weak from yesterday.”

  Tina knew she was right. She made some toast, poured some cereal, got it all down. No one said anything else; they just read different sections of the newspaper. Like any ordinary family, Tina thought. Yeah, right.

  The air had a bite to it when Tina stepped out the back door. She yanked on her gloves and got quickly into her car. The drive to Portsmouth was pleasant enough, and she had no trouble finding Dr. Stevenson’s cottage. It stood off by itself a few blocks away from the Atlantic Ocean, its weathered clapboards gray in the late fall sunlight. An old, dark green Porsche sat in the driveway. It needed a good wash Tina noticed as she went up the walk to the front door.

  She rang the bell twice before the door opened. Dr. Stevenson looked at her with no sign of recognition.

  “Dr. Stevenson? May I come in? I’m Tina. Tina Shaw. Laura’s daughter?”

  He nodded and shuffled backward to let her enter. The house smelled musty and stale. He led her into a neat but dusty living room and motioned to a chair.

  Tina sat. Dr. Stevenson stood staring at her.

  “Why don’t you sit down, too?” Tina asked gently.

  Nodding his head, the old doctor sat across from her. He squinted, then said, “Tina?”

  She sighed with relief. “Yes. I came to ask you about my medical records.”

  He stiffened. Shook his head. “Secret.”

  “Why?”

  “Bad medicine.”

  “What?”

  He became agitated, stood up.

  “Dr. Stevenson,” Tina said, her voice low and calm, “where are my medical records? Do you know?”

  He looked puzzled. Then he stood at the mantel, his back to her. “Where they’ve always been,” he said, then whirled around. “The office. You know they’re at the office.”

  “But I couldn’t find them there. They’re not with the others.”

  “No, of course not. I had to keep them separate. Yes, separate.”

  “In the file cabinet upstairs?” Tina guessed.

  “Yes! That’s it. But no one must know. Secret.”

  “I understand.”

  “Even my son mustn’t know.”

  “Who’s your son? I didn’t know you had any children.”

  “Ted.”

  “Ted’s your son?”

  Dr. Stevenson nodded.

  Her mind whirled. Everyone knew Dr. Stevenson and his wife never had children. She wondered who Ted’s mother was and where he had lived all these years. In Ohio, as he said? When had he found out he was Dr. Stevenson’s son?

  Dr. Stevenson walked out of the room, and when Tina quickly followed him, she saw him climbing the stairs. She called his name, but he ignored her. As if she wasn’t there. Maybe to him, she wasn’t.

  Too shocked to do anything else, she left. And wondered what to do all the way back to Newport. It was going to be pretty awkward seeing Ted. But she needed to get into those files more than ever.

  She drove around aimlessly for a while, then headed to the doctor’s office. It already held two secrets: Ted and those files. How many more could it hold?

  CHAPTER 38

  When Tina arrived at Ted’s Victorian, it was just past noon, and she found him in his office.

  He looked up when she entered. Stared. “You look awful!”

  Tina smiled. “Is that your professional opinion? I was sick yesterday. Is there a stomach flu going around?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. I just received a bulletin about it. New strain. Fortunately, it doesn’t last long. But it can be hard on the very young and the elderly.”

  “Since I’m neither, I seem to be over it.” She sat down. “I noticed that file cabinet upstairs. It’s locked. Might be something important in there. Do you happen to know where the key is?”

  Ted opened the middle drawer in his desk and rummaged around. “Here’s a bunch of keys. I didn’t know what they went to, so I kept them.” He stood up. “Let’s go see if one of these will open it. I vaguely remember that cabinet, but it didn’t make much of an impression on me.” He moved the gate and began climbing the stairs. “You think the missing files might be in there?”

  “Yes,” Tina said, catching up to him. The stairs were broad enough for them to go up side by side.

  When they arrived at the top, Ted said, “I forgot how dusty it is up here. You wouldn’t—” He turned to look at her. “No, of course not. I’ll call a cleaning service.”

  “Good idea.” Tina smiled. They went to the room over the kitchen, and Ted began going through the keys until he found one he thought might work. It went into the lock easily enough but wouldn’t turn. He tried another, and another.

  “If none of these work, don’t worry. I’ll hire a locksmith.” Ted tried another key.

  Tina found she kept holding her breath with each try, and she let out a huge sigh when at last a key turned, and the lock popped open.

  “Here we go!” Ted pulled the drawer open, and they saw some faded old files inside. There were so few that they wouldn’t even stand up straight. No hanging folders to prop them up. Ted thumbed through them then turned to Tina. “Your mother, you, Brenda, her mother, and so on. I can, of course, only give you yours.” He handed it to her.

  Tina’s already weak knees threatened to give way. She staggered over to one of the chaises and sat down with a thump.

  “You all right?”

  “I will be,” Tina said. “Just as soon as I read this.” She went through it slowly. She didn’t have to get far into it before she came to the secret.

  Ted sat down on another chair with a few of the other files.

  “It says here that my mother was given a drug—I can’t pronounce it—to prevent a miscarriage, and later Dr. Stevenson learned that that drug might cause cancer in a girl when she grew older. A rare kind of uterine cancer. Oh.” The file dropped from her nerveless fingers, scattering papers all over the floor.

  Ted stood up to retrieve the pages and handed them to her. “We kind of suspected something of the sort, didn’t we?”

  “Yes. But it’s quite different to read it in black and white. No wonder all the mothers hovered.” She shivered. Her mind flashed to her womb. Then to the other young women. All childless, she realized, and Rachel wanting a baby so badly she had created a pristine room for one.

  Suddenly she couldn’t sit still any longer. She jumped up and paced. “Do you know if this drug—what’s it called?”

  Ted read from another file. “Diethylstilbestrol. DES for short.”

  “Right. Does this drug make it hard for women to conceive?”

  Ted cleared his throat. “I’m not really up on this, Tina. It’s rather rare and not my specialty.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tina said automatically. She realized that Ted seemed as shocked as she was. But how could he be, and how come he didn’t know more about it since it seemed like Brenda was being tested for cancer of the uterus now? Had she revealed one secret about him only to learn there was another?

  What did it matter how many secrets Ted had? She had found the answer to her own. She understood now why the mothers had kept it when the girls were young. But the more she thought about it, the angrier she became at her m
other for not telling her when she reached adulthood. Especially when she’d gone away to college and might have fudged about getting those important yearly checkups.

  Her shoulders slumped, and she sank into the chaise again. What good would it do to confront her mother? Laura had done what she thought was best. As had the other mothers. And now, Tina realized, she knew the secret. Should she tell Rachel and Leslie? Did they really want to know?

  Well, one thing for sure. She didn’t see how any of this could have had anything to do with Crystal’s murder. Just another Newport secret.

  She realized Ted stood over her, hovering. She suddenly felt claustrophobic. She handed him her file. “I guess this should stay with the rest. I think I’ll go home.”

  “Good idea.” Ted took the file. “I’m going to leave these up here, locked, for now. Seems that’s the way everyone wanted it.”

  “Okay. I’ll let Rachel and Leslie know you have them if they want to know.”

  “Wait a minute. Let’s be sure their files are here. What are their last names again?”

  Tina told him and he checked the stack. “Yes, they’re both here. Let them know.”

  “I will.” She stood up, still shaky. The flu or the shock? Probably both. More realizations came flooding in. Hank knew all along. Was that why he kept his distance, afraid she’d die on him at any time and that she couldn’t conceive? And was she going to tell Uncle Bob? How could she keep it from him? And how was she going to cope with it herself? Almost thirty, she already felt her biological clock ticking. This was more like a bomb. She needed to go home, needed to climb into her bed and think.

  Ted took her arm, and she let him help her downstairs, holding onto the railing with the other hand.

  “Are you sure you can drive?” he asked when they were at the door. Concern softened the frown lines on his forehead.

  “It’s only a few blocks, back streets. I’ll be fine.” Hold onto that thought, she told herself.

  When she arrived home, neither Uncle Bob nor her mother was downstairs. Suddenly, Tina realized she still didn’t know enough. Was this a sure death sentence, or merely a possibility? Was her mother also at risk?

  She went to what was originally the back parlor, now an office with state-of-the art computer setup, a desk for Laura, a rolltop for Uncle Bob, and a modern computer desk for Tina. She hadn’t been at the computer for days and needed to check her email. First she’d Google DES.

  Right away at a government site she read “All DES Daughters (women whose mothers took DES while pregnant with them) have a risk of about 1 in 1,000 for a rare cancer of the vagina or cervix called clear cell adenocarcinoma. DES Daughters have an increased risk for infertility.” But the risk declined with age, and after thirty was even lower.

  Only one chance in one thousand, and only one more year until she hit thirty. But both Sally and Brenda had gotten it. Wait, she didn’t know for sure that Brenda had it. Brenda could be ill with something else. Ted had implied, but not said outright, he suspected Brenda had cancer.

  Then she thought of the sons, Brandon and Hank. Had they been exposed during their mother’s pregnancies with them? She read further down on the site and sighed with relief. “Men exposed to DES before birth (in the womb), known as DES Sons, are at an increased risk for non-cancerous epididymal cysts.” Non-cancerous. And she didn’t know if their files were in that drawer. Two more to look for.

  “There you are,” Laura said behind her. “What are you doing?”

  Tina jumped and turned around. “You startled me.”

  “Sorry.” As she approached, Laura glanced at the screen and saw what Tina was looking at. She slumped down in her own desk chair. “You found out. How?”

  Fury beat at Tina’s head and heart. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why?”

  “Are you happier knowing?”

  “Yes. It’s worse to imagine things than to know. You should have told me long ago. All the mothers should have told the daughters when they at least reached eighteen. What were you thinking?”

  “There’s only a one in one thousand chance anything bad would happen.” Tina noticed her mother couldn’t say the word “cancer.” “How could I let that hang over your head all during your growing-up years, which are hard enough? And then ruin your twenties, which should be happy? I did it for you, Tina.”

  “I know,” Tina said dully, the anger leaving her. She felt empty and sad. “I even understand. But I still think it was wrong. When I was young, maybe, but when I was older, I should have been told. It might have made a difference in how I lived my life. And what if I had lied to you and didn’t have those yearly checkups?”

  Her mother’s face lost all color. “You had them, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. Every one. But, if I hadn’t.”

  “You might have gone into denial and not had them if you knew why,” Laura said. “There was no easy answer for how to handle it. But all us mothers decided together not to tell. It felt right when we all agreed. Strength in numbers, you know.”

  Tina let her head fall to the headrest on the back of her chair. Suddenly too tired to think, she just sat there for a few moments. Laura was watching her, she knew, ever diligent. Finally, Laura said, “I love you so much.” Her voice caught.

  Tina’s head snapped forward and she stared at her mother. She looked small, older, and very, very tired.

  “I know you do, and I love you. I always will. I understand why you did it. But it will take me awhile to come to grips with everything. Can you at least tell me a couple of things?”

  Laura’s look grew cautious. “I’ll try.”

  “Do you know if Brenda has … “

  “The tests aren’t all in yet. They don’t think so.”

  A sigh of relief escaped Tina. “What about Brandon and Hank? Are they at risk for these cysts?”

  “Brandon is. Hank isn’t. Brandon doesn’t know anything about this, but Hank knows everything because his sister died of it.”

  “So, Leslie’s and Brandon’s mother took it twice. No wonder she drinks too much.”

  Laura wouldn’t look at Tina. “I didn’t say Leslie was at risk,” she said faintly.

  “Of course she is. Why else would Mrs. Young be in the Lunch Bunch? Not just because of Brandon.”

  Laura didn’t say anything.

  “And Mrs. Hudson took it during both pregnancies—Crystal’s and Rachel’s?”

  “I shouldn’t say … “

  “Come on, Mother. The cat is out of the bag. You might as well tell all.”

  Laura nodded slowly. “Yes, Nora took it both times. And worried all these years, only to have her daughter murdered. Really, Tina, the Bunch met last time to discuss that, to try to figure it out. We couldn’t come up with a thing.”

  “Well, here’s something interesting. I found out this morning that Dr. Ted is Dr. Stevenson’s son.”

  “What? How’d you find out?”

  “I went to see Dr. Stevenson. He admitted it. Hey, I think I’ll Google him.” She twirled her chair to face the computer and typed in Ted’s full name in the search block. Came up with several pages of hits. Three of the results were obituaries, the rest obviously irrelevant. She tried “Theodore” and came up with even fewer, also irrelevant. “That’s odd. I’d think he’d have written papers, have a website, something.” She typed in “Dr. Ted Hockmann.” Nothing.

  Laura stood up and looked over Tina’s shoulder. “That is strange,” she murmured.

  “He graduated from Harvard Medical School,” Tina said. “At least, he has a diploma from there.”

  She glanced back at her mother and their eyes met. Tina’s mind whirled. She remembered her own unease around him. She remembered a few comments about him, that he didn’t always seem to know what he was doing. He’d even admitted he knew nothing about DES. And he’d sent her to a specialist even though her recent Pap smear had come back negative. Maybe he wasn’t sure he’d done it right?

  Tina shook her head as if to clea
r it from these doubts.

  “If Crystal found out he wasn’t a licensed doctor and confronted him … “Laura said, backing away from the screen as if it would attack at any moment.

  Tina’s mind flashed to the two walks in the dark she and Ted had shared. To his kissing her. She wanted to wipe her mouth but forced herself not to.

  “We could be wrong,” she said in a weak voice. “We must be wrong.”

  “How can we find out?”

  “Call Harvard?”

  “I’m not sure they’d tell us. Does the American Medical Association have a list of doctors?”

  Tina did another Google search. Found that the AMA did have a search, but required a state. She tried Ted’s name for Ohio, Massachusetts because of Harvard, and Rhode Island. He didn’t show up anywhere.

  “Should I try any other states?” she asked her mother, who had come back to stand behind her.

  “Somehow, I don’t think it’s necessary. I never thought I’d say this. You need to call Hank.”

  Tina almost smiled. She fumbled for her cell phone in her purse next to her chair, flipped it open, and pressed number three for Hank. She’d put him after her mother. For emergencies, she’d told herself at the time.

  He answered on the second ring.

  “Hank, I have reason to believe that Ted Hockmann does not have a license to practice medicine.”

  “What? Why do you think that?”

  Tina explained. Hank made a few indistinguishable noises. “I’ll call you back,” he said finally and disconnected.

  Tina sat staring at the computer screen while Laura went back to her chair and sat down, sighing.

  The phone rang, but it was Rachel. She sounded both happy and scared.

  “Tina, the police have finished with the house. We can go back, and I’m sure I’ll need your help. And they’ve released Crystal. For burial. The funeral will be in two days.

  CHAPTER 39

  “That’s good news, Rach.” Tina wondered if it really was.

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “Can you come with me when I go in? I’m afraid to go without you.”

  “Of course. When do you want to do it?”