He grinned, a lopsided smile that made him look boyish. “Then a lot more questions.”
She opened a drawer and pulled Dr. Jansen’s file out. “Well, funny you should ask. I had to look up something today. From this.” She handed it to him, feeling guilty as she did so. But really, if Dr. Jansen were involved, the police should know. She was doing a public service. He raised his eyebrows as he took it.
“I’m not sure if this is useful,” she added, “but the conference Dr. Jansen is attending is a western chapter, not the national meeting of the Society.”
“He usually go to chapter meetings?”
“Not that far away.”
Sean nodded.
“And…”
“What? I’ll probably find it anyway.” He tapped the folder she’d given him. “In here.”
“You will. Dr. Jansen is from Detroit.”
“So?”
“He visited his family there not too long ago.” When Sean’s face remained blank, she explained. “Detroit is the location of the Parke, Davis lab that just had problems with its monkeys. They looked like they were infected with polio, from the vaccine.”
“So you’re thinking sabotage?”
“I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.” It seemed like nothing as soon as she’d said it. It seemed like a little girl playing detective. Or a secretary trying to get back at her boss. Why was she doing this? “Like I said, you’d have found it on your own anyway.”
“Do you mind,” he asked, “if I just take a few moments?” Without waiting for an answer, he sat in the metal-backed chair in front of her desk, flipping open the folder and scanning the pages. Would he notice, she wondered, what else she had seen? She chewed on her bottom lip, debating whether to tell him. She’d probably already said too much. And now that she’d said it, she felt very low about it.
She knew why she’d shared it—because Dr. Jansen had been unkind to her, because Susan had been unkind, because the world was unkind in general. She sighed.
He was a detective. Surely he’d see it. Especially after having just questioned Jansen. Why would her boss tell such an obvious lie? He had to know he could be caught in it.
While he scanned the file, he asked her if she’d heard from Susan today and if it was a habit of Susan’s not to show up like this.
“She’s visited her aunt before. But she always calls in.” Julia thought for a moment. “We all assumed she’s upset about Dr. Mike.”
He looked up, his face creased with concern, but before she had a chance to say more, her phone rang. His expression immediately changed, and he reached over to grab it before she did.
“Let me,” he said, lifting it from its cradle. He remembered the “crank calls.”
“Hopkins lab,” he said in a serious voice. Julia blushed. She never answered the phone that way. She saw his face soften as the caller said something, then he handed the phone to Julia.
“It’s your sister, Helen.”
***
“Get your coat. I’ll drive you home.”
“Don’t be silly. I—I…” She turned and looked at her desk, the half-typed page in the typewriter, the pencils and pens still in disarray by the pencil holder, paperclips by the side of her blotter. She started to neaten it, but he stepped over to her and touched her on the arm.
“Julia?” He studied her face. Her eyes were wide and scared, watering with unshed tears, her face drained of color. Her arm trembled under his hand.
The phone call had done this. As soon as she’d said hello, her face had gone ashen and she’d nervously twisted the cord as she’d asked a quick series of questions.
When did this happen….is Mutti with him….is he conscious….did he say anything….
Her father had collapsed on the kitchen floor after dinner. Her sister Helen thought it was “just pneumonia”—he coughed a great deal, you see—but Julia had offered that explanation as a question, too, wanting Sean to confirm that such collapses were always due to something once dreaded, now curable.
“I can’t find my purse.” But as soon as she said it, she opened the bottom drawer of her desk to retrieve it. She bent over, placing her right hand on the back of her desk chair. But as she leaned forward, the chair rolled backward, and her balance shifted, causing her to take a little hop on her good leg to retrieve her equilibrium. He could see the shame this caused her as the tips of her ears reddened and a lone tear fell from her eye. He reached both arms out to steady her, one on each shoulder.
“You’ve had a shock. Tell me where things are and I’ll get them.”
She crumpled into the chair and pointed. “My coat.”
He fetched it for her and helped her to her feet, then gently guided her hands into the sleeves. She still trembled, and he worried about her walking.
“Let’s get going. Where are they taking him?”
Her mouth fell open, and she looked at her coat as if seeing it for the first time. “Oh dear. I don’t need this.” She fingered the lapel. “They’re bringing him here. To Hopkins. The emergency room.”
He knew that terrain all too well.
“Come on then. I’ll show you where it is.” He folded the Jansen file and stuffed it in his pocket, then looped his arm under hers. She didn’t resist. He helped her lock up the office, and they set off down the hall. He’d get her settled and be on his way.
They didn’t speak while he led her through quiet hallways and down elevators. And what could he say anyway—that everything would be all right? The lie would be apparent before the breath left his lips. It’s not good for her to have someone like me standing by her. I have no more faith in “cures.”
And no more faith in the insincere platitudes uttered by nurses and doctors as impersonal as talk about the weather. Oh yes, Mr. Reilly, she’s doing much better this morning. Radiation, Mr. Reilly, has shown some very promising results in patients in your wife’s situation. The fatigue is a normal part of this illness, Mr. Reilly.
It hadn’t just been an illness. It had been cancer. He’d only told his uncle the truth. Everyone at work knew his Mary had been sick and died. Maybe they guessed what had felled her. Don’t say it and it won’t darken your own door.
He’d had to ask—and even then he’d asked only obliquely—how much time. He hadn’t put it like that, though. He’d sat at her bedside staring at her blue-veined eyelids closed in drug-induced sleep, holding her translucent hand. He still remembered how warm it had felt to him, how utterly alive. He’d looked up at the nurse and asked, “Should I be calling the priest now?” The nurse had merely nodded.
His Mary had received the Sacrament that night, unable to swallow Communion, unaware of the oil anointing her brow, the Latin prayers chanted over her body, the body she’d left so quietly in the wee hours of the next day that he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when she’d gone….
They were there. He pushed through large double doors, leading Julia to the waiting room, helping her to the registration desk where she learned her father had not yet arrived. He seated her on a bench and realized he couldn’t leave her alone. Excusing himself, he found a phone booth and called and left a message at Brigitta’s office that he’d have to miss their “appointment.”
Then he called Mrs. Buchanan and told her he’d be late, explaining he was at the hospital with a friend whose father had taken ill. This strangled Mrs. Buchanan’s protests before she had a chance to utter a word. Memories crackled across the phone line. So many times when Mary had been ill he’d had to call Mrs. Buchanan to say he’d be staying at the hospital. So many times she’d silently understood, offering to stay overnight with the boys. In those days she’d not complained. She’d not even charged him extra. She’d cooked and cleaned and even left him homemade bread. Now she murmured a soft, “oh, I see,” before asking him when she should expect him. He didn’t know. He’d be home as soon as he could.
When he returned to the waiting room, he saw Julia hugging a very pregnant woman who looked like an older ve
rsion of her. A man stood to the side holding a boy. Two other boys stood next to their father. One sucked his thumb and looked mournfully around. Just like Daniel had looked when he’d come to visit his mother in the hospital for the last time. Uncomprehending.
Sean swallowed. Maybe he could go now. But as he thought this, he saw Julia reaching behind her, her hand searching for the cane which had fallen to the floor. He rushed forward to retrieve it, handing it to her as she turned. When she saw him, her eyes softened with gratitude.
“Detective Reilly…”
“Sean,” he said. “Call me Sean.”
“—this is my sister Beth and her husband Stu.” She gestured to them both. “Beth said they should be here any minute.”
And at that moment a crisp nurse came through the doorway asking for the family of Howard Dell. In a rush she was gone.
He sank into a chair, his hands fingering his hat between his legs. Dammit, he couldn’t go now. He pictured her coming back to the waiting room, expecting to see a friendly face, wondering where he’d gone. That Stu fellow would be wise to take the little ones home to bed if things dragged on. And then Julia and her sister would be left in the lurch.
He settled back in the hard wooden chair. As he did so, he felt the Jansen file bend in his pocket. All right, he could at least get some work done. He took it out and began leafing through the pages once again.
It didn’t take him long to find it. Dr. Jansen had been at NYU at the same time as Dr. Lowenstein. He’d lied about not knowing the victim before he’d come to Hopkins.
***
“Brigitta! Thank goodness I saw you!” Diane Rivers stood before her friend on Lombard Street, one gloved hand holding her hat on her head as a gust of wind threatened to dislodge it. Diane wasn’t “showing” yet but her long face looked puffy and haggard, and her ankles were swollen in her smart black pumps. “I had a call for you.”
Brigitta smiled. Maybe it was one of the law offices she’d interviewed at that afternoon. Her luck was turning!
“A Sean Reilly phoned to say he was sorry but he couldn’t meet you. An emergency of some sort.”
Brigitta’s smile stayed in place, but her heart sank. “Thanks, Diane.”
“I hope you weren’t waiting here long.”
“Not long. No. Just arrived.” In truth, she’d been there twenty minutes, stepping behind a portico every time she saw one of her former officemates leave the building. She was hungry and tired and had been looking forward to seeing Sean. She had been prepared to suggest they ditch the trip to his house and go out to eat instead. She’d even chosen the restaurant—a dark, comfortable steakhouse just two blocks away that made excellent martinis and served perfect sirloins. At home she’d be opening a can of tuna.
“I can’t say enough how sorry I am about all this,” Diane said.
“It’s not your fault.” No, it was mine. I’ll never make that mistake again, trusting the wrong sort of man to be fair. She broadened her smile. “I’ll be on my feet again before you know it. I had several great interviews today and have more lined up for tomorrow.”
Diane grinned, too, a smile of relief. “I’m so glad. I didn’t want to worry you but I might be leaving sooner than I thought. My doctor told me I should be off my feet more.”
Brigitta couldn’t help it. Her smile dropped, replaced by grim acceptance. She hoped Diane would interpret it as concern for the baby.
“So I won’t be around to cover for you too much longer,” Diane continued.
“Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that—that you’re doing poorly, that is.”
Diane waved the air nervously. “I think it will be fine. My doctor’s a very cautious man. But Bill, he would like me home. I think I’ll probably be doing more at home than in the office!” She laughed.
“How much longer will you be here?” Brigitta gestured to their office building.
“Just a month. If that.” Diane looked down, her fingers clasping the handle of her smart red leather purse. “I told them today that I’d like to leave in two weeks. They asked if I could stretch it.”
Brigitta made a few more minutes’ small talk, asking the polite questions about her friend’s health and future, catching up on the day’s office gossip. But all the while Diane talked, Brigitta thought of one thing. She had to find a job, any job, within two weeks, or getting a reference from her former employer would be impossible.
***
When she first appeared in the doorway, she looked as if gravity was pulling her to the ground, pulling all of her there so hard she had to fight to keep herself upright. And then when she caught sight of him, everything lifted, almost imperceptibly, her mouth relaxing, her eyes opening from a worried frown.
He saw these things because he had been there, too, in that entryway by the registration desk, with a soul as weary as his body. He’d stood in that exact spot, rubbing his hand over his face as if that would wipe every vestige of fatigue and hurt away. If he’d seen a friendly soul waiting for him, it would have lifted fifty pounds off his shoulders.
He stood and greeted her. “Well?”
“A heart attack,” she said. She touched his arm when she spoke. He knew about that, too, the need for contact. “They’re taking him to a room. My mother and Beth will stay. Stu’s got the kids in the cafeteria, but I was going to get a ride with him. Helen’s home and I have to call her. She stayed home to tell me when I came home from work—in case she didn’t get me at the office.”
“I’ll take you home.”
She studied his eyes, looking for an answer. She didn’t know him. Why should she accept a ride from a virtual stranger? Something flickered across her face. Determination maybe. Or maybe resignation.
“All right. Let me tell them.”
***
She should have called Will.
That’s what had flickered through her mind as she sat in Sean’s car, headed toward home. Not once during this crisis had she thought of calling her fiancé. But it happened so quickly and Sean was there. It could have been Linda who stayed and then offered a ride and I would have been just as blank, just as thoughtless about Will….
No, if Linda had stayed with her, Julia would have remembered to call Will at the first opportunity. Linda would have been a reminder, the good fiancé, the woman who knew her place in life. Was that it? Dammit, she didn’t know. And she was too tired to reason it out.
“You didn’t have to stay,” she told him, staring out the window at the darkening streets. “Who’s watching your boys?”
“A neighborhood woman. I called her.”
With a flash of insight she realized he’d been through this before. He hadn’t hesitated or asked directions when guiding her to the emergency room. He’d known exactly where it was. She turned to him, but his eyes were on the road, gleaming in the light of passing lampposts.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. And when he asked her why, she looked straight ahead and told him what she suspected, that his wife had been there, that he’d sat through his own vigils.
He remained silent for a few seconds, then asked her if he was headed in the right direction. She couldn’t tell from his voice if she’d offended him or touched him or neither.
“Is he going to be okay?” he asked at last.
“The doctors said…” Now it was her turn to pause. What had they said? Nothing definite. Just as when she had polio. She sighed. “The doctors have a hundred different ways of saying maybe.”
She heard him chuckle softly and turned to see him nodding his head.
“It was the same when I was sick,” she continued, now surer of his mood.“When I starting feeling bad, really bad, my mother asked the doctor if it was polio. Specifically asked him. And he said ‘we can’t be sure. It could be the flu.’ My god, he knew. He just didn’t want to tell them, didn’t want to say it in front of me. At least he told them to get me to the hospital right away.”
“What happened then?”
“A nurse took o
ne look at me and said ‘she has polio.’ They verified it with tests, of course. But she knew and wasn’t afraid to say.”
“Sometimes you find a nurse like that.”
“They’re with you the most, so they are either compassionate or tyrants,” she said, now warming to her subject. “The tyrants can’t stand the wailing and whining and crying. Maybe it’s because they can’t do anything about it. So they decide it’s the patient who’s at fault. The patient should act better.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“You mean after the fever broke?”
He shot her a quick worried look. “I really don’t know much about polio.”
“The fever lasted a week, I think. I don’t know. I lost track of time. I was delirious. Couldn’t move anything below my neck, had trouble breathing, but I had enough sense not to complain of that. Any time they asked me, I said I could breathe all right. I pretended. I perfected a technique of taking shallow breaths when they were around and willing myself to look happy. I was terrified of being put in an iron lung. I dreamt I was in one. I kept forcing myself to stay awake so I could protest if they tried. I decided I’d rather die than live that way.” Her voice shook with conviction as she remembered lying there, helpless, her parents unable to visit except once a day, and then when they came in, they were unfamiliar creatures garbed in masks and gowns because she was in isolation. Her mother, pulling the mask off to kiss her on the forehead and murmuring prayers in German. Her father, trying to be cheerful but eager to leave, unable to see her like that. It angered her as she thought about it. Unfair—she’d felt that way then and she still felt that way today. She’d gone swimming and been struck down. Unfair.
“What happened after that?”
“The exercises and hot packs.”
“My boys’ doctor told me about those.”
She didn’t say more. She was afraid of how she’d sound, angry and weepy by turn. Angry at how cruel it felt to have scalding strips of hot wool burning into her flesh, then turning clammy and cool because the nurse dawdled on her way to remove them. Angry at having her legs bent and her neck pushed down and everyone knowing it would hurt like hell but not saying anything, not once saying “there, there, we know it’s painful.”
LOST TO THE WORLD Page 16