If I Should Die

by Hilary Norman

  “The drink changed her so much – literally changed her,” Chris told Lally. “From being irrationally self-critical and a little obsessive, she became resentful and belligerent.”

  “But only when she drank?”

  “Absolutely.” Chris picked up his own wine glass, then set it back down on the table. “It wasn’t as bad then as it is now, and after she became pregnant, things got a lot better because she stopped drinking.”

  “And after Katy was born?”

  “She started again.”

  With their child to consider, and aware to a degree of the bad effect liquor had on her, Andrea seldom took a drink outside the home. She wanted to be as good a mother as possible, and up to a point, she had always been great, but ever since they had moved to Stockbridge things had become worse.

  “My brilliant plan,” he said wryly. “My great hope for the future. Andrea had always been crazy about dogs, so I figured that going into the breeding business might be just what she needed to keep her happy. I guess I hoped that all that space and independence might help her to quit again.”

  It hadn’t helped. From lashing out verbally, Andrea had begun to react physically, and so long as she hadn’t taken out her rages on Katy, Chris had managed to control his own anger, but since the first time she’d struck their daughter, he’d been living in a nightmare.

  He paused for a moment. Lally’s kitchen was warm and snug, the only sounds the low hum of the refrigerator and Nijinsky’s loud purring from his comfortable spot on Lally’s lap.

  “You don’t have to go on,” Lally said.

  “It feels strange, opening up this way,” Chris admitted. “I’ve always been a pretty private man. And in spite of everything, I still feel disloyal talking about Andrea this way to – ” He stopped again.

  “To an outsider?” Lally smiled. “But isn’t that just why you feel you can talk to me? Because I’m not involved, other than with Katy.”

  “To be candid,” Chris said, “you don’t exactly feel like an outsider.”

  “Because of this afternoon,” Lally said quickly. “Because I was there.”

  “I guess so.”

  Lally took a sip of wine, then went on stroking the cat.

  “I’ve pushed Andrea as hard as I can to quit,” Chris said. “I’ve offered her every kind of help I could think of, but she’s rejected them all. She claims that she could give it up if she chose to, but that she doesn’t choose to. She says it’s what she needs to make life with me bearable.”

  Ever since he had found the first bruises on Katy a couple of weeks before, Chris had known that the writing was on the wall. If it hadn’t been for their daughter, he would have done Andrea a favour and left years earlier, but he hadn’t wanted to break up the family.

  “And now?” Lally asked, gently.

  “I know the situation can’t be allowed to continue.”

  “No.”

  “I tried talking to her before I came here tonight, but she was way too far gone for anything to get through.”

  “I saw the scratches,” Lally said. “They look sore. Would you like something to put on them?”

  Chris shook his head. “They’re nothing.”

  “How about some coffee then?”

  “Good idea.”

  Lally set Nijinsky on the floor, and cleared the table. Chris started to help, but she motioned to him to stay where he was. The silence was there again, but there was nothing too uncomfortable about it, it felt easy, almost intimate. Lally made a pot of coffee and poured them both a cup.

  “I’ve made up my mind about three things,” Chris said. “Number one, I have to protect Katy from this moment on. Number two, I have to get Andrea into a clinic, with or without her agreement.” He stopped.

  “And number three?”

  “I have to accept that my marriage is over.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Andrea wasn’t a drunk before she married me. She wasn’t unhappy before she married me, and she started drinking because she was miserable.” He shook his head. “I’m not taking all the blame, believe me, and I want to help her – I’m going to help her. But it was marrying me that changed Andrea. And it’s high time we ended it.”

  Chris asked Lally if Katy could stay with her the rest of the night. He knew it was a great imposition, but it seemed cruel to wake her now and take her back home. And besides, with Katy safely out of the house, Chris would be able to tackle Andrea more easily when she woke, talk to her about his feelings before she had a chance to start the day’s drinking.

  Lally showed Chris to her bedroom, watched him stoop and gently kiss his daughter’s hair, but she was sleeping soundly.

  “I should write her a note,” he whispered. “So she’ll know I haven’t just abandoned her.”

  “She wouldn’t think that.”

  Chris looked at the bed. “Where will you sleep?”

  “I have a spare room,” Lally whispered.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” He looked anxious again.

  “I can sleep anywhere.” Lally looked down at the sleeping child. “And to be honest, I think I’ll be happier knowing she’s here tomorrow morning, rather than – ” She stopped.

  “I know,” Chris said. “You’re right.”

  The dizziness hit Lally again at the front door. It was a worse attack than the one a few days earlier, and she thought for a moment she was going to fall down in a real faint, but Chris was beside her, holding her up, and in another minute it was gone.

  “What in hell was that?”

  “I don’t know. I just got a little dizzy.”

  He helped her back into the sitting room, and made her sit down on the sofa. “Are you sick?” he asked, anxiously. “You seemed okay before – you had a good appetite.”

  “I’m fine,” Lally assured him. “I’ve been a little off colour lately, that’s all.”

  He was appalled. “And you took the time and trouble to come to our house, and all you got was a pile of abuse. And now I’ve sat here all evening telling you my troubles – ” He started for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To wake Katy.”

  “Don’t you dare wake her.” Lally got up, then quickly sat back down.

  “Are you dizzy again?” He returned to her side.

  “No, I’m all right. But you mustn’t wake Katy – I’m fine, truly.”

  “You almost passed out.”

  “It was just a little dizzy spell, no big deal.”

  “Easy for you to say – you didn’t see how white your face was.”

  “All the more reason to let Katy stay. Hugo’s out for the night – it’ll be nice to know there’s someone else in the house. Not that I’m going to need anyone,” she added, quickly.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Can I get you something before I go?” He hesitated. “Should I stay?”

  “No,” Lally said firmly. “You’re needed at home.” She managed a smile. “Anyway, I really am okay now. See?” She stood up, and it was true enough, the dizziness was gone.

  “You’re quite sure?”

  “It’s time you left, Chris.”

  “I don’t know about this.”

  “Do you want me to turn pirouettes to prove I’m okay?”

  “No! Definitely not.”

  “Then go home, please.”

  It was another ten minutes before he drove away, finally satisfied that she wasn’t about to pass out and injure herself. Though Lally did have to admit to herself that she felt pretty sick, as if she’d run a marathon without water. If she didn’t perk up in a day or two, she guessed she’d have to see Charlie Sheldon, though it was years since she’d last visited the doctor.

  Maybe I’m just more upset about Katy than I realized, she thought.

  She walked upstairs slowly, holding onto the banister rail just in case. She went into her bedroom very quietly, took the things that she needed for the night, lo
oked down at the sleeping child for a moment or two, and then, leaving the door ajar and the light on in the corridor, Lally went to bed in the spare room.

  Chapter Seven

  Friday, January 8th

  The five factories that made up Hagen Industries occupied a site of nine acres of land behind Western Avenue in the Logan Square district of Chicago. Most of Hagen’s employees reported for duty between seven and nine in the morning and went home between four and six o’clock in the evening. During their eight or so hours of work, they had no real call to leave the complex; Hagen Industries was a paternalistic employer, and everything its people needed was on tap. There was a restaurant and a coffee shop, a branch of North Community Bank and a post office, a grocery and drugstore, and a doctor’s office.

  Most of the men and women who worked for Hagen Industries had the satisfaction of knowing that they were producing articles that benefited mankind, none more so than those who worked for Hagen Pacing. Their factory was the smallest of the five in the complex, and it was accepted by the parent company that this was one area where financial growth was considered a lower priority than continued quality, for Albrecht Hagen, the president, was known to care more passionately about the further development of these brilliant pieces of gadgetry than anything else in his business empire.

  The modern pacemaker was the most reliable electronic device ever made by man. It needed to be, for it was called upon to correct, without discomfort or even awareness, natural imperfections of the human heart, and each device was expected to provide more than three hundred and fifty million pulses in its own lifetime. At least three hundred and fifty thousand pacemaker implants were performed worldwide each year, and since its beginnings in the mid-seventies, Hagen Pacing had steadily and meticulously built itself a substantial slice of the manufacturing cake.

  The pacemaker factory was divided into two main areas, Research and Development, headed by Olivia Ashcroft, PhD, and Production, headed by Howard Leary, a scientist whose first ten working years had been spent designing weapons systems, but who had told Al Hagen, after joining his corporation, that he felt he’d come home. Ashcroft and Leary were both devoted to the company and its products, but at forty-five and fifty-two respectively, both were aware that they were now virtually over the hill. The peak of an electronic engineer’s career these days came much earlier than that of almost any other profession. There was so much new development to absorb, and so much growth, that within three years of an engineer starting out, he would have forgotten half of what he had learned, and would only be able to keep up with half of what was going on in his own area. There was nothing that Ashcroft and Leary did not know about pacing, but when it came down to the most crucial area of all – quality – the number one in the factory was Fred Schwartz, the Quality Assurance Manager. Schwartz lived and breathed for his work. Everyone who reported to him had been trained to check, check and check again that whatever they handled was one hundred per cent perfect, but no one had a sharper eye and a more acutely developed instinct for the most minute flaw that Schwartz himself.

  They had never needed him more than now.

  They assembled in the president’s office at 6 a.m. The factory was still silent, and Al Hagen’s office, too, had a strained, hushed atmosphere. It was a cool, rectangular room decorated and furnished in stark black and white; monochrome photographs, mostly of uncompromising landscapes, hung on the walls, and a built-in Bang & Olufsen hi-fi system with four speakers was a focal point.

  Hagen had called Ashcroft, Leary and Schwartz at their homes within moments of being alerted by Security to the two faxes from the Boston and Chicago Police Departments. Ashcroft and Leary had crawled, dazed and ragged, from their beds, but Schwartz, who prided himself on being able to get by on less sleep than most people, had already been dressed for work. The shock of the news imparted to them by Hagen guaranteed that none of them would rest easily for the foreseeable future.

  “Is it really true?” Schwartz asked Hagen.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Neither Ashcroft nor Leary spoke.

  “One death in Boston, last Sunday. The second on Wednesday morning, right here in Chicago.” Hagen’s light blue eyes pierced them all from behind his round wire-framed glasses. He was generally thought of by his workforce as a benevolent leader. Fifty-one years old, six feet tall and stoop-shouldered with grey, fuzzy, close-cropped hair, he tended to dress like an ageing college boy, with bow ties and white socks and long, colourful woollen scarves in winter. He looked anything but benevolent today. He looked stunned, and he looked accusing.

  “Do we have details?” Olivia Ashcroft recovered first. She was usually crisply elegant and poised, wore matte, understated makeup and tailored suits every day of the working week. This morning she wore blue denims, a sweater and anorak, and her hair was rumpled. She looked almost, though not quite, vulnerable.

  Hagen passed across the faxes. “See for yourself.”

  In the rush, Ashcroft had forgotten her glasses. She held the paper a little away from her face, and both Howard Leary and Fred Schwartz craned their heads to read at the same time.

  “Jeesus.” Leary, smartly dressed for business despite the frantic call, was a red-haired, green-eyed man with a quick temper, poor digestion and a sallow complexion. Reading the Chicago fax, he grew paler than usual.

  Ashcroft glanced at him. “What?”

  “Don’t you recognize the name?”

  She peered back at the fax. “Marie Ferguson?”

  “That’s Marie Howe Ferguson,” Hagen said. His voice, usually gentle, had a harsh note. “Head of the Howe Clinic in Rogers Park, daughter of William B. Howe. Major money, major citizen.”

  “Oh, God.”

  Schwartz remained silent, still staring at the faxes, too shocked to speak.

  “Nothing to say, Fred?” Hagen asked, quietly.

  “What can I say?”

  “You’d better think of something,” Leary said.

  Schwartz was a quiet, modest man, with hazel eyes, mousy hair and a small nose and mouth. “I’ll be trying to track both shipments – ” He sounded unsteady. “But since the faxes say that the explosions eradicated every trace of all serial numbers . . .” His voice trailed away.

  “You’re going to need as much information as possible,” Hagen said.

  “Their physicians will have our delivery notes on file,” Ashcroft said.

  “The pacemakers could have been hospital or doctors’ stock,” Schwartz pointed out. “I don’t have to tell anyone here that the delivery notes will only guide us to the relevant shipments. Many shipments are made up of devices from different production batches – if either Mr Long’s or Mrs Ferguson’s pacemaker was one of our biggest sellers – ” He came to a halt, his mind already hard at work sifting through possibilities.

  “Depending on when these two devices were manufactured,” Hagen continued the line of thought, increasingly appalled as the immensity of their predicament became clearer to him – ”most of the others in their batches will probably have been implanted too. If not all.”

  “We’ll still have the master copies,” Schwartz said.

  “Jesus,” Leary said again, more softly.

  The focus turned relentlessly on Schwartz. In the ten years this man had worked for the corporation, no one had ever seen him at a loss. Schwartz might be the quiet type, but he exuded a brand of confidence that others found reassuring. He was a gifted engineer with a fine scientific understanding; there was nothing flamboyant about him, neither in the drab clothes he wore nor in his unremarkable face. Only his clear, 20/20 vision, hazel eyes and his hands, long-fingered and nimble, betrayed his high intelligence and skill. So long as Schwartz was around, Hagen and the others knew things would be ticking along nicely. Or at least they had, till now. Now, just when it mattered most, he had nothing to offer.

  “This is a catastrophe,” Howard Leary said flatly.

  “How, Fred?” Ashcroft was gentler. “How can thi
s have happened?”

  “In theory, it can’t,” Schwartz replied.

  “According to the police departments of Boston and Chicago, it has.” Al Hagen’s narrow face was filled with tension. “According to the medical examiners in two cities, it has.”

  Since Schwartz had taken over quality control, not even the tiniest, most benign flaw had slipped through his net, but he had, nevertheless, laid down simple, straightforward procedures in case of unlikely hitches. To begin with, every component that went into a Hagen pacemaker had its own serial number, and all components were bought or produced in batches of one hundred, of which thirty-three were used in the current production cycle, another thirty-three were set aside to be used in three months, and a further thirty-three in a year. The remaining component in each batch was kept right out of production, and in that way, if something did go wrong, not only was the relevant component readily available for inspection, but the potential for trouble had been divided by three.

  Because the faxes made it clear that the explosions had obliterated every part of both pacemakers, including the serial numbers on the electrodes at the generator box end of the pacing leads, Schwartz had no alternative but to await full details of the shipments that had contained the devices; without that information, even if the Hagen Pacing computer could tell them how many pacemakers had been shipped to Massachusetts and Illinois locations in the past two months or so, there was no guarantee that one or both devices had not been awaiting use in Boston and Chicago for a year or more, since they would still have been well within their use-by dates.