Damage Control

by Robert Dugoni

  The following morning, Dana faced the inevitable task of cleaning out her office. As she filled boxes, she felt the floor outside her door tremor but made no effort to reach for the telephone. She no longer cared when the door burst open and Marvin Crocket stepped inside. His face was flushed red, a sinister smile on his lips. “Two weeks without any calls to check in? It’s over. I have the support—”

  In the midst of his tirade, Crocket had apparently missed the boxes and the empty shelves. When it finally occurred to him what he was witnessing, he reacted as if somehow being cheated out of the pleasure of firing her. His eyes widened, and the smile disappeared. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Dana pulled a diploma off the wall and slid it into the box. “I’m leaving.”

  “You’re quitting?”

  Dana smiled. “You were always a quick learner. Nothing escapes your trained legal eye.”

  “You can’t quit. Where will you go? If you think I’m going to let you take a single scrap of paper out of here, a single client, think again.”

  Dana turned to him. “Marvin, you are a pompous ass. For three years, you’ve been trying to fire me. Now you’re trying to keep me? Without the specter of employment, do you think there is any chance that you could intimidate me?” She stepped from behind her desk and approached him. He eyed her with caution. His feet, anchored by male ego, refused to budge, but his upper body leaned away from her. “I have a job, a good job with a strong salary, stock options, and flexible work hours. They’ve even agreed to my suggestion that they include a day care at the facility for employees. I can take my daughter there and see her during the day as much as I choose.”

  Crocket scoffed, “You’re dreaming. Those places don’t exist.”

  “Don’t they? Why don’t you call Don Burnside and ask him if that place exists?”

  “Corrugate Industries?” Crocket said with alarm. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “I didn’t have to. Don called me. He loved my presentation, and truth be told, I think he likes my blue eyes. I begin next week as in-house counsel. Linda will be coming with me.”

  Crocket’s bottom jaw hung near his chest.

  Dana went on. “Look at the positives. You got rid of us both, which is what you wanted. And I won’t be taking any of the firm’s files. I will, however, be in need of outside counsel to assist with litigation and business matters. I can’t possibly handle the legal issues confronting what has grown to a multimillion-dollar business on my own. Send me your résumé. I’ll consider it.”

  She winked at him, then went back behind her desk and picked up a letter opener. “Now, if you don’t mind,” she said, turning to him, “I need to finish clearing out my office, and I would appreciate it if you would knock before you barge in here.”

  Epilogue

  WHAT SHE NOTICED was how easily her blouse buttoned. Putting the small glass bead into the stitched hole required little effort at all. Dana held up her hand and examined it. No shakes. Not the slightest movement. They had performed another mammogram, this time with a small wire inserted into her breast to identify the exact location of the cancerous bump. The surgeon would remove the bump in the morning. It had hurt like hell, but Dana felt at peace.

  Her mother sat across the room in a chair, holding Molly in her lap. Her outward composure required a great deal more effort. When she wasn’t entertaining Molly with a book, Kathy’s lips moved, silently praying. Occasionally, she looked up at Dana and smiled, but not a word was spoken between them.

  Dana finished buttoning her shirt, tucked it into her blue jeans, and sat next to her mother, holding her hand. There was nothing left but the waiting. After two weeks, she had overcome her feeling that Robert Meyers had cheated her—that his death had been a false justice, without the satisfaction of finding him responsible for her brother’s death. She had wanted him punished like any other American. Like Martha Stewart’s trial and the trial of the Enron executives, it would have proved once and for all that a justice system designed by the people and for the people actually worked for all the people. But that had been a selfish desire, and she had realized it in that horrifying moment when she thought Meyers would kill Elizabeth Meyers.

  There had been no blood tests performed on Elizabeth Meyers or her unborn child. There had not been time. Dana had bluffed, knowing from her years as a lawyer that the threat of such information, taken in context with Meyers’s childhood medical records, would be sufficient to convince him there was enough evidence to convict him.

  The door to the room opened. Her mother squeezed her hand. Dr. Bridgett Neal came in holding a mammogram in each hand, studying them intently. Neal walked in silence to the small counter at the back of the room, turned on the viewer on the wall, and snapped the two images in place. She stepped back and pondered the X-rays, one arm folded across her chest, the other arm bent, finger tips at her lips. Dana and her mother stood. Kathy put Molly on the blue plastic chair with a copy of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham.

  Dr. Neal took a deep breath and shook her head.

  Kathy, no longer able to control her instincts, shouted out her questions. “What is it? How bad is it?”

  Dr. Neal turned to the two women. “They can’t find it.”

  Kathy’s voice rose with alarm. “Can’t find it? What do you mean?”

  Dana squeezed her mother’s hand. “Mom, calm down.”

  “They can’t find the lump,” Neal said. “And neither can I.”

  The pain of having her breast flattened between the two plates of glass with a needle and wire inserted through it remained fresh in Dana’s mind. “Don’t tell me I have to go through that again.”

  “No. No. The technicians are confident they have all the X-rays they need. They have every possible angle.”

  “Then why can’t they find it?” Dana asked.

  Neal shrugged. “Because the lump is no longer there.”

  Kathy put both hands to her mouth.

  “What do you mean, not there?” Dana asked.

  “It’s gone. It’s completely gone.” Neal’s face contorted in a pained expression. “It’s possible, I suppose, that it was some type of cyst and, when punctured, over time, shrank, but…”

  As Bridgett Neal defined in medical possibilities what could have happened to the cancerous lump in Dana’s breast, Dana heard a different voice, the voice of a troll-like English gentleman. She felt William Welles’s hand on her arm and heard him whisper in her ear as he handed her the bag of tea: Drink it every day with sugar until it is gone.

  Dana had finished the bag that morning. She and her mother each had a cup. She had assumed Welles had meant to drink the tea until it was gone, but she now understood that wasn’t what he had meant at all.

  Neal continued, “I have to tell you, however, that I have never seen this before. In fifteen years of practice, I have never seen a lump just disappear. Nor have I misdiagnosed a cyst. Dana?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I know this must be a shock to you. I can’t explain it, I’m sorry.”

  Dana smiled. “Don’t be. I’m not.”

  “I feel badly that I put you through this. I don’t know what could have happened.”

  “Some things in life can’t be explained, Dr. Neal. It’s why we still have miracles.”

  Neal shook her head. “As much as I would like to believe you, I have to caution you not to get too carried away with this. I’m sure there is a diagnostic explanation, and I will continue to review your records and the prior images. In the interim, I am recommending that you have a mammogram every four months for the next year, and every six months thereafter.”

  Dana smiled. “Then I’ll see you in four months.” She walked to where Molly sat.

  “Green eggs and ham,” Molly said, showing her the book.

  Dana picked up the little girl and hugged her, then turned to her mother. “Let’s go home.”

  AS DANA EMERGED from the Cancer Care Center, she saw the green sports car parked at t
he curb beneath a no-parking sign. Only a cop could get away with that. Detective Michael Logan leaned against the Austin Healey holding a huge bouquet of red roses, smiling.

  Kathy reached over and took Molly, setting the little girl down and holding her hand. “Go,” she said to Dana.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Go. Carmen will watch her.” At Elizabeth Meyers’s request, Kathy had hired Carmen Dupree, who would not leave her beloved Seattle for Los Angeles, professing that the smog would kill her. But living on the lake, she said, was something she could get used to. The pay was room and board. In return, Carmen baked apple pies and cared for Molly like her own. She told Dana she would teach the little girl the secret ingredients of her pies.

  “I have to get ready for tonight. Dr. Porter has asked me to the symphony,” Kathy said, smiling.

  Dana hugged her mother, then knelt and kissed her daughter. “I’ll be back later, honey. We have to help Grandma get ready for her big date.”

  “Grandmas don’t have dates,” Molly said.

  “Yours does,” Dana said. “Make sure you feed Freud and Leonardo. Just one can each this time. They’re getting too fat.”

  The little girl stood holding her grandmother’s hand. Dana hugged her mother again, then turned to the car. When she reached Logan, she was unable to keep from grinning. “My divorce isn’t final yet.”

  Logan handed her the roses. “I know.”

  “Grant is going to make this difficult.”

  “I know.”

  “I have a child.”

  “I know.”

  Dana laughed. “And one hell of a lot of baggage.”

  Logan turned and opened the car door for her. “I know.”

  As she lowered to get into the car, Dana heard her mother calling and turned to see Molly running down the sidewalk toward them, the little girl’s short legs pumping furiously, Kathy in pursuit. Dana turned to Logan.

  “Bring her,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. What little girl wouldn’t love a tree house?”

  Dana loaded Molly into the Austin Healey, sharing the seat with her. As they sped off, Molly looked up at the sky in amazement. “Mommy, we’re flying. Just like the birds.”

  Dana laughed and cradled her tightly. “You’re breaking the law, Detective.”

  Logan looked over at her. “Yeah, how’s that?”

  “No child seat.” She looked at the back, which didn’t exist. “No seat, period.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been meaning to get a bigger car. Perhaps you could help me pick it out, Molly?”

  The little girl smiled. “Can I have an ice cream?”

  Logan looked at his watch. “After lunch. You don’t want to spoil your appetite.”

  Dana smiled. Was there anything not to like about him?

  As they sped across the I-90 bridge, Molly squealed with delight. “Look at the boats.”

  Dana looked at Logan. “She’s having fun.”

  “How about you? Are you having fun?”

  She nodded. “More than I’ve had in a long time.”

  They took the exit for Cougar Mountain and started up the hill. Molly kept her head tilted to the sky, partially obscured by the tips of trees and overhanging branches.

  “What is that?” Logan asked the question as they made the final turn to the front of the house.

  Dana lowered her gaze and saw the metal sculpture at the entrance to Michael Logan’s home, the same sculpture that had stood outside the entrance to William Welles’s home. Logan parked the car, and the three of them got out and walked around it.

  “What the heck is it?” Logan asked.

  As she circled it, Dana watched the strips of metal bending and twisting, melding together as they had done that day on the mountain above Maui. Before she could answer, Molly spoke.

  “They’re dolphins, Mommy.”

  And Dana saw them. Two adult dolphins, their bodies entwined around each other, and a third, smaller dolphin below them. “Yes, they are,” Dana said. “That’s exactly what they are.”

  Acknowledgments

  ON A WARM AND SUNNY Sunday morning in July 1992, while I lay in bed reading the sports section, my telephone rang. It was my sister Susie. My sister’s role, as a doctor, in my large family has since become medical guardian and bearer of bad news. But fifteen years ago my family had experienced little such news and I remained blissfully oblivious to the possibility.

  “I have bad news,” Sue said that morning. “Mom has cancer.”

  To illustrate my naïveté, my first question was “Is it bad?”

  Cancer, I have come to learn, is never good.

  The doctors had found a lump in my mother, Patty’s, breast during a routine examination. She had undergone a mammogram and a needle biopsy with the expectation that it was a cyst. A full biopsy proved that expectation wrong. The doctors gave my mother two choices—a lumpectomy or mastectomy. At sixty, with a handicapped son still living at home whose future my mother worries about daily, she chose the mastectomy. Her treatment would include chemotherapy. The oncologist added, unsolicited, “And yes, you will lose your hair.”

  For the next eight months my mother underwent Friday-afternoon chemotherapy treatments. She would sleep and fight sickness over the weekend, then get up Monday morning and go to her office as a CPA. A self-proclaimed “tough old Irish lady,” she missed just one day at the office and refused to let any of her ten children see her suffer. Every phone call I made resulted in the same report. “I’m fine,” she’d say. “I’m fine.” Eventually, she would be.

  In 1996 she had breast reconstruction surgery. She did it not so much for herself, but for her four daughters. My eldest sister, Aileen, had several breast lump scares. My mother wanted her daughters to know that cancer did not have to be a death sentence, or leave them deformed.

  Eight years later we would all learn an ugly truth about the nondiscriminating, heartless disease.

  In December 2003, just before a family cruise, my cousin Russ’s wife, Lynn Dugoni, just forty years old and the mother of two grade-school-age boys, Eric and Paul, felt a lump under her left arm. The lump was malignant. The diagnosis was small-cell carcinoma. Lynn had the lump removed in February, and the day after her forty-first birthday an oncologist prescribed a rigorous twice a week, four-month chemotherapy treatment. On August 24 Lynn had a mastectomy and her lymph nodes removed. Four days after her surgery, Lynn got out of bed and traveled to San Francisco to participate in a gala celebration for my uncle Art. I saw her there, had breakfast with her the next morning. She looked to me as she always did—beautiful and optimistic and full of life. I gave her holy water I had brought back from a pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, with my handicapped brother. I fully expected I would see Lynn again.

  Lynn’s lymph nodes tested positive for cancer. She underwent a second round of chemotherapy. By Christmas she regained strength and started to recoup. She and Russ and the boys vacationed in Lake Tahoe. Lynn complained of back pain. New Year’s Day the pain became so extreme she could not get out of bed. On January 3 she was admitted to the hospital. Her cancer had spread.

  Over the course of the next three weeks my cousins Mary and Diane and my own sisters provided my family in Seattle with daily updates on Lynn’s condition. I sent her Saint Catherine’s medal—The Miracle Medal, a gift I had received while in Lourdes. But Lynn’s body was too weak, her blood count too low, to receive further treatment. The doctors sent her home.

  Lynn left for heaven January 28, 2005, at 10:30 p.m. Russ and his two sons buried her February 2—two days before his fiftieth birthday.

  I continue to believe in miracles. I’ve come to learn there is no miracle for cancer. My father, Bill, the best man you’ll ever meet, now battles melanoma. Lifelong friend Barbara Martin fought and survived breast cancer. Other friends have called to deliver the same bad news my sister delivered fifteen years ago.

  There is no cure—yet. Perhaps someday there
will be. A donation has been made to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in the names of Patricia and Lynn Dugoni. I encourage all to do the same.

  As always, there are many to thank—Northwest Publishing consultant and good friend Jennifer McCord always looks after me. The Jane Rotrosen Agency—Don Cleary and Jane Rotrosen and the gang—make it a team effort, and my agent, Meg Ruley, continues to amaze me with her boundless optimism, energy, and wonderful sense of humor. You make it fun. To the talented people at the Hachette/Warner Book Group—Publisher Jamie Raab and my editor, Colin Fox, who’ve made me feel at home. To the copyediting team that makes me look smart, to Ann Twomey, who continues to design interesting covers, to Rebecka Oliver for ensuring my work is read in numerous foreign countries, and to everyone in publicity, particularly Lisa Sciambra, I am appreciative and thankful.

  Here in Seattle, to all the boys in the Sacred Heart men’s group—good friends who have prayed faithfully for my family members, and who stand by with beers and cigars ready to celebrate my accomplishments. To all at Schiffrin, Olson, Schlemlein, Hopkins and Goetz, who help keep the lights on. And to my own wife and children, who have been with me each step of this journey. May God bless you all and keep you safe.