The Sisterhood

by Michael Palmer

  The huge picture windows and high beamed ceilings were little more than hazy, whirling shapes as she helped him past a large fieldstone fireplace to the bedroom. As she lowered him onto the bed, the telephone in the living room began ringing.

  “Go on and answer it, I’ll be all right,” he said, eyes closed. “It’s probably Joey.”

  He heard her leave, and for several minutes he battled encroaching darkness and waited. By the time she returned, he was losing.

  “David, are you awake?” A single nod. “You were right, that was Joey. He wanted to make sure we got here in one piece. Please nod if you understand what I’m saying, okay? Good. He called some friends of his on the police force. David, no one knows anything about Leonard Vincent being picked up tonight. Everyone in Boston is looking for you, but Vincent must have escaped the hospital before he was noticed. Joey said he would keep checking around and call us later today or else Saturday morning. We’re okay as long as we’re up here, but he said to be careful if we drive back to the city. David?”

  This time he did not acknowledge.

  Hours later, David’s eyes blinked open in misty wakefulness.

  He was undressed and under the covers, his torn, swollen ankle propped up on pillows. Nestled beside it was a plastic bag of water—the remains of an improvised ice pack.

  He lifted himself to one elbow and looked out through the ceiling-to-floor windows. An endless sea of stars now glittered across the clearing night sky.

  A cry came from outside the room. David grabbed his crutches and limped toward the sound. Christine was asleep on the living room couch. She cried out again, more softly this time. David moved to rouse her. Then he stopped. He could wake her for a minute or ten or even an hour, but it would make no difference. He knew the resilience of nightmares.

  CHAPTER XX

  The sizzle and aroma of frying bacon nudged David from a dreamless sleep and kept his first thoughts of the morning away from the horror of the past night.

  Sunlight, isolated from the ocean breeze by the wall-sized windows, bathed him in an almost uncomfortable warmth. Sun! David opened his eyes and squinted into the glare. For nearly a week the world had been a damp, monotonous gray. Now he could almost taste the blue-white sky.

  His forearm was throbbing beneath Terry’s bulky dressing, but not unbearably so. He dangled his legs over the edge of the bed and flexed his ankle. A numb ache, also tolerable. In fact, he realized, there was a strange, reassuring comfort about the pain—perhaps an affirmation that in order to hurt, in order to feel, he must still be alive. The notion brought with it a fleeting smile. How many times had he encountered patients who seemed to be actually enjoying their pain? Next time he would be more understanding.

  He heard Christine moving about the kitchen, then suddenly there was music from a radio. Classical music! Telemann? Absolutely, he decided. A jumbo pizza and six mindless hours of uninterrupted T.V. said it was Telemann. For a time he listened, thinking about the woman and the fantastic story she had told him. Last night he had been furious. As angry and frustrated as he could ever remember. But now, in the sunlight and the music, he realized she was in many ways as innocent, as caught in the nightmare, as he was. True, she had given the morphine to Charlotte Thomas, but in no way could she have anticipated the events to follow. He had to believe that. For his own sanity he had to believe that.

  He closed his eyes, savoring a few filial seconds of the promise of a new day. Then he picked up one crutch and hobbled out of the bedroom.

  The kitchen, separated from the living/dining area by a butcher-block counter, was on the west side of the hexagon. Christine stood by the sink, working a wire beater through a bowl of pancake mix. The sight of her triggered a warm rush through David’s body. No afternoon sun could have brightened the room as she did that moment. Her hair, a loose, sandy braid, dangled halfway down her back. A light blue man’s shirt, knotted at the bottom, accentuated the curve of her breasts and exposed a band of honeyed skin at her waist. Below that, faded jeans clung to her hips and buttocks.

  As he watched, David sensed the hammering in his chest and tried to will it to stop. “Mornin’,” he said casually, wondering if he looked more at ease than he felt.

  She turned. “I couldn’t decide whether to wake you or to wait and risk ruining breakfast, so I took the coward’s way out and turned on the radio. Did you get enough sleep?”

  David searched her expression. Was she asking for their truce to continue, to be allowed to bring things up in her own time and her own way? “I slept fine,” he said. “Thanks for putting me to bed.”

  “I was afraid you’d be upset about my doing that.” Christine set the beater down and walked to him.

  “Only that I wasn’t conscious when you did,” he said. Her laugh gave him his cue. He would keep things light until she was ready to talk. “Listen, can I help in there? I’m a wonderful cook … for any type of meal whose main ingredient is water.”

  “I think things are under control. You could light a fire. It’s a little chilly on this side of the house. There’s wood already laid in the fireplace. This afternoon, if you want, you can be in charge of lunch.”

  “Fair enough.” He headed for the hearth.

  As Christine returned to the sink she heard him mumble, “Maybe some Cup-A-Soup and instant mashed potatoes … or perhaps beef jerky in white wine sauce …” Silently she thanked him. A rueful smile tightened across her face as she remembered Dotty Dalrymple’s assessment. “A degenerate,” she’d called him. And just what does that make us? Christine wondered. We who have taken it on ourselves to weigh the value of a human life. We who can believe so mightily in our commitment to end it whenever we think appropriate. What does that make us?

  She glanced into the living room. David was sitting by a low fire, his swollen ankle propped on a hassock. “Show me how to make it, David,” she whispered. “Show me how you survived the hell I helped put you through. I know it’s a lot to ask, but please, please try.”

  Joey Rosetti’s jeep was antique in body and spirit, if not in years. From the passenger seat David watched with admiration as Christine maneuvered the snorting beast around rocks and muddy puddles on the steep grade to the ocean.

  Talk throughout the morning had been light, with only oblique references to the horrors that had brought them together. When Christine suggested a picnic by the water, David started to object—to insist that they confront the issues facing them. Quickly, though, he acknowledged that he too wanted the respite to continue. There would be time enough to talk after lunch.

  The stony dirt track they had chosen wound through a tangled fairy-tale forest of beach plum, wild rose, and scrub pine. After several hundred yards, it deteriorated into a series of partly overgrown hairpin turns.

  “Maybe we should back up and try to find another road,” David said.

  “Maybe …” She bounced through a vicious loop that he had felt certain would be impassable. “But I’ll bet you a … a Fruit Pie we make it on this one.”

  Moments later, the thick brush fell off to either side. A final hairpin and the road spilled onto a sandy oval scarcely thirty yards long, a perfect white-gold medallion resting on the breast of the Atlantic. Christine skidded to a dusty stop. The engine noise faded. They sat, feeling the silence and the colors.

  “A penny …?” David asked finally.

  “For my thoughts?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’ll want change.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well, I was just deciding which spot would be best to spread the blanket and set our lunch.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.” She took the bag of food and the blanket, then kicked off her shoes and hopped onto the sand. “After we eat, we can talk, okay?” He nodded. “Well, are you coming?”

  “In a minute. You go ahead.”

  Concern darkened her face, then vanished. With a delighted whoop, she raced across the beach.

  D
avid sank back in his seat, aware of a heavy, husky discomfort across his upper chest. In the minutes that followed the feeling intensified. He struggled to pin it down, to label it. Gradually he understood. He was being drawn into her world, her life. He was caring more almost every minute. Caring for the woman whose actions, whose hubris, had triggered his nightmare and had somehow led to the death of his friend. Caring for a woman who had confessed to murder, for a woman whose situation was … hopeless.

  This is crazy, he thought. Absolutely insane. This woman is headed nowhere—except possibly to jail. She has no career now. No future beyond the turmoil of an arrest and trial. Lauren had so much—talent, beauty, direction, self-assuredness. What has Christine Beall got?

  “David?” Christine’s voice startled him, and for a moment he couldn’t locate her. Then, through the windshield, he saw her, elbows resting on the hood of the jeep, studying him. “Are you all right?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure, I’m fine,” he lied.

  “Good. I couldn’t tell if you were in a trance or just in a snit because I forgot to let you put lunch together. It’s ready whenever you are.”

  David smiled thinly, lowered himself from the jeep, and limped across the sand to the partly shaded niche where she had spread their blanket.

  Silence settled in as they picked at the mélange of foods Christine had found—sardines, marinated artichoke hearts, Wheat Thins, boiled eggs, black olives, string cheese, and Portuguese sweet bread.

  “That was delicious,” David said finally. “Want to flip for rights to that last artichoke?”

  “No, thanks, I’m full. You go ahead.” She paused, then continued with almost no change in her tone. “Charlotte wasn’t dying of cancer, was she?” It was a statement more than a question.

  So much for Camelot, David thought. With a deliberateness that he hoped would help him form a response, he set his fork in an empty jar, then swung around to face her.

  “You mean the autopsy findings,” he said. She swallowed hard and nodded. “Well, then, the simple answer to your question is probably not. On autopsy there was no obvious cancer. For sure it could have popped up again in six months or a year, or even two. But for now that’s your answer.”

  Christine started to reply, then bit at her lip and turned away. Without the slightest warning, even to himself, David snapped at her. “Damn it, Christine, don’t do this to yourself. If you’re going to work this whole business through—and I think you should—then do it from all sides—not just the ones that will heighten your guilt. Either we take a hard look from every angle or we might as well go back to small talk. Understand?”

  Christine nodded. Her eyes were glazed and vacant. “I … I just feel so damn lost,” she said hoarsely. “So frightened, so … so hopeless.”

  That word again. This time it was David who looked away. He could not shake the feeling that she was right. What did she have to look forward to? Then he thought of Lauren. For better or for better. That was how he had described her commitment to him. Now it was his turn to decide.

  In that instant he felt a renewed spark of anger. Christine Beall had made choices and because of those choices people had gotten hurt—and killed. Now she was feeling hopeless. Wasn’t she getting just what she deserved?

  What she deserved. David shook his head. How many of his colleagues thought that getting arrested, then suspended from the Doctors Hospital staff was just what he deserved. Did he have any more right to pass judgment than they did?

  He reached out and took Christine’s hand. Her fingers tightened about his. He could feel her despair.

  All at once, he folded his arms in a rigid professorial pose. “Just where do you get off thinking you have the right to make that diagnosis?” he asked haughtily.

  “What diagnosis?”

  “Hopelessness. Here you are in the presence of perhaps the world’s greatest expert on the subject, and you have the temerity to diagnose yourself without asking for a consultation? That is unacceptable. I am taking over this case.” The emptiness in her eyes began to lift. “We must take an inventory, ” he said. “First the basics. I see ten fingers, ten toes, and two of all the parts there are supposed to be two of. Are they all in working order, miss?” She suppressed a giggle and nodded. “So far, this sounds very unhopeless. Are you perchance aware of the classic Zurich study on the subject? They measured hopelessness on a scale of zero to ten in over a thousand subjects, half of them living and half dead. A hopelessness index of ten was considered absolute. Can you guess the outcome of that research?” She was laughing now. “Can’t guess? Well, I’ll tell you. A marked difference was found between the groups. In fact, those in the deceased group invariably rated ten, the rest invariably zero.” He rubbed his chin and eyed her up and down. “I’m sorry, miss. I really am, but I’m afraid that no matter how much you want to be, you are simply not hopeless. Thank you very much for coming. My bill’s in the mail. Next?”

  She threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you.” Her lips brushed his ear as she spoke. “Thank you for the consultation.” She drew her head back to look at him. Their lass simply happened—a gentle, comfortable touching that neither of them wanted to end or change. A minute passed, and then another. Finally she drew away.

  “It all went wrong,” she said softly. “It seemed so right, and it all just went … crazy. Why, David? Tell me. How the hell can I ever trust my feelings again when something I believed in so very much turned out so sour?” She sank down to the sand and stared out at the Atlantic.

  “You want to know why?” he said, dropping next to her. “Because you’re not perfect, that’s why. Because nobody’s perfect, that’s why. Because every equation involving human beings is insolvable, or at least never solvable the same way twice. I believe in euthanasia just as much as you do. I always have. It’s an absolutely right idea as far as I’m concerned. The difference is that somehow I have come to understand that while it is an absolutely right idea, there is simply no way to do it right. Sooner or later, the human element, the unpredictable, uncontrollable X factor rears its ugly head, and wham, things come apart.”

  “And innocent people die,” she said.

  “Chris, as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to dying, we’re all innocent. That’s the problem. Someone in your Sisterhood—possibly this Peggy woman—has snatched up the good, honest beliefs of some wonderful, idealistic nurses and has run away with them. Again, the human element. Money, greed, lust, fanaticism. Who knows what will pluck that special string hidden within someone and set him off? You were about to expose The Sisterhood, or at least that’s what somebody thought. That string gets plucked and crazy, insane decisions get made.

  “There’s this riddle I once heard,” he continued. “It asks a person what he would do if he was presented with a healthy newborn infant and promised that by slaying that infant he could instantly cure the ills of all mankind. Someone in your Sisterhood has answered that riddle for herself. Ben, you, me—none of us is as important to them as their ideals. The individual sacrificed for the greater good. It happens all the time.”

  “That’s horrible,” she said.

  “Maybe. But more important, it’s human. You can shoulder the burden of responsibilities for my suffering or even Ben’s death, if you want to, but that’s being awfully tough on yourself for just doing what you believed in and for trusting that other human beings were just as constant, just as pure in their belief as you were.

  “You have decisions to make, Chris. Huge, crunching, God-awful decisions. If you want, I’ll help. But don’t expect me to stand by holding the matches while you pour gasoline over yourself. I … I care too much.”

  Slowly she turned to him. Her eyes held him as they had during their first moments together. Her hands caressed the sides of his face. Their kiss, this time warm and deep and sweet, carried them to the sand. Moment by moment, as they undressed one another, the world beyond their beach drifted away. David kissed her eyes, then buried his lips in the soft
hollow of her neck. Her hands flowed over his body, capturing new excitement for herself as she created it in him.

  With every kiss, every touch, the loneliness and fear inside them lessened. With each new discovery the sense of hopelessness ebbed.

  Christine’s face glowed golden in the late afternoon sun as she pulled herself on top of him. He stroked her firm breasts, first with his hands, then with his tongue.

  She was smiling as she reached down and guided him inside her.

  “Barbara, just stop fretting and give me the names. I’ll take care of it.”

  “But …”

  “The names, please.” Margaret Armstrong snapped the words, then balled the small piece of fabric in her fist and forced herself to relax.

  Barbara Littlejohn hesitated. A throbbing in her head, which had begun during the flight from Los Angeles, intensified. Finally she opened a manilla folder and passed one letter at a time across the cardiologist’s desk. “Ruth Serafini,” she said. “Resigned from both the board of directors and the movement. Says that she understands you are doing what you think is right, but that she cannot, in all good conscience, go along with it.”

  “Not even a copy to me,” Peggy muttered, scanning the letter, then tossing it aside.

  “Susan Berger,” Barbara continued. “Says essentially the same thing as Ruth, but goes on to state that until matters are resolved she intends to curtail all Sisterhood operations in northern California. No approval for new cases, and also her recommendation that all contributions to the Clinton Foundation be held up.”

  Peggy set the letter on top of the other without reading it. “Susan will listen to reason,” she said evenly, weighing the possibility of doctoring the half-dozen tapes of Susan’s that were locked in her basement vault. Without any reference to The Sisterhood of Life, the tapes would constitute a chilling confession. “She’s far too ambitious a woman not to listen to reason.” Peggy unraveled the square of linen and absently rubbed it between her fingertips.