Saving Meghan

by D. J. Palmer

  I was in bed sleeping (nothing new there) when Mom called me into the living room. There was breaking news on the TV: Dr. Zach Fisher was giving a news conference outside the front entrance to White Memorial. His dark hair ruffled in the steady breeze. Reporters gathered around, shoving their microphones into his face. My dad stood next to Dr. Fisher, looking sad, as if he were attending my funeral. I saw Dr. Nash there, too, looking prim and proper, her hair tied up in a bun, glasses in place.

  Mom turned up the volume. Dr. Fisher had finished whatever he had to say, so the reporters all started shouting questions at him. He ignored them, thanked everyone for coming, and then Knox Singer stepped up to the mic to announce that the news conference was over. This wasn’t like in the movies, where we happened to catch the news report right at the critical moment. We’d missed it all. But lucky for us, it was breaking news, so they reran the entire press conference about fifteen minutes later. This time we caught every word of it, including the most crucial part.

  “I’m speaking directly to Becky Gerard,” Dr. Fisher said, his chocolate-colored eyes boring into the TV cameras. “Becky, please bring Meghan back to White. We found something in Meghan’s labs that’s very concerning to us. I won’t go into detail on TV, but please listen to me. She’s sick—very sick. You need to bring her back to White immediately so she can be treated for this new issue we’ve discovered. Everyone here at White Memorial—including the police—we all just want Meghan to come back so she can be cared for properly. I know you want what’s best for Meghan. It’s urgent, Becky. You must act now.”

  Mom shut off the TV. She stared for a long time at the blank screen. I said nothing. My stomach was the size of a walnut.

  “What could it be?” I asked.

  “A trap,” my mom said. “It could be a trap.”

  “But what if it’s not?” I asked. “What if there’s something truly wrong with me?”

  I told Mom how I’d been feeling—the switches going off inside me, one by one, sensing that every day was bringing me one step closer to the last switch getting flipped.

  “What do we do?” I asked Mom.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” Mom said, stroking my hair. “I really don’t know.”

  CHAPTER 45

  BECKY

  Of all the holes in her plan—and there were plenty—she’d never contemplated the possibility of a new diagnosis for Meghan. She’d broken her daughter out of White because she had feared what would happen without continued treatment—thoughts of Will Fisher had propelled her into action. Now she feared what might occur if they stayed in hiding.

  A pressing need demanded Becky risk a brief shopping excursion. She spent extra time on her disguise to make sure no strands of blond hair spilled out from underneath her brown wig. She walked with purpose, head down, careful to avoid all eye contact, until she came to an electronics store not far from Inman Square. According to the salesperson, a chipper young man of Indian descent, the LG TracFone would allow her to make calls without being traced.

  He went on to describe plenty of other features, but untraceable calling was her only purchase criterion. As he talked, Becky wondered what use a person would have for a TracFone outside of criminal activities. Then the salesperson asked if she was selling something on Craigslist, which made sense to her. Becky told him yes, she was in fact selling some furniture through Craigslist, and left the store with the phone in a bag and sixty fewer dollars in her wallet.

  She walked back to the apartment in a hurry, mindful not to touch the wig, which was irritating her scalp. Bright sun filtered down from a nearly cloudless sky. A warm spring breeze bathed her face, scenting the air with the fresh smells of blossoming trees and flowers. She could not enjoy the fine afternoon weather, however, as every step was marked with fear. Did that person recognize her? What about that woman across the street? Or that man on his phone? Was he calling the police? Each worry served to quicken Becky’s strides, and soon she was winded from exertion.

  Back in the apartment, she found Meghan asleep in the bedroom. How many hours had she been sleeping? It had to be at least twelve. She was sleeping all the time. In the two days since Dr. Zach Fisher had made his televised plea, Becky had kept a close watch for signs of Meghan’s deteriorating health, for any proof that Dr. Fisher was telling the truth.

  At Walgreens, she had purchased a thermometer, a wireless blood pressure monitor, and a device to read Meghan’s glucose levels. Those instruments told her nothing. Whatever was wrong with her daughter—whatever had been wrong all along—had always lurked below the surface, impervious to detection. She was foolish to think two hundred dollars’ worth of medical devices available in aisle four at the local pharmacy would tell her something the doctors could not.

  Becky fixed herself a mug of green tea and slumped on the futon to watch the five o’clock news. Instead of the lead story, she and Meghan got a mention ten minutes into the newscast. With no updates, no leads, and no developments from Dr. Fisher’s press conference, there was little for the reporters to discuss.

  Becky sipped her tea as she debated her next move. Her head told her Dr. Fisher’s plea was a trap somehow, but her heart was saying something else. Her heart told her that Meghan was direly ill.

  It’s cancer … it’s a rare form of cancer … she needs treatment, not a bus ride to California … she needs help …

  Try as she might, Becky could not pull out from her thought spiral.

  She slumped on the futon, letting Meghan sleep while her tea went cold. She held the phone in her hand. One call might answer the question she’d been chasing for years, the question that had inspired her to create her Facebook group, that had brought Veronica into her life, that gave her filing cabinets full of medical jargon, and had ultimately ripped her and Carl apart. One answer was all she sought: What was wrong with Meghan?

  Becky returned to the futon, where she stared at the phone as though it were going to tell her what to do. If she called Zach, he’d want to see Meghan right away. He’d arrange a meeting place and time. He’d take Meghan back to White, not to the crazy floor, but somewhere she’d be treated properly for her illness—finally. It’s not mito; it’s cancer, Becky thought again.

  But what would happen to me? Becky wondered. That had to be a consideration. In addition to jail, Carl would fight her for full custody—a hardship of an entirely different sort. Judge Trainer would take away her parental rights. Jill Mendoza would be back in the picture. Kelly London, too.

  Becky saw herself standing at a fork in the road, but there was no good path to take. Go to California and possibly delay treatment for too long, maybe even past the point of no return. And that’s even if they could get to California. Becky had yet to figure out how to make fake IDs. Then they’d have to find a new doctor, one who might reconfirm the mito diagnosis, or maybe not. Maybe he’d say, I wish you’d gotten to me sooner. I’m so sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.

  Becky powered on the TracFone. The keypad illuminated in white light.

  A chorus of it’s a trap … it’s cancer … it’s a trap … it’s cancer looped in Becky’s mind.

  She dialed a number from memory. The phone rang. She heard a click. A voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Sabrina,” Becky said.

  CHAPTER 46

  Becky heard a gasp, followed by a deep inhale, and then, “Becky? Is that you?”

  “It’s me, Sis,” Becky said, stretching out her legs on the wood coffee table in front of the futon. “Long time no talk.”

  “Oh my God. Oh my God. Becky, where are you?”

  Her sister had a scolding tone, as if Becky had missed curfew. Once again, Sabrina was playing the parent, a role that had been thrust on her all too often.

  “I’m safe,” Becky said. “And Meghan is, too. We’re okay. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “You need to go to the police.”

  “I thought about coming to see you,” Becky said matter-of-factly. �
�How’s Mom?”

  “She’s alive, nothing new there.”

  “Tough old lady,” Becky said coldly. “What’s she hanging on for?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’s waiting to see if her youngest daughter is going to spend twenty years in prison for kidnapping.”

  “Does Cora even know what’s going on?” Becky asked.

  “Thankfully, no. She’s too out of it to understand much of anything these days. But everybody else in the country knows what you’ve done.”

  “They didn’t give me a choice,” Becky said. “They took my daughter. Took her illegally and then took my rights as her parent.”

  “As I understand it, they took her quite legally,” Sabrina said, always the logical one. No wonder she had gravitated toward a career in numbers, Becky thought to herself.

  “That’s not the point,” Becky said. “The point is, they had no business taking her in the first place. I’m her mother. I know what’s best.”

  “They obviously felt otherwise.”

  “She needed a second biopsy,” Becky protested. “But Carl paid off the Court Investigator so the judge would rule against me.”

  “You have proof of that?” Sabrina asked. “The bribe, I mean.”

  “No. If I did, I’d have gone to the police instead of going on the run with my daughter.”

  “Point taken,” Sabrina said. “So what now?”

  “Did you see the news conference?”

  “The one where the doctor told you to bring Meghan back to the hospital because they found something?”

  “Yeah, that one,” Becky said. “What do you think?”

  “Is that why you called? To get my advice?”

  “Yes, and to ask about Mom.”

  “You know what I think.”

  “That I should meet with Dr. Fisher?”

  “That you should turn yourself in,” Sabrina said succinctly. “Throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Tell them you were temporarily insane. Apologize profusely. Do something, but you can’t stay in hiding.”

  “Because Meghan might be sick,” Becky said, feeling encouraged by the thought that maybe Dr. Fisher hadn’t betrayed her.

  “No!” Sabrina shouted. “Because what you’ve done is wrong. It’s wrong for everyone. You have to undo this, Becky. You have to undo it now!”

  “Why? And let them stuff Meghan back in that psych ward? Have them not treat my daughter for her disease?”

  “What disease?” Sabrina said, exasperated. “There’s been no diagnosis. None.”

  “She has mitochondrial disease,” Becky answered defiantly, “or are you forgetting that? And she might have something else now, something Dr. Fisher found. What I need help with, what I’m asking your advice about, is if I should try to get to California and find a new doctor for Meghan, or if you think I should get her seen by Dr. Fisher right away. But I’m worried it might be a trap.”

  “Your mind, Becky, is the trap,” Sabrina said cuttingly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” There was rising anger in Becky’s voice.

  “It means that you grew up with a mother who faked her disability for years, who didn’t give you the attention you craved, that you deserved, except when you were helping support her scam.”

  “Same applies to you. What’s your point?”

  “My point is that I think something in your life changed, that you became deeply insecure, needy, something, and the only way you knew how to fill that void was to bring sickness back into your life. You’re reliving your childhood through Meghan. She’s not sick, Becky. You are.”

  “No, no,” Becky said, her voice sharpened. “You haven’t been here, Sabrina. You haven’t come to see us, not once since Meghan became ill. I’ve been dealing with this for years.”

  “I haven’t come, because I can’t stand to see it,” Sabrina said in a shaky voice that sounded on the verge of tears. “It hurts me, it physically hurts, to see what you’ve become. You’ve turned into Mom. Don’t you get it?”

  “No, I have not,” said Becky assuredly.

  “Our mother was very damaging, and you learned at her feet. For God’s sake, Becky, you learned to make up illnesses to please her. Yes, she did it to feed us, but she did it to feed herself as well. She craved the attention that she got. She needed it. She used it to try to fill some bottomless hole in her. And you’re doing what she did because it’s what you know how to do and it feels right and rewarding. But it’s not right. Not even a little.”

  “I am not making up anything. Meghan is sick. She’s been diagnosed. She’s here with me, in this apartment, sleeping twelve, fourteen hours at a time. Does that sound healthy to you?”

  “No, it sounds like a girl who’s craving her mother’s attention and getting it by acting sick. She sounds like someone I used to know, a little girl who’d do anything for her mother’s love.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “You’re not well. Ever since Sammy—”

  “Don’t,” Becky warned. “Don’t bring him into this.”

  “Ever since Sammy died,” Sabrina continued, undeterred, “you’ve been struggling, understandably so. Look, I think Meghan did get sick. Okay? I think it happened, some strange, weird illness that came and went. But it triggered something inside you—a fear, out-of-control anxiety, I don’t know what. I think Carl didn’t give you what you needed, and I suspect you became desperately lonely. You never had Mom’s love, and you didn’t have Carl’s support, so what did you have? You had Meghan. She is your world, your whole world.”

  “What’s your point?” Becky said, annoyed.

  “My point is that when you suffer a terrible loss, as you have, and you have attachment issues like we both do, it can mess with your head. When Meghan first got sick, it all came flooding back. Then she got better, but you couldn’t see it. You were still afraid something bad would happen to her, like it did to Sammy. You needed reassurances that nothing would happen to Meghan that you weren’t getting. But you knew just where to get those reassurances because Cora taught you how to play the doctors. And when you started doing that, you filled some empty place inside you, that place Sammy used to occupy, that space Meghan’s mystery illness took over.”

  “Fuck you and fuck your fucking two-bit psychoanalysis,” Becky snarled. “How dare you! You’re not here. You don’t know.”

  “Goddamn you!” Sabrina yelled. “I lived it, too! I lived it, too, and I didn’t run away from her. I stayed. I stayed because somebody had to look after our screwed-up mother.”

  “So that’s what this is really about, isn’t it?” Becky said curtly. “You’re angry that I left.”

  “No, I’m angry that you never left,” Sabrina said with venom.

  Becky’s throat tightened. “You … you have no business judging me like this. You never had children. You never got married. You never took those risks. You don’t know.”

  “No, you’re right, I didn’t do any of that.” Sabrina sounded wistful. “And I regret it, or a part of me does. A part of me is jealous of what you have, that you’ve been willing to open yourself up to hurt, to loss, to pain, when I haven’t been that brave. So it’s not about judging you, Becky. It’s about loving you. It’s about seeing you hurt, and suffer, and me wanting to help end that pain.”

  It was this rare display of her stoic sister’s vulnerability and honesty that forced Becky to lower her defenses.

  “What should I do?” Becky asked.

  “You need to take Meghan to White and turn yourself in,” Sabrina said.

  “But then I’ll lose her,” Becky replied. “Carl will fight for custody. And he’ll win. Who is going to advocate for her health then? She’s sick, Sabrina. You have to believe me. There’s something wrong with Meghan.”

  Sabrina fell silent. For a moment, Becky feared she’d ended the call.

  “Then you just answered your own question, didn’t you? Get her to the doctor,” Sabrina said.

  CHAPTER 47

&n
bsp; ZACH

  The four-door Toyota Camry was parked in the breakdown lane near the high-traffic entrance to Storrow Drive, directly across from the iconic Boston Sand & Gravel Company. The lights of Boston twinkled all around Zach like tiny stars cast down from the clear night sky. He checked the time. Ten o’clock. Becky should be arriving any moment now. But how would she get here? Was she coming by car? On foot? She did not say. Her only instructions to him had been where and when to meet.

  Zach had been at work, pulling a late night as usual, when he’d received Becky’s call. At first, he thought it was another prank. He’d received about a dozen of them since his widely publicized press conference. A few of those calls were obviously men, but a couple could have been Becky. Zach had prepared for that possibility. He asked any caller he could not easily rule out a simple question: What was Meghan most afraid of? He heard all variety of answers—spiders, heights, clowns—but only one person said needles.

  Becky.

  She had given him thirty minutes from the time of her call to get to the meeting spot. He understood why. She was being careful, not wanting to allow the police enough time to set up an ambush. Clever. She had also picked the highway breakdown lane because it would allow her a quick escape if she were to spot any police. But there’d be nothing to spook her. No helicopters hovering overhead. No police cars or undercover types in the vicinity. There was no reason for Becky not to show.