Informed Consent (17 page)

“
M
ac
, we think you should go home.”

Sasha looked up at the sound of Naya’s voice. Naya stood just inside Sasha’s office door, her arms crossed and her legs planted, as if she were a bouncer just waiting for a fight. Beside her, Caroline was wringing her hands in a nervous gesture. And behind them, loomed her law partner, Will Volmer, whose forehead was so wrinkled with worry that he resembled the pug puppy his wife had gotten him for his birthday.

“You people look a mess,” she joked, hoping the words masked the unnatural tremble in her voice.

Ever since she’d left Doug Wynn’s hospital room, she’d been keyed up. She was shaky, distracted. Her stomach was tight, her throat dry. But her friends and coworkers looked to be at least as terrified as she was—possibly more so. She let her pen fall to her desk.

“I’m fine, really. I just want to finish up some correspondence and then I’ll go home for the night,” she reassured them.

“You should go home
now
, spend some time with Leo. Stop trying to be superwoman,” Will intoned.

“I appreciate the concern, but really, you guys, I want to tie up as many loose ends as I can now so I don’t have to worry about them tomorrow while he’s in surgery.” She flashed a smile that she suspected was wholly unconvincing.

Naya uncrossed her arms and walked over to Sasha’s desk. “Leave the loose ends. Please, go. We’ll handle anything that comes up. I promise.”

Sasha’s eyes filled with tears at the gentle note in her hard-nosed associate’s voice. She blinked them away.

“Yes, go home and hug those babies tight,” Caroline agreed.

In the distance, Sasha could hear the main telephone line ringing at the reception desk. No one moved to answer it. She looked from Will to Caroline to Naya. They looked back at her somberly. Finally, the phone stopped ringing.

She nodded. “Okay, I hear you. I’m going.”

Relief washed over each of their faces.

“Good,” Will said. “Susan and I will be praying for Leo and his father.” He patted her on the shoulder and turned to leave.

Sasha tried to thank him, but she couldn’t find her voice.

Caroline leaned in for a quick hug. “I will, too. Please call us when you can give an update tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure thing,” she managed.

Naya waited until Caroline walked away. “You know, I’m gonna stand here until you pack up your little bag and head off into the sunset, right?”

“I sort of figured.”

Naya put a hand on her hip in an exaggerated gesture. “So get cracking.”

Sasha laughed for the first time in hours and started gathering her belongings as instructed. “Do you think you’re up for handling the hearing on Thursday?”

“By myself?”

“By yourself.”

“Damn straight I am.” Naya’s enthusiasm rolled off her in waves.

Sasha nodded. “I figured you’d be excited to do it. You’ll have a lot of legwork to do tomorrow. I guess Dr. Kayser’s still out sick.”

“He is. I meant to tell you. I called his office this morning. Ruth has never heard him mention a Dr. Craybill, and she searched his contacts—nothing there. He did call in and leave a message for her that he was very sick and she should cancel all his appointments for the rest of the week.”

“Did she mention whether he said anything cryptic?” Sasha wondered.

“No. I asked. She said he left a voicemail. He sounded tired and strained, but there was no secret message or anything. What do you think’s going on?”

“I really can’t imagine. Maybe the university reached out to him and worked something out to get him to back off?”

“Then why not just tell us and let the TRO expire? He wouldn’t play us like that. Would he?” Naya asked.

“I wouldn’t think so, but the whole disappearing act makes no sense. So he has the flu. He’s not
dying
. He was so committed to protecting his patients, and now he can’t be bothered. There’s something really off about this.”

Dr. Kayser’s behavior rankled her. And it worried her. She wondered if she’d be able to figure out his reason for mentioning Craybill if she were better able to focus. Then she wondered if she might be obsessing over a misspoken word in an effort to distract herself from Connelly’s upcoming surgery.

Naya was watching her closely. “You okay?”

“Yeah. This informed consent case makes my brain hurt, that’s all.”

“Like I said, Mac. Go home.”

G
reta stared at the wall
. She’d tried. She’d managed to screw up her courage and had called the McCandless & Volmer law firm. She wasn’t exactly sure what she would have said if she’d been able to speak to either Sasha McCandless-Connelly or Naya Andrews, but she would have said
something
, given them some hint about the serious situation Dr. Kayser was in. But no one answered the phone. She’d counted to seventeen rings and then hung up, her palms damp, her heart galloping in her chest.

She was at once relieved that her last-ditch effort had failed and horrified at what it would mean for her and Dr. Kayser. Someone was going to die. And it wasn’t going to be Greta Allstrom.

V
alentina caught
Sasha’s arm as she flew through the kitchen on her way to the refrigerator. “Honey—”

“Hang on, Mom. I just need to get these bottles ready for you and Dad.”

“Sasha, stop. Forget about the milk for a minute, okay?”

Something in her mother’s voice made her comply. She froze where she stood and turned to face her mom. “What is it?”

“Don’t worry about the twins. If they wake up and need you, we’ll bring them to the hospital. You focus on your husband. He needs you now.” Valentina’s eyes were serious.

Her mother leaned in to give her a hug. Sasha found herself clinging to Valentina’s shoulders, inhaling the cloud of Happy perfume that hung around her like a curtain. “Okay, Mom. You’re right.”

Valentina pulled back in mock amazement. “Did you hear that, Pat? Sasha just said I was
right
about something.”

Sasha rewarded her with a shaky laugh. “I’m going to run upstairs and see if Connelly’s almost ready.”

“You should put your hair up,” her mother observed, sliding seamlessly from the unfamiliar role of emotional support back to the more familiar ground of constructive critic.

“Mom—”

“And use Nana’s hairpin.”

Even for Valentina, that was an oddly specific dictate.

“Pardon? You want me to wear the
kanzashi
? Do you know something I don’t? Am I going to have to fight my way out of a corner?”

Her mother had given her Nana’s antique geisha hairpin, which doubled as a weapon in a pinch. The pin was about six inches long, with a wicked point.

“Don’t be silly. I’m not suggesting you need it to protect yourself. Well, actually I guess I am.” Her mother’s voice grew wistful, and she twisted a tarnished gold ring around on her right thumb.

Sasha forgot about the hair ornament and stared at the ring. “Is that … Patrick’s class ring?” When had her mom started wearing her deceased oldest child’s school ring?

“Yes. I wear it when I need to feel Patrick’s spirit watching over me. And that’s why I’m suggesting you wear your grandmother’s hairpin. It has Nana Alexandrov’s essence in it. She’ll protect Leo.”

Sasha cocked her head and studied her mother’s face. She appeared to be completely serious.

Over Valentina’s shoulder, Sasha’s dad caught her eye. He gave her a long, meaningful look that clearly said ‘Don’t argue with her. Just do it.’ She recognized it well, having been on the receiving end approximately five hundred times between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.

“Good idea, Mom,” she said and turned to leave, only barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes just as teenaged Sasha would have.

She tiptoed up the stairs so as not to wake Finn and Fiona and eased open the door to the master bedroom. Connelly was fully dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring down at something in his hands—it was the framed black-and-white picture he’d taken of her holding the twins during their first hour of life.

Uh-oh.

She opened her jewelry armoire and pawed through its contents until she found the jeweled pin. Then she twisted her hair into a low knot and jabbed the
kanzashi
through it.

Connelly glanced up.

“Don’t ask,” she said, gesturing to her hairstyle.

She joined him on the bed and looked down at the picture in his hands.

After a moment she said, “It’s hard to believe they were ever that tiny, isn’t it?”

He nodded but didn’t speak.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said, knowing as she uttered the words that he would say he did.

“Yes, I do.”

She smiled sadly and eased the picture out of his hands, returning it to the bedside table. “I guess you do, because you wouldn’t be you otherwise. Are you ready?”

He stood and swept her into a tight embrace. They stood silently, the only sounds their beating hearts, their soft breathing, and the muted tick-tock of the clock on the dresser.

After an eternity, he pulled away and cleared his throat. “We should go.” He turned, swiped the photograph off the nightstand, and slipped it into his overnight bag.

S
asha wasn’t
sure how long she’d been sitting in the waiting room. Time slowed to a crawl, every minute suspended in amber like a prehistoric insect preserved for an eternity. The other anxious occupants of the room clustered in small groups, laughing too loudly, talking too much—frenetic energy designed to ward off troubling thoughts. It seemed as though all the other patients had teams of family members and friends hunkered down in the waiting room, cheering on their loved one. At least one had a literal team, with matching t-shirts that read “Hope for Hope.”

Connelly had her. And his father had no one. She knew she could have called one of her brothers or their wives to come sit with her. Or Hank. Or Daniel and Chris. Someone would have joined her. But she didn’t want to have to talk about the amazing gift Connelly was giving his father. Because that conversation inevitably would lead to a more general conversation about Connelly’s long-lost father. And that was a discussion she wanted to avoid.

So she sat off by herself and read a book she’d picked almost at random from the gift shop—or pretended to. After she read the same passage for the fourth time she admitted to herself that in her current state of mind the book was a prop, nothing more.

After three hours, her neck and back were stiff and tight. She considered taking a walk, checked the electronic status board, and saw that both Connelly and Wynn were in surgery. She decided not to leave out of some superstition that as long as she kept the waiting room vigil, they would both be safe.

She used the far corner of the room as a makeshift gym to do some stretches. Then she refilled her coffee and opened her book to a page at random.

Halfway through the fourth hour, her stomach began to growl so loudly that she feared the noise would disturb Team Hope. She rummaged through her bag and pulled out a package of almonds. She ate them one at a time while she stared down at the strings of words on the page. Once she’d eaten the entire bag, she pawed through her bag looking for a napkin or tissue to clean the salt from her fingers. Instead she found a small cream-colored envelope with a loopy cursive ‘S’ scrawled across the front.

A note from Connelly.

She opened it with shaking hands:

T
hat was the entire message
—one snippet of a passage from
Romeo and Juliet.
The passage that they’d read to one another during their wedding ceremony. But what did it mean in this context? She closed her eyes and focused and suddenly she knew. His gift to his father was an offering of love. And even if Duc Nguyen never returned it, it would come back to him as more love, infinite love. And, through him, to her and the twins. This was his goodbye, just in case the unimaginable happened. She watched as the letters began to blur and then swim before her eyes.

Then she rested her head on her knees and wept.

She could hear the din of conversation in the room diminish and knew if she raised her head and opened her eyes she’d see dozens of curious, uncertain eyes watching her awkwardly.

Pull it together,
she ordered herself. When she was able to look up, Naya and her old neighbor Maisy were standing over her, looking down with expressions of panic.

“Did somethin’ go wrong with the surgery, sugar?” Maisy asked, her syrupy Southern accent filled with fear.

Sasha shook her head and sniffled. “No. I guess I’m just a little emotional. I’m sorry.”

Naya’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Good gravy, Mac. Don’t apologize. Here. From Jake.”

Naya handed her a stainless steel travel mug filled with steaming hot coffee. Sasha inhaled. Steel City Nic, her favorite.

“Thanks,” she said with a wobbly grin.

“Wait, there’s more.” Naya reached into her large, leather purse and removed a wrap. “The girls working the counter made you a salmon BLT. Something about omega-3 and mood and, ah, hell, I wasn’t listening. They thought it would make you feel better. Looks like you could use a pick-me-up. Although I don’t know about fish as a treat.”

She took the sandwich and the fistful of napkins that Naya offered and balanced them on her lap.

“Where’d you run into Maisy?” Sasha asked. The surgery had been scheduled so quickly, she hadn’t had time to let all of their friends know. Had Maisy been in Oakland just by chance?

“I went down to the television station and got her,” Naya said. “It’s not healthy for you to sit here all by your lonesome all day. I have to prepare for the hearing or else I’d stay here myself. But, you know, if there’s one thing Maisy is, it’s a good conversationalist. I figured she can distract you with her single girl tales of dating disasters.”

“Well, that’s for sure,” Sasha agreed. She felt the ghost of a smile forming on her lips.

Maisy’s blue eyes danced with laughter. “I can hear y’all. Y’all know that, right?”

Sasha giggled. Naya snorted. And Maisy threw back her mass of big blonde curls and howled with laughter.

Once they’d caught their breath, Naya grew serious. “I do have to go, though, Mac. Athena Ray let me camp out in her office this morning and go through Dr. Kayser’s files. I need to get back to the office and organize my notes. I also strong-armed Athena into testifying. She won’t add much, but I’m sure as shooting not showing up without someone to put in the witness chair.”

Sasha nodded. “Good instincts.”

Naya grinned and then suddenly snapped her fingers. “Oh, this is weird. I’m pretty sure Dr. Kayser left his car at Golden Village. There’s one that looks just like his parked back by those cottages.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. What did Athena say about it?”

“I didn’t notice until I was on my way out, so I haven’t mentioned it to her.”

Sasha watched her walk away, wondering what Dr. Kayser was up to.

After a moment, Maisy cleared her throat. “Honey, if you aren’t going to eat that wrap, hand it over. I missed lunch today.”