Costars (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (36 page)

“Why? Do you know one of the owners or
something?”

“No, I just wouldn’t worry about it. We’re
already in, so we may as well have some fun before we get thrown out or
arrested.”

This isn’t exactly the kind of thing I had
in mind when I was looking forward to a spontaneous night.

“Come on, you pansy,” she says.

I have no clue where she’s leading me, and
I’m even more uncertain exactly how nobody’s come to dive tackle us, stun gun
in hand, but I follow right along with Grace.

She’s moving slower than she was when we
got out of the car, but that’s to be expected. Tomorrow’s her last day of chemo
for the month. The fact that she’s out and moving around, much less breaking
into an amusement park, it’s actually kind of inspiring — you know, if you
squint.

“I’ve never been here,” I tell her. “I
don’t know where everything is.”

“You’ve never been here?”

“Nope,” I answer.

“Then you, my good trollop, have never
lived.”

“When we’re not together, do you just sit
around with a thesaurus and look for alternate words for prostitute or what?” I
ask.

“No,” she answers, “I was in a band back
in college.”

What that has to do with anything is
beyond me.

It’s already dark enough outside that it’s
taken me this long to realize why we haven’t been confronted by security: the
amusement park isn’t just closed for the night. It’s been closed down for a
long time.

Everywhere are bits and pieces of old
carnival rides, many of them rusted into near oblivion, although here and there
are almost completely assembled rides, though I seriously doubt I’d even get
near one, much less on one.

“There’s the tilt a whirl,” she says. “I
was fucking with you earlier about trying to figure out how to turn the thing
on — that ship sailed a while ago. Still, I bet we can get a pretty good view
of the sky in that one with the open end facing the hill.”

She leads the way as if she’s been here a
thousand times before, and I can’t be certain that she hasn’t.

“It looks pretty rickety,” I tell her.

“Don’t worry, doc. I’ve had my tetanus
shot.”

As I’m walking up the creaking metal
stairs, I mutter, “I’m more worried about the thing collapsing on us.”

Even with my trepidation, it doesn’t seem
like we’d be in too much trouble even if the ride were to fall apart with us on
it, so I follow her into one of the cars.

The metal is cold as we sit down, but she
was right about one thing: the view is pretty idyllic.

“Isn’t it funny how even a slight change
of perception can make everything look so different?” I ask.

“Pretty cool, huh?” she returns.

We sit for a while, looking up at the sky.

There aren’t too many lights around here,
so the stars are out in force. I’m trying to find constellations to point out
to her, but it occurs to me that I only know how to find the big and little
dippers.

It’s cold, especially on this metal seat,
so I put my arm around her shoulders as she huddles closer to me.

“You know,” I say, “while you were in that
building, I got a text message.”

“What’d it say?” she asks, huddling up
next to me for warmth.

“It was from Melissa’s boss,” I tell her.
“I think it’s safe to say that whatever’s been going on between the two of them
has been going on for a while now, and I really don’t think there’s any reason
to believe it’s going to be over any time soon.”

“Fuck her, anyway,” Grace says, shivering
next to me. “You don’t need someone who’s going to treat you that way.”

“I think I’m starting to realize that.”

Grace looks up at me and smiles. “Come
on,” she says. “There’s something that I really want to show you.”

She gets out of the car and starts walking
back down the stairs. It takes me a little longer to get out of the car than it
took her, but soon enough, I catch up to her.

“I can’t believe you’ve never been here,”
Grace says, walking about half a step ahead of me. “Back in college, I used to
get drunk out here with some frat guys.”

“Were you in a sorority?”

“No, I was too young. Apparently, they
don’t like to let anyone in unless they’re old enough to go for a beer run.
Besides, sorority chicks are bitches.”

“Is it weird that I’ve only ever heard
that from women who never made it into a sorority?” I ask.

“Not particularly,” she answers and stops
walking. Grace turns to look at me and, grabbing my hand, she tells me, “We’re
almost there.”

I walk with her or, rather, I walk as she
pulls me behind her, her grip surprisingly strong for how little strength she
must have right now.

“There,” she says, pointing into the
darkness.

It takes a minute for me to spot it, but
there looming ahead of us is an old Ferris wheel, its dark metal blending in
with the night sky.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asks.

The words I’m thinking at the moment are
more along the lines of “unsafe” or “terrifying,” but Grace’s almost innocent
look of awe and excitement is enough for me to bite my tongue.

“It really is,” I tell her. “How did you
know this place was still here, anyway?”

“People never move a graveyard unless they
absolutely have to, and this one’s still collecting bodies. Come on,” she says
and starts walking toward the Ferris wheel.

“Where are we going? I seriously doubt
that thing’s still got power running to it.”

“Oh, there’s no way. That’s why we’re
going to climb.”

Even if I weren’t a doctor, I’d still know
this is a bad idea.

“I really don’t think we should,” I tell
her.

“And why’s that?” she asks, continuing to
walk toward the base of the old ride. “It’s there and we’re here. What’s the
problem?”

“For one thing,” I start as I catch up
with Grace, “that thing’s falling apart. For another thing, it’s dark. Even if
the whole structure doesn’t come toppling down, we’re going to have a hell of a
time getting onto any of the cars without falling. For another-”

“I’m sure you have a long list of reasons
not to,” she interrupts, “but have you ever stopped to consider the reasons
that you should?”

“Like what?” I ask, stepping between her
and the rungs of the built-in ladder.

“It’s frightening,” she says. “Isn’t that
reason enough?”

“Jumping out of an airplane without a
parachute would be frightening,” I tell her, “but that doesn’t mean that you
should do it.”

“That’s completely different. This is the
one thing that I never did when I was tooling around here with the guys. If it
can hold half a dozen football and lacrosse players spread throughout the top
three or four cars, I know for a fact it can hold the two of us. Now come on,
get out of my way.”

“Grace,” I say, putting my back against
the metal rungs, “you’re not ready for this.”

“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m great at
climbing shit.”

“I believe you,” I tell her, “but you’re
not there right now. You can’t do this.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you needed my help getting over
the fence,” I answer.

I feel like an asshole saying it, but it
needed to be said. Idealism or not, people have physical boundaries and a person
on chemo, even the kind of dose and frequency Grace is on, tend to reach those
boundaries a lot faster than the rest of us.

She’s not saying anything, and she’s not
making a play to get around me. With that sentence, however honest, however
necessary, I feel like I’ve done what the diagnosis and the treatment hadn’t
been able to do: I’ve put a crack in her spirit.

“I’m sorry, Grace,” I tell her. “Let’s get
you through this round of chemo, and when you’ve got some more of your strength
back, I’ll come back here with you and we’ll climb up there together. What do
you say?”

She’s still not saying anything and it’s
killing me.

I’ve had to tell patients a lot of
difficult things in the short time I’ve been an oncologist, but I never would
have expected that something so bizarre and clearly beyond her present
capability would feel just as bad as any prognosis I’ve uttered.

“
It’s
fine,” she
says in a tiny voice. “I was just kidding.”

“Yeah?” I ask, doing my best to hide the
fact that I can see, hear, and feel her deepening realization that’s she’s just
that sick.

“Yeah,” she says. “I mean what kind of
freak breaks into and old scrap yard of amusement park rides to climb to the
top of the Ferris wheel? Of course, I’m joking.”

“I meant what I said,” I tell her. “In a
couple of weeks, before your next round, I’ll come back here with you and we’ll
make it to that top car together, okay?”

“You’re not listening to me,” she says
coldly. “I told you that I was making a joke. I’m obviously too weak to do that
now, and even if I wasn’t, it would be a monumentally stupid idea, anyway. Can
we just go?”

“There’s other stuff we can find,” I tell
her. “We just got here.”

“It’s getting late,” she says. “I’m
getting tired. That chemo just drags it out of you, doesn’t it?”

“Okay,” I tell her, “I’ll take you home,
then.”

I did the right thing, and I know that.
Even
she
knows that, but it doesn’t
change the fact that what’s going on in her body just became a whole lot more
real than it ever was before.

As a doctor, this is an important thing,
though rarely a pleasant experience for anyone involved. False hope only leads
to a harder crash, and as tempting as it can be to let a person think they’re
doing better than they are or that their treatment isn’t taking as much out of
them as they’d like to believe, the right thing to do is be straightforward and
take the hit sooner.

It’s better in the long run.

But it’s in this moment that I realize
that I’ve been doing the same thing that Grace wanted to do in climbing to the
top of that Ferris wheel. I’ve been pretending that it’s still okay that I’m
her doctor — that the friendship we’re developing or whatever else it may turn
into down the road isn’t going to affect my judgment when it comes to her
treatment.

Today, I received a group email from the
dean of medicine at the hospital regarding a new clinical trial and I already
know that I’m going to sign her up for it. That wouldn’t be a big deal if it
weren’t for the fact that the trial is specifically for
oligodendroglioma
patients who have lived with the diagnosis or are otherwise known to have had
the condition for at least five years, for whom chemo and radiation have had
little to no impact.

I told myself I’d just be taking my first
step back toward being true to myself, doing what I know to be right regardless
of how it looks to others. Now, though, it’s starting to set in that my growing
affection for Grace, this patient of mine, has just put me in a position to
lose my job, possibly my license to practice medicine.

Administrators don’t look too kindly on
falsifying medical records to get a patient into a trial and that’s what I’m
going to have to do to make it happen.

Still, though, as I catch up to her,
trying to cheer her up, I know the damage is already done. I can’t stand to see
that look on her face again, and I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure I
don’t have to.

“Grace,” I start, “there’s something I
need to tell you.”

Chapter
Nine

Under the Radar

Grace

It’s been a week since Jace told me about
the clinical trial.

At first, I was just thrilled that there
might be something that could change the course of the rest of my life, but
once he let slip what he would have to do to get me in, I tried to back out of
it.

I know what kind of a risk he’s taking in
doing what he’s doing, but he had a point when he told me that while chemo may
extend my life, though there are no guarantees on even that; without some other
intervening factor, chances are I’ve already lived more than half my life.

That’s a hell of a motivator.

He’s coming over tonight and we’re going
to go over the kinds of things I’m going to have to know when I give “my
history” to the doctors running the trial.

Right now, Yuri’s here, keeping me
company.

We’ve gotten pretty close over the last
while, and it’s nice to have someone who’s not an employee to share my thoughts
and feelings with. It helps that she’s almost as crazy as I am.

“So, are you going to go through with it?”
she asks.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “I think I have to. I
know it’s a risk for the doc, but with my life actually hanging in the
balance-”

“It’s not the risk to him that I’m worried
about,” Yuri says. “Okay, he’s my boss and if he loses his license, I lose my
job. And, of course, I actually respect him and I would hate to see something
bad happen to him, but Grace, I’ve seen countless patients who’ve gone through
clinical trials. Sometimes they come out the other side better off for their
inclusion, but a lot of times it goes the other way.”

“Well, if it weren’t safe, they wouldn’t
test it on people, would they?”

“They wouldn’t knowingly test a drug they
knew to be more harmful than helpful,” she answers. “At least, that’s what I
like to think, but you’ve got to understand that you’re in one of the very
first test groups for this drug. There’s a lot they don’t know about it.”

“It’s worth a shot, though,” I tell her.
“If anything goes the wrong way, they’ll take me off of it, right?”

“Yeah, but a lot of times, they don’t know
that something’s going the wrong way until it’s already past the point of no
return. You could lose years of your life or you could develop new symptoms,
symptoms that may or may not respond to treatment. I just want to make sure
you’re going into this with all of the facts.”

“Hey, on the bright side, they might put
me on the placebo,” I laugh, trying to cover my trepidation.

“That’s true,” she says, “but in that
case, you’re going to be risking Dr. Churchill’s job, reputation, and license
over something that’s not actually going to help you.”

“So you don’t think I should do it?”

“I’m not saying that,” she says. “I’m just
saying that I want you to be prepared that this might not go the way you’re
hoping it will, the way Dr. Churchill and I are hoping it will.”

There’s a knock on the door, and I get up
to answer it.

“He’s probably going to tell you a lot of
what I’ve been telling you,” Yuri says, “but I can’t be sure of that.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell me?” I ask.

“I know he’s got a soft spot when it comes
to you. He likes you, and I wanted to make absolutely certain that somebody
told you the things you need to know before you make a firm commitment to
this.”

“Are you staying? He knows we’re friends,
it’s all right.”

“I’ll say hi,” she says, “but I think I
should leave the two of you to go over the details — plausible deniability and
all that.”

“Okay,” I tell her. “I’ll call you later
and let you know how it goes.”

She nods and gets to the door. Answering
it, she says, “She’s inside. Don’t sugarcoat this.”

“I won’t,” Jace answers. “I’ll see you
tomorrow, Yuri.”

The door closes and I’m sitting down again
when he comes into the room.

“She knows that she can’t be seen to have
had any part of this, right?” I ask him.

“Of course,” he says. “The last thing I’d
want to do would be to put her at risk with what we’re doing.”

“So tell me,” I start, “what kind of
results have other trials of this drug had?”

“There’s not a lot of data yet,” he says.
“An earlier form of the drug was recalled before trials were over because it
was shown to actually cause patients with grade two
oligodendroglioma
to progress to grade three.”

“I’m guessing that’s the wrong direction?”
I ask, knowing very well what grade three means. It means that my chance of
being alive in five years would be cut in half.

“Yeah,” he says. “They did another trial
of this version of the drug, and it’s shown some improvement in over sixty
percent of patients, thirty percent over placebo.”

“That’s so weird,” I muse.

“What’s that?”

“That thirty percent of people get better
when they’re told they’re getting something that would make them better,” I
tell him. “Maybe you should start handing out sugar pills along with your other
treatments.”

“The problem with the placebo effect,” he
explains, “is that it usually doesn’t last for any significant period of time.
After a while, patients stop making the improvements and they return to where
they were before they were on placebo in the first place.”

“Still,” I tell him, “that’s got to buy
some time at least, right?”

“Grace, there are some things I need you
to know when it comes to trials like this one,” he starts.

“Yuri filled me in.”

“What’d she say?”

“That these drugs are experimental, that
there’s no guarantee that they’re going to help or even that I’m going to be on
the real drug. She told me that sometimes the drug actually makes things worse
and could end up costing me a lot of the time I have left,” I answer.

“Yeah,” he says, “that’s all true. Another
thing I need to tell you is that at the end of the trial, even if you are
improving, assuming that you
are
on
the real drug, they’re more than likely going to take you off of it. The best
we can hope for here is that the drug makes an improvement in your condition
significant enough that it’s more likely to be eradicated or suppressed longer
by your other treatment.”

“Am I still going to be on chemo?”

“No,” he says. “You’ve had your last chemo
treatment for a while.”

“But I
will
go back to it no matter what?”

“I think that’s the most realistic
scenario,” he tells me. “Chances of complete remission, even if this drug does
exactly what it’s supposed to, are very slim. I just wanted you to know that
before we go any further with this.”

“Are you scared?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re putting a lot on the line getting
me into this trial,” I tell him. “Yeah, I’m the one having an experimental drug
put in my body, but I’m not the only one who’s risking something here.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I haven’t really
thought about that part of it that much.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” I chortle. “You
know that?”

“Actually I do,” he answers. “Now, I’ve
called in a favor from one of my old professors — he’s still a practicing
oncologist. I told him the situation and, after a great deal of convincing and
assuring him that I’d owe
him
a few
favors in return, he agreed to act as the diagnosing doctor in your case.”

“How’s that going to work?” I ask. “Are
you just going to copy my newer scans and say they’re my older scans?”

“That’s part of it,” Jace says, “but we’re
going to have to give you five years’ worth of scans and that in itself has
risks.”

“What?” I ask, “Are you saying I might get
radiation poisoning or something?”

“No,” he answers. “MRIs don’t use ionizing
radiation. In fact, they’re safe enough. We will do a CT scan, but only one.
The risk is that we get caught while we’re doing this. The biggest risk, at
this point anyway, is that I get caught altering the dates on your scans.”

“How do you do that, anyway?”

“It’s simple enough,” he answers, “but the
problem is that the hospital archives hold the records for all scans. The date
on the film itself may be changed, but the file itself, at least in the
hospital’s database will show the date and time the scans were actually made.”

“So we’re fucked right out of the gate,” I
sigh.

“Not necessarily,” he answers. “Without
any reason for someone to go looking through your scans, they’re never going to
see the discrepancy. That’s why we’ve got to do everything by the book, even
while we’re not.”

“You kind of contradicted yourself there,
chief.”

“What I’m saying,” he explains, “is that
we’re going to have to make sure you’re scheduled for your scans and that
there’s some reason why you’re in there long enough to get everything we need.
I’ve already come up with something that should fit the bill, though.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to give you a sample of
hydroxyzine,” he says. “It’s an anti-anxiety medication. One of the
side-effects is restless leg syndrome. We’re going to want to do a blood draw
with it in your system just to be on the safe side, but we’ll do that before
your scans so we can make sure that it’s under control before you actually go
in, as we do want to get clear scans and that’s never going to happen if your
lower body’s jerking the whole time.”

“So you’re going to put me on a drug that
I don’t need so that we have a cause for a side-effect that I’m not actually
going to develop because you’re going to give me something else to counteract
it before we take the scans that we’re going to use to provide a history to
fraudulently get me into the trial?” I ask.

“I know, it sounds overboard, but we’re-”
he starts.

“Oh no,” I interrupt, “I’m fine with it.
I’m just making sure I’m clear on what we’re doing.”

“Yeah,” he says, “that’s right.”

“Cool,” I smile. “What happens if you get
caught? Would you definitely lose your license?”

“I’m not sure if it’s definite or not,” he
says. “The penalty for this kind of thing can range from suspension, to being
unable to put forth any more candidates for clinical trials, to having my
salary docked, to, yes, losing my license to practice medicine.”

“In that case, I have just one more
question,” I tell him.

“What’s that?”

“Why are you doing this? You have a lot of
patients, and I know I’m a consistently arousing presence in the lives of many,
but is that really a good enough reason to risk everything?”

He smiles and asks, “You’re a strange
woman, you know that, Grace?”

“I like to think I’m just ahead of the
curve,” I answer. “Seriously, though. Why are you doing this?”

“Because I want to give you every
opportunity to get better,” he says. “Even if it’s a long shot, I want you to
have a chance to be around for a long time to come.”

“But like I said, you have a lot of other
patients. Have you done this for anyone else?”

“No,” he admits.

“Then why are you doing this now?” I ask.
“Why are you taking these risks for me?”

“Because I think the world is a more
interesting place with you in it,” he says. “Because so often in my job,
there’s simply nothing more I can do for a patient. Because,” he pauses,
looking away bashfully, “I like you.”

“I
am
pretty
fuckable
,” I tell him.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Oh, so I’m
not
fuckable
?”

I wonder if he’s noticed that I tend to be
at my most suggestive when I’m feeling nervous or vulnerable.

“When do we start?” I ask.

“Start what?” he returns.

With a laugh, I say, “The scans and
everything. I’m assuming I’m probably going to need to meet this doctor friend
of yours at some point, too?”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he says.
“I’ve got you scheduled for an MRI in the morning. I wouldn’t plan anything for
a couple of hours, though. We’re going to have to do it at least a dozen times
and, even going as fast as possible with it,” he says, “it’s still going to
take some time.”

“All right,” I tell him. “I think I’d be
all right doing it with you at least a dozen times, though I’m not sure we’re
going to want to ‘go as fast as possible with it.’ Some things take time and
care.”

He’s smiling, blushing, and I’m wondering
if he’s finally kicked that pin cushion to the curb.

“What ever happened with you and your pair
of fake tits?” I ask.

“You know she has a name,” he says.

“I’m sure she does,” I respond. “Are you
still her cuckold?”