Over the Edge (33 page)

"What if it jumps back out?"

"Ticks don't jump."

She eyed me.

"Come on, Lauren, before he crawls out of there."

She righted the glass. The tick slid to the bottom.

Lauren set it on the counter near the stove and backed away. She shuddered. "Where
was
it?"

I watched its legs move, feeling for bearings. "Must have been up under that lip of wood by the cabinets."

"All that time it didn't eat?"

A shiver ran through me. "Guess not."

Lauren's eyes met mine. "Does it have Lyme?"

Probably.

"It's the one Dane put in my backpack, isn't it?"

Lauren remembered Dane. All too well. How nice he'd been to her that afternoon when she'd done her homework outside his office. He bought her a Coke. And he patted her head. No doubt that's when he released the tiny tick in its nymph stage. Alicia found the tick on Lauren's scalp that same night. Brock pulled it out with tweezers. Lab tests confirmed it carried
Borrelia.
But, thank God, the tick had not been attached to Lauren long enough to transmit the spirochetes.

"Yup. Imagine so."

The old anxiety rattled inside me. Mentally I recited a psalm.
When I am afraid, I will trust in You. In God, whose word I praise . . .

We watched the tick move across the bottom of the glass.

"What're you going to do with it, Mom?"

I wanted to kill it. Smash it flat. "I think I'll put it in a little plastic bag and take it to Detective Maxwell."

Lauren pulled her head back. "What's
he
want with it?"

I shrugged. "Maybe nothing. But maybe just as a last bit of evidence, he'll have it tested to see what it carries."

Or maybe he'd do that out of mere curiosity. The case was officially closed. Even though Dane was dead, Jud had dug into his background, uncovering the what and who, trying to piece together the why. The police had to be sure he'd acted alone. Apparently Dane had married young, to a woman named Elyse. She'd been infected with Lyme and, like so many patients, wasn't diagnosed for years. She had a particularly hard case and, despite months of antibiotics, could not get well. Then her insurance ran out, her treatment stopped—and she died. Upon autopsy spirochetes were found in the tissue surrounding her heart.

Dane had years to swim in his bitterness—until he vowed to do something about it. Jud surmised that he'd planned his attack for years, purposely hiring on as a lab assistant to Brock. The two years he worked with his nemesis he apparently learned Brock's out-of-town schedule, and most likely cased our house to see the layout of windows and doors.

The thought of the man's painstaking cunning still brought me chills.

Lauren moved her lips around. Her eyes wouldn't leave the tick. "I want to tell Daddy we found it. Think he's at work yet?"

I glanced at the clock. After 8:00. "Yes."

Since Lauren had come back to live with me two months ago, she called her dad at least once a day. And every other weekend she stayed with Brock and Alicia. Brock and I only spoke when we had to, mostly regarding our daughter. Too much hurt hung between us.

Lauren hurried to pick up the phone.

A few hours later I drove Lauren to Katie's to spend the night. Katie's family had been gone on vacation, and the girls wanted as many sleepovers as they could have before school started. I'd only begun driving again in the past three weeks, so I took it slow. But I could do it. And I could think better. And talk without stuttering—well, most of the time.

The tick rode along with us in a plastic bag, tightly sealed.

The minute Katie opened her front door Lauren launched into her story about finding the tick. Now that the thing was safely ensconced in plastic, she made herself sound oh, so brave.

"I can't believe it showed up, just like that." Maria shook her head.

I gave her a look.
Chalk it up to one of the many crazy things that have happened to me.

The girls soon pounded down the hall to Katie's room. I settled at Maria's kitchen table as she made me a latte—decaf coffee, no sugar. My Lyme diet reigned supreme.

"So how are you?" Maria poured milk into a metal cup.

"Okay. I have my good days and bad days, as you know. But I'm fighting it."

"How much longer will you need treatment?"

I sighed. "Don't know. Months yet. Still, I'm one of the fortunate ones. At least I have a diagnosis and a doctor who knows how to treat me. And so far my insurance continues to cover the medication. That's far more than a lot of Lyme sufferers have."

She nodded.

We fell silent as Maria foamed the milk at the espresso machine.

She poured the coffee and milk together. "Did the divorce papers come?"

My gaze fell to the table. "Yeah."

She made a sound in her throat. "When?"

"Last week."

Maria set the drink before me. Handed me a napkin. "I'm so sorry, Jannie."

I managed a smile. "Well, not like I didn't know he was going to file."

Brock had promised not to fight me over details—perhaps due to his guilt over not believing me. Lauren and I would stay in the house. He'd provide me with child support, of course, and alimony until I was well enough to work.

As for Brock's work—and views on Lyme—nothing had changed. He remained in his position at Stanford School of Medicine. His research continued. And the committee he chaired had published its latest findings on Lyme. Findings that further narrowed the parameters of the disease, which meant diagnosis and treatment would be even harder for many patients to obtain. I knew firsthand that was indeed happening from talking to Lyme sufferers across the country. After Dane's death my news story had gone national.

I found myself speaking out on behalf of the Lyme community often these days.

I sipped the foam on my drink while Maria made a latte for herself. "So Lauren's staying until Sunday, right? And we'll get her back to you at church."

"That's the plan. Unless I take a sudden downturn and can't go."

It had happened before a number of times, but now I managed to make the service most Sundays. For all I'd survived, God surely deserved my praise. And the people at Maria's church—now
my
church—had been so kind to me. That first horrible month of treatment, when Lauren still lived with her dad, many had brought me dinners and driven me to the doctor—even before they knew me.

Maria shrugged. "Well, if that happens, no worries. We'll just drive Lauren back to you." She settled at the table with her latte. "Lauren looks good. I don't see that lost little girl look in her eyes so much."

"She's hanging in there. Getting used to her new life."

Used to her parents not living together, and shuttling back and forth between homes. She was also getting used to Alicia. For Lauren's sake, I was glad to see that. Still, my heart panged whenever she spoke of their shopping or going places together. Things I longed to do with my daughter—and couldn't.

One day. My health
would
return to me.

Maria and I talked for an hour, until I felt myself tiring. I needed to get home and rest. But I still had to stop by Jud Maxwell's office. He was expecting me.

I hugged Maria, kissed Lauren good-bye, and caned out to my car.

Twenty minutes later as I made my slow way into the police station to see Jud, the bagged tick sat in my purse. I could feel my body weakening. Any time I pushed myself to do too much, my symptoms flared.

In Jud's small office I held the plastic bag out to him with a small flourish. "Here it is."

"Look at that." Jud shot me a nonplused grin.

"Will you test it at the . . . L-Lyme lab?" Uh-oh, I was starting to stutter. A sign of my weariness.

He lifted a shoulder. "Maybe. We'll at least keep it with the case files. It's nice to know it's out of your house."

No kidding.

Jud motioned to the chair before his desk. "Please. Sit down. You look worn out."

It was kind of him to notice. But then, he would. Jud had become a friend to me and Lauren. He'd stopped by the house on a couple occasions to see how we were getting along. And his wife, Sarah, called occasionally to check up on me, even if that did put her in a bit of an awkward position. Neither she nor Jud approved of Brock's relationship with Alicia. But Sarah did still work for Brock.

"Thanks." I settled into the chair.

Jud held up a finger. "I have something for you." He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a manila file. "These are extra copies for you to keep. All the stuff I uncovered about Dane Melford."

I eyed the folder, not sure how much I wanted to know. "Anything n-new?"

Jud rested his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers. "A few pieces that might help clarify why he did what he did. For one thing, he was bipolar and on meds. He'd been diagnosed as a teenager. If he went off his meds, that could have added to his instability. I also managed to track down some of his old friends from school. They told me Dane had a self-righteous, obsessive streak even then. Seemed to just be in his make-up."

Hardly an excuse for what he'd done to me. "He sure m-managed to seem normal when he worked with Brock."

Jud gave me a grim smile. "He sure did."

Fatigue weighed my chest. I really needed to get home. "Jud, thank you. I need to g-go now." With effort I pushed to my feet.

He nodded. "I'll walk you to your car." Jud picked up the file and ushered me out.

When I reached home it was nearly one o'clock. The house felt so still and empty. Brock gone, Lauren gone. But I was not alone.

Too tired to eat, I headed straight for the couch and collapsed upon it. After a few hours' rest I'd be ready to get up again. And with God's help I'd tackle the rest of the day.

As my eyes closed, my two favorite verses from Psalm 94 rose in my mind:
"If I should say, 'My foot has slipped,' Your lovingkindness, O LORD, will hold me up. When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, your consolations delight my soul."

Such comforting words. Again and again they had proved true.

I mouthed them silently until I fell asleep.

A Note from Brandilyn Collins

I HAVEN'T JUST STUDIED LYME. I'VE LIVED IT.

Remember Jannie McNeil's fall in her kitchen, and her inability to get up? That's straight out of my own life. When Lyme hit me, it came fast and hard. Until that day I had been a healthy, fit, five-miles-a-day runner. Fortunately I had a friend who recognized the symptoms and insisted I go for testing. From there I linked up with a Lyme-literate doctor. Most fortunate of all, God chose to miraculously heal me from the disease months later. But not before I'd lived the nightmare of Lyme. Six years later in 2009 I was reinfected with the disease and managed to conquer it after six months of antibiotic treatment.

I remember slumping in the waiting room of my doctor in 2003, so sick I could not remain sitting in the chair. (They had to move me to the doctor's personal padded armchair with footrest in a private office.) Hanging on the waiting-room wall was a framed newspaper article summarizing the 2001 findings written in
The New England Journal of Medicine.
(While Brock McNeil's part in writing those findings is fictional, they are very real.) The newspaper article explained how researchers had once again proved that Lyme was never chronic and was, in fact, very easy to treat with a short-term round of antibiotics. People claiming months or years of crippling symptoms from the disease were just
wrong.

What those know-it-alls need,
I thought with an admittedly un-Christian attitude,
is a real good case of Lyme.

And so the idea for this novel was born. It would take another seven years before I was ready to write it.

In
Over the Edge
the background information about Lyme disease and the Lyme wars is straight out of my research. To this day many Lyme patients have to fight for diagnosis and treatment. But beyond that, this book is a work of fiction. The characters are in no way real. Brock McNeil does not represent any one doctor. Rather, he arose from my own imagination as a combination of researchers who still deny the existence of chronic Lyme as an active infection. In placing him at the Stanford School of Medicine I'm casting no aspersions on that respected institution. It simply provided a setting for my story. One other fictional point to note: In
Over the Edge
Jannie's test results from the Lyme lab were available within about six hours. I wrote it that way to keep my story moving. In reality, results could not be ready that quickly.

Now, fiction aside, let's talk about the realities of Lyme.

The Lyme wars go back a number of decades. It's a complex war with complex arguments, but simplified it comes down to these two sides: Lyme-literate doctors—working in the trenches with very sick patients—who believe long-term antibiotic treatment is effective, vs. doctors aligned with such powerful entities as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), who deny the existence of chronic Lyme as an active infection. This latter group of doctors instead insist that long-term patients suffer from a post-Lyme treatment syndrome—some form of autoimmune disease as yet unknown and undefined. This "syndrome" should only be treated symptomatically, they say, and not with antibiotics.

As
Over the Edge
depicts, the Lyme wars arise from these four factors, which form a vicious circle:

First,
Ineffective testing.
The CDC criteria for administering and interpreting tests have been controversial since they were approved in 1994. First the CDC insists on a two-tier form of testing, starting with the ELISA test, then proceeding to the Western blot
only when the ELISA is positive.
Unfortunately all too often a negative ELISA is a false negative because of the test's poor sensitivity. (Although the CDC insists the test is sensitive.) So many patients are lost right there.

Those who do test positive move on to the Western blot, which looks for antibodies to
Borrelia burgdorferi
in the blood that reveal themselves in the form of stripes or "bands." Each band refers to a certain type of antibody and is indicated on the test results by a given number. Even when the test for Lyme was first developed many doctors protested the inclusion and exclusion of certain bands. One of the biggest arguments was over band 31—an antibody to a protein on
Borrelia's
outer surface called OspA that is exclusive to Lyme. Yet this band was not included as a positive indicator on the test, while other bands that were less important were included. In order to test positive for Lyme, a patient must see a certain number of the included bands indicate positive. Many patients fall short of that required number of positive bands, often due to the fact that Lyme-specific bands that should have been included as significant were not. Overall, as a result of these controversial criteria, patients can see "negative" false results as much as thirty to forty percent of the time.