Sisterhood (3 page)

“In that case, you’ll need all the nourishment you can get.” He nodded at her untouched breakfast. “Want seconds on the eggs?”

Lauren glanced at her watch, stood up, and stretched as high as she could reach. “Just leave them there until I get back from Washington.” She walked halfway toward the bedroom before adding, “They can only improve with age.” She giggled and dashed down the corridor as David sprang up to give chase. She waited until he had nearly reached the bedroom door before pushing it closed and flipping the lock.

“You’ll live to regret this,” David called out through the door. “Someday I’m going to become a famous chef and marry the Countess of Lusitania. Then I’ll be lost to you forever.”

Twenty minutes later, Lauren emerged from the bedroom,
breathtaking in a burgundy suit and beige blouse. A silk scarf was draped loosely about her neck. “No caveman stuff, David,” she said, anticipating his hug and blocking it with an outstretched hand. “This outfit has to last me at least a day. Listen, I almost forgot. You might be able to help me out.”

“Only in exchange for caveman stuff.”

“David, this is serious.”

“Okay.” He motioned that he was ready to listen.

“Senator Cormier’s office announced that he’s entering your hospital in the next day or two for an operation. Gall bladder, I think.”

“You sure? Cormier seems more the White Memorial than the Boston Doctors type.”

Lauren nodded. “Could he be coming in as Huttner’s patient?”

“No chance. Huttner would never go away with that kind of prestige coming in on his service.”

“Do you think you could get in to see him? Or even better, get me in to see him? His campaign for a stiff windfall profits tax against the oil companies has made him really big stuff. An exclusive interview would be an ostrich-sized feather in my cap.”

“I’ll try, but I can’t guarantee any—”

“Thanks, you’re a dear.”

Lauren wished him luck with his new responsibilities, squeezed his hands, and kissed him lightly on the mouth. Then, with a final, “Be a good boy, now,” she walked out of the apartment and down the hall to the elevator.

For several minutes David stood silently by the door, breathing in her perfume, but feeling only a strange emptiness. “At least she could have tasted them,” he said as he began to clear the table. “In spite of what they looked like.”

*  *  *

The night watchman was fat. Fat and agonizingly slow From a recessed doorway, the nurse, a fragile-looking woman with hair the color of pale sun, watched and waited as he lumbered down the hallway. Now and again he stopped to poke at the door of a storage room or to check one of the bank of staff lockers lining the wall. B-2 West, the subbasement of the west wing of Boston Doctors Hospital, was, but for the two of them, deserted.

The nurse looked about at the grime, illuminated by bare ceiling light bulbs, and her skin began to itch. She was a petite woman, impeccably groomed, with makeup so meticulously applied it was almost invisible. Impatiently, she rubbed her thumbs across her fingertips. The watchman was taking forever. She glanced at her watch. Forty-five, maybe fifty minutes of safe time—more than enough, provided she could get moving and avoid any other unanticipated delays. A roach crawled over the tip of her shoe and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick. She forced herself to relax and waited.

Finally, the watchman was done. He keyed the security box, began whistling the “Colonel Bogey March,” and, after a few in-place steps, strutted off to his own accompaniment. To some the man might have looked silly, or jovial, or even cute. To the delicate woman observing him he was, quite simply, repulsive.

She waited an extra few seconds, moved quickly down the row of lockers to number 178, then dialed the combination printed on the card Dahlia had sent her. The thin, half-filled syringe was right where she had been told it would be. She briefly held it to the light, then dropped it into the front pocket of her spotless uniform. Another check of the time and she headed for the tunnel leading to the south wing. She rode the elevator to Two South, then slipped into the rear stairwell and hurried up two more flights. Ducking into
Room 438, she stopped, regaining her breath in soundless gulps. Through the gloom she could see John Chapman. The man was asleep, tucked in a fetal position, his face toward her. From beneath the sheet a catheter drained clear urine into a plastic collecting system.

Chapman’s recovery following kidney surgery had been uneventful. The woman smiled at the thought. Uneventful … until now.

She checked the corridor. A nurse’s aide—the first arrival of her day shift—had just stepped off the elevator. The fragile night peace was holding, but the nurse knew that within half an hour it would yield to the chaos of day. The time was now. Her pulse quickened. Anaphylactic shock! Almost fifteen years in hospital nursing and she had never even seen a full-blown case, let alone watched one from start to finish.

She moved to the bedside. There, on the nightstand, were the flowers. A glorious spray of lilies. Taped to the vase was the card.

“Best Wishes, Lily.” She whispered the words without actually reading them. There was no need. They were her words.

On the table next to the vase lay Chapman’s silver necklace and medic-alert tag. She illuminated the disc with her penlight. Again she smiled. It said:

DIABETIC
ALLERGIC TO PENICILLIN
ALLERGIC TO BEE STINGS

The small syringe in her hand held the bee venom concentrate used by allergists to desensitize their high-risk patients. Although practically speaking the dose was enormous, it was still minute enough to escape detection during a conventional autopsy.

John Chapman’s cocoa face was loose and relaxed. Even asleep he seemed to be smiling. The nurse pulled
over a straight-backed chair and sat. With one hand, she slipped the needle through the rubber stopper of his I.V. tubing. With the other, she gently shook him by the shoulder.

“Mr. Chapman, John, wake up,” she cooed. “It’s morning. ”

Chapman’s eyes eased open. “Little Angel? Zat you?” His voice was a rich bass. A boyhood in Jamaica twenty-five years before still tinged the edges of his words. He focused on her and smiled. “My, but you are somethin’ to gaze upon,” he said. “Is it really morning or are you just one of my dreams?”

“No dream,” she answered. “But I am a little early. My shift doesn’t start for another half hour or so.” She depressed the plunger, emptying the venom into the intravenous line. “I came in early just to see you.”

“What?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she watched intently as a quizzical expression crossed Chapman’s face, which quickly gave way to apprehension.

“I … I feel funny, Angel,” he said. “Real funny.” Panic crept into his voice. “I’m starting to tingle all over.… Angela, somethin’s happening to me. Some-thin’ awful. I feel like I am going to die.”

The woman looked at him blandly. You are, she thought. You are. At that instant the full force of the anaphylactic reaction hit. The lining of John Chapman’s nose and throat swelled nearly shut. The muscles surrounding his bronchial tubes went into spasm. The nurse spun around to be certain the room door was closed. The reaction was more rapid, more spectacular than she had ever imagined it would be. In fact, she decided, it was more spectacular than anything she had ever witnessed.

“An … gel … please.…” Chapman’s words were barely audible. His eyes had swollen shut.

Instinctively, she checked for a pulse, but she knew
that vascular collapse had already occurred. A second later, the last sliver of air space in Chapman’s respiratory passage closed. He rolled to his back and was still.

The nurse with pale sun hair held her breath during the final moments, then exhaled. Her faultless fece glowed with a beatific smile, acknowledging that once again she had done her job well.

The Seth Thomas wall clock in his living room showed seven thirty when David finished stacking the dishes in the sink and changed into a navy blue sweat suit. He made a deliberate study of his small record collection before selecting Copeland’s
Rodeo
and then began a series of slow-motion stretching exercises and calisthenics.

The Copeland was a perfect choice, he thought as he dragged a set of weights out from behind the couch. For ten minutes he lifted in various positions and angles, pushing himself harder than usual until the tension of Lauren’s unemotional departure left him.

The weights had come to be as much mental as physical therapy—a morning ritual for almost five years, begun the day David had decided to return to surgery by repeating the last two grueling years of residency. That same day he smoked his last cigarette and ran his first mile. Within a few months he had more than regained the stamina lost during three years away from the operating room.

Glistening from the workout, he grabbed his stopwatch and keys, stuffing them into the pocket of his sweatpants as he stepped out the door.

He bypassed the narrow, rickety elevator in favor of the stairs at the end of the hall. Trotting down four flights and across the dimly lit foyer of the building, he pushed through the front doors and out onto Commonwealth Avenue.

The sunlight hit his eyes like a flashbulb. It was one of those days New Englanders boast about when they
tell outsiders that there is nowhere else on earth to live. One of those days that renders February little more than a distant memory, and helps them forget the muddy drizzle of April and the oppressive, steamy heat of mid-August, at least for a while.

Stiffly at first, but with rapidly developing fluidness, he jogged the few blocks toward the esplanade. Elms and oaks flashed by, heavy now with reds and oranges and golds. The air, unwilling this day to succumb to commuters’ exhaust fumes, tasted like mountain water.

David crossed over Storrow Drive and picked up his pace as he turned onto the tarmac path paralleling the river. For a time he ran with his eyes nearly closed, breathing in the day and taking increasing delight in the responsiveness of each muscle in his body.

He watched a lone oarsman sculling the Charles like some giant water bug. Even at such an early hour there were people scattered along the grassy bank reading, sketching, or just soaking in the morning. Cyclists glided silently past him in both directions. Dogs tugged their masters along. Intense-faced students, wearing their books on their backs like hair shirts, shuffled reluctantly toward classrooms where sterile fluorescence would replace the autumn sun.

David checked his stopwatch and glanced around him. Under six minutes to the bridge. He had won his first bet of the run. Sooner or later a Rolls Royce and an A-frame in the Berkshires would be his. Wiping sweat from around his eyes, he picked up his tempo a bit.

To his right a barefoot girl wearing jeans and a bright red T-shirt sent a Frisbee spinning toward her boyfriend. “Two Twinkies and a Big Mac says he catches it,” David panted just before the disc spun sharply toward the river, hit the ground, and rolled down the bank. “Thank goodness,” he laughed out loud.

At the three-mile mark he turned and headed back.
“Everything is getting better,” he said out loud, matching each syllable to the slap of his Nikes on the pavement. “Better and better and better.”

Christ, it felt good to be alive again.

C
hristine Beall eased her light blue Mustang past the guard at Parking Lot C, forcing a thin smile in response to his wave. She cruised past several empty spaces without noticing them, then spotted one in the corner farthest from the gate and pulled in. Stepping onto the gravel, she adjusted her carefully tailored nurse’s uniform and squinted up at the afternoon sun, but quickly gave up trying to absorb any of the magic of the brilliant autumn day. Her preoccupation with other thoughts, other issues, made it impossible.

Lot C was one of three satellite parking areas appropriated by Doctors Hospital to meet the needs of an ever-expanding staff. Christine started toward the minibus stop, then decided she needed the time and the three blocks’ walk as a bridge between her outside world and the hospital. Up ahead, two other evening shift nurses waved her to join them, but after a few quick steps, she stopped and motioned them to go on. Pausing by the window of a secondhand furniture store, she studied her image in the dusty glass.

You look tired, she thought. Tired and worried and scared.

She was not a tall woman, barely five foot four. Her sandy hair was tied back in a ponytail that she would pin up beneath her nurse’s cap before starting work. Scattered freckles, still darkened by the summer sun, dotted the tops of both cheeks and the bridge of her nose.

“What are you going to do, kid?” she asked her reflection softly. “Are you really ready to start this whole thing in motion? Peg-whoever-she-is may be ready. Charlotte Thomas may be ready. But are you?” She pressed her lips together and stared at the sidewalk. Finally, with an indecisive shrug, she turned and headed down the block.

Boston Doctors Hospital was a massive glass and brick hydra with three tentacles probing north and west into Roxbury and another three south and east toward the downtown area. Over the one hundred and five years of its existence several wings had grown, decayed, and died, only to be replaced by larger and higher ones. Ongoing construction was as much a part of its being as the white uniforms scurrying in and out of its maw.

Never able to snare a benefactor generous enough to endow an entire building, the hospital’s trustees had adopted the unimaginative policy of identifying the tentacles by the direction of their thrust. The sliding doors through which Christine entered the main lobby were located between Southeast and South.

She glanced at the large gold clock set in a marble slab above the information desk. Two thirty. It would be another twenty or twenty-five minutes before the day shift on Four South would sign out to her three-to-eleven group.

Christine leaned against a stone column and surveyed the activity around her. Patients and visitors filled every available seat, while dozens more crowded around the information desk or weaved their way across from one
wing to another. Scattered wheelchairs punctuated rows of molded plastic chairs. The scene, one she had viewed hundreds of times over the past five years, still filled her with fascination and awe. There were days, certain special days, when she actually felt a physical merging of her body with the fiber of the hospital. Days when she felt its pulse as surely as if it were her own. Slowly, she crossed the lobby and joined the flow heading down the main artery of the South wing.