Terminal (6 page)

“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain,” Anne said.

“Mom, you’ve been watching too much television. Miami is like any city, with both good and bad elements. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll be doing research. I won’t have time to get into trouble even if I wanted to.”

“You’ll meet the wrong kind of people,” Anne said.

“Mom, I’m an adult,” Sean said in frustration.

“You are still hanging out with the wrong people here in Charlestown,” Brian said. “Mom’s fears are not unreasonable. The whole neighborhood knows Jimmy O’Connor and Brady Flanagan are still breaking and entering.”

“And sending the money to the IRA,” Sean said.

“They are not political activists,” Brian said. “They are hoodlums. And you choose to remain friends.”

“I have a few beers with them on Friday nights,” Sean said.

“Precisely,” Brian said. “Like our father, the pub is your home away from home. And apart from Mom’s concerns, this isn’t a good time for you to be away. The Franklin Bank will be coming up with the rest of the financing for Oncogen. I’ve got the papers almost ready. Things could move quickly.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, there are fax machines and overnight delivery,” Sean said, scraping his chair back from the table. He stood up and carried his plate over to the sink. “I’m going to Miami no matter what anybody says. I believe the Forbes Cancer Center has hit on something extraordinarily important. And now if you two co-conspirators will allow me, I’m going out to drink with my delinquent friends.”

Feeling irritable, Sean struggled into the old pea coat that his father had gotten back when the Charlestown Navy Yard was still functioning. Pulling a wool watch cap over his ears, he ran downstairs to the street and set out into the freezing rain. The wind had shifted to the east and he could smell the salt sea air. As he neared Old Scully’s Bar on Bunker Hill Street, the warm incandescent glow from the misted windows emanated a familiar sense of comfort and security.

Pushing open the door he allowed himself to be enveloped by the dimly lit, noisy environment. It was not a classy place. The pine wood paneling was almost black with cigarette smoke. The furniture was scraped and scarred. The only bright spot was the brass footrail kept polished by innumerable shoes rubbing across its surface. In the far corner a TV was bolted to the ceiling and tuned to a Bruins hockey game.

The only woman in the crowded room was Molly, who shared bartending duties with Pete. Before Sean could even say anything a brimming mug of ale slid along the bar toward him. A hand grasped his shoulder as a cheer spread through the crowd. The Bruins had scored a goal.

Sean sighed contentedly. It was as if he were at home. He had the same comfortable feeling he’d get whenever he was
particularly exhausted and settled into a soft bed.

As usual, Jimmy and Brady drifted over and began to brag about a little job they’d done in Marblehead the previous weekend. That led to humorous recollections of when Sean had been “one of the guys.”

“We always knew you were smart the way you could figure out alarms,” Brady said. “But we never guessed you’d go to Harvard. How could you stand all those jerks.”

It was a statement, not a question, and Sean let it pass, but the comment made him realize how much he’d changed. He still enjoyed Old Scully’s Bar, but more as an observer. It was an uncomfortable acknowledgment because he didn’t truly feel part of the Harvard medical world either. He felt rather like a social orphan.

A few hours later when Sean had had a few drafts, and he was feeling more mellow and less an outcast, he joined in the raucous decisionmaking involving a trip up to Revere to one of the strip joints near the waterfront. Just at the moment the debate was reaching a frenzied climax, the entire bar went dead silent. One by one heads turned toward the front door. Something extraordinary had happened, and everyone was shocked. A woman had breached their all-male bastion. And it wasn’t an ordinary woman, like some overweight, gum-chewing girl in the laundromat. It was a slim, gorgeous woman who obviously wasn’t from Charlestown.

Her long blond hair glistened with diamonds of moisture, and it contrasted dramatically with the rich deep mahogany of her mink jacket. Her eyes were almond shaped and pert as they audaciously scanned the room, leaping from one stunned face to another. Her mouth was set in determination. Her high cheekbones glowed with color. She appeared like a collective hallucination of some fantasy female.

A few of the guys shifted nervously, guessing that she was someone’s girlfriend. She was too beautiful to be anyone’s wife.

Sean was one of the last faces to turn. And when he did, his mouth dropped open. It was Janet!

Janet spotted him about the same time he saw her. She
walked directly up to him and pushed in beside him at the bar. Brady moved away, making an exaggerated gesture of terror as if Janet were a fearful creature.

“I’d like a beer, please,” she said.

Without answering, Molly filled a chilled mug and placed it in front of Janet.

The room remained silent except for the television.

Janet took a sip and turned to look at Sean. Since she was wearing pumps she was just about eye level. “I want to talk with you,” she said.

Sean hadn’t felt this embarrassed since he’d been caught with his pants off at age sixteen with Kelly Parnell in the back of her family’s car.

Putting his beer down, Sean grasped Janet by her upper arm, just above the elbow, and marched her out the door. When they got out on the sidewalk Sean had recovered enough to be angry. He was also a little tipsy.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Sean allowed his eyes to sweep around the neighborhood. “I don’t believe this. You know you weren’t supposed to come here.”

“I knew nothing of the kind,” Janet said. “I knew I wasn’t invited, if that’s what you mean. But I didn’t think my coming constituted a capital offense. It’s important I talk with you, and with you leaving on Sunday, I think it’s more important than drinking with these so-called friends of yours.”

“And who is making that value judgment?” Sean demanded. “I’m the one who decides what is important to me, not you, and I resent this intrusion.”

“I need to talk to you about Miami,” Janet said. “It’s your fault you’ve waited until the last minute to tell me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Sean said. “I’m going and that’s final. Not you, not my mother, and not my brother are going to stop me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back in and see what I can salvage of my self-respect.”

“But this can impact the rest of our lives,” Janet said. Tears began to mix with the rain running down her cheeks. She’d
taken an emotional risk coming to Charlestown, and the idea of rejection was devastating.

“I’ll talk with you tomorrow,” Sean said. “Good night, Janet.”

T
ED
S
HARENBURG
was nervous, waiting for the doctors to tell him what was wrong with his daughter. His wife had gotten in touch with him in New Orleans where he’d been on business, and he had gotten the company Gulfstream jet to fly him directly back to Houston. As the CEO of an oil company that had made major contributions to the Houston hospitals, Ted Sharenburg was afforded special treatment. At that moment his daughter was inside the huge, multimillion-dollar MRI machine having an emergency brain scan.

“We don’t know much yet,” Dr. Judy Buckley said. “These initial images are very superficial cuts.” Judy Buckley was the chief of neuroradiology and had been happy to come into the hospital at the director’s request. Also in attendance were Dr. Vance Martinez, the Sharenburgs’ internist, and Dr. Stanton Rainey, chief of neurology. It was a prominent group of experts to be assembled at any hour, much less at one o’clock in the morning.

Ted paced the tiny control room. He couldn’t sit still. The story he’d been told about his daughter had been devastating.

“She experienced an acute paranoid psychosis,” Dr. Martinez had explained. “Symptoms like that can occur, especially with some sort of involvement of the temporal lobe.”

Ted reached the end of the room for the fiftieth time and turned. He looked through the glass at the giant MRI machine. He could just barely see his daughter. It was as if she were being swallowed by a technological whale. He hated being so helpless. All he could do was watch, and hope. He’d felt almost as vulnerable when she’d had her tonsils out a few months earlier.

“We’ve got something,” Dr. Buckley said.

Ted hurried over to the CRT screen.

“There’s a hyperintense circumscribed area in the right temporal lobe,” she said.

“What does it mean?” Ted demanded.

The doctors exchanged glances. It was not customary for the relative of a patient to be in the room during such a study.

“It’s probably a mass lesion,” Dr. Buckley said.

“Can you put that in lay terms?” Ted asked, trying to keep his voice even.

“She means a brain tumor,” Dr. Martinez said. “But we know very little at this point, and we should not jump to conclusions. The lesion might have been there for years.”

Ted swayed. His worst fears were materializing. Why couldn’t he be in that machine and not his daughter?

“Uh oh!” Dr. Buckley said, forgetting the effect such an exclamation would have on Ted. “Here’s another lesion.”

The doctors clustered around the screen, transfixed by the vertically unfolding images. For a few moments they forgot about Ted.

“You know it reminds me of the case I told you about in Boston,” said Dr. Rainey. “A young woman in her twenties with multiple intracranial tumors and negative metastatic workup. She was proved to have medulloblastoma.”

“I thought medulloblastoma occurs in the posterior fossa,” Dr. Martinez said.

“It usually does,” Dr. Rainey said. “It also usually occurs in younger kids. But twenty percent or so of the incidents are in patients over twenty, and it’s occasionally found in regions of the brain besides the cerebellum. Actually, it would be wonderful if it turns out to be medulloblastoma in this case.”

“Why?” Dr. Buckley asked. She was aware of the high mortality of the cancer.

“Because a group down in Miami has had remarkable success in getting remissions with that particular rumor.”

“What’s their name?” Ted demanded, clutching onto the first hopeful news he’d heard.

“The Forbes Cancer Center,” Dr. Rainey said. “They haven’t published yet but word of that kind of a result gets around.”

March 2
Tuesday, 6:15 A.M.

W
hen Tom Widdicomb awoke at 6:15 to begin his workday, Sean Murphy had already been on the road for several hours, planning on reaching the Forbes Cancer Center by mid-morning. Tom did not know Sean, and had no idea he was expected. Had he known that their lives would soon intersect, his anxiety would have been even greater. Tom was always anxious when he decided to help a patient, and the night before he’d decided to help not one but two women. Sandra Blankenship on the second floor would be the first. She was in great pain and already receiving her chemotherapy by IV. The other patient, Gloria D’Amataglio, was on the fourth floor. That was a bit more worrisome since the last patient he’d helped, Norma Taylor, had also been on the fourth floor. Tom didn’t want any pattern to emerge.

His biggest problem was that he constantly worried about someone suspecting what he was doing, and on a day that he was going to act, his anxiety could be overwhelming. Still, sensitive to gossip on the wards, he’d heard nothing that suggested that anyone was suspicious. After all, he was dealing with women who were terminally ill. They were expected to die. Tom was merely saving everyone from additional suffering, especially the patient.

Tom showered, shaved, and dressed in his green uniform, then went into his mother’s kitchen. She always got up before he did, insistent every morning as far back as he could remember
that he should eat a good breakfast since he wasn’t as strong as other boys. Tom and his mother, Alice, had lived together in their close, secret world from the time Tom’s dad died when Tom was four. That was when he and his mother had started sleeping together, and his mother had started calling him “her little man.”

“I’m going to help another woman today, Mom,” Tom said as he sat down to eat his eggs and bacon. He knew how proud his mother was of him. She had always praised him even when he’d been a lonely child with eye problems. His schoolmates had teased him mercilessly about his crossed eyes, chasing him home nearly every day.

“Don’t worry, my little man,” Alice would say when he’d arrive at the house in tears. “We’ll always have each other. We don’t need other people.”

And that was how things worked out. Tom had never felt any desire to leave home. For a while, he worked at a local veterinarian’s. Then at his mother’s suggestion, since she’d always been interested in medicine, he’d taken a course to be an EMT. After his training, he got a job with an ambulance company but had trouble getting along with the other workers. He decided he would be better off as an orderly. That way he wouldn’t have to relate to so many people. First he’d worked at Miami General Hospital but got into a fight with his shift supervisor. Then he worked at a funeral home before joining the Forbes housekeeping staff.

“The woman’s name is Sandra,” Tom told his mother as he ran his dish under the faucet at the sink. “She’s older than you. She’s in a lot of pain. The ‘problem’ has spread to her spine.”

When Tom spoke to his mother, he never used the word “cancer.” Early in her illness, they’d decided not to say the word. They preferred less emotionally charged words like “problem” or “difficulty.”

Tom had read about succinylcholine in a newspaper story about some doctor in New Jersey. His rudimentary medical training afforded an understanding of the physiologic principles. His freedom as a housekeeper allowed him contact with
anesthesia carts. He’d never had any problem getting the drug. The problem had been where to hide it until it was needed. Then one day he found a convenient space above the wall cabinets in the housekeeping closet on the fourth floor. When he climbed up and looked into the area and saw the amount of accumulated dust, he knew his drug would never be disturbed.