Weapon of Choice (6 page)

“That means you got a home run! Coach James must have been happy. Sorry I missed the game.” She meant it. Patrick was good, so good that he thought his career as a pro catcher was a given. “But how's that science report coming along?”

“I've got two weeks. And it's not just a report, Mom, it's a project. I have to come up with something. Can't you find some experiment at the hospital so you can make a chart and a demonstration? Remember the one you did for Nicole—different kinds of sutures and staplers.”

A pet peeve. High school science projects that a parent ends up doing. But yes, she had more or less done one for her four older kids. And, no, she couldn't let Patrick down.

“I'll give it some thought tonight,” she said. “Where are the girls?”

“Just four of us tonight,” Marcy said. “I let Natalie study at Collette's. Her father is a math teacher and Natalie has a trigonometry test tomorrow. They said she could have dinner there. Home by nine, I said.”

“Makes sense,” Laura said, getting up, going to the staircase and hollering, “Nicole, hurry up. Dinner.”

Nicole came bounding down the stairs, headed for the table, but before sitting down, she kissed Laura on the cheek. “How was your day, Mom?”

So the pleasant Nicole decided to show up. Interested in
her
day? Seventeen-year-old girls are internally focused.
Their
day.
Their
night.
Their
clothes.
Their
hair.
Their
friends. Not much interested in their parents. Or in Laura's kids case, parent. Seventeen-year-old girls are naturally narcissistic, an age-appropriate phenomenon, Laura judged.

“My day was busy,” Laura said. “I had—

“Oops, I forgot to tell you last night before you left for the hospital, Jennie called. She's having a party at her parents' beach house. You know, the one in Tarpon Springs. Her parents will be there, naturally. She invited me and Natalie.”

“Natalie and me,” Laura corrected. “And Nicole, you and I have to have our heart-to-heart conversation before I let you go anywhere.”

“That's not fair.” Nicole tossed her napkin on the table. “My life's important, too. You can't keep doing this to me!” She stood, flipped back her long blonde hair, and flashed overly mascaraed
eyes. “Sorry, Mrs. Whitman, dinner looks really great, but I'm not hungry.”

“Okay,” Laura said, trying for calm. “I'll be up to talk to you later. I'd like to see your homework, too.”

“I'm a senior in high school. I'm responsible for my own stuff. Give me a break.” Nicole stomped up the stairs.

Patrick helped himself to a second healthy slice of meatloaf. “What's wrong with her?”

“She'll be okay,” Marcy said. “I do think you should talk to her, Laura. Soon.”

Laura raised her eyebrows. Marcy's instincts about the girls and what was going on in their heads often exceeded hers.

As Laura and Marcy cleared away the dishes, the phone rang. Patrick answered, paused a moment then announced, “For you, Mom—Doctor Nelson.” He handed her the receiver.

“This is Dr. Nelson.”

“Dr. Worth. Matthew's father.”

Laura had meant to call him, but had let it slip.

“Yes,” she interrupted. “I tried to get that experimental drug. The research director at Keystone Pharma said it was impossible, that there'd been side effects—”

Worth said he already knew that. He'd called, too. The company had botched the study or the drug; she couldn't hear him that well amid the background noise. He must be in an airport.

He asked about the surgery.

Even though he was a relative, could she convey the AIDS diagnosis? What could she tell him? She decided to end the call and defer the decision. “Dr. Worth, I'm having trouble hearing you. Call Mr. Mercer's attending physician, Dr. Duncan Kellerman.” Rude, maybe, but it got her off the hook for now.

Natalie came home on time, hugged Laura, and started to unpack the contents of her bulging backpack on the kitchen table. The twins were in their last year at the Academy of the Holy Names, an all-girls Catholic high school. Both had been good students for their
first three high school years, but Laura had started to worry about their grades this semester. Natalie struggled in math as well as in honors history. And for the first time, Nicole's literature teacher had asked for a conference with Laura—scheduled for next week. She'd gotten two successive Ds on assignments. And barely squeaked out a C on her midterm.

The natural place to look, Laura knew, was their social life. The twins always had been popular. Very pretty, honey-blonde hair, the color of hers, cornflower-blue eyes the exact shade of their father's; slim, with breasts that were “too small,” they complained, but to their male admirers, probably appeared quite perfect. Neither girl cared much about athletics. For a while, Nicole had done gymnastics, back when she wanted to be a cheerleader, an activity she now disdained. Natalie, who usually followed in her sister's footsteps, had fallen in with an equestrian set of girlfriends in middle school and had taken up riding—until she broke her arm in a jumper fall. She never got back on a horse.

Going to a private school, the twins had friends all over Tampa, and for their seventeenth birthday, Laura had swallowed hard and bought them a four-year-old, green Chevy Impala. A joint gift. With Mike and Kevin at college, the girls having a car took a lot of pressure off her and Marcy, but she now wondered if the car—all that freedom—had triggered whatever was going on with them.

“Natalie, can you stay downstairs for a bit. I have to talk to your sister.”

“No, Mom, I have to go up to our room. All my stuff is up there, and I have to get organized.”

It looked to Laura that all Natalie's stuff was dumped on the table. Laura hesitated before replying.

“If you'd let one of us move into Mike and Kevin's room,” Natalie continued, “we wouldn't have this problem. Why keep their room for them? They're never going to live here again. And Nicole and I are so crowded. Our room is even smaller than theirs, and Patrick has his own room. Not fair, Mom.”

“They'll be home next weekend for Thanksgiving,” was all
Laura could think of to say. So unlike Natalie, this attitude. “And if you have to work in your room—go ahead.” She would find another time to talk to Nicole about last Saturday night.

Her daughters had been out with friends. They got in at midnight, their weekend curfew, and everything seemed okay. That is, until Nicole tripped on the landing, dropping her purse, spilling the contents. The plastic cover of a dial pack of Ortho birth control pills cracked when it hit the polished oak floor.

Had Laura overreacted? “What are these for?” she'd demanded, grabbing Nicole by the shoulders, shaking her, barely managing not to slap her. “Why do you need these? Are you having sexual intercourse?” she'd demanded.

A stunned stare from both girls, a long silence.

“Answer me, Nicole.”

“Mom, calm down.” Natalie jumped between them, pulling her away from Nicole. “Give her a chance to answer you. Get your hands off of her.”

When Laura thought about it, this was the first time her sweet, respectful Natalie ever had spoken to her like that. Nicole? Another story.

“Okay, Nicole, you tell me,” Laura stared at them both. She was angry beyond words, yet confused and overwhelmed by a feeling of hopelessness. How could she have prevented this? “What are these for if you're not having sex?”

“I'm not having sex,” Nicole shouted. “Think what you want. So what if you don't trust me. I don't care. You're a control freak.”

“Where did you get these?” Laura grabbed Nicole again.

“They're not mine,” Nicole said. “Listen to me,
Mother
. I am not taking birth control pills. Guess why not? Because I'm not having sex. I don't even have a boyfriend I give a shit about. If you even knew me, you'd know that.”

“Nicole, I asked you a question!” Laura couldn't help yelling.

Natalie had picked up the dial pack, and Laura grabbed it out of her hands. A prescription product. There should be a patient's name on it. There wasn't. The label had been ripped off.

“Lots of girls have these. Take them every day. Pass them
around. I do not know how they got in my purse.” Nicole stood, hands on hips, staring at Laura. “Would you rather have me lie to you? Make something up? Would that make you happy?”

“Nicole's telling the truth,” Natalie said. “I've never lied to you, Mom. I'd know if she was taking those pills, and she's not. I swear.”

“Okay. Let's go into the kitchen. Make some tea like we always do when we have a problem. I guess you understand why I'm so upset, don't you?” Laura was facing Nicole.

“How am I supposed to feel? As usual, you believe Natalie and not me.”

Laura put her arm around Nicole and led her into the kitchen. “Let's calm down, give us time to get over the shock of this—of what I just saw.” She brushed her fingers over Nicole's cheek. “We'll have to talk more about this, Nicole. I just don't know what to think right now.”

Sunday night, she'd been called out to see the AIDS patient and tonight she'd let Natalie preempt the time. She needed to clear the air with Nicole—but she also needed a feasible reason why Nicole had birth control pills in her purse. She needed to trust each of her daughters. If she couldn't, obviously, she was failing as a mother.

T
UESDAY
, N
OVEMBER
26

Nicole didn't say much the next morning, but she did show up in time for breakfast, in her uniform, looking like she'd spent plenty of time fixing her hair into an up-do with tendrils falling in an artsy pattern. Natalie, in the same uniform, looked demure, her skirt two inches longer than her sister's, hair shining, but with a simple side part. On the right. Since the girls were toddlers, Laura had chosen to part Natalie's hair on the right and Nicole's on the left. Over the years, the identical twins had tried to switch to confuse friends and relatives, but their hair was so trained that Laura, at least, could not be fooled.

All the Nelsons left together, Laura in her Oldsmobile station wagon and Nicole driving the Impala with Natalie in the passenger seat and Patrick in the backseat. They'd drop him off at Jesuit High on their way to Holy Names.

Laura decided to stop at Tampa City Hospital since it was on the way to her research labs about a half-hour drive from Davis Island into Tampa. Before starting her research day at the university, she'd page Michelle and check out her critical patients. Being chief resident meant that Michelle would be there before the crack of dawn.

Michelle met her outside Matthew Mercer's isolation room. They donned protective coverings and Michelle briefed Laura on Mercer's status. “Making some effort to breathe on his own, and his electrolytes have improved. Still pumping him full of antibiotics. We should have culture and sensitivity results later this morning.
He's on hourly blood gases and chemistries. So far kidney function is in the normal range.”

“Not much more we can do,” Laura said, as they pushed through the door. “Either he's going to rally, or he's not.” Now how profound was that pronouncement, from the chief of surgery.

Their patient had a visitor, a man, probably in his late forties or early fifties, sat in the lone bedside chair. Auburn curls slipped out from under the paper cap that covered his head. Above the mask, cobalt-blue eyes rimmed in red betrayed exhaustion. When Laura and Michelle approached, he reached out his right hand, but let it fall when Laura put up her hands to signal
no contact
.

“I'm Dr. Nelson and this is Dr. Wallace,” she said. “Are you Mr. Mercer's father?” She wondered again how much information she should give the man. He was an expert in infectious disease, had been rather pompous on the phone, and she had to leave for her research labs. He could debate antibiotic details with the medical docs if he wanted.

Before the visitor could respond, Laura turned and spoke directly to Michelle, “The medical service said something about trying to get that experimental drug, AZT. Did they?”

“Not in the chart, Dr. Nelson. But Infectious Disease did start acyclovir. Works in herpes, but probably not—this.”

“Yes, I am Dr. Victor Worth,” the visitor confirmed, “Matthew Mercer's father.” Aggressive-sounding tone. “I spoke to you on the phone yesterday, Dr. Nelson.”

“Yes. I'm sorry that didn't work out,” Laura said. “The drug had side-effect issues.” She still wondered why father and son had different last names.

“That drug was deliberately sabotaged,” Worth said. When he started to shake his fist, Laura was glad that she'd decided not to share Mercer's medical details. He seemed emotionally unstable, and she had no time to deal with the cause of his angst.

“We're doing everything we can for Mr. Mercer,” Laura said. “Now we have to get back to our rounds.” She turned abruptly to leave the room.

Michelle followed her and hesitated before taking off her protective gown. “Do you want me to go back and talk to the father?” she asked.

“No,” Laura said. “As long as his incision is clean, there's nothing more we can do. Remember, we're just consultants. It's up to the medical service to handle the infectious disease pathology and they have him on a potent cocktail of antibiotics.”

Dr. Worth followed the surgeons, but only as far as the door. Laura heard Worth mumble something, but his remark was not loud enough for her to hear.

She turned to face him through the doorway, saw the frustration and helplessness so common to the faces of loved ones. “I'm sorry,” she said, and meant it. She and her chief resident removed their gloves, gowns, caps, and booties.