Miracle Cure (16 page)

Jennifer Riker lifted her face toward the sun, enjoying the feel of the warm rays against her skin.

She passed a store window, stopped, took two steps backwards, and examined her reflection. The late forties, she thought, had not been particularly easy on her looks. Her petite figure was beginning to spread a little. The small lines around her eyes were deepening into full-fledged (no sense denying it) wrinkles. Her neck was starting to crease. She looked again and wondered for the millionth time if she had done the right thing:

if she had not, as so many had warned her, jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

She thought about it a moment before acknowledging that, in truth, there had been no choice. To stay with Harvey would have meant to wither away in a world of watching too many soap operas and feeling utterly worthless. To remain married would have meant playing the dutiful wife to a man who had dedicated his life to a cause and assumed those around him had chosen to do the same. Just looking at Harvey on those rare nights when he'd come home from the clinic, exhaustion blanketing his face and posture, made Jennifer feel inadequate and selfish. She had to get out.

And so she left. She made her escape before the weight of her depression had a chance to squash her spirit completely. She moved to Los Angeles where she now lived (quite happily, thank you) with her sister Susan and her young nephew Tommy. During her twenty-six years of marriage to Harvey, Jennifer had rarely ventured off the east coast, never visiting California, not even going as far west as Chicago. She and Harvey had been snobbish Northeasterners, believing that the only cultural life of the country bloomed within the boundaries of the original thirteen colonies.

But Los Angeles had its advantages over New York, albeit they were mostly the obvious. The warmer climate, for one; the warmer attitude, for another. Jennifer enjoyed the laid-back California lifestyle especially after the pressure of the last few years. And living with Susan had ended up being fun, almost like reliving her childhood in certain respects. Jennifer and Susan had always been close, confiding in each other even as small children. As they grew older, both sisters decided that they would always live near each other. Jennifer, older than Susan by two years, had gotten married first, to a doctor named Harvey Riker.

Almost in a rush not to be left behind, Susan married another doctor, Bruce Grey, a year and a half later. Harvey and Bruce quickly became friends and even medical partners while Jennifer and Susan continued to grow closer and closer. Everything was moving along perfectly until one minor problem began to snag up the works.

Bruce and Susan started drifting apart.

After a few futile attempts to save a dying marriage, Susan left Bruce, moving to Los Angeles and taking their seven-year old son, Tommy, with her. Jennifer and Harvey had been horrified when they heard. They started to feel isolated and afraid, and for the first time, Harvey and Jennifer began to question their own happiness and examine their own relationship. From then on, it had been only a question of time.

Jennifer closed her eyes and sighed. She took out a key, opened the door, and stepped inside the apartment. Almost immediately the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Is this Mrs. Susan Grey?"

"She's not here at the moment. May I ask who's calling?"

"Is this Mrs. Jennifer Riker?"

"Yes, it is."

"Good morning, Mrs. Riker. This is Terence Lebrock."

"Oh, you're the executor of Bruce's will."

"That's correct. I just wanted to let you know that I sent a post office box key via overnight mail yesterday. You should be receiving it today."

"A post office box key? I'm not sure I understand."

"Dr. Grey kept a post office box in the main branch of the Los Angeles post office. I think it would be best if somebody clears out that box right away. There might be important papers in there." Jennifer thought for a moment. Odd that Bruce had a post office box in Los Angeles. Of course it could be the same one he had used during his two-year stint in the research department at UCLA, but why would he have saved it? She shrugged. It was probably another example of Bruce's compulsive personality.

"Don't worry, Mr. Lebrock. I'll clear it out today."

The silence was staggering. It filled the room, expanding, growing larger and larger until Sara was sure the walls around them were about to give way. First, there had been denial. How could it be? Michael had never experimented with homosexuality.

He had never been an intravenous drug abuser. He was not a hemophiliac who needed constant blood transfusions. He had slept with no one but Sara for six years. Any way you looked at it, Michael should have been a very healthy, thirty-two-year-old man.

Except he was not healthy. He was lying in a hospital bed with hepatitis B and a positive reading on an HIV test. His T cell count was dangerously low and the most obvious conclusion the doctors could draw was that Michael had received contaminated blood in the Bahamas after his boating accident.

He had AIDS.

She looked at him now. His handsome face showed no emotion, so strange for a man as filled with passion as Michael, a man who rarely hid thoughts and feeling behind a black expression. She thought about the first time she had seen that face, the first time she had ever spoken to him in person.

The door swung open and Beethoven's Sonata No. 32 in C minor escaped from the room and moved outside.

"Yes?" Michael said. He was surprisingly handsome, tall, of course, with broad shoulders. There was a towel draped around his neck, a glass of what looked like orange juice in his hand. Perspiration matted the ends of his hair together. He wiped his brow with the corner of the towel.

Sara nervously gripped her cane. She was about to stick out her right -hand for him to shake, but she suddenly realized that her palm was slick. Her honey-blond hair was tied back away from her face, accentuating her already prominent cheekbones.

"Good afternoon. My name is Sara Lowell."

He looked at her, startled.

"You're Sara Lowell?"

"You sound surprised." "I am," he said.

"You're not what I pictured."

"What did you picture?"

He shrugged.

"Something a little gruffer-looking, I guess."

"Gruffer- looking?"

"Yeah. Dark, curly hair. Cigarette dangling from lip with an ash about to fall off. Manual typewriter. Black sweater. A little on the meaty side."

"Sorry if I disappointed you."

"Hardly," he said.

"What are you doing here, Miss. Lowell?"

"Sara."

"Sara."

She sneezed.

"God bless you," he said.

"Thank you."

"Have a cold?"

She nodded.

"So what can I do for you, Sara?"

"Well," she began, "I'd like to come in and ask you a few questions."

"Hmmm. This whole scenario seems a tad familiar to me. Do you have a sense of deja vu too, Sara, or is it just me?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"On if you slam the door in my face like you slammed the phone in my ear." He smiled. "louche."

"Can I come in?"

"First, let me ask you a question," he said. He feigned taking a pencil out of his pocket and writing in a small notebook.

"Why the cane?"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me," he continued in his serious, reporter-like voice.

"You're using a cane and you have a brace on your leg. What happened to you?"

"Playing role-reversal, Mr. Silverman?"

"Michael. Just answer the question, please."

"I was born prematurely, with permanent nerve damage in my foot."

"Was it bad when you were young?"

Her voice was soft.

"Not good."

She lifted her head and saw the gentle, almost soothing expression on his face. He'd have made a great interviewer, she thought, except there was an undeniable tension between them, a tension that was not all together unpleasant.

"You say you were born premature," he continued.

"Were there other complications?"

"Not so fast," she replied.

"My turn. When did you start playing basketball?"

"I don't know. When I was six or seven, I guess."

"Were you one of those kids who played all the time, who lived on the playground?"

"It was the best place to be," he replied.

"What do you mean?"

Michael did not answer.

"What were your other complications, Sara?"

"Lung infections," she said quickly. "So when did you start playing the piano?"

"When I was eight."

"Your parents hired a music teacher?"

A humorless smile came to his lips.

"No."

148 Haiian Coben

"Then who-"

"I think you'd better leave," he said.

"Let's change the subject."

"No."

"But I was just going to ask "

"I know what you were going to ask," Michael interrupted.

"How hard is this for you to understand? I don't want my personal life splashed all over the papers. Period."

"I just wanted to know the name of your piano teacher," she said.

"I thought you would want to give your teacher credit."

"Bullshit, Sara.

"Let's change the subject' is just another way of saying you want to try to attack from another angle. You figure if you keep probing, eventually you'll get what you want no matter what the cost."

"And what are the costs, Michael? Your story could give hope to thousands of children who are being abused "

"Jesus, how low will you stoop to get this story?"

"Don't flatter yourself," she replied.

"I want every story I'm assigned."

"Have you no ethics?"

Sara's fists clenched.

"Spare me the morality play. We reporters are great as long as we're telling the world what a wonderful guy you are. We're your best pals when we pat you on the back and help you get more endorsement money.

But oh, if we dare to criticize, if we dare to dig deeper "

"My personal life is none of anyone's goddamn business."

"Afraid I'll shatter your precious image? Afraid I'll make you look like something other than Superman?"

She could see him wrestling with his temper.

"Good- bye, Sara," he said with too much control.

"I really didn't want to do this."

"Go ahead. Slam the door in my face. I'll be back." "No," he said, "you won't."

"We'll see."

And then he closed the door in her face just as Sam let loose with another sneeze. Her breathing was shallow from the effects of her cold.

Sara wheezed, each drawn breath a painful struggle. She turned away from the door and huffed off.

"The man is a major league pain in the ass."

Back home, she began to re-read his file. As the words passed in front of her, her anger softened and then evaporated. Could she really blame him for being so defensive? His childhood read like something out of Oliver Twist. She sat back, laced her fingers behind her head, and sneezed again. Her breathing was still labored, even worse than before.

She had tried to dismiss it, but the truth was becoming more and more apparent. With something near terror, Sara knew what she had to do.

She reached for the phone and called her father.

The next morning the doctors confirmed Sara's diagnosis.

"Pneumonia," John told his daughter from her hospital bed. There were tears in his eyes.

"Third time for you in the last two years, Sara." "I know," she said.

"You have to slow down a little." Sara glanced up at her father but said nothing.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asked.

"Fine," she replied.

"How long will I have to be here this time?"

"The doctors don't know, honey. I can stay with you for a while, if you'd like."

She nodded.

"I'd like that very much."

John Lowell left his daughter's bedside at nine p.m. Sara did not want him to go. Irrational as it might seem, she hated being alone at night in the hospital. Despite all the time she had spent in hospitals, Sara was still scared to close her eyes, afraid that someone or something might sneak up on her. She felt like some movie character left alone to survive a night in a haunted house. It was the hospital sounds that made her shudder, the sounds that reverberated louder in the blackness and stillness of the night: footsteps echoing much too loudly against the tile floors; the constant beeping, gurgling, and sucking noises of lifesaving machines; the random moan of pain; the scream of terror; the squeak of wheels; crying.

Feeling lonely, Sara strapped on her Walkman and began to sing a little ditty by the Police. When her voice grew too loud ("Don't Stand So... Don't Stand So... Don't Stand So Close To Me!") the nurse came in, gave her a scolding glare, and told her to quiet down.

"Sorry."

She took off the headset and flicked on the television. She was immediately greeted by a sportscaster's voice.

"Great move by Michael Silverman. What a game he's having, Tom."

"Sure is, Brent. Twenty-two points, ten rebounds, nine assists. He's playing like a man possessed."

"And Seattle calls time out. The score in this fourth game of the NBA Championship Series New York 87, the Sonics 85. We'll be back at Madison Square Garden in New York City in just a moment."

Though not much of a sports fan, Sam watched the remainder of the game.

The Knicks won by five points, tying up the NBA finals at two games apiece. The series would now move to Seattle for the next two games and then back to New York if a seventh and final game was needed. She continued to watch as the inane sportscasters spewed out as many chiches as they could come up with while reviewing the game highlights.

After that there were interviews with numerous players and coaches, which lasted for another hour or so.

"Looking for me?"

Sara turned quickly toward the door.

"Who?"

Michael stepped forward from the shadows. His hair was still wet from his post-game shower.

"Miss. Nancy Levin," he said simply.