Second Opinion (21 page)

CHAPTER 38

From her twenties until the day she was diagnosed with cancer, Hayley was seldom aware of having dreams or of having dreamed. Now, she was awakening from nearly every sleep—even short naps—to vivid, frightening scenarios. The recurring themes of her nightmares were helplessness and enclosure: being buried alive in a coffin, being staked out on sunbaked ground, running from an unseen pursuer through a structure with no doors and no windows. A fourth, recurrent theme, so realistic that she inevitably woke up gasping and in an icy sweat, was being eaten alive by vermin or insects.

She was invariably wearing a dress in those dreams—a yellow housedress with a matching belt. The ants or rats or more exotic bugs would climb her naked legs and begin to gnaw their way inside her, first through flesh and then muscle, until they had devoured her bright crimson tissues and eaten down to white bone.

So realistic were the images that she wondered if they were a side effect of the chemotherapy, or even of the death of the cancer cells in her body. She mentioned the dreams to Lydia Thibideau, but got only a somewhat bemused 'don't know' shrug.

Hayley's mother, Belle, had been career Army and the center of her world. The nightmares began with Belle's death in a truck rollover when Hayley was nine. Invariably, the terrifying dreams centered on soldiers, explosions, and death. Her father, also military, though never married to her mother, took over her upbringing, and did the best he could between benders.

Throughout her early years, in housing units on military bases around the country, and indeed the world, Hayley had been a tomboy—resilient, stubborn, and determined to succeed. She earned her first hundred dollars at age ten, cashing in empty bottles and cans. Five years ago, when her Wildwood Enterprises acquired Harmon Electronics in a bitterly contested hostile takeover, her net worth passed three billion—placing her firmly among the wealthiest women in the country.

Still, she described herself as having enlightened toughness, and was routinely included on lists of the most active and broad-based philanthropists.

Now, though, all of her money and all her enlightened toughness were not enough to keep the cancer cells from eating away at her core, or the nightmares from attacking her spirit. If she ever made it past this chemo, she vowed, people would benefit. Many people. Curing cancer on an individual and global basis would be her cause, and the reason for her to continue making money. But first, she needed to survive.

'Ms. Hayley Long?'

Hayley had been asleep in her reading chair when the orderly awakened her. The dream this time had been even sharper than usual—a wooden coffin, seen from the inside, buried deep beneath the earth. She was on her back within it, her nose just inches from the lid, suffocating as she pushed and pounded against the wood, helpless to force her way out, and unable to keep sand from falling between cracks and into her eyes and mouth.

'That's me,' she heard herself say hoarsely.

She mopped her face and under her arms with a hand towel kept on her lap for just that purpose.

The orderly, tall and slender, was wearing a surgical mask and standing behind a wheelchair.

'Chest X-ray, then an MRI,' he said, checking the instructions he was holding.

'I didn't know I was scheduled for X-rays. It seems awfully late.'

'I have no idea. They send me, I go.'

'Well, can I at least see your face?'

'Oh, I'm sorry. I've got a wicked chest cold. I would have stayed home, but they couldn't get anyone else.'

The man lowered his mask, revealing a lean, well-tanned face that many would have felt was good-looking, but that didn't hold much appeal for Hayley. She felt excited to be getting the MRI done, and wondered if Thea might have said something to her oncologist about Master Fang's findings. She transferred herself and her blanket from chair to wheelchair, and paused to inspect the orderly's ID.

'Okay, Mr. Elliot Smolensky,' she said, 'put up your mask and let's ride.'

The orderly was well-spoken and amusing. He said he was in his last few weeks at the Beaumont before starting his second year as a nursing student at Emmanuel College—a career transformation from working as a salvage diver. Too bad, she told him as he backed her into the elevator. She had constant use for industrial divers, but not so much for nurses.

'That's very kind of you just the same,' Gerald Prevoir said.

Those were the last words Hayley heard from the man.

In what seemed like a single motion, he stopped the elevator long enough to clamp a hand over her mouth and bury a needle deep into the muscle at the base of her neck. Then he depressed the plunger and waited for the thirty seconds it took the drug to work.

Hayley was slumped back in the wheelchair, no longer conscious, when the doors opened on the main tunnel. Prevoir held her head erect and turned off into a side passageway. Traffic was light, and no one seemed to notice them.

Moments later, Hayley was covered with sheets, in a fetal position at the bottom of a laundry hamper. Soon after that, Prevoir calmly wheeled her out of a service entrance and hoisted her limp form into the back of a waiting van.

Hayley regained consciousness slowly, accompanied by a headache slamming against the back of her eyes like storm waves against a breakwater. She was in a small, windowless room, no more than eight by eight. The floor was plywood, and the walls packed dirt. A single bare lightbulb, no more than forty watts, illuminated the space from a sconce on the wall. Air from some sort of compressor blew in gently from a vent set in the ceiling. Along the walls were an apartment-sized refrigerator, a small microwave, and a pile of perhaps twenty paperbacks—half fiction. In addition, there was a five-gallon bottle of spring water, some microwaveable food, and three pairs of pajamas.

WELCOME
to your fortress of solitude, a computer-printed note on the wall read,
PREPARE YOURSELF FOR A LENGTHY STAY.

Her mind unwilling to acknowledge her situation, Hayley sank down on the edge of a metal-framed cot with a mattress that smelled of mildew. Then she scanned the damp, unadorned walls and the crude floor, and she began to scream.

CHAPTER 39

Thea knew that extricating herself from Niko and Marie's barbecue had become critical for her peace of mind, but she also knew it was not going to be easy—at least not without lying again. She stopped at the pod of guests clustered about her brother, mentally ticking off a list of excuses—most of them acute medical conditions—that she might use. In the end, she decided that lying about anything was not an option. There was no excuse with which she felt comfortable other than the truth—or at least the part of the truth that didn't involve her sister's unpleasant behavior, or that of the Beaumont director of nursing.

'Hey there, sis,' Niko called out as she approached, 'come over and meet some people.'

In an instant seven guests, all beaming, swung from her brother to her, hands extended, titles and names and connections to her father or Selene, or Niko and Marie, flying at her like darts. With the onslaught, Thea began feeling shaky and confined. Still, she managed to pump each hand in the group. She had never passed out—never even came close that she recalled, but now, sensitized by Selene and Mus-grave, and enclosed in a ring of Niko's friends, she wondered if it might possibly happen.

'Niko, could I talk to you for a minute?' she managed.

'Sure, sis. Hold the fort, everyone. That bartender looks like he's about to die of boredom. Why don't you all go and give him something to do?… You okay, Thea?'

'Actually—' Thea stopped herself again from taking the easy way out with a lie, the pounding headache one that she had selected as most believable. 'I'm worn out, and I need to go home.'

'But this is your party. Have you seen Aunt Mary? She came all the way from Springfield to see you.'

'I'm sure I haven't missed
any
Aunt Marys. I've just had enough crowd and steak for one night. The party's been wonderful, Niko. Really, it has.'

Niko tried to look hurt, but Thea thought that he missed. At that moment, she noticed Lydia Thibideau halfway across the lawn, deeply enmeshed in conversation with Sharon Karsten. Lydia, the specialist called in by Petros to care for Jack Kalishar and Hayley Long, and probably a number of other patients as well, and Sharon, Petros's paramour and possibly one of his heirs. Thea wished that she could be close enough to hear.

'… Thea, tell me something before you go,' Niko was saying.

'Yes?'

'Both Selene and I feel as if you've been acting rather distant toward us for a while now. Is it because we advocated for Petros to be let go?'

'I hadn't really realized that I've been distant. If I have, then I'm sorry. You know how I feel about him, and I know how you feel. For now, that's the way it is.'

'Yes,' Niko said, 'that's the way it is… Well, if you've gotta go, you've gotta go. Marie's upstairs making sure the kids are tucked in. I'll convey your regrets that you couldn't stay longer. Want me to have someone put a dessert plate together for you?'

'No, no. I'll be fine.'

'Have you been talking to Dimitri much? Is that it?'

'I'm fine, Niko. I'm sorry you guys think I've been acting distant, but I'm fine—really. Besides, whatever Dimitri says I tend to take with a grain of salt, just like you probably do.'

'You'd best do that, Thea. Our big brother has nothing to do cooped up in that carriage house of his except to make trouble. And he's extremely adept at doing that.'

'Thank you again,' Thea said.

She felt more anxious than ever to get away, but not home to Wellesley, she decided. At that moment, she wanted no more of Dimitri than she did of the twins. It was still early enough to go back into the hospital for a final check of Petros and some time with Hayley. Terrible things were going on at the Beaumont. She felt almost certain of it. The problem was that without her father's help, there seemed little she could do about them. Her allies were in precious short supply.

Like a servant taking her leave from a potentate, Thea backed away from her brother for several steps before finally turning and heading toward her car. Of all the unpleasant events since her return home, this party was the worst. She felt as if she had somehow swum into a whirlpool, and was being sucked helplessly into its vortex.

Her assault on Lydia Thibideau's office had provided nothing tangible. Hartnett was a dead end. Musgrave and Selene, and apparently any number of others, were annoyed or even furious with her. She could handle failures, but there had to be something she could do to increase the pressure on whoever was responsible for her father's condition, without putting him in even greater danger than he was already.

'Thea, wait!'

She was crossing the broad, arcing driveway heading toward the spot on the street where she had parked, when Scott Hartnett called to her from behind.

'Oh, hi, Scott.'

As done wanting to speak with any of her brother's guests as she could possibly be, she considered simply ignoring the man and dashing away to her car, but instead turned and took a step back toward him. Trim and dapper in white suit and shirt, with a crimson handkerchief folded perfectly in his jacket pocket, Hartnett looked a little unsteady on his feet and, as he drew closer, somewhat glassy-eyed as well.

'I… just wanted to officially welcome you to the hospital fraternity—I mean sorority, I mean, well, you know what I mean— and… and to touch base with you after… what happened earlier today.'

'Thank you, Scott. I'm certainly… honored to be a member of the club—even with the lingering restrictions that have been imposed on me.'

'Yes, well… I heard about those from Sharon. We'll see what we can do about them.'

He moved closer, listed to the right, and was forced to brace himself, full palm, against the highly polished hood of a black BMW.

'I'd appreciate that,' Thea said.

'I… um… was certainly startled and upset by what you were thinking about me… doing anything to harm your father. He was…
is
my friend.'

Thea felt uncomfortable talking to the man, who seemed barely in control of his speech. His eyes were bloodshot, and close up, through the evening gloom, his urbane good looks seemed worn and haggard.

'Well,' she said, 'with all that has happened, you understand why I might have been a little concerned.'

'I was worried about that, yes… So I brought this to show you. It's the description of the course I lectured at with Boris Adamov at the Moscow Institute of Coagulation.'

He fumbled for a folded paper in his right front pants pocket, opened it, made a largely unsuccessful attempt to smooth the longitudinal crease, and passed it over. Despite the location of the course, the program was in English. One of the talks, 'Recent Advances in Platelet Medicine,' was given by Hartnett himself. Several others, including 'Use of Low-Dose Mixed Anticoagulants in Posttraumatic Patients,' were presented by Boris Adamov, whom Thea had heard of.

'This is very interesting, Scott,' she said, handing it back. 'But it really wasn't necessary to bring this here tonight. I believed you. In fact, I believed you to the extent that I had decided just to dispose of the syringe you gave me, and not even to bother having the contents analyzed.'

Hartnett was nodding, his lips pulled back in something of a smile, as he shakily replaced the course program in his pocket.

'As I said, your father means a great deal to me,' he said deliberately, pronouncing
said
as
shed.
'I am glad you saw fit to trust me as far as analyzing the contents of the syringe goes, but either way would have been fine.'

'That's great you feel that way.'

'What… do you mean?'

'Well, I have a friend who's a former Boston policeman with connections in the state lab. Even though I completely trust that you were giving my father exactly what you said you were, he doesn't know you as I do, and he's not as trusting as I am. I've got the syringe you gave me packed away in ice. Tomorrow I'm going to give the mixture to him, and he's going to have it analyzed. That'll remove any question, right?'

There was a silence lasting several seconds.

'Right you are, Doctor,' Hartnett said finally. 'Let's get this business put behind us.'

'I knew you'd feel that way, too. Listen, Scott, I want to stop by the hospital and see my father before it gets too late, and you have dessert to take care of. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?'

'Yeah,' Hartnett replied, his eyes narrow, the muscles in his face tense. 'Tomorrow.'

Petros emerged from darkness slowly. He knew his eyes were closed, and that he could not open them, but light from above him was filtering through his lids. He had been having hallucinations—vivid, mostly pleasant hallucinations—although he had no sense of why they had been happening or how long they had lasted. He also knew that so long as he was hallucinating, he was virtually without pain. The nurses had to be giving him something, some sort of powerful narcotic.

He knew now. He knew that he had locked-in syndrome. He knew that the chances for any useful improvement were small. But according to studies, according to the experts in the field, the chances did exist. He knew that his older son didn't care. He knew that his twins, his pride for so many years, wished, for selfish reasons, to see him just die.

God knows I did right by them. I sent them to the best schools, guided them 
into medicine, provided f
or Niko's children during the lean years. Okay, so they had chosen to become surgeons, not internists; mechanics, not thinkers. I 
forgave them f
or that—
I've said so any number of times to anyone who would 
listen. How could they care so little about me now?

Have I done something wrong?

My dear
kouklitsa,
my Thea. She wants to help. She wants to communicate 
with me. She should never have left her place here to go off to the jungle, but she's back now. So intelligent. Such a fine doctor. Together we'll get to the bottom of whatever it is Hartnett is doing. Together we'll figure things out.