Terrified (16 page)
It killed her that she couldn’t show Josh the photos of her mom and her brother, still hidden in the Nordstrom box in the back of her closet. During her lonely first year in Seattle, Megan had been tempted to put the pictures on display in her living room. But holding on to anything from her old life—and putting it out there for anyone to see—seemed dangerous.
She’d shared stories with Josh about her mom, which seemed safe, since her mother had been gone way before Glenn Swann had come into the picture. Every November, she told him about the Thanksgiving her mom had baked a big, beautiful apple pie for a family gathering. She set it on the floor in the front seat of the car as they drove off to the grandparents. When she arrived her mother accidentally put her foot in the pie—but served it up anyway, camouflaging the damage with a big scoop of ice cream. Her father-in-law was such a finicky, fussy eater—to the point that he wiped off all his silverware before every meal. And the old man sat there at the head of the table wolfing down that pie. “Gloria, this is the best apple pie I’ve ever had,” he declared. “It’s got a little something extra in it, doesn’t it?”
“Just love,” her mother replied.
Her older brother, Cliff, and she tried so hard to keep from laughing that they had tears in their eyes. When her mother saw them, she started to crack up, too, and she had to leave the table.
Gloria Densmore passed away at age fifty-two, after a long bout with cancer. Lisa was sixteen. Cliff was twenty-one, and away at college. So Lisa was stuck with just her father, who was always a bit cold and aloof. She figured her mother must have married him because he was so handsome. He didn’t have much else going for him. He was forever focused on his business ventures, which weren’t too successful. He didn’t waste time remarrying—a rich, bossy, horse-faced widow named Nora. They moved into Nora’s house in Deerfield, and to hear her tell it, the place was a regular mansion. Lisa wasn’t impressed. Horse Face was crazy for plaid, and there were plastic slipcovers over every sofa and most of the chairs—and plastic runners over the carpet. Lisa and Cliff used to call her house the Plastic Palace. At least Lisa had her own room, in which she spent most of her time, counting the days until she could go away to college. She and Nora hated each other.
On the other hand, Nora adored Cliff, but then, everyone did. With thick, wavy chestnut hair, beautiful blue eyes, and a lean, athletic build, Cliff was gorgeous—and a real charmer. All of Lisa’s friends had crushes on him. Lisa came to depend on him once she went away to Indiana University. She always spent her holidays and weekends home with him at his apartment on Diversey Parkway. She preferred his sofa to a bed in the Plastic Palace. Besides, she didn’t have her own room there anymore. Nora had made it into a sewing and gift wrap room as soon as Lisa had gone away to school.
After graduating from college, she got a crummy little studio apartment in Evanston and taught kids with special needs. She was paid slave wages. Cliff always loaned her money when she was desperate. He’d moved from his one-bedroom on Diversey to a three-bedroom in a high-rise on Lake Shore Drive. He’d gotten rich from a dot-com business with his partner, Sean Hurley. Megan suspected they were boyfriends as well as business partners, but she didn’t ask Cliff about it. She figured Cliff would tell her when he was good and ready.
But it wasn’t Cliff who told her. It was Dr. Joel Siler, a short wrestler type with a perpetual snarl on his face and his brown hair in a crew cut. Lisa figured Siler’s tough-guy swagger was to compensate for his lack of height. He was the doctor who diagnosed Cliff after he was admitted to Evanston-Northwest with pneumonia symptoms and a fever of one hundred four.
Lisa sat in the hospital waiting area with her father, Nora, and Cliff’s partner, Sean. She’d gotten together with her brother two weeks before, and he’d looked tired—and way too skinny. But seeing him that day in the emergency room was a shock. He was so pasty and emaciated, she almost didn’t recognize him. The wait for word on his condition seemed interminable.
After two hours, Dr. Siler finally strutted out from a set of double doors in his white doctor’s coat with the stethoscope around his neck. “Well, I’m sure you know this kind of thing is par for the course with these AIDS patients,” he said.
The way he made the announcement was so tactless, it unnerved Lisa.
Sean got to his feet. He shook his head over and over. “That’s impossible. Cliff can’t have AIDS. We’ve been so careful. We’ve both been tested… .”
Meanwhile her father was shaking his head, too. “My son isn’t a homosexual. You have to be wrong… .”
Later, Lisa and Cliff managed to squeeze a laugh about the whole absurd scene as she described it to him: the clueless dad denying his son was gay, while the son’s lover was telling the doctor how they’d practiced safe sex. But it really wasn’t funny. As soon as her father and Nora realized Cliff was gay, they didn’t want anything to do with him. They never came back to the hospital to see him. In turn, Lisa cut them out of her life—which wasn’t so hard.
Harder to take was Sean’s reaction. The prospect that his partner had AIDS absolutely terrified him. Even when Dr. Siler changed his original diagnosis to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma unrelated to AIDS, Sean couldn’t handle it. He kept the dot-com business going, but stayed away from the hospital and his partner. Lisa was left in charge of her brother’s care.
Four days after Cliff had been admitted, she was standing in the hospital corridor with Dr. Siler, not far from her brother’s room, when she questioned his early misdiagnosis. Staring at her with that tough-guy look, Siler might as well have had a toothpick dangling from his mouth. He shrugged. “He had night sweats, fever, weight loss, fatigue, and swollen lymph nodes. It’s always pretty much the pattern with these people. Considering his lifestyle choice and his activities, it’s quite understandable my initial diagnosis was AIDS… .”
“You don’t know a goddamn thing about his
activities
,” Lisa whispered, glaring at him.
activities
,” Lisa whispered, glaring at him.
Cliff had been in the hospital a week, with his fever down to one hundred one, when Lisa learned from one of the nurses that Dr. Siler planned to put him on an aggressive chemotherapy regimen the following day.
“But he’s still weak and feverish,” Lisa told Dr. Siler, after tracking him down in the hospital cafeteria. He was getting up from the table, where some doctors and nurses were still seated. “Don’t you think it’s too soon for chemo? I’m sorry, but can’t you at least give him a chance to get back to normal for a couple of days before you bombard his body with poison?”
He carried his tray of dirty dishes to the bus station. “Where did you get your medical degree, Ms. Densmore?” he grumbled. There was a startling clamor as he dumped his tray and everything on it in the plastic bucket meant for dirty dishes and silverware. A few people at nearby tables stopped talking and looked at them. Dr. Siler swiped his hands together as if to dust them off. Then he started to brush past her. “I think I know what I’m doing… .”
“I seriously doubt it,” she said loudly. “Your first diagnosis of my brother’s illness was off the mark—and guided by prejudice. It’s bad enough that you’re an asshole, but do you have to be such an incompetent asshole, Dr. Siler?”
He scowled at her, and for a moment, Lisa thought he might even haul off and hit her. “What did you just say to me?” he asked.
“She said you’re an asshole—and incompetent,” piped up another doctor—at a table directly behind Lisa.
She turned to see a tall, handsome man in scrubs getting to his feet. He had black hair, parted to the side, a five o’clock shadow that gave him a sexy-sleepy look. He also had beautiful green eyes—which were staring at Dr. Siler. “I’m in total agreement with her, Joel. So—why don’t you apologize to this nice young woman?”
Sneering at him, Siler let out an abrupt, defiant laugh, and then stomped out of the cafeteria.
The man in the scrubs smiled at her, and extended his hand for her to shake. His bare arms were muscular and hairy. On his left forearm, he had a small tattoo—the symbol for medicine: a snake entwined around a staff. When he took her hand in his, he held on to it for a few moments. “I’m Glenn Swann, one of the head surgeons here,” he said. “I overheard what you said about your brother—and how Dr. Siler’s handling his treatment. I’m afraid Joel was behind the kitchen door when they handed out compassion and bedside manners. He owes you an apology, Miss …”
“Lisa,” she said, with her hand still in his. “Lisa Densmore.”
He nodded. “I have some clout around here, Lisa. If you’d like, I can get your brother lined up with another doctor.”
Cliff’s new physician was Dr. Nancy Abbe, a brilliant oncologist with a wonderful bedside manner. Dr. Abbe wanted Cliff to get his strength back, take two weeks out of the hospital, and then they’d start him on chemotherapy. She was optimistic his cancer would go into remission.
In what seemed like karmic retribution, Megan heard Dr. Siler had been mugged outside his home in Lincolnwood only two days after she’d confronted him in the hospital cafeteria. She actually felt sorry for him when he hobbled into Cliff’s room later that week while she was visiting. “I just wanted to stop by and make sure you’re happy with Dr. Abbe,” he said, standing in the doorway. His eye was blackened. A Band-Aid didn’t completely cover a gash on his forehead, and one cheek had a horrible, purple bruise on it. He leaned on a cane. He looked too battered to work, and wore his street clothes—a sweater and khakis. Lisa wondered if he’d made a special trip there just to see them.
“She’s working out just great,” Cliff said from his hospital bed. “Thanks, Dr. Siler.”
“Good.” He nodded, and then looked at Lisa. “I’m sorry if I came across as rude to you at any time.”
Sitting in the chair at Cliff’s bedside, she shrugged. “It’s okay,” she replied. He seemed so pathetic. “Forget about it. I hope you’ll be all right.”
Dr. Siler just nodded, then turned and limped away—no sign of that macho swagger.
“I can’t believe he actually apologized,” she murmured to her brother. She stared at the empty doorway, where Siler had just been standing. “Isn’t that the strangest thing?”
“Oh, he’s probably covering his ass, making sure we don’t sue him,” Cliff replied. “After all, he did misdiagnose me. Plus he outed me to my entire family.”
“Well, it wasn’t a huge shock to me,” Lisa said. “How many Tony Awards broadcasts did we watch together?” She put her hand on the railing to his bed. “Do you want me to call Dad and Old Horse Face and tell them how you’re doing?”
Cliff shook his head. “No. If they wanted to know how I was, one of them would have called by now.”
Leaving him for the night, Lisa passed the nurses’ station. On duty was Stacey, a thin, frizzy-haired brunette. Lisa hadn’t liked her from the start. On her first visit to Cliff, Lisa had stopped by the nurse’s station to ask if she could smuggle Cliff some cookies from his favorite bakery. Stacey had kept her waiting over five minutes while she gabbed on the phone with her boyfriend. When she finally hung up and Lisa asked her about the cookies, Stacey had said no. It’d turned out none of the other nurses had a problem with it. Cliff had confirmed that Stacey was kind of a pill—and a crummy nurse to boot. It’d sealed the deal when Lisa later overheard Stacey talking to another nurse and referring to Cliff as “the gay guy in 308.”
So when she saw Stacey behind the desk, Lisa ignored her. She glanced down at the tiled floor and kept walking toward the elevator.
“Shame about Dr. Siler, isn’t it?” Stacey called.
Lisa stopped and looked over at her. “Beg your pardon?”
With a strange smirk on her face, Stacey leaned over her desk. “I said it’s a shame what happened to Dr. Siler.”
Stacey seemed to think Siler walked on water, and that was another reason for Lisa not to like her. She nodded. “Yes, it’s—it’s very sad.”
“Did he apologize to you and your brother?”
Lisa hesitated before answering. “He—um, he came by this afternoon to check in on us, yes.”
“Did he offer up a good act of contrition—as commanded by Dr. Swann on high? I’m surprised Glenn’s goon left Dr. Siler with his teeth.”
Lisa eyes narrowed at her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Dr. Glenn Swann,” she said. “He’s from money. His parents are big donors to the hospital. So when Glenn speaks from the mountaintop, everyone listens. It’s all over the hospital that you and your brother are to be treated like visiting royalty—everything but a chocolate on his pillow at night. Anyone who’s not on board is likely to end up like Dr. Siler. Not that Glenn did the job on him. He would never get his knuckles bruised working over some
guy
. He gives that kind of work to his pal, JJ.”
guy
. He gives that kind of work to his pal, JJ.”
Lisa shook her head at her. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” She noticed two other nurses in the window of an office behind the nurses’ station. They’d stopped what they were doing to stare at Stacey and her.
The phone rang at the nurses’ station, and Stacey reached for it. She threw Lisa one final sneer. “Ask around,” she said. Then she spoke into the phone and turned her back toward her. “Evanston-Northwest, third floor, this is Nurse Wagner… .”
Lisa wasn’t sure what to think, but she kept telling herself to consider the source. She moved on toward the elevators.
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