After the Fall (33 page)

And what about her family? If she was not on that London flight on Friday, her parents, her sister, would be arrested, maybe tortured, even killed. What would happen to her two little nephews? Would they take Farrah's husband too? Leaving two more orphans among the thousands of Iraqi children who'd lost their parents to war or torture?

Addie could not let that happen. She'd comply with the orders handed down to her through Dru. Married to Jake or not. As she turned the key in the door of her apartment, she planned to tell Jake everything, let him decide.

W
EDNESDAY
, M
ARCH
4

Tim's surgical case had run for ten hours. Laura had called him six times during the day, but he had not been able to take any of the calls. Later, she missed him at home because he'd stopped at the grocery store on his way. At each failed connection, she'd left a message, upbeat, bubbling over with excitement at Immunone's imminent approval. Except for the last one, just before she'd left Keystone. She'd sounded exhausted. Well, who wouldn't? Tim tallied the reasons. Laura had less than two hours sleep last night. She was only sixteen days post extensive surgery on her shattered hand. The pressures of her new job were even greater than expected. She'd taken it upon herself to divulge a deep, dark secret of her past to her kids, risking a lifetime of their respect and loyalty. She'd not allowed herself time to deal with the psychological trauma of losing her cherished surgical career. Other than that, no problem. Or so Laura would have you believe.

On the way home, Tim had stopped to pick up steaks, potatoes, salad makings, and a bottle of champagne. Laura would have had a glass of the bubbly with her colleagues at Keystone, but when she got home, he wanted it for just the two of them, a simple dinner, sipping champagne before a glowing fire. She'd been self-sufficient for so long that he wanted to shower her with attention, to protect her—as much as she'd let him—from overexertion, from overextending herself.

As Tim seasoned the sirloin and set it aside to prepare the potatoes, he couldn't help but chuckle.
Who am I kidding? Laura thrives on hard-core work and responsibility. Why the hell would I want to change her?

But his smile turned to a frown when Laura came through the front door. Tim wiped his hands on the nearest towel and rushed to her side. She was struggling to remove her coat, all but strangling herself with the scarf caught in the left coat sleeve. The dressing on her right arm and hand was too bulky to fit in the sleeve, and when the coat fell to the floor, Tim noticed the edema and discoloration in her right hand. Last time he'd checked, the color was pink, and there'd been no swelling whatsoever.

“Laura, my God, your hand—let me see it.”

“It's okay. I just have to get it elevated.”

Tim led her to an oversized, upholstered chair in the living room and immediately began arranging pillows to raise her hand to a position higher than her heart. “Didn't you go to therapy today?” he asked.

“I wanted to, truly, but with all the hoopla over Immunone's approval, I couldn't get to it. I took some Motrin. It'll be okay.”

“Laura, you have to take better care of yourself. My God, so soon after surgery. What would you tell your patients if they disregarded everything—”

Shit! Wrong. Why did I have to bring that up? Of all the things to say
—

“Sorry to be such a nag.” Tim leaned over, kissed her on the forehead, and was rewarded with a tired smile.

“I'm going to pop the potatoes in the oven,” Tim said, bending to slip off Laura's two-inch heels and lifting her feet onto the ottoman. “I'll redress your hand, take some of that pressure off, then you can get out of that suit into something more comfortable. Champagne dinner will follow. Sound okay?”

“Tim, I so don't deserve you,” Laura said, leaning back, starting to relax. “I haven't even asked about your day. How did the double valve replacement go?”

“Difficult, long, but I think the kid is going to be okay. I'm glad we got started at six this morning, or I wouldn't be home yet to tend to my favorite patient. Really, Laura, you have to take better care of that hand.”

“I know, and I will, I just had to get today behind me. We got the approval. There'll be a lot of public relations activity, but then my department can get back to work on the next big breakthrough. I just wish I could continue my surgical transplant program now that Immunone's on the market; the prognosis for heart-lung transplant will be even better. We'll still have the organ shortage issue though.”

What could he say? How could he help Laura mourn the loss of her hands-on career? “What does Keystone have in the pipeline?” he asked, hoping they had something that would fully engage Laura's talents.

“Cancer,” she said. “Keystone's new frontier is cancer. And the most promising lead is for lung carcinoma, so that's right up my alley. God knows I've operated on enough lung cancers. So now, I'll be trying to cure them with drugs.”

“Sounds good,” Tim said. The potatoes in the oven, he went to get Laura's medical supplies.

When he returned, Laura looked more relaxed. He wondered whether he should disturb the ambiance of the evening by asking how she wanted to handle dinner with the kids, to bring them into the Patrick paternity loop. She'd decided to do it sometime, somewhere, on Friday night; she'd told Mike she would, okayed it with Patrick, but mustn't this be weighing on her mind, with so much else going on?

“I need to ask you something, Tim,” Laura said, interrupting his quandary. He'd just cut through the thick layers of bandages, loosening the pressure, watching with satisfaction as the color improved in Laura's hand.

Here it comes
. “About dinner with the kids?”

“No, though we do have to talk about that, too. This is about something weird that happened to me today.”

“Okay,” Tim said, peeling off the final layer, exposing raw flesh in various stages of healing. Laura's wound was healing by “primary intension,” that is, openly—no stitches, staples, or other closure devices. An ugly option, but the one that would prevent infection following extensive debridement surgery. “Can I get you a couple of Motrin?” he asked, before applying antibiotic ointment.

Laura winced, held her breath for a moment, and said, “No. I'm okay. What I wanted to ask was whether or not I should call the police?”

“What?” Tim stopped his rewrapping, and stared, clueless.

Laura chuckled. “Oh, I guess I forgot to tell you. The other day, a Philadelphia detective stopped by my office to ask me about the night Fred Minn was killed outside the Four Seasons where we'd just had dinner.” She paused, Tim nodded, and she continued, “They wanted to know whether I'd seen anything that night. You know, the ‘anything at all' line. Naturally, I wanted to help them. And I did think of something. I saw a dark-colored Jeep that night. Pulled out, headed the way Dr. Minn was walking. I actually did a double take because, at one point, Kevin had a Jeep that looked very similar, a Jeep Cherokee, I believe.”

Tim heard a timer in the kitchen and jumped up. “Just a sec. Let me take the steak out of the marinade.” When he returned, he picked up where he'd left off in the bandaging process, as Laura went on. “Today, I was standing in the FDA parking lot with the woman doctor at Replica responsible for the discovery of Immunone. Adawia Abdul. And I saw what seemed to be a really similar Jeep—dark green. I found out this Jeep belongs to Jake Harter, Immunone project director at the FDA, the one who supposedly ‘couldn't find' that missing data. And, guess what?”

“What?” Tim was not quite following the logic of her account.

“Dr. Abdul, or Adawia—during our conversation we got to a first-name basis—said she and Jake Harter were getting married.”

“So?” Tim asked. “Any law against that?”

“Conflict of interest,” Laura said. “I'm getting steeped in
all this corporate-government intrigue. Life was much easier in academia.”

“So her fiancé is in the position to push her drug through. But wait a minute, why would he claim data was missing if that was the case?”

“Beats me,” said Laura. “I may have said something I shouldn't have, but I did tell her I'd just come from a meeting and the drug would be approved on Friday.”

“She didn't know?” Tim asked, still not sure where this was going.

“She tried to get Jake Harter's attention when he tore out of the FDA lot, but he didn't see us. So, back to the Jeep: should I call the police and tell them?”

“Sounds far-fetched to me, Laura. Must be a lot of dark-colored Jeeps. Philly's a long way from Rockville, Maryland.”

“You're right,” she said, reaching over to the table for her purse. “The detective gave me his number just in case I thought of something. He did say they had a tire imprint from the car that had been parked where I saw it, the Jeep. I just wonder…but, you're right, it sounds crazy.”

“Sleep on it, Laura. It's late, you're exhausted, and I'm about to serve you champagne. Just a sip before you change. By then I'll have dinner on the table.”

Laura set down her purse. “I wish I could put off Friday night with the kids too.”

“Let's talk about that during dinner,” Tim said, helping Laura stand, supporting her right arm. “I have some ideas.”

Tim had given Laura's problem much thought. Based on his own shock when she'd told him she'd had a brief affair with the chief of surgery when she'd been a medical student, he wondered how her kids would respond. They were the “younger generation.” How important was marital fidelity to them? In general? With respect to their parents? He was too out of touch with twenty-year-olds to know.

Patrick, himself, had reacted better than Tim would have
predicted. Likely, based on his deep respect for his mother. And Patrick wanted this secret over and done with. And soon it would be. Friday night.

Tim had taken the initiative and arranged for a private dining room at the Barclay Hotel. A public place would discourage any histrionics on the part of the kids. Tim wasn't so worried about the boys, they seemed to take everything in stride. Case in point, Patrick did not go crazy on Laura. But the girls? To him, they seemed much more judgmental when it came to their mother.

What am I getting into with Laura? She's a handful herself—and her five kids? Tim smiled at how much meaning she'd added to his life.

W
EDNESDAY
, M
ARCH
4

Jake had crashed his Jeep into one mean bastard. Bad enough being shaken up at the impact, chest hurting like hell each time he took a breath, and a freaking bump on the head, but the man in the green truck knocked him out cold with a sucker punch. Jake woke up in the ambulance, oxygen tubes connected around his ears, a blood-pressure cuff on his arm, and a pulse oximeter clamped to his finger.

He'd tried to sit up, but found himself strapped to a gurney, the EMT sitting beside him, forcing him back down flat with a heavy, knuckled hand.

“I'm okay,” Jake told the big man, his temporary caretaker.

The only reply, “Tell that to the ER docs.”

“What about my Jeep?”

“It'll be towed.”

That was it for chitchat on the way to the hospital. When Jake tried to move again, the broad strap across his abdomen held him back. When he struggled against the restraint, his caretaker's big hand reached over to press him back. The combined movement and pressure on his chest made him moan in pain. He fell back prone, helpless and alarmed.

Arriving at Suburban Hospital ER, his attendant and driver jostled him inside, lined up his gurney against the wall, filled out some forms, and left without saying another word.

Still strapped down, now unplugged from the oxygen, Jake
glanced around the busy ER. What could he do to convince them he did not have to be seen? He was awake, conscious, and could leave without the need for any paperwork.

When a young female intern approached him with her clipboard, he told her he wanted to sign out. Go home. He was fine. “Just unstrap me.” But his demand seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“I have to take a history,” the woman said. “And then examine you. With that head wound, we'll need an MRI.”

“Take off the strap,” he repeated. “I can't breathe with that damn thing tying me down.”

The young doctor hesitated, glancing around as heads started to turn toward them. “Sir, I can't,” she said, looking up as two police officers in uniform approached.

“You the guy involved in the altercation at Norbeck and Baltimore?” the stockier one asked. “Ran your Jeep into a guy's truck? He knocked the shit out of you? We got you for reckless driving. You gonna press charges on the guy who punched you out?”

Jake tried to take a deep breath to steady himself, but the pain in his right side stopped him short. Maybe he did need X-rays of his ribs, but so what if they were broken? There was no treatment; they just had to heal on their own.

“Officers, I don't want any more trouble. I'll give the guy who hit me a break. I just want to get out of here. Where's my car, anyway?”

“Jeep's been towed to city impound. Your insurance adjusters can check it out there. Front end's a mess. You been drinking?” Both of the men leaned in closer to catch a whiff of Jake's breath. “Don't smell any,” the slimmer of the two said.

“I'm feeling okay now,” Jake said. “I don't need to be seen here. Leave the doctors for the real emergencies.”

“Up to them,” the slim cop indicated the intern who waited at the foot of the gurney. “Right now, looks like Detective Booker and his partner are on their way here.”

“Yeah, what's that all about?” the stocky cop wanted to know. “You in some kind of trouble with the law? Ran you through, nothin' came up.”