Of Flesh and Blood (20 page)

Jill nodded. “I hear it’s causing your father no end of grief.”

“Yeah, I don’t think he’s slept in days. You know Dad. Any threat to the Alfredson—”

“Is like a threat to his own child.”

“No, it’s
far
more serious than that,” Erin said, and they both laughed.

“William dropped by on Tyler’s birthday. He tried to talk him into getting involved in medical administration.”

Erin’s eyes lit with amusement. “My little bro in med admin? Can’t see it.”

“Has William ever approached you about it?”

“He doesn’t waste his breath anymore.” The amusement slid from Erin’s expression. “Jill, how do you think Dad looks lately?”

“Pale,” she said without hesitation.

Erin nodded. “I saw him a few days ago. He looked like crap.”

“Maybe the stress of being CEO is finally catching up to him.”

“Maybe,” Erin said distantly.

Jill shrugged, still stung by her father-in-law’s insinuation that her career might be adversely affecting her fertility. “I get the feeling William would like to see me gestate a male heir to the McGrath throne.”

“No doubt. My boys don’t share the McGrath name. Besides, I can’t see a medical future for either of them.” Erin put down the cup of tea and viewed Jill earnestly. “How’s that going, anyway? You guys still trying?”

Jill looked away. “Not actively.”

“Friends of mine adopted a little girl from China. They’re so happy that they’re now planning to adopt a little boy from Korea.”

Jill’s frustration surged, and she slammed her cup down on the counter-top. “We’re not idiots, Erin,” she snapped. “We’re aware of the other options out there.”

“I am sure you are, Jill. I just thought—”

“Thought what? Because you had no trouble having kids, you could offer me advice on the best way to?”

Erin shook her head. “I wasn’t trying to advise you, Jill,” she said in a quiet but firm tone. “And I didn’t mean to offend. I thought you might be interested in my friends’ experience. But I guess not.”

“I know people who have adopted kids from Asia as well,” Jill said in a more conciliatory tone. “Sorry, Erin. As you can probably tell, this whole child issue is a bit of a sore point for me these days.”

“Fair enough. I could have been a little more sensitive.” Erin checked her watch and then rose to her feet. “I think I’ll have to catch up with Tyler at the hospital.”

Oil and water
, Jill thought again as she walked Erin to the door, where they shared a cursory good-bye.

By eleven
P.M
. Jill had still not heard from Tyler. That was unusual. Most times, he would have at least called to explain his lateness. Stewing with frustration and worry over the future of her lab, the run-ins with her
in-laws, and Tyler’s whereabouts, Jill drew a bath and uncorked a bottle of wine.

Lying in the tub, she performed the breast self-exam that she performed monthly (whenever she remembered) since her favorite aunt had been diagnosed with breast cancer the year before; the second of her mother’s sisters to develop cancer. Jill found no lumps, but her breasts were tender to touch. She remembered she was due to start her period any moment, so that would explain their sensitivity. Out of reflex, she considered taking another home pregnancy test but decided there was no point. She had not conceived during their regimented sexual schedule while on fertility-enhancing drugs and—as Tyler and she had made love only once in the past month or so—she was unlikely to get pregnant now.

Besides, she thought her breasts, which were never particularly large but always shapely enough to draw attention, had shrunken over the past year. She had lost weight, as she was prone to, due to her recent career stress. She knew those lost nine pounds included her chest, still she couldn’t help but see her reduction in cup size as symbolic of further-dwindling fertility.

You’re not even thirty-five yet! Get a grip, Jill
. She had little time for anyone’s self-pity, least of all her own.

She had just climbed into bed and reached for her book when Tyler walked in. His face was haggard, his eyes bloodshot. For a moment, she had a fleeting premonition that he was about to announce he was leaving her.
What the hell is wrong with me?

Jill dropped her book on the nightstand. “What’s the matter, Ty?”

Arms dangling at his sides, Tyler stood on the other side of the bed looking like an automaton. “Nate Stafford died.”

Jill couldn’t place the name at first, but then she remembered. “Oh, the baseball player?” She felt a pang of relief that the news wasn’t of a more personal nature.

“The former ball player.”

“Sorry.” Jill held out a hand to him. “But you made it seem that this was inevitable,” she said as gently as possible, aware of how sensitive he had been lately to her tone when it came to his patients.

“True.” He looked away. “I just never guessed that I would end up killing him.”

“
Killing him?
” She sat up in the bed. “What are you talking about?”

Tyler dropped onto the bed. He sat hunched over the end of it with his head in his hands, rocking in place. “Nate was in the ICU with pneumonia.” He went on to describe the boy’s septic condition and his decision to rush Nate onto the experimental Vintazomab treatment protocol. “Right after I ran the dose through the spinal needle, he began to seize. We gave him every drug we could think of, but nothing would stop those goddamn convulsions. Finally, we chemically paralyzed him with neuromuscular blockers.” He held up a hand and then dropped it to his side. “By that point, it was too late. The damage was done.” The emotion drained from his voice entirely. “Nate died two hours later.”

Jill’s shock receded as she absorbed his explanation. She shuffled down the bed until she sat beside him. She laid a hand on his thigh and squeezed gently. “Ty, you did exactly what was needed. What any good doctor would do. You tried a medicine of last resort when all else had failed.” She sighed. “It didn’t work. That’s not your fault.”

“I was cavalier, Jill,” he said flatly. “I rushed the treatment.”

“Sounds to me like he needed urgent treatment.”

“I should have done a CAT scan of his head to make sure there was no sign of elevated pressure from the cancer load before I gave him the spinal Vintazomab. I think that dose pushed his cerebral pressure over the edge.”

“You don’t know that!” Jill snapped, frustrated by her husband’s determination to hold himself accountable for something so obviously beyond his control. She willed her voice calmer, and squeezed his leg supportively. “Listen to me, Ty. I’m a neurologist. I know a thing or two about seizures and raised intracerebral pressure. The boy was awake and alert when you saw him. There was no reason to get a CAT scan before starting the drug. We both know it would not have affected his outcome.”

“Do we?”

“He was dying, Tyler,” she said more firmly. “No matter what you did or did not do. At least he was unaware at the end.”

“So were his parents, Jill,” he said, his voice catching. “They never even had a chance to say good-bye.”

Jill had run out of ways to defend Tyler to himself, so she left her hand where it was and said nothing. Her thoughts drifted back to ideas for enhancing the grant renewal application, which hung over her like a guillotine. With the current state of her data—and still months away from potential
publication in a high-impact journal—she was less and less certain of re -approval.

“You know, Nate was the first patient I saw at the Alfredson,” Tyler murmured, still staring straight ahead. “I had such a good feeling about his prognosis last year. I basically told him he was going to beat his cancer.”

“You gave him every chance to,” Jill said absentmindedly.

“Hmmm,” Tyler grunted.

Jill turned and studied her husband. She had never seen him so shaken. Part of her wanted to cradle him until the pain eased, while the other wanted to slap him back to his senses. She squeezed his leg harder. “Listen to me, Tyler. You can beat yourself up forever. But when you step away from your personal attachment, you know that this poor boy was destined to die.” She numbered the points with the fingers on her other hand. “He was riddled with cancer. He had failed all therapy. His immune system was shot. And he had acquired an overwhelming infection.” She reached out with the same hand and cupped his chin between her thumb and index finger and gently rotated his head toward her. “The truth is, no doctor or medicine was going to save Nate.”

He nodded slightly.

“Ty, do you think you’ll be able to let this go?” she asked.

“With time,” he said, and mustered a small smile. “Thank you.”

She shrugged. “Hey, that’s our deal, right? We cover each other’s backs.”

Tyler studied her tenderly for a long moment. Then he leaned closer and kissed her on the mouth. She met his kiss with little interest, but that did not discourage him. He seemed to need her physical consolation.

It had been weeks since they had made love, and normally the pressure of his lips and the minty taste of his breath would have stoked her interest, but the stress of her looming grant showdown had doused her libido.

Despite her minimal responsiveness, Tyler did not stop as he might have at other times. He moved his mouth across her cheek to her ear and began to lick and nibble at her earlobe. He slipped a hand under her pajama top and massaged her lower back in slow deep circles.

Feeling his warm breath on her ear and the steady pressure of his fingers against her spine, Jill’s body began to respond in spite of herself. Her husband’s desperate need for sexual solace was arousing, too. Soon the checklist of next steps on her grant dissolved from her mind, and she focused on
the pleasing rhythm of his fingers and lips. When he slipped off her pajama top, she felt the warmth between her legs. She was surprised by how excited she had become at the sudden anticipation of their nakedness, and the touching, licking, and pleasure that was to follow.

After they had made love, twice and with more intensity than they had in months, Jill drifted into an easy contented sleep, her worries sweated away.

But she awoke shortly after four
A.M
. with a sense of looming dread even more acute than the previous evening. Tyler tossed restlessly beside her, but when she looked over his eyes were shut and he appeared to be dreaming. She wondered if he was experiencing a nightmare related to his patient’s death, but she did not wake him up. She had no energy to console him again this morning.

Jill crawled out of bed and tiptoed to the bathroom. The scale showed she had lost another two pounds since her last weigh-in. She showered, changed, and headed downstairs. She hesitated a moment outside the kitchen. Based on the scales, she knew better than to skip another meal, but feeling the pressure of time, she promised herself she would grab a bite of breakfast at the hospital.

Jill arrived at the Alfredson’s neurosciences center at 5:05
A.M
. It was still dark, but several of the floors were lit inside the sixties-style, white-and-blue tile building that Jill always considered hideously ugly. Regardless, it was one of the larger buildings on site, indicative of the prominence of the neurology program within the Alfredson. Someone had once told her that the hospital’s focus on multiple sclerosis and the neurosciences in general dated back to the original chief of staff, Tyler’s great-great-grandfather, whose first wife had died of the disease.

Aside from a nurse who was having a smoke break outside, and the night-shift security guard inside the lobby, Jill saw no one else until she reached her ninth-floor lab. She unlocked the door and let herself in to find that the lights were already burning. She wondered for a moment if she had left them on the evening before but dismissed the idea. Even if she had, the cleaners would have turned them off.

“Jill!”

The loud voice startled her. It had come from down the hallway housing the inner offices. “Andrew? Is that you?” she asked, recognizing the voice of one of her research assistants.

Andrew Pinter stuck his head out of Jill’s office, the last one down the corridor. The twenty-eight-year-old Ph.D. in biostatistics often used her office computer to analyze data for their study, claiming it was faster than the others, though Jill suspected Pinter preferred the size and privacy of her office. With a mop top, scraggly beard, and studded earrings in both ears, Pinter could have passed for the front man of a grunge band. Despite his trademark torn jeans and chronic scruffiness, or maybe in part because of them, he exuded an effortless animal magnetism. Jill understood why a steady stream of gorgeous young women dropped by the lab to bring him food or pick him up after work. Pinter was a charmer when he chose to be, and Jill usually enjoyed his playful flirtatiousness.

“You got to check this out,” he said, waving her into the office.

“What is it?” she asked, stifling a yawn as she walked toward him.

“You’ll see.” He winked and his head disappeared into the room.

Jill stepped inside. Pinter had plunked down behind her desk and was typing away at the computer. A coffee cup sat on one side of the keyboard, and on the other side lay an open wrapper with muffin crumbs that sprawled beyond its edges and onto her desk. The sight raised her hackles; Jill was meticulous about keeping her workspace clean.

Pinter didn’t seem to notice her exasperation. He waved her around to his side of the desk and pointed proudly at the screen. Jill studied the simple graph it showed. Two colored lines started from the same point near the bottom of the vertical axis on the left-hand side of the screen. As the lines progressed over the time axis, the one labeled
TREATMENT
diverged dramatically upward from the line labeled control.

Jill eyed him skeptically, though excitement had begun to bubble inside her. “Where is this data from?”

“I plugged in what data we had on the six-month follow-ups on the stem cell implantation subjects,” Pinter said.

“We’re still enrolling patients. Besides, we haven’t even finished collecting that six-month follow-up data yet.” Jill tried to sound dismissive, but her chest had begun to pound and she warmed with excitement.