Of Flesh and Blood (63 page)

After almost two hours of discussion, Hutchins halted further debate. “As per the bylaws, we will vote by ballots and then count each one aloud.” She went on to read the motion again, as the ballots were distributed to each voting member.

Lorna checked off her ballot, folded it over, and passed it down. After all the lead-up and discussion, she was surprised by how quickly the voting process passed. Within five minutes, the ballots had been collected and the overhead screen filled with two columns and a one-word heading above each:
FOR
(those in favor of the sale) and
AGAINST
(those opposed).

Eileen sat at the front with the pile of sixty slips in front of her. Two other board members stood beside her as witnesses to the vote-counting. Without another word, Eileen reached for the first slip. “Against,” she called out impassively and Lorna’s stomach fell.

“For,” Eileen said. She reached for another slip. “For.” And then a third “for.”

Lorna looked up to the big screen above the podium with growing optimism. The “for” side was leading three to one.
Could it be?

“Against,” the chairperson called out. “Against,” she repeated.

Three to three. Lorna’s expectations plummeted again.

Ignoring everyone and everything else around her, she kept her eyes glued to the two columns on the screen as Eileen continued to read out the slips. The numbers flip-flopped back and forth, and Lorna’s hope rose and fell with them.

“For,” Eileen called out as she read off the fifty-fourth vote. Someone across the table oohed. The numbers on the screen changed again to show that the pro-sale side had reclaimed the lead by two votes: twenty-eight to twenty-six.

Three more votes in favor will be enough
, Lorna thought, barely able to breathe.

She stole a quick glance at the far end of the room. Erin shook her head disappointedly while Tyler clutched his temples between his thumb and forefinger and rocked in his chair. But William sat upright and very still, his hands folded in his lap and his face as much of a mask as ever.

“Against,” Eileen called out.

Damn it!

“Against.”

Lorna gripped the edge of the table.

The chairperson reached for the next of the only four remaining slips in front of her. “For,” she called out, and Lorna’s chest swelled with anticipation.
Only two more votes
.

The room was dead quiet except for the sound of the crisp paper unfolding. “Against,” Eileen said.

Lorna dug her fingers into the tabletop until they throbbed. Twenty-nine to twenty-nine.
We need both of those last two votes
.

Eileen fumbled with the second-to-last slip. The room collectively held its breath and watched as she straightened out the paper in her hand and slowly unfolded it. “Against!”

Lorna dropped her head into her hands.
It’s over
.

Whoops and groans broke out simultaneously as Eileen read off the last—and now meaningless—vote. “Against,” she said. “So the final tally is twenty-nine for and thirty-one against. The motion to sell the Alfredson is defeated,” Eileen shouted over the clamor.

“Darling. Darling. Oh,
darling!
”

It took Lorna a moment to register that Dot was calling out to her. Finally, she pulled her face from her hands and looked up at her great-aunt. The crafty woman was beaming with her most mischievous smile. She shrugged as though helpless to explain the recent turnabout. “Darling, it just wasn’t meant to end yet.”

Lorna simply gaped back at her great-aunt, speechless and agonizingly aware she had been utterly outmaneuvered.

Despite the cool chill that bit through his light jacket, Tyler stopped on the pathway as soon as he heard the thudding chopper blades above him. He craned his neck to stare into the drab November sky and admire the way the red bird swooped down toward the Henley Building as effortlessly as an eagle alighting. As he viewed the familiar buildings around him, it dawned on Tyler that, for better or worse, the Alfredson really was home.

He thought back to the dramatic board meeting a month earlier and remembered the moment—after the duplicitous Lorna Simpson had blind-sided them by attacking the integrity of the hospital and the McGrath family—when it seemed inevitable the board would vote to sell off the hospital. As irate as he had been with her at the time, he had also experienced a sense of loss, as though a small part of his identity was being ripped away from him.

He still chuckled every time he thought of how that cagey little woman, Dot Alfredson, had torn apart her great-niece’s case. The vote had still been uncomfortably close. The allure of the money must have been very strong for many family members.

The breeze picked up, and Tyler shuddered from the cold it brought. He glanced at his watch and realized it was time to head to the cafeteria.

Inside, Nikki was waiting for him at a corner table. She wore the same lavender scrubs and her hair was pulled back from her face as usual, but he noticed something different about her as soon as he sat down. It took him a moment to place it. Her dark expressive eyes were free of their recent angst, and she looked more at peace than he had ever seen her. “Nikki, you look great,” he said. “So relaxed and rested.”

“Five weeks clean and sober.” She grinned. “Providing, of course, I don’t have any slipups before dinner.”

“Congratulations!”

“Other people climb mountains or run triathlons. I don’t pop any pills for a month and it’s an accomplishment.” She laughed self-consciously. “How’s Jill doing?”

“Better, thanks,” he said, smiling. “We have another ultrasound today, but so far, so good.”

She nodded. “Like I told you before, I have a good feeling about all this.”

He wanted to reach out to touch her hand, but stopped himself. “Hey, I’m going to see Keisha again this afternoon in the clinic.”

She smiled. “How’s our little van Gogh doing?”

“Well. Really well. All the blood counts suggest her cancer has gone back into remission.”

“Maybe even cured this time?”

“That would be amazing,” Tyler said. “I have to give Vintazomab credit. If not for that drug . . .” He shook his head.

“Somehow it makes it a little easier to remember Nate and what he went through.” She grimaced. “Know what I mean?”

“I know exactly. By the way, it looks like the hospital and my lawyers are going to settle the lawsuit out of court with the Staffords.”

“Is that good for you?” she asked hesitantly.

“It’s going to cost the insurance company a decent settlement and my premiums are going to go up.” He shrugged. “But the point is, it’s good for the Staffords. Even more important, I think it’s going to help bring them some closure.”

Nikki nodded. “That’s exactly what they need.”

“Yeah.”

Nikki shifted in her seat and looked away. “Speaking of closure, Tyler, I wanted to tell you something.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m leaving,” she said.

“Leaving? The Alfredson?”

“Oakdale. The Pacific Northwest.” She looked away. “I’m going home to Arizona to be nearer my family.”

“Oh.” Tyler felt a twinge of loss. “When, Nikki?”

“Friday.”

“So soon?”

“I have a job waiting at the children’s hospital in Phoenix.” She chuckled. “I’ll make twenty-two cents less an hour, but the benefits are better.”

A long, silent pause passed between them. “I’m going to miss you, Nikki.”

She smiled warmly and for one millisecond Tyler felt the same rush as he did that evening at O’Doole’s. But then it was gone. “I’ll miss you, too,” she said. “But I need to make this change. The time is right, you know?”

He nodded. “Of course.”

They walked together out of the cafeteria. In the corridor they stopped and hugged for one long moment, and then she turned and hurried off.

Tyler headed directly to the outpatient ultrasound department. He arrived ten minutes early and was reading a magazine in the sprawling waiting room when Jill walked in. His wife had regained the weight from before her
C. diff
infection, and although she had yet to start adding any from her pregnancy, her skin’s glow was unmistakable. Over the past month her raw vulnerability had subsided and her old self-assurance had rebounded, though not to quite the same extent as before; pregnancy had softened the edge.

“Hey,” Tyler said as she sat down beside him. “Did you just come from your lab?”

“Indirectly.” She gripped his hand. “I dropped in on Senator Wilder on the way here.”

“How is he?” he asked.

“
He
thinks he’s better.” Jill shrugged. “The senator swears his hands are steadier. He thinks he’s already on his way to reclaiming his political career. Maybe even another run at the presidency.” She exhaled heavily. “But it’s way too soon for him to notice any real difference.”

Tyler ran a hand over her cheek. “Jill, even if his stem cells do nothing, you have given him fresh hope. Sounds like he needed that.”

“Everyone needs that,” she said with a little nod to herself. “I hope we can keep my study going.”

“That’s more than you would have thought possible four weeks ago.”

“True enough.”

A month before, neither of them would have dreamed that her lab was salvageable. Jill was convinced that she was facing permanent academic
ruin. But Wilder’s public endorsement combined with the surprise admission in her lab had strengthened her position. She had lost the funding of her previous agency, but she was guardedly optimistic that one of the other major multiple sclerosis societies might take up the slack and continue to fund her research.

“We’re scrambling to get the new grant applications in,” Jill said. “My staff has been so great, Ty. And Senator Wilder found backers who have donated the money to keep us afloat for the next few months.”

“They all believe in you. So they should.” He grinned. “Did you see Rymer’s article this morning?”

Jill chuckled. “I almost feel sorry for Andrew.”

“I don’t. The weasel got exactly what he deserves.” Tyler smiled, remembering the scandal. A few days after the board meeting, just as word of the cooked data in Jill’s lab began to circulate, Carla Julian—the emotionally frail Ph.D. student whom Andrew Pinter had dumped for one of her friends—had stepped forward and publicly accused Pinter of tampering with the study data. The fallout had driven Pinter from the Alfredson, but it had not ended there. Somehow—Tyler still suspected someone in the Alfredson’s communications department was involved—word reached Denny Rymer. The reporter jumped all over the case, holding Pinter up as the epitome of all that was corrupt and unethical in the world of academic research. The publicity had taken much of the heat off Jill, to the point where Tyler felt grudgingly grateful to Rymer.

“Ms. Laidlaw? Jill Laidlaw?” a tall blond-haired woman in white scrubs called out from across the waiting room.

Jill and Tyler rose and followed the ultrasound tech down a corridor and to a changing room. He waited outside for his wife to slip into a hospital gown and then they walked together across the hallway into the dark room, where the thin tech already sat on a stool between the empty stretcher and her ultrasound machine.

Jill climbed onto the stretcher, while Tyler sidled around the edge of it. He took her hand in his, and they shared a brief encouraging glance. The ultrasound tech draped Jill from the waist down with a sheet, pulled up her gown, and squirted the blue jelly onto her lower abdomen. The woman tapped a few buttons on her machine and then applied the ultrasound probe to Jill’s belly. The screen filled instantly with a new sight. Instead of
the tiny, ill-defined blob with the flickering heartbeat, they now saw a human fetus—with identifiable limbs, torso, and head—floating inside the gray shadow of Jill’s uterus.

Tyler watched in awe as the baby’s arm moved up toward its head while one of the legs suddenly bent as though doing hip thrusts.

Jill squeezed his hand tightly and stared up at him with unabashed joy. “Oh, Tyler!” Her voice cracked. She brought her other hand to her mouth. “She’s got all her limbs and everything!”

Tyler leaned forward and kissed Jill on the cheek. “I count four, too,” he said as a lump formed in his throat.

“Do you want to know the baby’s sex?” the tech asked them.

“No need.” Jill laughed. “We already do.”

After a long congratulatory kiss outside the diagnostics building, Tyler parted ways with Jill and made his way to the outpatient clinic. The busy afternoon flew past, highlighted by a visit and another sketch from Keisha, who was continuing to thrive post-Vintazomab.

Tyler picked Jill up from home at 6:35
P.M
., and they drove straight to his father’s house.

Looking as thin as ever, but far more at ease, William greeted them at the front door and led them into the dining room. Tyler had expected Liesbeth and his sister and her family to be there, but he was surprised to see Eileen Hutchins standing by the table with them. The adults all exchanged warm hellos, while Simon and Martin raced each other—almost upending the end table holding the salad bowls in the process—to high-five their uncle, Tyler, and hug their aunt, Jill.

Tyler was impressed by the gourmet dinner, including the poached salmon and red wine–braised beef, which William had catered from Le Bistro. The guests attacked the food and downed four bottles of wine among the six people drinking. (Jill and the boys abstained, though the twins kept trying to steal sips of the other guests’ wine.) The mood was celebratory, and the laughter frequent.

After dessert, Simon and Martin went upstairs to watch a movie, while the others gathered in the living room for coffee and port. William never explained Eileen’s presence, but he sat beside her on the couch. Though there was no physical contact between the two of them, Tyler inferred a romantic spark and felt pleased for his father.

“I’d like to make a toast,” William said as he stood from the couch, raised his glass of port, and waved it to each of the guests. “To family.”

Everyone lifted their glass or cup and toasted.