Whispers and Lies (25 page)

“I’m just not sure this is such a good idea.”

“It’s a great idea,” Beverley countered with a slap on my arm, as Lance began carefully measuring out equal amounts of champagne. I noticed that he too was dressed all in white.

“We couldn’t let you spend New Year’s Eve alone,” K.C. said.

“That wouldn’t have been very nice of us.” Denise began rifling through a nearby stack of patients’ charts.

I quickly moved them out of her reach. “You shouldn’t be back here.”

“Why not?”

“Denise,” Alison said.

Denise promptly left the nurses’ station, grabbing a glass of champagne from the counter as she brushed by. “Cheers, everybody.”

“Wait. We have to make a toast.” Alison waited to make sure we each had a glass.

“What are we drinking to?” Lance asked his sister.

“To the best year ever.” Alison raised her glass into the air.

“The best year ever,” we all agreed.

I didn’t want to be considered a wet blanket, so I took one sip, then another. The champagne tasted surprisingly
refreshing, so I took several more, the bubbles stinging the insides of my nose. “Good health,” I said under my breath.

“And wealth,” Denise added quickly.

“May we all get exactly what we want in the coming year,” Lance continued.

“Everything that’s coming to us,” K.C. added, smiling at me from over the rim of his glass as everyone took another sip of champagne.

“Everything we deserve,” Denise said.

“Everything we need,” said Alison.

“And what exactly is that?” her brother challenged.

Alison buried her nose inside her glass of champagne and said nothing. I finished the last of my champagne in two quick gulps.

“Well, I know what I need,” Denise said, laughing. “I need a change of scenery.”

“Weren’t you just in New York?”

“New York doesn’t count. I was with my mother.”

“What’s wrong with your mother?”

“Nothing—if you like uptight, anal-retentive, old farts.” Denise immediately doubled over with laughter.

“Alison likes uptight, anal-retentive, old farts,” Lance said, looking directly at me. “Don’t you, Alison?”

“I like everyone.” Alison finished the contents of her glass and poured herself another. I could tell by the way she was swaying, by the way they were
all
swaying, that this wasn’t the evening’s first bottle of booze. “Terry, your glass is empty.” Alison filled it to the top before I had time to object. “Drink up,” she urged, watching as I lifted the glass to my mouth.

“I’m serious,” Denise was saying. “I’ve had it with the East Coast. It’s time for a change.”

“Could this have anything to do with getting fired by your aunt?” K.C. asked.

“My aunt’s an uptight, anal-retentive, old fart.”

“Why’d she fire you?” Beverley asked, holding out her glass for a refill.

Denise shrugged. “Because she’s jealous of me. She’s always been jealous of me.”

“I thought it was because she caught you stealing from the till.”

Denise waved away K.C.’s unwanted explanation. “Wouldn’t have happened if she wasn’t such a damn tightwad. She was paying me next to nothing, for God’s sake. And she has all this money. Plus, I’m family. You’d think she could afford to be more generous. I hate people like that. Don’t you hate people like that, Terry?”

“I think people have a right to decide what to do with their own money.” I took another long sip of champagne, struggled to stay focused.

“Yeah, well, I think she’s—”

“—an uptight, anal-retentive, old fart?” Lance asked slyly.

“Exactly.” Denise wobbled toward him, pushed her breasts against his chest. “I was thinking of trying New Mexico. Want to come with me?”

“Sounds like a plan.” Lance put his arms around Denise’s waist, stared over her wilting dark spikes at Alison. “I’m getting a little tired of South Florida myself.”

Alison looked away, smiled in my direction, though
her smile was tight, as if it were holding back a torrent of angry words.

A buzzer sounded.

“What’s that?” Denise raised her head from Lance’s chest.

I glanced at the wall behind the nurses’ station. The button indicating Eliot Winchell’s room was lit up. “It’s one of my patients. I have to go.”

“We’ll come with you,” Lance said.

I shook my head in an effort to clear it, watched the room spin instead. “No. You have to leave now.”

The buzzer sounded again.

“Come on, guys. We should get going,” Alison said. “We don’t want to get Terry in trouble.”

Denise shook her head. “Oh, come on. Don’t be such an uptight—”

“—anal retentive—” K.C. continued.

“—old fart,” Lance concluded, and they all laughed. Except for Alison, who had the decency to look both embarrassed and ashamed.

The buzzer sounded again.

“Persistent little bugger, isn’t he?” Beverley said, making no move to respond to his call.

“Okay, guys, I appreciate your coming here, and bringing the champagne, and celebrating New Year’s Eve with us, but I really have to go now. And so do you.”

“We understand,” K.C. said.

“We can show ourselves out,” Lance offered, guiding the others to the elevator as the buzzer sounded yet again.

“Thanks for dropping by,” I heard Beverley say as I headed down the hall. The floor was sliding under my
feet, like a moving sidewalk, and I grabbed the wall for support, trying to control the spinning of my head. Was I drunk already, on only two glasses of champagne? The only other time I’d gotten this drunk this fast, I realized, I’d also been with Alison.

I pushed open the door to Eliot Winchell’s room. He was sitting up in bed, his covers bunched up around his ankles, the front of his pajamas wet with his urine. “Oh, Eliot. Have you had an accident?”

“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly.

“No. Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.”

“Really?” Lance asked, pushing past me into the room, followed by Denise and K.C. Alison hung back in the doorway as the others approached the bed. “Then whose fault is it? Hello, I’m Dr. Palmay,” Lance continued before I had time to react. “And these are my colleagues, Dr. Austin and Dr. Powers.”

Denise laughed, and Eliot laughed with her, although I doubt he got the joke.

“He’s so cute,” Denise said. “What’s his problem?”

“Obviously, he’s wet his pants,” Lance answered. “What kind of doctor are you anyway?”

“Oh, gross,” Denise said.

“You have to leave now,” I said when I could find my voice. My mouth was dry. Thoughts swirled helplessly around my brain, as if trapped in an unexpected eddy. I steadied myself against Eliot Winchell’s bed.

“Yes, we do,” Alison agreed from the doorway. “Come on, Doctors. We have to go now and let Terry do her job.”

“Looks like Terry could use a bit of help,” K.C. said. “She’s looking a little green around the gills.”

“I’m sorry, Terry,” Alison said. “I didn’t know they were going to do this.”

“What are you talking about?” Lance shot back angrily. “This whole thing was your idea.”

And then they were gone. In the merciful silence that followed, I changed Eliot into another pair of pajamas and settled him back in his bed. I did all this by rote, my head spinning, my vision impaired by a cluster of bright neon bubbles exploding before my eyes. Had my glass contained something more potent than champagne?

I clung to the walls as I navigated the moving hallway back to the nurses’ station, my concerns swept away in an unexpected fit of adolescent giggles that burst from my throat like kernels of corn from a popper. Seconds later, I collapsed into my chair, wondering at what precise moment I’d lost control of my life, knowing it was exactly the moment Alison had shown up at my door.

T
hey were waiting for me in the parking lot at the end of my shift.

I saw Denise first. She was sitting on the trunk of a car, drinking wine directly from a bottle and kicking her feet into the air, as if she were lounging at the end of a dock on the Intracoastal. A small gold loop flashed at me from the side of her right nostril. I didn’t remember seeing it earlier.

K.C. was standing beside her, his hands crammed into the pockets of his tight jeans, his eyes on the ground. He looked as if he’d just been sick or was about to be, although when he raised his head in my direction, I saw he was smiling. Surprisingly, I smiled back, as if I were no longer in charge of my own reflexes, as if I’d been reduced to a puppetlike state, and I went wherever my strings pulled me. I’d expected the champagne to have worn off by now, but if anything, I was feeling even more
discombobulated than before. Strange images were dancing around my head, refusing to settle long enough for me to identify them. Bright colors continued to float, like loose balloons, across my line of vision. It required all my concentration just to put one foot in front of the other.

Alison and Lance were sitting, half-in, half-out of the white Lincoln that was parked several empty spaces away, its doors open to the early-morning air. Lance was in the front seat, Alison the back, and when she leaned forward, balancing her elbows on her knees, I saw that her eyes were puffy and wet, as if she’d been crying. Or maybe she was just stoned, I realized, as the unmistakable odor of marijuana wafted toward my nose, and I saw the rich orange glow of a hand-rolled cigarette dangling casually from Lance’s fingers.

“Well, look who’s here,” Denise said.

“About time.” K.C. straightened up, lifted his arms above his head in a prolonged, catlike stretch, as if he were getting ready to pounce.

“What are you still doing here?” I looked around, the scenery blurring as I strained to see whether anyone else was in the parking lot, but there was no one. Great security, I thought, wondering who would hear me if I screamed.

Alison climbed out of the rented Lincoln, swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I didn’t want you driving home alone on New Year’s Eve.”

Lance took a long drag of his cigarette. “Party’s just beginning.”

“Party’s over,” I told them, trying to remember where I’d parked my car. “I’m exhausted. I just want to go home and crawl into bed.”

“Now that’s a plan,” Lance said, as he had said earlier.
He extended the marijuana cigarette in my direction. Smoke filled my nostrils, like a too sweet perfume.

I shook my head no, although I had to admit the sensation was not altogether unpleasant.

“For strictly medicinal purposes, of course.” Denise slid off the trunk of the car and inhaled deeply from the smoldering joint in Lance’s fingers.

“K.C., you and Denise take my car,” Lance instructed. “Alison and I’ll go with Terry.” Without asking, he lifted my purse from my hands and extricated the keys to my car. “I’ll drive,” he said, the words crawling around the joint now pressed between his lips.

“I’m not sure this is such a good idea.”

“You shouldn’t be driving in your condition.” Lance laughed, as if he knew something I didn’t, and I felt my legs buckle beneath me. They
had
put something in my champagne. Probably a hallucinogen, I decided, trying to hang on to reality, like a child clinging to the handlebars of a runaway bicycle.
Let go
, a little voice urged inside my head. Give in and let go.

I felt a wave of euphoria wash over me as I released my grip on the here and now. I pictured myself flying backward through the air without a helmet, the wind whipping at my hair. Instead I found myself squashed beside Alison in the passenger seat of my car, her arm around me in a protective, almost smothering embrace. The oppressive smell of marijuana circled my head like an errant halo, forcing its way up my sinuses, like wads of cotton batten. “What exactly did you put in my drink?” I heard someone ask, understanding it was me only by the echo bouncing between my ears.

“You mean aside from the rufies and the LSD?” Lance laughed as we sped out of the parking lot and turned onto Jog Road, the white Lincoln following close behind.

“Shut up, Lance,” Alison said. “She’ll think you’re serious.”

“I
am
serious. I’m a very serious fellow. Come on, Terry.” He waved what was left of the marijauna cigarette in front of my face. “In for a penny, in for a pound. Isn’t that what they say?”

“She said she doesn’t want any,” Alison said.

“No, that’s all right,” I surprised us all by saying. What the hell, I remember thinking. My life was no longer my own. Whatever was going to happen was no longer up to me. I’d been excluded from the decision-making process, and instead of feeling threatened and afraid, I felt relieved, even excited. I was walking a tight-rope without a safety net. I was free.

So I laughed as I accepted the joint from Lance’s waiting fingers, then raised it to my lips and inhaled deeply, holding it in my lungs the way I’d seen Denise do in the parking lot, until my throat burned and my chest threatened to explode.

“Look at that.” Lance laughed. “She’s an old pro.”

I took another drag, this one longer than the first, watching dispassionately as the thin paper burned its way down to the tips of my fingers. Unfamiliar stirrings of well-being whooshed through my body, like a fresh transfusion of blood. I’d never smoked marijuana before, although I’d been tempted as a teenager. This had less to do with any great moral integrity on my part than it did with my greater fear of my mother finding out.

I drew another long drag into my lungs, then sank into a deep well of complete and utter calm, realizing I never wanted to resurface. I clung to the sensation, as a drowning woman clings to a life buoy, pressing the smoke against my lungs like a branding iron, exhaling only the faintest puff, and only when I could no longer hold my breath.

“Easy does it,” Lance warned as I inhaled again, a small tower of ash replacing the paper in my hand.

I gasped as the cigarette burned into my fingers.

“Are you all right?” Alison asked. “Did you burn yourself?”

“Let me see that.” Lance grabbed my right hand, forced my index and middle fingers into his mouth, sucked greedily on their tips.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Alison slapped her brother’s hand with such force, his teeth scraped my knuckles. “Terry, are you okay?”