After the Fall

by Patricia Gussin

Gun in right hand, now held behind his back, Jake grabbed Addie’s arm with his left. “Let’s go, Addie.”

  Jake’s plan hadn’t included the use of weapons on the street, but the notion of Addie going anywhere with Nelson incensed him beyond tolerance. “Now!” he repeated.

  “Jake?” Addie looked up at him, her eyes clouded with something he feared was betrayal.

  “Addie, come,” Jake said, catching her coat sleeve.

  “No.” Addie tried to free her arm. “Jake, I can’t go with you. I’m sorry.”

  “Mr. Harter,” Nelson said, “Addie’s with us. Come on, Addie, just keep walking.”

  “You are coming with me.” Jake’s heart beat faster now. He meant to keep his tone normal, but his words came out a command. “You are with me.”

  “The lady doesn’t seem to want to leave with you,” the redheaded man butted in. “So—”

  In an instant, Jake swung the gun toward Nelson, who didn’t seem to flinch. What, she wasn’t afraid of bullets? Didn’t think he’d have the balls to terminate her worthless life? Well, she was about to—

  The gun in his right hand, within point-blank range of Nelson, Jake saw the redhaired man start to move. He had to kill the bitch, now. He pulled the trigger, but not before Addie pulled out of his grip, flinging herself in front of his target. As the bullet tore through his beloved’s chest, Jake felt his life implode. His body started to fold, the gun almost slipped from his hands, but within a millisecond, a surge of adrenaline restored his strength. Again he took aim at Nelson, who now was on the ground beside Addie, kneeling in a pool of bright red blood. I can’t let Nelson’s be the last face Addie sees. Aiming at Nelson’s chest, Jake pulled the trigger just as a force hit his knees. The gunshot reverberated as Jake hit the pavement, landing on his side. On top of him now, the man with the red hair delivered a powerful blow to his jaw. He felt bone shatter. When he looked up, he no longer faced the redhaired man, but looked into the faces of the black woman and the white man he’d made as law enforcement. Each held a firearm inches from his face. “Federal Agent,” the woman said, “Jake Harter. You are under arrest.”

  Jake’s garbled, “Addie?” was drowned out by a man’s shout. “Laura, no! Get an ambulance! Now!”

  Pinned to the ground, facing away from Addie, tears flooded in Jake’s eyes. “Addie? Are you—”

  “Mr. Jake Harter.” The familiar voice of Detective Booker. “We’ve been looking for you. Been wanting to pin a murder charge on you. Doctor Fred Minn? Name sound familiar? Outside the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia? And maybe we could make the case for your wife too. But hey! Now we got you cold. Killin’ your fiancée. Didn’t you say you and the beautiful young doctor were planning to marry? And so soon after losing your wife Karolee?”

  “Addie?” Jake called in anguish through the pain in his busted jaw. As the handcuffs went on, he struggled for a glimpse of Addie. What had Detective Booker meant? “Addie!”

  Jake’s head throbbed as he kept trying to turn and look at the spot where Addie had fallen. Sirens screamed, the sound closer and closer. “Hurry,” Jake yelled. “Addie, you have to be okay.” He wanted to call out to Nelson, a chest surgeon, to beg her to help Addie, but when he tried to talk, his efforts were thwarted by blood flooding in his mouth. That guy had hit him hard, very hard.

  Despite the cuffs, despite the searing pain in his jaw, the thumping in his head, despite a pair of guns still trained on him, Jake managed at last to turn far enough around to see the ground where Addie lay drenched in blood. But she was not alone on the blood-soaked pavement. Beside her lay Laura Nelson. The redhaired man leaning over her, talking to her. Jake’s field of vision was not clear enough for him to see whether either Addie or Nelson were moving, whether they were breathing, but the intermingling blood where they lay was profuse. Onlookers stood around, mostly wringing their hands, waiting helplessly for the ambulance that was now screaming its arrival.

  “I need to be with Addie,” he begged.

  “Too late,” pronounced Detective Booker.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  FRIDAY, MARCH 6

  When Tim leaned across the gurney to kiss Laura’s forehead, she saw dark red stains on his pale yellow shirt, and an irregular pattern of darkness on the dark brown suit jacket. So much blood had soaked his jacket she could smell the acrid odor.

  The Georgetown University Hospital doctors wanted her admitted right there, right then. Laura intended to keep her appointment with her children that evening in Philadelphia. She would not take no for an answer. The compromise: Georgetown ER physicians would stabilize her. The Gulfstream, which Keystone Pharma often volunteered for medevac missions, would take her immediately to Philadelphia. She promised to remain at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania until doctors there signed her medical release.

  She’d been shot through her left shoulder. A lucky shot, if a gunshot wound could be considered lucky. Damage to muscles and tendons, but they would heal. Among the doctors, including Laura, no one could agree whether, given a choice, it would be better to be shot in her bad arm or her healthy one. Fate picked the good arm. When she went down, she’d landed on the site of her injury, but Addie’s body, already bathed in the blood of her mortal chest wound, absorbed much of the impact.

  An ambulance had taken Addie to Georgetown, too, but she had been dead on arrival. The first bullet had torn into her friend’s left ventricle, destroying it on impact. The second time the gunman took aim, he might well have killed again, if Tim’s tackle had not deflected the bullet. Just before Laura’s morphine injection, her last conscious thought was grief over the loss of a promising young medical researcher and a charming friend.

  Having slept four hours, Laura awoke in a hospital room. Tim sat in the chair next to her bed, still wearing the brown tailored suit he’d worn to the press conference. While in the emergency room at Georgetown, they’d removed her contact lenses and, without her glasses, she couldn’t make out much detail.

  Lost without them, she asked Tim, “Do you have my purse?”

  “Funny question. You need cash? I’m sure the hospital will accept a check.”

  “My glasses,” Laura said. “Can’t face the world—or my family—without them. What time is it?”

  “It’s five thirty.” Tim reached into her bulging handbag, fumbled around, and pulled out the case with her glasses inside.

  “This is better,” Laura said.

  She attempted to rise to a sitting position, but the pain in her bandaged left shoulder made that maneuver impossible, and she still couldn’t put any pressure on her right hand without reinjuring the healing bones. She felt helpless, not to mention a mess. “Can you elevate the bed, or, if there’s a button, I can push it.”

  Tim found the button, raised the bed to a comfortable angle, and sat down beside her in his chair on the edge of the bed. “Seriously, Laura, how are you feeling?”

  “My new bad arm hurts like hell, and my old bad arm is not about to let me forget, but overall, I’m okay. Most of all, though, I grieve for Addie. I didn’t know her that well, but I really liked her. She’s not that much older than Natalie and Nicole. What a loss to medicine too.”

  “This may not be the right time, Laura, but I have something to tell you.” Tim paused, took a deep breath. “While you were asleep, Mike came to see me.”

  Tim had said me. Why Tim?

  “What did he want?” asked Laura, a panicky note in her voice. Tim had changed the venue for the planned meeting with the kids to a conference room here in the hospital, rather than the restaurant at the Barclay Hotel. They should be here in two hours. “Was it about tonight?” Had Patrick already told his brothers and sisters? Was her family already shunning her?

  “No, Laura.” Tim reached for her left hand, held it gently. “Mike came to me about something else.”

  “Everything okay for tonight?” Laura verified, trying for a neutral voice. What I really want is to put off tonight until never.
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br />   “Yes, if you’re up to it. Each of the kids called to check that it’s okay to come. Patrick called three times. I told them all a tentative yes, knowing you, how stubborn you are. Said I’d let them know if you decided to postpone. You know the shooting at the FDA has been all over the news. You’re reported as ‘stable with minor injuries.’”

  He had told her in the Keystone Gulfstream flying back from DC that Jake Harter was in custody. Thanks to Laura’s tip linking Harter’s Jeep to the night Fred Minn was killed, the Philly police had arrested Harter for that hit-and-run. And they still suspected him of killing his wife.

  “Good thing I showed up today, huh?” Tim said. “I’m coming off like a hero in the news. I just wish I could have acted before Harter shot Addie. He was aiming at you—Addie jumped in the way. She’s the real hero.”

  “You are a hero, Tim. My hero, always will be. And Mike? What did he want?”

  “Mike told me about last night. How he’d worked into the early hours to pull together the papers Dr. Abdul needed to secure the money Replica owed her. And to put the funds into safekeeping until she felt free to access them. She also did not want her family in Iraq to come into this money unless she so requested. Mike put it in a trust.”

  “Yes,” Laura said, “Addie seemed fine with Mike as her trustee. Not that she wasn’t worried about going back home—”

  “Mike told her she needed a backup plan.” Tim had cut her off, and Laura wondered why he seemed overanxious. “What if something happened to Addie before she could use the money? She had seven and a half million dollars in the US. She didn’t know what to do.” Tim paused to take a really deep breath. “So Mike advised she assign it to a good cause. When she asked ‘what good cause could you recommend?’ he said, ‘CHOP.’ So, Laura, now that Addie’s dead, that money will go to CHOP to be used for whatever programs I recommend.”

  “Tim, that’s wonderful. If anything good could come from losing Addie, this is it. You save so many lives. You know, after you called last night saying you wouldn’t be able to make the press conference today, I told Addie about you, about your patients, about how CHOP had become the surgical hospital of choice for children with congenital heart disease from the Middle East.” Laura hesitated as tears slipped down her cheeks, “But I was just bragging about what you do. You’re my hero.”

  “I’m still in shock,” Tim said. “I wanted you to know about Addie’s legacy. No one at CHOP knows yet.”

  “Addie was conflicted about her Western and Middle Eastern lifestyles,” Laura said. “I think she’d want this kept anonymous. Let’s go over that with Mike.”

  “Speaking of Mike, the kids will be here at seven thirty.”

  “I need to get cleaned up. Tim, how will I tell them? I have no words.”

  “Go with your heart, babe. Use the words in your heart to reach them.”

  A knock at the door interrupted. “You have a visitor,” the cheery nurse announced. “Go on in, Mr. Parnell.”

  Again, Laura attempted to sit up and, again, was thwarted by pain in both arms; throbbing in her right lower arm and hand; sharp and searing in the left shoulder.

  “Laura, I can’t tell you how distraught I am.” Paul Parnell’s cheeks did, in fact, look a bit less ruddy than usual. “All of Keystone Pharma, actually. Instead of popping champagne corks, we’re mourning Dr. Abdul, and praying for your quick recovery.” He walked up to her bedside and stood by Tim.

  “Thank you for coming,” Laura said. She wished he hadn’t. She knew she looked awful. She had a lot on her mind that had nothing to do with being shot or with Immunone’s approval or her boss. “Sorry, neither of my arms work now.”

  “No work for you, period, for a while,” Paul said. “We do hope you recover fast, but when you feel better, please take a break?”

  “Laura, I think you absolutely should take your boss’ offer.” Tim turned to Paul. “I’ve been trying to get your new employee to settle on a wedding date, and with your considerate offer, I think we could even fit in a honeymoon. How about that, Laura?”

  Unless my kids reject me tonight. Decide that the mother they’d grown up respecting all their lives was a phony. A deceitful slut who’d indulged in an extramarital affair, who’d betrayed their poor father. Tim, if my life became a wasteland, I couldn’t marry you.

  “We’ll see.” Laura tried for a smile, but managed only a grimace.

  “I’ll be running along,” Paul said. “I can see you’re in a lot of pain. Any idea when they’ll let you go home?”

  “We’re hoping for tomorrow or Sunday, at the latest,” Tim said.

  “Just keep us posted at Keystone, Laura. In the meantime, we’ll keep that champagne on ice. You were brilliant at the press conference. We all thank you. You take good care of her, Tim.”

  Paul Parnell left, looking more robust than when he arrived.

  Laura rang for the nursing staff, requested a sponge bath and help with her hair, refused any mind-numbing pain meds, but accepted a tray of finger sandwiches, grateful that she could at least pick them up with her left hand and lift them to her mouth; likewise, she could lift the glass of water and drink through the straw.

  Tim pushed Laura’s wheelchair into the conference room he’d arranged for the Nelson clan meeting. A far cry from the private room at the Barclay. The hospital had provided soft drinks and the same little finger sandwiches they’d given Laura in her room. Not much, just a few munchies to create the illusion of a social occasion.

  Tim had said to go with her heart. Laura’s heart was with her kids, always had been. Had she been a good wife to Steve? Probably not. Had he been a good husband to her? In some ways, but not at the end. Had he been a good father to her children? Yes, for the boys. No, for her twin daughters. Were her children old enough to even remember Steve? Definitely Mike, he’d been fourteen years old when Steve died. Maybe, for the others; Kevin, eleven; Natalie and Nicole, ten; Patrick, nine.

  Patrick now knew Steve was not his biological father. She’d told him about her involvement with David Monroe. Patrick was twenty-two, he deserved to know. He’d taken it well, or at least he appeared to have. How would the other four react: their brother Patrick, in reality, a half-brother?

  She would know soon enough. Thank goodness she had Tim. Tim had become her strength. Why, she wondered, had it taken so long to come to realize she and Tim belonged together. More than she and Steve. Even more than she and David, although that realization still stunned her. For all these years, Laura had remained true to the memory of David Monroe. She and David had spent only one night together. And David had died in her arms.

  Laura had no clothes of her own at the hospital, so she had to meet her family in one of those open-from-the-back hospital garments under a gray-striped robe. She looked pathetic. Her hair hung limp and her nails were broken and she wore her clunky glasses.

  She insisted that she sit at the table in a normal chair. Tim dutifully did as she’d requested; parked the wheelchair outside the room. She was ready. Tim sat beside her. They simultaneously checked their watches. Twenty after seven. Tim had gotten up to get her a glass of water when Natalie arrived. Still in green scrubs, her daughter explained that one of the other residents on her team wanted to surprise his wife for their anniversary, and she’d offered to take his call since she’d be in the hospital anyway. That was Natalie, always looking out for others. Would her generous spirit prevail tonight?

  Natalie sat down on Laura’s left and, after an air kiss, inspected Laura’s left shoulder. “Bullet missed the scapula,” she said.

  “Right.” Laura hoped for a clue about Natalie’s choice of specialty. “You thinking about orthopedics?”

  “Me? Wrong daughter,” Natalie said. “But I wouldn’t put it past Nicole. That field is dominated by men.”

  Mike arrived next, still in his business suit. Probably came right from his office. He swooped down to kiss her cheek. “You okay, Mom? Did Uncle Tim tell you I stopped by earlier? Gosh, Mom, you s
ure gave us all a scare.”

  “Am I late?” Kevin arrived within minutes. He looked business-like in a suit of muted greys, except for his loosened tie. Must have been meeting with clients. In the field he wore khakis, a t-shirt, and work boots. “Traffic from Princeton was heavier than usual.” He headed toward Laura, pressed his cheek to hers, instead of doing his usual bear-hug routine. “You okay, Mom? You’ve been all over the news. Wish you’d stay out of harm’s way. You need another bum arm?”

  Laura watched Kevin playfully punch Natalie’s shoulder as he settled in the chair next to her. “Looks like you didn’t have far to travel. How convenient that Mom comes to your hospital. Where’s your better half?” Laura could only hope their camaraderie would not shatter by the end of the evening’s discussion.

  “I talked to Nicole about an hour ago,” Mike said. “She went home to change. Wanted to look good in case Mom decides to hold her second press conference of the day.”

  “She’s on Dermatology this week,” Natalie said. “Ridiculously easy call schedule. Maybe she’s got a big night planned. It is Friday night. But I won’t be going anywhere.”

  “I’m betting Nicole becomes one of those dermatologists to the stars,” Kevin said, his mouth stuffed with a sandwich. “The kind that rips people off and makes billions—”

  “I heard that.” Nicole barged through the door. Her brainy daughter wore a black cocktail dress that came well short of her knees and displayed too much cleavage for Laura’s taste. Nicole wore more makeup than usual and her hair was pulled into a classy updo. Not a child anymore, Laura had to remind herself.

  Nicole approached her, aborted a hug halfway, planted a kiss on Laura’s forehead with a simple “Hi, Mom.” She sat down next to Tim. “Okay, Uncle Tim, what’s this powwow about? I can tell you, I wasn’t happy having to come back to this place when we were all set for a sumptuous meal at the Barclay.”

  “Uh, Nicole,” Tim said. “Your mother…”

  “Oops, I’m sorry. Mom, that came out wrong. Not your fault you got shot. You are okay, aren’t you? I mean, you’re sitting up. No respirator. Not even an IV line going. Can you imagine when I walked into the Derm waiting room and saw you on TV? I did a double take. That was you they were putting on a stretcher. Then they showed the woman who was murdered. My God. Did you know her?”