Chase, the Bad Baby: A Legal and Medical Thriller (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 4)

by John Ellsworth

  Morgana stayed as far away from her as possible in the bed that night.

  It was just too much to comprehend, having a baby in case Morgana didn’t make it. Hell, they didn’t even have a donor picked out, test-tube or alive.

  Didn’t even compute.

  17

  The weekend passed slowly—too slowly, for Morgana.

  Monday she would start chemotherapy and she was dreading it. In her world, when she would have a trial coming up, she could prepare. She would depose all the witnesses, review all documentary evidence, handle and make her notes about all physical evidence, hire and depose expert witnesses, learn from them, learn how to cross-examine the other side’s experts from her own experts, and visit premises, hospitals, doctor’s offices, surgical suites, speak with doctors and RNs, radiologists and lab rats—all of it in preparation for the moment she would get to stand up in front of a jury and say Ladies and Gentlemen, what I am about to tell you is....

  But there was no such preparation for chemo.

  All she knew was that she was going to be sicker than anyone could be and still survive. She knew there would be chemicals that would ruin her digestive tract, cause hair to fall out, keep her wired and awake all night (steroids), and all the rest of the calamities she had read about and discussed with others in support groups who had survived the same ordeal. But there was nothing she could actually do. She had to put her life in the hands of other people and for a trial lawyer that’s the hardest thing on earth.

  And her foul mood and silence affected Caroline. For one, Caroline was terrified, though Morgana wouldn’t find out just how terrified until much, much later.

  Also, Morgana was anxious to get on with her next move, her new life, now that Jones Marentz was in the rearview.

  Caroline encouraged her to slow down. “Take it out of overdrive, baby, and enjoy the beginnings of a new life with me and with a baby”—an idea Morgana was slowly warming to. “We’re going to beat this thing and we’re going to create a family.”

  “Is this really the time to have a child?” Morgana asked for the hundredth time. The reality of possible parenthood settled over her, and she found herself struggling to see how she was going to pay for a child and make their monthly nut without a steady income. Maybe it was time to update the résumé? Talk to some other med-mal defense firms?

  Saturday noon she finished studying the Post and her page-twenty trial article. Then she changed into sweats and bounced a basketball over to the HOA court, where she spent an hour working on her jump shot. Still had it cold. She tried ten shots from beyond the three-point line and made four of them. Forty percent, not all that great, though most driveway players would kill for that.

  She returned home, showered, and set off with Caroline for a slow afternoon of a game they called Tourista. What it was, was they would prowl Michigan Avenue and watch the tourists as they drove by and gawked. When the car was directly beside them the next up had to yell out which state the plates were from. As the car passed and the license plate rolled into view, they kept score. First to twenty-one won. That particular Saturday there were the usual majority of Wisconsins, Indianas, and Missouris, of course. Occasionally they got stumped by a Maryland or New Mexico. No one ever got an oddball like North Dakota or Idaho.

  “It’s hard to tell, anymore,” Caroline said. “Americans are all starting to look the same wherever they’re from.”

  “I like the bucking bronco plate from Wyoming,” Morgana said. “That should be worth ten points right there. Wildcard thing.”

  At 3:30 they headed over by the Art Institute, found a small restaurant, and got a table on the sidewalk. It was still cold out, but Chicagoans prided themselves on seeming not to feel cold weather. Sub-zero Bears games were the norm. Morgana ordered a long-neck Coors and Caroline scowled at the menu and raised her eyes at Morgana. There passed between them a quick understanding: what if there was a baby on the way? No more alcohol, not that Caroline ever drank more than one wine anyway. Caroline settled for Diet Coke. “And an order of wings, bleu cheese,” she added.

  To which Morgana also added cheese fingers.

  Not much else was said that afternoon. Caroline was into baby world, but Morgana knew she was actually trying to ignore the upcoming chemo. As for Morgana, she was into chemo and work world. First one, then the other, then back to the work issues. As for the chemotherapy, it was less than forty-eight hours away, but Morgana refused to let her mind dwell there. It’s fourth quarter, seven seconds left, LeBron guarding you, down by three, and the throw-in comes right at you.

  So they talked about everything but. They would work it out.

  They always did.

  Morgana went to bed feeling a little more peace. Time spent with Caroline always gave her that.

  And that night Morgana was very grateful and slept very peacefully, untroubled by the dreams that lately had her coming awake in the wee hours gasping and struggling for air.

  18

  The thing about her leukemia was, she was feeling fine. So when she woke up Monday morning and she was apprehensive, which was understandable because her brain didn’t want to accept that while she was feeling okay she was soon going to voluntarily trade that for being sicker than a dog. It just didn’t make sense and that part of her mind was really struggling.

  “How you doing?” Caroline casually asked as Morgana shrugged into the sweats the oncologist’s office recommended she wear to the chemo.

  “Fine.”

  “Fine? Isn’t that an acronym for Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Extreme?”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Are you any of those?”

  “Probably the first one.”

  “Fucked up?”

  “Probably.”

  “I would be too.”

  “Probably.”

  Caroline drove her to the low, dark building on the edge of Evanston, north on Dewey Street. It was a commercial-looking area, more like a commercial park than a shopping area. They parked at A-111 (how clear things are when you’re super-stressed) and went inside.

  Her hands were shaking as she signed in. Caroline put her arm around her back as she jittered her first and last onto the clipboard. Caroline kept it there and guided Morgana to a waiting room chair. Morgana knew she was in no shape to have to decide even something as simple as which side of the waiting room to choose.

  There were two other people waiting. One was a forty-something woman wearing a turban and reading a Cosmo. The other was a young boy, maybe twelve years old, with a totally bald head. Morgana looked at him and smiled. He didn’t return her smile, didn’t acknowledge the women, nothing, just kept staring at a spot on the floor between them. Morgana realized the kid had an iPod plug in his ear and he was lost in the music being piped to his brain. She was glad the kid had something to help calm him. She was also wondering where in the hell a parent was. He shouldn’t have had to be there in that situation alone. Even Morgana had somebody and she was almost thirty years old. At which moment Caroline, reading her thoughts, took her hand and gave a squeeze. For several harsh moments Morgana fought back the tears that welled up in her eyes. This wasn’t going to be easy. She was already feeling sorry for herself and she hadn’t even received a drop of the chemicals yet.

  Soon a nurse came for her and led her through a door and back into a room with ten recliners. She told her to remove her shoes and sit back. Which she did.

  A phlebotomist showed up out of nowhere and pricked her for a blood sample. The oncology nurse said they were going to determine whether she was well enough to have chemotherapy that day.

  “Well enough?” Morgana said. “Are you serious? Hell no, I’m not well enough. I have leukemia, for the love of God! Is anyone following all this?” The oncology nurse—whose name was Karen—smiled and tweaked her shoeless toes.

  “We’re on it,” she said softly and followed the phlebotomist through the far door.

  Karen returned and unsheathed a set of head
phones from plastic. “These are brand new. They’ll be waiting for you every time you come in. You can watch the little TV screen on the arm of the chair while we dose you. The headphones give everyone privacy to watch whatever they want.”

  Which Morgana could probably have figured out for herself. It was then she realized that she was fuming inside. Her fear and dread had boiled up into rage. This wasn’t fair! How did this happen to me?

  Karen then gave her a paper cup brimming with anti-nausea medication and a plastic cup of water. “Take, please,” she said. “These will keep you from throwing up all over yourself and our chair.”

  Great. Protect their property, that’s what she was all about. Later she would learn that it was the little things in life, like keeping her vomit out of crevices and crannies, that were the important things in life. That was a lesson yet to come.

  Then she settled back and settled in. She sat in the sleek white chair at the Weinstein Clinic and watched as if in a dream. The oncology nurse returned with another nurse, who inserted a needle and cannula into her hand. They took turns explaining what they were doing and what she was going to feel.

  For the next two hours, Morgana watched ESPN on her private TV screen as a cocktail of liquid drugs infused into her veins through a long tube. It was an uncomfortable but not painful process and the strong anti-sickness drugs ensured she didn’t feel any nausea.

  Her first chemotherapy session coincided with the day the NBA all-star selections were announced. So she watched the announcements and followed the film of the stars’ performances during the first half of the season. Being an ex-point guard herself, she was engrossed in the announcements—which were a welcome distraction from the various tingling and cold sensations she experienced during the chemo.

  The last needle came out just as the national anthem started for one of LeBron’s games as LeBron, D-Wade, and Bosh were shown on the lights-out basketball court just moments before being introduced to the adoring crowd.

  All she could think about was how vigorous and healthy they all looked. Compared to how she must have looked right then, three hours after the needle bit into her arm.

  She silently gave herself an All-Star pat on the back for getting past the first quarter in her game. Actually there would be six sessions, each a week apart, so it was one down and five to go. She had survived.

  * * *

  On the drive home, feeling sicker and sicker as they rode along, Morgana seized the last vestige of remaining normal health, and called A.W. and told him the truth about her health. She talked about the chemotherapy. She talked about the six weeks it would take. A.W. was tremendously empathetic and told her they still considered her a member of the firm, no matter what had been said. A.W. expressed how he thought a cooling-off period might be helpful. In all honesty, Morgana was too sick to argue and didn’t respond, just thanked A.W for his support and let it go at that.

  So, she thought as Caroline drove them homeward, that door was still open. She could still go back to Jones Marentz if she had to. She thought it must have been how Butch and Sundance felt when they found they could return to the gang of murderers, robbers, and thieves they ran with. Not a healthy place, but familiar. She’d had a girlfriend like that her freshman year in college. They lasted the whole school year, having great times one week and then having the blowup and being estranged and hating each other the next week. They would make up and get back together. This went on for nine months. Finally she realized that the girl’s name was Chaos and, if they kept at it, her whole life would be like that, topping the waves from crest to crest, high time to high time. But there was always the trough below, where you always came crashing down. That was Jones Marentz. You could never be at peace there. Not anymore.

  For all her ambivalence brought on by her physical ills, the knowledge that she could still return to the law firm somehow made her feel better anyway.

  “It’ll be six weeks before I can even talk about all that,” she told A.W.

  “Take all the time you need, Morg. They just want you feeling better and cancer-free. We’ll all be praying for you.”

  Who could argue with that? she thought as she rode along, feeling more nauseated by the block. Times like that they didn’t sound like criminals.

  Which made her think of the scorpion that hitched a ride across the pond on the frog’s back. At the other side, the scorpion stung the frog to death. Just as he was departing this world, the frog managed to ask, “Why did you sting me? I helped you!”

  “You know what?” said the scorpion. “It’s just my nature.”

  So it was.

  And they pulled over at the next corner so she could stick her head out and throw up.

  The fight was definitely on.

  * * *

  That evening in bed, it took every ounce of strength in her body not to vomit. She hummed and sang to herself as she tried to get through the constant waves of nausea and the pounding in her head. The feeling of not knowing what was next was the worst, and she kept a bucket by her bed just in case.

  After a steroid-induced night of insomnia interrupted by fifteen-minute islands of sleep, she woke up with what could only be described as a combination of the worst hangover in human history—a horrific migraine, and food poisoning in India. (She had never been to India, but she had had more than her share of hangovers back in her youth at one time.) She spent the morning in the bathroom, on her knees praying to the porcelain, imploring forgiveness for all wrongs and sins. Seriously, she would have called on Houdini if she’d thought he could stop the process and restore her normal life.

  She had completely gone off tea and coffee and sweet foods but her appetite remained strong for anything savory she could get her hands on. She remained in bed the entire day with a pounding headache, light aversion, and terrible nausea. She also had terrible constipation—a common side-effect—and she almost fainted after spending yet another hour in the bathroom.

  At dinner time, a home health nurse came to the house to inject her in the stomach with a powerful drug to boost her immune system. Her skin had gone a funny gray color and the acne she had fought at thirteen had flared up like a teen’s.

  Later she opened her Kindle and pretended to read. This made Caroline feel better, as she was trying not to hover and baby her. Caroline was giving her the room she needed to be sick and face the reality of chemo for herself. Morgana did read a couple paragraphs of Martin Cruz Smith, one of her favorites, but the description of the bodies found under the snow had her quickly running for the toilet as the nausea overwhelmed her. She set that aside when she stumbled back to bed.

  By 10:30 she realized that she was bored to death and nowhere near sleepy. It occurred to her, this was her life now.

  She had a terrible urge, almost a panic, to call A.W. and tell him she’d made a huge mistake. It took every bit of logic could Caroline could impart to keep her from making that call.

  Just please, keep paying the premiums on her insurance.

  She really needed that health insurance. Especially now.

  19

  She made it to week six of chemotherapy.

  The treatment had depleted every last ounce of reserve strength—and then some. She was exhausted mentally and physically. And it was taking its toll on Caroline as well. Too often they snapped at each other over what once what had been mere nothings. Now, however, under the pressure of Morgana undergoing the literal hell of cancer therapy, the mere nothings were often larger than one of them could grin and bear. So they snapped back and forth and then, at times, held each other and cried, forgiving each other for what they had become. But now it was week six—the magical week six—and the race was nearly run.

  It was just after noon when the mail arrived. They tore right into it. Which was a good sign. Morgana usually couldn’t have cared less what arrive by USPS. But she was actually coming back to life. Hey, she thought, she might actually survive this thing!

  But her exuberance was short-lived
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  “Uh-oh,” Caroline said, glancing over a letter. “You’re going to love this.”

  “Let’s see.”

  “Take a deep breath.”

  “C’mon.” She scanned the document. “Student loan—what?”

  She slumped at the dining room table. “So, should we just declare bankruptcy right now and get it over with?”

  “What the crap! They’ve raised my student loan to over five grand a month. I’ve got to call them!”

  Suddenly she was back. Full-b0re, head-on, toe-to-toe, she was back.

  “And when they tell you there’s no mistake, then what?”

  She crossed to the refrigerator and popped a long-neck. That was another good sign. She hadn’t had a beer in almost two months. “I’ll figure something out.”

  Caroline swiped the beer from Morgana’s hand and replaced it in the refrigerator. “Drinking beer isn’t going to help anything. We’ve got to be clear-headed right now. Give it a rest.”

  “Give what a rest? It’s only one beer.”

  “And one leads to two and ta-da-ta-da. I know you.”

  “But you don’t know me like this,” she indicated, holding out both arms to emphasize her new scarecrow physique. “Down thirty-five pounds in just six weeks. It’s amazing what not eating can do for your weight.”

  “I know you, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Morgana’s face flushed. “Yeah? So just what is it you think you know?”

  “I know how you sometimes dodge issues. You don’t always face things head on.”

  “I did six weeks ago. I walked away from the greatest job I’ll ever have. By the way, I can’t believe they’d just let me walk. I’m surprised A.W. hasn’t called to check up.”

  “I could hear what he was saying that day. You managed to leave that door wide open. No sympathy from me, miss.”

  “But I’m not going back. At least I wasn’t until this student loan disaster crashed through the roof and took me out.”