I gobbled two slices of bacon, wiped my fingers on a napkin and then used some hand sanitizer from my purse. The tea was still too hot to drink, so I vented the lid and set it in what I hoped would be a non-spill area of my table. The nasty old industrial clock on the wall at the end of the windowless dungeon indicated there were still four minutes before starting time. I went ahead and began to work on pulling the files.
Oh did my muscles tell me I was doing something they didn’t like. All the up, down, turn around, pull another file. Up, down, turn around, shove it in a tan plastic basket.
My androgynous colleague Angel stuck his/her head in my aisle at morning break time but I didn’t want anything. I still had the tea on my desk, so I slipped over, took three big swallows and got back to work. I finished all the pulling and schlepped the thirty-pound baskets over to the cart to go out. I was careful to bend my knees each time. Work smarter, not harder and all that workaday wisdom.
I had run four files over to the investigative unit that morning. Thank goodness the phone wasn’t ringing off the hook. I picked up a basket of PIF’s, emptied the papers into the crook of my left arm and tossed the basket onto the floor. I kicked my three-wheeled stool over to the Ta’s, climbed up and began. Zigzagging my way from top to bottom of each bookshelf, I started working in a rhythm. The cadence started a little guitar strumming in my brain. Bobby Vinton’s “Take Good Care Of My Baby”. Yeah. That was the song.
Oops. I stood up too fast from that last squat. I hated when I did that. Momentary blindness. As the hallway swirled, the music played louder. The forward momentum was too fast this time. I didn’t like it. I tried sticking both arms out to grab hold of something in the tunnel. No luck. I fell on my face.
~♥~
I felt arms under mine, from behind. Grabbing my breasts actually and pulling me to my feet.
“Cinderella, are you all right?”
I caught my breath. “Yeah, but I didn’t like that ride. It was bad. Hey, good to see you again. I’m sorry about barging in on someone else’s dream.”
“Me too. I wished you didn’t have to see that.”
“Why were you roughing up Officer Dick?”
“To try to stop him from continuing in his father’s murderous footsteps.”
“Officer Dick? He’s not the type. He’s a good guy, a cop.”
“Killers usually are good guys to the rest of the world. But not to the ones they murder.”
“Killers? Whom has Dick killed? You’re freaking me out.”
“Exactly why I wished you hadn’t interrupted us. Hopefully he’s seen the error of his ways. Watch out for him but please don’t go around living your life paranoid. I don’t think he means harm to anyone anymore. He was very young and he was having mother issues. Dick’s mother had quite a hold over him.”
“You are still freaking me out.”
“Concentrate on good times and before you know it, we’ll be able to complete our heavenly journey.”
“Promise?” I pleaded.
“I promise, sweetheart.” He kissed my forehead and smiled.
“Oh. Good. But really, right now I need to PIF.”
“There’s a toilet down the hall.” Mr. Jones grabbed my hand and led me.
I laughed. “No, that’s not what I meant. I’ve got loads of work to do in the real world.”
We stopped in front of a nurses’ station. Nurses’ station?
“Hey, are we in a hospital again?”
“Good Samaritan in Los Angeles 1962. What do you mean you have work to do in the real world? Don’t you want to be with me anymore? I thought we were getting on well. I’m your mate, don’t you remember? Or have you found someone else you prefer?”
“Mr. Jones, there has never been and never will be another man like you. I want to be with you. And there isn’t anyone for me in the real world.”
We searched each other’s eyes. God, were his gorgeous. Deep brown pools of wonder. I wanted to swoon again. But Daddy passed by me. So of course, we tailed him. Doctor Payne and a nurse walked through the dreary, pale green, rubbing alcohol- scented corridors. Screams emanated from a room as we passed by and then we heard the awesome sound of a new life crying. The doctor and nurse both smiled. So did we. They made a right turn and proceeded to the end of the wing, stopping outside of Miss Pippin’s room. That was the name on the door card. The same name as on the note inside the Tupperware container, the one Uncle Howie had snatched from Daddy’s deep freezer. I shuddered, remembering the pink-ish gray lump. At least I’d finally get some answers now.
Daddy said, “Thank you, Miss Livingston,” to the nurse.
The nurse said, “She’s in a lot of pain and passing large clots this evening. And she’s in a bad way emotionally too, poor girl… I’ll be waiting at the nurses’ station.”
I started rolling that name through my mind. Miss Livingston… Nurse Livingston… “Hey, that’s my namesake! Momma’s friend, Orpha Livingston. She was Momma’s housemate in Washington. They were also in the Secret Service together.”
Dream boy smiled. “Yes, but she also trained as an Army Air Corps nurse together with your mother.”
“Yeah, I know, Momma told me,” I said.
Doctor Payne watched Orpha Livingston’s shapely legs, clad in white stockings, until she rounded a corner. He stuck his hand in his right pants pocket for a moment, then took it back out and firmly rapped on the patient’s door.
A small sweet voice said, “Come in.” He did and so did we. Since we were invisible.
I whispered, “Why are we invisible again?”
He pulled the hair back from my neck and his lips brushed against my ear. “Because this is one of your father’s secrets. He wouldn’t have wanted you to know.”
I tingled all the way down to my toes. I just melted at his touch.
Daddy disappeared behind a white curtain. We couldn’t see the patient.
“Hello, I’m Doctor Payne.”
Via the silhouette, we observed them shaking hands. “How’d ya do?”
“I’m good, thanks. How are you?”
“Oh doctor, I don’t know what’s worse. The pain and the heavy bleeding or the thought of havin’ the operation. You know, I really wanna have a baby.”
Her silhouette was as unmistakable as her kitten voice. Miss Pippin was not this woman’s real name. I knew it was Daddy’s idol, screen goddess Marilyn Monroe. Oh my God! Miss Pippin! He had her left ovary in the deep freezer! Marilyn Monroe’s ovary! No wonder Uncle Howie flew all the way from Sacramento to snatch it.
Doctor Payne pressed the call button and waited patiently for Nurse Livingston. She came in and went about her duties preparing for the examination. Doctor Payne slipped his hands into gloves that Nurse Livingston had just powdered. She yanked the stirrups up. They telescoped from the foot of the hospital bed. She helped the patient move into position.
Once the examination was under way, Doctor Payne appeared to keep his gaze locked on the agony tormenting Miss Pippin’s beautiful face.
“I’m so sorry, my dear, I’m trying to be gentle.”
He completed the exam, removed his gloves and washed his hands with a bar of soap in the basin in the corner of the functional room. Nurse Livingston retracted the stirrups and tried to make the patient comfortable before she left.
Miss Pippin said, “I have to have the full hysterectomy, don’t I?”
“I’m very sorry, my dear. Yes.”
“Well, I asked for the best in the biz and they say he’s you, so that’s that.”
Doctor Payne tugged three tissues out of a box on the bedside table and gave them to her. She wiped her eyes.
She said, “You know, next week I’ll be thirty-six years old. And all alone. No husband and now who would want me?”
He interrupted. “Millions of men want you, my dear. You should know that. That one special man, your soul mate, is out there somewhere. And he won’t care that you can’t have babies. You’ll still be able to be a p
roper wife, in every other sense of the word. I mean sexually. And there’s always adoption. There are charities in Los Angeles that might have a child you’d be interested in—”
“No. It’s not the same. I want my own baby. My own flesh and blood. God’s punishing me for all the ones I-I had to make go bye-bye.” She drew the starched white sheet up to her chin.
Doctor Payne moved a rolling stool over to her bed. He sat down and embraced her hand. “Shh…we all sin. And He forgives us. Sometimes circumstances force us to act in ways against our hearts. It happens to everybody. No one here on earth is a saint. Not me, not you, not Nurse Livingston, not even the President of the United States.”
She sobbed. “I wanted to have his baby…”
He gave her more tissues and as she blew, he walked over to the window. He cleared his throat and said, “There is something… I might be able to help… It’s really just experimental.”
“What?”
“I’ve been doing research into ovary transplants. I’ve had good success so far, with rhesus monkeys. But I haven’t done them on women yet.”
“Ovary transplants? Whadaya mean? If you have to take out my womb, what good would an extra ovary do me?” She ran her hands through her hair. “No good at all…” She sniffed.
He walked back over and sat on the stool. “Your situation dictates complete removal of your uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes and ovaries. If, and I can’t say until I open you up, but if one or both of your ovaries are healthy enough and hopefully the fallopian tubes as well, I can save them by transplanting them into another woman who’s lost hers but has a healthy uterus.”
“Do it.”
“Do it? I told you, I’ve never done this before on humans and while the research looks promising, I can’t guarantee I can even find a woman with your same blood type who would agree to it.”
Holding the sheet modestly to cover herself, she sat up and leaned in toward Doctor Payne. “Take my ovaries and put them in a jar or freeze dry ’em or petrify ’em or whatever it is that ya need to do. Find a nice lady to carry my little baby. I don’t care if the whole thing is science-fictiony. If it means I might have my own little baby some day…”
Doctor Payne looked down at his black penny loafers. He tugged on the hairs of his left eyebrow. After a long tense silence, he looked up. “But it’s still… I can’t… I shouldn’t do it. I shouldn’t have even brought it up. I’m sorry for getting your hopes up, my dear.”
In her famous breathy little-girl voice, she begged, “Oh but doc, you just gotta. Please, pretty please?” She let go of the sheet and arched her back, thrusting her much- photographed breasts toward him. They were perfectly pointed inside one of the custom-made brassieres that she only removed for bathing or making love. “I’ll do anything, anything at all. I’ve got loads of money and just tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”
“You just concentrate on getting well, my dear. And you mustn’t speak of our conversation to anyone, understood?”
“But why? I mean it could be a miracle. I could be like the Virgin Mary and have an immaculate conception. Wow…but oh boy, now I know what you mean! I can’t tell anyone. I mean who’d believe it anyway? I won’t tell a soul, I promise, cross my heart and hope to die. Please, do it for me, huh?”
Doctor Payne pressed the call button. Nurse Livingston returned.
“Nurse, you can prep our VIP for surgery now.”
The private duty nurse said, “Yes, doctor.”
He turned and smiled at the patient. She reached for his hand and squeezed it.
Doctor Payne said, “I’m off to scrub up. I’ll look in on you tomorrow morning before I leave for Washington. Doctor Quiambo will take over your post-operative care.”
He left the room. We followed him down the corridor to the doctors’ lounge. After he stepped inside and thought he was alone, Doctor Nathan Lucifer Payne reached into his right pants pocket and removed a tape recorder. He switched it off, kissed it and opened his brown suitcase. He shoved the tape recorder inside a pair of balled-up socks, closed the lid and locked it.
~*~
I heard the darned old “Donna” song. Opening my eyes, I stared into a fluorescent light. I looked around. I was lying in the company clinic. Dr. Goldfarb hovered over me. Daddy’s sports club pal, Farts.
He counted my pulse. “Donna, you gave us quite a fright. You’ve been out for nearly twenty minutes. Did you fall and smack your head?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Have you been having these spells often?”
“Huh?” I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the cot. I threw back the sheet.
“Careful. Not too fast.”
“I’ve been having some really weird dreams since the accident.”
“Did they do a CT scan and an MRI on your brain?”
“In the hospital? Are you kiddin’? Heavenly HMO won’t pay for those unnecessary tests. You know that.”
Dr. Goldfarb huffed. “I’m not the one who writes the contract. I just work here, you know. Donna, I’m going to write you a referral, I want you to go and get an MRI done today. I’m worried you might be suffering from narcolepsy and that is a very dangerous condition.”
“Yeah yeah yeah. Falling asleep in the middle of a meal and stuff like that. I work at a health insurance company, you know.”
He smiled. “At least you have your caustic comments. That’s the Donna I know. Come on, I’ll drive you over to the hospital.”
I stood up. “No, thanks and all but I’m fine. Really. I’ve got loads of work piled up I really need to get back to.”
“Absolutely not. You need at least another week off from work. I’ll take care of it. Now come on and let’s get you to the hospital.”
Chapter Eleven
The ride from Heavenly HMO in Reston, Virginia, over to Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church took about forty-five minutes. A bird could fly it in five but as the congested Northern Virginia roads knotted, it took us a little longer. Dr. Farts Goldfarb’s antique Chevy pickup ran really sweet. Nice and noisy. He’d had it reupholstered in a black and white vinyl and the inside was operating room sterile. My only complaint was that the door required three tries to close.
Dr. Goldfarb parked outside the emergency room entrance. He creaked as he stumbled out. The semi-retired physician lumbered around to my door and guided me inside. He made a big to-do about getting me signed in and prepped for tests. The cheerful admissions man and triage nurse accommodated Dr. Goldfarb.
“While I’m here, can I get my sutures removed?” I tugged the collar of my sweater down so they could see the wound. I’d stopped bandaging it since it seemed to be healing and not oozing anymore.
The nurse led us into exam room one. Dr. Goldfarb examined the wound and asked for a double-edged razorblade while he washed his hands and put on gloves.
I looked away as he snipped. It hurt like hell.
The nurse squeezed something onto a long wooden cotton swab and he dabbed it on my wound. As he rubbed an extra large Band-Aid over it, he said, “Keep the Band-Aid on for two days, then you should be fine. There was just some minor bleeding from the suture removal. With your fair skin, you might develop a hypertrophic scar. A thick raised pink and itchy area, sometimes with an occasional pinpricking sensation. It should fade within two years. If not, I can laser it out to bleach the vessels back to white.”
Just great. Why couldn’t a plastic surgeon have sewn me up in the ER? They should pass a law requiring hospitals to staff their emergency rooms with plastic surgeons for their trauma patients.
By late afternoon, I had completed my tests and was plopped in an empty exam room and left to “rest” while Dr. Goldfarb consulted with the radiologist and neurologist on call. Fat lot of rest I got.
A knock on the door prompted me to say, “Come in.” Bad decision. Next time I’d rethink that stupid polite reflex. The door flew open. I groaned. “Do you wear that robe everywhere, Judge?”
&
nbsp; “Shut up, Oh-Donna. I received an emergency message to race to the hospital. I had to recess a murder trial. Apparently you aren’t quite at the grim reaper’s lair.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, brother dear. Who called anyhow?”
“An ER nurse. She said Dr. Goldfarb had brought you in and that I should get here now. So what crawled up your butt necessitating emergency surgery?”
“What? Eww…stop being gross, Perry.”
Dr. Goldfarb hobbled into the exam room. I sat up. He and the judge exchanged pleasantries. My sister Tammy sashayed in.
I rolled my eyes and ran my fingers through my disheveled locks.
Dr. Goldfarb said, “Oh good, you made it.”
Tammy kissed him on the cheek. He patted her back.
Dr. Goldfarb said, “Donna, I’m afraid you’ve suffered some damage to the pons area of your brain.”
Perry demanded, “How?”
Dr. Goldfarb said, “When the buck hit her car.”
Perry said, “What?”
Dr. Goldfarb said, “Her car accident. What don’t you understand?”
Tammy said, “Oh-Donna, you never told me nothin’ ’bout a car accident. You didn’t wreck Mom’s Corvette, did you?”
Perry interrupted. “So that’s what you meant when you told me you needed a car, you’d totaled yours. Why the frick didn’t you go to the hospital after the accident?”
I said, “I was impaled on a buck’s antlers and thrown from my SUV. They MedEvac’ed me to Fairfax Hospital where I spent four days.”
Tammy said, “I think I might hurl…” She turned her back and walked to the window.
Perry said, “When did this happen?”
I said, “The Thursday that Daddy called me telling me that Momma was trying—” I stopped. I didn’t want to admit what he’d said in front of Dr. Goldfarb, he might not understand. They were pals. And I certainly didn’t want to say it to Perry and feed into his obsession that Momma was a murderess.
Perry said, “Well. Okay.”
Dr. Goldfarb said, “Donna collapsed at work today, fell into a deep sleep. I brought her in for testing.”
The Immaculate Deception Page 18
