Flashback

by Gary Braver

  “Yes, I understand, but—”

  “Don’t!” The syllable shot out of Lutz’s mouth like a bullet. Then he turned on his heel and stormed away.

  “Well, that was pleasant.”

  Alice put her hand on René’s arm. “Look, hon, I don’t mean to turn up the heat, but my brother-in-law was caught up in a lawsuit involving a traffic accident that left somebody crippled. It went on for years and he lost nearly everything. Carter’s right: It’s not worth it. Believe me. Tell them you know nothing and let the lawyers fight it out. Please. Otherwise, it’ll never go away.”

  God! It wasn’t all that long ago she’d been thrilled at landing a job in a community dedicated to doing good by doing right—a profession that was noble and dedicated to the well-being of needy people. The wonderful world of health care, the Hippocratic oath, of good science, healing and all that. Now she was knee-deep in murder, conspiracy, and corporate cover-up. And in her dissent she had ended up on the wrong side of the battle line. She looked at Alice’s supplicating eyes and suddenly she felt trapped between trying to sort out the merits of moral rightness versus professional ethics—of good versus the strangulating red tape of law.

  “Thank you,” she said, thinking that her decision could render a brutal new shape to the universe.

  23

  THE DIRECTOR OF THE GREENDALE REHABILITATION Center called Beth to say that there was a bed available for Jack. He could be moved from Spaulding within two weeks.

  Meanwhile Jack slept.

  And after their visit, Vince drove Beth to Carleton. She didn’t want to go right back to an empty house, so she suggested they get something to eat. And Vince took her to a restaurant near the hospital. “He’s never going to come out of it,” she said in a low voice.

  “Don’t say that,” Vince said. “He’ll be back. I’d bet my life on it.”

  “But I’m okay with it, really. I just wish I could have said I’m sorry.” She took Vince’s hand. “You were such good friends. I envy that. Really. Jack and I were talking of separating.”

  Vince’s eyes dilated in shock. “Well, he never said anything.”

  She shrugged. “Pride. But things weren’t what they seemed. We had problems. It’s just too bad we never worked them out.” She could see Vince becoming uncomfortable with the conversation.

  “The MRIs are showing activity, which means his brain is still active. He could snap out of it anytime.”

  “Maybe.”

  Vince checked his watch. “I think we should go.”

  By the time they reached Beth’s place it was dark. Vince parked around back and walked her to the door. She put her arms around him. “Thanks, Sweetie.”

  “Nothing to thank me about. We’re practically family.”

  They were standing at the back door. The night was cool and overcast with a hint of autumn in the wind. The house was dark and forbidding. “I hate the thought of going in there. It’s so damn empty.” She hugged him to her.

  Vince didn’t say anything, but she could feel him brace.

  “You could sleep on the couch,” she whispered, and she pressed herself against him ever so slightly.

  She felt Vince pull away. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  She nodded because they both knew that it was not the couch where she wanted him to spend the night but in her bed—to be made love to without thought, to nestle against the curve of his hard body like spoons, the way she would with Jack. Just this once—a momentary lapse into creature needs absent of reflection or consequence. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that it gets so hard at times.”

  “I understand.”

  But she knew that he didn’t understand. She kissed him on the cheek and let herself in the house as Vince returned to his car and drove home.

  For over an hour Beth rolled around in her bed unable to compose her mind to sleep, thinking that she had in a moment of weakness led Vince on. Thinking that maybe he really did understand and would not see her proposal as an overture of betrayal. Thinking of the emptiness in the bed next to her.

  I cannot live this way, she told herself. I cannot go on. Yes, I’m weak, selfabsorbed, starving. But that’s me, and I can’t spend the next months or years waiting to resume a dying marriage to a man who even if he does emerge will probably be mentally and physically impaired. What’s in it for me?

  I can’t.

  I won’t.

  24

  SATURDAY COULD NOT COME SOON ENOUGH. All René wanted to do was sleep in and not think about lawyers, depositions, and clinical trials.

  But that was impossible, since over the intervening five days she got e-mails from Alice, Bonnie, and even the director of nursing at Broadview saying how well the meetings went with the attorneys representing the home. Bonnie actually claimed it was “kind of fun.” She also said that she understood René’s position, but it was a bit of an overreaction, if you asked her.

  Of course, the wording was purposefully vague so as not to leave record of anything incriminating. In spite of the sweet-smelling wording, all the messages read the same: Don’t rock the boat. Deny, deny.

  According to René’s boss, CommCare had provided her a lawyer named Brenda Flowers who would accompany her next week at the deposition with a Zuchowsky lawyer. Over the telephone Ms. Flowers assured René that it would be “a piece of cake.”

  A little after eight o’clock, Silky began nuzzling her face to be fed and let out. She thought about taking care of the cat then going back up to bed to sleep until noon, the way she did when she was younger. But that was impossible. Her mind was racing with thoughts of the deposition she was required to give in a few days and the words of Carter Lutz, Jordan Carr, Alice, and the others whipping through her mind like hysterical sound strips.

  The stress of the last several days had left her mentally and physically fatigued. It crossed her mind to put Silky in the car and drive until she reached the Pacific Ocean, maybe someplace in northern California or Oregon where in some nice little town she’d get a job as the local pill counter in some little mom-and-pop apothecary where nobody had ever heard of GEM Tech and the McCormick, Hadlock, and Woodbury law firm.

  But she couldn’t do that, of course. So she slipped on her robe and followed the cat downstairs, his huge fat black tail trailing him like a skunk’s.

  She dumped a can of Figaro into his bowl, changed his water, and looked out into the front yard. It was a sunny day, and a brilliant blue sky made a dome over the house. At the bottom of the driveway near the mailbox sat rolled-up copies of the Manchester Union-Leader and Boston Globe that the paperboy had left.

  That was when she noticed the red metal flag of the mailbox sticking up. That was odd, since Joe the mailman didn’t come around to deliver until after eleven, especially on Saturdays. Maybe somebody else had taken his weekend route.

  She opened the back door, and Silky shot between her legs into the middle of the backyard, where immediately he squatted down to assess the bird situation.

  The sun was warm, and the air moist, although a touch of autumn laced the air. It was one of those mornings that made her grateful for living in New England. But in a month, the sky would be bleak, the ground crusted with frost, and the air snapping with the scourge of a Puritan God.

  She headed down the driveway and picked up the paper rolled in the plastic bag. The headlines were about the war. More dismal news. More dead soldiers and civilians. “Will the world ever saner be?” The Thomas Hardy line shot up from college English class. “Seems not,” she said aloud as she approached the mailbox. She waved to a neighbor across the street who was packing her young daughter into her car seat. René watched them pull away as she reached the box.

  It was the odor that hit her first. She opened the door of the mailbox and let out a scream.

  For one hideous moment that telescoped her horror, all she could think was Silky. But a voice inside reminded her that she had just let him out the back door—that he was in the backyard stil
l stalking starlings.

  God, please no.

  In a microsecond reprieve her mind scrambled—no white patch, no white patch … wider nose …

  Staring out at her from inside the mailbox was the severed head of a black cat.

  25

  “IT WAS GODDAMN SICK,” RENÉ SAID.

  “Of course it was,” Nick said with a dismissive shrug. “But maybe it was just some random prank.”

  “Nick, it was no random prank, and you know it. Someone’s trying to intimidate me into lying. And I’m ready to go to the police.”

  “I can understand. But you have no proof who did it.”

  “Well, it wasn’t my mailman.”

  It was later that day. And Nick, who was at Mass General catching up on work as he often did on weekends, had convinced her to drive to town and jog with him down the Esplanade along the Charles. It was what they did whenever René visited one of her Boston-area nursing homes. This time it was to get out of her place.

  But she couldn’t leave the cat head in the mailbox for the deliveryman. So, fighting the rise of her gorge, she used a stick to pull it into a paper bag. She hosed out the mailbox, buried the bag in her backyard, and then threw up the contents of her stomach.

  “If you go storming into Carter Lutz’s office, he’s only going to deny it and make it difficult with your boss.”

  “He already did. I called him at home and told him what happened. He said that he had no idea what I was talking about. Half an hour later I got a voice message from my district manager at CommCare saying that he had gotten a call from the VP of Health Net regarding my overreacting to policy issues. Overreacting! They put a fucking cat’s head in my mailbox and I’m supposed to look the other way.”

  “Did you mention the video to anyone?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Or the cat’s head?”

  “Just Carter Lutz.”

  “Good.”

  “Good what?”

  “Good you didn’t take this any further.”

  René wasn’t sure why, and Nick was turning something over in his head. So they jogged in silence for a few moments. Because Nick was more than twice René’s age and thirty pounds overweight, their pace was leisurely. It was also a warm September afternoon and many sailboats were on the river. In the late afternoon sun the trophy buildings of MIT squatted like ancient gilded temples rising above the trees of Memorial Drive.

  “You want my advice?”

  “Of course.”

  “Drop it. You don’t know who did this. It could be anybody at Broadview as well as friends and associates of them. And it’s simply not worth running around accusing people. Yes, it was sick and crude, but the gesture reads more of desperation than menace.”

  He was right that it could be anybody. Most of the people she worked with knew that René owned a black cat. A photo of Silky hung from a tag on her laptop case and she occasionally wore her cat pin. “But this was well planned. Somebody went to the trouble of finding another black cat at some animal shelter or they stole some kid’s pet and decapitated it, then sneaked out to my place in the middle of the night and put the thing in my mailbox. We’re talking health care professionals, and that scares the hell out of me. What else are they capable of?”

  “I understand.”

  “It was a warning to shut me up or scare me into quitting my job.”

  “Well, it won’t happen again.”

  While she wanted to take refuge in his assurance, she couldn’t. “Look, I have to continue working with these people, smiling and acting normal, all the while wondering which of them did it and when they’re going to strike again—and how.”

  “I don’t think it was any of them.”

  “But I don’t know that.”

  He gave his head a shake to dismiss her concerns. “Back to the issue. Going to the police would guarantee blowing up everything, the upshot being the termination of the trials. And that’s what this is all about. You know how anal the FDA is about protocol. One hint of impropriety, and Memorine would be back-burnered for years. Meanwhile, somebody else would try to get their look-alike on the market, and GEM would be down the tube.”

  “So it’s all about saving GEM’s ass.”

  “We’re going around in circles again.”

  “In other words, look the other way.”

  “Only because there are more important issues at stake, like our patients.”

  “Someone threatened me, Nick.”

  He looked at her directly. “I know, and that will not happen again.”

  The intensity of his look was almost startling. She didn’t have his certitude but let that pass. “What about setting myself up for a perjury charge?”

  “First of all, nobody can prove you saw the tape. Second, my guess is that it will be settled before it ever gets to court.” Then, as if reading her mind, he added, “I know you don’t like lying, but sometimes we have to overlook minor violations for a higher good. You’ve seen the results, right?”

  “Yes, they’re remarkable. I also feel guilty about the Zuchowsky family.”

  “Unfortunately, they can’t get their son back. But I’m sure they’ll want to avoid trench warfare and would probably agree to a settlement. Besides, what good would it do if the Zuchowskys knew that Clara let herself out instead of slipping through a faulty security system? Tort lawyers would turn this into a juicy malpractice case that would bring a sympathetic jury to its knees and send everybody straight to litigation hell, including you. And three years later you’d probably be jobless and in debt for life.”

  “But denying that Clara Devine was a subject in a clinical trial violates a whole slew of regulations designed to protect patients and prevent litigation. And now we’re agreeing to perjuring ourselves.”

  “Maybe the lesser of two evils. So, go to the lawyers and tell them what everybody else is telling them, that you know nothing—just to get it behind you.”

  “But the legal back-and-forthing could drag on for years.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  She looked at him. “Nick, what are you telling me?”

  His expression softened. “That I really didn’t want to retire.”

  She stopped in her tracks. “You’re taking the offer?”

  “What the hell, I’d get bored otherwise. Besides, look at the mess they got themselves into. Maybe I can put some pressure on them.”

  She had been after him to accept Moy’s offer as chief principal investigator from the start. “That’s great. And maybe you can keep their act clean.”

  “Whatever. I’m not signing any papers until this Clara Devine thing is behind us.”

  They started jogging again. “Any idea who’s behind the cat head?”

  “My guess is no one you know. But nothing like that will happen again.”

  She glanced at him, thinking that dear old Professor Nick Mavros carried more guns than she had imagined.

  26

  JACK CONTINUED IN A PROFOUND SLEEP.

  And after two weeks they moved him from Spaulding to Greendale Rehabilitation Home in Cabot—a private long-term-care facility just twenty miles north of Carleton. There was a special rehab unit devoted to coma patients. He occasionally muttered meaningless things, but his brain activity held steady and with diminished agitation.

  A white two-story stone building that looked more like a restored elementary school, Greendale boasted “high-quality and compassionate” medical care and rehabilitation. It also offered a “coma stimulation program” for patients at low levels of cognitive functioning. Beth was impressed with the staff’s professionalism and good nature.

  Jack’s primary care nurse, Marcy Falco, explained that she had brought several patients out of comas in her twenty-three years. In fact, she was so successful, she said, that others on the staff wondered if she was a witch. She said that she believed in talking to her patients, telling them about herself, narrating her regular tasks, summarizing the dai
ly news and sports scores, playing their favorite music, making simple requests—blink, wiggle your toes, squeeze my finger. “His spirit is trapped inside of him,” she told Beth one day. “But it’s listening. He can hear you. Tell him stuff, tell him you love him. And above all, tell him the truth, because it may set him free. Honesty is the best therapy.”

  Beth visited Jack every other day at first, helping out with the physical activities as did Vince when he visited—turning him over, exercising his limbs, changing his bedding. They also helped out in the stimulation program—rubbing his face, his arms and legs, brushing his hair, moving his limbs, using smell stimulation. Beth brought in a CD player to play his favorite music—John Lee Hooker, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bessie Smith. Vintage blues. She also ordered a television set to be left on as sound stimulation when she wasn’t present.

  Meanwhile, the jellyfish welts faded and the flesh around his eyes had lost its puffiness. His hair had begun to grow back, although his brow was still slick with antibiotic ointment.

  Beth also saw René Ballard on occasion, as Greendale Rehab Center was one of the facilities where René worked as consultant pharmacist. She was very friendly and offered good moral support. She was also interested in Jack’s dreams since she said his MRI patterns coincidentally resembled those of some Alzheimer’s patients. That meant nothing to Beth.

  As time passed, she visited Jack less frequently. She also began to go to bars with women friends. She met single men and talked, and she felt no guilt. She did not wear her wedding ring. When asked, she said she was a widow.

  Beth cut her visits to once a week at best, and she sat with Jack for shorter periods. She continued to talk to him when she came by—mostly monologue spurts full of chitchat nothings. But she never told Jack that she loved him.