by Barbara Ebel
“Now this only deals with visitation. It would be difficult to change custody from joint to sole custody to you. If we tried that, it would involve a lot more, including a trial. But I would let it rest. Nowadays, family court won’t give one parent sole custody if the other spouse is a deadbeat, drunkard, or drug addict.”
Danny listened intently, letting his plate cool while Mark continued.
“The judge also agreed to sign a motion for me to amend the child support you’re paying. I’ll draw the papers up tomorrow and simply bring it next Monday to motion hour. I can get that down to practically nothing. Basically, it will be a token payment to her for occasional weekends. Not big enough to pay for her designer shoes, or whatever the hell she wore or didn’t wear which caught your attention.” Mark put on a sheepish look and cut a piece of steak.
“This is fantastic news.” Danny looked out at the pouring rain. Life had just changed for the betterment of Julia, but it wasn’t going to be easy for him to raise another child, one he had never planned for. And starting over at forty-six years old with a youngster? Nevertheless, he vowed to provide Julia with a proper moral upbringing, see to all her needs, and love her like his other daughters … a love stretched to infinity.
“Well, better you than me,” Mark said, butting into his thoughts. “But you did the right thing. Makes up for all the wrongs you’ve done.”
“Mark, if I want a pontificator, I’ll go to church.”
“Sorry, but skirts can be a dangerous thing.”
Danny tried not to roll his eyes. The dinner was going to be delicious and hefty and, like his attorney, maybe almost too much to handle.
Chapter 24
By Tuesday, Rachel hoped that any anger Leo felt towards her would have subsided as she’d be seeing him the next night and he’d better bring her payoff.
She also knew that fine cop had followed up with her situation by reporting Danny to the Nashville police. Rachel wished she could have been around to watch the surprise on Danny’s face when he was confronted by men in blue uniforms.
However, she still didn’t have Julia. She trusted that Leo wouldn’t call and harass her now so she turned on her cell phone. She retrieved Danny’s phone message from Sunday and spent the day on and off calls with her attorney. Phil Beckett told her there was evidence that Julia had been abused, it was rock solid, and that Danny’s lawyer would get to a judge by the end of the day.
Rachel paced back and forth in her new apartment until she’d worn an imaginary track into the old hardwood floor. She assumed Phil wasn’t even telling her everything … maybe deals were going on behind her back. She was a good mother - she would never bend on that - and it wasn’t her who had caused Julia’s pain and scars. But, if she explained to any of them that the person she lived with had done it, that wouldn’t bode well for her either. Half of the injuries Phil had told her about, listed on the pediatrician’s statement, she didn’t even know about. Hell, that Leo was one freaking maniac. She should charge him double for all the trouble he’d caused her.
Rachel made an iced tea and squeezed in a lemon wedge. She sat and drank slowly looking out at the Tennessee River. Storm clouds from the west had rolled in and the rain started picking up. Finally her cell phone rang, an incoming call from Beckett and Livingston.
“Phil, I hope you have a definitive time set up for me to get my daughter back,” Rachel said optimistically.
“Uhh… no, Rachel. I’m afraid not. I want you to know you still do have joint custody with Dr. Tilson.”
“Well, now, I didn’t think that was in question.”
“Ms. Hendersen, the visitation schedule has changed. The judge ordered Julia to spend the time previously allotted with you to go to her father. You’ll get supervised visitation on weekends twice a month.”
Rachel could swear her skin erupted with hives. “What?” she yelled. “I thought you were going to fix things today, not make them worse.” She got up and paced her previous path.
“Sorry. The facts you left me to work with, most of which I learned from Mark Cunningham, were dismal. Have you ever considered they could press charges against you?”
“It’s not me,” she mumbled.
“In one swoop, the judge also changed your incoming child support. It’ll be a hundred bucks a month, a token for those weekends you have her. The judge said he’d sign it at the next motion hour.”
Rachel slithered back down into a chair, a horrendous headache beginning in her temples.
“Also, Ms. Hendersen, you can file a motion like you’ve been doing to have Dr. Tilson pay my attorney fees because of the huge discrepancy of income, but I wouldn’t count on it this time.”
Rachel wished he was standing in the same room as her because she’d wring his neck with the telephone wire. Then she realized she was so upset, she’d forgotten she was on a cell phone.
“Mr. Beckett,” she said, ramping up her decisiveness, “file that motion. The way I see it, the judge will consider it tossing me a crumb after taking my daughter away. I’ll send you my new address by email and then send me all the legal paperwork of everything that’s transpired. Good-bye for now.”
Rachel hung up, knowing there was nothing else she could do. However, this would put a serious dent in her finances. The money to be used for rent just disappeared. She paced again. She guessed it was time to call back that police officer, Evan Parks, and find out more about him.
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The waitress abruptly stopped at Danny and Mark’s table with a water pitcher and topped off Danny’s glass. The rain outside had ceased to less than a sprinkle and the light thunder now rumbled off in the distance. Danny picked the napkin off his lap and wiped his hands as his cell phone rang registering Casey’s number. The two men had finished discussing legal matters and had turned to lighter topics so he took the call.
“Danny, we all just left the dress shop where Mary got fitted in her wedding dress. We see your parked car. Where are you?”
“At the corner steak restaurant. Come on in. Mark is here and he gave me good news. I’ll treat you all to dinner.” Danny closed his cell phone and put it to the side. “Looks like my sister, her fiancé, and my baby are joining us.”
“Joining you, Danny.” Mark only had half a potato left. He put down his fork and took another sip of his half-full beer. “I better get going. We’ll talk soon and I’ll get the bill on the way out.” Mark slithered out from the bench and paid at the register. When the group entered the front of the restaurant, Mark introduced himself to Casey and the girls. Sara was with them and Mark had previously met her in court because of the Tilson’s divorce hearings. He smiled at Julia in Casey’s arms and said, “So this must be little Julia.”
Danny waved the family over. The waitress with the red hair moved the adjoining table next to theirs. Danny got up and took Julia from Casey, giving her a hug and a kiss. “What a surprise,” he said. “Please scoot in here where I was,” he said to Sara, “and I’ll sit at the end with Julia.” Casey and Mary sat opposite and the girls sat at the wooden table.
“I don’t understand,” Danny said. “What were you all doing while Mary got fitted? Isn’t it non-customary for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the wedding?”
The waitress handed menus, napkins, and utensils to the newcomers. “What can I get you all to drink?” she asked, looking at Casey.
“Water?” he asked around. “And a couple of iced teas?” All the women nodded as they began looking at the menu. The waitress headed off. “You’re right, Danny. I didn’t peek. I stayed with Julia, comfortable in another area.”
“Good. Mary’s wedding dress will be a surprise to you and me, too. And how were the first two days of school, girls?”
“The usual,” Nancy said, “but Annabel got the stupidest science teacher in the whole school. What a dork.”
Annabel tapped her fork on the table. “Doesn’t matter, it’s my last year there.” She smiled wide at her father.
Danny expressed his joy for her with a laugh. “Look at you. Braces gone. Your teeth look spectacular, like you.” He realized she had recently backed off the tomboy look just a bit.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. “And thanks for getting them for me in the first place.”
The waitress came with their drinks, scribbled Sara’s order first, and went on to the others.
“Sara,” Danny said in a low tone, appreciating her orange-ginger scent, “besides your new job, how did your date go Saturday night?”
Sara hesitated. “I am so happy to be back teaching, you have no idea.” She wiggled her beaded necklace for Julia’s amusement. “And my date? He’s a nice man.” She paused and a small smile crept over her face. “Actually, I was going to call you tonight. Thank you for the flowers. They are lovely.”
“I’m so glad you liked them.” Danny’s eyes softened. He hoped she wouldn’t be going out with the principal again.
“So what happened, Danny?” Mary asked. “Did he have good news?”
“Oh, not good news. Fantastic news.” He sat Julia on the table in front of him, holding her hands. “I will keep Julia all the time, except for Rachel’s supervised visitation every two weeks. I’ll fill you in later with details but that’s the gist of it.”
Mary sat dumfounded while Casey raised his glass in congratulations. Sara smiled at Julia, who stared at Sara’s double strand of beads. The girls chirped in. “Guess I can make extra money babysitting,” Annabel said. “That is, when you need someone extra, Dad.”
“Hey, I can help, too,” Nancy pouted. “That’s great, Dad. Julia has a better family with us than whoever she’s been with.”
“That sure blew up in Rachel’s face,” Casey said.
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On Wednesday, Joelle opened her drapes to a pretty morning. The rising sun beaming on the scattered, departing clouds from the day before deflected color on the horizon and up into the sky. She smiled because of her condo’s view; at least it was something to make up for her asphalt-city life.
Today she anticipated the big PAM meetings the team would conduct in the afternoon, first amongst themselves and then with the media, so her choice of clothes was carefully planned. She slipped on a burgundy dress with pewter-looking buttons down the front, a belt, sandals with very little height, and a pair of amber and silver earrings. Then she pinned a small, crystal fruit-cluster brooch on the lapel of her dress.
As Joelle put together paperwork for her briefcase, her cat jumped onto the top of the desk. She stopped sorting her things and scratched Bell under her neck. “You’re a sweetheart. I’m glad you don’t belong to the medical campus.” Joelle gave her another pat and left for the big day.
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After routine catch-up with her ongoing research, Joelle examined the previous PAM work she had started before the canine contributions. She made notes and went over more than once to the young student by the window who was assisting her for the day. Results so far - except for the ray of hope with the dog saliva or enzyme penetrating the organism’s outer wall - proved to be futile. When would the incidence of PAM breakouts stop? When would its morbidity and mortality be put to an end by medical miracles stemming from a lab?
Rhonda showed up at noon, sacrificing her own lunch time to evaluate Joelle’s plates and slides and offer any suggestions. She popped to the lab door with all the enthusiasm of a fifth-grader and began donning a mask. Joelle turned around.
“You changed your nose ring, I see,” she commented. “Less conspicuous. I like it better.”
“That’s what everyone says,” Rhonda said. “Hardly anyone comments about a woman’s bracelet, or necklaces, or earrings, but everyone notices nose rings. I think I’ll start a company to market and sell them.”
Joelle grinned. “If pet rocks were a big thing, you may have something there.”
“Yeah, think of the cool possibilities. Nose jewelry mimicking cat whiskers and elephant tusks. The more bizarre, the better.”
Joelle’s eyebrows rose. “Will you stay in veterinarian medicine and research?”
“Hell, yeah. You have to have a real day job.”
“Good, glad to hear it. You had me worried for a minute.”
Rhonda started glancing at Joelle’s table for slides. “I’m about ready to put them on the scopes,” Joelle said. “I have in order here samples four, five, and six; the beagle, Labrador retriever, and greyhound.”
“I thought you were also doing Dr. Tilson’s dog that dunked his tongue into his wound?”
“I did. But I didn’t get it until a day later, so it’s not ready yet.”
“And why do you have two sets of each sample again?” Rhonda asked.
“This first row is the new dog’s saliva simply put with the organism. So we’ll see if the saliva’s contents wormed its way through the wall, like the Newfoundland’s did. The second set is where I injected the saliva into the organism to see what it does then.”
“Obviously, you’re hopeful one of them will destroy the amoeba from inside,” Rhonda said.
“Precisely.”
Joelle put the first set under the stage clips on each microscope to hold the slides in place. She then peered through the scopes from left to right with Rhonda following her lead. “Wow,” Joelle said, standing straight and speaking fast. “None of these dogs’ saliva penetrated the amoeba like the Newfoundland’s.” She tightened her lips, wishing she could change the results.
“”This isn’t good,” Rhonda said. “But at least we’ve had one that did.”
Joelle took the slides off and clipped on the next three, where the samples had been microscopically inserted into their killer creature. She went around Rhonda and again started on the left. Joelle focused with both the coarse and fine adjustment knobs. All she stared at was an intact trophozoite amoeba – inside and out.
“I guess a beagle is no good to us,” she said. Rhonda also looked and nodded in agreement. Their theories were going out the window.
Joelle went to number five, the Labrador retriever. The exterior of the eyepiece had a fleck of dust so she reached for a lens cleaner and smoothed the cloth over the glass. The two ladies frowned at their dismal attempts to get results.
Leaning over again, Joelle peered down at a hazy slide so she fine-tuned the knobs. Finally, her picture looked crystal clear. She held her breath, stood up and rubbed her eyes … and looked again.
She let out a gasp and said, “Another mother of pearl.”
Chapter 25
Joelle’s arms broke out in goose bumps. She stood tall, squared her shoulders and smacked Rhonda’s upper arm. “Look at this!”
Rhonda viewed the slide. “Damn, Joelle, that saliva has decimated the cytoplasm. And it’s made mince-meat of the nucleus.” Taking her eyes off their work, she looked at Joelle with wide eyes. “This is fantastic!”
Joelle bit her lip. “Wow. In vitro, we’ve killed this brain-eating amoeba. Now we have to combine what the Newfoundland’s saliva did by getting into the cell with what the Labrador retriever’s saliva did once it was inside.”
Rhonda’s hair along her arms stood on end. She pushed her blonde bangs away from her preppy glasses, walked a few steps and turned abruptly. “So we don’t have Dr. Tilson’s dog done yet?” she asked absentmindedly.
“No, we’ll check on it by tomorrow.”
“And what breed did you say it was?”
“I didn’t.”
A smile crept over Rhonda’s face. “Pray, do tell me.”
“A Chesapeake Bay retriever.”
“Hot dog.” Rhonda said. “I have a crazy idea. But I just don’t know.”
“Rhonda, you know what Albert Einstein said, don’t you?”
Rhonda stared at Joelle, a blank expression on her face.
“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is not hope for it.”
Rhonda nodded. “Thanks,” she said. She turned and started towards the door.
“Whe
re are you going?”
“To get you more saliva from Chessie’s other than Dr. Tilson’s.” She turned with a huge smile. “If my suspicions are correct, I’ll pierce your nose if you want.”
“No thanks,” Joelle said. But Rhonda had already disappeared into the hallway.
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Late in the day, the conference room came alive on the upper administrative floor outside Robert Madden’s office. All the major medical players broke from their other duties and patient care. But everyone made sure their beepers were set correctly so any calls about meningoencephalitis patients would come through during their absence; they wanted the most up-to-date information before heading into the news conference to follow.
Joelle came in last, scurrying in her flat sandals and lugging her briefcase. She had received six purebred samples from Rhonda – who had procured them from both the vet school and a dog breeder she knew who bred several large pedigrees on the outskirts of Nashville – and had quickly gotten them processed.
Ralph Halbrow looked like a tired, jet-jumping businessman, not like a non-clinical physician from the CDC.
“Alright, y’all,” he said standing in front of Robert Madden at the head of the table, “we’ve got to push on downstairs where the national news media wants information to make ‘em stuffed as a hog. Since we’re here in the hospital where the outbreak started, our info has to be right off the press.” He looked back at Madden, the battered CEO who’d been dealing with a stiff board of directors, news media, and patients’ families since the whole mess started. Robert grinned, jammed his hands into his pockets, and prayed there would be no major surprises.
As if his fingers were too heavy, Ralph hooked them in his suspenders. “I have today’s numbers,” he said with utter annoyance. “This damn amoeba is running rampant faster than a scalded dog.”
Joelle elbowed Danny, who was sitting beside her. “Funny he should mention a dog,” she said. “I’ve made some progress with in vitro experimentation, but need to bring the two parts together to work together.”
