by D. J. Palmer
He had called Nash, of course, but the call was sent directly to voice mail, probably intentionally. If he were in her shoes, he would have done the same. Still, he had left a rather angry message that implored her to call him immediately. He did not expect his phone to ring anytime soon. He could hardly fathom the number of lines Nash had crossed, but the deed was done, the bomb had gone off, and what was left for Zach were the pieces of a shattered family he’d have to try to put back together.
Zach checked out of his hotel a day early and caught a late-night flight back to Boston, incurring a rather hefty fee for the last-minute change. He instructed his office manager to reach out to the Gerards and set up a meeting at White first thing in the morning. He knew he was being a bit of a coward not addressing the family right away, but figured everyone would be better off after a night’s sleep, assuming anyone would get a wink.
Zach could hardly imagine Becky Gerard’s anguish, though he knew the source of her pain would be staring right back at him anytime he peered into a mirror. As anticipated, Zach had a hard time falling asleep that night, but when he finally did, he dreamed he was sitting next to his boy, on a park bench, under a bright blue sky, eating ice cream, waiting for his heart to get ripped out.
* * *
BECKY AND Carl sat across from Zach in a room a few doors down from his cluttered office. Outside, the early-morning sun sprinkled prisms of light across the windows of the tall buildings comprised in the White Memorial medical complex. Off to the north was the Mendon Building, home to the Behavioral Health Unit.
Zach saw Becky glancing out the window repeatedly. He got the feeling she knew exactly where her daughter was being held. After this meeting, Zach planned to go to Mendon to try to see Meghan and get an update on her condition, but first he had to face the parents.
“It’s your fault,” Becky said, her voice packing a lot less punch than Zach had expected. Exhaustion may have taken its toll, zapping Becky’s fight.
“I understand you’re angry,” Zach said, “but I promise you I’m going to do everything I can to help.”
Becky had on a black sweater over a paisley-patterned blouse and dark jeans that showed off her slender physique. Carl was equally put together, dressed in a white oxford shirt and dark jeans as well, the glint of a gold Rolex peeking out from beneath a cuffed sleeve. Zach suspected people were often jealous of them, the perfect couple who seemed to have it all, but if they knew the daunting situation they faced, he doubted any of those envious souls would trade places with the Gerards.
Carl Gerard sent Zach a look of pure contempt. Zach’s one and only fight had been on a school playground at the end of sixth grade against a boy he’d had no business battling, but who’d needed a punch in the nose to put an end to his bullying. It looked to Zach like Carl was ready to make it fight number two.
Becky Gerard was seated next to her husband, but Zach observed no real connection between them. They did not make eye contact, or hold hands, or do any of the little things that he and Stacy might have done before everything fell to pieces. Whatever had come between husband and wife was pronounced enough to feel like a fourth person in the room.
“What has Nash said?” Becky asked. “How long are they going to hold Meghan here? When can we bring her home? When can we see her? Talk to her?”
Zach looked down at his hands. He did not have any answers and said as much.
“Well, when are you going to know?” Carl asked, leaning forward, encroaching on Zach’s personal space the way that playground bully had done so many years ago.
“I’ve left messages for Dr. Nash, and I have calls in to Knox Singer. I’m sure they’ll meet me later today.”
“And what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Becky said, tossing up her hands in distress. Her body sagged forward as tears sprang to her eyes.
To Zach’s utter surprise, Carl made no gesture to comfort his wife.
“This is a process,” Zach said. “Not one I’m very familiar with, to be honest, but it’s happened in mito cases before. This disease, unfortunately, has unusual and inconsistent symptoms. Parents, like yourselves, often become strong advocates for their children, pushing for consults with specialists and sophisticated tests. Some doctors misinterpret these efforts as a bid for attention and label the condition Munchausen syndrome by proxy.”
“Where have you heard that term before, Becky, huh?” Carl asked.
“We both know that answer,” Becky replied coolly.
Zach knew not to tread on the obvious marital strife as he knew to avoid a downed power line. “From what I understand of this situation—and, granted, I haven’t been able to do a deep dive here—it’s a temporary custody ruling, so we have time to plan our next moves.”
Color rushed into Becky’s pale cheeks. “Time? These people have my daughter!” she exclaimed. “They took her phone. I don’t have time to wait. I’m going up there now, right now, to get her.” Becky pointed out the window. “They’ve kidnapped her! Don’t you see? We need the goddamn FBI here!” Becky smacked her hand against the table, the sound punctuating her decree. “I don’t think I’ve made myself clear, Dr. Fisher. I’m not leaving here without my daughter.”
Carl shot his wife a hard look. “Maybe you should have thought all this through before you set off on your quest to make Meghan a medical cripple.”
Becky snapped her head around so fast, Zach thought he heard vertebrae popping. “You know what, Carl, fuck you.” Becky looked away in disgust.
Carl pushed his chair back. “I told you this meeting was going to be a waste of time,” he hissed, rising to his feet with a scowl. “I’ll meet you at the lawyer’s office.” He tossed his car keys onto the table with a clatter. “I’ll take a cab. I have a few hours to kill, so I’m going to go check on the condo job in Beacon Hill.”
“Aren’t you going to try to see your daughter?” Becky remained in her chair, her gaze directed once more out the window at the Mendon Building.
“We can’t see her, Becky,” Carl said, “or do you think the judge’s ruling is all bullshit?”
Zach thought if Carl’s voice carried any more bite, Becky would have suffered a puncture wound. “Listen, I understand you’re both extremely emotional right now, and that’s understandable, but I think for Meghan’s sake it’s important we form a united front here.”
“Really,” Becky said, glaring at Carl, who was putting his sport coat on. “Because our united front involved my husband throwing my computer out our second-story window.”
Zach thought it best not to press for details. “Listen, can we please sit and talk?” he implored.
“You sit. You talk,” Carl answered cuttingly. “But don’t you think you’ve done enough damage already? Stay out of this, Dr. Fisher. This isn’t your fight anymore.” And with that, Carl was out the door, the stamp of his heavy footsteps fading down the hallway.
Becky sat quietly for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t fair of him—or me, for that matter. I know this isn’t your fault.”
“What’s happened between you?” Zach’s instincts told him not to press for information, but curiosity beat out his better judgment.
“Are you married?” Becky asked. She caught herself, embarrassed, as if she had remembered something, and decided against saying it aloud.
Zach wondered if he had told her about Stacy and Will, but could not recall.
“That’s personal, I shouldn’t have asked,” she said.
It took a moment or two for the tension to leave his body, and when it did, Zach shared, in brief, the worst moments of his life.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” Becky said. “You did tell me that and it completely slipped my mind when I asked my question. I feel terrible for bringing it up.”
“It’s not a problem. And, hopefully, it helps to know that I understand all too well how a marriage can suffer under extreme stress. You have my sympathy.”
“I lost my son, too, you know.”
<
br /> Zach didn’t know. His heart broke for her.
“SIDS,” she said. “I put him down for a nap, and when I went to check on him, he was gone.”
“I’m so sorry,” Zach said.
“It was eighteen years ago, but I still think of him all the time. I wonder where he would be today, what he’d be doing. He’d probably be off to college.”
“I can relate to everything you’re saying,” Zach replied, holding Becky’s gaze, feeling a long-forgotten tug on his heart.
“Even today, all these years later, just seeing a crib can send me back into that darkness. That’s why we had to move, to escape the reminders that were everywhere, that covered every inch of the town where Sammy died.”
“You and Carl have been through an awful lot,” Zach said, finding his words empty and unhelpful.
“What I need is to have my husband at my side,” Becky said.
“What happened last night?”
“Carl found me chatting with my friend Veronica over FaceTime, and he just lost it. He started screaming at me, well Veronica mostly. Blaming her for everything because she’s part of my online support group, but really he was blaming me for letting the group fill my head with a nonsense fantasy, nonsense in his view at least, that Meghan is actually sick. Then he tossed my computer out the window.”
“He’s wrong,” Zach said. “And Nash is wrong, too.”
To Zach’s complete surprise and astonishment, Becky reached across the table to put her hand over his hand. His body froze up like an engine grinding to a halt. He was not at all accustomed to touch.
Did the contact comfort her, or was she flirting with him? Zach was not sure, but he did notice her looking at him in a different way, and it made him feel incredibly uncomfortable. He pulled his hand out from underneath Becky’s, hoping his slow withdrawal would be viewed less harshly than if he had jerked his hand free, which was his initial instinct.
“How can you be so sure of me?” Becky asked.
Zach cleared his throat and recomposed himself. “I don’t believe for one second that you’d hurt your daughter intentionally. We’re going to get this straightened out.”
“What if I was doing it unintentionally?” Becky asked. “What if I’m sick and I can’t help myself?”
Zach found Becky’s calm demeanor eerily unsettling. “I don’t believe that’s true,” he said, worried his answer might have sounded forced.
“Why so confident?” Becky asked. “You don’t know me well at all. How can you be so sure of yourself?” The coolness in her voice set a chill against Zach’s skin. If he’d just met her, if this were a police interview, he’d think her quite capable of the charges.
“I guess I can be confident because I believe Meghan has mito,” he said.
“But you’re not positive, are you, because we don’t know for sure it’s mito?”
Zach shook his head, rubbing his facial scruff with the hand newly freed from Becky’s touch. “That’s right, I’m afraid. We haven’t confirmed a diagnosis.”
“So you see, Carl might be behaving like a complete jerk but, in a way, a part of me understands why he’d have his doubts. Nash, too. But what I don’t understand is how they can take my daughter without having the proof. Why does Nash’s claim trump ours?”
“Because you don’t return a child to a dangerous situation,” Zach said flatly.
Becky’s body tensed. She got it. If mito were harming Meghan, then it would be blamed on bad luck and nothing more. But if Becky were to cause harm, everyone from the hospital down to the doctors who had treated the patient would bear the responsibility. For this reason alone the burden of proof shifted, arguably unfairly, onto the parent.
“Carl’s attitude isn’t helpful. It’s going to work against you,” Zach said.
“Be honest, Dr. Fisher—”
“Please, call me Zach.”
Becky leaned back in her chair, hands folded primly in her lap. Her eyes were again assessing him, making him feel strangely vulnerable. “Be honest, Zach,” she said, tilting her head, looking at him coquettishly. She could start a fire with that smile, thought Zach. “If you weren’t so close to the situation, you’d probably blame me, too.”
Zach did not like the way Becky kept planting these doubts. Did he see Meghan as having mito because it’s what he wanted to see? Was it possible Becky was something more than a devoted mother? Zach looked at Becky with renewed intent, forcing himself to see past her beauty, searching her face for assurances that were not there, looking into eyes that were clouded with grief, anguish, or perhaps something else—perhaps, as he now feared, malice.
Zach knew something of the psychology that makes a parent do harm behind closed doors. He knew that in such cases, the parent had usually suffered an unpredictable childhood, one of abuse or neglect. And while he knew nothing of Becky’s upbringing, he thought of the baby she had lost, and what it might have done to her. He knew what the loss of Will had done to him.
No … no … no, Zach thought to himself. It can’t be true. It can’t be.
And yet, try as he might to reason it away, the doubts remained.
CHAPTER 22
MEGHAN
I woke up not sure where I was. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but as soon as my eyes opened, I thought for a second I’d been in a car accident and this was an operating room. I’d never had an operation before, but the walls of the room were painted white like the operating rooms I’d seen on TV, and the overhead lights burned my eyes the way I figured powerful operating room lights would burn. I panicked because I knew I wasn’t supposed to wake up during surgery. I wondered if maybe my stomach was cut open or something. I waited to feel sharp jolts of pain, hear doctors screaming: She’s awake! She’s awake! Get her back under!
But as my mind cleared, I saw there weren’t any doctors in the room with me. In fact, I was alone. But where am I? I drifted in and out of consciousness, feeling woozy and dazed, but little jolts kept jabbing me back to alertness.
The feeling of coming in and out of focus reminded me of the time I’d woken up still drunk in Shelly Stevenson’s basement last year. A bunch of my girlfriends had crashed out in sleeping bags after we’d polished off the rum punch that Tanya Carmichael had made from her parents’ stash. We had huddled together and watched horror movies until we’d passed out, having laughed and screamed ourselves to exhaustion.
When I came awake on the basement floor, my head was throbbing, buzzing. I eventually made it to the bathroom, where I sent that good time into the toilet with a splash. I stayed in a fog for most of that day. That’s how I felt now. My brain was clouded and I’d swear someone had stuffed cotton in my mouth. But where am I?
I tried to swing my legs off the bed to stand, but my knees connected hard with a plastic guardrail raised along the side. Who has a bed with guardrails on it except old people or sick people? Directly across from my bed was a television built into the wall, but the screen was covered in thick plastic, like someone was worried I might try to steal it or break the glass. I slumped back onto the mattress and began to count to ten, trying to rid myself of that doped-up feeling. My eyelids grew heavy, and it became dark again.
When they opened for a second time, I had no idea if a minute, an hour, or a day had passed. But I was more alert now. I could see clearly that I was in a mostly empty room with a hospital bed in the center. There was a second room across from the bed, the door slightly ajar. The lights were off, so I couldn’t see inside, but I guessed it was probably a bathroom.
Off to my left was a sort of couch, more like a bench built into the wall, with a couple of long cushions to make it comfortable for sitting. There were three square windows above the couch, but I couldn’t see a latch, or handle, or any way to open them from the inside. There were no blinds or curtains on the windows, and light poured in from the outside. Daytime. What did I last remember? Day or night? I couldn’t think clearly enough to recall. I wasn’t entirely sure what my last memory wa
s.
I realized there wasn’t a sheet or a pillow on my bed. How come this hospital doesn’t believe in sheets?
I managed to get myself out of bed. There was a second door to my right, with a square portal window built into it. I went to that door and tried the knob, but it was locked. I turned the knob several times; it wouldn’t budge. Then I remembered pulling on a doorknob just like this one and it, too, had been locked from the outside.
A second memory came to me, and I shivered. I recalled screaming, crying for my mom—not my dad, no, not him—pleading for someone to come get me. People came, all right, about four of them. They grabbed me and pushed me down on the bed with force. Someone came at me with a needle. Yes, I could see it in my mind’s eye like it was happening all over again. It was sharp and long, coming straight at my arm, some liquid inside the syringe. I bit the arm of somebody who was wrestling me, tasted their blood as it seeped into my mouth. Whoever it was screamed and gripped my arm hard enough to break it.
Was that a dream?
Glancing at my arm, I noticed a big purple bruise above the elbow, so I knew it wasn’t just my imagination. Around my wrist was a hospital bracelet. On my other arm, someone had secured a small square piece of gauze to my skin with a few strips of medical tape. I peeled the tape back, felt the pull against my skin as it came free, and saw beneath a tiny dot that was probably the spot where a needle had sunk into my vein. Who had put that needle in me?
I tried the doorknob again, this time banging against the door for somebody’s attention. I peered out the portal into an empty hallway with splashes of color on the wall. Color or not, every fiber of my being told me this place was my worst nightmare.
