After the Fall (7 page)

Laura felt her strength dwindle as the burning pain from
her arm spread across her chest and into her abdomen. “Kids, this is not a suggestion. It's a serious request. You know how much I love you, how much I appreciate your being here, so I hope you understand when I tell you I need some time. To process this…catastrophe.”

She hadn't wanted to describe events that way, end with that word, but isn't this what she was facing? She had worked so hard to be a surgeon, sacrificed so much, and now…

“Okay, Kevin,” she said as she looked around at the stricken faces, “please go get the pain nurse. Never thought I was such a wimp, but I really need that stuff.”

Kevin returned, following a nurse carrying a prefilled syringe. As the analgesic infiltrated the IV tubing, the kids all gathered on the opposite side of the bed, thankfully not leaning in to touch her.

“If that's what you want, Mom.”

“We love you.”

“Get well soon.”

Tim waved them off so they didn't kiss her. They left as a group, blowing kisses.

The drug started to take its blissful effect, but not before she heard Tim say, “I'm staying right here, Laura. With you. No matter what.” Drifting off, Laura realized she'd not sent Tim away with the kids.
What did that mean?

She was out before she could tell herself the answer.

W
EDNESDAY
, F
EBRUARY
19

Jake almost left his apartment without checking the messages on the answering machine in the kitchen. Halfway out the door, he'd felt a weird twist in his gut.

Other than quick stops to pick up extra clothes, he hadn't been home in three days. Not since his trip into Philadelphia on Sunday. He'd spent his free time and his nights with Addie, and now was absolutely determined to spend every possible moment with her for the rest of his life. She made him feel young, vibrant, whole. Sum it up in a word: happy. A word he hadn't thought to use for longer than he could remember. And now he was looking forward to two more nights of sensational lovemaking. Or so he thought, before Karolee's messages—she was coming home early.
Today
. She told him to pick her up at the airport at four p.m.

Six messages starting at five last evening. One at eight. At nine. At eleven. At midnight. At one a.m. Each one louder, angrier. Seems their son Mark and daughter-in-law had asked Karolee to leave. Claire, a mini-bitch herself, ordered Karolee, the bitch-of-all-bitches, out of her house. Now wasn't that the pot calling the kettle black? And when Karolee called home and didn't find her husband, her obscenities blasted through the answering machine.

“Fireworks tonight,” Jake said aloud. His stomach clenched,
but only briefly, till opportunity began to replace dread. This explosion of Karolee's may offer him just the excuse he'd been looking for—an appropriate time to confront her, to parlay her anger into what he wanted: a divorce. But a surge of reality quickly replaced any sense of optimism. Jake was an ex-Marine, but when Karolee flew into attack mode, his only strategy was avoidance. “Yes, ma'am” her and go off to work during the day, hang around the house at night when she'd be at her la-de-da restaurant. Go to bed before she got home. Leave in the morning before she got up. That was an MO he could handle. Until now. Addie had changed everything.

Jake needed to reconfigure his day. At work, he'd planned another delicate manipulation of the Immunone data files that only he could do. Jake did not believe Keystone Pharma had an understudy to replace Minn in the pivotal Immunone approval role, so losing one day shouldn't screw up his plan.

Jake had to concentrate only on Karolee from this moment until her touchdown at the airport. His stomach again seized, and a wave of acid shot up his esophagus. Acid reflux. He'd call in sick; an attack of severe gastritis.

Unpleasant as it was, he needed to talk to Karolee at Mark's house. Find out her arrival details. Jake gritted his teeth for the call. His excuse for last night? He didn't have one. He'd make one up as he listened to her opening round.

Mark answered. “She's pissed, Dad, off the wall this time. Didn't think things could get worse, but they did. Why didn't you pick up when she called you last night?”

“Where is she now?” Jake asked. He hoped to hell she was in bed, that Mark could let him know her travel arrangements.

“Still asleep. Kept us up most of the night with her ranting and raving. Baby in the house is noise enough. We don't need a crazy grandmother. The woman smokes like a chimney, and you know how that sets off Claire. Passive smoke for the baby. Mostly, Mom took the smokes outside. But not happily. That was the root cause of the first row she and Claire had, until
Claire lost her cool when she found Mom smoking in the guest room. Gotta say, I stick by Claire on this issue. Bad enough I'm gonna have shitty lungs based on Mom smoking when I was young.”

“The smoking, that's why she decided to leave?” Jake asked. Karolee was one of those women who would never stop smoking. Don't even ask her about it, she'll bite your head off. And her daughter-in-law, a zealous anti-smoking advocate.

“Oh boy, Mark, not a great week for the new dad, huh?”

“Claire insisted that Mom leave after that incident. Made me do the honors. Put me at the top of the shit list—until you didn't answer the phone last night.”

“Maybe I should speak to her,” Jake said, trying to take back the words even as he uttered them.

“Oh no, Dad, not after that rant last night. Don't ask me to wake her up. We're going to let her sleep as long as possible. Then I'm assigned to take her out for a late breakfast before dropping her at Miami International. I had to take off work. No way I could leave her with Claire.”

“Should have moved farther away, son.”

“Listen, her Delta flight gets to LaGuardia at 4:10. I'd suggest you be there, Dad, with a helluva good excuse.”

“I'll be there,” Jake promised.
And I'll have more for her than just an excuse
.

“Mom did do something for the baby though. She set up a trust for Amanda's education. Knowing how she hates Claire's guts—well, I was blown away. A hundred thousand bucks. That's a side of Mom I never saw. The generous side.”

Uncharacteristic, for sure. “Hmm,” was all Jake could come up with. Karolee scored high on the miser scale. Was a grandmotherly side of Karolee coming through? Jake leaned against the kitchen counter. At least the baby girl was too young to recognize the words Karolee had yelled into the phone last night, but weren't infants sensitive to tone of voice? Karolee's would have been terrifying.

After the call to Mark, Jake methodically erased the answering machine messages. Not really sure if police had a way to restore deleted messages, he'd just get rid of the machine altogether. Anyone wants to know, he'd say it's broke. Why hadn't he thought of that when he was talking to Mark? Should have told him the damn thing was out of commission, that's why Karolee's calls had not been picked up. Shit, did any of this make sense? Phone machines working, not working? He had no time for fine points. Jake could push paper at work, but at his core, he was a Marine. Marines deal in physical punishment. His move would be fast and final.

Since meeting Addie, Jake had fantasized endlessly about killing Karolee. Now the fantasies were morphing into solid plans. Only the details had yet to solidify. He couldn't get that song “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” out of his brain. He was leaning toward a quick, effective kill mode. The killing part didn't faze him whatsoever. He was prepared. He was a Marine. He had an arsenal. He'd kept in shape.

Karolee was five foot three, a hundred and ten pounds.

Before last Sunday night, Jake had killed twice. Never in combat, he conceded. In Vietnam, he'd worked communications, far away from the battle fields, but his first kill had been a fellow Marine, a disgrace to the uniform. Happened outside a house of ill repute in Saigon. By mistake, Jake had walked into a client room as the asshole was brutalizing a very young Vietnamese girl, beating the shit out of her. Jake had backed out, bringing no attention to himself. Leaving the brothel, he'd waited. When the guy staggered out, Jake struck him in the solar plexus, shoved him into a dark corner, and slipped his Gerber Mark II out of its sheath and slit the bastard's throat. Took less than a minute. No man—especially a Marine—should beat up a woman. He considered that kill righteous. There had been no repercussions.

Second time, maybe not so righteous. Ten years ago, he'd taken out a brawny, mouthy guy who cheated him at cards.
Repeatedly cheated. Jake had drowned the drunk at the guy's own fishing camp. Again, no repercussions. He'd covered his tracks.

Sunday night, his weapon had been his Jeep Cherokee. Did the job. Another clean kill. For Karolee, he wouldn't need a two-ton machine.

This time, more important than weapon of choice was crafting a plausible scenario surrounding her death. That was the trick, a feasible plan: hit-not-miss—ready to go in seven hours.

What if: He feels better this afternoon and goes to the office, hell-bent on his important Immunone project. But he starts feeling really sick again and nods off at his desk. Only wakes up at four-thirty—too late to pick up my wife, he tells his colleagues; she'll catch a cab home from the airport.

At the airport: He pictures Karolee at the arrival gate, looks around for him, more agitated, royally pissed—he's not there! She takes the escalator to baggage claim, hauls her luggage off the belt, still no Jake, gets more pissed. She finds a pay phone, calls home. No answer. No answering machine to record her royal tantrum.

Her timing: a half hour to get luggage, make calls, grab a cab; a forty-five minute trip home, more for bad traffic. Karolee walks in the door at quarter past five, give or take.

His timing: couldn't leave work too early, people would take note. Their house was fifteen minutes from the FDA along a route where traffic moved predictably well. Stay in his office until a quarter till five. Create a diversion on his usual route home. Traffic delay to support his story that I got stuck in the traffic jam caused by…fill-in-the-blank.

Jake had made himself a mug of instant coffee. At the kitchen table, face in his hands, fingers pressed against closed eyes, he concentrated. A bomb? A fire? A hit-and-run? A fallen tree? A broken water main? Live electricity? A load of whatever dumped in the middle of the street? An escaped convict?

A headache derailed his train of thought. Jake's doctor had
warned him he was borderline diabetic. Was he experiencing hypoglycemia? Maybe he should get something to eat.

Two pieces of wheat toast, a hunk of cheddar, and slugs of orange juice later, Jake sat back down. He would defer the question of how to cause a traffic delay and focus on what he had to do before going in to work in the afternoon.

Now it was 9:30 a.m. Plenty of time to get set up. This phase would be easy. He made a list: Go through each room of the house. Take items of obvious value. Leave a burglary mess everywhere. Take the loot to the dumpster behind the gym across town where he'd been a member. Break a window to document the burglar's entry… Jake kept writing until he had two single-spaced pages of action items. Like the project manager he was, he sorted them chronologically, worked out a complicated time line. Done, except for the diversion component that would alibi him from the time he left the FDA to the time he arrived home to find Karolee…

Keep that on the side for now. He'd been in situations before when the answer popped up at the last possible moment. Now he had to get moving on his action list.

W
EDNESDAY
, F
EBRUARY
19

In Laura's place, Tim hoped he'd be as brave as she was. Laura had opted for on-demand pain relief rather than continuous infusion of pain meds. She said she didn't want to live in a narcotic fog. She was accustomed to control, didn't abdicate it easily. Neither would Tim, under the circumstances.

He napped on a narrow cot set up in the far corner of her hospital room. Even though her condition was listed as stable, she needed care on an hourly basis. Besides routine vital signs, nurses checked her intravenous lines, changed her dressings, and monitored her pain.

Each time Laura stirred throughout the night, Tim instantly awoke. A skill left behind from his training, all those thirty-six-hour call schedules. Drop off to sleep in an instant. Wake up on demand. On each occasion, he pressed the button for the pain nurse. Compartment pain in the hand is excruciating. She'd need a long course of pain meds; narcotics, unfortunately.

Once during the night when Laura's pain started to break through the drugs, she seemed particularly agitated. As she awoke, she murmured a man's name. Not Tim. Not the name of her dead husband Steve. But,
David
.

Tim's heart plummeted.

What else could it mean? So, Laura has been seeing another man. No wonder she didn't say “yes” when he'd asked her to
marry him. How could he have been so stupid not to know? To allow himself to think that they'd had an exclusive relationship?

But Laura had seemed to want him there with her. She'd dismissed her kids, but not him. And, he'd promised the kids he'd stay with her. Yes, even if she did have another guy, he vowed to see her through this. The accident happened in front of his house. If only he'd gone down to the car with her, been there to stabilize her on that black ice.

At eight in the morning, food service brought Tim a tray. Typical hospital food, no different here at Hahnemann than at CHOP—Children's Hospital of Philadelphia—where he was the senior cardiac surgeon, trained under the best, C. Everett Koop, who made it to surgeon general of the United States.

Tim picked at the soggy scrambled eggs, nibbled the crispy bacon and the fresh orange slices, but mostly he appreciated the hot, caffeinated coffee. Laura was a true caffeine addict. She needed it to jump-start her breathing in the morning. He'd tease her about refilling her cup nonstop, marvel at how she could drink coffee just before she went to bed. Even if she wasn't suffering from a concussion, she'd have a headache from caffeine withdrawal. How long did caffeine withdrawal symptoms last? How do we know if her headache is related to the concussion or the caffeine withdrawal? Tim mentally slapped himself in the face.
How stupid can you get, obsessing over Laura's simple caffeine headache when she faced horrible pain in her hand as well as the loss of her career?