Elementary, My Dear Watkins (21 page)

Alexa climbed onto the exercise bicycle and started pedaling. She would never admit it to anyone, of course, because it was way too babyish, but sometimes when no one was paying attention, Alexa would turn on the box fan, point it toward herself, and pedal as fast as she could, imagining that the wind in her hair was the real wind blowing past as she sped down the road. She had never ridden on a real bike, so she used this one to pretend. She was studying about Europe with Mr. Preston, and sometimes if she closed her eyes she could picture herself in London or Paris or Rome, maybe pedaling down to the Sistine Chapel and taking a look at its famous ceiling, or swinging around the Louvre and giving a hand to the Venus de Milo.

“Up your tension there, honey, and slow it down,” Yasmine said as she finished her notations and closed the file. “Focus on the program. You seem a million miles away.”

Alexa adjusted the controls so that it was a bit harder to pedal. It wasn’t as much fun that way, and she could feel the pull in her right leg.

“I was just thinking about real bike riding. It must be fun, if you can keep your balance.”

“You’ve never ridden a real bicycle before?”

“Where I’m from? Duh. Where am I going to ride it? On the Turnpike? Maybe the railroad tracks?”

Alexa’s voice sounded a bit sharp, but at least she got her point across.

“Maybe I could ask Dr. Stebbins about getting a bicycle for you here,” Yasmine said. “There’s certainly room to ride around on the estate. It’s not hard to learn.”

“Sounds great,” Alexa replied, but she knew better than to get her hopes up. “Dr. Stebbins never lets me do anything dangerous. He already said no to skateboarding.”

“Bicycling’s a lot safer than that. Dr. Stebbins would probably approve as long as you always wear a helmet. Some of the others have real bikes, and it seems to be helping with coordination and balance, not to mention their gross motor skills.”

Yasmine put away the goniometer and then the rubber bands, not looking at Alexa, obviously not realizing what she had just said.
Some of the others
.

There were others?

Others like her?

Heart pounding, Alexa spoke, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Yeah, so how many others are there? Dr. Stebbins never said.”

Yasmine instantly stiffened, and Alexa knew that she had asked the wrong question.

“I, uh, I just meant other people who’ve had cerebral hemorrhage,” Yasmine said lightly after a pause, closing the cabinet.

Alexa slowed the pedaling until she stopped. She stared at her physical therapist.

“No, you didn’t. That’s not what you meant at all. You meant others in my same situation, others who got treated with Fibrin-X, like me.”

Yasmine turned to her, her expression grim.

“No, you misunderstood.”

Yasmine busied herself with straightening the room, nervously adjusting the papers in Alexa’s file and sliding the chair up under the desk. Alexa watched her for a minute, and then she climbed off the bike and simply stood there.

“If you knew what it felt like to be me,” she said slowly, “you’d tell me the truth. I have to know, Yasmine. Are there others? I’m not the only one?”

Finally Yasmine stopped puttering and focused on Alexa.

“If there were—and I’m only saying
if
—I couldn’t tell you that anyway. That would have to come straight from Dr. Stebbins.”

“He says I’m one of a kind. A medical marvel. I thought he meant it literally.”

“You are a medical marvel.”

“But I’m not one of a kind, am I? There are more. Tell me. You’ve met them. You work with them! Are there kids? My age? Kids who know what I’m going through?”

“Alexa, please, I can’t—”

“Tell me!” Alexa cried, hating the desperation in her own voice. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how miserable she was to think she was the only person in the world who had ever been through what she’d been through. “Where are they? Are they close? Do they live around here?”

“Alexa, you’ve got to bring this up with Dr. Stebbins.”

“But he doesn’t want me to know! He doesn’t care how this feels. He just wants to do his stupid evaluations. It doesn’t matter to him that I’m a freak.”

“You are not a freak.”

“That’s how it feels! And he doesn’t care! Neither do you!”

Alexa stomped off to a far corner of the room and sat down on the low, wide window ledge. Tucking her legs against her body, she wrapped her arms around her knees and began rocking back and forth.

“Dr. Stebbins and I both care very deeply about you,” Yasmine said, stepping closer. She went on to give Alexa some spiel about ethics and procedures and confidentiality laws. “I’m afraid our hands are tied.”

Alexa knew enough to realize that was probably true. Still, there had to be a way to find out.

“What if he didn’t have to tell me?” she asked, her mind racing. “What if I found out on my own?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if I looked at his files or read the data or something? Then I could find out without him having to say a word.”

“That’s against the law, honey. Besides, all of the data is probably under lock and key down at the pharmaceutical company. That sort of information isn’t just lying around. Patient rosters are highly confidential, especially in new drug development.”

Alexa thought about the small side room where the doctor kept a desk and a file cabinet. He did a lot of paperwork in there. Even if the main notes weren’t kept on site, there might be something in there that she could find—some kind of list or printout.

“Look, honey, the doctor’s running late today, but you can talk to him about this when he finally gets here. Tell him how you feel. Maybe…I don’t know…maybe he can try to put together a support group or an Internet loop or something for kids in stroke recovery. No one involved here wants you to feel like a freak. I think you just need some interaction with kids your own age for a change.”

Alexa nodded, her plan already set. She was going to break into the office tonight and find the information that she sought. Dr. Stebbins might get angry if he found out, but that was nothing compared to the thrill of finding someone else—anyone else—who was just like her.

T
hree hours and forty-five minutes after leaving her grandmother’s estate in Westchester County, Jo finally spotted the exit sign on the highway that said “Mulberry Glen.” She had already given Fernando directions to her neighborhood, and she watched now as he took the exit and drove them there, steering through the lazy, tree-lined streets, past modest homes and rolling parks. Mulberry Glen.

Home.

Why did it feel as though she’d been gone forever? She had only left early yesterday morning, but it seemed like ages ago. She was glad now that she had asked Danny’s dad to drive her to the train station yesterday morning, intending to take a taxi or call Marie for a ride home, so that at least she didn’t have to retrieve her car from there now.

The driver put on his blinker at Jo’s driveway, turned in, and pulled up beside the pile of charred rubble that had been her house, a roughly-repaired fence, and her lone little home office sitting in the backyard looking like a lost puppy.

Jo went into the office after the bodyguard checked it out, and then Fernando showed up at the door a moment later with two huge Louis Vuitton suitcases on wheels, loaners from Jo’s grandmother. As the bodyguard stood near the doorway, Fernando opened each bag in turn so Jo could fill them with her necessary papers and equipment.

“Is there more luggage in the car?” she asked, wondering whether she needed to leave room for her clothes as well.

“Two more this big,” Fernando replied, “plus three smaller ones.”

Okay. Obviously her grandmother expected her to stick around a while.

In that event, Jo filled the second suitcase also, mostly with her chemicals and testing supplies. She’d miss the ease and convenience of having a built-in test kitchen right at her fingertips, but maybe her grandmother would let her set up something temporary that would suffice.

Finally, when both bags were full, Fernando brought them back to the car and loaded them into the trunk.

“You see that house there?” she asked him, pointing across the back lawn to Danny’s. “We’ll walk over and meet you. Just go around the block that way and come back up.”

Fernando did as she said, though as he started up the limo and shifted into reverse, Jo noticed her across-the-street neighbor standing near her mailbox, eyeing the luxurious vehicle.

“Jo?” the woman called out. “Everything okay?”

Mrs. White had lived in the same house Jo’s whole life and was probably her favorite of all the neighbors. When Jo was young, whenever she came to stay with her grandparents, inevitably she would end up at some point over at the Whites with the other neighborhood kids, just hanging out or playing a game of Uncle Wiggly or learning how to knit. Trained as an RN, the woman was a nurturing sort who simply drew children like a magnet. When Jo grew up and finished college, Mrs. White insisted that she call her by her first name, Jean.

“Hi, Jean,” Jo said now, walking toward the tiny octogenarian with the salt-and-pepper hair and sparkling blue-gray eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”

“I saw the limo, and I wasn’t sure if someone died or if you were getting married again.”

Jo cringed, wishing she could tell her the whole truth.

“Neither. I…uh…I’m taking a vacation with my grandmother. She likes to travel in style.”

“I can see that. And how do you do?”

Jean introduced herself to the bodyguard and shook his hand, probably assuming he was Jo’s date. Not wanting to start any rumors in this small town, Jo quickly interjected that he worked for her grandmother.

“I needed somebody strong to help with the luggage.”

Not wanting to linger, Jo bid her sweet neighbor goodbye and hobbled back across the street, through her yard, and past the gate into Danny’s yard. The path between the two homes was well worn from years of use, a sight that almost always made Jo smile.

Loving thoughts of Danny were on Jo’s mind as she waited inside the back door, the bodyguard doing a quick sweep through the house before giving her the all clear. Thinking of the man who was her best friend and also her true love, Jo found herself practically humming as she went about the business of packing up her clothes and personal items that were in his house. While Jo was living there, she had slowly been cleaning and organizing the place, not so much so that it would seem intrusive to him once he returned—as though she had rearranged his life or invaded his privacy—but just so that it was livable for her in the meantime.

More than once she had resisted the urge to put up a fresh coat of paint in the living room or totally reorganize the way he had set up his kitchen cabinets. He probably wouldn’t have cared on either account, but she did. This was his home, and she wanted to respect all of the boundaries that ought to come with that.

At Jo’s request, Fernando tossed out all of her perishables from the refrigerator and carried out the trash as she packed her things. Once she was finished, she told the two men she’d just be a few more minutes, and then she walked down the hall and opened the door to Danny’s tiny darkroom, stepped inside, and pulled the door shut behind her.

The room hadn’t been used for weeks, not since Danny left, but there was something about being in there that made her feel close to him. She thought it was probably the smell—the odor of photochemicals and special papers and developer fluid—mixed with the worn spot on the floor where he stood as he worked, and the places on the counter where he had rested his hands so often that there were permanent smudges there.

Placing her hands in the same spot, she simply closed her eyes and inhaled, wishing desperately that he would come home to her, knowing that she would never ask him to. In fact, she wouldn’t even tell him what was going on so that she would never be the one to have come between him and the dream come true he was currently living. Just a few more months, and then they’d be together again anyway.

If she wasn’t killed in the meantime, that is.

Alexa didn’t think Yasmine would ever leave. By the time the physical therapist said her goodbyes, got in her minivan, and drove away, Alexa had only a 15-minute unsupervised gap in which to break into the doctor’s office and search his files.

At least she knew how to do it. She’d never done any breaking and entering, as some of her friends had, but she knew the techniques for getting past certain locks. She’d taught herself how a long time ago, when her mother would pass out on the couch inside their apartment and Alexa’s only choices were either to climb through a window or jimmy the door.

All she needed was a little screwdriver or a slim piece of metal. Quickly, she rooted through the drawers of the workstation, but all she could come up were two paper clips. If the lock was simple enough, they might work.

Running to the door she wanted to open, she knelt in front of it, bent the paperclips to a 45 degree angle, and placed them horizontally above the knob. Then she jiggled the clips with one hand while she twisted the knob with the other. Fortunately, this was no deadbolt, just a household key lock. Within 30 seconds (though it felt like 30 minutes) the knob twisted all the way and she was in.