Jonathan Kellerman - Blood Test

“Great,” I said wearily.

Several yards later:

“You okay, pal?”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Thinking about the kid?”

I stopped and looked at him.

“Do you need to head back to L.A. right away?” I asked.

He put a heavy arm around my shoulder, smiled and shook his head.

“Getting back means diving into a mess of paperwork. It can wait.”

I stood at a distance and looked through the wall of plastic.

The boy lay on the bed, still but awake. His mother sat by his side, rendered nearly anonymous by spacesuit, gloves, and mask. Her dark eyes wandered around the room, settling momentarily on his face, then upon the pages of the story book in her hands. He struggled upright, said something to her and she nodded and held a cup to his lips. Drinking exhausted him quickly; he fell back against the pillow.

“Cute kid,” said Milo. “What did that doc say his chances are?”

“He’s severely infected. But the I.V. is pumping in high-dose antibiotics and they feel it will eventually clear up. The original tumor has enlarged — it’s begun to press against the diaphragm, which isn’t good — but there’s no evidence of any new lesions. Chemotherapy will start tomorrow. Overall, the prognosis is still good.”

He nodded and went into the nurses’ office.

The boy was asleep, now. His mother kissed his forehead, drew the blankets around him, and looked at the book again. She flipped a few pages, put it down and began straightening the room. That done, she returned to sitting bedside, folded her hands in her lap, and remained motionless. Waiting.

The two marshals emerged from the nurses’ office. The man was thick-waisted and middle-aged, the woman petite and dyed-blond. He looked at his watch and said “It’s time” to his partner. She walked over to the module and tapped on the plastic.

Nona looked up.

The woman said, “It’s time.”

The girl hesitated, bent over the sleeping child and kissed him with sudden intensity. He called out and rolled over. The movement caused the I.V. pole to vibrate, the bottle to sway. She steadied it, stroked his hair.

“Come on, honey,” said the female marshal.

The girl stiffened, stumbled out of the module. She took off the mask and gloves and let the sterile suit fall around her ankles, revealing a jumpsuit underneath. On the back was stenciled PROPERTY SAN DIEGO COUNTY JAIL and a serial number. Her copper hair was drawn back in a ponytail. The golden hoops had been removed from her ears. Her face looked thinner and older, the cheekbones more pronounced, the eyes buried deeper. Jailhouse pallor had begun to dull the luster of her skin. She was beautiful, but damaged, like a day-old rose.

They handcuffed her — gently, it seemed — and led her to the door. She passed by me and our eyes locked. The ebony irises seemed to moisten and melt. Then she hardened them, held her head high, and was gone.

I found Raoul in his lab, staring at a computer screen on which were displayed columns of polynomials atop a multicolored bar graph. He’d mutter in Spanish, examine a page of printout, then turn to the keyboard and rapidly type a new set of numbers. With each additional bit of datum the height of the bars in the graph changed. The lab was airless and filled with acrid fumes. High-tech doodads clicked and buzzed in the background.

I pulled up a stool next to him, sat and said hello.

He acknowledged me with a downward twist of his mustache and continued to work with the computer. The bruises on his face had turned to purplish-green smudges.

“You know,” he said.

“Yes. She told me.”

He typed, hitting the keyboard hard. The graph convulsed.

“My ethics were no better than Valcroix’s. She came wiggling in here in a skintight dress and proved that.”

I’d come to the lab with the intention of comforting him. There were things I could have said. That Nona had been turned into a weapon, an instrument of vengeance, abused and twisted until sex and rage were inexorably intertwined, then launched and aimed at a world of weak men like some kind of heat-seeking missile. That he’d made an error in judgment but it didn’t negate all the good he’d done. That there was more good work to be done. That time would heal.

But the words would have rung hollow. He was a proud man who’d shed his pride before my eyes. I’d witnessed him ragged and half-crazed in a stinking cell, obsessively intent on finding his patient. His quest had been ignited by guilt, by the mistaken belief that his sin — ten lust-blinded minutes of Nona kneeling before him, ravenous — had caused the removal of the boy from treatment.

Coming to see him had been a mistake. Whatever friendship we’d had was gone, and with it, any power I might have had to reassure.

If salvation existed, he’d have to find it for himself.

I placed my hand on his shoulder and wished him well. He shrugged and stared at the screen.

I left him with his nose buried in a pile of data, cursing out loud at some arcane numerical discrepancy.

I drove east on Sunset slowly, and thought about families. Milo had once told me that family disputes were a cop’s most dreaded calls, for they were the most likely to erupt in violence that was murderously sudden, stunningly intense. A good chunk of my life had been spent sorting out the scrambled communications, festering hostilities, and frozen affections that characterized families in turmoil.

It was easy to believe that nothing worked. That blood ties strangled the soul.

But I knew that a cop’s reality was skewed by the daily struggle against evil, that of the psychotherapist distorted by too many encounters with madness.

There were families that worked, that nurtured and loved. Places in the heart where a soul could find refuge.

Soon a beautiful woman would meet me on a tropical island. We’d talk about it.