Patricia Cornwell - Book of the Dead

He’s an older man, probably retired and bored, so he’s parking cars at the hospital. Or maybe someone in his family has cancer or did. But it’s obvious he’s never driven a Ferrari and may never have seen one up close. He eyes it as if it just landed from outer space. He wants no part of it, and that’s a good thing when one doesn’t know how to drive a car that costs more than some houses.

“I don’t think so,” the valet says, transfixed by the saddle leather interior and red “start” button on the carbon-fiber steering wheel. He steps around the back of the car and looks at the engine under glass and shakes his head. “Now, that’s something. A convertible, I guess. Must blow you around a lot when you got the top down, as fast as it must go, I guess,” he says. “I got to admit that’s something. Why don’t you just pull it right over there.” He shows her. “Best spot in the house. That really is something.” Shaking his head.

Lucy parks, grabs her briefcase and two large envelopes containing magnetic resonance films that reveal the most devastating secret of her life. She pockets the Ferrari key, slips the valet a hundred-dollar bill, says very seriously but winks at him, “Guard it with your life.”

The cancer center is the most beautiful medical complex, with expansive windows and miles of polished wooden floors, everything open and full of light. The people who work here, many of them volunteers, are unfailingly polite. Last time she had an appointment, a harpist was perched in the corridor gracefully plucking and strumming “Time After Time.” This afternoon the same lady is playing “What a Wonderful World.” What a joke, and as Lucy walks fast, looking at no one, a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes, she realizes there’s no music anyone could play that wouldn’t make her feel cynical or depressed right now.

The clinics are open areas, perfectly appointed in earth tones, no art on the walls, just flat-screen TVs that show soothing nature scenes: meadows and mountains, leaves in the fall, snowy woods, giant redwood trees, the red rocks of Sedona, accompanied by the gentle sounds of flowing streams and pattering rain and birds and breezes. Live potted orchids are on tables, the lighting soft, the waiting areas never crowded. The only patient in Clinic D when Lucy reaches the check-in desk is a woman wearing a wig and reading Glamour magazine.

Lucy quietly tells the man behind the counter she’s here to see Dr. Nathan Day, or Nate, as she calls him.

“Your name?” With a smile.

Lucy quietly tells him the alias she uses. He types something on his computer, smiles again and reaches for the phone. In less than a minute, Nate opens the door and motions for Lucy to come inside. He hugs her, always does. “It’s great to see you. Looking fantastic.” He talks as they walk to his office.

It’s small, not at all what one might expect of a Harvard-trained neuroendocrinologist considered one of the most outstanding in his field. He has a cluttered desk, a computer with a large video screen, an overflowing bookcase, multiple light boxes mounted on walls where in most offices there might be windows. There’s a couch and one chair. Lucy hands over the records she brought with her.

“Lab work,” she says. “And the scan you looked at last time, and the most recent one.”

He settles behind his desk, and she sits on the couch. “When?” As he opens the envelopes, then reads her chart, not a word of it stored electronically, the paper file kept in his personal safe, identified by code, her name not listed anywhere.

“Blood work was two weeks ago. Most recent scan a month ago. My aunt’s looked, says I look good, but then considering what she looks at most of the time,” Lucy says.

“She’s saying you don’t look dead. That’s a relief. And how’s Kay?”

“She likes Charleston, but I’m not sure it likes her. I like it okay…. Well, I’m always motivated by places that are a bad fit.”

“Which is most places.”

“I know. Lucy the freako. I trust we’re still undercover. Seems like it, since I gave my alias to that same what’s-his-name at the desk and he didn’t question it. Democratic majority notwithstanding, privacy’s a joke.”

“Don’t get me started.” He peruses her lab report. “You know how many patients I have who would self-pay if they could afford it just to keep their information out of databases?”

“Good thing. If I wanted to hack into your database, I could probably do it in five minutes. The Feds might take an hour, but they’ve probably already been in your database. And I haven’t. Because I don’t believe in violating a person’s civil rights unless it’s for a good cause.”

“That’s what they say.”

“They lie and are stupid. Especially the FBI.”

“Still topping your Most Wanted List, I see.”

“They fired me for no good cause.”

“And to think you could be abusing the Patriot Act and getting paid for it. Well, not much. What computer stuff are you selling for multimillions these days?”

“Data modeling. Neural networks that take input data and basically perform intelligent tasks the way our brains do. And I’m fooling around with a DNA project that could prove interesting.”

“TSH excellent,” he says. “Free T-four fine, so your metabolism’s working. I can tell that without a lab report. You’ve lost a little weight since I saw you last.”

“Maybe five pounds.”

“Looks like you’ve gained muscle mass. So you’ve probably lost a good ten pounds of fat and water weight from bloating.”

“Eloquently put.”

“How much are you working out?”

“The same.”

“I’ll note that as obligatory, although it’s probably obsessive. Liver panel’s fine. And your prolactin level’s great, down to two-point-four. What about your periods?”

“Normal.”

“No white, clear, or milky discharge from your nipples? Not that I expect lactation with a prolactin level this low.”

“Nope. And don’t get your hopes up. I’m not letting you check.”

He smiles, makes more notes in her record.

“Sad part is, my breasts aren’t as big.”

“There are women who’d pay a lot of money for what you’ve got. And do,” he says matter-of-factly.

“They’re not for sale. In fact, I can’t even give them away these days.”

“That I know isn’t true.”

Lucy is no longer embarrassed, can talk about anything with him. In the beginning, it was a different story, a horror and humiliation that a benign pituitary macroadenoma — a brain tumor — was causing an overproduction of the hormone prolactin that fooled her body into thinking she was pregnant. Her periods stopped. She gained weight. She didn’t have galactorrhea, or begin to produce milk, but had she not discovered what was wrong when she did, that would have been next.

“Sounds like you’re not seeing anyone.” He slides her MR films out of their envelopes, reaches up, and attaches them to light boxes.

“Nope.”

“How’s your libido?” He dims the lights in the office and flips on the light boxes, illuminating films of Lucy’s brain. “Dostinex is sometimes called the sex drug, you know. Well, if you can get it.”

She moves close to him and looks at her films. “I’m not having surgery, Nate.”

She stares dismally at the somewhat rectangular-shaped region of hypointensity at the base of the hypothalamus. Every time she looks at one of her scans, she feels there must be a mistake. That can’t be her brain. A young brain, as Nate calls it. Anatomically, a great brain, he says, except for one little glitch, a tumor about half the size of a penny.

“I don’t care what the journal articles say. No one’s cutting on me. How do I look? Please tell me okay,” she says.