Michael Palmer - Side Effects

How are Ellen and the girls? " It was at that moment that she first appreciated the sadness in his eyes. "I… well actually, I was just driving around and decided to cruise up here. Sort of a whim. I… I needed to talk to Jared… and to you."

"You and Ellen? " Jared's sense of his friend told him immediately what to ask. "I… I'm leaving her. Moving out." Sandler stared uncomfortably into the center of his drink. At his words, Kate felt a dreadful sinking in her gut. Ellen had stated on many occasions and in many ways the uncompromising love she bore for the man. How long had they been married, now?

Eighteen years? Nineteen, maybe? "Holy shit, " Jared whispered, setting a hand on Sandler's forearm. "What's happened?"

"Nothing. I mean nothing dramatic. Somewhere along the way, we just lost one another."

"Sandy, people who have been married for almost twenty years don't just lose one another, " Kate said. "Now what has happened? " There was an irritability in her voice which surprised her. Jared's expression suggested that he, too, was startled by her tone. Sandler shrugged.

"Well, between running the house and entertaining and taking the girls to one lesson or another and scouts and committees at our club and that business of hers, Ellen simply ran out of energy for me. In some areas, meals and such, she still goes through the motions, but without much spark."

"How is Ellen handling all this? " Kate asked, checking Jared's face for a sign that she might be interloping with too many questions. The message she received was noncommittal. "She doesn't know yet."

"What?"

Her exclamation this time drew a be careful glare. "I just decided yesterday. But I've been thinking about it for weeks. Longer. I was hoping you two might have some suggestions as to how I should go about breaking the news to her."

"Have you been to a counsellor or a shrink or something? " Jared asked the question. "It's too late."

"What do you mean? You just said Ellen doesn't even know what you're planning to do." Jared sounded baffled. Across the table, Kate closed her eyes. She knew the explanation.

"There's someone else, " Sandler said self-consciously. "A flight attendant. I… we've been seeing one another for some time." For Kate the words were like needle stabs. Jared was pressing to get a commitment from her to alter her life along pathways Ellen Sandler could negotiate blindfolded. Yet here was Sandy, like Jared in so many ways, rejecting the woman for not devoting enough energy to him. The image of Ellen sitting there while he announced his intentions made her first queasy and then frightened. The fear, as happened more often than not, mutated into anger before it could be expressed. "Ellen doesn't deserve this," she said, backing away from the table. We just lost one another. Sandy, don't you think that's sort of a sleazy explanation for what's really going on? How old is this woman?"

"Twenty-six. But I don't see what her…"

"I know you don't see. You don't see a lot of things."

Jared stood up. "Now just one second, Kate."

"And you don't see a lot of things either, dammit." There were tears streaming down her face. "You two boys work out how you're gonna break the news to Ellen that she did everything she goddamn well could in life-more than both of you put together, probably-but that it just wasn't enough. She's fired. Dismissed. Not flashy enough. Not showy enough. Her services are no longer required. Excuse me, I'm going to the bathroom to get sick. Then I'm going to my hospital. People there are grateful and appreciative for the things I do well. I like that. It helps me to get up in the morning."

Fists clenched, she turned and raced from the room. Roscoe, who had settled himself under the table, padded to the center of the room and after a brief glance at the men, followed. Ginger Rittenhouse, a first-grade teacher, had just finished her run by the ice-covered Charles River when she began to die. Like the random victim of a crazed sniper, she did not hear the sound or see the muzzle flash of the weapon that killed her. In fact, the weapon was nothing more malevolent than the corner of her bureau drawer, the shot, an accidental bump less than twenty-four hours before to a spot just above her right eye. "That's one incredible lump! " her new roommate had exclaimed, forcing an icepack against the golfball-sized knot. The woman, a licensed practical nurse, had commented on the large bruise just below her right knee as well.

Ginger was too self-conscious to mention the other, similar bruises on her lower back, buttocks, and upper arm. Her death began with a tic-an annoying electric sensation deep behind her right eye. The wall of her right middle cerebral artery was stretching. Bruised by the shock from the bureau drawer, the vessel, narrow as a piece of twine, had developed a tiny defect along the inner lining. The platelets and fibrinogen necessary to patch the defect were present, but in insufficient amounts to do the job. Blood had begun to work its way between the layers of the vessel wall. Squinting against the pain, she sat on a bench and looked across the river at the General Electric building in Cambridge. The outline of the building seemed blurred. From the rent in her right middle cerebral artery, blood had begun to ooze, a microdrop at a time, into the space between her skull and brain. Nerve fibers, exquisitely sensitive, detected the intrusion and began screaming their message of warning. Ginger, mindless of the huge lump over her ear, placed her hands on either side of her head and tried to squeeze the pain into submission. Powered by the beating of her own heart, the bleeding increased. Her thoughts became disconnected snatches. The low skyline of Cambridge began to fade. Behind her, runners jogged by. A pair of lovers passed close enough to read the dial on her watch. Ginger, now paralyzed by pain that was far more than pain, was beyond calling for help.

Suddenly, a brilliant white light replaced the agony. The heat from the light bathe the inside of her eyes. Her random thoughts coalesced about woods and a stream. It was the Dingle, the secret hiding place of her childhood. She knew every tree, every rock. Home and safe at last, Ginger Rittenhouse surrendered to the light, and gently toppled forward onto the sooty snow.

.

First there was the intense, yellow white light-the sunlight of another world. Then, subtly, colors began to appear, reds and pinks, purples and blues. Kate felt herself drifting downward, Alice drawn by her own curiosity over the edge and down the rabbit's hole. How many times had she focused her microscope in on a slide? Tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands.

Still, every journey through the yellow-white light began with the same sense of anticipation as had her first. The colors darkened and coalesced into a mosaic of cells, the cells of Beverly Vitale's left ovary, chemically fixed to prevent decay, then embedded in a block of paraffin, cut thin as a slick of oil, and finally stained with dyes specific for coloring one or another structure within the cell. Pink for the cytoplasm, mottled violet for the nuclei, red for the cell walls.

With a deep breath calculated at once to relax herself and to heighten her concentration, she focused the lenses and her thoughts on the cells, now magnified a thousand times. Her efforts were less successful than usual. Thoughts of Sandy and Ellen, of Jared and the 26-S discussion they had had following her return from the hospital the previous night, continued to intrude. She had come home late, almost eleven, after meeting with Tom Engleson, interviewing Beverly Vitale, examining the frozen section of her ovary, and finally spending an hour in the hospital library. Her expectations had been to find the former roommates in the den, comatose or nearly so, with the essence of a half a case of Lowenbrdu permeating the room. Instead, she had found only a somber and perfectly sober Jared. "Hi, " he said simply. "Hi, yourself." She kissed him on the forehead and then settled onto the ottoman by his chair.