Michael Palmer - Side Effects

"Gone to find something better" was all the note from his wife had said.

The trail of the woman and her daughter had grown cold in New York and finally vanished in a morass of evanescent religious cults throughout southern and central California. "Gone, to find something better."

Jared had cried as he spoke of the Vermont years, of his need then to break clear of his father's expectations and build a life for himself.

Kate had dried his tears with her lips and listened to the confusion and pain of a marriage that was far more an act of rebellion than one of love. Kate was finishing the last of the Globe stories when, with a soft knock, a ponderous woman entered carrying a paper bag. The woman's overcoat was unbuttoned, exposing a nurse's uniform, pin, and name tag.

Kate read the name as the woman spoke it. "Dr. Bennett, I'm Sandra Tucker. Ginger Rittenhouse was my roommate."

"Of course. Please sit down. Coffee?"

"No, thank you. I'm doing private-duty work, and I'm expected at my patient's house in Weston in half an hour. Dr. Engleson said that if I remembered anything or found anything that might help you understand Ginger's death I could bring it to you."

"Yes, that's true. I'm sorry about Ginger."

"Did you know her?"

"No. No, I didn't."

"We had shared the house only for a few months."

"I know."

"A week after she moved in, Ginger baked a cake and cooked up a lasagna for my birthday."

"That was very nice, " Kate said, wishing she had thought twice about engaging the woman in small talk. There was a sad aura about her-a loneliness that made Kate suspect she would talk on indefinitely if given the chance, patient or no patient. "We went to the movies together twice, and to the Pops, but we were only just getting to be friends and …"

"It's good of you to come all the way down here in the snow, " Kate said in as gentle an interruption as she could manage. "Oh, well, it's the least I could do. Ginger was a very nice person. Very quiet and very nice. She was thinking about trying for the marathon next spring."

"What do you have in the bag? Is that something of hers? " A frontal assault seemed the only way. "Bag? Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Dr. Engleson, what a nice man he is, asked me to go through her things looking for medicines or letters or doctors' appointments or anything that might give you a clue about why she… why she…"

"I know it was a hard thing for you to do, Miss Tucker, and I'm grateful for any help."

"It's Mrs. Tucker. I'm divorced."

Kate nodded. "The bag?"

"My God, I apologize again." She passed her parcel across the desk.

"Sometimes I talk too much, I'm afraid."

"Sometimes I do, too." Kate's voice trailed away as she stared at the contents of the bag. "I found them in the top of Ginger's bureau. It's the strangest way to package pills I've ever seen. On that one sheet are nearly two months worth of them, packaged individually and labeled by day and date when to take each one. Looks sort of like it was put together by a computer."

"It was, " Kate said, her thoughts swirling. "Pardon?"

"I said it was put together by a computer." Her eyes came up slowly and turned toward the window. Across the street, its glass and steel facade jewellike, was the pride of Metropolitan Hospital of Boston. "The pharmacy-dispensing computer of the Omnicenter. The Omnicenter where Ginger Rittenhouse never went."

"I don't understand."

Kate rose. "Mrs. Tucker, you've been a tremendous help. I'll call if we need any further information or if we learn something that might help explain your friend's death. If you'll excuse me, there are some phone calls I must make."

The woman took Kate's hand. "Think nothing of it, " she said. "Oh, I felt uncomfortable at first, rifling through her drawers, but then I said to myself, If you're not going to do it, then…"

"Mrs. Tucker, thank you very much." One hand still locked in Sandra Tucker's, Kate used her other to take the woman by the elbow and guide her out the door. The tablets were a medium-strength estrogen-progesterone combination, a generic birth control pill. Kate wondered if Ginger Rittenhouse had been too shy to mention to her roommate that she took them. Computer printed along the top margin of the sheet were Ginger's name, the date six weeks before when the prescription had been filled, and instructions to take one tablet daily.

Also printed was advice on what to do if one dose was missed, as well as if two doses were missed. Common side effects were listed, with an asterisk beside those that should be reported immediately to Ginger's Omnicenter physician. Perforations, vertical and horizontal, enabled the patient to tear off as many pills as might be needed for time away. The setup, like everything at the Omnicenter, was slick-thoughtfully designed, and practical-further showing why there was a long list of women from every economic level waiting to become patients of the facility. Kate ran through half a dozen possible explanations of why she had been told Ginger Rittenhouse was not a patient at the Omnicenter, then she accepted that there was only one way to find out. She answered,

"Doctor Bennett, " when the Omnicenter operator asked who was calling, emphasizing ever so slightly her title. Immediately, she was patched through to Dr. William Zimmermann, the director. "Kate, this is a coincidence. I was just about to call you. How are you? " It was typical of the man, a dynamo sometimes called Rocket Bill, to forgo the redundancy of saying hello. "I'm fine, Bill, thanks. What do you mean coincidence'?"

"Well, I've got a note here from our statistician, Carl Horner, along with a file on someone named Rittenhouse. Carl says he originally sent word to you that we had no such patient."

"That's right."

"Well, we do. Apparently there was a coding mistake or spelling mistake or something."

"Did he tell you why I wanted to know?"

"Only that this woman had died."

"That's right. Does your Carl Horner make mistakes often? " The idea of an error didn't jibe with Marco Sebastian's description of the man.

"Once every century or so as far as I can tell. I've been here four years now, and this is the first time I've encountered any screw up by his machines. Do you want me to send this chart over to you?"

"Can I pick it up in person, Bill? There are some other things I want to talk with you about."

"One o'clock okay with you?"

"Fine. And Bill, could you order a printout of the record of a Beverly Vitale."

"The woman who bled out on the inpatient service?"

"Yes."

"I've already reviewed it. A copy's right here on my desk."

"Excellent. One last thing."

"Yes?"

"I'd like to meet Carl Horner. Is that possible?"

"Old Carl's a bit cantankerous, but I suspect it would be okay."

"One o'clock, then?"

"One o'clock." + Ellen Sandler clutched her housecoat about her and sat on the edge of her bed staring blankly at a disheveled blackbird foraging for a bit of food on the frozen snow beyond her window. She was expected at the office in less than an hour. The house was woefully low on staples. Betsy's math teacher had set up a noontime conference to investigate her falling interest and grade in the subject. Eve needed help shopping for a dress for her piano recital. Darcy had come home an hour after weekday curfew, her clothes tinged with a musty odor that Ellen suspected was marijuana. So much to do. So much had changed, yet so little. The silence in the house was stifling. Gradually, she focused on a few ongoing sounds, the hum of the refrigerator, the drone of the blower on the heating and air conditioning system Sandy had installed to celebrate their last anniversary, the sigh that was her own breathing.

"Get up, " she told herself. "Goddamn it, get up and do what you have to do." Still, she did not move. The hurt, the oppressive, constricting ache in her chest seemed to make movement impossible. It wasn't the loneliness that pained so, although certainly that was torture. It wasn't the empty bed or the silent telephone or the lifeless eyes that stared at her from the mirror. It wasn't even the other woman, whoever she was. It was the lies-the dozens upon dozens of lies from the one person in the world she needed to trust. It was the realization that while the anguish and hurt of the broken marriage might, in time, subside, the inability to trust would likely remain part of her forever.