Michael Palmer - Side Effects

"Went along with it? " Kate was incredulous. "Lieutenant Finn, it was your suggestion in the first place. For the kids of Boston. Don't you remember saying all that? " Her voice cracked. The day had been punishing enough without this. Suddenly, Jared pushed past her and confronted the man. Though he was taller than Finn, the policeman was far stockier. "Finn, if you've said what you came to say, I want you and your foul mouth out of here. If not, say it. Then leave."

"I'll leave when I'm fucking ready."

"Get out."

Jared stepped forward, his fists clenched in front of him. It was only then that Kate sensed how heavily Finn had been drinking. She moved toward them, but not quickly enough. With no warning or windup, Finn sank a vicious uppercut into Jared's solar plexus. A guttural grunt accompanied the explosion of air from his lungs, as he doubled over and dropped to his knees. Kate knelt beside her husband. "You damn animal," she screamed at Finn. "I wish it had been you, lady, " Finn said as he turned and walked clumsily from the house. The antique vase Kate threw shattered against the door as it closed behind him. Jared remained doubled over, but his breathing was deepening. "You okay? " she said softly. "Never laid a glove on me, " he responded with no little effort.

"Could you bring over the wastebasket, please? Just in case."

"You poor darling. Can I do anything else? Get you anything?"

Slowly, Jared sat back and straightened up. His eyes were glazed.

"Just remind me again what I told that minister."

"For better or for worse. That's what you told him. Jared, I don't want to sound corny, but that was a pretty wonderful thing you did standing up to that animal."

"For better or for worse? You sure that was it?"

"Uh-huh."

"Katey, I don't know how to tell you this, but in some perverse way getting hit the way I just did felt good."

"I don't understand."

"Right before Finn came in I was ready to tell you that I agreed with my father in thinking everything would be simpler and look better for all of us if you would just admit to writing the letter. Then that asshole started in. All of a sudden, I realized how wrong I was… and I'm sorry. I couldn't stand hearing him talk to you that way. Katey, please just try to remember that there's a lot going on that's confusing to me.

Sometimes I feel that living with you is like trying to ride a cyclone.

Sometimes I feel like a slab of luncheon meat between one slice of Winfield and one slice of Kate. Sometimes He whirled to the wastebasket and threw up. Sheila Pierce stared past Norton Reese's sweat-dampened pate at the stucco ceiling of their room in the Mid City Motel and reminded herself to continue the groans that the man found so exciting.

Careful not to disrupt his rhythm, she reached up and reassured herself that her new diamond studs hadn't come dislodged. "Oh, baby, " she murmured. "Oh, baby, you're so good. So good." She wished she could have seen Kate Bennett's face when the reporters started calling. Reese was hardly a Valentino for her, but she had to give credit where credit was due, and Reese deserved what she was giving him for what he had given Bennett. "Oh, baby, come to me. Come to me, " she moaned. It had been a thrill just to watch, Kathryn Bennett, MD, Miss Perfect, confused and irritable, suddenly not in control of every little thing. How good at last to be the one pulling the strings. Too bad there was no way for Bennett ever to know. "Don't stop, Norty. Oh, yes, baby, yes. Don't stop."

Compared with the conference rooms of other departments in Metropolitan Hospital of Boston, the one belonging to the pathology unit was spartan. French Impressionist prints mounted on poster board hung on stark, beige walls. Below them, metal, government-surplus bookcases were half filled with worn, dogeared texts and journals. The meager decor, plus a large, gouged oak table and two dozen variegated folding chairs did little to obscure the fact that prior to a modest department wide renovation in 1965, the room had been the hospital morgue. Some among the twenty-nine assembled for the hastily called meeting still sensed the auras of the thousands of bodies that had temporarily rested there. Kate, Stan Willoughby seated to her right, stood at one end of the table and surveyed the room. There were six pathologists besides the two of them, some residents, and a number of lab technicians. It bothered her terribly to think that one-or more-of them might be capable of an act as malicious as the Bobby Geary letter. Those in the room were, in a sense, her family-people she spent as many waking hours with each week as she did with her husband. It had always been her way to deal with them in a straightforward manner, respectfully, and with no hidden agendas. There were only two characteristics that they knew she would not tolerate-laziness and dishonesty. However, to the best of her knowledge, none in the room could be accused of either. The closest had been the business of Sheila Pierce's claiming she had misplaced the required vouchers and certification for her Miami trip, and even then, Kate had no proof of her suspicions. Besides, the matter had been settled between them with little disagreement. John Gilson, the unit's electron microscopist, Liu Huang, a meticulous pathologist, whom Kate tutored in English, Marvin Grimes, the always pleasantly inebriated deiner, Sheila, herself, so very bright, so dedicated to the department, momentarily, Kate's eyes met each of theirs. "I want to thank you all for taking the time out of your schedules to hear me out, " she began. "I know the last day and a half have been… how should I say, a bit disrupted around here."

There was a murmur of laughter at the understatement. "Well, I'm here to tell you that compared to what you all have been through, my life has been absolutely nuked. At three o'clock this morning, my husband and I caught a reporter trying to sneak out of our bedroom in time to make the morning edition. He had disguised himself as our antique brass coatrack."

Laughter this time was more spontaneous and animated. Kate smiled thinly. "Norton Reese has set up a news conference for me in about an hour. He wants me to state my position on the Bobby Geary business once and for all. Well, before I tell those vultures, I wanted to tell you.

"What the press has been saying about Bobby Geary is true. From all we were able to tell at post, he had been a longtime user of intravenous amphetamines. How he could do what he did to his body and still play ball the way he did is a mystery to me, but the chronic scarring we found along certain veins makes the truth clear. Sad for Bobby's family, sad for the baseball fans and the kids, and, I'm sure, a nightmare for Bobby. The decision to withhold our findings from the press was as much mine as Dr. Willoughby's or Detective Finn's." A jet of acid singed her throat at the mention of the man. "I have trouble with deceit in any form, but every sense I have of what is decent says that our decision was the right one. Now someone is doing his best to make me pay for that decision. I did not write the letter, and I have no idea who did, why they did it, how they got the information on Bobby Geary's post, or how they obtained my stationery. The possibility exists that it was someone from this department. I very much hope not-all of you are very important to me. I feel like we're a team, and that helps me show up every day ready to try and practice decent pathology in this dinosaur of a hospital. "But what's done is done. I've agonized as much as I'm going to, and after the little Q-and-A session in Reese's office, I intend to begin stuffing this whole business into the barrel I use to dispose of the garbage in my life. If any of you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them as best I can."