Michael Palmer - Side Effects

"And you think I'm forcing my will on Jared?"

"You have a tremendous amount of influence on him, " she replied. "I don't think I'm giving away any great secrets by saying that." Samuels nodded thoughtfully. "Kate, " he said finally, "humor this old man and let me change the subject a bit, okay?"

Old man. Give me a break, counselor, she wanted to snap. Instead she sat forward, smiled, and simply said, "Sure."

"Why do you want to be the chief of pathology at Metro?" Kate met his gaze levelly and said silent thanks for the hours she had spent answering that question for herself. "Because it would be a fascinating experience. Because I think I could do a credible job.

Because my work-and my department-mean a great deal to me. Because I feel a person either grows or dies."

"Jared tells me you feel accepting the position will delay your being able to start your family for at least two years."

"Actually, I said one or two years, but two seems a reasonable guess."

Samuels rose slowly and walked to the window and then back to the fire.

If he was preparing to say something dramatic, she acknowledged, he was doing a laudable job of setting it up. "Kate, " he said, still staring at the fire, "when I phoned, I invited you to stay the night if you could. Are you going to be able to do that?"

"I had planned on it, yes." Actually, the invitation had been worded in a way that would have made it nearly impossible for her to refuse.

"Good. I'd like to take you for a ride after dinner. A ride and a visit.

I… I know I sound mysterious, but for the moment you'll have to indulge me. This is something I never thought I would be doing." There was a huskiness, an emotion to the man's voice that Kate had never heard before. Was he near crying? For half a minute there was silence, save for the low hiss of the fire. But when her father-in-law turned to her, his composure had returned. "Kate, " he said, as if the moment by the fire had never happened, "do you think that you are ready to handle the responsibilities of a whole department?"

She thought for a moment. "This may sound funny, but in a way it doesn't matter what I think. You see, Dr. Willoughby, the only person who knows both me and the job, thinks I can handle it. It's like becoming a doctor-or, for that matter, a lawyer. You only decide you want to do it. They-the bar or the medical examiners-decide whether or not you can and should. From then on, your only obligation is to do your best."

She paused. "Does that sound smug?"

"Not really."

"I hope not, Win. Because actually I'm scared stiff about a lot of things. I'm frightened of taking the job and I'm frightened of not taking it. I'm frightened of having children and I'm frightened of not having them. And most of all, I am frightened of having to face the dilemma of either losing my husband or losing myself."

"There are other possibilities, " Samuels said. "I know that, but I'm not sure Jared does, and to be perfectly honest, until this moment, I wasn't sure you did, either."

"There are always other possibilities, " he said with a tone that suggested he had voiced that belief before. "Kate, you know hospital politics are no different from any other kind of politics. There's power involved and there's money involved, and that means there are things like this handbill involved."

He took the garish orange flyer from his desk drawer and held it up for her to see. Kate shuddered at the sight of it. "Do you think that brilliant effort was aimed at me or at Jared? " she asked. "The truth is it makes no difference. Politics is politics. The minute you start playing the game you have enemies. If they happen to be better at the game than you are, you get buried. It's that simple."

He held up the flyer again. "My sense of this whole business-assuming, of course, that you didn't send Bobby Geary's autopsy report to the papers — is that someone is determined to keep you from becoming head of your department. If they have any kind of power, or access to power, your department could suffer dearly."

"My department?"

"Certainly. Your people end up overworked because of staffing cutbacks and outmoded equipment. Turnover is high, morale low. Quality of work drops. Sooner or later there's a mistake. You may be the best pathologist in the world, Kate, and the best-intentioned administrator, but unless you play the politics game and get past the competition to people like the Ashburton Foundation, you will end up an unhappy, harried, unfulfilled failure. And take it from me, winning that game means plenty of sacrifice. It means that if you know the competition is getting up at six, you damn well better be up at five-thirty."

"I appreciate your thoughts, " she said. "I really do. All I can say is that the final decision hasn't been made yet, and that I was hoping to work the whole thing out with Jared."

"But you have okayed submission of your name."

"Yes, " she said, averting her gaze for the first time. "Yes, I have."

Samuels turned and walked again toward the window. For a time, there was only the fire. "Say, Win, " she said, hoping to lead them in other directions, "how much do you know about the Ashburton Foundation?

" He turned back to her. "I really don't know anything. In the early days of their involvement here, my firm handled some of their correspondence with the hospital. But I haven't dealt with them in years. Why?"

"Just some research I've been doing at work. Nothing, really. Do you by any chance have their address?"

"I don't know, " Samuels said, somewhat distractedly. "In the Rolodex over there on my desk, perhaps. I really don't know. Kate, you know it is my way to reason, not to beg. But for the sake of my son and myself, if not for yourself, I'm begging you to put the chairmanship on the back burner and devote yourself for a few years to your family and to helping Jared get his foot in the political door."

At that instant, a chime sounded from the kitchen. Kate glanced instinctively at her watch, but she knew that it was exactly seven o'clock. She rose. "When is Jared due back? " she asked. "Wednesday or Thursday, I suspect."

"Win, I have no response to what you just asked. You know that, don't you?"

"Perhaps before too much longer you might. Let us eat. After our meal, there is a trip we must take."

With a faint smile, Samuels nodded Kate toward the dining room and then took her elbow and guided her through the door. The IV nurse, a square-shouldered woman overweight by at least thirty pounds, rubbed alcohol on the back of Ellen Sandler's left hand, slapped the area a dozen times, and then swabbed it again. "Now, Ellen, " she said in the patronizing, demeaning tone Ellen had come to label hospitalese, "you've got to relax. Your veins are in spasm. If you don't relax, it will take all night for me to get this IV in."

Relax? Ellen glared at the woman, who was hunched over her hand. Can't you tell I'm frightened? Can't you see I'm scared out of my wits by all that's happening to me? Take a minute, just a minute, and talk to me.

Ask me, and I'll try to explain. I'll tell you how it feels to be seven years old I and to learn that your father, who entered the hospital for a "little operation, " has been taken to a funeral home in a long box with handles relax?

Why not ask me to float off this bed? Or better still, just demand that I make the blood in my body start clotting, so you'll be spared the inconvenience of having to plunge that needle into the back of my hand.

Relax?

"I… I'm trying, " she said meekly. "Good. Now you're going to feel a little stick."

Ellen grabbed the bedrail with her free hand as electric pain from the "little stick" shot up her arm. "Got it, " the nurse said excitedly.

"Now don't move. Don't move until I get it taped down, okay? You know," she continued as she taped the plastic cathe er in place, "you've got the toughest veins I've seen in a long time."