Michael Palmer - Side Effects

Ellen didn't answer. Instead, she stared at the ceiling, tasting the salt of the tears running over her cheeks and into the corners of her mouth, and wondering where it was all going to end. Apparently blood had begun appearing in her bowel movements. The intravenous line was, according to the resident who announced she was going to have it, merely a precaution. He had neglected to tell her what it was a precaution against. "Okay, Ellen, we're all set, " the nurse announced, stepping back to admire her handiwork. "Just don't use that hand too much. All right?

Ellen pushed the tears off her cheeks with the back of her right hand.

"Sure, " she said. The woman managed an uncomfortable smile and backed from the room. It isn't fair. With no little disgust, Ellen examined the IV dripping saline into her hand. Then she shut off the overhead light and lay in the semidarkness, listening to the sighs of her own breathing and the still alien sounds of the hospital at night. It isn't fair. Over and over her mind repeated the impotent protest until she was forced to laugh at it in spite of herself. Betsy, Eve, Darcy, Sandy, the business, her health. Why had she never appreciated how fragile it all was? Had she taken too much for granted? asked too few questions? Dammit, there were no answers, anyhow. What else could she do? What else could anyone do? Here she was, almost forty, lying in a hospital bed, possibly bleeding to death, with no real sense of why she had been alive, let alone why she should have been singled out to die. It just wasn't fair.

A soft tap from the doorway intruded on her painful reveriestanding there, silhouetted by the light from the hall, was Sandyhe was holding his uniform hat in one hand and a huge bouquet in the other'permission to come aboard, " he said Ellen could feel, more than see or hear, his discomfiture. "Come on in, " she said. "Want the light on?"

"I don't think so. On second thought, I'd like to see the flowers."

Sandy flipped on the light and brought them to her. Then he bent over and kissed her on the forehead. Ellen stiffened for an instant and then relaxed to his gentle hug. "How're you doing? " he asked. "On which level?"

"Any."

"The flowers are beautiful. Thank you. If you set them over by the sink, I'll have the nurse get a vase for them later on."

"Not so great, huh." He did as she asked with the bouquet, then pulled a green vinyl chair to the bedside and sat down. Ellen switched off the overhead light. "You look nice in your uniform. Have you been home yet?"

"Just long enough to drop off my things and look in on the girls."

"How do they seem to you?"

"Concerned, confused, a little frightened maybe, but they're okay. I think it helped when your sister brought them up to see you yesterday.

I've moved back into the house until you're better."

"You may be there a long time."

"That bad?"

"Kate says no, but her eyes, and now this"-she held up her left hand-"say something else."

"But they don't really know, do they?"

"No. No, I guess not."

"Well, then, you just gotta hang in there a day or an hour or if necessary a minute at a time and believe that everything's going to be all right. I've taken an LOA from the air line to be with the girls, so you don't have anything to worry about on that account. I'll see to it that they get up here every day."

"Thanks. I… I'm grateful you're here."

"Nonsense. We've been through a lot these nineteen years. We'll make it through this."

Softly, Ellen began to cry. "Sandy, I feel like such a… a clod, an oaf. I know it's dumb, but that's how I feel. Not angry, not even sick, just helpless and clumsy."

"Well, you're neither, and no one knows that better than I do. Hey, that's the second time you've yawned since I got here. Are you tired, or just bored?"

She smiled weakly. "Not bored. A little tired, I guess. It turns out that lying in bed all day doing nothing is exhausting."

"Then how about you don't pay any attention to me and just go to sleep.

If it's okay with you, I'll sit here for a while."

"Thanks, Sandy."

"It's going to be okay, you know."

"I know."

He took her hand. "Kate's watching out for you, right?"

"She's in twice a day, and she's doing everything she can to find out why I'm bleeding." Her voice drifted off. Her eyes closed. "Don't be afraid."

"I'm not, " he said. "I'm not afraid… It's going to be okay." + The ride in Win Samuels's gray Seville took most of an hour along a network of dark country roads heading south and east from the city.

They rode largely in silence, Samuels seeming to need total concentration to negotiate the narrow turns, and Kate staring out her window at dark pastures and even darker woods, at times wondering about the purpose of their journey and at times allowing disconnected thoughts to careen through her mind. Jared… Stan Willoughby… Bobby Geary … Roscoe… Ellen… Tom… even Ros'beekes, her elementary school principal-each made an appearance and then quickly faded and was replaced by the image of another. "We're here, " Samuels said at last, turning onto a gravel drive. "Stonefield School." Kate read the name from a discreet sign illuminated only by the headlights of their car.

"What town is this?"

"No town, really. We're either in southernmost Massachusetts or northwestern Rhode Island, depending on whose survey you use. The school has been here for nearly fifty years, but it was rebuilt about twenty-five years ago, primarily with money from a fund my firm established."

The school was a low, plain brick structure with a small, well-kept lawn and a fenced-in play area to one side. To the other side, a wing of unadorned red brick stretched towards the woods. They entered the sparsely furnished lobby and were immediately met by a stout, matronly woman wearing a navy skirt, dull cardigan, and an excessive number of gold bracelets and rings. "Mr. Samuels, " she said, "it's good to see you again. Thank you for calling ahead." She turned to Kate. "Dr.

Bennett, I'm Sally Bicknell, supervisor for the evening shift. Welcome to Stonefield."

"Thank you, " Kate said uncertainly. "I'm not exactly sure where I am or why we're here, but thank you, anyway."

Sally Bicknell smiled knowingly, took Kate by the arm, and led her down the hall to a large, blue velvet curtain. "This is our playroom," she said, drawing the curtain with some flair to reveal the smoky glass of a one-way mirror. The room beyond was large, well lit, and carpeted. There were two tumbling mats, a number of inflatable vinyl punching dummies, and a stack of large building blocks. Mo one corner, her back toward them, a chunky girl with close-cropped sandy hair hunched over a row of large cloth dolls. "She's never in bed much before two or three in the morning," Sally Bicknell explained. "Kate, " Samuels said. "I brought you here because I thought that seeing this might help you understand some of my urgency as regards your moving forward with starting your family. Mrs. Bicknell."

The evening shift supervisor rapped loudly on the glass three times, then three times again. The girl in the playroom cocked her head to one side and then slowly turned around. "Kate, meet your sister-in-law, Lindsey."

The girl was, physically, a monster. Her eyes were low set and narrow, her facial features thick and coarse, with heavy lips and twisted yellow teeth. What little there was of her neck forced her head to the right at an unnatural angle. Her barrel chest merged with her abdomen, and her legs were piteously bowed. "That can't be, " Kate said softly, her attention transfixed by the grotesquery. "Jared's sister Lindsey…"

"Died when she was a child, " Samuels finished the sentence for her.

"I'm afraid his mother and I chose not to tell him the truth. It seemed like the best idea at the time, considering that we were assured Lindsey would live only a few years. She has Hunter's Syndrome. You are familiar with that, yes? " Kate nodded. "Severe mental retardation and any number of other defects. Her mother, my wife, was nearly forty when she gave birth."