Michael Palmer: Side Effects

"Always side with the overdog. That's my motto, " he said brightly. "I even voted for Mattingly in the Sixth Congressional race. I mean who would want to waste his vote on a sure loser like the other guy?"

"A two-point defeat when you started out twenty-two behind?

Some loser. Slide on down here, big boy, and I'll give you our traditional Sunday morning kiss."

"We have a traditional Sunday morning kiss?"

"Not yet."

Jared surveyed the embankment and then chose a safer, albeit much longer, route than Kate had taken. She stifled a smile. Never lift up your left foot until your fight one's firmly planted was a favorite saying of Jared's father, and here was the scion-the disciple-embracing the philosophy in its most literal sense. Someday, Jared, she thought, you are going to lift up both of your feet at the same time and discover you can fly. His kiss was firm and deep, his tongue caressing the roof of her mouth, the insides of her cheeks. Kate responded in kind, sliding both her hands to his buttocks and holding him tightly. "You kiss good, Doc, " he said. "I mean good."

"Do you think the ducks would mind if we started making dirty snow angels? " she whispered, warming his ear with her lips. "No, but I think the Carlisles would." Jared pulled free. "We've got to get going. I wonder why they keep inviting us to play with them when we haven't beaten them once in two years."

"They just love a challenge, I guess." Kate shrugged, tossed out the remaining bread, and followed him along the safe route to the road. "Did someone call this morning? " he asked over his shoulder. "Pardon?"

"While I was in the shower."

Jared turned to her as he reached the MG and leaned against the perfectly maintained canvas top. "I thought I heard the phone ring."

"Oh, you did." A nugget of tension materialized beneath her breastbone.

Jared hadn't missed hearing the phone after all. "It… it was nothing, really. Just Dr. Willoughby." Kate slid into the passenger seat. She had wanted to choose carefully the moment to discuss the pathology chief's call. "How is Yoda? " he asked, settling behind the wheel. "He's fine. I wish you wouldn't call him that, Jared. He's been very good to me, and it sounds so demeaning."

"It's not demeaning. Honestly." He turned the key and the engine rumbled to life. "Why, without Yoda, Luke Skywalker would never have survived the first Star Wars sequel. What else could I possibly call someone who's three feet tall, bald with bushy eyebrows, and lives in a swamp?

Anyway, what did he want?

" Kate felt the nugget expand, and fought the sensation. "He just needed to discuss some twists and turns in the politics at the hospital, " she said evenly. "I'll tell you about them later. How about we use the little time we have to plan some kind of strategic ambush for the Carlisles?"

"Don't poach. That's all the strategy we need, Now what was so important to ol' Yoda at eight-thirty on a Sunday morning?

" Although the words were spoken lightly, Kate noted that he had not yet put the car into gear. From the beginning of their relationship, he had been somehow threatened both by her career and by her unique friendship with her aging department head. It was nothing he had ever said, but the threat was there. She was certain of it. "Later? " She tried one last time. Jared switched off the ignition. The mood of the morning shattered like dropped crystal. Kate forced her eyes to make and maintain contact with his. "He said that tomorrow morning he was going to send letters to the medical school and to Norton Reese announcing his retirement in June or as soon as a successor can be chosen as chief of the department."

"A, nd… 9"

"And I think you know already what comes next." Deep inside her, Kate felt sparks of anger begin to replace the tension. This exchange, her news, her chance to become at thirty-five the youngest department chief, to say nothing of the only woman department chief, at Metrothey should have been embraced by the marriage with the same joy as Jared's election to Congress would have been. "Try me, " Jared said, gazing off across the lake. Kate sighed. "He wants my permission to submit my name to the faculty search committee as his personal recommendation."

"And you thanked him very much, but begged off because you and your husband agreed two years ago to start your family when the election was over, and you simply couldn't take on the responsibility and time demands of a department chairmanship-especially of a moneyless, understaffed, political football of a department like the one Yoda is scurrying away from now-right?", Wrong! " The snap in her voice was reflex. She cursed herself for losing control so easily, and took several seconds to calm down before continuing. "I told him I would think about it and talk it over with my husband and some of my friends at the hospital. I told him either to leave my name off his letter or wait a week before sending it."

"Have you thought what the job would take out of you? I mean Yoda's had two coronaries in the last few years, and he is certainly a lot more low key than you are."

"Dammit, Jared. Stop calling him that. And they weren't coronaries. Only angina."

"All right, angina."

"Do you suppose we could talk this over after we play? You're the one who was so worried about being late."

Jared glanced at his watch and then restarted the engine. He turned to her. There was composure in the lines of his face, but an intensity perhaps even a fear-in his eyes. It was the same look Kate had seen in them when, before the election, he spoke of losing as "not the end of the world."

"Sure, " he said. "Just answer me that one question. Do you really have a sense of what it would be like for you-for us-if you took over that department?"

"I… I know it wouldn't be easy. But that's not what you're really asking, is it?"

Jared shook his head and stared down at his clenched hands. Kate knew very well what he was asking. He was thirty-nine years old and an only child. His first marriage had ended in nightmarish fashion, with his wife running off to California with their baby daughter. Even Jared's father, senior partner of one of Boston's most prestigious law firms, with all the king's horses and all the king's men at his disposal, couldn't find them. Jared wanted children. For himself and for his father he wanted them. The agreement to wait until after the election was out of deference to the pressures of a political campaign and the newness of their marriage. Now neither was a factor. Oh, yes, she knew very well what he was asking. "The answer is, " she said finally, "that if I accepted the nomination and got the appointment I would need some time to do the job right. But that is the grossest kind of projection at this point. Norton Reese has hardly been my biggest supporter since I exposed the way he was using money budgeted for the forensic pathology unit to finance new cardiac surgery equipment. I think he would cut off an arm before he would have me as a department chief in a hospital he administrated."

"How much time? " Jared's voice was chilly. "Please, honey. I'm begging you. Let's do this when we can sit down in our own living room and discuss all the possibilities."

"How much?", I… I don't know. A year? Two?"

Jared snapped the stick shift into first gear, sending a spray of ice and snow into the air before the rear tires gained purchase. "To be continued, " he said, as much to himself as to her. "Fine, " she said.

Numbly, she sank back in her seat and stared unseeing out the window.

Her thoughts drifted for a time and then began to focus on a face. Kate closed her eyes and tried to will the thoughts, the face, away. In moments, though, she could see Art's eyes, glazed and bloodshot, see them as clearly as she had that afternoon a. dozen years before when he had raped her. She could smell the whiskey on his breath and feel the weight of his fullback's body on top of hers. Though bundled in a down parka and warm-up suit, she began to shiver. Jared turned onto the narrow access drive to the club. To Kate's right, the metallic surface of the Atlantic glinted through a leafless hardwood forest. She took no notice of it. Please Art, don't, her mind begged. You're hurting me.