Kate White - Hush

From there she threaded the maze of hushed corridors toward the small conference room. All the office and exam room doors were closed again today; behind some of them she could hear murmuring voices. She nearly jumped when Dr. Sherman emerged from one, closing the door quickly behind him. He nodded distractedly at Lake, his face flushed. She watched as he hurried down the hall and slipped into the lab.

In the conference room she dumped her purse and tote bag onto the table. For a moment she just stood there, deliberating. There was no reason to wait, she realized. She had to do it now. She took a pad and a pen with her in case she needed to write anything down.

As she turned the last corner toward the file room she nearly collided with Harry Kline.

“Oh, hey,” he said genially. “How goes it?”

“Fine,” she said as pleasantly as she could summon. She was still pretty sure he was the one who’d ratted her out to the cops-telling them that she’d seemed upset since the murder-and she had no interest in spending any time with him.

“I hear you’re doing your presentation tomorrow.”

“Yup. I’m just here to pick up a couple of files. Nice to see you.”

She could sense him following her with his eyes as she walked away. Just wait, she thought-he’d probably tattle to the cops that she was guilty of failing to engage in idle chitchat.

To her relief, no one was in the storage room-or in the kitchenette catty-corner to it. She had decided in advance that if someone came in after her, it would seem odd for the door to be shut all the way. So she shut it halfway and then dragged a small stepladder behind it. That way if someone pushed the door open further, she’d have a little warning.

She moved to the wall of patient files. Taking a stab at where the H ’s might be, she pulled open a middle drawer. On the tabs of the hanging files were last names beginning with J and K . She slid the drawer shut and pulled open the one just to the left of it. The first name she spotted was Havers-this was where she needed to be. She flicked quickly through the row of hanging files. There it was: Hunt, Alexis and Brian. She pulled the file from the drawer.

It bulged with papers. She skimmed quickly through them-test results, more test results, details of the procedures performed, including the IVFs. With her limited knowledge, it was impossible to know if some of the procedures had been unnecessary. Alexis’s situation had been complicated and she may have truly needed all of it. Despite what Alexis had told her about having plenty of frozen embryos on reserve, it appeared only two were banked.

Lake laid the file on top of the open drawer, withdrew another file at random and flipped through the contents. It wasn’t as full as the Hunt folder but just as impossible to interpret. She realized that the only way to tell if something was wrong would be to photocopy some of the pages and get the objective opinion of another doctor. But the photocopy machine was adjacent to Brie’s alcove and she couldn’t risk it.

What if she could talk to other patients? she wondered. If something were going on, Alexis probably wasn’t the only disgruntled person out there. She thought of the woman she’d seen Rory comfort-the one she’d discussed with Harry Kline. Though Harry hadn’t mentioned the name, she’d heard Rory say it. Mrs. Kastner. Lake slipped the Hunt file back in its place, and after checking quickly behind her, pulled open the drawer to the right. There was a file for Sydney and Ryan Kastner, and it was even thicker than the Hunts’. As Harry had revealed, Sydney had undergone eight rounds of IVF. The most recent IVF had resulted in ten embryos-with three being transferred-but no pregnancy had resulted.

Eight did seem excessive. Maybe Sydney had been encouraged to do too many, pressed like Alexis to continue with the process despite the fact that it wasn’t working.

Considering how distraught she’d seemed, she might be open to talking. Lake flipped back to the front of the folder, to the basic information form patients filled out before their initial consultation. The address listed was on East End Avenue. As Lake finished jotting it down, along with the various phone numbers, her eye caught something odd. Next to each name, in pencil, was a series of letters: Rb next to Sydney’s, BRbr , by her husband’s. Lake had no idea what they could mean.

Lost in thought, it took her a moment to hear the alert being signaled in another part of her brain. Her head snapped up. There were soft footsteps on the carpet in the hall. Someone was headed toward the storage room.

She clapped the file shut and crammed it into the drawer. She had just slid the drawer shut and stuffed the paper with the numbers into her pocket when she heard the door knock against the stepladder. Slowly she turned, trying not to seem startled. To her utter dismay, Brie was standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing?” Brie asked roughly.

“What am I doing ?” Lake asked, trying to sound mildly indignant. “As I told you, I still have a bit more research to take care of.”

“But those are patient charts in there,” Brie said.

Lake turned around and pulled her upper body back, as if scrutinizing the drawers in front of her.

“Oh, right,” she said. She crossed the room, let her eyes roam for a moment and then pulled open the drawer with the press clippings. The whole time she could sense Brie’s eyes boring into her.

“What’s going on with the stepladder?” Brie asked.

“Excuse me?” Lake said, tugging a press file from the drawer. She turned and faced Brie again.

“Why was the stepladder against the door?”

Lake glanced casually in that direction.

“It was in the middle of the room,” she replied. “I just moved it out of the way.”

Brie didn’t say anything. She just stood there, watching, as Lake walked past her out of the storage room.

Lake’s heart was still pounding as she reached the small conference room. She’d played indignant with Brie, but she doubted she’d deceived her. And to make matters worse, Lake had left evidence behind. If Brie opened the drawer Lake had been standing in front of and saw the Kastner file stuffed haphazardly in the wrong spot, she’d realize that Lake had been rooting through there-and clearly on a mission.

Lake knew that the best move she could make now was to just get out of the clinic. She grabbed her bags, leaving the press file on the table as she fled.

Out on Park Avenue, she hurried north along the wet, glistening sidewalk. She would catch the crosstown bus on Eighty-sixth Street and escape to her apartment. It had stopped raining and people were out again-nannies pushing strollers; thin women toting yoga mats and shopping bags; doormen lolling in front of redbrick apartment buildings. How could everything seem so sane, she wondered, when her own world was a nightmare? By now Brie had probably figured out that Lake had been checking out a patient chart. And she had more than likely squealed to Levin. If asked, Lake would have to say that she had grabbed a file before realizing she was in the wrong drawer and hastily stuffed it back in-as unconvincing as that sounded.

The irony of her busted spy mission was that she had absolutely nothing to show for it, though it had given her the idea of reaching out to Sydney Kastner. Without allowing herself time to deliberate, she dug her BlackBerry from her purse and called Sydney Kastner’s cell number. She was greeted by a soft hello.

“Ms. Kastner?”

“Yes?”

“Good morning. My name is Lake Warren. I’m a consultant with the Advanced Fertility Center and I’m trying to touch base with some of the patients-for, um, background research. I’d be so grateful if we could meet for a few minutes to talk.”