Kate White - Hush

As soon as she entered the large conference room, her stomach began to roil. The last time she had been in this room was when Levin had announced Keaton’s murder and Hull and McCarty sat there like predators anxious to pick up a scent.

After unpacking her tote bag, she hooked up her laptop so that it fed into the flat-screen TV on the wall. Next she distributed pads and pencils around the table, a touch that a former boss had always insisted on. When she was done, she ran through the PowerPoint presentation.

“You’re early.”

Lake spun around and saw that the comment had come from Brie, who was standing in the doorway. Great, she thought. Brie had probably been sent to watch her like a hawk.

“I just wanted to run through my slides on the big screen,” Lake said, hearing the defensiveness in her voice and hating it.

“No problem,” Brie said, weirdly chipper for her. She was wearing a slim black dress and her lips were painted a nude color that made them almost recede into her face. “Everyone’s still finishing up with patients, so six-thirty is the earliest we can start.”

“Perfect,” Lake said, trying to smile. “Excuse me, you said everyone-who do you mean? Isn’t it just Dr. Levin and Dr. Sherman?”

“Dr. Levin asked a few others to join them. He thought it would be great to get their feedback.” Still that unnatural cheeriness. “Did you figure out how to hook up your laptop okay?”

“Um, yes, thanks,” Lake said.

“Well, just let me know if you need any help. I’m going to be in Dr. Hoss’s office going over a few things.”

As Brie left, closing the door behind her, Lake pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips, thinking. Why was Brie acting so helpful? Was it because Lake’s work was almost done and she’d soon be out of Brie’s hair-or was something more sinister afoot? Maybe the geniality was an offshoot of devilish glee because Brie knew Lake was in trouble. In any case, Lake couldn’t worry about that now. She had to focus on sneaking into the file room, which she had fifteen minutes to do. The good news was that it sounded like Brie would be ensconced in Hoss’s office.

Lake slipped out of the conference room and looked both ways up and down the hall. No one was in sight. Quickly she made her way to the file room. This time she didn’t bother with the stepladder ruse. It hadn’t worked before anyway and she needed to make dead certain no one saw her this time. She shut the door firmly behind her.

She went to the drawers and quickly found the Turnbull chart. It wasn’t as thick as the Hunt chart, and as she thumbed quickly through the pages she saw that Melanie had indeed undergone two IVF procedures, the second resulting in a pregnancy. Though it was difficult to completely decipher the doctors’ notations, it seemed that only six eggs had been harvested the first time and only one embryo had made it to day three, which Lake knew was the first point it was viable to transfer embryos to the uterus for implantation. The low number wasn’t surprising if Melanie was in her forties, as Alexis had suggested, but it also meant that the chances of a pregnancy were very slim. The next IVF, however, produced eight eggs and six viable embryos. What a nice surprise, Lake thought mockingly. If Alexis was right, this was when her embryos had been used because Sherman realized Melanie had little chance on her own.

What Lake didn’t see was any notation that seemed to link this chart to another. She would have to pull Alexis’s chart and compare them side by side. But first she flipped to the front of the file to check Melanie’s age. According to her birth date, she’d been forty-one at the time of her first in vitro. As Lake started to lay the file down on top of the open drawer, she noticed several letters, written in pencil, by Melanie’s name on her information form. BLb . It was similar to what she’d spotted in the Kastners’ file, but with different letters, she thought. Her eyes jerked toward Melanie’s husband’s name. BLg . Was this the code that linked one couple to another?

She glanced at her watch. To her shock, it was 6:28. She needed to look at Alexis’s file again, but she’d run out of time. Suddenly, from behind the door, she heard the muffled sounds of conversation. She froze. But the sound soon receded and she dropped the chart back into place. Lake eased the door open, peeking cautiously into the hall-no one was there-and quickly slipped from the room. Her heart was thumping so hard, she could hear the sound it made. As she hurried back to the conference room she could feel that the inside of her jacket was sticky with sweat.

Steve was the first to arrive for the presentation, only seconds after Lake had returned to the room. Lake felt a momentary rush of relief. Surely she could count on him to be supportive tonight.

“I’m so sorry about yesterday evening,” he said quietly. “There were some complications with a patient.”

“Did everything turn out all right?”

“Yes, thankfully. Hilary said you weren’t feeling well.”

“Oh-it was just a very bad headache. I’m better now.”

“Lake, I-”

Hoss had just entered the room-followed by Perkins-and Steve took a seat without finishing his comment. Sherman came in next, along with Brie. Finally Levin appeared. He greeted Lake politely but his eyes slid quickly off her face.

“Okay, let’s get started,” Levin said as people eased into their chairs.

Lake took a deep breath and pulled her laptop closer to her.

“These past few days have been extremely stressful,” she said, “but it’s important to press ahead with the marketing plans. You do wonderful work here, and more women need to know about it.”

Her voice, she knew, sounded strained. She cleared her throat.

“This is the first of several presentations I’ll be making,” she continued. “Today I’m going to share some of my initial ideas. I’ve also included some of the first concepts from the person I retained to do regular PR for the clinic as well as the terrific Web designer who will be redoing your site. They’ll develop more extensive ideas after I share the feedback I get from you.”

Everyone was looking at her but their faces were expressionless. Except for Dr. Hoss. Her lips were pursed, as if she’d found Lake’s introduction oddly confusing. Lake tried not to let that rattle her even more.

The actual presentation took her about thirty minutes. As the slides came up, they looked foreign to her, as if she’d never seen them before. But she read the words aloud and then expanded on each point the way she had rehearsed, often giving examples. When she discussed her community-outreach ideas, she described the halo effect those would create for the clinic. Finally she got to the part where she encouraged a more public role for Levin. She smiled as she described making him a media star, a la Dr. Oz, and forced herself to look at him. All he did was nod.

Finally it was over. Her hands were sticky and she slipped them into the pockets of her jacket to try to absorb the moisture.

“So that’s it-round one,” she concluded. “There’s much more to come, of course.”

Though people had maintained a decent amount of eye contact with her during the presentation, most of them now glanced down. All the pads, she noticed, were absolutely blank. From one of the two small windows that faced the alley between the clinic’s building and the next, she heard the distant, muted honk of a horn. She felt as if she were in some kind of alternate universe.

“Well,” Levin said finally. “You’ve given us lots to think about.”

Lake was stunned by his comment. Was that it ? All he-or anyone else-was going to say? She grabbed a breath and forced herself to smile.