Jonathan Kellerman - The Conspiracy Club

From the civil rights struggle to bodice rippers. Maynard’s philanthropy said he’d maintained a focus on morality, just like Norbert Levy.

Now Jeremy believed he was beginning to understand the old eccentrics.

Maynard had fought for equality and watched his idol die violently. Levy’s extended family had been exterminated, and his inheritance plundered. Tina Balleron had lost her husband to violent crime.

Victims, all. What about Arthur? And Edgar Marquis? The ancient diplomat had alluded to witnessing too much duplicity in the foreign service- his reason for ending a career rise by requesting transfer to obscure posts in Micronesia and Indonesia.

Places he could do some good.

Idealists, all of them.

Good food and wine notwithstanding, they were all about justice- their vision of justice.

And now he was being courted.

Because of Jocelyn.

He wanted to think it out more, but evening had fallen, and he was due to meet Angela for a quick bite in the dining room in ten minutes.

Before he left, he looked up Theodore Dirgrove’s office in the Attending Staff roster.

The penthouse floor of the Medical Office Building. The space occupied by Psychiatry until the cutters had deemed it theirs.

When Psychiatry had occupied the premises it was just an upper floor, dingily walled and floored. Now, the carpeting was fresh and clean, the walls, wainscoted. Polished mahogany doors replaced white slabs.

Dirgrove’s door was closed. The surgeon’s name was mounted in confident gold letters.

Jeremy stood in the hallway for several moments, finally approached, and knocked.

No answer.

He left to meet Angela and encountered Dirgrove as he got off the elevator.

Dirgrove wore a well-cut black suit over a black turtleneck. His nails were impeccable. His lips compressed when he saw Jeremy.

The two of them locked eyes. Dirgrove smiled but kept his distance. Jeremy smiled back and took a step forward. Putting so much intensity into the smile that his eyes burned.

Dirgrove held his ground, then he shrugged and laughed, as if to say, “This is trivial.”

Jeremy said, “Lose any other patients, recently, Ted?”

Dirgrove’s lips dropped suddenly, as if yanked down by fishhooks. His long, pale face turned deathly white. As he walked away, Jeremy stayed and watched. Dirgrove’s hands kept clenching and unclenching, spidery fingers fluttering wildly, as if sparked by random synapses.

Jumpy. Not good for a surgeon.

Angela worked hard at finishing a third of her turkey sandwich. There wasn’t much time till she went back on-call. Jeremy picked at his meat loaf, watched her push wilted lettuce around her plate.

She said, “I’m not very good company. Maybe I should just go.”

“Stay a while.” His beeper went off.

Angela laughed, and said, “There’s an omen for you.”

He took the call in the doctors’ dining room, now empty. An oncologist named Bill Ramirez was phoning with an emergency. A patient they’d both seen seven years ago, a young man named Doug Vilardi, with Stage III Ewing’s sarcoma of the knee, was back.

Jeremy had counseled Doug and the entire family shortly after diagnosis. Between the bad news, debilitating treatment, and losing a leg, there was plenty to cry about. But Jeremy finally figured out that what really bothered the seventeen-year-old was the prospect of sterility caused by radiotherapy.

Touching optimism, he’d thought, at the time. The survival statistics for advanced Ewing’s weren’t encouraging. But he’d gone along with the fantasy, talked to Ramirez about sperm donation prior to treatment, learned it was feasible, and helped set things up.

Doug had lost his left leg but survived his cancer- one of those bright spots that energize you. No phantom pain, no tortured aftermath. He’d started with crutches, progressed to a cane, adjusted beautifully to his prosthesis. Jeremy had heard from him last, four years ago. The kid was playing basketball with his plastic leg and learning to lay brick.

What, now?

“Relapse?” he asked Ramirez.

“Worse, goddammit,” said the oncologist. “Secondary cancer. AML or possibly a newly converted CML, I’m still waiting for Pathology to clear it up. Either way, it’s leukemia, no doubt from the radiotherapy we gave him seven years ago.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. ‘The good news, kid, is we nuked your solid tumor to oblivion. The bad news is we nuked your hemopoietic system and gave you goddamn leukemia.’ ”

“Jesus.”

“Him I could use,” said Ramirez. “However, given the fact that Jesus didn’t answer his page, I’ll take you. Do me a favor, Jeremy. Make time to see him tonight. Soon as you can. They’re all here- him, his parents, his sister. And get this: to make matters even more pitiful, a wife. Kid got married two years ago. Used the sperm we stored for him and now she’s pregnant. Isn’t life grand? He’s up on Five West. When the hell can you make it over?”

“Soon as I finish dinner.”

“Hope I didn’t ruin your appetite.”

He returned to the table. Angela hadn’t taken a bite in his absence.

“Trouble?” she said.

“Not our trouble.” He sat down heavily, ate a bit of meat loaf, washed it down with Coke, tightened his tie, and buttoned his white coat. Then he explained the situation to her.

She said, “That is beyond tragic. Helps put things in perspective. My petty little issues.”

“Being petty’s a constitutional right,” he said. “I can’t name the amendment, but believe me, it’s definitely right there in the Bill of Rights. I see families falling apart after a traumatic diagnosis, everyone working hard at concentrating on the Big Issues. In a crisis that’s fine, but you can’t live like that indefinitely. Eventually I get around to telling them, ‘When you start to be petty again, you’ll know you’re adjusting.’ ”

She placed her hand on his. “Where is he, on Five?”

“Five West. You still on Four?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Let’s ride up together.”

He dropped her off and continued up to the cancer ward. Entertaining fantasies of bypassing the ward and taking the passageway that connected to the medical office wing. Then jogging the stairs up to the penthouse level.

He had no idea what he’d say or do if he ran into Dirgrove again, but he had a feeling he’d pull it off well.

When the elevator door opened on Five West, he walked out, looking to the most casual observer like a man with a mission.

What the hell would he say to Doug Vilardi and his family?

Most likely, he’d keep his mouth shut and listen.

The virtue of silence. Ethics of the Fathers.

At seventeen, Doug had been a tall, gawky, dark-haired kid, not much of a student, his best class, metal shop. Since then, he’d put on weight, lost some of the hair that had grown back after chemo, stuck a diamond chip in his left ear, grown a tea-colored goatee, and gotten a tattoo on his right forearm. “Marika” in blue script.

He looked like any regular guy who worked for a living, except for the pallor- that certain pallor- that sheathed his skin, and the jaundiced eyes that lit up as Jeremy entered the room.

No family, just Doug in bed. The prosthetic leg leaned in a corner. He wore a hospital gown, and bedsheets covered him from his waist down. An IV had already been hooked up, and every so often it clicked.

“Doc! Long time, no see! Look what I did to myself.”

“Being creative, huh?”

“Yeah, life was getting too friggin’ boring.” Doug laughed. Held out his hand for a soul shake. Muscles flexed and “Marika” jumped as he held on to Jeremy’s fingers.