Robin Cook - Critical

Angela's eyes strayed over to her telephone and then on to the Tiffany desk clock. It was four-thirty-five in the morning, hardly the time for a personal call. Yet she was so certain of Laurie's threat potential that she seriously debated calling. From sore experience, she knew Michael sometimes partied to such an hour, even five a.m., on numerous occasions when they were married.

Talking herself into making the call, Angela justified it because of the importance of starting some sort of offense against Laurie and because Michael deserved it. All those times he'd stayed out to such an hour he'd return and wake her with his drunkenness, and sometimes even Michelle.

With a certain vengeful glee Angela dialed the number. As the number rang, she fully expected his voice mail, especially since he had caller ID and she had a private line.

To her surprise, he answered, sounding mildly intoxicated.

"This better be important," he said, slurring his words.

"Michael, it's Angela."

There was a pause. In the background, Angela could hear a woman's voice with a heavy New Jersey accent complaining and demanding to know who was calling in the middle of the night.

"Did you hear me?" Angela demanded. Now that she'd awakened him, she felt a tad guilty, but she was determined not to show it.

"For chrissake. It's four-thirty in the fucking morning."

"It's four-thirty-five, to be exact. I'm concerned about the Dr. Laurie Montgomery issue I called you about last night."

"I said I'd take care of it."

"Have you?"

"I told you I'd take care of it, and I did. It's over, it's done, so go back to sleep!"

"How are you so sure? As I was told, she has a reputation of being very persistent."

"It's not going to matter how persistent she is. My client actually knows her personally. He said he'd be happy to talk with her, and he's confident she'll be amenable to his position. What I gathered was that the doctor owes my client big-time."

Michael's explanation didn't make too much sense, but his assuredness did. Angela thanked him and told him to go back to sleep.

Laurie had been awake for a while; she didn't know exactly how long when she finally looked at the clock. By then it was quarter to five, an hour before Jack would be getting up to shower and an hour and fifteen minutes before he would come back and drag her out of bed. That was the normal routine, and the fact that she was already awake spoke volumes about her mental state. Laurie was a night person. Along about ten o'clock, when Jack was finding it hard to hold up his eyelids, Laurie would usually get a second wind. She loved to read at night and would stay up after midnight engrossed in a novel more often than she liked to admit, always to deride herself the following morning and vow never to do it again. Now, as she lay there, fully awake and staring up at the dark ceiling, she knew exactly what the problem was; she was depressed. It wasn't a major, incapacitating depression, which she'd never had but could imagine was like, but rather a nagging melancholy that she was inexorably being set up for a major disappointment. She'd always wanted a child from as early as she could remember, and she always thought of herself as a mother-in-waiting through her long medical training, which she'd blamed for not having had the time to find a spouse. Then she'd fallen in love with Jack and had to deal with his guilt over the loss of his family and whether or not he could commit to another. But that was now behind them and they were trying to have a family, but over the last year, it hadn't happened despite temperature charts and careful monitoring of her cycles. The problem, as she saw it, was her age now that she was in her forties. Every month that went by, she was terrified that her chances of naturally conceiving had sunk, and now Jack was insisting on having an operation, which would take him out of commission for God knew how long, and not only that, he was choosing to have it at a time when he was putting himself at significant risk.

Laurie rolled over on her side facing Jack and propped herself up on an elbow. She gazed at his profile, the picture of tranquility lying on his back with one arm casually thrown onto the pillow behind his head. She did indeed love him, but his obstinacy could drive her to distraction, as was the case with the surgery issue. For the life of her, she could not understand how he could dismiss the data and believe it was prudent to have the procedure.

Recognizing that more sleep was not in the cards, Laurie got out of bed. With her bathrobe and slippers on, she padded into the study they had made facing out onto 106th Street. It was just becoming light. She looked down from the window onto Jack's beloved basketball court, wishing it would suddenly disappear. Then she turned back to the partner's desk. Her side was piled high with the MRSA case files and hospital records of the twenty-four cases, along with her uncompleted matrix. She'd hauled all the material home with the intention of working on it the previous evening, but she hadn't done it. And now that she was awake early, she thought she would take advantage of the time, but before even sitting down, she recognized she felt the same as she had the night before. Her despondency kept telling her that her efforts were in vain. Jack was just going to do what Jack wanted.

In the kitchen, Laurie made herself some coffee. Sitting down at the breakfast table, she began thinking about the process of in vitro fertilization and how Jack would respond to the idea..Although it would be a natural progression, they'd not discussed it. In truth, Laurie had been afraid. She knew that Jack's agreement to have children was more to please her than something he intrinsically wanted to do.

To Laurie's surprise and despite being unable to fall back asleep in bed, she fell asleep at the kitchen table as evidence of how tired she was. What woke her was Jack standing in the doorway completely naked with his hands on his hips and an exaggerated expression of confusion on his face.

"What the hell are you doing snoozing in the kitchen?" he asked.

"I couldn't sleep," Laurie said, conscious of the irony.

Jack advanced into the room and put a hand on her shoulder. "If you are still fretting about this surgery, I'll promise you I'll be fine."

"Oh, yeah, sure," Laurie said sarcastically. "As if you have control. Why do you have to be so headstrong?"

"Look who's talking!"

"Well, if the situation was reversed, I sure as hell wouldn't be taking the kind of gamble you're planning on taking."

"Hey!" Jack said. "We've been through this, remember? Let's agree to disagree. I have to go over to the hospital this morning on the way to work for a quick pre-op blood and urine test, get the MRSA swab I told you about, and have a quick chat with the anesthesiologist. That's why I'm up early. Why don't you come along? Witnessing all such preparation, maybe you'll feel better."

Laurie thought for a moment about the suggestion. At first she thought she didn't want any further association with Jack's surgical plans as a way of protest, but rethinking the issue, she didn't want to cut off her nose to spite her face. On this visit, she'd be invited as a spouse of a patient, so she wouldn't be blamed for making an official ME visit. Laurie couldn't help but feel that if the MRSA cases weren't intentional, then it had to be some sort of systems error involving all three hospitals, and if there was any chance of her guessing what such an error could be, she'd have to have opportunities to visit, which Jack was obviously affording.

"Okay, I'll come," Laurie said with such sudden decisiveness that Jack was mildly taken aback.

"Wonderful," he said. "Let's hit the shower and be on our way."