Stephen White - Warning Signs

I eased the car straight into the intersection but took a sharp left with the conversation. "How are your symptoms?"

"About the same."

"Not worse?"

"Not much worse."

"Is it an exacerbation?"

"I don't know yet. Could just be a series of reruns. That's what I'm hoping."

L auren and Iwalked hand in hand toward Community Hospital, chatting about what it was like to leave Grace with a sitter, what it was going to be like doing it every day now that Lauren's maternity leave was ending. Our guard was down, and neither of us saw the ambush developing as we approached the ER entrance to the hospital. By the time I had started paying attention, a reporter from one of the Denver TV stations had a foam-covered microphone in Lauren's face.

The reporter was a young Asian woman. I'd seen her work; thought she was pretty good. "Ms. Crowder? Ms. Crowder? Are you here to interview Susan Peterson? Is she a suspect in her husband's murder? Have the police interviewed her yet? Ms. Crowder?"

Lauren's balance faltered as the reporter closed in. I tightened my grip on my wife's hand and silently urged her to keep walking. After another step or two, Lauren spoke without turning toward the camera. "I'm here visiting a friend who's hospitalized. That's all."

"Is Susan Peterson a suspect in her husband's murder? Ms. Crowder? Ms. Crowder?"

The reporter's voice faded as the sliding glass doors closed behind us. "I wasn't expecting them here," I said. "You handled yourself well."

"Thanks. They're like grasshoppers. Once they show up in one place, it seems they show up everywhere."

We were alone as we made our way up the elevator. I asked Lauren the same thing the reporter was wondering about. "Is there any chance Susan was involved? What are you hearing in the office?"

"When the police found her in bed she was so heavily medicated that she was almost impossible to arouse. Her neurologist doesn't think she would have had the strength to do what was done to Royal. So, no, even though they'll take a close look, no one's taking that possibility too seriously at this point."

The elevator door opened. We got out and paused at the nursing station to get directions to Susan's room. A nurse pointed out the room and said, "Her doctor's in with her right now. I'm sure it will only be a few more minutes. You can wait in the lounge."

Just then the door to Susan's room opened and her doctor walked out, a Palm Pilot in one hand, a stylus in the other.

I said, "Good morning, Adrienne." Adrienne Arvin, a little fireball of a urologist, was our neighbor and close friend.

She stopped in her tracks, looked up at Lauren and me, then smiled. "Hi, guys. What are you doing here?"

I stepped over to give her a kiss on the cheek, then Lauren did the same before she responded, "We're here to visit Susan. She's one of yours, I take it?"

"Be silly of me to deny it at this point, I suppose. I'm doing a consult."

"She's okay?" Lauren asked.

Adrienne muttered, " Oy ," and made a face that aptly communicated that "okay" was not one of the modifiers she would use to describe Susan Peterson's condition. "MS is a tough disease, Lauren. I don't have to tell you that. Susan's is particularly insidious. The stress of having her husband murdered hasn't made it any easier on her."

I asked, "Can we go in?"

"Be my guest. She'll be pleased to see you, I think. She's quite tired. I wouldn't stay long."

"Of course," Lauren said. Adrienne pocketed her little computer and bounced off down the hall.

S usan Peterson's multiplesclerosis was different from Lauren's. Susan had secondary progressive disease. Although she'd been diagnosed years after Lauren, Susan frequently used a wheelchair, and lately was bedridden more often than not. She was virtually blind in one eye, and Roy had once confided in Lauren that the pain she suffered from spasticity was growing more and more severe. Adrienne's presence on Susan's care-team was a clear indication that she was suffering bladder problems as well.

While Lauren could expect periods of remission between infrequent exacerbations of her disease, Susan was likely to deteriorate progressively, with little or no respite from the assault of multiple sclerosis.

We found Susan on her side in bed, facing away from the door. Her room was full of floral bouquets and the aroma was a cloying mix of hospital disinfectants and nature's perfume. The television was tuned to religious programming, but the sound was so low I couldn't hear the minister's words.

We took a couple of steps into the room and Lauren said, "Susan? It's Lauren and Alan."

"Oh, oh, good," she said. "You came to see me? Come on over on this side so I can lay my eyes on you."

Lauren and I crossed the room. Immediately, Susan said, "My girls came in early before church and helped me get made up. It's Sunday, and I wanted to look nice. It's not the way I would do it myself, but- Do I look okay?"

Lauren told her, "Your daughters did a great job, Susan. You look wonderful. Lovely."

"Thanks. But I don't know about the eye shadow. It's so, so… And my hair after three days in this bed… what can you do?"

Despite the fact that Lauren had done all the talking since we'd entered the room, Susan addressed her words to me. I'd always suspected that Susan was uncomfortable with Lauren. I thought it was because Lauren, too, had MS. And I thought perhaps Susan's ambivalence was exacerbated because Lauren had the less malignant form of the disease.

I said, "How are you, Susan?"

"Better, better. The nurses are a little-I don't want to say slow, but-anyway, anyway, let's just say they're not the most prompt. You buzz, you buzz and… you know. I wish Matthew could have stayed longer. He came in from Phoenix but he's gone again already. Mothers and sons, right? Thank God I have my girls. They bring food at least." She touched her hair with her hand. "You could starve to death in here waiting for something edible to arrive."

I bit the soft flesh on the inside of my lower lip.

Susan Peterson had probably always been a difficult woman-what her children's generation would have called "high maintenance." According to Royal, when Susan's disease was first diagnosed she actually softened a little, but as the insidious myelin destruction progressed in her central nervous system, the underlying flaws in her character seemed to have become magnified.

If a young psychology graduate student I was supervising asked me to describe a narcissistic character disorder, I would have been tempted to introduce the student to Susan Peterson.

"What you've been through, Susan…" Lauren said. "We're so sorry about what happened to Roy."

"Thank you," she said, and her chin crinkled and began to quiver. "I'm so frightened. So frightened.

"The other night, you know? When it happened? I was asleep. It sounds awful but what can I say? I usually don't sleep well. I have pain that wakes me up. It's in my feet and my back and my left leg… sometimes it feels like an electric shock or being stabbed with a sharp knife. So some nights I let Roy give me a sleeping pill so that I sleep through the night. It's mostly for him that I do it, really. It's so I don't wake him during the night with my… moaning. Halcion. That's the one he gives me. I don't like it because it knocks me out so much. But sometimes Roy would give it to me in the evening and I'd take it. That's what happened, Friday. He gave it to me and he looked so tired that I took it. I didn't hear anything until these police officers woke me up. They wouldn't tell me what happened to Roy. I didn't find out until the next morning. A policeman told me. A policeman."

She raised a hand to cover her mouth. She looked right at Lauren and started to cry. "Oh, what am I going to do? Who's going to take care of me?"