Robin Cook - Marker

Laurie generally found the conferences entertaining to a degree, particularly the informal social period prior to the meeting. It was during this time that the examiners traded war stories of the week's more intellectually challenging or plainly bizarre cases. Laurie rarely contributed to these "sidewalk" discussions but enjoyed listening. Unfortunately, enjoyment was not the situation on this particular Thursday. After learning that she was positive for the BRCA1 marker and then having the disturbing worry emerge in Roger's office, she felt shell-shocked, almost numb, and certainly didn't feel social in the slightest. Coming into the room, she didn't join the group around the coffee and donuts, but rather had taken a seat near the door to the hall in hopes of possibly slipping away at some convenient and unobtrusive time.

The conference room was of moderate size, and its decor had a particularly tired look that suggested it was much older than its purported forty-four years. To the left, where a door communicated directly into Bingham's office, stood a scarred and scratched lectern with its own little picture lamp that no longer worked and a goose-necked microphone that did. Arrayed in front of the podium were four rows of equally battered seats fixed to the floor and outfitted with hinged writing surfaces. The seats gave the room the appearance of a small lecture hall and allowed it to fulfill its major function: Bingham's news conferences. In the back of the room stood a library table that presently supported the refreshments, and around which were grouped the city's medical examiners: everyone except the two higher-ups and Jack. A babble of voices interspersed with laughter floated around the room.

Unlike Laurie, Jack did not like anything about the Thursday conferences. Jack had had a run-in with one of the medical examiners from the Brooklyn office over the sister of one of Jack's basketball buddies and refused to even socialize with the man. The same feelings were extended to the branch chief when he supported his underling in the dispute. Even though Jack denied that it was deliberate, he always arrived late, to Calvin's irritation.

The door to Bingham's office opened, and Calvin's massive body appeared. He was clutching a folder, which he opened on the lectern. His dark eyes scanned the room, briefly connecting with Laurie's before moving on. He was obviously taking attendance.

"All right!" Calvin bellowed when no one paid him any heed. Thanks to the microphone, his voice reverberated around the room like a kettledrum. "Let's get under way here."

Calvin kept his head bent down while he organized his papers on the lectern's slanted surface. The medical examiners quickly broke off from their conversations and filed into the rows of chairs to take their seats. Calvin began the meeting the way Bingham used to, back when the chief regularly attended. First, he launched into a summary of the previous week's statistics.

As Calvin's voice droned on, Laurie's mind wandered. Although she was usually good at slipping into her professional persona on command and leaving her personal problems for another time, she couldn't do it presently. Her new worry kept popping back unpleasantly into her consciousness, such that it even trumped the BRCA1 concern. The problem was that she had no idea what she would do if her fears were realized.

The hall door immediately to Laurie's left opened, and Jack walked in. Calvin stopped his presentation, glared at Jack, and said sarcastically, "I'm so glad you were able to grace us with your presence, Dr. Stapleton."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Jack answered, causing Laurie to wince. With her fear of authority figures, she couldn't understand how Jack could be so transparently brazen with Calvin. She thought it was a kind of masochism on Jack's part.

Jack looked down at Laurie with an exaggerated questioning expression. She was sitting in the seat he always preferred, and for the same reason Laurie had taken it. He gave her shoulder a squeeze before taking the aisle seat directly in front of her. With Jack's head in the line of her vision, she found it even harder to concentrate on what Calvin was saying. It was a visual reminder that, one way or the other, she was going to have to have a serious conversation with him.

After giving the statistics, Calvin launched into his usual discussion of cogent administrative issues that usually involved some decrease in city funding, and this week's conference was no different. Instead of listening, Laurie watched Jack. Although he had just sat down, his head started the telltale bobbing that suggested that he had already begun falling asleep, causing her to worry that Calvin was going to notice and fly into a rage. When authority figures got angry, even if it wasn't directed at her, it still made her feel uncomfortable.

Either Calvin didn't notice or he just elected to ignore the disrespect, because he concluded his remarks without making a scene and introduced the chief of the Brooklyn office, Dr. Jim Bennett.

Each one of the chiefs from the respective borough offices stood up to give their presentations. When Dick Katzenburg from Queens got behind the microphone and started speaking, Laurie had a flashback to her cocaine conspiracy twelve years earlier. It was at a Thursday-afternoon conference that she had the idea of discussing her overdoses with the group, and the ensuing discussion had been helpful, thanks to Dick. She wondered why the idea of doing the same with the Manhattan General cases hadn't occurred to her, and she thought about bringing it up. But then she changed her mind. She was too stressed-out to deal with the anxiety of talking in front of the group. But then she waffled again when she reminded herself that Calvin seemed to be in a reasonably tolerant mood.

At the end of Margaret Hauptman's presentation of the Staten Island statistics, Calvin reclaimed the podium and asked if anyone else wanted the microphone for any other business. It was a pro forma offer that was rarely accepted, since people were eager to leave. After a moment of painful indecision, Laurie tentatively raised her hand. Any chance of changing her mind was dashed when Calvin quickly but reluctantly recognized her. Jack twisted around in his seat in front of her and gave her an exasperated questioning expression that implied: Why are you extending this agony?

Laurie walked unsteadily up to the podium. She felt a jolt of adrenaline, since speaking in front of groups always intimidated her. As she adjusted the microphone, she berated herself for getting into such a situation. She certainly didn't need any more stress.

"First, let me apologize," Laurie began. "I hadn't prepared for this, but it just occurred to me that I would like to get some general response from everyone about a current series of mine."

Laurie looked down at Calvin and could tell that his eyes had narrowed. She sensed that he knew what was coming and didn't approve. She glanced back at Jack, and as soon as her eyes connected with his, he positioned his fingers like a gun and pretended to shoot himself in the head.

With such negative vibes, Laurie felt even more insecure. To collect her thoughts, she looked down at the lectern's defaced wooden surface with its myriad initials and doodles encased with ballpoint-pen marks. Vowing to avoid making eye contact with either Calvin or Jack, she raised her eyes and launched into a short description of her Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, or SADS, a term she admitted she'd coined when talking with a professional colleague five weeks ago, about four totally unexpected, hospital-based cardiac arrests that had resisted resuscitation. She said she now had six cases spanning a six-week period, all of which had similar demographics: young, healthy, and within twenty-four hours of elective surgery. She went on to say that there was no pathology on gross or microscopic, although on the last two cases, she had yet to do the microscopic, since they had been posted that very morning. She concluded by saying that despite toxicology failing to come up with any possible arrhythmic agent, she suspected that the manner of death in these cases was not natural or accidental.