Robin Cook - Cure

“Thanks for coming to see us,” Laurie said.

“Thanks for inviting me,” Lou said. “I’m glad you got me out. It’s such a beautiful day. It would have been a shame to have wasted it vegetating on my couch, which is probably what I would have done had you not called. So tell me, what’s this good news you have to share? Is it what I’m hoping it is?”

“That I don’t know.” Laurie laughed. “Anyway, I’m going back to OCME!”

“Terrific!” Lou said sincerely. He raised his hand and high-fived Laurie. “I was hoping that was what you’d say. Visiting OCME is just not the same if the only person I get to see is boring old Jack. Congratulations! When is it going to happen?”

“A week from tomorrow,” Laurie said. “The chief has been so good about it, I can’t tell you.”

“He’s not being good, he’s being smart,” Lou responded.

“Hear, hear!” Jack said, raising his wineglass for a toast. Then, remembering that Lou was “wineless,” he sat up in his chair, looking for their waitress.

“I couldn’t be happier for you,” Lou said, leaning over toward Laurie. “Of course, that’s at least partially a selfish response. I’ve been missing you at OCME since your maternity leave started. But beyond being selfish, I think it is the best decision for you and JJ. You are so good at being a forensic pathologist, and you seem to get a lot of secondary gain out of it. I thought you’d go back, but to be truthful, I thought it would take more time for you to realize you could and still be a great mom. If you don’t mind me asking, can you tell me what made you decide so quickly?”

“It certainly wasn’t one thing, but rather a host of things. First of all, there was the tragedy of Leticia’s death, which I don’t want to be entirely in vain. Maybe that sounds a bit strange, but not to me. She died because she was taking care of JJ so I could go back to work. Somehow I think I owe it to her memory to do it.”

“That doesn’t sound strange to me at all.”

“I also recognized that kidnapping JJ to get me off a case was a one-in-a-million phenomenon. It’s not going to happen again. But the most important realization is that there are people out there who are absolutely superb nannies and love being nannies, and have made it a true goal of being the best nannies they can be. For me to be comfortable working, I need someone who truly wants to be with JJ full-time and who is also willing to be my partner so I can remain as involved as possible. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do,” Lou said. “You need someone who will be as good a mom and as attentive to JJ as you would be if you weren’t going to have a career as well as be a mom. If push comes to shove, JJ’s needs trump any career ambitions—”

Jack interrupted Lou, having gotten the attention of the waitress. “We’re having a Vermentino. Do you want to try it, or do you want something else? We’re also having Caesar salads with chicken. What do you say?”

“Whatever,” Lou said with a wave. He was a meatloaf-and-gravy sort of guy, except when he was with Jack and Laurie. Besides, at the moment, he was more interested in the conversation with Laurie than what kind of wine and food he wanted. “I suppose the fact that you are coming back so quickly means you have already found someone whom you believe fits the bill?”

“I believe I have,” Laurie admitted. “I put out a feeler about a week ago to all my friends, particularly my college friends, and found an Irish woman who had been the nanny for a woman I knew in college whose two children are now teenagers. My friend had actually been trying to find a placement for the nanny, since she’d been so loved she’d practically become part of the family. When I met the woman, I knew she was perfect from the very first words out of her mouth. And she’s willing to live in. I mean, being a nanny is her life’s mission.”

“All right! Let’s try that toast again!” Jack said when the waitress brought Lou’s glass of Vermentino. Jack held up his own glass of wine, and the others followed suit. “To Laurie’s return to OCME; to JJ’s resilience, since he’s been acting entirely normal; and to Leticia’s memory and scholarship fund!”

The three friends clicked glasses and then took healthy swallows of their wine.

“What’s this about a scholarship fund?” Lou asked after putting down his wineglass.

“We tried to think of something to honor Leticia’s memory,” Jack said. “A neighborhood college-scholarship fund was what we came up with. Laurie has been in contact with Columbia University, and they seem to like the idea as a nice addition to their efforts of neighborhood outreach. Laurie and I have already started the funding by setting up a yearly stipend and inviting others to do the same. Plus, we’ve also started planning various neighborhood fund-raisers. We think it will be good for the community.”

“I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate,” Lou said. “Great idea!”

“What’s been going on in the legal arena?” Laurie asked. “I’ve been curious ever since you stopped by the house and told us about the corporate raids.”

“It’s been a mixed bag, as usual,” Lou said. “All the big honchos have been bonded from all three companies except for Benjamin Corey. They are all to be arraigned this week and, of course, all will plead not guilty, including Corey. What the prosecution is doing now is putting serious rollover pressure on the lesser officers to cop a plea in exchange for testimony on the big guys. It’s going to work, for sure, thanks to all the evidence obtained during the raids in unlocking the secrets involving all the organized-crime shell companies. More important, the comfortable relationship between the Long Island Mafia and the Japanese Yakuza is a thing of the past, at least in the short run, and I hope in the long run as well. Thanks to you, we are going to see a lot less crystal meth around town.”

“Why wasn’t Benjamin Corey bonded?”

“Because of the international warrant for his arrest on the murder charge for the security guard in Kyoto, Japan. He would have been bonded if it had been just the white-collar crime. If anybody is a flight risk, it’s him. Right now his biggest effort is in trying to fight extradition. I tell you, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. Even if he prevails on the extradition issue, he’s still got to face the money-laundering charges. I mean, I just can’t understand it. A guy with that kind of background and education: it was as if he was trying to see just how much he could get away with.”

“I see it more like a Greek tragedy,” Laurie said. “The fatal flaw of greed evidencing itself in an individual who most likely started out with an altruistic desire to help people, just like ninety-nine percent of other medical students.”

“But how could that happen? I don’t understand it.”

“It’s the unfortunate marriage of medicine and business. In the mid-twentieth century you could do well in medicine, but you really couldn’t become truly wealthy. All that changed when medicine in this country did not emerge as a responsibility of government, like education or defense, as it did in most every other industrialized country. Add to that the U.S. government’s inadvertently contributing to medical inflation by passing Medicare without effective cost controls, by generously subsidizing biomedical research without maintaining ownership of the resultant discoveries for the American public, and by its patent office awarding medical process patents, like for human gene sequences, which it’s not supposed to do by law. I tell you, the medical patent situation in this country is a total mess, which is already starting to haunt the biomedical industry, but that’s another issue.