But tonight . . . tonight he was feeling pretty goddamn low.
His thoughts ran to Gin again. He'd been pretty rough on her. Hadn't meant to be, but the bitterness was like a pressure, he'd had to blow off at least some of it. Couldn'r on Ketter, who'd backed him a hundred percent, and certainly not on Martha.
That left Gin.
Maybe she needed some help. She certainly hadn't been fully connected to reality imagining that implant in Marsden.
Gin . . . he felt a need for her but didn't want to be in the same room with her. At least not tonight. Maybe he'd get past this and maybe not. Where did they go from here? The fallout from today could poison their relationship.
He shifted in the chair. Enough wallowing. He had someone very real and very important sitting on his lap. Time to focus on Martha, and on the problem of Madeline's tummy ache.
But a vision of Gin sitting alone in her apartment came to him. He wondered if she had anyone to turn to tonight. He wondered if she knew someone was thinking about her.
Duncan sat before MaeNeil/Lehrer, sipping a scotch and soda, barely listening. He was envisioning Gin. His earlier anger was gone and now he was wondering what slue was thinking.
Poor girl. Probably couldn't figure up from down at the moment.
Probably questioning her sanity.
He sighed. He wished he could feel good about hoodwinking the poor thing, but frankly, it hadn't taken much. He'd been all primed for her yesterday morning. He'd had the TPD, the trocar, and a saline-filled implant sitting on his desk where she could see them. He'd dosed her coffee with twenty milligrams of Lasix. The diuretic had achieved the desired effect, she'd had to leave Marsden's side for a trip to the john. And while she was gone he'd ducked in and given Marsden a quick jab with the tip of the trocar. After that it was simply a matter of waiting.
All to see what she knew. Obviously she suspected something, but how much?
Now he knew.
Gin knew everything. Or at least enough to go to her fellow in the FBI and convince him to save her dear senator from the wicked Dr. Lathram.
The call from the hospital that the FBI was involved had come as a mind-numbing shock.
He sipped his scotch. But he was better now. Everything was under control again.
But poor Gin. She must have been so sure.
And right now she probably wasn't sure of anything at all, except that the FBI considered her an unreliable source.
He'd neutralized her without harming a hair on her head.
Pretty slick.
So now she had to put this behind her. Write it off as a bad dream and let things return to normal. If he were smart he'd find an excuse to fire her. Play it safe and get her off the premises.
But he couldn't do that. He still remembered that skinny, raven-haired little girl with the huge brown eyes, wide with fright, asking him if she was going to die, and later his hands inside her abdomen, her blood pooling around his wrists as he fought to find the bleeders and mend her damaged arteries. As much as he hated to admit it, he missed those days. He missed the adrenaline rush of the emergencies, opening up a patient and searching for the leak, racing against the falling blood pressure, the falling hematocrit, the impending cardiovascular collapse and shock.
Or rushing to tie off a bulging abdominal aneurysm before it blew and splashed red against the ceiling. He missed saving lives.
But McCready, Ailard, Lane, Schulz, Vincent, and the rest of them had made that impossible.
He rubbed his eyes as bitter memories rushed in. . . memories of poor Lisa . . .
Lisa Lathram . . . a euphonious name, such an up sound to it. And yet Lisa herself . . .
He remembered her as such a happy child, could still hear her dulcet laugh, see her bright eyes, her effulgent smile, Lord, that smile .
.
.
Lisa was always smiling, accepting everyone and everything, hugs and kisses all around.
When Brad came along, Duncan loved him equally, but as a son. There was a difference there.
Lisa remained the light of his life. At times he was sure Diana was jealous of their relationship. When he arrived home from the hospital or the office, Lisa was the first one he looked for, and she always came running when she heard his voice. How he cosseted her. Whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, a piano to play, a horse to ride, a balance beam for gymnastics practice, was hers for the asking.
But the halcyon days of her childhood evanesced as puberty took hold, and Duncan came to understand firsthand the origin of the changeling myth. As her body changed, so did Lisa's personality. At first he and Diana chalked up the moodiness to the new hormones pulsing through her.
After all, what was there to be grumpy about? With her flowing blond hair and lissom figure, she was only getting prettier.
He and Diana kept hoping their adolescent age would snap out of it, but after a while it became clear that more than hormones were at work here. She lost interest in her friends, her piano playing, her horse.
The downs kept getting deeper and longer, and there never seemed to be any real ups, only not-so-downs.
And then she swallowed half a bottle of her mother's Dalmane and had to have her stomach pumped. She was diagnosed with severe endogenous depression and the endless rounds of antidepressants and outpatient therapy began.
Nothing worked for very long. And then came that terrible night she locked herself in her room and screamed with pain. Duncan kicked the door down and found her sitting in the middle of her bed bleeding from a slit wrist.
They hospitalized her for a month after that, and tried something new called Prozac. Lisa responded beautifully. In her case it was truly a miracle drug.
Duncan still remembered the day he came home from the hospital to find Diana standing in the foyer sobbing. Immediately his heart plummeted, expecting the worst And then he heard it, floating in from the living room, the sound of Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 2I. Lisa was playing again.
He and Diana fell into each other's arms and wept.
Even now his eyes clouded at the memory.
After that, as Lisa brightened, so did their lives. Duncan hadn't realized how his daughter's problems had tainted their entire family life. But now that she was getting back to normal, the days seemed brighter, his own step lighter. Laughter again around the dinner table as Lisa began riding her horse and hanging out with some of her old friends. Her grades turned around and she began dating Kenny O"Boyle.
They dated for months, and Kenny became the sole topic of Lisa's conversation. She and Diana would have long mother-daughter talks about him, and Diana told Duncan she was worried that Lisa might be getting too involved. She'd just turned eighteen, true, but she'd missed a lot of growing up in those black years.
Duncan wasn't crazy about Kenny. He seemed a shifty, inarticulate dolt, but then Duncan was naturally leery about any male sniffing around his daughter. Lisa adored him. And Lisa was happy. Happy for the first time in years. So Duncan decided to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut.
And then the McCready committee reared its ugly head. He remembered the morning five years ago when it all began, in the doctors lounge at Fairfax Hospital, somebody showing him the article on the front page of the Post. He'd just come off two scheduled procedures, an abdominal aneurysm graft and a carotid endarterectomy, all after rushing in at 3:00 A. M. to close a torn femoral artery on a motorcyclist, "donorcyclist, " as the E.R staff called them. He was tired. But not too tired to be furious at Senator Vincent's public condemnation of his million-dollar charge to Medicare the year before.
Every time he turned around some baseball player or basketball dribbler was signing a contract for five or six million dollars a year. How many lives did they save in a year? Barbra Streisand can get twenty million for two nights of warbling, but you, Duncan Lathram, you moneygrubbing bloodsucker, you charge too goddamn much.
He'd wished he had some legal recourse, but how the hell did you sue a congressional committee? And what would he accomplish but call even more unwanted attention to himself?