Then, suddenly, Shelly stopped about ten feet from the quicksand-like muddy border of the lake. He turned and faced Laurie. He was smiling in the same taunting fashion as he had when they were children.
Relieved, Laurie came to a halt. Panting, she didn't know if she should be thankful or angry. Then, before she could say anything, Shelly turned around again and recommenced his mad dash toward calamity.
"No!" Laurie shouted. But this time, Shelly reached the lake and ran out as far as he could go before his legs became hopelessly mired. Again, he looked back, only now his smile was gone. In its place was a look of terror. He reached toward Laurie, who'd run to the very edge of the dry land. Again, she looked for something to use to reach out to him, but there was nothing. Rapidly and relentlessly, her brother sank into the muck, with his pleading eyes riveted to Laurie's until they disappeared into the filth. All that was left was a hand vainly grasping at the air, but it, too, soon disappeared from view, swallowed by the enveloping mud.
"No! No! No!" Laurie shouted, but her voice was drowned out by a jarring jangle that pulled her from the depths of sleep. Quickly, she stretched out and quieted her ancient windup alarm clock. She flopped back onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. She was perspiring and breathing heavily. It was an old nightmare that, mercifully, she'd not had for several years.
Laurie sat up and put her feet over the side of her bed. She felt terrible. The night before, she'd stayed up too late, compulsively cleaning her dirty apartment despite her exhaustion. She knew it had been a stupid thing to do, but it had been symbolically therapeutic. The literal and figurative cobwebs had to be cleaned.
She couldn't believe how much her life had changed in forty-eight hours. Although she was confident that her friendship with Jack would remain strong, her intimate relationship with him was probably over. She had to be realistic about her needs and his reality. On top of that were the concerns about her mother, as well as the worry about her own health.
Getting to her feet, Laurie went into her tiny bathroom and started her morning routine of showering, washing and drying her hair, and putting on the small amount of makeup she'd become accustomed to using. It was restricted to a touch of coral blush, a bit of eyeliner, and a natural-color lipstick. When she was finished, she looked at herself in the mirror. She wasn't pleased. She appeared tired and stressed, despite her attempts to hide it, and even with additional blush and a few dabs of concealer, she didn't look any better.
Laurie had always been a healthy person, and had taken health for granted except during a brush with bulimia in high school. Suddenly, the threat of carrying the marker for a BRCAl mutation changed that dramatically. It was a scary, disturbing idea that a genetic conspiracy might be covertly residing inside every one of her trillion cells. Although she had hoped the previous evening's research would have been reassuring, it hadn't been. She now knew a lot more about the BRCAl problem from an academic point of view; namely, that the normal gene functioned as a tumor-suppressor gene but that in its mutated form, it acted the opposite.
Unfortunately, bookish information was not a lot of help when she thought about the issue personally, particularly when she coupled what she had learned with her desire to have children. Prophylactically losing her breasts was bad enough, but losing her ovaries was much worse: It was castration. To her horror, she'd learned that if she had the marker for BRCAl, she not only had an increased chance of developing breast cancer before age eighty but also an increased chance of ovarian cancer! In other words, her biological clock was ticking even louder and faster than she had thought.
It was all very depressing, especially combined with her exhaustion from lack of sleep. The question was: Should she be tested for the BRCA marker? She didn't know. She certainly would not consent to having her ovaries removed, at least not until she had had a child. And her breasts? She didn't think she'd consent to that, either, so what would be the rationale for having the test? In her mind, such a quandary was the current problem with modern genetic testing: Either there was no cure for the illness in question, or the cure was too horrific.
After a quick breakfast of fruit and cereal, she got out of her apartment only fifteen minutes later than she would have liked. Mrs. Engler didn't disappoint her. She cracked open her door on cue and looked out at Laurie with her bloodshot eyes as Laurie repeatedly hit the elevator button in the hope of speeding it up. Laurie smiled and waved at the woman but got no response other than Mrs. Engler clicking the door shut.
The walk up First Avenue was uneventful. It had turned colder than it had been the previous few days, but Laurie didn't try to hail a cab. With her down coat zipped up to her neck, she was warm enough. She also enjoyed the distraction that the pulsating city provided. For her, New York had a dynamism like no other place on the planet, and her problems mercifully retreated into the recesses of her mind. In their place surfaced thoughts about the McGillan case and the hope that she would get slides from Maureen and a report from Peter. She also found herself wondering what kind of cases she'd get that day. She hoped they would be as absorbing and distracting as McGillan's.
Laurie entered the OCME through the front door. In contrast with the previous morning, the reception area was empty. The administration area to the left was also empty. She waved to Marlene Wilson, the receptionist, who was enjoying the solitude and leafing through the morning paper. She waved back with one hand while buzzing Laurie into the ID room with the other. Laurie slipped out of her coat as she walked into the office.
Two of the more senior medical examiners, Kevin Southgate and Arnold Besserman, were sitting in the two brown vinyl club chairs, deep in conversation. Both waved to Laurie without interrupting their dialogue. Laurie waved back. She noticed that Vinnie Amendola was not in his usual spot, hiding behind his newspaper. She approached the desk where Riva was busy reviewing the cases that had come in overnight. Riva looked up, peering at Laurie over the tops of her glasses. Riva smiled. "Did you get more sleep last night?" she asked.
"Not a lot more," Laurie confessed. "I was apartment cleaning until almost two."
"I've been there," Riva said with an understanding chuckle. "What happened at the hospital?"
Laurie told her about the visit and that her mother was doing fine. She talked briefly about her father but didn't mention the BRCA1 problem.
"Jack is already down in the pit," Riva said.
"I guessed as much when I noticed Vinnie wasn't here reading the sports page."
Riva shook her head. "Jack was already in here, rooting around in the cases, when I arrived before six-thirty. That's too early for him to be in here. It's pathetic. I told him to get a life."
Laurie laughed. "That must have gone over well."
"I also told him about your mom. I hope that was okay. He had asked where you had gone yesterday afternoon. Apparently he'd come by our office just after you'd left for the hospital and I had gone down to talk with Calvin."
"That's fine," Laurie said. "Now that I've been told, it's no secret."
"I hear you," Riva said. "I can't understand why your mother wouldn't want to confide in you. Anyway, Jack was taken aback; I could tell."
"Did he say anything in particular?"
"Not about your mom. He was quiet for a few minutes, which is not like Jack."
"What kind of case is he doing?" Laurie asked.
"An ugly one," Riva said. "He is amazing; I have to give him credit. The more difficult the case, whether emotionally or technically, the better he likes it. This one was particularly troubling from an emotional point of view. It was a four-month-old infant that had been abraded all over its little body, then brought into the ER, dead. The ER personnel were in an uproar of indignation, since the parents tried to say they had no idea what had happened. The police were called, and now the parents are in jail."