7 ........................................................................................ 67
8 ........................................................................................ 79
9 ...................................................................................... 107
10...................................................................................... 123
11...................................................................................... 137
12...................................................................................... 149
13...................................................................................... 157
14...................................................................................... 165
15...................................................................................... 185
16...................................................................................... 211
17...................................................................................... 227
18...................................................................................... 239
19...................................................................................... 243
20...................................................................................... 261
21...................................................................................... 265
22...................................................................................... 277 Epilogue
.............................................................................. 285 A Novel of Ideas That's a Page-Turner by Alan W. Bock ................................................... 299 Medical Novels: Double Dose of Fear by Brad Linaweaver ............................................ 303 About the Author
................................................................ 305
I
A cool breeze blew from the ocean over the hills of Palos Verdes, carrying the scent of salt and clean air with it. Valerie Dalton took a deep breath, held it, let it out. It smelled like the winds that caressed the Rocky Mountains in winter. Fresh and pure. It reminded her of home.
She'd lived in the Los Angeles area for ten years since leav-ing home to attend UCLA. This was home now, not Colorado. This was where she had chosen to come. This is where she chose to stay. The man she chose to stay with slumbered in bed, his dark hair tousled, face buried in the pillows. She watched him for a moment. It gave her a certain warm pleasure to know that by rising first to shower, she could allow him a few moments more to sleep. A moment or two more to recover from their late evening of lovemaking.
A lawyer of Ron Czernek's ambition needed all the rest he could get.
Valerie stepped quietly into the bathroom. First stop was the mirror atop the vanity for a survey of the night's damage. She gazed at the flesh around her blue-gray eyes. At twenty-eight, she feared the onslaught of crinkles with an apprehension usually reserved for toxic pollution or nuclear war. Safe for now, she thought, reaching for her hairbrush. She plucked a few blond strands from the bristles, laid them in a tissue, and balled it up. A light toss sent the ball sailing into the wastebasket. Two points. She smiled at the thought of how she'd picked up the phrase from Ron. That, and the line about punting. Or was it bunting?
Long nails clacking against the shower tiles, she twisted the hot water on full, waiting outside for the chill to abate. As she slipped out of her peach silk teddy, her thoughts turned to the problems she'd face at work. She wanted to have Shirley fired. It wouldn't look good, though, for a new office manager to flex her recently acquired authority that quickly. Perhaps a dis-cussion with her about her absenteeism. And the condition of her desk.
That's it, she thought as she stepped into the hot, tingling spray. A quiet, private talk. She languished for a precious moment in the swirling warmth of the shower. It became a waterfall off a mountain hot spring. She was successful, comfortable, and in love with a gentle, considerate man. The future lay before her, exciting and sweet. With a smile and closed eyes, she thrust her head into the cascade. Her long golden hair carried the waterfall down her back.
Valerie Dalton was happy. As happy as she'd ever been.
Soaped, shampooed, conditioned, and rinsed, she stepped a few moments later from the shower. The bath sheet felt warm from basking under the heat lamps. She wrapped her hair in a smaller towel, twisting it up and over. Queena Sheba, she thought, looking in the soaped portion of an otherwise fogged mirror. Her mother had always called her that whenever dry-ing her. It was years before she realized that Queena was not a first name.
Valerie sat at her vanity. A quick check for water damage to her nails came before anything else. They'd survived.
She had everything timed. Ten minutes for the shower, ten for the hair, twenty-five for dressing and makeup. That left fifteen minutes for emergencies before she gave Ron a last kiss and squeeze. Then he hit the shower, and she hit the road.
When she finished blow-drying her hair to full-bodied, soft-waved completion, she moved on to makeup. Rummaging for that new bottle of foundation she'd bought the other day, she uncovered her Hallmark date book.
Valerie felt a childish glow whenever she opened it. Her mother had always used one and had instilled the tradition in little Val from day one. As long as she could remember, she picked up the giveaway every year while buying Christmas cards. As a child, it had been filled by her mother with impor-tant dates. Later, she used it to keep track of friends' birth-days. When she turned eleven, the little book took on a new meaning.
"Now that you're a woman," her mother said, "it's impor-tant that you keep track of your friend." She showed Valerie how to put an inconspicuous dot next to the date of her period.
"See?" she said, marking the page on Valerie's date book with a tiny black spot. "No one will know what it means ex-cept you."
"And you," Valerie added with a child's seriousness.
"It'll be our secret."
When Valerie turned fourteen, she very daringly chose to use a red pen to make the dots. And she made them just a little bit larger.
Every year at Christmastime she still picked up the date book at whatever card shop she visited. And even though she used her Day-Timer for all other matters of import, she still took a red pen to the page of the date book. Every month. Every...
Curious, she opened the book to the page for February. Even though it was the first of March, no spot of red glowed from the previous month's white-and-blue surface. She flipped back to January. And stared in quiet shock.
She tried to remember everything that had happened in the last month. Her promotion had so occupied her time that she hadn't given any thought to much outside of her work. If any-thing, the freedom from aches and cramps had enabled her to handle the transition with ease. She gazed at January's mark. The third. She counted. Eight weeks. Over eight. It can't be. She begged herself to remember something. The week or two before Valentine's Day. Spotting, maybe.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
She opened a drawer to check her tampons. The box was nearly full. When did she buy it?
Looking up in the mirror, Valerie saw a different woman staring back. She missed work that day."
Dr. Evelyn Fletcher's eyes opened three minutes before her alarm went off. Thoughts immediately began their daily churn. Concerns about luteinizing hormones, estradiol, and catheters intertwined with musings over synchronization, scheduling, and budgets.
She rolled naked out of the narrow single bed and, after a perfunctory glance at herself in the bathroom mirror, climbed into the frigid bathtub and turned on the water.