“Sounds like a plan to me,” Madison said as she pulled on her denim jacket.
—
When they climbed out of the car in front of Madison’s apartment building, Aria said: “I’ll wait out here.” Although it was on the cool side, it was still a pleasant mid-spring night and it was still early enough for significant vehicular and pedestrian traffic particularly on the bounding avenues.
“Suit yourself,” Madison said. Not having to be hospitable was preferable as she wanted to get to bed as soon as she could. Earlier in the evening she’d worried about what sleep that night was going to be like after the disturbing day, but following the conversation with Aria in Nobu and the prospect of doing something positive for Kera, her natural exhaustion had caught up with her.
Up in her one-bedroom rear apartment, Madison had to scan her sizable bookcase for the two books she’d described to Aria. Once she had both books, she returned outside to the front of her building. Aria was sitting on one of the granite blocks that lined the three steps up into the building. A man with a dog had stopped and was trying to engage her in a conversation. Madison felt sorry for the man as it was apparent things were not going well. Madison wondered if Aria ever let her guard down with anyone. She was a mystery to Madison, who’d never met anyone quite like her.Unpredictablewas the word that came to mind. One minute she seemed tolerable enough, the next minute disagreeable. Madison wondered if Aria was typical of all forensic pathologists. Considering the experience she’d had that day, she wondered if they all might be a bit weird. Dealing with death on an everyday basis had to have a consequence. She couldn’t imagine doing it herself.
Aria stood, ignoring the man with the dog, and took the booksfrom Madison. “These do look used,” she said as she quickly flipped through them.
Holding her tongue from what she initially thought to say in response, Madison said instead, “I think you’ll find them useful. And let’s talk tomorrow. I’ve got patients all day, but I’ll be able to talk in between them if that works for you. Then we can decide how we’re going to proceed.”
“Sounds good,” Aria said. “I’ll be able to have these books back to you quickly. I’m a fast reader.”
“Whatever,” Madison said with a wave of her hand. “Keep them as long as you like. As I said, I’ve read them several times.”
“Okay,” Aria said with a nod before striking off toward Columbus Avenue.
—
Aria walked quickly. Now that she had the books about genetic genealogy, she wanted to get home and start reading. Although she’d been initially disappointed in Madison’s suggestion about using genetic genealogy to locate the missing man, she now felt encouraged. Sensing that Kera had been an intelligent, culturally endowed, educated woman despite her appearance that day prior to the autopsy, it seemed to make sense that she would have been involved with a man with similar traits and interests. If so, it stood to reason that his relatives would be similar, and Aria surmised such people would have the means and interest to indulge in genetic genealogy. All that meant was finding him by this process would be that much easier.
As it was dog-walking time before bed, she encountered several other men who tried to engage her in conversation, using her white coat and their dog as a convenient entrée. Aria either ignored them completely or told them that she couldn’t stand dogs, which was aconvenient turnoff. In less than ten minutes she was mounting the steps up the front stoop of her building.
When Aria first came to New York for her residency, she thought it best to buy herself a condominium rather than have to deal with a landlord. She’d always liked New York because the sheer number of people made it easy to ignore everyone. In medical school at Yale, she’d not had that luxury, as New Haven in comparison seemed like a small town. She’d wanted to live on the Upper West Side because of its proximity to Central Park and because it was a real neighborhood. Within a short walking distance, she had everything she needed. She didn’t own a car and didn’t want one.
The apartment she ended up buying was on a street lined with brownstones. Although they were originally single-family dwellings, many were now converted into condominiums. She was particularly drawn to 70th Street because some of the buildings were still single family, significantly reducing the congestion. Her building, strangely enough, had been painted white to cover up the many repairs that had been done on the brownstone. Her unit was on what was called the ground floor even though it was elevated from the street by the ten steps of the stoop. Beneath her was another unit whose windows were partly below ground level.
Originally Aria’s two-bedroom apartment had been the building’s parlor and formal dining room when it had been a single-family home. During the building’s conversion, the floor plan had been altered. Now as she came through the apartment’s door from the common hallway, she was in the living room/kitchen/dining area with a wood-burning fireplace. To the left was a corridor to her bedroom and the apartment’s only bathroom. Such a setup was a little unfortunate since it meant that the bedroom was exposed to street noise like ambulance sirens and drunk neighbors on summer Saturday nights. To the right from where she was standing there was a doorway in thecorner that led to a final small room. When Aria had originally been shown the apartment by the Realtor, this last room had been marketed as a bedroom without a bath. Instead Aria had turned it into a study, and it was in this room that she spent most of her awake time. All in all, the apartment was a pleasant environment, particularly with its twelve-foot ceilings that magnified the sense of space.
After draping her white coat over the back of the sofa, Aria went directly into the study with the two borrowed books. One of her fortes was the ability to concentrate regardless of what was going on around her, and despite being tired from a full day’s activities, she intended to become significantly more knowledgeable about genetic genealogy.
CHAPTER 16
May 9th
5:15A.M.
It was a déjà vu for Laurie as her eyes blinked open far earlier than was her norm for the second day in a row. The problem was that as soon as her eyes opened, she instinctively knew that more sleep was an impossibility. Her mind was already in gear, processing everything that was going on, but mostly relating to her breast situation. That was how she referred to it in her mind: a “breast situation.” She didn’t like the wordcancer. It had too many emotive and irrevocable connotations, even if it was just one of several possible outcomes.
As she had done the morning before, she turned her head to the side to see the time and was dismayed it was still so early. Although it was light outside, the sun had yet to rise. Having slept poorly most of the night, she knew she was going to be tired during a day with obvious challenges.
Using her hand, she gingerly palpated the involved breast. She hadn’t done it yet since the positive screening, despite having beensorely tempted. She was very careful as she did so, wondering if touching could possibly dislodge a few wayward cells if it indeed was cancer. As a doctor, she knew all too well how significant it was whether the possible cancer had spread to distant sites with what were called metastases. A cancer in situ where it had originated was a far different story than a cancer that had already metastasized.
As per usual, she could feel multiple tiny lumps in her breast. None stood out. Was that reassuring? Partially, but she didn’t know which of the various irregularities she could always feel was the lump that had the radiologists alarmed. It made her feel betrayed that her own body could turn against her.
Throwing back the covers, Laurie sat up and wriggled her feet into her slippers, which were exactly where she had left them. She’d been up in the middle of the night after having essentially passed out from sheer mental and physical exhaustion soon after she and Jack had had their supper. For a while she’d wandered around in the dark apartment, going room to room while mulling over the difficult question of what to do about dealing with her worrisome breast lump. Unable to come to any conclusion with such an existential question, she’d eventually gone into the study, turned on the light, and got out the architectural plans for the new OCME Forensic Pathology building. Despite her personal concerns about her health and mortality, she knew that the plans had to be finalized in the near future before getting a final cost estimate and then presenting them to the City Council. To her surprise, she actually was able to concentrate enough to make some progress, or so she thought. It wasn’t until she’d felt sleepy enough that she’d turned out the desk light, returned to the bedroom, and climbed back into bed.
After donning her robe, she glanced at Jack. He looked as peaceful as he had yesterday morning, lying on his back with his hands clasped on his chest. He wasn’t actually snoring, just breathing particularly deeply. Laurie assumed he was dreaming as his lidded eyes wereclearly darting about. As close as she felt to him, it was moments like this that emphasized they were in reality two very separate people who thought of themselves as the center of the universe. It was a fleeting thought that made her figuratively smile since it was proof that she had no way of knowing what was going on in his mind.
Just as she did the previous morning, Laurie silently left their bedroom, walked down the hall, and entered Emma’s room. Again, peering down at the angelic four-year-old girl, she had an abrupt epiphany. Her children, particularly Emma, needed her, which answered the difficult question of how she should handle the breast lump. Since she was positive for the BRCA1 mutation, which raised her chances for both breast cancer and ovarian cancer, she had to take the most conservative choice even if doing so challenged her self-image as a woman. She had to follow Angelina Jolie’s lead and have the mastectomy and the oophorectomy. The choice was suddenly completely clear.
“Thank you, my child,” Laurie whispered under her breath. Emma and her autism had shown her the way to deal with the current problem. Feeling suddenly relieved of an oppressive weight, she walked out of her daughter’s room, and the moment she did so, she could see that the sun had cleared the horizon, again bathing that water tower on the neighboring building in golden light. To Laurie it seemed symbolic of having come to a decision.
When she entered the bathroom for a shower following a quick visit to JJ’s room, she wished she could pick up her phone that very instant and call the surgeon and the oncologist to get the whole issue of the breast situation out of the way now that she had made up her mind. She felt that as soon as she’d made the call, she could relegate the problem to the back of her mind, thereby allowing herself to concentrate on all the other things that needed her attention, like writing up the death certificate for Kera Jacobsen. Laurie again smiled to herself as she turned on the water from outside the shower and adjusted the temperature. With all the other, bigger-picture things on her mindinvolved with running the OCME, it seemed pathetic that she would single out a particular case. Yet she understood. The personality of the pathology resident aside, she had enjoyed doing the autopsy, which again underlined how much she missed the mental rigor of forensic pathology. Was she really cut out to be an administrator at the expense of having to give up doing her own cases? She didn’t know. The pregnancy discovered during the autopsy had been a surprise, and she wondered if it might have the significance in regard to the manner of death, as Dr. Nichols had suggested. Laurie doubted it purely from a statistical basis, but she wasn’t going to restrict Dr. Nichols from pursuing it as Laurie probably would have done the same if their roles were reversed. One thing that was clear: The hour or so doing the autopsy had been the only time that the breast situation hadn’t been at the forefront of her consciousness since the moment she’d gotten the bad news from the radiologist reading her MRI.
As she climbed into the shower and allowed the water to cascade down onto her head and from there onto all the curves and creases of her body, she remembered one other important thing she had to do prior to eight o’clock. She had to call the Brooks School and tell Miss Rossi that they had decided to have JJ evaluated. Hopefully the school psychologist could recommend someone to do the evaluation, particularly a male psychiatrist or psychologist. The more Laurie had thought about the issue, the stronger she felt that receiving a professional opinion would only help her and Jack make effective parenting decisions.
