Authors: Alison Gaylin
D
r. Glassman was an excellent physician. Meade had met him while working at the VA Hospital. He was good back then—skilled and considerate. Yet he was too distracted by everyday things to be truly great. Little League games, anniversaries, tennis lessons for his daughter . . . He’d often leave work early for something as mundane as a school play—a school play, when there were lives to be saved. It didn’t make sense, but then again, human behavior rarely did. Meade didn’t begrudge Dr. Glassman that, his humanity. But still he saw the weakness—that flaw, thin as a nerve, that kept him from becoming the great thing he was meant to be.
Then one day, a fire struck the Glassman home while the doctor was at work, killing his entire family. After a long mourning period, Dr. Glassman emerged changed. He was now a man without emotions, a man who lived only to save lives, to fix bodies—sew them up and send them out. Dr. Glassman never asked questions. In fact, he rarely spoke. He worked out of his small apartment in Morningside Heights, plucking bullets out of chests, sewing up knife wounds, sometimes stabilizing the erratic beat of a dying heart. He seemed to get no pleasure out of this, no joy, no sense of accomplishment. He healed, quite frankly, because he could do nothing else. Dr. Glassman was the closest thing to a machine Meade had ever met. For that reason, he trusted him.
Dr. Glassman attended to the bullet wound first. It had struck Meade in the shoulder, and it burned when removed, but he stayed stoic, as he knew his father would have done.
Soldiers don’t cry
, Dad had told Adam, Adam at ten years old, a different Adam than the world saw now. Dad had said that to young Adam as he left their house at dawn, walked out that front door for the very last time, on his way to his sixth and final tour. “
Don’t worry, son. Hanoi’s got nothing on me. Hey, what’s that in your eye? A tear? Soldiers don’t cry, Adam. You must be strong. I need you to take care of the ladies while I’m gone
.”
“Yes sir.”
“Atta boy.”
As Dr. Glassman sewed up the gash on the side of Meade’s face, treated the cuts over his eyes, bandaged the shoulder, and disinfected the glass wounds, Meade put his father out of his mind. Instead he thought about machines—the simple beauty of them, the singularity of purpose. The Glock, of course, was a perfect example, and in a different way, Meade’s car. So was the tracking chip he’d stuck beneath the carriage of Brenna Spector’s van after the press conference, while she and her assistant were visiting Nelson Wentz.
The doctor was a machine now—a machine that saved lives—and though he might not care enough to realize it, this made him great. Tragedy had transformed him. Just as it had transformed young Adam.
Before he left the apartment, Meade put the money on the kitchen table. As usual, the doctor didn’t look at it. Instead of just leaving, though, Meade put a hand on his shoulder, looked him in the face. “Some fires,” Meade said, “happen for a reason.”
Dr. Glassman said nothing. His eyes were dry as stones.
“Y
ou do realize I hate hospitals,” Morasco said. He was standing next to Brenna’s bed at 10
P.M.
, just about to leave.
“Then you must be miserable at this point.”
“Not really. In fact, I kind of like this hospital, if only because it’s keeping you from going out and getting attacked again.” He smiled, and Brenna flashed on Wright, naked in the photograph, staring at Lydia . . .
Amazing what love did to the eyes. It made them light up in the same way pain made them light up, the same way tears did. How could anyone be capable of that much love and that much hate at the same time?” Brenna said, “How do we know?”
“How do we know you won’t get attacked here in Columbia-Presbyterian?”
“No,” Brenna said. “How do we know that Meade is still working for Wright? How do we know he’s not going after these people of his own accord?”
“Are you serious?”
She looked at him. “I’m not saying Wright didn’t bribe the Schulers and Chief Griffin with homes in the Waterside Condos. And I’m not saying he didn’t make sure Hutchins took that interview out of the police file. I’m just saying . . . Maybe he isn’t responsible for the
killings
. Maybe Meade is a stalker. Maybe he somehow found out that Carol Wentz had the photos, and he’s doing this out of some weird loyalty to Wright.”
Morasco stared at her.
Brenna sighed. “I know,” she said. “I guess I just don’t understand why any sane human being—even an entitled asshole like Wright—would be able to destroy that many innocent people. Seriously, how could you live with yourself?”
Morasco glanced away for a moment. “People make all kinds of excuses, Brenna. They tell themselves lies. They repeat those lies in their heads over and over until they become memories,” he said. “That’s how they live with themselves.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Of course you don’t,” he said. “Your memory never lies.” Morasco touched the bandages on her cheek. “Please don’t get attacked by goons anymore.”
“Goons.” Brenna smiled. “That sounds like a word Jack Paar would use.”
“Wiseass.” His gaze stayed locked with hers, and for a moment, she might have seen it in his eyes—that spark, love or pain, she wasn’t sure which.
Or maybe she was just remembering the picture.
T
rent showed up per Brenna’s call at 10:30
P.M.
with a packed bag that included a change of clothes, toothbrush, plus Brenna’s laptop and the envelope containing the three pictures and the drawing, all of which Trent had scanned, downloaded, and copied. He’d come in just after Morasco had left and must have passed him in the hall, because the first thing he said when he saw Brenna was, “You and Morasco. Huh? Huh?” accompanied by a hand gesture she hadn’t seen since fifth grade.
“Uh, no.”
Trent gaped at the bandages on her face. “Man,” he said. “I hope you gave it to Meade fifty times worse.”
“I tried.”
By now, doctors had informed Brenna that her tests had all come back within normal range and she didn’t need another transfusion, but that they’d like her to stay the night for observation. Fine with her—the hospital was as good a place to figure things out as any, and, as Morasco might have said, a place where she wasn’t likely to get attacked.
She took the laptop from Trent and flipped it open, connecting to the hospital’s wi-fi. Then she placed the pictures over the screen like a lightboard, stared at Wright’s face. What did a man like him do with a great love once he was through with it? Did he throw it into his work? His marriage? His children? How could he just turn and aim that laser elsewhere? How could he ever forget?
How could any man ever forget?
She stole a glance at her home screen. Jim wasn’t online.
Fine
. She’d call Faith tomorrow morning, arrange for her to pick up Maya at school, explain to her that she was laid up for a bit but it was nothing serious . . . Brenna shut her eyes tight, as if by doing so, she could squeeze the pain out of her mind
. Forget.
“Thanks for all this, Trent,” she said. “I’ll probably be out of here sometime tomorrow, so I’ll see you.”
“Wait. There’s something I need to show you.”
She gave him a look.
“I didn’t get anything else pierced. I swear.”
“Okay then.”
Trent edged next to her on the bed, minimized her home screen. “If you go to the control panel, you’ll see I downloaded Nelson Wentz’s Mailkeep.”
“The program that saves copies of all e-mails.”
“Yep.”
Brenna found the Mailkeep icon and clicked on it. She saw a long list of e-mails, all of which seemed to be from Nelson’s address. “Have you looked at these yet?”
“Nope. I just transferred it before I came over.”
There were some e-mails from as recently as two days ago—one from Nelson to what looked like an online memoir-writing course, another to his boss, Kyle, titled “Taking personal day. Back next week.” It struck her anew, the strangeness of his death.
Trent’s cologne pressed into her sinuses, and she turned to find him leaning to the computer, a pec against her back, his head practically on her shoulder. “A little space please,” she said.
Trent put a finger to the bottom of the list. “Look.”
He was pointing at one e-mail—the only one that wasn’t from Nelson. It was from OrangePineapple98, dated September 24, 11:30
P.M.
The subject line read: “HOW DARE YOU.” The recipient was [email protected]. “Her last night alive, Carol e-mailed Wright.”
“Oh, Mommy.”
“You can say that again,” Brenna whispered. She clicked open the e-mail. No message beyond an attachment—a jpg, which Carol had named “neff.”
The pictures
, she thought.
Carol e-mailed him the pictures
. Wright had learned who Carol was from the e-mail address. That was easy enough for someone as powerful as him. He had learned who she was, and then he had sicced Meade on Carol, on everyone she had spoken to, everyone who might know, all just to keep a secret.
She stared at the subject line, anger bubbling up inside her, pressing against her wounded skin until she thought she might explode from it.
How dare you?
she thought.
How dare you, you sick, selfish . . .
Then she opened the attachment. Her eyes widened.
“I don’t get it,” said Trent.
Neither did Brenna. Carol hadn’t sent Wright the three incriminating photos. The attachment was a scan of Iris’s strange drawing—the stick-figure girl, trapped in a flower.
T
rent left twenty minutes later, when a nurse came in to remove Brenna’s IV. “Yikes. Nast. Needles. Gotta go,” said Trent, who less than a week earlier had paid someone to stick silver hoops through his nipples during his lunch hour. Trent LaSalle, ever a mass of contradictions.
Brenna said good-bye as he hurried out the door, her mind still fixed on Carol’s e-mail to Roger Wright.
How dare you
, she had written to Wright—not over his affair with Lydia, but over a missing child’s drawing. What could it mean? She cut and pasted Carol’s e-mail, tacked on the attachment, and sent it to Morasco’s personal e-mail address, along with a message:
From Carol Wentz to Roger Wright.
Last night of her life.
“How’s your pain?” said the young nurse, surprisingly stoic for someone with pink clouds and rainbows all over her smock. “Scale of one to ten.”
“I’d say about a two, maybe three.”
“We’ll hold off on the painkiller then. Buzz me if you feel worse.”
After the nurse was through removing the IV and had left the room, Brenna stared first at the downloaded image and then at the original drawing, wishing she’d completed the psychology degree she’d begun at Columbia, if only to be able to interpret the meaning behind the crayon lines. What had driven Iris to draw this?
Of course, she did know of someone who could probably tell her . . .
Brenna hadn’t spoken to Dr. Lieberman in years, but his e-mail address was safe in her memory and, whimsical ties notwithstanding, she knew of no better child psychiatrist than him. Quickly, she fired off an e-mail to Lieberman, keeping the small talk to a minimum, as he tended to analyze even the most mundane of sentences.
I need your professional opinion
, she typed,
on this drawing by a missing, six-year-old child. Could you please interpret and get back to me ASAP?
Then she attached the downloaded image.
Brenna had just sent the e-mail when an IM flashed across her screen:
JRapp68: Hi.
Jim
. Brenna inhaled sharply, her knife wound burning with it. The skin around her left eye began to sting and she was sorry now she’d turned down painkillers, though she knew deep down they wouldn’t have done much good. Her jaw was throbbing, the bones in her face ready to split, yet she had no sense of the bandages she wore now. That’s how she knew: the pain in her face wasn’t real but remembered. It was pain from eleven years ago, from a cheating husband whose name she’d never known, bursting to life on October 23, 1998, one night after the husband has inflicted it, with Brenna’s own husband glaring her in the eye, Brenna’s own husband saying, “
I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive you
.” Brenna’s own husband crushing her heart. Brenna typed:
Hi.
I’m sorry I disappeared last night.
Brenna stared at Jim’s words. She started to type,
That’s okay
. But then she deleted it. It wasn’t okay. Why should she say it was? She went for the keyboard:
I wasn’t saying that I blamed you for moving on. I don’t blame you at all.
I like Faith. She’s good to Maya, and I’m glad she makes you happy. I was just saying: It isn’t as easy for me. The memories I have of us are still alive in my head, and sometimes they hurt bad. That isn’t your fault. It isn’t mine, either. It’s the disorder.
Brenna sent the paragraph without reading it. She didn’t receive an immediate reply. IM said he wasn’t typing. But Brenna wasn’t sorry she’d sent it. It was something that needed to be said, whether he wanted to hear it or not. He could ignore it in the future, forget she ever said it, but she needed to say it now. She still felt it—that love, that ache. She would always feel it and he ought to know.
Jim typed:
What’s my excuse then?
Brenna stared at the screen. Typed a question mark.
He typed:
I remember, too, Brenna. I hurt, too.
Brenna started to reply but stopped herself when she saw that Jim was still typing. His next message flashed on-screen:
I can’t keep doing this
.
Doing what?
IMing every night. I’ve come to look forward to it—probably more than I should.
Her breath caught.
Don’t leave me
, she wanted to type.
I need you
. She thought about telling Jim where she was right now. Thought about saying,
Can we at least wait until the stitches from my ABDOMINAL KNIFE WOUND are removed?
But she didn’t. It wasn’t fair.
Whatever you need to do
, she typed instead.