Of Flesh and Blood (26 page)

Erin was still struggling to wrap her mind around the far-fetched idea. “Do you think they really will try?”

“All they need is a simple majority vote. There are several family members who would never support the motion, and almost as many who certainly will. The fate of the Alfredson will rest with the unknowns and the undecided.” He sighed again. “That is why it’s so important that all stays quiet in the days leading up to the vote. This damn
C. diff
outbreak is not helping. Nor will the fact that our top heart surgeon is taking an indefinite leave.”

She reached across the desk and squeezed William’s arm through his jacket, surprised by the boniness of it. “Dad, I just can’t see how it will matter to anyone if I take a couple of weeks off.”

“You’re probably right, of course,” he said, sinking deeper in his chair. “I just don’t want to give the other side any more fodder.”

She mustered a reassuring smile. “Surely the Alfredson has survived bigger threats than this one.”

“Of course it has, but . . .” He grimaced. “When I still practiced medicine,
I had this patient, Harry Olsen. Harry was an overweight smoker with high blood pressure, out-of-control cholesterol, diabetes, and kidney failure. He survived three heart attacks, two bypass surgeries, and a lung cancer scare. After all that, Harry still refused to give up smoking or stop eating donuts. You know what finally killed him?”

She shook her head.

“A bee sting. Harry didn’t even realize he was allergic until a bee stung him on the lip.” He stared hard at his daughter. “Erin, sometimes it’s the most unexpected, seemingly harmless threats that inflict the most damage.”

She released his arm. “Dad, is there any other way I can help?”

William rose awkwardly from his chair. He smiled stiffly. “No. Just get your talented hands operating again as soon as possible.”

Self-conscious, she folded her arms across her chest, tucking her hands underneath them. “I’ll give it a week and see.”

“I hope you’re feeling better soon, Erin.”

“You, too, Dad. Are you planning to see a physical therapist about your back?”

“I think I will follow your same strategy. I’ll give it a week and see.”

She smiled. “Hard to argue with that.”

He shuffled toward the door, stopping with his hand on the doorknob. “Erin, there’s nothing else, is there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Aside from your carpal tunnel syndrome, everything else is okay? With Steve? The boys?”

“Fine.” She cleared her throat. “Why do you ask?”

“Lately, you’ve seemed subdued.”

She felt her face flushing. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re not quite the same outspoken tireless girl I remember.” He chuckled. “That thirteen-year-old who insisted on continuing to play the part of Maria in her junior high’s production of
The Sound of Music
despite the crutches, cast, and broken leg.”

“Maybe I’ve matured a touch since ninth grade.”

“I suppose that can happen.” He opened the door. “I just haven’t seen a lot of the old Erin since you came back from Kenya. To be honest, I miss her a little.”

After William left, Erin slumped back in her chair. She could not
continue to hide or bury her anxiety attacks for much longer. She was not accustomed to lying, and she was obviously doing a lousy job of it. Not only had the panic attacks incapacitated her at work, but they were taking a toll on her family life. Her poor sleep, preoccupation, and irritability were driving a wedge between her and Steve and the boys.

Involuntarily, her thoughts drifted back to Africa and that hospital in Nakuru. By the time she returned stateside, Erin had almost buried the memories of that harrowing standoff in the muggy operating room. Somehow they had crawled back into her consciousness. At first only in her nightmares, but now they were terrorizing her waking hours. Earlier that morning, she had practically jumped out of her skin at the pounding footsteps of the Code Blue team as they raced past her in the hallway.

In her mind’s eye, she could still see the old man’s pupils dilate until his brown irises disappeared altogether. And she could practically hear his forlorn cry as the first swing of the machete fell.

Despite her promise to Steve, Erin had not yet made an appointment to see a therapist. But she could no longer deny to herself that she needed to talk to someone.

Palms sweating, she reached for the phone and punched in the number for her brother’s pager.

Dot Alfredson had found her second wind. Or perhaps, Lorna Simpson thought to herself with a smile, the old girl’s cocktail (a triple vodka tonic) accounted for her renewed vigor. Not that Lorna was in any position to judge. The bitter smell of tonic hit her nose like an invitation. Though still enjoying her first drink, she was already anticipating the second.

While Dot seemed to rely on her maid, Juanita, for most necessities, she insisted on attending to her own bartending. She now stood in the corner of the room, with only her head and shoulders clearing the leather-sided mahogany bar, as she lovingly dispensed Grey Goose vodka into two fresh glasses.

For Lorna, the lull in Dot’s storytelling was like a spell breaking. Her thoughts turned to the other purpose of her visit. “Dot.” She stopped to have a sip of her drink as if only making small talk. “That Alfredson board meeting in a couple of weeks.”

In mid-pour, Dot glanced up from the bottle without spilling a drop. Her gaze drifted back to her task, but her voice carried that same note of suspicion Lorna had heard before. “What about it,
darling?
”

“How many voting Alfredsons are there?” Lorna asked.

Dot lowered the bottle and stirred the drink with a long narrow spoon. “As you know, I’ve fallen off the Christmas card lists of most of our dear relatives,” she said lightly. “According to the charter, only direct descendants of Marshall Alfredson twenty-one years and older are entitled to vote. Everyone else from my generation has had the good decency to die. Last time I checked that would leave sixty or so voting Alfredsons.”

The number was consistent with Lorna’s estimate. “Nearly all of whom are coming to the extraordinary board meeting,” she said, as much to herself as her great-aunt.

Dot fixed her with another probing gaze. “Darling, I thought you had no interest in things that happen in
this
century.”

“Only a passing interest.” Lorna laughed as she tossed back the last of her drink.

“Of course, we will be making history at this meeting, won’t we?”

“Oh?” Lorna said with her nose still buried in her glass. “How so?”

“ ‘Money first.’ That was Grandfather’s credo,” Dot said. “And most of our dear clan still lives by the same belief. Certainly many of the Alfred-sons,
especially
the Californian collection, could use the windfall that would come from selling off the only family asset left.”

Lorna stood up and carried her empty glass over to the bar and exchanged it for the fresh drink waiting for her. She took a sip, pleased to taste even more vodka than in the previous glass. “You think the family will vote to sell?” she asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“I imagine so, yes.”

“Do you intend to vote?”

Dot’s bright red lips parted in one of her lascivious smiles. “For me, this is like hunting big game on safari. I’m
merely
going for the sport of it.” She ran her hand over her short white hair. “And you, darling? How will you vote?” She paused and then added with a trace of sarcasm, “Assuming you even bother to attend, of course.”

Lorna considered her answer carefully. Her great-aunt was no fool. She needed to reinforce her credibility or risk losing the old woman altogether. “To be honest, Dot, that is one of the reasons for my visit. I’m still trying to decide.”

Dot’s smile withered. “Really? All this ancient family history will
actually
influence your decision one way or another?”

“In a way.” Lorna mentally composed her words before continuing. “The Alfredson has never meant much to me aside from its status as a minor landmark and the family name, which I don’t even share. But now, listening to you describe its history and how it touched people—my ancestors—has given me a far greater sense of . . . ownership. You understand?”

Blank-faced, Dot nodded. She reached for her own drink, sniffed it, and then took a long sip.

“Dot, there’s something confusing me about the chronology of your story.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Olivia was your aunt. So your father must have been her brother, but you have yet to mention him once.”

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “He was considerably younger than Olivia.”

Lorna frowned at her great-aunt. “But Marshall’s wife died when Olivia was in her early teens. Correct? Did your father and Olivia share the same mother?”

“No.”

“So they were only half siblings,” Lorna said. “When did Marshall remarry?”

“He never did.”

Lorna threw her hands in the air. “Okay, now I’m totally lost.”

But Dot simply shook her head and laughed. “Darling, why ruin a perfectly good story by cutting to the end?” She picked up her glass but didn’t drink from it. “Now where were we?”

“Olivia was just about to blackmail her father into funding Evan’s hospital.”

“Ah.” Dot smiled. “So she was.”

Reserved and unassuming, Marshall initially balked at the suggestion of naming the clinic after himself, but Evan insisted. The young doctor convinced Marshall that it was only right, since there would be no clinic without the Alfredsons.

—
The Alfredson: The First Hundred Years by Gerald Fenton Naylor

By the early 1890s, Seattle’s only hospital was no longer large enough to accommodate the city’s booming population. Every day Evan McGrath spent at the hospital, he grew more convinced he could design and run a superior clinic that, despite the Sisters’ tireless efforts, offered better and more humane care. But like a fire deprived of oxygen, his hope of realizing the dream had withered and died in the wake of losing Olivia’s loving support and encouragement.

This morning, Evan walked onto the women’s ward to find it even more crowded than usual. The bare walls were lined by narrow beds with cloth
partitions separating some, but not all, of the beds. The nuns had laid extra mattresses on the floor to house the overflow of patients. They were laid so tightly together that Evan had to tread carefully to avoid stepping on patients. As usual, they ranged from young to old with diagnoses that ran from heart ailments to wound infections and almost everything between. As always, there was a disproportionate representation among the “seamstresses” (as the Sisters euphemistically referred to the city’s prostitutes). Despite the modest nightgowns in which the nuns dressed them, these women were easily recognizable by their skeletal faces and blank stares. Advanced syphilis and cervical cancer were the common culprits. As a surgeon, Evan rarely had any treatment to offer the cervical cancer victims, whose tumors were invariably too advanced to remove.

But the prostitutes accounted for a smaller than usual fraction of the admitted women on this cold December morning. An outbreak of influenza had hit Seattle hard in the late fall, and most patients were sick with the virus. Many others admitted with alternate diagnoses had since acquired the flu from their sick and contagious neighbors. And the virus had spread among the staff, too. Several of the Sisters were now too sick to leave their own beds.

A devout follower of the germ theory teachings of Lister and Pasteur, Evan had always been conscientious about hand-washing, but he had become obsessive during this influenza outbreak. He could not afford to become sick. While the flu was usually no more than a nuisance to healthy adults, he feared he might bring the virus home to Virginia and put her, in her weakened state, at mortal risk.

Recently, Evan’s concern for his wife’s health had soared, as he helplessly watched the multiple sclerosis continue to ravage her. However, despite her steady physical deterioration, her mental status had actually improved. Her paranoia and forgetfulness had dissipated. She was acting more like the old Ginny, which, compounded by the lingering guilt over his adultery, only deepened his attachment to her.

Shaking off the worry, Evan focused on his rounds. He stepped from bed to bed and mattress to mattress. Unlike many doctors, Evan believed firmly in his patients’ right to privacy during examination. He often addressed people in a whisper to avoid being overheard by neighboring
patients. And whenever possible, he pulled partitions around patients before uncovering a body part to examine. But this morning any hope of modesty was lost.

Evan assessed the belly of a woman whose gallbladder he had removed three days before. Her wound was closing nicely, but she had developed a high fever that he believed was more attributable to the flu than her surgery. Still, he intended to instruct the Sister to change her dressings three times a day until her fever broke.

He was on his way to find the nun when he bumped into Moses Brown in the hallway. The hulking black man had a broad nose, crooked front teeth, and intelligent brown eyes. He wore, as always, the same fraying navy blue suit that was too short in the pants and sleeves, and in all likelihood had belonged to a patient that had died in the hospital (the nuns were very practical about recycling clothes to the needy). Six months earlier, Evan had reset Moses’s badly broken forearm that was shattered in a fall from the hospital roof. Moses’s radius and ulna had healed straight, and the successful treatment won his devotion.