Starlet's Web (The Starlet Series, #1) (29 page)

I liked Sunday school and the service because of the messages. I liked learning about compassion, forgiveness, and charity. I wanted to be a good person, considerate and conscientious. I liked hearing the music and songs during the service. I liked the priest interpreting the scriptures explaining how they were relevant in helping us all be better, nicer people.

I didn't like the rules and exclusions. I didn't like the superiority the pious people showed toward people who they thought were sinners. I didn't like the hypocrisy.

Mom thought she had sinned too much after the divorce and stopped going. Now I understood what sin she was talking about. For the last four years I thought she meant that the sin was that she was divorced and had a few boyfriends.

I explained, “Yeah, I did like going to church before the divorce, but that was when I believed that God was love. I certainly don't think that now.”

I didn't want to tell Manuel what I believed, not that I knew anyway. I actually tried to ignore thinking about God or church or what I was supposed to believe. Prayers ran through my head sometimes, especially in my dreams, but I actively ignored them, too. I only prayed with Manuel because I found it so charming that he liked me saying a prayer aloud to him.

“I'm sorry your parents' divorce was so hard on you. You're probably thinking about bailing, but it would really be nice if you could be with me today.” Manuel smiled at me and took my hand. “I have to pray and want to go, but it's up to you.”

“Well, it won't kill me,” I said with a laugh as we walked into the church.

I looked around and was instantly familiar with everything as if I had never missed a Sunday in five years. I followed Manuel to a pew and went through the motions. I fought back tears several times. I didn't know if the tears were from thinking about Mom's betrayal and my health or from being moved by scripture or song. The setting intensified my self-reflection. I was also aware of the words I heard during the service. Saying the “Our Father” while Manuel held my hand made me have to wipe tears off my cheeks. It was a strange experience. I was more than relieved when it was over.

I wanted Manuel to know that I appreciated him taking me to church. I thought it was sweet somehow, but couldn't explain it. I put my arm around his waist as we walked to my car. “Thanks for taking me. I liked the sermon and I got a warm feeling when I prayed the ‘Our Father.' I remembered every word of the entire mass. It all came back to me as if I had never been away.”

We got into the car but I didn't start it. I wanted to know why he needed to go to church and why he liked me praying to him.

“Why do you like me saying prayers aloud to you?” I asked.

“Because you have the voice of an angel.” He shrugged. “The way you say the prayer somehow moves me, like, gives me chills.”

I laughed. “And you like getting chills? Have you ever thought that maybe the chills are from Satan or something?”

He laughed, held my hand and kissed the top of it. “You don't have an evil bone in your body. You're total sweetness.”

I teased, “Maybe I'm a siren, an evil temptress singing songs to lure you to your death.”

He dismissed me. “Not a chance. You're an angel.” He squeezed my leg. “I get the same feeling with you that I do when I go to church.”

I started the car and headed home. I still had questions.

“Manuel, why did we just go to church?”

He answered bluntly, “Because you just had a major life trauma and I can't deal with it by myself. I need help.”

“But God's not, like, speaking your words for you and controlling your actions. You are. You're responsible for yourself. God has nothing to do with it,” I explained.

He disagreed. “No. God helps me deal with it, do the right thing.”

I objected, “I don't see it. People turn to God for guidance and ignore that bad stuff happened in the first place which made them turn to God. So why not just blame God for doing the bad stuff, too? I easily believed in God when my life was good and happy before the divorce and before I started acting. Everything that had happened in my life that was bad happened after Dad left Mom and me. All I knew was that there was a lot of pain and loneliness. I understood that Dad needed to divorce Mom to find happiness and have a better life. He got that out of the divorce. He found Celia and is completely in love with her. Mom didn't find happiness. I thought that I had found happiness with you and just learned that I'm a mess. Either God is here for the bad stuff, too, or there's no God.”

“God is here always, Lia. Sometimes the bad stuff is what we need to become who we should be, to get stronger, to learn. God is the sun and the moon at the same time. Sometimes there's an eclipse where the bad stuff is all darkness. The dark and light are both there. Right now, there's more darkness so I needed to go to church today to pray for more light, to get help seeing the sun again without burning my eyes.” He held my hand. “You think I'm a God freak, don't you?”

“No, Manuel. You have a halo, a pure soul.” I looked into his smiling eyes as I drove into the garage. “I see it in those sweet, gorgeous eyes of yours. I love you, my guardian.”

 

Dad and I felt like we walked through a labyrinth of hallways to find the lab. We were both already anxious and getting lost several times did not improve our moods. “Finally!” I exclaimed when we saw the doctor waiting for us in the hallway.

Dad shook his hand. “Thank you, Jacques, for helping us.”

“Oh, please, call me Jack.” He turned to me and shook my hand. “I'm sorry I forgot to introduce myself to you yesterday. Please follow me.”

He slid his key card into the door to the lab. We followed him.

“I'm Tom Durglo and this is…”

I immediately pulled Dad's arm to interrupt him. “I'm sorry. Is it okay if I just go by CSY7? As an actress I have learned to guard my privacy. Since you're working with the FBI, I hope my name and that of my mother's be kept out of your documentation if that's possible.”

“Sure. I'll call you CSY7. It stands for Case Study Youth number seven. I'll let the FBI make its own choice, though—it isn't my call.”

“Thank you. My mother also took the drug as an alternative to plastic surgery. She started taking it five years ago. She said that a fellow actor, who now has cancer, told her about it. He started taking it six years ago.”

Jack protested, “Irresponsible. Completely irresponsible! No wonder Mark disappeared. It's like doping for cyclists or steroids for athletes. I can't believe what he has done.”

I added, “And something my mom said yesterday that you should know. I have never felt sick, and my mom said that she and her friend also felt better, not worse, while on x-nib. Maybe we all felt good because we all took an expensive immunity enhancement medicine that my mom said Mark sold exclusively to us. You were surprised yesterday that I felt fine while on x-nib. That must be why.”

His face changed. “Mark must have figured it out. After we developed x-nib, we worked together for years on an immunity enhancer to ease the pain of our HIV, AIDS, and cancer patients. Our results were inconclusive, and we parted ways. He must have decided to keep his solution secret to profit in the short term rather than develop the drug through FDA approval, marketing and distribution. That process takes years.”

Jack slouched. “He could have kept hundreds of thousands of people from suffering… I developed the drug to help cure people and the realization that it has been debased literally nauseates me. It's deplorable.”

Jack gestured for us to take a seat. Dad put his arm around me as we walked to the desk. “I'll just make some notes. Then we'll get started.”

The office was a mess. File folders were everywhere. Several computer/microscope stations were cluttered with papers and empty water bottles. The back of the lab was full of cages of mice and of vials and bottles in refrigerated cases that resembled the frozen food aisle of a grocery store.

“I'd like to get started right away. Can you tell me your story from when you started taking x-nib? I'll listen, write questions and thoughts down while you talk, and then ask you questions after. I'll try not to interrupt.”

I started, “My mom took it first and felt great. I was thirteen. I had painful periods and looked like I do today. I met with Dr. Mark at the end of April, the month I turned fourteen. I started taking the immunity medicine the first day we met and took it every day since I was fourteen until this past March when I left it behind on set. I started taking the x-nib on May 1
st
, four years ago. I was on a cycle of 2 weeks on, 1 week off, for six months. I stopped having a period that summer before the end of the first six month mark, so maybe four months into it. He said he expected that I'd lose my menstrual cycle but that my period would return, as well as my cramping, when I got off of x-nib. I just figured I'd get off of it when I wanted to have kids. I did notice that he reduced the dosage amount every time we met for both medicines. I would have expected another dosage reduction for this six month cycle that should have started today. When I met him after I turned fifteen, I complained that I felt nauseous often, fatigue, and felt like I couldn't think. He told me to call him as soon as I felt severe headaches or problems with my vision. That happened right before I turned sixteen. It was like I had tunnel vision. My joints also hurt. My headaches were awful. I asked him if I could just get off the medicine since the headaches were daily and so much worse than two days of cramping a month, but he said that I couldn't just stop the medicine, that he would continue to reduce the dosages.”

I added, “Oh, I forgot. I did take two Excedrins this morning, out of habit. I hope that doesn't mess up your tests.”

“Do you have chronic headaches?”

“Yeah, just two months ago I had to take six pain killers per day. Now I take two.”

“How about your menstrual cycle? Has it returned?”

“No. That hasn't changed.”

“What about your sexual drive? Irregular or nonexistent menses and loss of sexual drive is a symptom of hypopituitarism.”

“Yeah, actually I have only now felt aroused within the last month. I read about the symptoms and I had all of them,” I said, completely embarrassed. “I had the blurry vision and the morning nausea, too.”

“I'm so sorry you have to go through this. It must be quite a shock. Should I talk with your dad about this now? I'm pretty sure I know what's going on with you.”

“No, I want to know.”

“You're describing symptoms of a non-functioning pituitary tumor. There is a loss of hormonal function with increasing damage: the first to go is the growth hormone, next is your LH and FSH which control your sexual and reproductive function, then TSH which releases your thyroid hormone and last your ACTH which controls adrenal function.” He wrote more things down while I tried to understand what he just said.

Dr. Jack viewed me carefully, gauging my reaction to the news. I could tell, again, that his brain quickly switched between two tracks.  “So your body is changing. The headaches are caused by the ‘mass' effect from the pituitary tumor. Mark surely knew this. That must be why he reduced the dosage each cycle. I'm surprised he didn't use hormone therapy. He must have had his reasons. Somehow x-nib caused pituitary failure and immediately created a non-functioning tumor. Most of these tumors are benign. My son also had the tumor but we removed it successfully, with very minimal damage to the gland.”

He wrote notes to himself, concentrating on figuring out what Mark knew at the same time that he continued talking, “I would like to run most of my tests on your blood. I'd like to do a hormonal evaluation. I'd also like to do an MRI with and without contrast. I need to x-ray your wrist; measure your bone growth. Would that be okay with you? I also need to test you for secondary malignancies. Some of the tests hurt. Would that be alright?”

I swallowed, suppressing my fear. My eyes watered and I couldn't get the words out. I held Dad's hand and nodded.

Dad got up and lifted me onto his lap as he sat back down. “I love you, my filly.” He took a deep breath. “Let's get started,” he whispered to Dr. Jack.

 

We were there for most of the day. I was drained—literally. Dad ran into the grocery store on the way home while I waited in the car. He bought some feminine products for me just in case I menstruated, groceries for himself for the week and some yummies for us to share after we ate dinner. After we returned to the house we ate our separate meals and shared dessert. Then I went straight to bed.

Despite my tragic weekend, I felt rested. I checked my phone. It was 4 am Monday morning. I would work out at 5:30 am that day as I did every weekday. I missed Manuel terribly. I was comforted that Dad was in the guest suite but wished Manuel was there in my bed. I wanted him to be my husband so he could be in my bed when Dad slept downstairs.

Manuel wouldn't be sleeping with me because, well, Dad certainly wouldn't allow it and Manuel liked to study and then rest, study again, rest, and so on. He said it helped him learn better if he let his mind absorb the material in bursts. He had finals for the next three days but had nothing on Thursday or Friday. Everyone in AP classes had already taken their exams. My last two finals were on Thursday, back-to-back.