Laurie had to suppress a smile. Her mother's ploy was transparent. Whenever she didn't want to talk about herself, she went on the offensive. Laurie used both hands to sweep her highlighted auburn hair back away from her face. It was shoulder-length, and although she usually wore it up with a clip or a comb, she'd taken it down to brush it out after her morning's stint in the "moon suit" and hadn't put it back up. Unfortunately, her hair had been a frequent target for her mother ever since Laurie's teenage years.
After the conversation about her hair and a short pause in which Laurie tried to ask a question about her mother's surgery, Dorothy switched to another convenient target by saying that Laurie's outfit was much too feminine for working in a morgue. With some difficulty, Laurie restrained herself in response to this new criticism. She made it a point to wear such clothing. It was part of her identity, and she saw no conflict with her place of employment. Laurie also knew that part of her mother's response was derived from her distaste for Laurie's career choice. Although both her parents had mellowed to a degree and had even grudgingly come to recognize the merits of forensics subsequent to Laurie's work, they had been disappointed from the moment she had announced her decision to become a medical examiner. At one point, Dorothy had actually told Laurie that she had no idea what to say when her friends asked what kind of a doctor Laurie was.
"And how is Jack?" Dorothy inquired.
"He's just fine," Laurie said, not wishing to open that can of worms.
Dorothy then went on to describe some upcoming social events that she hoped Laurie and Jack would attend.
Laurie listened with half an ear while glancing over at her father, who'd finished with The Wall Street Journal. He had a large stack of newspapers and magazines. He stood up and stretched. Although he was in his eighties, he was still a commanding figure, well over six feet tall with an acquired aristocratic air. His silver hair knew its place. As usual, he had on a carefully pressed, conservatively cut, glen plaid suit with matching tie and pocket square. He walked over to the opposite side of the bed from Laurie and waited for Dorothy to pause.
"Laurie, would you mind if we stepped out in the hall for a moment?"
"Not at all," Laurie said. She stood and gave her mother's hand a squeeze through the bed's guardrail. "I'll be right back."
"Now don't you go worrying her about me," Dorothy scolded her husband.
Sheldon didn't respond but rather pointed with an open palm toward the door.
Outside in the hall, Laurie had to step out of the way of a passing gurney carrying a postoperative patient back to her room. Her father came up behind her. Since he was almost a foot taller, she had to look up into his face. His skin was tan from a January trip to the Caribbean and surprisingly devoid of wrinkles, considering his age. Laurie didn't harbor any ill feelings toward the man, since she had long ago overcome her anger and frustration about his emotional distance. Her eventual maturation had made her realize that it was his problem, not hers. At the same time, there was no sense of love. It was as if he were someone else's father.
"Thank you for coming over so quickly," Sheldon said.
"There's no need to thank me. There's no question I'd come over immediately."
"I was afraid you might be more upset with the news coming out of the blue. I want to assure you that it was your mother's insistence that you not be informed of her condition."
"I gathered that from what you said on the phone," Laurie said. She was tempted to say how ridiculous it was to keep such information from her, but she didn't. There wasn't any point. Her mother and father were not going to change.
"She didn't even want me to call you this afternoon, wishing to wait until she got home either tomorrow or the next day, but I had to insist. I had respected her wishes up until today, but I didn't feel comfortable putting it off any longer."
"Putting off what? What are you talking about?" Laurie couldn't help but notice her father looking up and down the hall as if concerned that they might be overheard.
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your mother has a marker for a specific mutation of the BRCA1 gene."
Laurie felt her face flush with heat. Although she knew people were supposed to blanch with disturbing news, she always did the opposite. As a physician, Laurie was aware of the BRCA1 gene, which in its mutated form was associated with breast cancer. More disturbing, she knew that such mutations were inherited in a dominant fashion with high penetrance, meaning there was probably a fifty percent chance that she carried the same genotype!
"It is important for you to have this information, for obvious reasons," Sheldon continued. "If I had thought the three-week delay would have had any significance for you, I would have told you immediately. Now that you know, I must say that my professional opinion is that you should be tested. The presence of such a mutation raises the probability of developing breast cancer sometime prior to your eightieth year." Sheldon paused and again glanced up and down the corridor. He seemed to be genuinely uncomfortable about revealing a family secret in public.
Laurie touched her cheek with the back of her hand. As she feared, her skin was hot to the touch. With her father showing no emotion as usual, she was embarrassed that she was being so demonstrative.
"Of course, it is up to you," Sheldon recommenced. "But I should remind you that if you are found to be positive, there are things you can do to lower probabilities of developing a tumor as much as ninety percent, such as prophylactic bilateral mastectomies. Thankfully, the implications of a BRCA1 mutation are not the same as with Huntington's chorea gene or some other untreatable illness."
Despite her obvious embarrassment, Laurie stared back into the dark eyes of her father. She even found herself imperceptively shaking her head. Even if their relationship was strained, particularly after her brother's death, even if he didn't act like her father, she couldn't believe he could be saying what he was saying without more human warmth. In the past, she'd attributed his general detachment to a need for a defense mechanism against the stress of literally holding his patients' beating hearts, and hence their lives, in his hands on a daily basis. Having assisted at surgery as a first-year resident, she knew something of what such stress was like. She also was aware that his patients had ostensibly appreciated his detachment, seemingly interpreting it as supreme confidence rather than a narcissistic personality flaw. But Laurie hated it.
"Thank you for this most helpful sidewalk consult," Laurie managed, unable to keep the sarcasm from her voice. She forced herself to smile before breaking off from her father and returning back to claim her seat at her mother's bedside.
"Has he upset you, dear?" Dorothy questioned after taking one look at Laurie. "Your face is as red as a beet."
Laurie didn't answer for a moment. She had her mouth clamped shut to stop her lower jaw from quivering. Her emotions were threatening to surface, a weakness she had always despised, especially in the presence of her emotionless father.
"Sheldon!" Dorothy called out as he reclaimed his chair by the window. "What did you say to Laurie? I told you not to upset her about me."
"I wasn't talking to her about you," Sheldon said as he picked up The New York Times. "I was talking about her."
Jack put down his pen and turned to look at Chet McGovern's back hunched over his desk. Chet was a medical examiner colleague and Jack's officemate. Although he was five years Jack's junior, they had started at the OCME at almost the same time and got along famously. Although Jack appreciated sharing space with Chet for the companionship, he still thought it was ridiculous that the city didn't provide them with private offices. The problem was a continuous budgetary constraint that precluded updating the facility; the OCME was an easy target for politicians in a city strapped for funds. The building had been adequate when it had opened almost a half a century ago but was now something of a dinosaur, with space at a premium. Since Jack was aware that dinosaurs had lived on Earth for some hundred and sixty million years, he hoped the building in its present configuration wasn't expected to last quite that long.