“It’s dumb really. And I don’t even know if it’s illegal. Everybody just makes it seem like it is.”
“What is?” What was he talking about? He was throwing her off. What did this have to do with them?
“I have a prescription I wrote for a drug that now they tell me is only available at hospital pharmacies and that I need local authorization for. I don’t know any doctors here’ and . . .”
“What drug?” Concern was written all over her face. “Are you ill?”
“No.” Osborn smiled.
“What then?”
“I . . . I told you it was dumb,” he started uncertainly, as if he were embarrassed. “I’m presenting a paper when I get back. As
“Say what you mean, will you?” Vera grinned and relaxed. Everything they had done together had been rich and romantic and deeply personal, even to helping each other through the private embarrassments of bodily functions when they’d both had the twenty-four-hour flu in London. Aside from their first exploratory conversations in Geneva, little, if anything, had been said about their professional lives and now he was asking an everyday question involving just that.
“I’m presenting a paper to a group of anesthesiologists the day after I get back to L.A. Originally I was to speak on the third day, but they changed it and now I’m first. The paper has to do with presurgical anesthetic preparation involving succinylcholine dosage and effectiveness under emergency field conditions. Most of my experimentation has been done in the lab. I will have no time when I get back, but I still have two days here. And it seems that if I’m going to get any succinylcholine in Paris, I’m going to need an okay from a French doctor before anyone will I give it to me. And as I said, I don’t know any other doctors.”
“You’re going to self-medicate?” Vera was astonished. She’d heard of other doctors doing that from time to time and had almost tried it herself as a medical student, but she’d chickened out at the last minute and copied a published Study instead.
I’ve been doing various experiments since I was in med school.” A broad grin crossed Osborn’s face. “That’s why I’m a little strange.” Abruptly he stuck out his tongue, bulged his eyes and twisted up an ear under his thumb.
Vera laughed. This was a side of him she hadn’t seen, a silliness she hadn’t known existed.
As quickly, he let go of his ear and the goofiness faded. “Vera, I need the succinylcholine and I don’t know how to get it. Can you help me?”
He was very serious. This was something that had to do with his life and who he was. Suddenly Vera realized I how very little she knew about him and, at the same time, how much more she wanted to know. What he believed, and believed in. What he liked, and disliked. What he loved, feared, envied. What secrets he had he’d never shared with her or anyone else. What it was that had cost two marriages.
Had it been Paul, or were the women at fault? Or was he just bad at choosing them? Or—was there something else, something inside him that festered a relationship all the way to ruin? From the beginning she’d sensed he was troubled, but by what she didn’t know. It wasn’t something she could point to and understand. It was deeper and for the most part he kept it hidden. But it was there just the same. And now, more than at any time since she’d known him, as he stood there under her umbrella in the rain asking her to help him, she saw him absorbed by it. All at once she felt herself overwhelmed by a wanting to know and comfort and understand. Much more a feeling than a conscious thought, it was also dangerous, and she knew it, because it was pulling her somewhere where she had not been asked, and to a place, she was certain, no one had ever been invited.
“Vera?” Suddenly she realized they were still on the street corner and that he was talking to her. “I asked if you could help.”
Looking at him, she smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Let me try.”
19
OSBORN STOOD near the front counter of the hospital pharmacy trying to read get well cards in French while Vera took his prescription and walked to the pharmacist in the back. Once he glanced up and saw the pharmacist talking and gesturing with both hands while Vera stood with a hand on a hip waiting for him to finish. Osborn turned away. Maybe he’d made a mistake involving her. If he were ever caught and the truth came out, she could be charged as an accessory. He should tell her to forget it, find some other way to deal with Henri Kanarack. Fumbling, he replaced the card he was looking at in the rack and was turning to go back to her when he saw her coming toward him.
“Easier than buying condoms—less awkward, too.” She winked and walked past him.
Two minutes later they were outside and walking down the boulevard St.-Jacques, the succinylcholine and a packet of hypodermic syringes in Osborn’s sport coat pocket.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, putting up the umbrella and holding it so they could both walk under it. Then the rain started to come down more heavily and Osborn suggested they look for a taxi.
“Would it be all right if we just walked?” Vera said.
“If you don’t mind, I don’t.”
Taking her arm, they crossed the street against the light. When they reached the far curb, Osborn purposefully let go. Vera grinned broadly, and then for the next fifteen minutes they simply walked and said nothing.
Osborn’s thoughts turned inward. In a way, he was filled with relief. Getting the succinylcholine had been easier than he’d imagined. What he didn’t like was that he’d lied to Vera and used her and it bothered him a great deal more than he thought it would. Of anyone he’d even known, Vera was the last person he’d deliberately use of not tell the absolute truth to. But the fact was, as he reminded himself, he’d had little choice.
Today was not every day, nor was what he doing the stuff of everyday life. Old and dark things were at work Tragic things, that only he and Kanarack knew. And that only he and Kanarack could settle. It worried him again to think that if things went wrong, Vera might be accuse of being an accomplice. In all likelihood she wouldn’t go to jail, but her career and everything she’d worked for could be ruined. He should have thought of that earlier before he’d even talked to her about it. He should have but he hadn’t and now it was done. What he had to think about was the rest. To make sure that nothing went wrong, to make sure that both he and Vera were protected.
Suddenly she took his hand and pulled him around to face her. When she did, he realized they were no longer on boulevard St.-Jacques but crossing the Jardin des Plantes, the formal gardens of the National Museum of Natural History, and were almost to the Seine.
“What is it?” he asked, puzzled.
Vera watched his eyes find their way to hers and she knew she’d snatched him out of a dream.
“I want you to come to my apartment,” she said.
“You what?” He was clearly bewildered. Pedestrians scurried past left and right and gardeners, despite the rain were preparing their work for the day.
“I said, I want you to come to my apartment.”
“Why?”
“I want to give you a bath.”
“A bath?”
“Yes.”
A great boyish grin crept over him.
“First you didn’t want to be seen with me and now you want to take me to your apartment?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Osborn could see her blush. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes. I have it in my mind that I want to give you a bath, and in the thing they call a tub in your hotel you could barely wash a small dog.”
“What about ‘Frenchy’?”
