“Maybe even a couple of drinks.” Smooth, smiling, she moved in for the kill. “Isn’t it the case that your earlier allegation was simply an attempt to divert attention from your own transgressions?”
My father flushed, took a breath. “The hospital will no doubt hold some kind of internal inquiry. Until then, it would be improper to comment further,” he said, struggling to regroup and only managing to sound pompous instead. “Not to mention unprofessional and unfair to the patient’s family.”
She didn’t quite crow at this obvious retreat, but she allowed herself the luxury of another feline smile. “Oh, really, Mr. Foxcroft,” she said. “I think it’s a little late to worry about things like that, isn’t it?”
He stiffened. “At this stage I have nothing further to add to my statement,” he said. And then, just when I’d begun to think that the whole thing was some kind of gigantic mistake, he took my breath away by adding, “I—I’ve admitted that I have a problem with alcohol. I have agreed to withdraw from all surgical procedures and take an unpaid leave of absence until that problem is resolved.”
Finally—
“Mr. Foxcroft, numerous patients must have—perhaps misguidedly—placed their trust in you as a highly respected member of the medical profession,” she persisted, thrusting the microphone into his face. “Have you
“Charlie, what the—” Nick began, unconsciously echoing my earlier thought, as his brain finally caught up with what was happening.
“Ssh!” I braced my arms on the front of the stationary treadmill, suddenly far more badly winded than a mere eight-mile jog would ever justify.
My father paused and, possibly for the first time in my life, I saw uncertainty in him. Perhaps even the faintest suggestion of panic.
He glanced away from the woman’s face and looked directly into the camera, as though he could see me staring back at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply. Then he turned, ignoring the clamor the apparent admission caused, ducked into a waiting car, and was gone.
The reporter faced the camera, power suit, power makeup, scarlet nails clutched round her microphone as she delivered her gleeful wrap-up. Her words scalded me but afterwards I couldn’t recall a single one of them.
It had finally dawned on me that the reporter was a regular on one of the local news channels. That the car my father had climbed into was a black Lincoln Town Car with no stretch, and the building he’d been standing outside was one of the big hotels less than a dozen blocks from where I stood.
He was right here. In New York. In trouble.
And I hadn’t known a thing about it.
Nick still had hold of the remote control. He was big enough that it looked like a toy in his hands. As the reporter handed back to the studio, he thumbed the volume down again and eyed me with quizzical concern.
“So, that guy—someone you know?”
For a moment I didn’t—couldn’t—answer. My head was buzzing like I’d taken a blow. My leg ached fiercely, more of a burn. “I thought I knew him,” I murmured at last, slowly. “But now I’m not so sure.”
Nick frowned. “You okay to go on?” he said. “Or you wanna take five?”
That got my attention. I flicked him a fast glance. “Look, Nick, I need to leave. Now.”
“You can’t,” he said. He picked up his clipboard, lifted a page, frowning harder. “You got maybe another twenty minutes, tops, then we’re all done. Way you’re going, you’re gonna ace this. C’mon Charlie, what’s so important that it can’t wait twenty minutes?”
“That,” I said, jerking my head towards the TV set. I scooped up my towel from the bench and started for the changing rooms, only to feel Nick’s hand rough on my shoulder.
“Hey! You don’t walk out on me, lady.” His voice rose, harsh. “Mr. Armstrong pays me for results and I got a lotta time invested in you.”
The only excuse I have for what happened next is that my mind was half in shock from the news report. It slackened the usual restraints that govern my behavior and my temper ignited to a white hot burn. I grabbed his imprisoning hand and stepped out from underneath it, jerking the heel of his palm upwards into a vicious lock.
Nick was around six foot one and more than two hundred pounds. He had six inches in height and maybe eighty pounds on me. Now, he tried to use that differential in resistance but his bulk was gym cultivated. Useful as a deterrent maybe, but clearly he had never been a fighter.
I tightened the lock and yanked him round like an Olympic hammer thrower going for gold. He sprawled into one of the racks of dumbbells, sending half of them rebounding to the wooden floor, and thudded down heavily onto his knees. The noise was thunderous. Somebody nearby—a man—squealed.
I still had the lock on his wrist. Nick was grunting now, his substantial muscles trembling. In the right hands, pain compliance can be a wonderful thing. I leaned in close enough to smell the sweat.
“I’m in a hurry, so I’m willing to forget what just happened here,” I said, my voice entirely reasonable. “But if you ever lay a hand on me again,
Driving a car in Manhattan is madness, but reliably parking one there is worse. So, one of my first actions when we’d arrived was to buy another motorcycle. I’d left my Honda Fire-Blade in storage when I’d left the UK and missed it every day.
As soon as I’d felt physically capable of riding it, I’d succumbed and, in deference to my new adopted homeland, had bought a midnight black Buell XB12R Firebolt. It didn’t have the outright speed of the’Blade, but it was skinny and nimble enough to slice through the midtown crush. Most of the time, at any rate.
Usually, I can slip relatively unimpeded through the vast sea of yellow cabs that seem to outnumber the private cars on Manhattan Island by at least two to one. But today, because I was under pressure, because I was in a hurry, nobody wanted to give me mirror-width gaps. I’d cracked the left-hand mirror less than a month after I’d bought the bike, and I didn’t want to add to the bad luck.
So I sat, feeling the nagging pulse in my left leg, hemmed in by hot steel boxes vibrating gently as they scattered heat and fumes into the surrounding air, listening to the symphony of the city. Going nowhere. Ahead, Lexington Avenue ran arrow-straight south almost to vanishing point, like a taunt.
Around me, the monumental buildings of New York hummed and breathed. It was early September, balmy after the brutal summer just past, the temperature shedding its way gently into the time of year I still thought of as autumn rather than fall.
And all the while, I was running through scenarios of how on earth a man as coldly disciplined as my father could possibly have caused a patient to die under his hands through sheer bloody carelessness.
I cast back through the empty rooms that held my childhood memories, but nothing clicked into place. There had been no unexplained clinking from the wastepaper basket in his study, no long periods he’d spent in the garden nursing a furtive hip flask, no telltale smear of peppermint across his breath. He liked the occasional single malt and drank it like a connoisseur, with due reverence and ceremony. No more than that.
But every time I thought I’d come up with some plausible excuse, his own words damned him all over again.
A long time ago, when I’d been up to my ears in scandal not entirely of my own making, I’d officially shortened my name from Foxcroft to Fox. At the time I’d explained my decision away to my half-offended, half- relieved parents by telling them I didn’t want to drag their name through the mire along with my own.
I’d never considered for a moment that one day it might also work in reverse.
