fifteen.
'Well, Lara,' Lynette said after the Secretary had poured a cup of decaf from a carafe, 'my staff is lighter by one.'
'You did the right thing. Janine Brady has been in this game for a long time. She knows better than to assure you a vote will be unanimous without checking and rechecking.'
'So, where do we stand now?'
'Well, it appears Ellen Kroft does have serious misgivings about Omnivax.'
'Damn.'
'She's the consumer representative on the panel, so there's no way any of the pharmaceutical grant providers can put any pressure on her.'
'Was one of my people consulted before she was appointed?'
'I hate to say it, but it was Janine Brady. Wait, though, I was consulted, too, Lynette. Kroft seemed absolutely harmless — a token offered up by the people at PAVE. If she was more militant, we never would have approved her appointment. No one expected anything like this.'
'So?'
'Our man Poulos on the committee tells me he's dealing with the problem. He's optimistic something can be worked out.'
'Is it worth my meeting with her?'
'You can try, but I've learned that she contributed fifty dollars to Harrison's campaign last election and upped it to seventy-five this time.'
'Oh, that's just terrific. We're three points down in the latest polls. Jim is counting heavily on Omnivax to eliminate that. And here is a Harrison supporter threatening to screw up the whole thing.'
'If Kroft remains on this path, we're getting prepared to make the whole thing look political, being as she is a known Harrison backer.'
'That isn't going to give us back those three points.'
'I know.'
'What about our plans for the first inoculation?'
'I think we're there, Lynette. We have two women here in D.C. due to deliver at the right time, so that their babies will be four days old when we're ready. Both attend the neighborhood health center in Anacostia, both are anxious to have their kids be the first to receive Omnivax.'
'Uneventful pregnancies?'
'No problems.'
'Do we know the sex of the babies?'
Bolton grinned. 'Mrs. First Lady, you said you wanted a girl; whichever mama we choose, we got you a girl.'
'It'll be great theater, Lara. There's three points in this, mark my words there are. Maybe more.'
'Maybe more,' the Secretary echoed.
CHAPTER 12
Nikki's drive from Boston to Belinda, West Virginia, was a somber, introspective one, filled with music — country-western, jazz, classical, and all manner of bluegrass. In addition to Kathy Wilson's two albums, there were a number where she played as a studio musician, backing up star performers, several of whom were singing songs she had written. Kathy's musicianship was transcendent on several instruments, but especially on mandolin, which she played as well as anyone Nikki had ever heard.
A chief selling point for Nikki's Saturn had been its sound system, which was surprisingly potent in all ranges. She drove most of the trip with the volume cranked up and the moon roof open. The backseat and trunk were packed with Kathy's books, clothes, stereo, personal belongings, and instruments, including her most prized possession, a Gibson F-5 mandolin, built, she was proud to tell anyone who would listen, whether or not they knew mandolins, by Lloyd Loar.
The day, like the one before, was sparkling and not too warm. Nikki had spent the night in a Best Western just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and had left the motel early enough that morning to make Belinda with an hour or so to spare before the memorial service. Between the music and her reflections on the life and death of Kathy Wilson, hundreds of miles had passed virtually unnoticed.
The autopsy Joe Keller had performed on Kathy revealed disappointingly little. Her brain, at least on gross examination, appeared normal. No tumors, no old strokes, no vascular malformations or occlusions, no scars — in short, no explanation for the pervasive psychological transformation that had ultimately taken her life. The microscopic sections of her brain would be ready to be read as soon as today or tomorrow, but Nikki wasn't expecting anything from that or, in fact, from the detailed toxicology examination of her blood.
Tongue-in-cheek medical wisdom had it that internists knew everything but did nothing; surgeons knew nothing but did everything; and pathologists knew everything, but a day too late. In Kathy's case, the old saw couldn't have been further from fact. What they would be left with, even after a most exhausting postmortem examination, were questions — questions with precious few answers.
Even the striking neurofibromas had revealed little. Joe's initial impression of the lumps that covered Kathy's face and scalp was that they were fairly typical examples of the condition — cause unknown, except for the likelihood they were due to some sort of mutation or other genetic factor. He had assured Nikki that he wasn't giving up and would be calling some other pathologists for advice, as well as trying some special staining techniques. But for the moment at least, the questions that remained unanswered were like unfulfilled promises.
Nikki rolled the window down halfway and breathed in the fragrant Appalachian air. She had traveled some in the U.S. — a rafting trip down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon, mountain-bike tours of Bryce, Zion, and Yosemite National Parks, plus a week here and there in places like New Orleans, San Francisco, and Chicago. But this was her first time in West Virginia. Even viewed from the highway, it was a stunningly wild and beautiful place. The forests were dense and lush, and largely unspoiled. Countless streams and broader rivers wound under the roadway, roiling off through prolonged stretches of whitewater or meandering through the intensely deep green canopy, toward distant, dusky mountains. Waterfalls that would have been a major attraction in many places were simply… there. Driving through this country, it was easy for her to understand the passion for the natural earth in much of Kathy's music.
The sign on Route 29 read BELINDA, 20 MILES. As planned, she would be there an hour or so before the service. She could have flown and rented a car as the band had done. But even though she would have to turn around and drive right back to Boston in order to avoid unnecessarily taking vacation time and, worse, being indebted to Brad Cummings for coverage, she wanted the extended time alone to listen to the music and reflect on the choices she had made in her own life.
Her decision to attend medical school, while it seemed to be proving the right one for her, was based on nothing more profound than the desire to emulate her father. Likewise, the decision to become a surgeon. If there was a single turning point in her life and her sense of herself, it was leaving surgery for pathology. At last she was no longer choosing paths merely because others were urging her to travel that way. Breaking her engagement to Joe DiMare — a man everyone, including her parents and many friends, deemed the perfect catch and perfect for her — underscored her evolution. It happened a year after completing her pathology residency. A year or so after that, she was dropping out of chamber-music groups and begging Kathy Wilson to teach her bluegrass.
At its most placid, her existence, like almost everyone else's, was unpredictable and frangible. Illness, accident, errors in judgment, errors in choices — they were all out there like boulders in a rapidly flowing river, along with the challenges of love, work, and relationships. The most she could do, she was finally learning, was to keep searching her own soul for who she was and what she wanted, to be fearless in making decisions, and to try to make every day matter.
The prim, white Baptist church was filling up when Nikki arrived. She was wearing a black linen pants suit with a sleeveless, silver silk blouse. But the day was already nearing eighty, and the crowd was dressed informally
