Read Online Side Effects by Michael Palmer - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Palmer
Tags: Fiction, thriller, Suspense, Medical, Mystery, Mystery & Detective - General, Fiction - Espionage
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to. Issues surrounding me or having children or both."
"And you've got it all together, right?" Kate struggled to stop the tears that seemed to be welling from deep within her chest.
"I know what I want."
"Well, I don't. Okay? And I'm the one who's going to have to pass up a chairmanship and go through a pregnancy and change my life so that I don't make the same horrible mistakes with our child that my mother made with us. I ... Jared, I'm frightened." It was, she realized, the first time she had truly recognized it.
"Hi, Frightened. I'm Perplexed. How do you do?"
"You know, you could use a little better sense of timing yourself."
"Okay, folks, here we go. It's time once again to play let's-jump-all-over-everything-Jared-says. Wel}, please, before you get rolling, count me out. I'm going to bed."
"I'll be in in a while."
"Don't wake me."
The section from Beverly Vitale's left ovary was unlike any pathology Kate had ever encountered. The stroma--cells providing support and, according to theory, critical feminizing hormones--were perfectly Page 23
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
normal in appearance.
But the follicles--the pockets of nutrient cells surrounding the ova--were selectively and completely destroyed, replaced by the spindle-shaped, deep pink cells of sclerosis--scarring. Assuming the pattern held true throughout both ovaries--and there was no reason to assume otherwise--Beverly Vitale's reproductive potential was as close to zero as estimate would allow.
For nearly an hour, Kate sat there, scanning section after section, taking notes on a yellow legal pad. Why couldn't Jared understand what it all really meant to her?
Why couldn't he see what a godsend medicine had been to a life marked by aimlessness and a self-doubt bordering on self-loathing.
"My God, woman, if I didn't know better, I'd swear you were a model the Zeiss Company had hired to plug their latest line of microscopes."
"Aha," Kate said melodramatically, her eyes still fixed on the microscope, "a closet male chauvinist pig. I expected as much all along, Dr. Willoughby." She swung around and, as always, felt a warm jet of affection at the sight of her department head. In his early sixties, Stan Willoughby was egg bald save for a pure white monk's fringe. The pencil-thin moustache partially obscured by his bulbous nose was a similar shade. His eyes sparkled from beneath brows resembling end-stage dandelions. In all, Jared's likening him to the wise imp Yoda was, though inappropriate, not inaccurate.
Willoughby packed his pipe and straddled the stool across the table from Kate. "The young lady on Ashburton Five?" he asked. Kate nodded. "This a good time for me to take a look-see?" Although Willoughby's primary area of interest was histochemistry, thirty-five years of experience had made him an expert in almost every phase of pathology. Every phase, that is, except how to administer a department.
Willoughby was simply too passive, too nice for the dog maim-dog world of hospital politics, especially the free-for all for an adequate portion of a limited pool of funds.
"Stan, I swear I've never seen, or even heard of, anything like this." The chief peered into the student eyepieces on the teaching microscope--a setup enabling two people to view the same specimen at the same time. "All right if I focus?" Kate nodded. Ritualistically, he went from low power magnification to intermediate, to high, and finally to thousand-fold oil-immersion, punctuating each maneuver with a "hmm" or an "uh huh." Through the other set of oculars, Kate followed.
They looked so innocent, those cells, so deceptively innocent, detached from their source and set out for viewing.
They were in one sense a work of art, a delicate, geometrically perfect montage that was the antithesis of the huge, cluttered metal sculptures Kate had built and displayed during her troubled Mount Holyoke years. The irony in that thought was
"And you've got it all together, right?" Kate struggled to stop the tears that seemed to be welling from deep within her chest.
"I know what I want."
"Well, I don't. Okay? And I'm the one who's going to have to pass up a chairmanship and go through a pregnancy and change my life so that I don't make the same horrible mistakes with our child that my mother made with us. I ... Jared, I'm frightened." It was, she realized, the first time she had truly recognized it.
"Hi, Frightened. I'm Perplexed. How do you do?"
"You know, you could use a little better sense of timing yourself."
"Okay, folks, here we go. It's time once again to play let's-jump-all-over-everything-Jared-says. Wel}, please, before you get rolling, count me out. I'm going to bed."
"I'll be in in a while."
"Don't wake me."
The section from Beverly Vitale's left ovary was unlike any pathology Kate had ever encountered. The stroma--cells providing support and, according to theory, critical feminizing hormones--were perfectly Page 23
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
normal in appearance.
But the follicles--the pockets of nutrient cells surrounding the ova--were selectively and completely destroyed, replaced by the spindle-shaped, deep pink cells of sclerosis--scarring. Assuming the pattern held true throughout both ovaries--and there was no reason to assume otherwise--Beverly Vitale's reproductive potential was as close to zero as estimate would allow.
For nearly an hour, Kate sat there, scanning section after section, taking notes on a yellow legal pad. Why couldn't Jared understand what it all really meant to her?
Why couldn't he see what a godsend medicine had been to a life marked by aimlessness and a self-doubt bordering on self-loathing.
"My God, woman, if I didn't know better, I'd swear you were a model the Zeiss Company had hired to plug their latest line of microscopes."
"Aha," Kate said melodramatically, her eyes still fixed on the microscope, "a closet male chauvinist pig. I expected as much all along, Dr. Willoughby." She swung around and, as always, felt a warm jet of affection at the sight of her department head. In his early sixties, Stan Willoughby was egg bald save for a pure white monk's fringe. The pencil-thin moustache partially obscured by his bulbous nose was a similar shade. His eyes sparkled from beneath brows resembling end-stage dandelions. In all, Jared's likening him to the wise imp Yoda was, though inappropriate, not inaccurate.
Willoughby packed his pipe and straddled the stool across the table from Kate. "The young lady on Ashburton Five?" he asked. Kate nodded. "This a good time for me to take a look-see?" Although Willoughby's primary area of interest was histochemistry, thirty-five years of experience had made him an expert in almost every phase of pathology. Every phase, that is, except how to administer a department.
Willoughby was simply too passive, too nice for the dog maim-dog world of hospital politics, especially the free-for all for an adequate portion of a limited pool of funds.
"Stan, I swear I've never seen, or even heard of, anything like this." The chief peered into the student eyepieces on the teaching microscope--a setup enabling two people to view the same specimen at the same time. "All right if I focus?" Kate nodded. Ritualistically, he went from low power magnification to intermediate, to high, and finally to thousand-fold oil-immersion, punctuating each maneuver with a "hmm" or an "uh huh." Through the other set of oculars, Kate followed.
They looked so innocent, those cells, so deceptively innocent, detached from their source and set out for viewing.
They were in one sense a work of art, a delicate, geometrically perfect montage that was the antithesis of the huge, cluttered metal sculptures Kate had built and displayed during her troubled Mount Holyoke years. The irony in that thought was
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