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four

DESPITE LAURIE'S CONCERNS to the contrary, the phone conversation with Dr. McGillin turned out be surprisingly civil. He had accepted that the autopsy had failed to show any pathology with unexpected equanimity. It was as if he had taken the information as a compliment about his adored son, corroborating the idea that the boy was indeed perfect, inside and out.

Having expected to be angrily chastised for not delivering on her promise, or at the very least anticipating having to weather passive-aggressive disappointment, Laurie felt even more beholden to the man when he maintained his composure. He had even gone to the extent of thanking her for her efforts on his son's behalf and for spending time with them in their hour of need. If she had been willing before to bend the rules by providing the man with the cause of his son's demise, she'd now become determined to get him that information.

After hanging up the phone with Sean Sr., Laurie spent some time pondering the case while staring blankly ahead at her cork-board with its various notes, reminders, and business cards. She tried to think of a way to speed up the process, but her hands were tied. She had to wait for Maureen and Peter, and hope that they would respond to her appeal.

Time melted away effortlessly. Riva came in and said hello as she dumped folders on her desk and took her seat. Laurie returned the greeting by reflex without turning around. Her mind by then had switched to Jack and his irritatingly insouciant joviality, and what that meant about their relationship. Although she hated to admit it, it was becoming progressively apparent that he was happy she'd decided to leave.

In a circular fashion, thoughts of Jack brought her back to Sean Jr.'s case as she recalled Jack's comments about forensics occasionally revealing that the causation and manner of death were the opposite of what was assumed. Laurie again considered the possibility that Sean's death could have been a homicide. She couldn't help but remember several infamous episodes of serial homicides that had occurred in healthcare institutions, particularly one rather recently that had continued undetected for an unconscionably long time. Such a scenario had to be considered, although she recognized that all the involved patients in those series were aged, chronically ill individuals and that there was an inkling of an imaginable, albeit sick motive. Not one of the victims had been a vigorous, healthy twenty-eight-year-old whose whole life was still ahead of him.

Laurie was certain that homicide was extremely implausible, and she wasn't going to worry about it, especially since Peter's toxicology screen would pick up an overdose of insulin or digoxin or another potentially lethal drug akin to those implicated in the previous institutional murders. After all, that was what the toxicology screen was all about. In her mind, Sean Jr.'s death had to be either natural, which was most probable, or accidental. Yet what was she going to do if the microscopic and the toxicological turned out to be negative? Such a concern seemed reasonable, considering the autopsy itself had been so surprisingly clean. From her experience, it was rare not to find some pathology, even in a twenty-eight-year-old, and even if the abnormalities were not associated with the demise.

To prepare for such an eventuality, Laurie needed as much information as possible. Although the usual course of action in such a case would be to wait for the microscopic and the toxicological to come back, she decided to be proactive to save time. Impulsively, she snatched the receiver and called down to the forensic investigator's office. Bart Arnold picked up on the second ring.

"I posted a Sean McGillin this morning," Laurie said. "He was an inpatient over at the Manhattan General. I'd like to get a copy of his hospital chart."

"I'm aware of the case. Did we not get what you need?"

"The forensic investigator's report is fine. To be honest, I'm on a fishing expedition. The post was negative, and I'm a little desperate. There's kind of a time constraint."

"I'll put the request in immediately."

Laurie replaced the receiver while racking her brain in hopes of coming up with something else that would be useful if everything turned out to be negative.

"What's wrong?" Riva asked. She had swung around in her desk chair after overhearing Laurie's conversation with Bart. "Knowing how tired you are, I thought I'd given you straightforward cases. I'm sorry."

Laurie assured her officemate that she needn't apologize. Laurie admitted that she was creating a problem when there really wasn't one, probably to keep from obsessing about her social life.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"You mean my social life?"

"I mean Jack and what you did this morning."

"Not particularly," Laurie responded. She waved a hand as if swatting a nonexistent fly. "There's not much to say that you and I haven't hashed over before ad nauseam. The reality is that I don't want to be stuck in a never-never-land relationship, which is what I've been settling for over the last couple of years. I want a family. It's that simple. I guess what's really irking me is that Jack is being such an ass by acting so blasted cheerful."

"I've noticed," Riva agreed. "I think it is an act."

"Who's to know," Laurie responded. She laughed at herself. "I'm pathetic! Anyway, let me tell you about the McGillin case." Quickly, Laurie related the whole story, including the details of the conversations she'd had with the parents and then subsequently with Jack.

"It's not going to be a homicide," Riva said emphatically.

"I know!" Laurie agreed. "What's bothering me at this point is not being able to live up to the promise I made to the parents. I was so sure I'd be able to tell them today what killed their boy, and now I have to sit on my hands and wait for Maureen and Peter. My compulsiveness is driving me batty."

"If it's any consolation, my opinion is that Jack was right about the microscopic being the key. I think you'll find the pathology in the heart, especially with a strong family history of elevated LDH and heart disease."

Laurie started to concur, but her phone rang. Twisting around, she answered it, expecting some quick tidbit of information on one of her cases, which is what the vast majority of her calls were about.

Instead, her eyebrows arched in surprise. Covering the mouthpiece, she looked back at Riva and whispered. "You're not going to believe it! It's my father!"

Riva's face reflected equal disbelief. She hastily motioned for Laurie to find out the occasion for the call. Phone contact was restricted to Laurie's mother, and that was rarely at work.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," Dr. Sheldon Montgomery said. He spoke in a resonant voice with a hint of an English accent, despite his never having lived in Great Britain.

"You're not disturbing me," Laurie answered. "I'm sitting here at my desk." She was intensely curious why her father was calling, but resisted the temptation to ask directly, fearful such a question would sound too unfriendly. Their relationship had never been anything special. As a self-absorbed, workaholic cardiac surgeon who'd demanded perfection from everyone, including himself, he'd been emotionally distant and generally unavailable. Laurie had tried vainly to break through to him, constantly pushing herself to excel at school and in other activities, which is what she thought he wanted. Unfortunately, it never worked. Then came her brother's untimely death, which Sheldon blamed on her. What little relationship they'd had deteriorated even further.

"I'm at the hospital," he said. His tone was matter-of-fact, as if he was telling her the weather. "I'm here with your mother."

"What is Mother doing at the hospital?" Laurie asked. For Sheldon to be at the hospital was not out of the ordinary. Although he was retired from private practice now that he was in his early eighties, he still frequently went to the hospital. Laurie had no idea what he did. Her mother, Dorothy, never went to the hospital despite being active in various hospital fund-raising activities. The last time Laurie remembered her mother being in the hospital was for her second facelift fifteen years earlier, and even then, Laurie had learned of the admission after the fact.

"She had surgery this morning," Sheldon said. "She is doing fine. In fact, she is rather chipper."

Laurie sat up a bit straighter. "Surgery? What happened? Was it an emergency?"

"No. It was a scheduled procedure. Unfortunately, your mother had a mastectomy for breast cancer."

"My word!" Laurie managed. "I had no idea. I just spoke with her on Saturday. She didn't mention anything about surgery or cancer."

"You know your mother, and how she likes to ignore unpleasant issues. She was particularly insistent on shielding you from unnecessary concern until this was behind her."

Laurie looked at Riva with disbelief. As close as their desks were in the small office, Riva could hear both sides. Riva rolled her dark eyes and shook her head.

"What stage was the cancer?" Laurie asked solicitously.

"A very early stage with no apparent nodal involvement," Sheldon said. "Things are going to be fine. The prognosis is excellent, although she'll have to undergo further treatment."

"And you say she is doing well?"

"Very well indeed. She's already taken some nourishment orally, and she's back to her old self by being genuinely demanding."

"Can I speak with her?"

"Unfortunately, that would be rather difficult. You see, I'm not in the room at the moment. I'm at the nurses' station. I was hoping you'd be able to come over here to see her this afternoon. There is an associated aspect to all this that I would like to discuss with you."

"I will be right over," Laurie said. She hung up the phone before turning back to Riva.

"Is it true you had no idea about any of this?" Riva asked.

"Not a clue. There wasn't even the slightest hint. I don't know whether to be angry, hurt, or sad. Actually, it's pathetic.

What a dysfunctional family! I can't believe it. I'm almost forty-three and a doctor, and my mother still treats me like a child about illness. Can you imagine, she wanted to shield me from unnecessary concern?"

"Our family is just the opposite. Everybody knows everything about everybody. It's the opposite extreme, but I don't advocate it, either. I think the best is somewhere in between."

Laurie got up and stretched. She waited for a moment of dizziness to pass. Her fatigue had come back with a vengeance after sitting at her desk. She then got her coat from behind the door. When she considered the differences between her family and Riva's, she thought she would pick Riva's, although she certainly wouldn't choose to live at home like Riva did. She and Riva were the same age.

"Want me to answer your phone?" Riva asked.

"If you won't mind, especially if it's either Maureen or Peter. Leave any messages on my corkboard." Laurie got out a package of Post-its and plopped them on her blotter. "I've got to come back here. I'm not going to take my suitcase with me."

Laurie stepped into the hall and briefly considered going down to Jack's office to tell him about her mother, then decided to skip it. Even though she was certain he'd ultimately be sympathetic, she had had quite enough of his levity and didn't want to risk having to deal with anymore.

On the first floor, Laurie took a quick detour into the administration office. Calvin's door was ajar. Unchallenged by the two busy secretaries, Laurie glanced in to see the deputy chief hunched over his desk. A standard-sized pen looked like a miniature in his huge hand. She knocked on the open door, and Calvin raised his intimidating face and drilled Laurie with his coal-black eyes. There had been times when Laurie had clashed with the deputy chief, since he was both a stickler for rules and a politically savvy individual willing to bend those rules on occasion. From Laurie's perspective, it was an untenable combination. The occasional political demands of being a medical examiner were the only part of the job Laurie didn't like.

Laurie mentioned that she was leaving early to visit her mom in the hospital. Calvin waved her away without a question. Laurie didn't have to clear such a thing with him, but she had been trying of late to be a little more politically sensitive herself, at least on a personal level.

Outside, the rain had finally stopped, making it easier to hail a taxi. The ride uptown went quickly, and in less than a half hour she was deposited at the front steps of the University Hospital. During the drive, she had tried to imagine what her father had meant by "an associated aspect" of her mother's illness that he wished to discuss. She truly had no idea. It was such an oblique statement, but she assumed he meant some limitations of her mother's activity.

The hospital's lobby was in its usual afternoon uproar with visiting hours in full swing. Laurie had to wait in line at the information booth to find out her mother's room number, castigating herself for failing to get it earlier. Armed with the information, she took the proper elevators up to the proper floor and walked past the nurses' station, where a number of people were busy at work. No one looked up at her. It was the VIP wing, which meant the corridor was carpeted and the walls were hung with original, donated oil paintings. Laurie found herself glancing into the rooms as she passed like a voyeur, reminding her of her first year of clinical residency.

Her mother's door was ajar like most of the others, and Laurie walked right in. Her mother was in a typical hospital bed with the guardrails up, an intravenous running slowly into her left arm. Instead of the usual hospital garb, she was wearing a pink silk robe.

She was sitting up with a number of pillows behind her. Her medium-length, silver-gray hair, which normally billowed on top of her head, was pressed down like an old-fashioned bathing cap. Her color was gray without her makeup, and her skin seemed to be pulled tighter than usual over her facial bones, and her eyes had retracted as if she was slightly dehydrated. She appeared fragile and vulnerable, and although Laurie knew she was petite, she looked particularly tiny in the large bed. She also looked older than she did less than a week before, when Laurie had seen her for lunch. There had been no conversation about cancer or imminent hospitalization.

"Come in, my dear," Dorothy said, waving with her free hand. "Pull a chair over. Sheldon told me he had called you. I wasn't going to bother you until I was home. This is all very silly. It's just not worth getting all upset over."

Laurie glanced over at her father, who was reading The Wall Street Journal in a club chair by the window. He glanced up, gave a little wave and a wan smile, and then went back to his paper.

Advancing to the side of the bed, Laurie took her mother's free hand and gave it a squeeze. The bones felt delicate and the skin cool. "How are you, Mother?"

"I'm just fine. Give me a kiss and then sit down."

Laurie touched her cheek to her mother's. Then she pulled a chair over to the side of the bed. With the hospital bed raised, she had to look up at her mother. "I'm so sorry this has happened to you."

"It's nothing. The doctor has already been in, and he said things are just fine, which is more than I can say about your hair."

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.

"I can't believe it," Jack called out. "I'm finished. I've never been finished."

Chet swung around. He had a boyish face capped by a shock of blond hair that was considerably longer than Jack's but worn in a similar unkempt style. Like Jack, he also gave the impression of being athletic, but it was from almost daily visits to the gym, not from street basketball. He was in his mid-forties but looked considerably younger.

"What do you mean you're finished? Finished what?"

With his hands clasped into fists, Jack stretched his arms over his head. "All my cases. I'm completely caught up."

"Then what are all those folders doing in your inbox?" Chet used his index finger to point at the sizable stack threatening to spill out.

"Those are just the cases waiting for material to come back from the lab."

"Big deal!" Chet scoffed with a dismissive laugh before returning to his work.

"Hey, it's big for me," Jack said. He stood up and touched his palms to the floor and held them there for a beat. After the unaccustomed bike ride to work that morning, his hamstrings felt tight. After straightening back up, he glanced at his watch. "Good grief! It's only three-thirty. Will wonders never cease? I might make it for the first run on the court."

"If it's dry," Chet said without looking up. "Why don't you come over to Sports Club L.A. The court will be dry there. If you were smart, you'd tag along with me to body-sculpting class. I tried it last Friday, and I'm telling you, the chicks are incredible. There was this one that was something else. She had on a full-body, black, skintight bodysuit that left nothing to the imagination."

"Ogling chicks!" Jack mocked. "One of these days, you'll wake up and be able to look back on these difficult years of puberty and laugh at yourself."

"The day I stop checking out the women will be when I'm ready for one of those pine boxes downstairs."

"I've never been much for spectator sports," Jack quipped. "I'll leave that up to you wimps."

Jack took his jacket from the back of the chair and headed out of the office, whistling as he went. It had been an interesting and stimulating day. When he reached Laurie's office, he poked his head in, wondering if she was inclined to change her mind about not coming back to his place that evening. The office was empty, though he noticed an open folder on Laurie's desk.

Jack sauntered in and checked the name. As he'd guessed, it was Sean McGillin. He was curious why Laurie and Janice seemed so engrossed in what sounded to him like a routine case. Generally, he wasn't one to stereotype women, but he thought it odd that they had both displayed what he thought was rather unprofessional emotion. He flipped open the folder and shuffled through it until he found Janice's report. He read it quickly. Nothing jumped out. Other than the victim being only twenty-eight, the circumstances weren't particularly noteworthy. It might have been sad and a tragedy for the victim's family and friends, but it wasn't sad for mankind or the city or even the borough, for that matter. There were a lot of individual tragedies in a metropolis the size of New York.

Jack quickly closed the folder and beat it out of the office as if he'd been engaged in something surreptitious and was fearful about being caught. All at once, he was less inclined to see if Laurie wanted to reconsider her decision to move back to her own apartment for fear of having to deal with too much emotion. Thinking about family tragedies was not a pastime he wanted to indulge in. He'd had too much personal experience.

Down on the first level, Jack retrieved his biking paraphernalia as well as the bike itself. He waved to the evening security man, Mike Laster, as he carried his bicycle out onto the receiving dock and then down onto the pavement. The rain had stopped, and it was significantly colder than it had been when he'd arrived that morning. He was thankful for his gloves as he climbed on the bike and pedaled across 30th Street to First Avenue.

In contrast to his morning ride, Jack enjoyed the afternoon slalom among the cars, taxicabs, and buses as he streaked northward, racing the traffic in daredevil fashion. Eventually, he cut over to Madison Avenue, using the brief crosstown traverse as a time to allow his circulation to relieve his aching quadriceps. Heading north again, he regained his speed. At the rare times he had to stop for traffic lights, he briefly questioned between breaths why he was enjoying challenging the traffic when he hadn't that morning. Sensing it had something to do with things he didn't want to think about, he gave up trying to understand and just savored the experience.

At the Grand Army Plaza, with the Plaza Hotel on one side and the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on the other, Jack entered Central Park. This was always his favorite part of his commute. With the temperature continuing to plummet, it was now cold enough for his breath to form a cloud of vapor with each exhale. Overhead, the sky had darkened into a deep purple, except to his left, in the direction of the setting sun. There it was still a rich but rapidly fading scarlet that formed a striking, blood-red backdrop for the sawtoothed spires of the buildings lining Central Park West.

The street lamps had come on in the park, and Jack rode between spheres of light and their intersecting penumbras. There were more joggers than there had been in the morning, and Jack kept his speed down. Above 80th Street, the number of joggers began to fall precipitously. By then, night had taken full command of the sky. To make things worse, it seemed to Jack that the distance between the street lamps had grown. As dark as it was, he occasionally had to slow down to walking speed between illuminated areas, since he could not see the ground and had to proceed on faith that there were no obstacles in his path.

When he passed 90th Street, it got even darker, particularly in the hilly section where he had felt such exhilaration that morning. In contrast, now he felt the stirrings of foreboding. The leafless trees crowded the pathway. He could no longer see the buildings along Central Park West, and except for an occasional distant beep of a taxi horn, he could have been biking out in some vast, isolated forest. When he did approach a street lamp, it made the intervening, leafless branches appear like giant spider webs.

Exiting the park at 106th Street, Jack felt relief. As he hit the button for the traffic light, he had to laugh at his imagination and wonder what had stimulated it. Although he had not been riding in the park at night for months, he'd done it a considerable number of times over the years. He could not remember it having affected him in such a fashion. Even he recognized the absurdity of his having had no fear earlier in traffic, where it was truly dangerous, while getting the heebie-jeebies riding through the deserted park. He felt like an impressionable ten-year-old walking through a cemetery on Halloween.

Once the light had changed, Jack crossed Central Park West and rode along 106th Street. As he came abreast of the neighborhood playground, he stopped. Without taking his toes from his toe clips, he grasped the high chain-link fence and looked out onto the basketball court. It was illuminated by a series of mercury vapor lamps that he had paid for. In fact, Jack had paid to have the entire playground rehabbed. Originally, Jack had only offered to redo the basketball court, thinking the neighborhood would be overjoyed. To his surprise, he was forced by an ad hoc neighborhood committee into considering doing the whole park, including toddler area, if he was to be granted the privilege of upgrading the basketball section. It took Jack just overnight to decide to do the whole schmear. After all, what else was he going to do with his cash? That had been six years ago, and Jack had more than gotten his money's worth.

"You coming out and run, doc?" one of the players called out.

There were only five men, all African-American, casually warming up at the distant basket. In deference to the cold, they were all dressed in multiple layers of trendy hip-hop gear. One of them had stopped when he'd caught sight of Jack. From his voice, Jack knew it was Warren, a man with whom Jack had become close over the years. Warren was a powerfully built, gifted athlete as well as the de facto leader of the local gang. He and Jack had come to share a great mutual respect. In fact, Jack even gave Warren credit for having saved his life.

"That's my intention," Jack yelled back. "Anybody else coming out, or is it going to be three-on-three?"

"We got rained out last night, so the whole gang's going to show up. So get your kicks and get that white ass of yours out here on the double. Otherwise, you'll be standing around holding your dick. Catch my drift?"

Jack flashed back a thumbs-up. He'd caught the drift all right. There would be a lot more than ten guys, meaning the first ten would get to play while the others would be forced to jockey to get into subsequent games. It was a complicated system that had taken Jack a couple of years to comprehend. By most people's standards, it wasn't democratic or fair. Winners was taken by the eleventh guy to show up, who then chose the other four he wanted on his team. At that point, the order people arrived didn't matter. In fact, sometimes one of the members of the losing team would get selected because he was a particularly good player. Back when Jack had just moved to the neighborhood, it had taken him months to get into his first game, and that was because he finally realized he had to get out there early.

Motivated by not wanting to stand around on the sidelines in the cold, Jack quickly pedaled across the street, snatched up his bike on his shoulder, and ran up the steps leading to his building's front door. Skirting some large, green trash bags, Jack pushed open the inner door. Just inside were two derelicts sharing a bottle of cheap wine. They got out of the way as Jack charged up the stairs. He was careful because of the debris that sprinkled the steps.

Jack lived in the rear unit on the fourth floor. He had to put his bike down while he struggled with his keys.

Without even bothering to close his apartment door, Jack stashed his bike against the wall in the living room, then kicked off his shoes and stripped off his jacket, tie, and shirt, and tossed them over the back of his sofa. Clad only in his boxer shorts, he ducked into the bathroom to get his basketball gear, which normally hung over the shower curtain.

Jack stopped in his tracks. Instead of his shorts and sweatpants, he was looking at a pair of Laurie's pantyhose. He had forgotten that he had not played the previous night, and Laurie had folded his gear and put it in the closet.

Jack snatched the pantyhose off the curtain rod and held them in his hand. Slowly, his eyes rose to look at himself in the mirror. He was alone, and his slack face reflected the reality he'd been actively avoiding all day: Laurie wouldn't be there when he'd finished his basketball game. There wouldn't be the usual intelligent banter. There wouldn't be the inevitable laughter. They wouldn't be heading down Columbus Avenue for a bite to eat at one of the many Upper West Side restaurants. Instead, he would be coming back to an empty apartment just like he had for all those years after he'd first arrived in the city. It was depressing then, and it was depressing now.

"You basket case," he voiced with derision. He looked back down at the pantyhose, feeling a mixture of emotion that included anger at himself and at Laurie. At times, life seemed too complicated.

With unnecessary care, he folded the pantyhose and carried them into the bedroom. He opened one of the now-empty drawers that Laurie had been using and carefully put the lingerie inside. He closed the drawer and felt a modicum of relief with the painful reminder out of sight. He then ran to the closet to get his athletic gear.

To Jack's relief, he got back out onto the court before ten people had arrived, and Warren selected him to be on his team. Jack warmed up by shooting a series of perimeter jump shots. He felt ready when the game began a few minutes later, but unfortunately, he wasn't. He played poorly, and he was a significant factor in the loss. With another team ready to run, Warren and Jack and the rest of Warren 's team were relegated to standing on the sideline, shivering in the cold. None of them were happy.

"Man, you were shit," Warren said to Jack. "You were killing us. Wassup?"

Jack shook his head. "I'm distracted, I guess. Laurie wants to get married and have a kid."

Warren knew Laurie. Over the previous several years, he and his girlfriend, Natalie, double-dated with Jack and Laurie almost once a week. They had even gone on a wild trip to Africa together seven years ago.

"So your shortie wants to get hitched and have a kid?" Warren said derisively. "Hey, man, what else is new? I got the same problem, but you didn't see me throwing the damn ball away or letting a perfectly good pass bounce off my forehead. You got to pull yourself together; otherwise, you're not going to be running with me. I mean, there's a question of getting your priorities straight, you know what I'm saying?"

Jack nodded. Warren was right, but not quite the way he was implying. The trouble was, Jack didn't know if he was capable of getting his priorities straight, since he wasn't quite sure what they were.

With her ankle holding the insistent elevator door open, Laurie managed to get her suitcase onto the fifth-floor landing. It was a bit of an effort, since the floor level was a few inches higher than the elevator's cab. She then stepped out herself and let the door close. She could hear the whine of the elevator machinery on the roof as the cab immediately descended. Someone had obviously been pressing the call button.

Taking advantage of the suitcase's wheels, she got it over to her door without having to lift it again. The more she had struggled with it, the heavier it seemed to have become. She knew the culprit was the stash of cosmetics, shampoo, conditioner, and detergent she'd had to bring over to Jack's. None of it was travel-size. Of course, the iron didn't help, either. She went back to get the bag of groceries.

As she fumbled to extract her keys from her shoulder bag, she heard the door to the front apartment open as its securing chain reached its limit with a definite clank. Laurie lived in a building on 19th Street that had two apartments per floor. While she occupied the rear apartment that looked out onto a warren of postage-stamp-sized backyards, a recluse by the name of Debra Engler resided in the front. Her habit was to open her door a crack and peer out every time Laurie was in the hall. Most of the time, her nosiness had irritated Laurie as an intrusion on her privacy, but at the moment, she didn't mind. It was a reassuring familiarity welcoming her home.

Once inside, Laurie activated every one of the locks, bolts, and chains that the previous tenant had installed. Then she looked around. She hadn't been there for over a month and couldn't remember the last time she'd slept there. The entire apartment needed a good cleaning, and the air smelled slightly stale. It was smaller than Jack's but a quantum leap more cozy and comfortable, with real furniture, including a TV. The colors of the fabrics and paint were warm and inviting. A group of framed Gustav Klimt prints from the Met hung on the walls. The only thing missing was her cat, Tom 2, whom she had boarded a year ago with a friend who lived out on Shelter Island. She wondered if she'd have the nerve to ask for her pet back after such a long time.

Laurie dragged her suitcase into her tiny bedroom and spent a half hour organizing things. After a quick shower, she donned her robe before making herself a simple salad. Although she hadn't had any lunch, she still wasn't particularly hungry. She brought the salad and a glass of wine out to her desk in the living room and turned on her laptop. While she waited for it to boot up, she finally allowed herself to think about what she had learned from her father. It had taken effort to avoid thinking about the issue, but she had wanted to be by herself and have access to the Internet as well as be more in control of her emotions. She knew she didn't know enough to be able to think clearly.

The problem was that medical science was racing ahead at breakneck speed. Laurie had been to medical school in the mid-eighties and had learned a significant amount about genetics, since that was the time of the heady breakthroughs in recombinant DNA. But since then, the field had mushroomed geometrically, climaxing in the sequencing of the 3.2 billion base pairs of the human genome as announced with great fanfare in 2000.

Laurie had made it a point to stay reasonably current with her genetic knowledge, particularly as related to her specialty of forensics. But forensics was only interested in DNA as a method of identification. It had been discovered that certain noncoding areas, or areas not containing genes, showed dramatic individual specificity such that even close relatives had differing sequences. Tests taking advantage of the specificity are called "DNA fingerprinting." Laurie was well aware of this and appreciated it as a powerful forensic tool.

But the structure and function of genes were other issues entirely, an area where Laurie felt unprepared. Two new sciences had been born: medical genomics, which dealt with the enormously complex flow of information within a cell; and bioinformatics, which was an application of computers to such information.

Laurie took a sip of her wine. It was a daunting process to try to make sense of what she learned from her father; namely, that her mother carried the marker for the BRCA1 gene and that Laurie had a fifty percent chance of having the same marker. She shuddered. There was something unsettlingly perverse about knowing that she might have something potentially lethal hiding out in the core of her body. Throughout her life, she'd always felt that information was good in and of itself. Now she wasn't so sure. Maybe there were some things that were better not to know.

As soon as Laurie was connected to the Internet, she googled "BRCAl gene" and got five hundred and twelve sites. She took a bite of her salad, clicked on the first site, and started reading.