Cure by Robin Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

going back to work. Her main worry was for her just-over-one-and-a-half-year-old son, John Junior, and whether it was appropriate to leave him with a nanny for what would often be long days. But there was also a personal issue concerning a real fear of competence after such an unexpectedly long break: Would she still be able to handle her job as a medical examiner at what she thought was the most prestigious ME office in the country, if not the world?

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    Laurie had been working at OCME, or Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, in the city of New York for almost two decades. Self-confidence had always been an issue with her, going back to her teenage years. When she’d first started work at OCME, she’d worried about her competence at such an extremely challenging and demanding position, and she’d not overcome the concern for years, far past the time that her colleagues had dealt with similar fears. Forensic pathology was a field where book learning was not enough. Intuition played a major role in being good at practicing it, and intuition came from constant experience. Every day a good forensic pathologist was confronted with something he or she had never seen before.

    Laurie studied herself in the mirror and groaned. From her perspective she looked terrible, with dark circles under her eyes and a pallor that was more suited to one of her patients. Motherhood had been more difficult and exhausting physically and mentally than she had ever imagined, particularly having had to deal with a serious, often fatal illness. At the same time, it had also been more rewarding.

    Taking her robe from its hook on the back of the door and pulling it on, she slipped her feet into her mules with the pink puffs over the toes. She smiled at the slippers. They were the sole reminder of the time when she could feel sexy with lingerie and enjoy the feeling. Vaguely she wondered if that feeling would ever come back. Becoming a mother had changed her sense of self in a number of domains.

    Back out in the hall, Laurie padded down to JJ’s room. The door was ajar, and she walked into the room, which was bright enough for her to see. Dawn was approaching, but more important there were a number of night-lights conveniently spaced along the baseboards. Thanks to her mother, the room was decorated with riotous blue wallpaper and matching curtains covered with images of airplanes and trucks.

    The furniture consisted only of a rocking chair, which Laurie had used for breast-feeding, a bassinet swathed in eyelet, and a crib. The bassinet was still there for sentimental reasons, as was the rocking chair, although she used the rocker occasionally when JJ was fussy and needed her presence to fall asleep.

    Moving over to the crib, Laurie gazed in at her son, thankful for his healthy complexion. With a shudder she could remember distinctly when it hadn’t been so. At the age of two months JJ had been diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma, a very serious and often deadly childhood cancer. But Laurie had been able to thank the lucky stars, or God, or whomever or whatever, that the cancer had disappeared. Whether it had been through the divine intervention of 30

    a faith healer in Jerusalem, the dedication of the doctors at Sloan-Kettering, or the fact that neuroblastoma can, on occasion, spontaneously resolve, Laurie would never know—nor care, if truth be told. The only thing that mattered to her was that JJ was now a normal one-and-a-half-year-old boy whose growth and development, despite chemotherapy and what was called monoclonal antibody therapy, had reached normal percentiles in all aspects, enough for Laurie to consider returning to work.

    Glancing in at the peacefully sleeping child, a smile spread across Laurie’s face despite the concerns and ambivalence she was suffering about going to work.
    JJ’s angelic face reminded her of a conversation she’d had with Jack just the previous evening. It had started when they had both gone into