Second Comings III The Mask of Anar

"Your Honor, I found out this morning, just before I came here, that Grier is HIV positive, fairly well along, and she's not been treated, apparently it's undiagnosed. We need to get these boys tested, but there's a problem."

"Yes," the judge said. "Genetic tracers. That'll confirm whether she had sex with them or not, which could of course implicate these boys."

"There're both personal and public health issues to consider here as well, sir," the prosecutor interjected. "If the infection is not far along, aggressive anti-retrovirals could make a big difference in their future health, not just the trial outcome."

"And I'd object to any testing done at this time," Bianchi's attorney said. "The results could be prejudicial..."

"File your motion some other time, counselor," the judge said. "I'm signing warrants to get them tested right now. Bailiff, get someone from the hospital over to the jail and let's get this going. Frankly counselor," the judge said when Bianchi's attorney started to object, "I don't give a damn about the consequences right now – beyond seeing these boys get appropriate medical care. I'll seal the results pending our next hearing, but if they're positive I want treatment started."

Everyone nodded understanding.

"Detective Marchand? What's this all about?"

"She bled out on me at the hospital, sir, several of us, actually. Some of her blood got in my eyes, in my mouth. I started treatment this morning."

"Dear God..."

"Uh-huh. Well, I'm not so sure God is paying much attention to this case, sir. He seems to be out on vacation this week."

+++++

"We'll use a quick count test, Dr Lake, and we should have basic results in an hour or so. If you test positive, we'll start both you and Dr Hastings on anti-retrovirals immediately, and we'll go from there. I'll have to notify Boston, too, I guess."

Lake shook his head, then looked up at the physician. "It's been a real slice, doc. Thanks."

"You want to tell her, or would you rather I did?"

"I'll do it."

"Well, good luck. I suggest you hang around here, come by about ten."

"Okay. We'll grab breakfast then swing by then. Do you know what's going on with Laura Grier?"

"What do you know?"

"Just that she was brought here yesterday. I went with Sharon and Jordan Secord to Mass Gen yesterday."

"So, you don't know much, like about her arm."

"I don't remember. Yesterday is like this weird blur..."

"She's on West. You ought to drop by."

He pursed his lips and shook his head. "I can't."

"Whatever," she said. "But it wouldn't hurt, and I think you should."

"Okay, we'll see." He left, went out to find Sharon and he took her by the arm and walked to the exit. He found a bench, sat and waited for her to sit to.

"What's wrong?" she said at last.

"She's HIV positive. They're testing me. If I'm positive, we'll both need to start treatment."

She looked at the ground, then looked up to the sky, at the few clouds passing overhead. She sighed, looked at Justin again and nodded her head. "Well, that figures. How long do we wait?"

"Around ten." He looked at his watch. "About an hour or so."

"I'd like to see Laura," she said.

"Why? Want to kill her?"

She laughed. "Yeah. I do."

"So do I."

"Let's go."

They walked to the West building and up to a nurses station and asked if they could see her, and a nurse walked with them down to the room and unlocked the door. A uniformed officer was seated there, then they looked at Laura.

Her face was frozen in the rictus of a scream, and it looked like she had died in the middle of discovering some vast, existential terror. Her hand was raised, as if warding off a blow, and the officer said it had been like that for over an hour. Catatonic, the officer said, was what one of the doctors said after he examined her, then Lake looked at her right arm...or where her arm had been, and suddenly, he wanted to run from the room. He felt a hand on his arm then, and turned to see Sharon holding him firm, steadying him.

Or was he steadying her?

He watched as she moved close to Laura, watched as she bent over and looked into Laura's eyes, and she stood there for what felt like minutes – hardly breathing, watching her – then she went to the dressing over the remains of Laura's missing arm and looked closely, then she turned and walked from the room, leaving Lake standing there – alone. He looked in her eyes, thought he saw some reaction – but he too turned and left the room.

When he got outside he saw Sharon leaning against a wall, her forehead resting on her forearm, and she was breathing raggedly in desperate gulps. He went to her and held her, and didn't let go, then she turned and fell into his arms, crying in odd, desolate moans. Lake didn't understand. Why? Why was she so upset?

"Sharon?" he whispered. "Come back to me. Tell me what you're thinking..."

"Did you see her?" she cried, and in between these ragged gasps: "Two days ago? What was she? Now this? Mutilated! A mutilated human being! Reduced to what? How did this happen!? How? Why?"

And Lake felt himself shivering, not cold but even so frozen inside, like he'd been chased to the edge of a cliff and had stopped in time to face his pursuer. Only now? Who was pursuing whom?

"Let's go back to the docs office, see if they have any results yet."

He took her hand, led her through quiet hallways past all the measured machinery that is modern medicine, then they stood outside one Sara Epstein, MD's office and hesitated. He didn't know why, but he knew he was positive, that Laura's betrayals existed on so many levels none of them had ever had a chance.

And so it was. Sharon went in with him and they took the news together, and they left to get their prescriptions together. They went to the hospital pharmacy and filled their scrips together, then walked out to Sharon's car together. He opened her door, held her hand, kissed her, cried with her, cried for everything that had happened and held her more tightly then ever. He felt like a Tyson or Ali had boxed him into a corner and was beating his head in, then he felt her hand cupping the back of his head, felt her lips brushing his cheeks, and his face was buried in her neck and he was crying again, crying almost uncontrollably, and now she was holding him up, holding him and kissing him...

"You were going to talk to a lawyer today? Do you still want to?"

She nodded her head. "I was just thinking about that."

"Where do you want to go after?"

"Your place. Let's get your place cleaned up, then I need to go to Jordan's house, see what needs to be done there."

"I mean, where will you stay now?"

"I don't know...haven't thought about it yet."

"I think we should go to Boston."

"In the morning. There's nothing we can do there now, and a lot to get done here. Anyway... Don't you have papers to grade, her stuff to get taken care of?"

"And breakfast. Can't take these pills on an empty stomach, and we've got to develop a timetable for taking these meds...

+++++

Secord had been in and out of sleep all night long. Nurses came in and checked leads, drew labs for enzymes and gases and checked volumes in his catheter bag. A resident came in twice and talked with him about follow up care – the same conversation twice, then a priest came in after breakfast talking about Jesus and salvation, but when all was said and done Secord kept going over that neurosurgeon's second report. The vertebral break was bad, but the cord hadn't been damaged. There was swelling now, however, so either short term paralysis or weakness in one or both legs was possible. Too early to say yet. Her hand would heal within six to eight weeks. There could be facial paralysis. It was just too early to tell...everything was just too early to tell.

He asked a nurse if he could call home and that softly benign utterance was met just like his request for a coke had been. Kind of a 'You've got to be kidding' look. Incredulous. Not quite mocking contempt.

"So how about a Coke?"

She looked at him and shrugged, got him a coke and some crushed ice, and he smiled.

"Life is good," he said as he sipped his cola.

"Yes it is," the nurse replied. "'Bout time you woke up and smelled some of them roses, huh?"

"Do you have any word on my friend, Michele, last name is Lansing?"

"She's fine, no change. They're calling down updates every hour, and you might get to see her tomorrow. Someone named Sharon called a while ago, said she'll be here first thing in the morning. Some guy named Dennis called and said not to worry about your term papers, and to call him when you get home. That's about all, and you tell them folks I ain't no secretary, you hear?"

+++++

Sharon and Justin stood outside of the CCU, talking with Secord's cardiologist, trying to get straight in their minds the changes they'd need to help implement once they got him home: restricted diet, a large number of new meds, and help him get rid of as much stress as possible.

"How's he doing," Lake asked. "I mean, when can he come home?"

"He's doing okay, but he drinks too much Coke."

Sharon laughed. "That's Jordan!"

"He's also restless. Worried about Miss Lansing, and about getting his grades done by the end of term. Aside from that? He wants out of here. We'd normally keep him a week or so, but he's young and there's no underlying vascular disease, so there's no real danger as long as we can keep his stress levels under control."

"We've cleaned his house, fixed what we could, so there won't be too many reminders about what happened in there," Sharon added, "so I was thinking? Do you think he could come home today?"

"I was thinking about it," the physician said, "but I want to see how he responds when he sees Lansing. They're getting him in a wheelchair now, and we're going up if you'd like to come along."

"If you think it's okay, sure," Justin said, while Sharon just nodded.

Secord came out a moment later, dressed in hospital scrubs and disposable paper slippers.

"Well, as I live and breathe," Secord said when he saw Sharon and Justin, "here we are, the three musketeers ride again!"

Sharon came and hugged him, Lake stood back and watched the change that came over her. She seemed caught in a tempest, torn between love and concern, lost, really, without Secord to anchor her emotions. A part of him felt happy for her, then sad, because he knew the road she was on could only lead to a great deal of unhappiness. Let alone he was falling in love with her now, or at least the idea of her. She had become his anchor, and while it wasn't quite jealousy he felt when he watched her now, it might have been a very close cousin.

They walked down to a bank of elevators, the nurse taking care to keep Secord's IV lines clear of the wheelchair's tires, then they rode up in silence, getting off on the neurology services floor.

Michele Lansing was in an extraordinary contraption of a bed. The bed itself was suspended between two large rings, so that the bed could be positioned at almost any angle, and Michele was suspended almost six feet above the floor – face down – held in place by what almost looked like a screen of some sort, and, the physician explained, because all weight could be kept off her spine in this position. Her right hand was in a pink fiberglass cast; her head and face swaddled in gauze bandages, but her eyes were open, and she reacted when Secord came in to the room.

He rolled right under her face and simply looked up into her eyes, and she looked into his.

She just smiled as she looked at him. "Looks like you had a rough day at the office," she said at last.

"It's no big deal."

"A heart attack? At your age?"

"I was worried."

"You're going on a diet."

He laughed. "Really?"

"Your appetite for Coca-Cola is becoming legendary around this place."

"Breakfast of Champions, darlin'."

"Not when I get home! It's protein shakes and smoothies for you, bucko!"

"For us?"

"For us. Is that Sharon over there? I don't recognize the shoes!"

Sharon came over and scrunched down under the bed. "How you doing up there, girl? Looks like you're in astronaut training!"

"Kinda feels like it, too! Is that Justin over there?"

Lake walked over, knelt down and said hello, but he seemed shy, reserved.

"You two taking care of each other?" Michele asked, and she watched as Justin turned red and Sharon as she dodged the question. "Oh, I see, said the blind man! Well, isn't this interesting? Do I hear wedding bells?"

Sharon laughed. "Strangers in the night. You know how that song goes."

Just then Secord raised his hand and touched her face. "I love you," he said, and everyone could see he was starting to tear up.

"I love you too."

"Okay," Secord's cardiologist said, interrupting, "we'll come up again later. Let's head out now..."

Secord nodded, understood what was going on. He could feel the pressure in his chest, in his left arm, but still he looked at her as he was wheeled away.

"How do you feel," the cardiologist said when they were out on the hallway.

"Pressure," Secord said, pointing to his arm and chest, "here, and here."

"Okay, downstairs, now."

August

"I still can't believe they're gone, both of them," Daisy Evans, one of the women around the table said. "Here one day, gone the next, you know?"

Sharon and Justin had just sat down at the President's table, drinks in hand, waiting for this year's faculty dinner to get under way. She was doing ginger ale this year, and she sipped it slowly.

"That's the way it goes sometimes," the college president said. "Hard to keep faculty these days with so many better paying gigs in government and industry."

"So, Sharon," Daisy asked. "Do you know? Where are they? I heard Idaho?"

"Mid-coast Maine, near Boothbay Harbor."

"What'd he do? Buy a house there?"

"Yup. He might teach a course at Bowdoin, I don't know, though. He's back in the White House again, every week or so, and is going to China next month, with Clinton."

"Does he think she'll run," Evans said excitedly.

Sharon shrugged. "No idea. He's kind of apolitical now."

"How's Michele doing?" The president asked.

"Better. She's walking now, able to see well enough to type again. I expect by Christmas she'll be up and around, wanting to get back to work."

"Wish we could get her to come back here," Daisy said, and Sharon turned away, tried to hide her anger. Evans had been the most vocal dean against hiring Lansing the year before, citing having a transexual on campus would be polarizing.

"I suspect," Justin Lake said, "you'd have a hard time prying those two apart."

"Yes, of course," Evans said. "Such a tragedy."

"I just couldn't believe the verdicts," the president added.

"Oh? Why's that?" Sharon asked, knowing full well the man had done everything in his power to keep the entire episode out of the papers. What else had he done?

"Well, not guilty based on improper Miranda warnings? Really? I thought that was a little unjust, after all Jordan and Michele went through." he said.

"Going through, sir," Lake corrected. "She might be back where she was in a year, maybe two."

"Justin, what do you think about the Grier verdict?"

"Not guilty by reason of insanity? Well, you can't very well try a mushroom," a man said, just now joining the table. "From what I hear, she's unresponsive, hasn't said a word in months. Paranoid schizophrenia, that's what I heard..."

Lake kept his face impassive, dared not respond. He'd taken what Laura told him last January and started digging. Mother a grade school teacher, dead a few years, and no father at all, so he'd looked up her birth certificate using Social Security information. He found a name, called the number he found and talked to Laura Grier's mother – and father – in Boston. He told them some of what had happened, though not all. There was no reason to hurt them like that...they'd been through enough just getting Laura through high school, it turned out.

Borderline Personality, her father called it, with sociopathic tendencies. She was bright, too bright, he said for her own good. She'd always liked to twist up people, wind them up, get them caught up in intricate plans then pull the rug out from under them. One boy in high school had committed suicide over one of her schemes, another girl had tried, but failed.

Lake had hung up and walked away in disgust. Not only had Laura never been hospitalized or prosecuted, she'd been left free to become a teacher, a professor, and so to hatch ever more creative and destructive ways to destroy people. What, he wondered, would this smarmy college president do with that little bit of knowledge? How far would he sweep it under the rug? How far would people run to hide their complicity in a system that had turned, by and large, into a system where self-serving grifters milked their institution's reputations for increasingly delusional outcomes?

Goodness, Secord told him, was the only path through such hatred. Now Lake saw that path as not only a righteous course of action, but perhaps the only means by which one could preserve some small shred of sanity. Everywhere he looked, not just in education, but in government, in banking, in the medical-industrial complex, he saw nothing but grifters and con-artists, swindlers out milking more victims every day. Swindlers and their lawyers creating deeper and deeper layers of deceit, taking more and more every year, everything teetering on the brink now, the entire world seemingly just one more lie away from imploding in on itself.

He grew angry. He wanted something revolutionary to happen, he wanted to see the people get angry enough to tear it all down and start over again, but then he went to Maine.

He and Sharon helped Secord move belongings into their new house, and all the while Lake talked about his anger, his despair, and Secord listened patiently, smiling from time to time, and then once he spoke:

"Stand ye calm and resolute, like a forest close and mute..."

"What's that?" Lake said, and Secord smiled.

"It never fails to amaze me how far we've fallen. Anyway, it's from the opening of Shelley's The Mask of Anarchy. Do you know it?"

"No, not really, though I've heard about it, of course."

"Well, it was a bedrock document of the romantic movement, and so as long as you're teaching romanticism you might as well look it up, get used to using it in the classroom. Shelley laid out the entire principal of non-violent resistance to oppressive tyranny in this poem, and it's been used and referenced by revolutionary leaders from 1842 on, right up to Martin Luther King. Union organizers at the end of the 19th century used to read entire passages at organizing meeting, but today all that nonsense has fallen out of favor. Like I said, if it ain't on Facebook these days, it might as well not even exist."

"We can't all be luddites, Jordan."

"We can open our eyes, too, Justin. We don't all have to play the doomed species so convincingly."

"So, you still see goodness as the only way forward? Is it still that simple, really?"

"Remember Montaigne," Sharon said, carrying a load up from her Volvo, "all those things we talked about."

"I like Montaigne," Secord said. "Ahead of his time."

"I was thinking about him the other day," Sharon said: "'Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition,' and I was thinking about that when I read about Laura and those boys during the trial. Was he saying we are, in the end, our brothers' keepers? He was, wasn't he?"

Secord stood and caught his breath. "We can't avoid those responsibilities. We are all in this together, so I guess we'll either fix things together – that, or we'll all go down together."

"Have you been keeping up with the trial?" Justin asked.