Hiss of Death: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery (18 page)

“Cool day,”
observed Mrs. Murphy, intently watching out the window.

Happy to make polite conversation, Tucker agreed.

“If it’s cool, why does Harry put the windows down a crack? I don’t like it,”
Pewter grumbled.

“Fresh air.”
Mrs. Murphy noticed a chipmunk shoot across the beltway road.

“Bother.”
Pewter vacated her bed to crawl in with Tucker.
“You take up so much space.”

“It’s my bed, Fatso.”

“Oh la.”
The gray cat ignored this, curling her back to Tucker’s white stomach.

•    •    •

As these edifying conversations were taking place, Harry lay down for her first radiation treatment, the killer beams focusing on the former tumor site marked with ink.

The process, explained to her in detail, caused no pain, but she needed to remain still on the special table. Staying motionless was more difficult than Harry had anticipated. She wanted to scream and run out of there. The nurse told her the first treatment wouldn’t be so bad. But in case nausea developed, there were drugs for that. A slight possibility existed for burns on her skin, which would be uncomfortable.

Harry refused drugs. She wanted her mind to be clear. What she’d do down the road, she didn’t know. She’d find out when she got there, but the first treatment was okay, apart from staying still.

The support group had prepared Harry. Medicine, with its many protocols and restrictions—courtesy of one’s government—could be as baffling as a peasant landing in the court of Catherine II of All the Russias. There were way too many complications, too many forms to fill out and papers to take home and read. Basically, all the forms boiled down to one thing: letting the hospital off the hook, should something go awry. In turn, the hospital feared gargantuan lawsuits if so much as one bent needle was used or someone was not properly swabbed, according to a potentially litigious patient.

Harry hated all of that. As she lay on the padded table, oddly grateful for the interlude on a busy day, she felt as though she’d stepped through a door into a prison without walls. Her body no longer belonged to her. The hospital accepted her body and the money in her purse. She was told what to do and when to do it. The insurance companies would try to kill her with paperwork, calls, and the need for intense documentation of every little thing done to her. She pitied Jennifer Potter. If Harry, a patient—well, actually a number—faced towers of paper and constant concerns about liability, what did her surgeon face?

Harry paid little attention to medicine. Although married to a vet, she exhibited zero curiosity about human medicine. Thrilled with the miracles stem cell treatments did for horses, she didn’t give it a thought for people.

Yet here she was in the cancer factory. She still didn’t really care. If she hadn’t been married, she wouldn’t submit to radiation. Thanks to his medical knowledge, Fair had insisted, as did Susan, BoomBoom, Alicia, Rev. Jones, Franny, and every single person with whom she came into contact. Part of her felt she’d caved to the pressure. Part of her figured she’d get through it and then everyone would shut up. She’d be forty-one in August; she hoped she had a lot of life left.

If nothing else, cancer introduced her to her own mortality. Intellectually, she knew she was eventually going to die. Now she knew it emotionally, and it was okay. She didn’t want to go now, but she was a farmer. She’d lived with nature in a way few Americans did anymore. She accepted death, including her own. When that Dark Angel knocked on her door, she prayed she would accompany him with dignity. She resolved during that first radiation session that once done with this, she’d avoid this or any hospital if she was ill and the survival chance was less than fifty percent. If injured, sure, let the doc fix your bones or whatever. Injury is different from illness. She hated being ill. She could put up with injury.

“How do you feel?” asked Corrine, the nurse.

“Okay.” Harry smiled up at her. “Did you always want to be a nurse?”

Corrine nodded. “I used to bandage my dolls.”

The two laughed, and Harry understood why men fall in love with their nurses.

Once finished and back outside, Harry flipped up the collar of her fleece-lined denim jacket. Hard to believe it was full spring. If the dogwoods—now in full bloom—weren’t in sight, she’d think this was early April. You never could know about the weather in central Virginia, or maybe the fickleness of the weather was true in most places.

As she reached the Volvo, she clicked the open button.

“Harry.”

The voice made her turn around and brought the animals to the windows.

“Thadia.” For years Harry hadn’t seen her, and now twice in short order. She wasn’t sure she liked that, but being a Virginian to the marrow of her bones, she appeared thrilled at the sight of Thadia Martin.

“I’m on my way to lunch,” said Thadia. “Would you like to join me? We could talk about women’s lacrosse. Saint Anne’s is always a power.”

“Thank you, but I have to get back. Just had my first radiation.”

“Ah.” Thadia’s brow furrowed. “I was hoping you could help me.”

Here it comes, Harry thought to herself.

“Do jockeys, show riders, or polo players use performance-enhancing drugs?”

“Jeez, Thadia, I’ve never seen any evidence of it. Or even heard of it, either. Yes, the big-money riders, some of them, have battled the same demons a lot of people battle, but drinking and drugging, especially before riding, would be a real death wish.”

“Why?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t cocaine speed you up?”

“Certainly speeds up your heart rate,” Thadia said.

“And alcohol is a depressant, a downer?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then, when you ride, you have to be perfectly in tune with your horse. It’s like dancing. If you’re flying high, it isn’t going to work. You’ll rush your jumps or do something stupid, or you’ll set off your horse and the animal will refuse to do as you ask.”

“Really.” Thadia was incredulous. “I never fooled with horses. Half the girls at Saint Anne’s did, but that wasn’t the half I ran with.” She smiled ruefully.

“Horses are very emotional animals. They sense a great deal about
you. Like I said, you need to get in tune. And it’s kind of like with people. Some you get along with better than others, but if you’re out of it or flat-out crazy, they know. They don’t like it.”

“But aren’t a lot of horses on drugs?”

“Depends on the venue. Are they on drugs foxhunting? No. Again, that would be a death wish. Flat racing.” She whistled. “Unfortunately, it’s a dreadful mess. Every state has different standards. Most of the drugs for horses abused by their trainers or owners don’t correspond to, say, cocaine for the horses, but they mask pain or inhibit bleeding—stuff like that. And, of course, there’s always steroids.”

“Bodybuilding for horses?” Thadia had never heard of that.

“For some medical conditions, steroids are appropriate. However, the horses loaded up on them aren’t being treated for those conditions. Steroids do to horses what they do to humans. They make them bigger, stronger, faster. In short, a better athlete.” She stopped. “Do you have people in the recovery groups who abused steroids?”

“Not many. And I can’t say that was their primary problem. A lot of athletes fall into evil habits.” She half smiled when she said that. “Pressure—too much too soon—and a lot of them don’t come from stable backgrounds. Well, since we were talking of horses, forgive the pun.”

Harry stated with conviction, “Horses have more sense than people. We screw up their body chemistry and the poor animal has no choice.”

Thadia nodded. “I read somewhere, wish I could remember, that if you tested a thousand Americans, about eighty percent would show positive for trace amounts of cocaine.”

Harry’s eyes opened wide. “What!”

“They aren’t users. It’s on our money.”

“Oh, my God.” Harry’s hand came up to her face. She’d never thought of anything like that.

“You can see, I got my work cut out for me. Also, when times are hard, people drink more, drug more, abuse women, children, and animals more.”

“That’s horrible.”

“The problem is men. They lash out. Women internalize their misery. They’ll hurt themselves, which in turn hurts others—it’s just not
that obvious. Can you name one woman who’s picked up an assault rifle and gunned down innocent strangers?”

“No.”

“But I bet you can name some who have committed suicide.”

“Sure.” Harry hated that thought.

“Most of the work I do with the men in my groups is getting them to face their problems without taking it out on someone else or escaping via the bottle.”

“Well, you have to do that with the women, too.” Harry was ever suspicious of gender statements, even though occasionally she made them herself.

“I do, but it’s different. What really upsets me—and this gets back to drugs again—people, medical people, explain the violence of the men by latching on to physical explanations. Their hormones, the male brain.
Blah, blah, blah, blah
. Hey, there’s the male brain in France, too. They don’t have the problem of domestic violence to the extent that we do. It’s culture.”

“Yeah, I agree with you. And our culture also encourages all the drug use. Doesn’t matter if a doctor’s pushing it on you or the guy on the street corner.”

“Actually, Harry, the guy on the street corner corresponds to the streetwalker. Bottom of the barrel, because usually both of those jobs, if you will, are people who are paying for their habit. It’s the pushers in the country clubs that never get caught. The pusher in the big corporation, say, in personnel. It’s so easy.”

“Given your history, I can understand your anger.”

“What I’m angry about is our duplicity. Either legalize the crap or ban all of it. After all, the biggest drug is alcohol. It’s crazy. Our War on Drugs is a great recipe for failure, for ensuring that the brightest make fortunes and pay not a penny of taxes. It ensures that we have millions of poor people in prison, maybe they had a lid of marijuana. But the rich kingpin is untouchable. It’s so sick.”

“Thadia, I can’t say I share your passion about this, but then I don’t have your history. Do I think it will change? If the American people want it to, it will, even though the bigwigs you’re talking about can buy our senators and congressmen, can sway the churches with giant contributions,
and probably the media, too. I trust the boots-on-the-ground American. My fear is Americans too often wait until it’s a crisis squared before we do anything.”

“Well, we’re already pretty damn close. Anyway, thanks for talking to me about people in the horse world.”

“You can cross out performance-enhancing drugs, because they won’t enhance performance. I’m pretty sure about that, but as to cocaine and booze, after the show—well, most horsemen carry a bit of pain.”

“You?”

“I have my share. I take Motrin when it gets to me. The ground is pretty hard.” Harry laughed.

“It was hard when I hit it playing lacrosse, and I was closer to it than someone falling off a horse,” Thadia remembered.

“All part of the game.”

“You take vitamins?”

“Susan—you remember Susan Tucker—gave me a bottle of Centrum when I turned forty. I actually take it.”

“She was the best midfielder I ever played against.”

“Now she’s a good golfer. Her handicap is four, and she’s determined to get it down to zero.”

“You’re a good natural athlete.”

“You, too, but there wasn’t a path for us. Team sports, I mean. I was lucky because I had horses. Now girls have the hope of a future in professional sports if they play basketball. Still not much else, though, besides golf and tennis.”

“And the skills you and I had, well”—Thadia shrugged—“golf and tennis are too tame.”

“Not the way Susan plays.” Harry laughed.

“Not to be pushier than I already am, but talk to your cancer support group about vitamins. They can really help.”

“I will.”

As Thadia turned to leave, Harry considered how lucky she was that she hadn’t gone down that gilded path, which turns to molten lead fast enough. Thadia—the pretty party girl, the good athlete, the girl everybody wanted to date—looked ragged, old, and gray in the face yet there
was still something pretty about her. She’d lost her muscle tone by age thirty, every job she ever had, and all her friends. Much as Harry admired her comeback, she didn’t particularly want to be her friend, didn’t want to see much of her.

And she wouldn’t. This was Thadia’s last day on earth.

H
arry had promised herself after her operation to try one new thing per day. It might be as quiet as reading Wilfred Owen or, like today, riding a different breed of horse with an acquaintance made on trail rides.

“Like sitting in your easy chair.” Harry smiled after jumping a three-foot-six-inch coop on Sparkle Plenty.

Following on Overdraft, her eight-year-old, Sue Rowdon enthused, “You can see why I love my Irish Draughts.”

“Can. Takes up my leg,” Harry noted.