The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [54]
“You don’t feel bad enough, in my opinion.”
He seemed to sink even farther into the ugly chintz chair. “I need to lie down.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to lie down after I kill you.”
His voice sounded faint. “That’s funny.”
“Do you think I’m a stand-up comedian? Why did I say I came here?”
He picked up his coffee mug, a thick brown and white thing that looked like a passable murder weapon. “To read the paper to me,” he said. “And it’s very good of you.” He took a sip of the coffee.
“I’m supposed to read the paper to you. But notice I’m not. What am I doing?”
“You’re pestering me about something.”
“Pestering you?”
He looked over at the Tallahassee Democrat on the couch, tucked up close to Marylou where she could snatch it up and pretend to read if Caroline should come in. “Have we read Arts and Leisure yet?” he said. “Let’s see what movies are playing.”
“Listen. I’m going to keep telling you, as many times as it takes. I was one of the pregnant women you gave a radioactive drink to. In 1953. And here I am today, in 2006.”
He smiled at her, turning on the charm. “You look fine to me.”
“I’m not fine. My daughter died of bone cancer.”
He shook his head and sighed. “My wife died of cancer. She played her piano right up until the end. She played hymns, songs from West Side Story, everything.”
Marylou couldn’t help herself. “West Side Story? Yuk.”
“They have a piano here, but nobody plays it.”
“Cry me a river. It’s not the same thing. Helen died of cancer because you gave it to her. You gave me the radioactive cocktail and told me it was good for me. It was vitamins, you said. So you killed Helen. Can I be any more clear?”
“I gave you a cocktail?”
“No, you idiot. You were in charge of the study. At Memphis University. One of your minions gave me the drink. Nurse Bordner. But you were the doctor in charge. It was your study. You came by to say cheerio right after I’d drunk it. ‘We appreciate your cooperation,’ you said.”
“You’ve got the wrong person,” Wilson said.
“No, I don’t, but we’ll move on. I also saw you on the day Helen died. Do you remember that?”
He shook his head, so she refreshed both her memory and his.
It was on a February day in 1963. Helen lay on a bed at Memphis University Hospital—white sheet, white gown, white walls, gray girl—hours away from death. Marylou and Teddy were crouched on either side of her with their winter coats on. Teddy’s coat was red with a plaid hood. Why hadn’t they taken their coats off? By then Helen’s face had lost much of its Helenness, her lovely curving mouth now a hole drawing in ragged, irregular breaths, her formerly, plump freckled cheeks hollow. Marylou and Teddy said soothing things to the part of Helen who was there with them, kissed her forehead, alternately clinging to her and squeezing her hands and stroking her hair, hoping to get some last response, some acknowledgment that she knew them and knew she was loved—they would’ve been overjoyed to see her eyelids flickering—but there was nothing. How long had they done this? Were they crying? Or were they subdued and numb? Marylou had no idea.
What she did remember was hearing, at some point, behind her in the doorway, a rustling sound, and she’d automatically turned around, expecting to see one of the nurses or Helen’s doctor, but by that point, even if it had been President Kennedy himself she wouldn’t have cared. But it wasn’t President Kennedy; it was the same doctor she’d seen the day she’d been given the “vitamin cocktail” at the same hospital almost ten years earlier. Dr. Wilson Spriggs.
Once again he was standing in a doorway, even though it was a different doorway in an entirely different wing of the hospital. But she remembered him, even though his dark hair was graying and longer, curling around his ears, and his glasses were smaller and wire framed and he wore a fat paisley tie instead of a bow tie. He still looked foppish and pretentious. She had no idea in 1963 that the “vitamin drink” had given Helen the