Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

my life saw a man gulp fresh air like Rob did when we were out of there. He staggered to the car, a broken man. “Rebecca, let’s get a drink.”
    “You’re supposed to be a hard-boiled reporter.”
    “I’m a wreck. Next time let’s go watch a baby having open heart surgery or something. Something I can handle.”
    I had to admit it had been pretty harrowing. We drove back to the Chronicle , where Rob had left his car, and headed for the M&M, where generations of similarly wrecked reporters had drowned their sorrows. “One thing,” he said, beer safely in hand and about three-quarters down the hatch, “a pattern seems to be emerging.”
    “You mean about Jason’s women?”
    “Yes. A first string and a second string, but he only slept with the second string.”
    “I thought a pattern was supposed to make sense.”

Chapter Thirteen
    Carolyn Perimutter consulted her notes. “It says here you think you have a lump in your breast.”
    “Carolyn. I do have a lump in my breast. I’ve felt it about eight times.”
    “Well, let’s have a look.”
    As I lay back with my hands behind my head, the prescribed posture for breast examinations, I was aware of how wet my palms were. Fresh sweat was breaking out in my armpits. Every time fingers touched skin, I flinched.
    “Nervous, huh?”
    I’d been going to Carolyn for ten years. What did I have to hide? “Scared shitless.”
    She stopped, pawing over an area— the one where The Thing was— a little more thoroughly; then she did it again. Without saying anything, she went on to the other breast. She wasn’t going to say a word until she’d finished the exam. But I couldn’t stand it. “What do you think?”
    “I feel something, but it’s fibrous. I want to see if I can get fluid out of it.”
    “What’s that about?”
    “If I get fluid, we don’t have to worry.”
    I watched her attach a needle to its syringe. At least it was a small one.
    “Okay, try to relax.”
    Sure.
    “Ouch.”
    “Okay. Let’s wait a minute while that gets numb.”
    “That wasn’t it?”
    “That was the xylocaine.” Now she attached a businesslike needle. I averted my eyes.
    A moment later Carolyn was saying, “You can sit up now,” by which I imagined the worst was over.
    I rose, pulling up the hospital gown. She said, “I’d like to refer you to Charlie Suzawa. He’s an excellent surgeon; really a prince of a guy, I promise you. Honestly, I refer everyone to him now.”
    I couldn’t believe what she was saying. Hadn’t she left out a chapter or three? “You didn’t get any fluid?”
    “No, I didn’t. And with a lump as big as this one, I really think we need a surgeon’s opinion.”
    “Oh, opinion . I thought I was going under the knife.”
    “He might— well, he’ll probably want a biopsy.”
    A biopsy. There it was, the B word. I’d been expecting this; I had known I’d get sent for a biopsy. Why was the word so awful? Why was my heart pounding so hard? Because I was flat-out terrified, that was why. All it took was that one little word to reduce a competent lawyer to boneless protoplasm, a quivering puddle in the corner.
    I got in my car and found my hands were shaking. Okay. I wouldn’t drive drunk, and I shouldn’t drive boneless. I got out and walked around the block, trying to breathe deeply, to banish the thing at least long enough to restore muscle coordination. But there is something about a purely physical fear without adrenaline behind it— it doesn’t seem to respond to ordinary attempts to get rid of it. I finally got in and drove, the steering wheel so slick from sweat I knew I was dead if I had to react suddenly. Slow and easy, I thought; it’s just a few blocks. Some creep on my rear end leaned on his horn, and the fear doubled. The car swerved nearly out of control, but I got it back in its lane. The creep passed on the right. If I’d had a coronary, my estate could have sued big.
    It was too much to handle by myself. I sailed past Kruzick and right into Chris’s office, where I plopped down in the client’s chair. Chris looked up, alarmed. “What is it? You feel awful, don’t you? Omigod, you’re white as a ghost— which never look white to me, by the way. You must be alive.”
    “You see ghosts too?”
    “I guess so, if you want to call them that. But not so much anymore— mostly when I was a kid. And never, never anybody I knew or ever even heard of, just sort of nonpeople in period clothes.”
    “God, I’m