Chapter 21: Cast Out

The doctor was beside my father before his knees touched the carpet.

He had been waiting by the door all morning, because my father wouldn't stay in bed.

"Breathe, Mr. Gattuso. Slowly."

"She's poisoned me," my father said. "Six years."

"Let me hear your heart."

The room had gone so quiet that we could all hear the stethoscope's small rustle.

I had the real pill bottle in my vest.

The security man had returned it to me that morning, sealed in a bag, after the doctor's own tests.

I took it out and set it on the table in front of forty bosses.

I ran the chem pen over the open mouth of the bottle, and then over one pill, and then over three more.

It stayed clear.

"Doctor," I said. "What's in that bottle?"

He didn't take his eyes off his watch.

"His own prescription, filled at his own pharmacy, tested in my lab at four this morning," he said. "Nothing wrong with it."

"And the heart?"

He lifted the stethoscope.

"A frightened heart, and a strong one for its age. He is not dying. He was never dying of anything but her."

My father opened his eyes.

All the colour came back to his face at once, and with it something worse than grief.

Everyone looked at my mother.

She hadn't moved.

She stood with her hands folded and her eyes on the doctor, and the little smile was still there, but it had gone stiff.

"That was my last card," she said, to nobody. "It was a good one."

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