Page 54 of Tear Me Apart

“Hi, Woody. It’s Juliet.”

“My brilliant one. What’s happening? Are you ill? I stopped by the lab this morning, and Bai said you were out.”

“I have a personal issue. You know my niece has cancer?”

“Yes, the poor thing. She’s not improving, I take it?”

“No, and we’ve had a bit of a personal family revelation about something, and my sister has asked for my help. I have vacation days accrued—”

“Juliet, seriously, take the week. I don’t know that we can spare you for more than that without advance warning, but you do what you need to, and if you need more time, just shout. We are all rooting for Mindy. She’s our champion.”

“You’re the best, Woody. Thank you.”

“No, you’re the best. That sample you ran last week, from the quadruple murder in Golden? We just nailed the sucker. Can you believe it, they’d been looking at the wrong man all this time?”

“Because they were looking for a man. It’s so rare for a woman to do something so heinous.”

“Rare, but you never know. Women can be just as ruthless as men when they need to.”

“No kidding. Thanks so much for the time off, Woody. I’ll keep in touch in case something breaks and you need me immediately. Otherwise, Bai has control of the lab, and all will be well.”

“Copy that. Good luck. Call if you need me for anything, I’m happy to help.”

Wondering how things are going at the hospital, she thinks through her plan of action. Interview hospital staff, find out if by chance there are videotapes from the time frame, which is a long shot, but neonatal is a whole different story than the rest of the hospital. It’s worth a try.

And she needs to look up everything she can find on the name Graciela. With any luck, she’ll find a last name through the hospital records and the woman will be living somewhere in the Denver metropolitan area, and life will be grand.

Yeah, right. The odds of things going smoothly from here on out are astronomical, without a doubt, but it is worth being optimistic, at least until she has reason to feel otherwise.

And of course, there is the database, churning through millions of profiles, searching for the truth.

One way or the other, their mystery is about to be unraveled.

29

VAIL HEALTH HOSPITAL

Mindy is watching the downhill from Val d’Isère, fighting feeling sorry for herself that she isn’t there, when her parents appear in the doorway, clutching a bag of her favorite cookies. She knows something major is up. Her mom was supposed to be finding a room to do yoga, and instead, here they are together, almost creeping into the room, eyes sliding to the side, not meeting hers at all.

She is dead. She knows it. They have some sort of test result that confirms it. She felt so awful yesterday morning, but once Dr. Oliver gave her the shot, she was better. But it wasn’t enough.

Tears begin to leak immediately. She doesn’t want to die. She feels the cancer moving through her, like a shadow in her blood. It has grown in the past few days, is becoming harder and harder to fight. She isn’t a quitter, though, and is doing everything she can to keep it at bay. Its snapping jaws are just there, out of reach, but for how long?

So now they are going to tell her it is all over, and she has to give in gracefully, and they are prepared to let her go. It is inevitable, but it pisses her off. She wants to ski again, wants to feel the wind whip past her face. She bets they won’t let her out of their sight for a minute now. They’re going to condemn her to rot away in this hospital bed until she can’t even move and the pain becomes so great they drug her into oblivion to make it all stop.

This is not the path she’d choose.

“You can tell me,” she says, steeling herself. “I already know what you’re going to say.”

Her parents stare at her, and for a moment, she wavers. No, she is going to be strong, she is going to decide how things end. She read the story about the girl who moved to Washington so she could have euthanasia. Mindy doesn’t think she’ll have to go that far; she’ll be able to convince them to get her out on the slopes once more. She’ll take one run for pleasure, and the second, right off the side of the mountain. She can almost feel the thin air buffeting her as she falls...

Her dad closes the door. Her mom sits on the side of the bed, pulling the covers straight. Mindy feels claustrophobic all of a sudden and rips them back. Her mother frowns once, then puts on a perfectly blank face.

“Sweetheart, what we need to talk to you about is going to come as a shock.”

“I’m dying,” Mindy says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I already know. They can’t find a donor, and I’m not going to make it.”

Jasper pulls a chair to the bed on the other side.