Hearts of Sand(22)

Part of being careful in the founding and running of the free clinic was his choice of where to live. He hadn’t been silly enough to think he could afford a house in Alwych at the same time he was telling single mothers they didn’t have to worry about getting a bill for Susie’s flu vaccination and Tommy’s set leg. Tim Brand lived in a “condominium townhome,” which had been ridiculously expensive, but at least within the realm of basic sanity.

This morning, he had gotten up and showered as soon as he accepted the fact that sleep was over for the night. Then he had gone to Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

After Mass was over, he went out to stand on the steps and look down the hill at the town. The priest stopped and asked him if he felt all right. He brushed it off.

He took his run the long way. He went down by Beach Drive and the Atlantic Club. He watched the waves coming up on the shore.

He ran down the Drive and up again. Then he headed off through the houses and the stores toward the hospital and the clinic. The hospital was not a Catholic hospital. It hadn’t had to do anything ridiculous when the law was passed that required all emergency rooms to provide the morning-after pill to rape victims. The hospital emergency room was so close to the clinic, he could walk there in under three minutes. Ambulances arrived at the doors of the emergency room all the time. No ambulances arrived at the clinic. There were good reasons why, if he went toe to toe with the Office of the Health Care Advocate and the Office of Health Care Access, he would very certainly win.

The problem, of course, was that winning—that way—was not the issue here.

Tim got to the clinic parking lot. The clinic was open, because it always was, but there was almost nobody waiting.

Tim let himself in through the front door. He nodded at the volunteer on reception and went on through to the back. He passed the door to the room where Maartje was sorting mail. She looked up and waved to him. He waved back and kept on going.

He went past empty examining rooms and empty offices. He got all the way to his own office and stopped. Marcie was in there, going through the paper records of their books. They always kept paper records as well as computer records, just in case.

Marcie looked up when he stopped at the door and gave him a faint smile. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

“I couldn’t either,” Tim said. “We’d better start finding ways to sleep, or we’re going to start making mistakes when we really can’t afford to. Did you really buy one of those silly books about the Waring case?”

Marcie picked it up and looked it over. “It was at the checkout this morning when I went into the pharmacy to buy aspirin. I bought the aspirin, I bought the book, and I bought a little Fourth of July teddy bear to give to the little Desini boy the next time his mother brings him in.”

“Did we talk to Yale about that?” Tim asked. “I thought we were going—”

“I got a call from the financial department about his insurance.”

“Ah,” Tim said. “Maybe we should try Saint Raphael’s.”

“They’re merging with Yale.”

“Mary Desini is absolutely never going to let us do a public appeal.”

“I know.”

Tim came all the way into the room. Marcie was sitting in his chair behind his desk. He took one of the other chairs and sat down.

“We’re going to need lawyers,” he said finally.

“Well,” Marcie said. “That was the idea, wasn’t it?”

“I think the idea was for Virginia to be able to tell her hard-core base that she was moving against ‘theocracy.’ Not that she’s ever going to admit in public that she’s behind this thing. If she did, she’d kill any chance she had of being elected, even in Connecticut. But there are ways to get the word out without admitting anything, and Virginia knows all of them.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Marcie said.

“It’s ridiculous, but it’s just plausible enough so that we can’t count on its being thrown out the first time we appear before a judge. And that, Marcie, means we’re going to need lawyers.”

“Does she really think the world would be a better place if this clinic shut down?”

“I think she thinks the world would be a better place if nobody in it thought like us,” Tim said. “I’ve never really understood Virginia.”

“She’s a rich girl who wants to go on being rich.”

“If that was all it was, she could have stayed married to Kyle Westervan and devoted her life to giving parties. There’s something else driving that woman. There always has been, even when we were both children. And I’ve never known what is it.”