Now she sat in a chair in the hall outside her mother’s door and listened to Bobby and Christopher arguing in the foyer, their voices sharper than usual against the interminable carols. She was very tired. Since Christmas Eve, her fear had been absolute—that Mother would die before she had a chance to get ready for it, that Mother would die before she managed to get a grip on herself, that Mother would die. God only knew she ought to be used to the idea. Mother had been dying for years. Maybe that was the problem. Mother had been dying for years, but not in any danger of being dead, until that attack in November that had brought them all running home for Christmas. Anne Marie had to admit it. That was the first time she had really believed it was going to happen.
Somewhere inside Mother’s room, a chair scraped against hardwood. The doctor was getting up, getting ready to leave. Anne Marie stood up herself, trying to force an expression on her face, the one the doctor was expecting to see. She didn’t do a very good job of it. She hadn’t known Emma very well, that was the problem. With all the worry about money, with all the strain of keeping the house going when Daddy was still alive and likely to go crazy at least once a day; Anne Marie hadn’t had the emotional energy to care about a sister she had never really known and very rarely saw. Bobby was the same way. She had seen it in his face when she told him. Christopher’s reaction had come as a complete surprise. Such a complete surprise, in fact, that Anne Marie had almost thought he must be faking.
The chair scraped again—back into position, probably. Then there was the sound of metal things being tossed against each other, followed by a sharp snap. A moment later, the door opened. Anne Marie looked up to find Dr. Borra’s sour young face glaring at her over the velvet collar of a Chesterfield coat. Dr. Borra’s face was always sour. Years ago, on the day he’d been taken into the Rittenhouse Square practice where he was now a full partner, he’d been apprised of the “special circumstances” under which that practice served the Hannafords. He still didn’t like them. To Dr. Borra, neither $400 million nor family connections going back to six generations gave anybody a right to house calls.
Anne Marie smoothed her skirt, stared at the floor, and said, “Well?”
“Well what?” Dr. Borra said.
Anne Marie looked up angrily. “Well, how is she, for one thing,” she said. “You’ve been in there for forty-five minutes. You must have found out something.”
“Found out what?” Dr. Borra said. “Miss Hannaford, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this—an infinity of times, as far as I can see—but people don’t die of adult onset lateral multiple sclerosis. Not these days. They get weak. They become prone to opportunistic infections. They don’t die of—”
“You should have been here a few days ago,” Anne Marie said. “She certainly looked like she was going to die of it.”
“Shock.” Dr. Borra shrugged. “I told you when you called on Christmas Eve. She should have come in to the hospital.”
“She doesn’t want to go to the hospital.”
“I know what she doesn’t want, Miss Hannaford. I’m merely telling you what she should have. All I can do is make suggestions. If the patient won’t take them, I can’t force her.”
“Meaning if I want to indulge her, you can’t force me.”
“Well, Miss Hannaford, she’s hardly competent, is she? I could go to any medical review board in the country and make a good case for total mental breakdown.”
“That’s because you don’t live with her,” Anne Marie said. “Believe me, she’s perfectly competent. She just has a little trouble expressing herself.”
Dr. Borra shrugged, again. Anne Marie looked away, down the hall, to where the yellow plastic strips of the police seals gleamed falsely under the dim hallway lights. The police seals annoyed her unreasonably. There they sat, a great big boulder in the middle of an already rocky road, one more obstacle to be gotten around on her way to—what? Anne Marie didn’t know what she was on her way to, anymore. She was just furious at Emma, for causing all this trouble.
“Tell me,” she said, “have you got any idea, now that you’ve seen her, how long she’s going to be able to last? Should I expect her to die tomorrow? Should I expect her to live to 1995?”
“Yes,” Dr. Borra said.
“Don’t be juvenile. This isn’t an anxious relative question. My father is dead, in case you don’t remember—”
“It would be hard to forget. It made the front page of The Inquirer.”