The Magic Bullet Read online

  ANDREW

  NEIDERMAN

  THE MAGIC BULLET

  LEISURE BOOKS NEW YORK CITY

  For George and Annie, my parents,

  who gave me the foundation upon which to build my castle.

  And for my wife,

  Diane, who is and always has been my Magic Bullet.

  THE IMPOSSIBLE CURE

  “What is it, Lois?” Demi asked, her hand on her heart. Her legs felt like they were turning into jelly. She really believed she was about to faint.

  “It’s Jodi.”

  “Oh, God.”

  She felt the tears coming.

  “No…she’s…completely better,” Lois said.

  “What?” Demi shook her head as if her ears weren’t working correctly. “What are you saying, Lois?”

  “Jodi. She went into a remission so quickly and so completely, the doctor’s stupefied.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No one does. They’ve tested her twice. They can’t find any evidence of cancer. You should see her. She’s eating everything in sight, and she wants to go home. Demi, it’s a miracle!”

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The Impossible Cure

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  Eight-year-old Jodi Walker lay terminally ill in the Palm Springs Desert Hospital. She was in a private room and resembled a doll in the large hospital bed. Strands of her once vibrant golden-brown hair looked more like fading hay brushed over the pillow. Her hazel-green eyes were almost always closed now, the lids occasionally fluttering spasmodically as if she were struggling to open them. Lying beside her, her favorite doll had its own eyes closed. It seemed to be mimicking her.

  No one stated it outright, but whenever visitors for other patients or even hospital personnel looked in on her, a gray pallor came over their faces, and they averted their gaze quickly to deny the morbid reality. It was as if Death had moved closer and closer, its shadow just a moment or two behind, but deep enough and large enough to drape itself over everyone and everything within ten feet of the room.

  And whenever Lois and Ralph Walker walked through the corridors, those who knew who they were and what they were about to lose avoided them or looked through them. No face is more filled with pain than the face of a parent about to lose a child. They wore translucent masks of denial, under which were layers and layers of raw horror. One could almost hear the primal anger and pain echoing down the hallways. It reached deep into the very core of those within what now looked to be caves housing the lost and soon forgotten. Visitors tightened their grips on the hands of their ill friends and relatives when Lois and Ralph Walker passed by their doorways, their two bodies moving in a funeral gait, looking detached from their very souls.

  As silently as ghosts themselves, the Walkers entered their daughter’s room as if they feared they might wake the sleeping patient and the Grim Reaper folded at Jodi’s feet. Ralph went to sit at his daughter’s side. Lois quietly went to the phone.

  Demi Petersen had been expecting her sister Lois’s phone call. She had already discussed the subject with her son, Taylor. The Walkers were having difficulty finding blood donors. Jodi’s blood type was Type O/Rh negative, and so was Taylor’s. Normally, it was preferred that the donor be at least seventeen years old. Taylor was only fifteen, but with Demi’s consent, the Walker’s oncologist, Dr. Weber, was willing to have him be a donor.

  “She needs the platelets,” Lois said in a voice that sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of a deep tunnel instead of a telephone. “But Doctor Weber also wants to transfuse white cells. She’s not reacting to the antibiotics. I wouldn’t ask if we had another choice. You know that, Demi. I hate asking.”

  “Of course you should ask, and you don’t have to hate doing it, Lois. Taylor wants to donate. You know how fond he is of Jodi. He always looked after her like an older brother. They were so cute together,” Demi said and stopped when she realized she was starting to couch her words in the past tense.

  “I know it’s traumatic for a boy Taylor’s age to be brought to the hospital and hooked up to tubes that take his blood. It’s still traumatic for me, and I’m in my thirties,” Lois said and followed it with a slight, thin laugh.

  “Taylor won’t be upset. You know how he is. He feeds on a challenge, and he loves to confront his fears. He’s just like Buddy that way. If you merely imply he can’t do it, he’ll want to do it more, and he’ll do it better than you ever expected. I don’t think there’s another boy his age who can deal so maturely with his emotions.”

  Demi could hear Lois’s deep breathing. She had to keep talking. If she stopped, she would burst into tears, and especially now, Lois needed her to be strong.

  “I look to him for advice half the time. Warren says he’s a sixty-year-old man in a fifteen-year-old’s body. Although, he usually doesn’t mean it as a compliment.”

  “Are they getting along any better?” Lois asked, not really wanting to hear about it.

  “There’s an uneasy truce. I guess I should have checked it out with him before I started dating Warren, but it’s been nearly two years since Buddy died and…”

  “Eventually he’ll understand,” Lois said.

  “Oh, Taylor understands. He just doesn’t like it. But that’s not important now. What’s important is getting him over to the hospital to give the blood. It’s wonderful that he is able to do it. When do you need him there?”

  “Yesterday. She’s bad, Demi. They’re not saying it, but I know it’s only a matter of days. If we’re lucky,” she added, and laughed again. “Imagine thinking that would make us lucky.”

  “Stop,” Demi said. She was the original ostrich who had faith that if you ignored something enough, it would simply disappear. Their mother always accused her of being unrealistic or burying her head in the sand. “Don’t dare say such a thing. I won’t hear it. I won’t.”

  “Seems hard to believe, doesn’t it? For us, it’s still just a bad dream. Both of us keep hoping we’ll wake up and laugh with relief. Imagine? I wonder if I’ll ever laugh again.”

  Demi could hear how her sister’s throat tightened when she spoke. The words were being squeezed out a syllable at a time as if the Grim Reaper had a tight grip on her neck as well. It wasn’t difficult to imagine her grief and depression afterward leading her to the same dark hole.

  “Lois, I’m so worried about you.”

  “Don’t worry.” The tone of her voice changed to a firmer, almost stoically official one. “I may look like the walking dead, but I’m okay. Bring him in the morning before school, if you can. It’s all arranged. Call me if there’s a problem and I’ll look for other donors. I know how Taylor feels after being at this hospital, the hospital where his father died. You’ve told me often how he avoids looking at the building whenever you drive by.”

  “There won’t be a problem,” Demi promised.

  “You know what I was thinking yesterday, Demi? I was thinking how good it is that Mommy and Daddy are gone and they don’t have to see this.”

  This time Demi couldn’t speak. She had thought the same thing often. She took a deep breath and squeezed back the tears.

  “Lois, you’ve got to hold yourself together. Somehow…” she managed before her own th
roat tightened.

  “I’ll call you, if there’s any change,” her sister offered. It was the best she could do.

  After Demi hung up the receiver, she sat on the stool in her kitchen and stared blankly at the microwave as if the glass door were a television screen. Indeed, she was seeing pictures: pictures of Jodi and Taylor, pictures of her and Buddy and Taylor enjoying a Sunday barbecue at Lois and Ralph’s house during happier days when everyone she loved was still alive and healthy.

  She sighed deeply and ran her right hand through her thick, dark-brown hair, brushing it back and down to her shoulders. Kiki was upset with her for continuing to keep it that long. He never hesitated to say what-ever he thought, the consequences be damned. He wanted all of his beauticians to have their hair cut and styled as models for the customers. It was even his self-anointed brilliant idea to have each of his stylists wear a different style so the customers would immediately see choices.

  “If all the women in Palm Springs let their hair grow as long as yours, Demi, we wouldn’t have much business. You’re setting some example, thank you,” he told her, twisting and turning his shoulders so emphatically she thought he would tear himself apart.

  However, she knew he was right when it came to promoting his salon, but Demi had resisted because Taylor liked her hair longer, and she felt guilty about her relationship with Warren, guilty enough to want to do things to please Taylor. Warren didn’t mind her hair long and didn’t care if she cut it short. Any other woman would probably find her lover’s indifference troublesome, but she didn’t give it much thought. In the back of her mind, even though Warren had moved in, she couldn’t see the relationship ever lasting. For now they had fun together, and that seemed to be enough.

  “What is it?” Taylor asked. “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  From the expression on his face, she knew he had been standing there staring at her for a while. He stood in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest, just the way Buddy used to whenever he was getting ready for a serious conversation. Her son was growing more and more like her dead husband. He had Buddy’s lighter brown hair and Buddy’s deep set, dark-brown eyes. He was going to be tall like Buddy, and slim, too. He had Buddy’s smile, which was just a tiny tucking of the corners of his mouth, and a twinkle in his eyes.

  And, like Buddy, he always sensed when something was bothering her. He was also just as successful at making her laugh, making her forget. He was the antidote to doom and gloom, the sunshine on a dark cloudy day. Her sister Lois, she thought, would be losing this precious gift, her child. Her own fear of such a loss convinced her that her sister would not survive.

  “It was Aunt Lois,” Demi said.

  “Jodi needs my blood?”

  She nodded. “The platelets like we discussed, and also your white blood cells.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow morning. We’ll go early, before school. Is that all right?”

  “I’ll have To move the president back an hour or so, but it will be all right,” he said.

  Demi smiled. “It’s very nice of you to do this for your little cousin, honey.”

  Taylor shrugged.

  “What am I doing? If I could invent a cure for leukemia, I would be doing something. What’s for dinner?”

  “Warren’s bringing Chinese.”

  “He always brings the hot and spicy stuff I hate. Can’t you make me some eggs?”

  “Is that all you want?”

  He thought a moment.

  “I read someplace that when a person gives blood he should eat steak. We got any?”

  “I think I do have a T-bone in the freezer. I bought it for Warren last week, but he forgot.” She looked and nodded. “I’ll defrost it in the microwave.”

  “Warren told me real men eat their meat raw. He said he likes it still wiggling on the plate and then wiggling in his mouth and stomach. I think it even wiggles when he goes to the bathroom.”

  “Stop,” Demi said.

  “I’m not joking. He said he likes it biting back.”

  “Oh, he did not.”

  “I like it dead,” Taylor added.

  “I know how you like your steak, Taylor,” Demi said. She smiled at him and nodded. “I gave you a good haircut. It’s growing in even this time.”

  Taylor shrugged again. It was really just a quick lift of his shoulders that was so Buddy-like it made her heart ache.

  “I didn’t think mine was so bad last time. Warren’s looked bad.”

  “No, it didn’t,” Demi said laughing.

  Taylor widened his eyes as if a brilliant thought had just arrived.

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter what he looks like. Maybe nothing will help.”

  “Taylor!”

  “I gotta go do my homework. Test tomorrow in English. I have to transfuse my knowledge to the paper, too.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you. It’s nice what you’re doing, honey. Other boys your age…”

  “I hope it helps,” he said and dropped his shoulders just the way Buddy used to when a dark thought crossed his mind. Then he turned and walked off, leaving Demi feeling like she was on a sailboat in a dead calm.

  Demi thought there was something magical about the mornings in Palm Springs, especially during March and April. The dark shadows of evening thinned with the sun peering over the San Andreas Mountains and became extensions of dreams, weblike, ethereal, no longer silhouettes cast by the grand brown hills but veils being softly pulled back to reveal the glistening sidewalks and streets, the bright bougainvillea and oleander bushes, the trimmed hedges and lawns along the well-manicured golf courses. It was truly as if some deific magician edged back his grand handkerchief to illustrate his wonder. Where was that magician now, when they needed him so badly?

  After Buddy’s untimely death, Demi had lost her faith in spiritual things. A heart attack was, ironically, the least feared danger in her mind when it came to him. He should have been the cancer victim, not poor little Jodi. There had been good reason to believe that might happen to Buddy.

  A year before Taylor was born, Buddy had been one of a dozen or so people accidentally exposed to a high dosage of radioactivity at the nuclear energy facility in Palo Alto. Many of his coworkers had come down with some form of cancer over the following ten years, but he had no signs of any tumors or blood trouble. They thought he had escaped serious illness. Soured on working in the plant, Buddy became a computer programmer and took a job in Palm Springs. Life was promising again, but two weeks after Taylor’s tenth birthday, Buddy had a heart attack on the job. It was truly as if he had been shot.

  One day they were laughing and talking about selling their house and building a home in the Indian Canyons of Palm Springs, and the next day she received a phone call telling her he was on his way to the ER. She dropped everything. She had just started dinner. Taylor came with her, and all the time she drove to the hospital, she chanted, “He’ll be all right. This is a mistake. It can’t be. He’ll be all right.”

  She remembered laughing in the midst of her grief that day.

  “Buddy and I were always expecting him to develop some form of cancer. After Palo Alto, the odds were not in his favor. We never thought about a heart attack,” she told the emergency room doctor. He listened politely, but he didn’t understand because he didn’t know about Palo Alto.

  For a while afterward, she convinced herself he wasn’t really dead; he was just away on a job. In his place, some surrogate volunteered to fake his death.

  It was just her way of avoiding reality again, she thought, pretending it never happened. Actually, her sister Lois had it wrong. It wasn’t Taylor who freaked at the sight of the hospital because of Buddy’s death; it was her. She was the one who had to swallow hard, close her eyes, take deep breaths and then move forward talking about other things, other places. Taylor, as usual, dug his hands into his pockets, put his head down and charged forward.

  Maybe that determination stemmed from his short, but caustic conversation
the night before at dinner when Demi told Warren that Lois had asked for Taylor to donate his blood.

  “Won’t do any good,” he had said as he chewed and savored the Szechwan shrimp dish. “Just prolongs the inevitable, tortures the kid.”

  “Warren, how could you say that?” Demi asked. Sometimes he could be so cold she wondered how he could also be so loving. Or was that just simply sexual excitement? Lately, she had been closing her eyes, pretending she was with Buddy. She was afraid Warren would somehow realize it.

  “It’s easy for him to say it,” Taylor remarked. “He’s not the one with leukemia.”

  The way Taylor spoke, it was clear even to Demi that he wished Warren was the one in the hospital. Warren put his fork down and sat back.

  “Hear that? Hear the way he talks to an adult?”

  “Adult?” Taylor said looking up. He turned his head to search the room.

  “Smart-ass. When I was his age, I didn’t say a word at the dinner table.”

  “Probably couldn’t think of anything to say,” Taylor quipped.

  “Taylor. Stop it,” Demi said. Somewhere inside, she was laughing, though she kept it well hidden. Warren eyed her suspiciously, searching her lips for the slightest sign of a smile.

  “Let me take a hand to him and he’ll mind.”

  “I told you a million times, Warren. I don’t believe in hitting.”

  “Easy to see the result of that,” he said, nodding toward Taylor.

  “He happens to be an A+ student. All his teachers rave about him.”

  “They don’t have to live with him.”

  “You don’t either,” Taylor shot back.

  “Taylor, please,” Demi said and raised her eyebrows.

  Taylor pressed his lips together and then concentrated on his food.

  “Kid’s right about something,” Warren remarked after a few more moments. “I don’t.”

  Everyone ate in silence. Afterward, Warren went out, and Demi went up to Taylor’s room. He was already in front of his computer, tapping away at the keys, weaving that magical electronic loom, just the way Buddy used to do it. She watched from the doorway for a while, intrigued and amazed at the child who had come from her body. Surely some of the seeds of this intellectual curiosity had to have been in her, which could mean she never achieved what she was capable of achieving herself. She should have gone to college, perhaps. She had decent grades in high school, and she loved to read.