Pestilence: A Medical Thriller Read Online Free PDF

saw his girlfriend in the middle of a group of people wearing what appeared to be Chinese peasant clothing. They even had the communist hammer and sickle embroidered on their jackets. He walked up to her and waited until she noticed him.
    “Hey,” she said, smiling widely. She came over and kissed him on the cheek. “I thought you weren’t coming?”
    “Changed my mind. Thought it’d be best to get out of the house. This is Jessica.”
    Brandi smiled a wide, fake smile. “Hi. Your dad tells me you’re staying with him this weekend?”
    “Yup.”
    “Well, I’m glad you came down here. Do you like art, Jessica?”
    “Yeah. I’ll let you know when I see some.”
    Brandi’s face looked as though someone had pissed in her drink, and though he tried not to, Howie couldn’t help but grin.
    “So show us around,” he said.
    “Sure.” Brandi smiled, stepping between the two of them before taking Howie’s arm.
    For twenty minutes, they went from photograph to photograph to crappy painting and weird video. Howie tolerated it because of the simple fact that Brandi was a knockout, and it couldn’t hurt him later to score points. But Jessica was rolling her eyes and grunting as if she were so frustrated she might have a meltdown.
    At one point, t hey met the artist, a thin woman with a butch haircut and men’s glasses, and Jessica asked her if she had dropped her camera in New York and then decided to keep the pictures.
    After Brandi had shown them around, Howie could tell she wanted to mingle and introduce him to everybody, which he definitely was not in the mood for, so he said goodnight and forcefully took Jessica’s hand as they walked outside.
    “What’s the matter with you?” he said. “She’s a friend of mine.”
    “She’s an idiot.”
    “She was polite to you , and you responded with nothing but rudeness. Who’s the idiot?”
    Jessica glanced away, her face contorting in anger. “Why do you even have me come over? You don’t like it.”
    “Jessica,” he said, kneeling down, “I love having you over.”
    “No you don’t. I heard you talking to Mom once on the phone, and you told her there was no reason for me to come over.”
    He thought back and wondered if he’d really said it . “I didn’t mean it that way.”
    “Let’s just go.”
    When they got back to the house, she went straight to her bedroom that he kept for her and slammed the door. Howie felt as if he were living with her mother again, and it brought back bad memories.
    He got a beer and then went out to the hot tub, where he stripped down to his boxers and got in. Leaning his head back against the side, he gazed at the stars and wondered if anybody was staring back at him.
    He thought to the early years, the time when he and Kaila were dirt poor and happy. They were living in a studio apartment where the heater wouldn’t turn off during the summers, so they had to soak towels in cold water and use them as blankets. The walls were so thin that he heard every one of his neighbors use the bathroom, burp, and even the crunch of their breakfast cereal when the TV wasn’t on.
    But he and Kaila had dreams. At night, they would lie awake and talk about all the things they would do once they made it. If they hung on until Howie graduated and got that first job, they would make it.
    Eventually , they made it, but somewhere along the way, they lost each other. The divorce wasn’t messy. Howie gave her everything she wanted. He didn’t fight for custody, and he even sold his Porsche that he loved and gave the money to her. He wanted out and was willing to pay any price.
    H e wondered if he’d made a mistake. Maybe he should have brought Jessica to live with him? Her mother shipped her off to boarding school while she and David went off on vacations. She had two stepbrothers, but from what Kaila had told him, they were happy, but didn’t really pay attention to Jessica. She was also hyper-intelligent and was in the gifted program at her