The Last Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

up and turned it in his hand, imagining him and Barney playing pitch with it in the backyard on a spring afternoon. He supposed Natasha had been holding it to better remember Barney He put it back and looked down, spotting, between the sofa's cushions, a flash of white. He came up holding an envelope addressed to Natasha at her office. The return address belonged to the head of pediatric surgery at the Seattle children's hospital where she had done her residency. He lifted the flap, took out the letter, and read an offer to join her surgery professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. TaylorPatten, who practiced at Seattle Children's Medical Center, wanted her as a partner in his practice. Ward's face grew hot as he sucked in a long breath and contemplated the letter's significance.
    Ward had once wondered if the association between his wife and her mentor had been more than the usual student/teacher relationship, because of their familiarity when they were around each other. The idea now revolted and alarmed him. He'd never asked her about their relationship, just as she'd never asked him about his previous girlfriends. What he wondered as he read the letter was whether she had written her mentor first, or if he had sought her out. And his heart pounded because it reinforced his belief that, aside from Natasha's patients, there was nothing of substance holding her in North Carolina. It didn't make him feel any better to discover that the letter was dated two years earlier, because that meant she had kept it. Why had she? She had been born in Seattle, grew up and had friends and family there. She had never mentioned wanting to return, but in keeping the letter she must havebeen thinking that she might pursue the offer. She must have been thinking of getting out.
    Ward folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope, and put it back where Natasha had left it.
    Crossing to the wet bar, Ward opened the liquor cabinet and selected a bottle of Laphroaig. He poured three inches of the golden liquid into a crystal glass, clouding it with a little water from a plastic bottle, and, picking up the remote, sat down, put his stocking feet on the coffee table, and started surfing TV channels as his mind grew dull from the pleasant effects of the Scotch.

FIVE
    After Natasha left the den, she walked down the hallway, the slate cool against the soles of her bare feet. The combination of chilled wine and Ambien was an effective white noise generator. Natasha was confident that she knew enough about her own body and the drugs to ensure that she wasn't in any real danger of overdosing.There was the time, a few weeks earlier, when she had awakened in the tub half filled with cold water, dried vomit in her hair, with no memory of either throwing up or getting into the tub. She mixed the drugs only occasionally, she thought, as she ran her hand along the wall.
    She had been lucky so far that her hands hadn't started shaking during surgery. The duration of the tremors so far was short—usually a few seconds—but they seemed to be coming more often. She would have to have tests run to see what was causing this, but there was no explanation for the tremors that was good. If she had a nervous system disorder, like MS, she was screwed—her career would be over. With the diagnosis of any degenerative disease, she would have no choice but to quit performing surgery. She knew she would have to seek a diagnosis soon.
    Walking by Barney's bedroom, Natasha reached out to brush the knuckles of her left hand gently across the smooth wooden door. For nine years of nights she rarely walked past this door without pausing to visit with her son or to open the door quietly take a peek in, check on her sleeping child. The room had not changed in a year. Six months earlier, when she had men tionedto Ward that it might be time to begin thinking about boxing up just the clothes in their son's closet and few drawers, he'd started screaming at her