Venus Envy Read Online Free PDF Page B

in her brain like a piece of cotton on the boll. She wondered if she should ring the nurse or call up her pastor for the Last Rites. No, she’d lived this life fundamentally alone. She might as well die alone. Frazier Armstrong fell into a boiling sleep from which she never expected to return.
    The descent into Hell had begun.

3
    T HE OFFICIAL BEGINNING OF SPRING WAS THREE WEEKS IN the future but already the predawn light cast a softer gray glow on the horizon. The peepers sang down at the lake, indicating they cared little for official dates. The horses, cats, and dogs were shedding their coats, and bluebirds would soon awaken to dart along fence lines and bushes searching for a suitable nest site. A great heron poised at the edge of the lake appeared ghostly in the pale light.
    Jogging along the dirt road through his property, Dr. Yancey Weems breathed in the cool air laden with moisture. Running in forty-degree weather suited him and he had learned to rise before dawn during his days as an intern. Like most early risers he prided himself upon this trait and felt superior to those slugabeds who awakened at 7:30 or 8:00 A.M.
    His beeper disturbed his reverie and rhythm. Cursing,he turned and ran back toward his work shed, where there was a telephone.
    Yancey picked up his message to call Thornton Rogers, head of oncology at Albemarle General Hospital in Charlottesville. He knew it wouldn’t be a happy call. Which of his patients had surrendered at last?
    “Thornton, Yancey here.”
    “Get your ass down here faster than a crow flies, Yancey,” Thornton commanded. Thornton commanded everyone, except for his wife. “We’ve got a problem.”
    “Who?”
    “Mary Frazier Armstrong. Just get here.”

4
    W INKING OVER THE HORIZON, THE FLAMING HALO OF THE sun announced hope and happiness and a new day. Apollo had again replaced his sister in the sky, the sun kissed the moon goodbye, and day enjoyed victory.
    Yancey Weems, sent on this mission by Thornton Rogers, bent over Frazier’s inert form. The nurse quietly rolled away the morphine drip and the other machines.
    “Mary Frazier.” Yancey sounded shaky. “Mary Frazier, wake up.”
    Frazier rolled over, the remnants of Terese Collier’s makeup more on the pillow than on her face.
    “Here.” Yancey handed her a cup of real coffee. “Slug up first.”
    The hot liquid popped her internal clutch into first gear. “I’m here now. I mean, my brain is warming up.”
    “Uh, Mary Frazier, honey, we’ve known one another for a long time. I’ve known your family ever since Imoved here for my residency, and well …” Beads of sweat dotted Yancey’s upper lip, though it wasn’t remotely hot. “And well, I have wonderful news but please don’t sue me. I’ll take care of everything. I swear I will.”
    “Will you cut to the chase? I may be dying but I’m not dumb.”
    “That’s just it. You’re not dying. You’re as healthy as a horse except for a severe case of bronchitis and stress—you’re under a lot of stress. Work, I reckon.”
    Frazier didn’t move a muscle. Then she felt her face. She touched her wrist to feel her pulse. She pinched her arm, then shouted, “Thank you, Jesus!” She remembered the other patients. “Sorry, Yancey.”
    “Oh, it’s quite understandable. I would dance a jig myself. This whole thing is due to a computer error—I want you to understand that. We enter data according to social security number and a lab-work order number, and somehow your numbers became scrambled with another individual’s who, as luck would have it, was having symptoms somewhat similar to yours. I think a lab technician punched up a wrong digit. The X-rays from last night show that your lungs are clear—remarkably so, given that you’re a smoker. ‘Course your bronchial tubes are infected but”—he paused to catch his own breath—“Thornton Rogers and I would have caught this right away if we could have gotten the X-rays when we wanted