In contrast, mine looked about as densely packed as a political headquarters two hours after the candidate has conceded.
“This is treatable, right?” I
asked him. More like I was telling him.
“It’s treatable, Lindsay,” Orenthaler said, after a pause. “But it’s serious.”
A week ago, I had come in simply because my eyes were runny and blotchy and I’d discovered some blood in my panties and every day by three I was suddenly feeling like some iron-deficient gnome was inside me siphoning off my energy. Me, of the regular double shifts and fourteen-hour days. Six weeks’ accrued vacation.
“How serious are we talking about?” I asked, my voice catching.
“Red blood cells are vital to the body’s process of oxygenation,” Orenthaler began to explain. “Hemopoiesis, the formation of blood cells in the bone marrow.”
“Dr. Roy, this isn’t a medical conference. How serious are we talking about?”
“What is it you want to hear, Lindsay? Diagnosis or possibility?”
“I want to hear the truth.”
Orenthaler nodded. He got up and came around the desk and took my hand. “Then here’s the truth, Lindsay. What you have is life threatening.”
“Life threatening?” My heart stopped. My throat was as dry as parchment.
“Fatal, Lindsay.”
Chapter 4
THE COLD, BLUNT SOUND of the word hit me like a hollow-point shell between the eyes.
Fatal, Lindsay.
I waited for Dr. Roy to tell me this was all some kind of sick joke. That he had my tests mixed up with someone else’s.
“I want to send you to a hematologist, Lindsay,” Orenthaler went on. “Like a lot of diseases, there are stages. Stage one is when there’s a mild depletion of cells. It can be treated with monthly transfusions. Stage two is when there’s a systemic shortage of red cells.
“Stage three would require hospitalization. A bone marrow transplant. Potentially, the removal of your spleen.”
“So where am I?” I asked, sucking in a cramped lungful of air.
“Your erythrocytic count is barely two hundred per cc of raw blood. That puts you on the cusp.”
“The cusp?”
“The cusp,” the doctor said, “between stages two and three.”
There comes a point in everybody’s life when you realize the stakes have suddenly changed. The carefree ride of your life slams into a stone wall; all those years of merely bouncing along, life taking you where you want to go, abruptly end. In my job, I see this moment forced on people all the time.
Welcome to mine.
“So what does this mean?” I asked weakly. The room was spinning a little now.
“What it means, Lindsay, is that you’re going to have to undergo a prolonged regimen of intensive treatment.”
I shook my head. “What does it mean for my job?”
I’d been in Homicide for six years now, the past two as lead homicide inspector. With any luck, when my lieutenant was up for promotion, I’d be in line for his job. The department needed strong women. They could go far. Until that moment, I had thought that I would go far.
“Right now,” the doctor said, “I don’t think it means anything. As long as you feel strong while you’re undergoing treatment, you can continue to work. In fact, it might even be good therapy.”