The Writer and The Word (02)

Angela had been lying there, listening to his voice, listening to the possibilities of coincidence and . . .

There was a gentle knock on the stateroom door.

+

"Sum?" It was his Dad's voice.

"Yeah, Dad, be there in a minute."

"Say, Sum, meet me up on the bridge, O.K.? ASAP."

If Angela had recognized some tension in Bennett Welles' voice, Sumner heard outright alarm. "Angela, better let me go up and find out what's up . . ."

"Do you think he's mad about you being in here with . . ."

"Good God, no. That was his maintaining his cool while something bad has happened voice. That means something truly bad has happened. Let me see what's up, and I'll be right back down."

"Should I get dressed?"

"If we need you up there I'll call down on the intercom . . . the telephone will ring," he said, pointing to the phone on the bedside table. He walked over to the door, and turned to look at her. "Wherever you want to go, Angela, I want to be there beside you. Alright?"

She turned to look at him, but he had already left the room.

+

"Sum, an internist at Mass Gen called about twenty minutes ago, a Dr Marc Greenbaum. His daughter had called him at home, she says she knows you, was in Scotland with you last month. She was with another girl, I don't know who, I think he said Westhoven, but apparently this Westhoven girl tried to commit suicide . . . Sum?"

Sumner Welles had gone white at the mere mention of Diane Westhoven and suicide in the same sentence.

"Sumner, what going on here, is it anything I need to be aware of? Do I need to wake up some lawyers?"

Sumner pulled himself back together. "Can we get a hold of this Dr Greenbaum? I need to talk to him, or better yet, his daughter."

The ship's Captain was busy on the helm, but his mate was up on the bridge, and started to make the call when Mr Welles looked at him and nodded.

"So, Sum, what's this all about?"

He told his father what he knew. He recounted meeting this Westhoven woman on the flight home last week, what had happened and what he'd said to her afterwards. He went over the telephone call today, yesterday, he corrected himself, and her declaration of love. He went over the conversation he'd had with her again in his mind to think if he'd forgotten something.

"Diane Westhoven, huh? The writer? Well, I'll be. We publish her stuff, you know, through Odyssey Books. Well, I'm gonna call Marshall and get him onto this, just in case."

"Dad, I don't think that'll be necessary."

"Sum, you can't just 'think' when something like this happens, you have to anticipate. You have to understand that maybe this Greenbaum girl or maybe Westhoven's agent will get a lawyer outta bed tonight, and the press will get a hold of things and blow them out of proportion. You may not know what reporters and lawyers will do to this, but I have a pretty fair idea. So, why don't you let me do the thinking for a while, O.K.?"

Sumner nodded his head. He wasn't thinking clearly, he knew.

The ship's First Mate, Brian, interrupted, informing Mr Welles that he had Dr Greenbaum on the SatPhone.

"You take it Sum, and Brian, record the call." The First Mate hit a red button and a light on the SatComm panel lit up, indicating that the call was being recorded.

"Dr Greenbaum, Sumner Welles here. Can you tell me what happened tonight?" He listened for a few minutes as the Internist talked, only interjecting now and then to indicate that he understood or heard something. "Alright, if Nancy is there, may I talk to her. Aha, yes well, thank you very much, sir, and please call back out here if there is any news we need to be apprised of." Pause. "Hello, Nancy? Are you alright? Can you tell me what's going on? How do you know Miss Westhoven? Aha. You did what? Whoa-whoa, Nance, not on an open line, O.K.? Ah, just stay there with your Dad, will you? I'll try to make it there in an hour or so. Alright, you just stay put, O.K., and I'll be there as soon as I can. Alright. Bye."

His Dad had been listening in on headphones, and had nodded when Sumner stopped the girl from talking on the open line, then snapped his fingers to the mate and whirled fingers over his head indicating that they were going to need one of the company helicopters out at the yacht ASAP. When Sumner broke off the connection, he askedthequestion.

"What about Angela, what do you want me to tell her?"

"You don't need to say a thing, Dad. I'm not going to keep anything, not one thing, ever, from her. And she's going with me."

His Dad shook his head and grinned. "Hell, Sum, y'all set a date yet, anything I need to know?"

"If she'll have me, Dad, if she'll have me. That's all I can say. But I asked her."

"O.K., Sum."

"Sir, the helicopter will be here in about fifteen, and flight plan back to Mass Gen is approved by FSS."

"Thanks, Brian." Bennett Welles turned to look at his son. He wasn't there.

+

The Bell Longranger touched down on the yacht's aft helipad a little after two in the morning. Sumner and Angela hopped on board as soon as it had settled on the pad, and Brian shut and latched the door behind them. The helicopter lifted off into the air behind the yacht, then spun in the air toward the southwest, and sped back toward the loom of lights cast by the mass of Boston. Sumner had put on headsets when he entered, and he put another pair on Angela's head. He flipped on the intercom, and he continued to tell her about Diane Westhoven's attempted seduction on flight 481.

He had filled her in on events up to his leaving the flight once it had landed in Boston last Sunday while still in her stateroom; he continued now telling her about Westhoven's call to him yesterday morning. He bluntly told Angela about Westhoven's declaration that she was lost without him, and that she thought she loved him.

"I guess Dad thinks she's off her rocker, but I'm not so sure that is even remotely close to what the problem is. I think our talk must have uncovered a really raw nerve, and rather than try to get her help, I wanted to lead her to wanting to get help on her own. I had no idea she was in so much trouble. And this stuff with Nancy . . ."

Angela took his hand, held it tightly. She had been in all manner of jet aircraft before, but never in a helicopter, and never at low altitude at night over the ocean. It was almost pitch black outside; the moon was high overhead now, but behind thick cloud cover, and the sea was a featureless black void. Angela listened as carefully as she could, but the vertiginous streaking flight toward the city was disconcerting, and she felt as if she might get airsick. The lights of Boston's northern suburbs occasionally winked by as the helicopter continued toward downtown and Massachusetts General Hospital.

"Sumner, you can't take responsibility for her actions; she made a choice to seduce you, made a choice to call you, made a choice to back you into a corner. You called her bluff when she tried to make her actions into a game - a game she alone decides the rules of, by the way - and she can be the only victor. Don't let her suck you into her drama, not now."

The lights of the city grew rapidly now, and Angela grew more comfortable with each passing second. "Sumner, she made her choices. You've got to make one now. Help your friend Nancy, if you can, but be very careful about even thinking you can assume any responsibility for that woman's actions. You must know better on one level, but obviously her reactions affected you, perhaps be design, perhaps spontaneously, but you're not thinking clearly right now. I'll be with you, and let me know if I can help."

The helicopter was making adjustments to avoid airspace around Logan airport, but continued to bore in on the north side of downtown, then along Starrow Drive and the river. The pilot threw the Bell into a steep banking turn to the left over the river and leveled out near the Science Museum, took the bird on in toward the hospital's heliport, and put it down squarely on the pad.

Sumner opened the door and stepped out, then helped Angela out. They moved off the pad in the direction indicated by the men attending the landing, and went into the hospital.

Nancy Greenbaum was waiting just inside the door.

Sumner thought she looked pale, almost shocky.

And what the hell was with the Gothic street-slut outfit?

+

As Sumner listened to Nancy tell her tale of wanting to give the Westhoven woman a taste of her own medicine, of planning to seduce and betray her, he felt a dread fascination when he thought of how all of these two women had entered his orbit, and each spun out of control as they had tried to control him.

And yet here was Angela, he thought, the one who not only hadn't wanted to control him, but had in fact almost run fromhisgrasp.

Was life ever really so simple.

+

Diane Westhoven had just been transfused her second unit of O negative blood; two of Boston's finest vascular surgeons worked rapidly to repair the wounds deep in her forearm - under the overwhelmingly bad odds of doing surgery on a patient who had overdosed on painkillers and Tequila.

Her blood pressure was falling again - though more rapidly now, and an unsettling arrhythmia began. Suddenly the EKG went flat and alarms rang out; the anesthesiologist began to administer drugs as the surgeons went to support basic cardiac function.

"We're losing her," the anesthesiologist called out.

The surgeons placed defibrillator paddles on Diane Westhoven's chest and shocked her.

And shocked her again.

The readouts on the EKG remained flat.