Justice

"How is Mr. Vinson?" Minerva asked.

"His last name isn't Vinson. I use my maiden name professionally but my legal name is hyphenated with his. To answer your question, he is doing remarkably well. There are very few residual effects evident from his stroke and those are expected to improve within the next few months through his therapies. Our friends, Dru and Randy McLean have taken him to lunch so that we three would have the house free for our discussion. Please follow me. We'll use his office."

She led them through a set of double doors into a large office that looked like it was a converted living room space due to its size and location within the house. There was an L-shaped desk with a computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse on its surface. Along the wall, under a large picture window was a sitting area comprised of a large leather sofa with a coffee table between it and two over-stuffed leather chairs. The walls were adorned with framed pictures of a handsome man standing beside Dr. Vinson.

Stepping to one of the pictures, Minerva studied it and said, "It has to have been close to twenty years since I sat in your office but you don't seem to have aged a day in that time. You're still so beautiful. Is this your husband?"

Hayden hadn't met Dr. Vinson before today, but after quickly examining the pictures on the walls and comparing them to the woman before them, he had to agree with Minerva's assessment. This woman looked at least twenty years younger than what her current age must be.

Dr. Vinson snorted softly and said, "I've already agreed to talk with you both about Athena. You don't need to try to flatter me with falsehoods. Can I get either of you something to drink before we start? I have some freshly made lemonade if you're interested."

Hayden glanced at Minerva and shrugged. She nodded and said, "That would be nice. Can I be of any assistance... help you carry things maybe?"

"No, no, just make yourselves at home. I already have everything on a tray in the kitchen and it won't take me but a second to bring everything in here. I'll be right back."

Hayden set the binder on the coffee table and strolled around to examine more of the framed pictures on the walls. His attention was no longer on the beauty that was Dr. Denisa Vinson, but rather on the man standing beside her in most of the pictures. There was something familiar about him that Hayden couldn't immediately identify.

Minerva was examining pictures on the wall adjacent to Hayden's and was the first to achieve recognition of the man. "Hayden, do you know who this is?"

Pointing to the framed pictures that he had just noticed, he replied, "I do now. Look, these are all the book covers from his best sellers. I thought he looked familiar. You didn't know?"

"I had no idea," Minerva confessed. "Are you a fan of his books too?"

Moving between each of the framed book covers on the wall, Hayden studied each carefully to see if there were any covers for books by this award-winning author that he hadn't yet read. "I have all of these books at home. I've read each of them at least a dozen times over the years. You?"

Nodding, Minerva said, "'His Daddy's Car' has to be one of my favorite books of all time. 'Heavy Traffic on a Dirt Road' runs a close second though."

Hearing Dr. Vinson rejoining them, Minerva turned to her and asked, "Your husband wrote all of these books?"

"Yes, he hopes to get back to his ninth novel in a few months if the physical therapy keeps progressing as well as it has so far. His greatest fear was that the stroke impacted his cognitive abilities or memory to the point that it would affect his ability to continue writing. We don't need the income, you understand, but I don't know what he would do if he no longer had an outlet for his imagination. Please, have a seat and help yourselves."

"Well, please tell him that we are both huge fans of his work," Hayden said as he took a seat in one of the chairs across from the sofa.

"Why don't you join me over here on the sofa," Minerva suggested as she stepped around the coffee table and began pouring a glass of lemonade from the pitcher.

Hayden quickly stood and moved over to the sofa. Minerva waited for Dr. Vinson to take a seat in one of the chairs before handing her one of the glasses filled with lemonade. She handed another to Hayden before sitting beside him with her own glass on the table in front of her.

"Once the remaining weakness in his right hand abates, I'll make certain that you each get autographed copies of his books," Dr. Vinson assured them both. Then, pointing to the binder, she asked Hayden, "Are those the documents that I send you?"

When Hayden nodded, she continued, "When the young woman called to request this meeting, she mentioned that you both had been reviewing the documents together and that you both had questions. Is that right?"

Answering for them both, Minerva said, "That's correct. When Hayden and I met, it didn't take us long to learn that we both had a lot of questions and not a small amount of lingering guilt related to my sister. We have been trying to discover what motivated her behaviors, especially during her pregnancy, and this is what led us here today. Can you help us? Help us understand Athena?"

Dr. Vinson studied the couple sitting across from her for several seconds before responding, "First, tell me about you two. What is the extent of your relationship?"

"Why does that matter?" Hayden asked, strictly out of curiosity.

Watching Minerva reach over and take Hayden's hand in hers answered much of Dr. Vinson's question, but she added, "It's important for me, when meeting with a couple at the same time, to understand how what I tell them might affect the dynamics of their relationship. You two obviously have an individual interest in the knowledge contained within those documents and what they will reveal about Athena's condition. What I need to understand is what shared interests might exist. Will my revealing certain aspects of Athena's condition affect you as a couple?"

Before Hayden could respond, Minerva said, "Hayden and I are making progress toward becoming a couple. Athena broke Hayden's heart, and although we have been able to determine from the documents that she lied when she did that, knowing the 'why' is important for him, and for us to continue making progress. My misunderstanding of what transpired between Athena and Hayden left me with not only guilt, but also a soul-burning desire for retribution. Retribution against a man that I now believe was as much a victim of Athena's illness as she was. I need to understand why my sister did what she did and if her ghost will always haunt any relationship that Hayden and I have."

"What about Alex?" Hayden interrupted. "He's a shared interest for us too."

"Oh, God yes," Minerva agreed. "Thanks for reminding me. We need to know if whatever plagued Athena is something that we need to be concerned about with her son, Alexander."

Dr. Vinson nodded in understanding, "I can say with extreme confidence that the medical issues that affected Athena are not hereditary and her son stands very little risk of experiencing the same symptoms."

"How can you be so certain?" Hayden asked.

Smiling, Dr. Vinson replied, "Because he is your son."

Before either Hayden or Minerva could interrupt, she continued, "He is your SON, which means he is a boy. He doesn't have ovaries."

Minerva and Hayden shared a puzzled exchange of glances before she said, "Now might be a good time for you to explain to us exactly what was wrong with Athena from a medical perspective. We have been able to discern from the documents that she had serious emotional issues, but we don't understand the underlying physical issues that seem to have contributed to those."

"I promised Athena that I would make certain that HO understood her actions and her condition," Dr. Vinson told them.

Addressing Minerva, she said, "I don't know if what I share with him will address all of your concerns, particularly where any future relationship between the two of you is concerned. Hopefully, it will, but I can't make any promises to either of you."

Sharing another glance between each other, Minerva said. "We understand."

"Fine then," Dr. Vinson began. "Let me start by explaining that Athena's underlying physical issues, as you phrased it, were not merely contributing factors to her emotional issues, they were entirely the cause of them."

"She paused a beat before continuing, addressing Minerva once more, "You are aware of the behavioral issues that Athena experienced as a child which first brought her to my office. Do you remember how I explained her challenges to you back then?"

Nodding, Minerva said, "I remember you comparing Athena's behavioral problems to what happens to people when they eat certain foods. Examples you gave me were those of someone becoming stimulated after eating too much sugar or growing tired after Thanksgiving dinner."

"That was part of it," Dr. Vinson agreed. "I explained that the human body relies upon various chemicals for a multitude of processes within the body and that different people tolerated the oversaturation or undersaturation of some chemicals better than others."

"I remember us all changing our diets several times," Minerva said. "My mom explained that we were trying to find out which foods bothered Athena the most."

"For over a year," Dr. Vinson confirmed. "In pediatric psychiatry, we always try to find natural ways to bring a body into balance before resorting to pharmacological alternatives. When it became clear that diet alone wouldn't resolve Athena's issues, I prescribed Ritalin for her. It made a marked improvement in her behavior and allowed her to proceed through her school years with above-average grades."

"But she only took the medication on school days," Minerva reminisced. "She still had trouble settling down or concentrating on weekends, holidays, and during vacation."

"I remember," Dr. Vinson said. "That's one of the reasons that you and I would meet from time to time. You started growing resentful of Athena because her behaviors prevented you from having friends over to your house for slumber parties and other events and your parents frequently denied you the opportunity to go to parties or other weekend activities that they couldn't allow your sister to go to as well."

"Right. And we established that it wasn't Athena's fault, and that my resentment was not towards her, but at the situations. I learned to find things for her and me to do together, like going to the movies or to the park together. I understood her antsy or distracted behaviors and made allowances for her that others wouldn't. My parents and I were under the impression that Athena eventually outgrew her problems. I know that she stopped taking the Ritalin when she was in high school and seemed to do fine without it."

"Yes," Dr. Vinson said, "Changes in her physiology as she grew older did result in her body achieving a chemical balance that temporarily allowed her to function without any medication. That changed once she started college."

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Hayden remained silent, allowing Minerva to discuss her sister's past with Dr. Vinson. Then Minerva asked, "Why? What happened in college to, I assume, throw her body out of balance again?"

"HO happened," Dr. Vinson replied. "In the simplest of terms, Athena fell in love with Mr. Justice and her body's reaction to that had profound and life-altering effects on Athena beyond the romantic aspects of their relationship."

Seeing dropped jaws and gaping mouths as the reaction to her statement, Dr. Vinson continued, "Avoiding all the medical terminology that you can read in the case reports that I sent you, the essence of Athena's problem was that she became a chemical train wreck when her body reacted to her falling in love."

Confirming that she still had their full attention, she explained, "Athena's endocrine system was extremely hyperactive from the age of around seven. You were two years younger than your sister, but do you remember her starting her period right after she turned ten?"

"Vaguely," Minerva admitted. "I do remember my mom discussing the possibility that my period could start early also, but it didn't. I was actually later than most of the girls I knew, almost thirteen when my first period came. How did getting her period early cause Athena problems?"

"It didn't. It was just one of the first visible signs that her body's endocrine system might be abnormal. It wasn't until she came back to see me at the age of eighteen that we started looking into other, less obvious signs of a systemic issue."

"Like what?" Hayden asked, finally joining the conversation.

"Athena met you during the summer between her freshman and sophomore years at Clemson. With a carefully maintained diet, exercise, and plenty of rest, her body had stabilized and she was functioning normally without the need for any regular medication. When she returned to school the following fall, she suddenly had trouble sleeping and experienced bouts of depression that caused her to miss several classes. These episodes would be replaced by episodes of euphoria for a brief period after speaking to you on the phone. Her feelings for you had triggered something within her system that once more threw her body out of balance. Your interactions with her had a calming effect on her system for some reason, but any prolonged periods away from seeing or at least talking to you were dark times for her emotionally."

"I never knew," Hayden said, more to Minerva than to the doctor. It was important to him that Minerva know that he wasn't aware of the challenges that his relationship with Athena might have caused.

"Athena was very guarded about her condition," Dr. Vinson explained. "When she was with you, her body reacted to her emotional state in a few interesting ways that we never understood entirely. Much of what I described in her case notes were hypothetical beliefs derived from lab test results and Athena's descriptions of how she felt, both physically and emotionally when around you. I can tell you, Mr. Justice, Athena Hart loved you with all four letters."

Minerva understood the reference to a "total" love; one that exists in its purest and most natural form, unconditional, unapologetic, and undying. The kind of love frequently associated with soul mates or mythological beings. The kind of love that she herself had been waiting for her whole life.

"If I might," Minerva said, "You're saying that Athena's love for Hayden caused her body to come into balance, and being away from him sent her out of balance. Is that right?"

Nodding, Dr. Vinson said, "In the simplest terms possible, yes, that is exactly what I am saying happened with your sister. I had suspicions as to why this occurred and had intended to conduct more tests after the birth of her child to confirm these, but her death put an end to my research."

"What were your suspicions?" Minerva asked.

"It goes back to what I said earlier about her having ovaries and her son not," Dr. Vinson replied. "I suspect that the hormonal feedback from her ovaries to her hypothalamus gland was the root of her problems. You see, the hypothalamus and the anterior pituitary are two out of the three endocrine glands that are important in cell signaling. They are both part of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, or HPA axis which is known to play a role in cell signaling in the human nervous system. To be blunt, Athena's body became sexually aroused when she was around Mr. Justice and this led to increased secretion of certain hormones, including estrogen, which traveled to her brain and acted as a sort of support system to the signaling synapses that drive our thoughts, feelings, and emotions as human beings. Without the arousal-driven hormones, her synapses once more became erratic and unpredictable."

"Let's back up a second," Hayden said. "If Athena was fine when she was with me and, for lack of a better term, 'bonkers' when we were apart, why would she lie to me about her pregnancy? Why would she purposely drive me away if being with me was what made her okay?"

Sighing, Dr. Vinson said, "It would be easy for me to simply say something like, 'Sometimes we push away the one we need the most,' but with Athena, it was more than that. I mentioned that she was very guarded about her condition, and she was. However, in the case of your relationship, she was convinced that she had to keep her condition from you to protect you from it."

"Protect me from what?"

"I was the first doctor to confirm Athena's pregnancy after she had come to me with the results of her home pregnancy test. Once I had the lab results confirming it, we discussed how to handle the pregnancy. You see, I had prescribed a few different medications to help Athena cope with her erratic emotions since returning to school from Myrtle Beach and her time with HO. Athena was concerned about possible side effects from any of these medications might have on the fetus, so she insisted on stopping all of them, immediately."

"Did you agree with her decision?" Minerva asked.

"Frankly, yes, I did, for two reasons. First, the potential for any of these drugs to harm an unborn child was quite real. The second reason was that I simply didn't know how being pregnant would influence the same hormonal-neurotransmitter dysfunction that Athena had been experiencing prior to becoming pregnant."

The doctor continued, "You both need to understand that Athena was very ill. While her illness was systemic from a physical perspective, it affected her mentally and emotionally. Her illness could be viewed similarly to a brain tumor which has been known to affect a person's cognitive abilities or their judgment. Her illness affected her reasoning and judgment where her pregnancy and her relationship with others were concerned."

Pausing once more, Dr. Vinson allowed Hayden and Minerva to consider what they were being told. "As her pregnancy progressed, my sessions with Athena became more frequent. I was very concerned about her mental state several times, but I recognized a strong maternal instinct was also developing within her and this is why I didn't seek her legal confinement. As erratic as her emotions were at times, I never believed that Athena was a threat to herself, her baby, or anyone else. I had no argument from her when I suggested that she use an OB/GYN located in the same building as my practice and that she schedule her prenatal visits to coincide with our sessions. This was my way of ensuring that she received the attention to her pregnancy that she might otherwise have neglected."

"But they didn't recognize her risk for HELLP syndrome," Minerva said.

For his part, Hayden was getting frustrated that Dr. Vinson seemed to be skirting around the answers that he was seeking from her. Minerva heard him take a deep breath and sensed the need to move the conversation in the direction that Hayden desired.

Minerva interjected before Dr. Vinson could respond to her previous comment, "We can discuss that later. Go back to why Athena lied to Hayden."

Focusing all of her attention on Hayden, the doctor said, "As Athena described her time with you, it was the most enjoyable and fulfilling time of her entire life up to that point. Even though the two of you spend the majority of your time together in professional settings, I believe that she viewed her summers in Myrtle Beach almost like honeymoons that the two of you shared. It was a vacation from her school responsibilities and required no major decisions by either of you. Is that the way that you saw your times with her?"

Hayden considered the question for several seconds before responding, "I suppose it was a carefree time for both of us. Decisions at work were sometimes challenging, but we always had someone there to backstop us to prevent any major mistakes. Other than that, our toughest decisions as a couple were deciding what we wanted to eat together."