We'll Meet Again

I didn’t know at the time she was involved with Gary, Peter Black thought. What if Molly did get to her now? he wondered. Suppose A

He became aware that Cal was still talking. What was he asking?

“… is there anyone at the hospital who might have stayed in touch with her?”

“I have no idea.”

After he put the receiver down a minute later, Dr. Peter Black spoke into the intercom. “Hold my calls, Louise.” He put his elbows on the desk and pressed his forehead with his palms.

The tightrope was fraying. How could he stop it from breaking and sending him hurtling to the ground?

22

“She didn’t want to worry you, Billy.”

Billy Gallo stared across his mother’s bed at his father as they stood in the intensive care unit at Lasch Hospital. Tony Gallo’s eyes were welling with tears. His sparse gray hair was disheveled, and the hand that patted his wife’s arm was trembling.

There was no mistaking the kinship of the two men. They had strikingly similar features-dark brown eyes, full lips, square jaw lines.

Sixty-six-year-old semiretired Tony Gallo, a former corporate security officer, was a school crossing guard in the town of Cos Cob, a stern and trusted fixture at the intersection of Willow and Pine. His son, Billy, thirty-five, a trombonist in the orchestra of the road company of a Broadway musical, had flown in from Detroit.

“It wasn’t Mom who didn’t want to worry me,” Billy said, his tone angry. “You wouldn’t let her call me, would you?”

“Billy, you were out of work for six months. We didn’t want you to lose this job.”

“To hell with the job. You should have called me-I would have stood up to them. When they refused her permission to go to a specialist, I wouldn’t have let them get away with it.”

“Billy, you don’t understand; Dr. Kirkwood fought to get her to a specialist. Now they’ve okayed surgery. She’ll be fine.”

“He still didn’t send her to a specialist soon enough.”

Josephine Gallo stirred. She could hear her husband and son arguing, and she had a vague awareness that it was over her. She felt sleepy and weightless. In some ways it was a nice sensation, to lie there and almost float, to not have to be a part of their argument. She was tired of begging Tony to help Billy when he was between jobs. Billy was a fine musician, and he wasn’t cut out for a nine-to-five job. Tony just didn’t understand that.

She kept hearing their angry voices. She didn’t want them to argue anymore. Josephine remembered the pain that had yanked her from her sleep this morning; it was the same pain that she’d been telling Dr. Kirkwood, her primary care physician, about.

They were still arguing; their voices seemed to be getting louder, and she wanted to tell them to please, please stop. Then somewhere off in the distance she heard bells clanging. She heard ru

As she drew in her last breath, she heard their voices, in unison, urgent, filled with fear, edged with grief: “Mommmmmmmm,” “Josieeeeeeeee.” Then she heard nothing.

23

At quarter of twelve, Fran walked into the lobby of Lasch Hospital. Pushing back the memories of that same place years earlier, memories of stumbling, and of her mother’s arms around her, she forced herself to stop and to look about the space.

The reception/information desk was on the far wall, opposite the entrance. That’s good, she thought. She didn’t want a solicitous volunteer or guard offering to help direct her to a patient. If that were to happen, she had a story ready: she was picking up a friend who was visiting a patient.

Any patient, she thought.

She studied the area. The furniture-couches and individual chairs-was upholstered in green imitation leather and had plastic arms and legs in a faux maple finish. Less than half the seats were occupied. A corridor to the left of the reception desk had an arrow and a sign that read ELEVATORS. Then Fran found what she was looking for-the sign on the other side of the lobby that read COFFEE SHOP. As she headed for it, she passed the newspaper rack. The weekly community paper was displayed in it, and a picture showing Molly at the prison gate was on page one. Fran fished in her pocket for two quarters.

She deliberately had arrived before the lunch-hour rush began, and she stood at the entrance to the coffee shop for a moment as she looked around, trying to choose the most advantageous seat. There were about twenty tables in the restaurant, as well as a counter with a dozen stools. The two women behind the counter, wearing candy-striped aprons, were hospital volunteers.

There were four people sitting at the counter; about ten others were scattered at tables. Three men in standard white jackets, obviously doctors, were deep in conversation by the window. There was a small empty table next to them. For a moment Fran debated whether or not to ask for that table, as the hostess, also wearing a candy-striped apron, bore down on her.

“I’ll go to the counter,” Fran said quickly. Over coffee she might be able to strike up a conversation with one of the volunteers working there. Both women looked to be in their mid-sixties. Perhaps one or both of them had been volunteers there six years ago, when Gary Lasch was ru

The woman who served her coffee and a bagel was wearing a smiley-face name tag that read, “Hello, I’m Susan Branagan.” A pleasant-faced woman, with white hair and a bustling ma

It gave Fran the opening she wanted. “I’ve been living in California, so it’s hard to get used to the East Coast weather again.”

“Visiting someone in the hospital?”

“Just waiting for a friend who’s visiting. Have you been a volunteer long?”

Susan Branagan beamed. “Just got my ten-year pin.”

“I think it’s wonderful that you volunteer to help out here,” Fran said sincerely.

“I’d be lost if I didn’t come to the hospital three times a week. I’m a widow, and my kids are married and busy with their own lives. What would I do with myself, I ask you?”

Clearly it was a rhetorical question.

“I guess it must be pretty fulfilling,” Fran said. Trying to appear casual as she did it, she laid the community paper on the counter, placing it so that Susan Branagan could not miss seeing Molly’s picture and the headline above it: WIDOW OF DR. LASCH PROTESTS HER INNOCENCE.

Mrs. Branagan shook her head. “You may not realize, being that you’re from California, but Dr. Lasch used to be the head of this hospital. It was a terrible scandal when he died. Only thirty-six, and such a handsome man.”

“What happened?” Fran asked.

“Oh, he got involved with a young nurse here, and his wife-well, I guess the poor woman went into temporary insanity, or something. Claimed she didn’t remember killing him, although nobody really believes that, of course. What a tragedy and loss it was. And the sad thing is that the nurse, A