Implant

But McCready, Ailard, Lane, Schulz, Vincent, and the rest of them had made that impossible.

He rubbed his eyes as bitter memories rushed in. . . memories of poor Lisa . . .

Lisa Lathram . . . a euphonious name, such an up sound to it. And yet Lisa herself . . .

He remembered her as such a happy child, could still hear her dulcet laugh, see her bright eyes, her effulgent smile, Lord, that smile .

.

.

Lisa was always smiling, accepting everyone and everything, hugs and kisses all around.

When Brad came along, Duncan loved him equally, but as a son. There was a difference there.

Lisa remained the light of his life. At times he was sure Diana was jealous of their relationship. When he arrived home from the hospital or the office, Lisa was the first one he looked for, and she always came ru

But the halcyon days of her childhood evanesced as puberty took hold, and Duncan came to understand firsthand the origin of the changeling myth. As her body changed, so did Lisa's personality. At first he and Diana chalked up the moodiness to the new hormones pulsing through her.

After all, what was there to be grumpy about? With her flowing blond hair and lissom figure, she was only getting prettier.

He and Diana kept hoping their adolescent age would snap out of it, but after a while it became clear that more than hormones were at work here. She lost interest in her friends, her piano playing, her horse.

The downs kept getting deeper and longer, and there never seemed to be any real ups, only not-so-downs.

And then she swallowed half a bottle of her mother's Dalmane and had to have her stomach pumped. She was diagnosed with severe endogenous depression and the endless rounds of antidepressants and outpatient therapy began.

Nothing worked for very long. And then came that terrible night she locked herself in her room and screamed with pain. Duncan kicked the door down and found her sitting in the middle of her bed bleeding from a slit wrist.

They hospitalized her for a month after that, and tried something new called Prozac. Lisa responded beautifully. In her case it was truly a miracle drug.

Duncan still remembered the day he came home from the hospital to find Diana standing in the foyer sobbing. Immediately his heart plummeted, expecting the worst And then he heard it, floating in from the living room, the sound of Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 2I. Lisa was playing again.

He and Diana fell into each other's arms and wept.

Even now his eyes clouded at the memory.

After that, as Lisa brightened, so did their lives. Duncan hadn't realized how his daughter's problems had tainted their entire family life. But now that she was getting back to normal, the days seemed brighter, his own step lighter. Laughter again around the di

They dated for months, and Ke

Duncan wasn't crazy about Ke

And then the McCready committee reared its ugly head. He remembered the morning five years ago when it all began, in the doctors lounge at Fairfax Hospital, somebody showing him the article on the front page of the Post. He'd just come off two scheduled procedures, an abdominal aneurysm graft and a carotid endarterectomy, all after rushing in at 3:00 A. M. to close a torn femoral artery on a motorcyclist, "donorcyclist, " as the E.R staff called them. He was tired. But not too tired to be furious at Senator Vincent's public condemnation of his million-dollar charge to Medicare the year before.

Every time he turned around some baseball player or basketball dribbler was signing a contract for five or six million dollars a year. How many lives did they save in a year? Barbra Streisand can get twenty million for two nights of warbling, but you, Duncan Lathram, you moneygrubbing bloodsucker, you charge too goddamn much.

He'd wished he had some legal recourse, but how the hell did you sue a congressional committee? And what would he accomplish but call even more unwanted attention to himself?

What did it matter? he remembered thinking. The whole brouhaha would blow over in a couple of days.

But he was wrong.

His auto-da-fe' at the hands of the Guidelines committee continued with unflagging zeal. Apparently the members thought they'd found a particularly tasty bone in Duncan Lathram and wanted to keep gnawing away at him. Then the Alexandria Ba

Duncan was angry and embarrassed, but not too worried. His medical records were impeccable, and he'd match his morbidity and mortality stats against anyone in the country. Let them investigate. He'd come up smelling like a rose.

He just wished they'd hurry and get the whole mess over and done with.

But it dragged on, and in the ensuing months Duncan began to notice a hint of coolness from some of his colleagues at the hospital. He was getting fewer requests for surgical consults. He understood their predicament, worrying about guilt by association. They were waiting till things cooled down.

Still, he was in for a nasty shock one day as he began one of the surgical consultation requests he did receive. When he entered the patient's hospital room and introduced himself, the patient bolted upright in bed. Duncan still remembered his words.

"Oh, no. Forget it. No way I'm go

It couldn't get any worse.

The only way he could go from there was up.

Again, he was wrong.

Because all the bad press was having a devastating effect at home.

Duncan Lathram, MD, was the talk of the town . . . including the high school.

And so in retrospect it seemed inevitable that he would come home one night to find Lisa sobbing in her mother's arms. She and Ke

Ke

Barely able to speak through her sobs, she wanted to know why her father hadn't said anything, why he hadn't come out and defended himself.