The Syndrome

Adrie

“All that electronics stuff.”

“Unh-huh… “ He didn’t say anything, so she prodded him. “And?”

“Well, I was thinking—maybe it had something to do with me.”

She just looked at him.

While Duran lay on the bed, lost in thought, Adrie

Like most interns, Fellowes spent a lot of his time doing shit work, but he was clearly going places. She’d gotten to know him when he’d been assigned to the Amalgamated case, helping her compile a database for the documents and work product. She remembered feeling guilty. Here was a guy who was law review and all that—and she was spending day in and day out, handing him papers to number and date-stamp. Then she remembered that she was law review, and what she was doing wasn’t any more interesting than what he’d been assigned. On the contrary, they were doing it together.

But the thing about Fellowes was, he’d assisted on a case in the spring that was actually pretty interesting (compared to the Amalgamated matter). Adrie

She lathered her hair, squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face to the showerhead. She’d get the doctor’s name from Bill. Maybe the doctor would look at Duran and, even if he wouldn’t, he might be able to point her in the right direction—a colleague, or something.

After a minute or two, she rinsed the soap from her hair, stepped from the shower and wrapped herself in a towel. The bathroom was small and steamy, the mirror a gray cloud. Using a hand towel, she cleared enough of its surface to see herself, then yanked the hotel’s plastic comb through the tangles in her hair. It didn’t do much good. But it was the weekend—and it was all she had.

Finally, she pulled on her new panty hose and stepped into the navy-blue dress she’d bought. With her earrings in place, she emerged from the bathroom, transformed.

Duran looked up from the TV, and did a double take. “Hey,” he said, “you look… nice.”

“Thanks,” she replied, stepping into her shoes. “I’ll be back late, so don’t wait up. On the other hand—don’t get lost, either.”

“But… where are you going?” he asked, as suspicious as he was concerned.

“To work.”

“‘Work’? Are you crazy? We’re in hiding, for Christ’s sake! And it’s Sunday—you can’t go to work.”

“Got to.”

Duran snapped off the TV, sat up and looked directly into her eyes. “People are trying to kill you! Whenever that happens, you’re supposed to take a day off.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to.”

“I won’t.”

“And what if they follow you?” he demanded.

“From here?”

He shook his head. “To here. From your office.”

“They won’t do that. They’d have to watch the office all day, just to see if I show up—and my apartment, too—because, when you think about it, I’m more likely to go there than to the office. Especially on Sunday, so… I’ll be okay. It isn’t like the KGB is after us.”

Duran fell back on the bed. “How do you know?”

She smiled. “Very fu

“You won’t change your mind?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Then I want you to call me,” Duran told her, “when you get there, and when you leave. Okay?”

She agreed.

The rental car was a metallic-green Dodge Stratus. It had that new car smell in spades, and kept fogging up as Adrie

Not that it mattered. Her mind was elsewhere. She was thinking that Duran was right about going to work. The safest thing to do would be to stay away for a few days, and call in sick. But she couldn’t do that. Slough wouldn’t understand. And if she tried to explain it—if she told him what had happened—well, that would be even worse. Lawyers at Slough, Hawley did not get shot at. Or, if they did, they did not make partner.

And, anyway, she wasn’t afraid. On the contrary, she was all tapped out on the fear front, and had been for a very long time.

The thing about fear was that it was exhausting. She’d known that ever since she was a child. For years she’d lived in a state of almost constant anxiety. After Gram died, there was the fear that there would be no one to take care of her. Then, after a series of foster homes, and interim periods in “care,” there was the fear of getting hit, yelled at, humiliated, ignored, or bullied. Even the social workers scared her, the creepy way they held her hand and asked loaded questions whose significance and consequences she couldn’t guess. That she didn’t know the right answers was clear from the little twitches of disappointment in their eyes, the reflexive smiles, the rephrased questions. Once, she’d overheard them talking about a family’s interest in adopting “the younger child”—her—and she’d been scared to death. For weeks she wouldn’t let Nikki out of her sight, terrified that they’d be separated.

But those were the acute fears, the ones that rose and fell on an almost daily basis, like the tides. There was another fear, though, that was chronic and unchanging, an adrenal drain fueled by the worry that whatever sanctuary she and Nikki had found, it would soon disappear.

Not surprising then, that after a while, her capacity for being afraid dwindled toward zero—so that by the time she and Nikki were placed with Deck and Marlena, Adrie

Turning off M Street, she headed downhill toward the river, and swung left in the direction of Harbor Place. Georgetown had an abandoned, rainy day feeling to it. Cruising slowly along K Street, she studied the parked cars that she passed. But there was nothing unusual about any of them. So she parked on the street, avoiding the underground garage, which charged twelve dollars for the first three hours.

It was only a block to the office but, even so, she was wet when she got there. Stopping in the ladies’ room, she blotted her dripping hair with paper towels. Her dress was more than damp, as well, but there was nothing she could do about it—and, anyway, the color hid the rain.

She passed Bette’s cubicle, and saw that she was hard at work, clacking away at the keyboard, printer humming, talking on the phone. Adrie

Adrie