An Erin McCabe Legal Thriller

8 September 2008 Erin watched her brother, Sean, pace back and forth across the surgical waiting room and wondered why he seemed to be the most nervous person in their family. After all, he was a highly sought-after orthopedic surgeon. Then it suddenly made sense – of course he was worried, he knew all the things that could go wrong, not to mention he was used to being the one in charge of what was taking place in the operating room. Today he was a bystander – a mere mortal – waiting for news from their mother’s surgeon on how the mastectomy had gone. For the last three-and-a-half months, in an effort to shrink her tumors, Peg had undergone neoadjuvant chemotherapy along with taking other drugs, which her oncologist had hoped would allow her to avoid a mastectomy. The treatment, along with a lull in Erin’s own trial schedule, had allowed her to spend time with her mom, including two weeks that they spent together at Erin’s condo in Bradley Beach. Focusing on her mom had the added benefit of allowing Erin to avoid dealing with her issues with Mark. Unfortunately, by mid-August it was apparent that, although the tumors were shrinking, a mastectomy would still be necessary, and today’s surgery was scheduled. Erin shifted her gaze from her brother and turned to her left. There was an empty chair between her and her father, who sat bent over, his head bowed and his hands folded. Sean’s wife, Liz, sat on the other side of him, gently rubbing his back as she quietly whispered that Peg would be fine. Erin would have loved to have been the one comforting her father, but it had only been in the past year that they had begun to bridge the divide that had opened between them when Erin had come out as transgender and then transitioned. For nearly three years, Sean and her father had refused to talk to her. It was only thanks to the persistence of her mother, Liz, and Sean’s two sons, Patrick and Brennan, that they had started to heal. Erin knew her dad loved her, but she also knew he still struggled with the fact that she was a woman. A struggle made even harder when she had started dating Mark. Watching Sean pace and her father quietly suffering, she was struck by the realization that her mom was the glue that held them all together. If something happened to her, would they all spin off into their own separate orbits, only sporadically getting together when those orbits happened to intersect – perhaps on Thanksgiving or Christmas? She tried to push those thoughts out of her head, afraid that even conjuring them up might somehow make the possibility more likely. Erin tried to dwell on the positive. The five-year survival rate for her mother’s type of cancer, stage IIIA, hormone receptor positive, was over seventy percent. And even though the effort to shrink the tumors wasn’t totally successful, both the oncologist and surgeon had been upbeat in terms of the prognosis. Both had recommended a mastectomy of her left breast, then, depending on how many lymph nodes were involved, perhaps additional chemotherapy, followed by radiation and treatment with tamoxifen. It also helped that her mother’s joie de vivre and her sense of humor remained unchanged. Erin looked up at the wall clock – eleven fifteen a.m. Her mother had gone into surgery at seven that morning. The surgeon had told them to expect the surgery would take around three hours, and so, even though Erin had to pee so badly she thought her bladder was going to burst, she had stayed put, knowing that as soon as she went to the ladies’ room, the surgeon would call them in and she’d miss the news. Finally, she couldn’t take it any longer. ‘I have to run to the bathroom,’ she said quietly. ‘Wait for me if the surgeon comes out.’ To Erin’s relief, Liz stood as well. ‘I have to go too.’ Erin gave her dad a small smile and patted his hand, trying to reassure him that everything was going to be fine. ‘Oh my God,’ Liz said as they walked into the ladies’ room. ‘I’m so glad you had to go. I should never have had that second cup of coffee. It went right through me.’ After they had both finished and washed up, Erin said, ‘Thanks for being there for my dad.’ ‘Of course,’ Liz replied, with a sad smile. She gave Erin a small hug. ‘He needs you, even if it’s hard for him to show it.’ ‘I know,’ Erin said, biting her lip. ‘At least he and I can talk now. One step at a time.’ As Erin had anticipated, they came back to find Sean standing in the door to the recovery area, motioning for them to hurry up. ‘Everything went well,’ Dr Seiko said when they had all gathered inside. ‘The surgery took a little longer because we removed a few more of Peg’s lymph nodes than we originally anticipated. Also, Peg made the decision that she wanted to have a mastectomy to her right breast prophylactically, both to reduce the risk of recurring cancer and… well, from an appearance standpoint, she thought it might be easier in terms of breast reconstruction surgery.’ Sean looked surprised. ‘My mom didn’t say anything to me about removing her right breast.’ ‘Is she going to be okay?’ their father interjected before Dr Seiko could respond to Sean. ‘Yes, Pat. The surgery went well. We’re confident that we got all of the cancerous tissue, but we’re also going to do the radiation, and, of course, she has to remain on the hormone-blocking medication. At this point, I’m very hopeful that your wife will make a complete recovery.’ Seiko then turned to Sean. ‘I don’t have to tell you that your mother is a very strong-willed woman. She made the decision concerning what she wanted to do, and that’s all I’m at liberty to say.’ Her father exhaled as if he hadn’t let out a breath since seven a.m. ‘Your mom and I discussed this. I wasn’t a big fan, but you know your mother – when she makes up her mind, there’s nothing that’s going to change it. And she didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to get into an argument with anyone before the surgery.’ ‘When will we be able to see her?’ Erin asked before Sean could say anything else. Seiko looked relieved. ‘They just brought her into recovery. I would say it’ll probably be an hour, give or take. So if you want to grab something to eat, you have some time.’ An hour and a half later, they gathered around Peg’s bed in the recovery room. After blinking a few times, Peg looked to Erin. ‘I get your Wizard of Oz impression now,’ she said with a small smile, referring to the time two years ago when the family had gathered around Erin in recovery. ‘I do feel a little like Dorothy after a tornado, with you all standing around me.’ ‘Listen, Auntie Em. Don’t go trying to steal my lines.’ She leaned over and kissed her mother on the forehead. ‘How you feeling?’ she asked softly. They all took turns telling Peg how good she looked and how relieved they were that the surgery had gone well. Thankfully, no one mentioned the double mastectomy, although from the look on Sean’s face, he wanted to. They had hovered around Peg for about fifteen minutes when a nurse pulled back the curtain and said, ‘Okay, Margaret, time to get you to your room.’ Peg cringed at Margaret – it was a formality she used only when she needed to use her full legal name. ‘Call me Peg, please.’ ‘Of course,’ the young nurse replied, scribbling a note on Peg’s chart. As Peg was being wheeled out the door, she motioned for her husband and Sean to come closer. ‘They said you could buy me a coffee and donut from the coffee shop. Think you guys can do that?’ ‘Sure,’ Pat said. ‘The usual?’ She nodded and squeezed her husband’s hand. After they had settled Peg into her room, she directed Liz and Erin to either side of her bed. ‘Liz, I know my son, and at some point, he’s going to want to talk to me about why I had my right breast removed. Honestly, as much as I love him and know what a great doctor he is, I don’t want to discuss it with him. So could you warn him off?’ Liz gave her mother-in-law a smile. ‘Of course, Peg. Whatever you need.’ ‘Just so you both know, I don’t have the BRCA gene. That’s not why I did this. So, Erin, you don’t need to get tested.’ ‘That’s good to know,’ Erin replied. ‘But I did want to tell you why.’ ‘Mom, you don’t have to tell us,’ Erin interrupted, then glanced at Liz, who was nodding. ‘But I want to tell you, because your father thinks I’m nuts,’ Peg said, looking as though she might start crying. ‘I have a friend who had one breast removed and then reconstructed, and she hated the fact that her breasts weren’t a matched set anymore. One was old and droopy, and the other young and perky.’ Peg looked away, embarrassed. ‘She said she always felt like she was a car whose headlights were out of alignment and wished she had gotten both breasts reconstructed at the same time.’ Erin sat on the edge of the bed and took her mother’s hand. ‘That makes sense to me. Why shouldn’t you want to continue to look attractive?’ Peg’s eyes welled with tears. ‘Your father didn’t understand. He was pretty upset with me. He said, “For Christ’s sake, you have cancer, and you’re worried about how you’re going to look!”’ Erin grabbed a couple of tissues and handed them to her mother. ‘But I have to believe I’m going to recover, and when I do, I don’t want to be embarrassed by the way I look.’ She looked up at her daughter and daughter-in-law. ‘Am I wrong?’ ‘No,’ they said in unison. Later, walking to her car, Erin was drawn back to the conversation, and her mother’s desire not to be embarrassed by the way she looked. It was a desire Erin knew all too well. Erin was lucky. When she transitioned, her relatively small frame and the impact of the hormones had provided her with a body that took on the average contours of a cisgender woman. Yet, before she started living full-time as Erin, she had plastic surgery to give her face more feminine features. She didn’t want to be embarrassed by the way she looked. There too she had been lucky, because unlike many trans women, she had the financial wherewithal to have done what she needed. But now, after listening to her mom, she realized society ingrained in all women, cis and trans, the need to meet certain expectations as to how they looked. It wasn’t lost on her that neither she nor her mom had been immune. After starting her car, she retrieved her BlackBerry from her purse. As she scrolled through her e-mails and messages, she came across a text from an unknown number. She opened it. mccabe it’s kluska from ucpo. want to meet with you off the record. let me know availability next week mon thru weds – early afternoon. important. Strange. She hadn’t seen Detective Kluska since her days in the PD’s office. Why the hell would he want to see her? And even stranger, why off the record? What the hell, she thought as she typed her response.