The Dark Side - Danielle Steel Page 0,68

mentioned it to her, and she thought she would have. Maybe over the incident in Florida. She could hear on the phone that Austin was upset, and Zoe had told her as much after the accident in Florida and the stitches in Jaime’s chin, which Cathy was sorry to hear about. But at least she hadn’t drowned and Austin had pulled her out of the pool in time.

He got right to the point when he came to see her. He walked past the nurses and went straight to her office since he knew where it was, and she waved him to a chair after he closed the door so no one would hear them. She had a sandwich on her desk.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch,” he said, looking apologetic, “you can eat while we talk if you want.”

“I’m fine.” She smiled at him, half friend and half physician, and trying to be both. “What’s on your mind?”

Before he said anything, he handed her a list of all of Jaime’s injuries, the stitches, the broken arm, the broken wrist, the sprains, the dislocated elbows, the fall off the changing table. The list was long and Cathy read it carefully, and he startled her with what he said next.

“I’m not sure I know who I’m married to. And I’m not sure you do either. That’s a long list of injuries for a three-and-a-half-year-old, not to mention the illnesses, the mysterious febrile seizure, apnea, the unnecessary surgery for ear tubes, that she conned me into and lied about, both to me and the doctor. The appendectomy she insisted on, that thank God they didn’t do, and you saved the day when you figured out that Jaime had strep in her stomach lining. And now she’s chasing an orthopedic surgeon for scoliosis Jaime doesn’t have, and Zoe may want rods put in her spine.”

“Do you know that for a fact?” Cathy frowned as she asked him.

“Close enough. She’s seeing an orthopedic surgeon for scoliosis, and that’s what he does. I assume that’s what she has in mind.” She was moving into the big leagues now, surgeries instead of falls.

“He won’t do it to a patient who doesn’t need it, if he’s a reputable surgeon,” she said with conviction.

“For now. He told her to come back in six months. God knows what else she’ll come up with by then.”

“What are you saying to me, Austin? We both know she’s anxious, because she lost her sister to leukemia when they were both so young. It frightens her as a mom. I’m sure she’s afraid the same thing could happen to Jaime. She’s never said that to me exactly, but it’s a normal fear for a ten-year-old who lost her seven-year-old sister.”

“She’s not ten years old now, and yes, I think losing her sister affected her deeply. She went through years of neglect by her parents, who were too devastated to pay attention to her. In a sense, they abandoned her as a child. They admit it themselves. She grew up with no affection and no help. And now she wants attention by being super-mom, and she can only be that if Jaime is sick. Maybe that’s all she knows. I’ve been reading about Munchausen by proxy, and, Cathy, she’s a textbook case.”

At first she was too stunned to respond to him, but she could see that he was serious, and she felt she owed it to him to pay attention to what he had to say. He was a reasonable person, and she respected his concerns.

“I don’t know much about it, to be honest with you. I’m a pediatrician, not a shrink.” She picked up the list of Zoe’s injuries for a minute and stared at it, set it down on her desk, and looked at him. “I know the description generally, mothers who make their children sick, set them up in risky situations to get injured, exaggerate symptoms to physicians to make themselves more important, and even cause their children to have unnecessary surgeries.”

“Sometimes leading to death,” he said somberly. “The ear tubes weren’t serious, but Jaime had general anesthesia when she didn’t need to, she’d have survived an appendectomy, and now Zoe’s going to an orthopedic surgeon, and God knows what she’s telling him. She had Jaime see a neurologist when she got a bump on her head, a gastroenterologist for reflux while she was nursing, and Jaime wore a monitor for a year that drove us all insane. You add