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"I wish Maureen were staying," I said finally. "I hate to think how this will hurt Liam. I know how it will hurt Liam. He's even younger than I was when my mother left me."
Ethan reached out and patted me on the arm. "The judge will take it all into consideration and I have to admit that he'll be sympathetic to you, given Maureen is practically abandoning the boy. Her objections to you
having custody will be seen with a very jaundiced eye."
"I don't want to do anything to hurt her," I said, truthfully. "I understand she's sick. People do things that aren’t in their own best interest when they are depressed. My mother was depressed after my brother died and she never got over it. I just hope that Maureen gets over it and comes back. She's choosing between Chris and Liam. I hate Chris for making her choose him over Liam. Even though she says it's only for six months, why couldn’t she just suck it up for six months while Chris is away?"
"Depression is hard to understand unless you've been there yourself."
I turned to look at Ethan, surprised. "You have?"
Ethan nodded. "After Kate's mother died, I was alone and was at a point in my career when I had to put in long hours. Luckily, Elaine came along and helped me through it. As to your mother, a lot of couples break up when a child dies but it's usually the mother who takes custody during a divorce. It's rarely the father. Even today, it's still uncommon. Regardless, whatever cracks existed in their relationship are magnified and sometimes, the parents aren't strong enough to do what it takes to stay together."
I exhaled, sick about Liam having to say goodbye to his mother for even six months. Who knew whether they'd return at the end of that time? Maybe Chris would want to stay there. Would Maureen want to stay with him? Would Liam ever be healthy enough to go and live with them in Indonesia? Sure, they could afford the best quality medical care that money could buy in Indonesia, but it wasn't the same as medical care Liam could get in the states.
"Liam really can't go somewhere like Indonesia to live until he has the all clear from his doctors, but he'll always be at risk due to his medications to suppress rejection of his transplant. Even though we were a perfect match, he'll always be on a low dose of steroids. That puts him at risk of infections and diseases that he might otherwise avoid."
"Maureen will have to make a hard decision at some point. Hopefully, she'll get over her depression and come to her senses about what really matters."
"Hopefully," I replied.
"Speaking of mothers, have you ever tried to contact yours?"
I didn't say anything for a moment. I'd always been curious about my mother's life after she left me, but I had to admit there was a part of me that felt abandoned and angry at her for leaving. I hadn't done any research into her life and what happened to her after she left. It was always a sore point with my father and we avoided talking about it like the plague.
"No, I haven't. I should, now that I'm out here, but it's been twenty-eight years since I saw her."
"You should look her up. You never know what wounds might be healed if you do."
I glanced at him and he nodded meaningfully before taking another drink from his beer.
"I wanted to ask you about the case," Ethan added. "When will you have to testify?"
"I haven't heard yet from the prosecutor. He wants me to come back to Manhattan to go over some details in the case and talk about my testimony. My lawyer will let me know when they need me. Until then, I don’t even want to have to think of it and how close we came to Kate and Sophie dying."
"You'll do fine," Ethan said and held up his beer. "Just tell the absolute total truth and you won't have any problems. Don't hold back any details out of embarrassment. They always come out in the end."
"I won't, but honestly, my actual experiences with Lisa were not very memorable. I do remember pretty much everything from our time at NYU, but our encounters back when she was with Derek Richardson are a blur."
Ethan shook his head. "Like I say, just tell the truth the best you can remember. You won't have anything to worry about."
"I hope so. I wanted our time in San Francisco to be worry free for Kate. I knew I'd have to fly back and testify in the trial, but I didn’t expect there to be so much national coverage."
"Juicy gossip with lurid details sell copy. It was inevitable that it would become a national story, given the details."
I told Ethan about my run-in with one of the hospital admins and with Christy.
"She actually said she'd warned the nursing staff about you?"
I nodded and we discussed how to handle these kinds of situations at the hospital. I appreciated having Ethan as a confidant because he knew how to handle these kinds of issues after a life-long career in the justice system.
"You know, you don't have to work, Drake. You could stop completely and live off your investment income."
"I love my work," I said, because it was true. "I don't want to think I have to give it up because of what happened. There's nowhere that I could work where my past wouldn't be quickly discovered and discussed in the staff lunchroom. I have to just face things and buck up, as my father would say."
"It's true," Ethan said and held up his beer. "You're still young and have years ahead of you. You could quit for a couple of years, spend time volunteering, or doing nothing. You could return to practice once all this blows over and becomes nothing more than a bad memory."
"I doubt it will ever go away completely. People will always know I'm the Doctor Dangerous whose ex-lover tried to kill my pregnant wife and who killed an old friend of mine."
