The Lazarus Effect Read Online Free Page B

few minutes it took to exchange pleasantries about the weather and their families, and then hustled for the lift to the second floor before anyone else cornered him. He ducked past his personal assistant and the assault of morning messages, emails and appointments he knew she had waiting for him and snuck into his office. He hoped, in vain really, that none of the other PAs had seen him. The first moments of peace in the mornings were worth killing for.
    It lasted about two minutes before the phone went. Let it ring, he thought as he reclined his chair, pressing thumbs into tiredeyes. It didn’t stop. Sighing, he reached over and answered. It was Tamsin from paediatrics, fraught and apologetic as she informed him they had only two doctors available and the place was a meat market. She knew it wasn’t his responsibility to monitor his wife, but she’d tried the other Dr Fourie several times on her beeper, cell and home phone and still no answer. Could he perhaps …
    Ian hung up. He didn’t need to glance at the wall calendar or the smaller, flip-over version on the desk to know the date. No parent ever forgot the month that carried the anniversary of a child’s death. Obviously that was why Carina wasn’t at work yet, why he knew she had no intention of turning up at all. September had truly begun, and every year like clockwork, September rolled in like a cumulonimbus, dank, heavy presence that chewed up every scrap of joy in his heart and home. Every member of his family grew subdued, avoided eye contact and engaging conversation, not to mention the frequent, inexplicable absences from home. Having slept at a nearby bed-and-breakfast last night, he was hardly setting the best example.
    Their well-coordinated, sombre dance around the unspoken was familiar – sickeningly comforting, in fact. All the same, he’d expected it to have petered out, if not through the passage of time then at least from how exhausting it had become for all of them. He couldn’t help but conjure up an image of himself seated at his mother’s kitchen table as she fussed over him, his attire and confidence changing over the years but a petulant, hangdog expression tattooed on his face. The years had yawned between them, and neither had been able to submit to thegrief of losing a husband and father. Food and denial became substitutes for communication. Anything could petrify into tradition if people gave it enough respect. Now here he found himself again, decades later. Rinse, repeat. Superstitious he was not, but wondering if a curse hung over his head was beginning to sound plausible.
    Ian picked up a framed photograph. The smiling face of his son looked back at him, a face so like his own that the resemblance threatened to splinter his ribcage. In a green shirt splashed with a jaunty print that made him look even younger than his fourteen years, Sean grinned as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Wherever he was now, he likely had no cause for cares. Even with the barest of fuzz on his scalp and lighting that hardly compensated for a sallow complexion, it was hard to tell he was a sick child with precious moments left of his life.
    Ian removed the frame and drew another snapshot from behind the first, peeling them apart. The heavy, gilded frame ensured no one ever guessed it was there. The hidden photo showed a young girl in a T-shirt and blue jeans, framed in a doorway with hands in pockets and shoulders raised as she laughed into the camera. Same smile, same-ish nose.
    They could be brother and sister.
    Absurd, seeing as they were, a bond they would’ve enjoyed more thoroughly had he allowed it in the short time they’d known each other. ‘2 September, 2002’ was written on the back of the boy’s photo, the same day as today, the memory captured mere weeks before he died. ‘17/03/07’ was scrawledbehind the girl’s. Sean, who in a few weeks would have been dead for seven years, and Jacqueline, missing for nearly two.
    Two of his