Premonition Chs. 7-9

After doctors pull Kristen Abbott from the womb of her mother, Mary Abbott, moments after she is stabbed to death, associations with Mary's murder continue to torment Kristen throughout her childhood and adolescence. Callous schoolmates add to Kristen's trauma when they use her fixations as ammunition to terrorize the emotionally scarred adolescent. After the young woman's psychic instability leads to her hospitalization at the Wallburton Clinic, Kristen experiences a series of strange events including the appearance of a mysterious stalker who hides amidst the shadows outside her window at night.
Through Mary's voice, we discover that she herself was a society writer from a well-to-do Massachusetts family who was married to Kristen's father, John Abbott, an occasionally violent manual laborer. Mary casts suspicion on her husband when she chronicles John's increasing envy as he becomes progressively convinced that she'd sought out the company of a man whose background she found more in concert with her own. Mary then presents a competing narrative, one detailing a medical scandal, which took place at the time of her attack, that potentially implicates members of the hospital staff in her death.
[You are here]--> We then progress 18 years from the harrowing events of her young adulthood. Kristen has become a scientific journalist, who is gathering information for a story on the science of epigenetics. Her research for the article introduces her to experimentation in which a mouse that’s exposed to the smell of a cherry blossom and then shocked produces offspring that display adverse reactions to this particular odor. Kristen’s exploration of this phenomenon leads her to discover the source of her recurrent psychological impressions of her mother’s killing. After Kristen insists the investigation be reopened, she soon finds her interest in the case is putting her own life in jeopardy. In order discover the truth and save herself, she must untangle a web of clues related to her mother’s death.


Chapter 7

Kristen


Two months after our wedding, Brad and I moved into a charming federal style apartment in the Boston suburbs. Shortly after we were married, my husband went on to land a position as a therapist in a group practice in Allston. I myself became progressively more adept at ferreting out the crucial details of groundbreaking scientific discoveries in the research I did. Now 33, I was also expecting my own child in a few months.
My sister Deborah had become a lawyer like her grandfather and lived in an apartment in downtown Cambridge. She herself had grown into a sophisticated young professional with brown hair that she wore in a stylish pixie-cut. She remained a bachelorette, and the men she dated were constantly frustrated by certain aspects of her personality, particularly her fear of own commitment. Some of this anxiety, she realized, stemmed from the trauma of her mother's death, but there was another element of it that she was willing to acknowledged only after a great deal of introspection. While my sister believed it was I who'd suffered the brunt of our family tragedy, for reasons she couldn't understand she found herself incapable of fully trusting any man regardless of how close they grew to one another.
One particular morning, I walked through the entrance to the Scientific Observer Magazine building where I worked. I greeted the security guard as I headed towards the elevator. The lift took me up to my office on the third floor every morning. I walked in and poured the remainder of my decaffeinated coffee into the geranium, something I'd learned is a forgivable offense as long as it's black. I then logged onto my email. A Google calendar notification immediately popped up reminding me about the staff meeting scheduled for later that morning.
When I walked into the conference room at 10:00 am, Paul Mason, our Editor-in-Chief, greeted me with his customary wave and head bob. Paul was a burly man is his fifties with a grey beard who sat alongside the journal's other reporters including Amanda Sterling, one of my closest friends in spite of the hipster garb she sported with occasionally nauseating pride, Greg Halstead, a brash blond "surfer type" in his thirties, and a bookish reporter named Ted Jarvis.
Paul looked over the list of assignments he'd compiled. "Okay, Ted's got the collider story down in Hartford and Kristen, we've picked you for this month's mouse 'tale.'"
"Fantastic!" I exclaimed. "What is it this time, lymphoma from iPads or the cerebral impact of too much Jerry Springer?"
"Actually, this one's about genetics," Paul replied with an effort to boost my curiosity about the story. "Apparently someone's gotten some pretty interesting results by breeding mice who share the experiences of their parents."
"What, like in their past life?" I retorted somewhat cynically.
"No, nothing quite so Shirley MacLaine. It appears it's about something very simple...the smell of a flower I think."
I reeled at the thought of anything that might over-stimulate my olfactory nerves. "Oh boy! Well, as long as I don't have to get too close to it myself. I think even daffodils would make me toss my cookies at this point."
Paull looked at me empathetically. "If you're not up to it right now--"
"No, I'm on it. Sounds right up my alley," I said twitching for a moment at my choice of idioms.
That evening, I sat on my couch talking to Deborah. I held my phone in one hand and petted Oliver, a Persian cat sitting on my lap, with the other. "Almost over the worst of the morning sickness," I said thinking how relieved I'd be when I no longer had to make a beeline to the bathroom every morning.
"That must be a relief," Deborah responded.
"Sure is. One more hour-long vomit fest and I was gonna' go back to the hospital."
"You're still coming to my holiday party right?" Deborah queried.
"Of course. You don't think this baby's gonna' keep me from your double-fudge brownies."
"Aren't you supposed to avoid chocolate?" my sister asked.
I thought for a second. "I don't know, I'll ask my doctor."
"When are you going to see her?" responded my health-minded sibling.
"The day after your party."
My bossy older sister can't help but laugh at my response.
That next evening, Brad and I were dressing for Deborah's party. "Are you sure you should be going out tonight?" my overprotective husband asked. Last time we had a social engagement you barely made it to the bathroom to throw up."
"I'll be fine," I said performing the last brush strokes on my hair. I always loved my sister's Christmas parties. So much good food, so many close friends. I'd sacrificed enough of her normal holiday festivities out of exhaustion. I wasn't going to let my condition deter me from some long overdue socialization.
We heard the sound of my sister swinging open her oven door and declaring that her brownies were almost ready as we entered her apartment. I ducked my head in and informed her of our arrival, an announcement she acknowledged with a thin smile and a characteristically insouciant head nod. Looking around the room as I returned to where Brad stood among the other guests, I quickly realized that I hadn't seen some of Deborah's friends in years. One woman I felt certain I had never even met before. I assumed she must be one of Deborah's co-workers. Walking over to her once Brad had left to take my coat and his own to the guest room, I made a casual introduction. When she greeted me in return and told me that her name was Erica Cotman, I knew the name had vague ring of familiarity but I couldn't figure out why.
I thought back to my sister's childhood playmates. I remembered Marcie, the girl with the red pigtails and Eleanor, the selfish girl who refused to let anyone but herself ride her new pink with the handlebar ribbons.
"I was a friend of your sister's right around the time you were born."
"Really, that's odd," I responded. "I thought I knew all of Deborah's friends."
"Well, we kind of lost touch after your mom...well you know. I think you were just a few weeks old the last time I went over there."
"Oh, did your family move?"
"Actually, I just stopped going over to your house."
I felt slightly taken aback. I'd never realized that my sister had alienated some of her childhood friends. "Did you and Deborah have a fight?"
"No, I stopped playing with Deborah because of your dad's...um...temper."
"His temper?!" I asked incredulously.
"Yeah, he'd snap at the smallest things your sister did. After a while, my parents said they didn't feel totally comfortable with me playing with Deborah anymore."
"Well, having to deal with my mom's death was really difficult for him. I guess he might have been on a short fuse around then."
"Actually, this was almost all before your mom was killed," Erica replied.
          I looked at her in complete surprise.
On the way home from the party, I mentioned what Erica had said to Brad.
"Well, you told me he was going through a rough time around then, right?" asked Brad.
"Yeah, but this woman made it sound like he was some kind of monster. Either her parents were really over-protective or there's a side of my dad that I've never seen."
My husband shrugged, but said nothing.
"Do you think that might be true?"
"Could be."
"In what way?" I asked.
"Well, sometimes I think your dad lashes out me more than he ever does at you..."
"That doesn't mean he's got a bad temper," I replied immediately hitting on a defensive posture. "You know my mom's dad treated him like shit," I said, reminding Brad of the Abbott/Tillman feuds. "He probably just feels like that's what father-in-laws are for...to keep their daughter's husband in line."
"Maybe," he said.
I would've pushed the issue had I any further to desire to explore the subject than he did. But I didn't. Dad was no brute--case closed, end of discussion.
The next day, I drove across the river to MIT and parked on the grounds outside a large science complex. I'd always been a little intimidated by MIT. During my undergraduate career, whenever I met students who studied there, I had the impulse to exaggerate my own academic accomplishments. Now that I was a journalist, I no longer felt quite as overshadowed by the institution's reputation. Nonetheless, as I opened the glass door leading into the heart of the labyrinth, I couldn't overcome the feeling that I was traveling to the inner sanctum of scientific inquiry itself. After more than 15 minutes of wandering the serpentine halls of the cavernous facility, I finally located the office I'd been searching for. I walked into a biology lab where an earnest-looking young researcher with a full head of large curly hair was feeding a mouse. "Hi, I'm Kristen Abbott. I'm doing the story about Dr. Rothman's experiment," I said. "Is he here?"
"I'm Abe Rothman," he replied.
"Oh...well, hello," I said trying to hide my surprise at the age of the biologist behind the highly touted "revolutionary" breakthrough I'd been assigned to cover.
"Welcome," Abe said, himself suppressing his excitement at the notion of an attractive woman seeking him out in the cloistered recesses of MIT's laboratory infrastructure. "I was just giving Annabelle here her lunch," Abe continued pointing to a white mouse munching on a sprig of celery.
"Well hello, Annabelle," I said charmed by the small white creature's nose flares. "And who's this little guy over here?" I inquired pointing to a much tinier rodent in a nearby cage.
"It's actually another 'she.' That's Annabelle's daughter, Trudy."
"Pleased to meet you, Trudy," I said.
"She's a bit shy like her mother," Abe explained acclimating me to his charges' general demeanor.
I looked back at Abe. "So, my editor tells me that you've been working with genetic imprinting?"
Dr. Rothman suddenly felt amped at the idea that he was being given the opportunity to share his discovery with the world. "Yeah, let me show you," he said with the energy of a five-year old displaying the capabilities of a newly acquired electronic action figure. Abe walked over to a shelf, picked up a flower and returned to Trudy's cage. "Three weeks ago, when this little lady was still just a gleam in her mother's eye, we gave this cherry blossom to Annabelle to sniff and then we administered an electric shock. Now observe. This mouse here has never had any contact with this flower before." Abe offered Trudy the cherry blossom to smell and the mouse retreated in fear.
I didn't understand why but I found myself flinching in unison with the tiny rodent backpedaling in terror.
"So, she's afraid of the cherry blossom because her mom was?" I responded in confusion.
"No, she's never even seen her mom's reaction to this flower," Abe explained.
"I don't get it," I replied feeling somewhat embarrassed by my lack of knowledge in this particular realm of hereditary science.
"It's called epigenetics. She jumped back like that because the shock we gave Annabelle after she smelled the cherry blossom burned a fear of the flower's odor into her genes."
"Wow, that's really amazing!" I responded beginning to grasp the significance of the mouse's behavior. "So, what exactly are the implications?" I then inquired.
"Well, we're discovering that all living creatures have particularly traumatic, or emotionally stimulating, experiences of their parents imprinted into their DNA."
"So, like if your mom escaped from a burning building you might actually remember that?" I asked.
"It doesn't even have to be that dramatic," the scientist replied.
"Give me an example," I insisted.
"Ever wonder what your dad's first time was like?"
I balked at the thought of contemplating my father's sexual experience. "Actually, that's never something I had any interest in knowing about," I reassured my interviewee.
"Well, like it or not, that memory is sitting somewhere in your chromosomes."
I held up my hand. "Please, I feel nauseous enough."
Abe looked down at my stomach. "Oh...sorry," he apologized.
"That's alright," I said with a soft smile. I picked up my belongings and bid Dr. Rothman and his two companions a fond farewell. I then left the laboratory eager to describe what I'd just witnessed to my journal's readership.
As I drove home, I began to think back to the memories I'd discussed with the child psychologist. It'd been quite a while since any of the premonitions attached to my mother's life had visited me in the dreams or momentary flashbacks that'd once terrorized me. Still, the visceral reaction I'd felt at that small rodent's jump caused me more than a moment or two of unexplainable pause.



Chapter 8

Kristen


A few days later, I sat in the living room of my father, now in his sixties. The dor of my dad's house hadn't changed much since my childhood. The hallway was still adorned with accoutrements from he and my late mother's various trips. A horseshoe from a ranch in Oklahoma hung on one wall. A miniature totem pole from a reservation in Arizona stood next to their fireplace. And my dad's favorite, a portrait of Wild Bill Hickok, was displayed with prominence in their foyer. My mom had always supplicated her husband to take her to Europe or Asia, but he was never one for long plane trips. He felt much more comfortable visiting places where he spoke the language and could carry all of his favorite albums in tow.
Having retired five years earlier, my dad spent most of his free time involved in model building and birdwatching. A miniature windmill, his latest project, sat on the shelf in the living room next to the eight-inch Studebaker he'd built some years prior. He wore his green hunting-vest, his clothing of choice both outside and in. I walked over to my dad's Christmas tree. For years, Deborah had wanted an ornament with our mom's picture on it. Dad always refused. We sat engaged in a chess match on a board that my dad and I had played on since I was young. Christmas carols emitted from my father's worn-out tape deck that rested atop a cabinet behind us.
As my dad pondered his next move, I asked him out of nowhere, "Daddy, do you remember what you were you doing the night it happened?"
My father turned away.
"I'm sorry, forget I asked," I said after seeing his response.
In spite of my father's reassurance, I regretted having forced him to relive the memory. I'd spent so much time attempting to suppress my curiosity that this too had blossomed into a kind of grotesque fixation. My dad hated any discussion of her attack or, for that matter, commemorations of her death. When we were young, Deborah had wanted an ornament with our mom's picture on it for the Christmas Tree that now stood behind me. Dad always refused. On top of that, he'd always find some excuse or another to postpone promised trips to bring us to our mother's gravesite. On the few occasions when he did grant our wish, my father would wait in the car while Deb and I laid flowers at the base of our mom's headstone.
"No, no it's alright," my dad replied to my query still looking back down at his bishop. "I've spent enough years hiding from that whole thing. Actually, I was trimming the tree." My dad finally took his eyes off the board and looked at me. "Your mom hated doing it...she always managed to get the tinsel all over the place. That year I decided to surprise her."
"I'd just switched on the lights when the phone rang," my father continued. "I thought it was going to be Mary letting me know she'd be late."
"But Deborah told me you guys used to have a mini-tree lighting ceremony every year," I interjected.
"We did," my dad replied. "But not that year."
"Why not?" I asked.
"You know, I don't recall," my father said his tone suddenly changing. "And this is why I don't like talking about this," he exclaimed. "For God's sake, haven't I begged you and your sister enough times not to ask me about that night."
"I'm so sorry, Daddy," I responded.
My father slid a pawn forward. "It's your move," he said.
Later that evening, I made my way into the kitchen where my dad was washing dishes. He hadn't heard me behind him, and I watched for a moment as he stood looking out of the window into the evening darkness.
"I'm gonna' head home," I said startling my father out of thought.
"Okay," my dad said, scarcely acknowledging my announcement.
He waited a few moments until I'd stepped out of the house. Immediately after I left, he walked up to the door and turned the handle lock as well as the bolt behind me.
The next night I performed a series of stretches in preparation for my first Lamaze class. My doctor and I'd recently had a disagreement over delivery methods. I'd thought about the idea of an epidural, or at least some kind of medicine to reduce the pain. I decided, however, that I wanted to eschew such options. I'd read about ways of making natural childbirth fairly comfortable. I felt that if others could do it, so could I. I'd always believed that being a mother was about a multitude of sacrifices. Brad and I would no longer be able to run to the movies on a moment's notice. We couldn't simply drive up to the mountains for the weekend any time we felt like it. That sense of obligation I thought began during the birth process. It was not so much that I felt that any kind of anesthesia posed a risk to the fetus, though that was certainly part of it. It was more that I wanted to be totally "there" the moment my child entered the world.
When I presented my opinion on this subject to my obstetrician, Dr. Beth Grayson, my doctor voiced her firm disapproval. Dr. Grayson believed that I'd gone through enough emotionally during my young adulthood. My physician thought the decision to deliver my baby without any form of palliative was some kind of masochistic invitation of suffering. She hypothesized that her patient somehow felt she could compensate for her latent guilt over her mother's death by enduring the brunt of the agony of childbirth.
The next day, I was sitting in my journal's conference room surrounded by my fellow magazine staff. I read the end of my article from my laptop, "...a scientific frontier that promises to offer unimaginable insights into the human mind."
"Pretty amazing stuff!" my colleague Ted remarked.
"So, you mean you can actually have, like, memories of what your parents did floating around in your brain?" Amanda asked with a combination of amazement and befuddlement.
"Not just your parents," I replied.
"Well, how far back can it go, grandparents, great-grandparents?" Amanda continued.
"They don't know yet," I responded shaking my head.
"No wonder I bombed my SAT's," Greg thought out loud. "I must've had my dad's test anxieties hounding me the whole exam."
"Or you're just stupid," Ted commented.
"Apparently Yale didn't think so," Greg argued.
"My friend...I'm sure the only thing you really inherited from your dad was his Ivy League legacy," Ted responded.
Interrupting his young colleagues' badinage, Paul turned to me. "Well, great article anyway, Kris. Think we'll lead with it in the next issue."
I smiled.
"And I'm giving you the Big Pharma story coming up," he added.
"Can't wait!" I replied.
"That's my girl!" he said praising my enthusiasm.
After my supervisor dismissed the group, I left the meeting feeling elated at the ponderous mark I'd suddenly made within the scientific community. I was excited to begin my next assignment. Not quite as exciting. Pharmaceutical distribution. A mundane, even sleep-inducing subject. Fortunately, as it turned out, it was a slumber I'd eventually wake up from. Or would I?


Chapter 9

Mary


I would have been so proud of that girl had I ever had the chance to see just one of the amazing things she did with her life. Of all the awful things that would populate her brain, the one thing I prayed she would never witness was the social prejudice that poisoned her parents' lives. My parents' snobbery, their vile bigotry engendered a hatred so vehement it nearly cost me my marriage.
The evening following our anniversary celebration I found my husband at home fully intoxicated. I tried to apologize for my father's behavior, but my words fell on deaf ears. After that point, the cold war between John and my dad poisoned every interaction between the Abbotts and the Tilworths. Family holidays were always clouded with an icy silence. Messages of even the most trivial nature were transmitted between the two men through either me or my mother.
And then, I realized one day amidst such animosity that I was late. I set up an appointment with an OBGYN. I now began pondering whether I really wanted to have a baby with husband. I had to talk myself out of the idea of looking into an abortion if indeed, I was carrying his child.
The day of the appointment, I was sure that I'd wait an additional half an hour on top of the full sixty minutes I'd already subjected myself to. This was my universal experience with physicians in the past. Yet, the moment the clock struck 11:00 am, the doctor's assistant called my name. I was shocked. I eagerly stood up and followed the nurse down the hall toward the examination room.
As I began disrobing, I was momentarily reminded of a gynecologist I'd seen once in college. An ugly mole on his chin rendered me unnaturally cognizant of the physicality of our interaction. In spite of all efforts to eschew such thinking, my mind began drifting towards images of him pleasuring himself to thoughts of the many female orifices he observed in his professional capacity. I subsequently avoided clinical visits of such an intimate nature even in situations that called for the expertise of this kind of medical professional.
Suddenly, the sound of the outside knob turning pulled me out of such unpleasant reminiscence. Immediately upon the doctor's entrance, I felt myself at ease just in the casual manner in which he shut the door behind him.
"Hello," he said smiling. "I'm Doctor Edward Hayes."
Edward had a cleft in his chin that seemed to add to the dashing persona already created by his imposing stature and Harvard accent. It was his voice, a resounding baritone, that a patient he met during his residency found herself enamored with before she was uncontrollably drawn to his broad shoulders and Davey Jones haircut. Edward had been engaged, but his fiancultimately stood him up at the altar when sudden cold feet sent her back into the arms of her high school sweetheart. After this romantic debacle, he'd dated various women, but none of them had quite lived up to his standards for a partner. He reminded me of an older version of one of my father's friend's sons. His name was Tyler. He'd been 12 years my senior and already well established in the business world when I was still in high school. I found him infinitely more attractive for, what appeared to my 16-year-old sensibilities, as his manifest sophistication in relation to my boorish male peers.
"Mary Abbott," I said as cordially as I could.
"It's nice to meet you Mary," Edward continued. "So, what brings you here today?"
"I'm late," I replied.
"How late?"
"Five days."
"Well, that's not a sure sign that you're pregnant but it's certainly cause for optimism. That is, if you're hoping to become pregnant."
I nodded my head four times.
When the exam Dr. Hayes administered told me that I was, in fact, pregnant, the news temporarily quelled John's hostility, his unpredictable, peevish nature.
At first, my husband had no qualms about the relationship I developed with Edward. He felt nothing but appreciation for the man saw me through months of retching, edema and constipation without failing for a single moment to express his heartfelt encouragement and genuine concern for my comfort. Throughout the process, we developed quite a rapport. However, this special bond started to reveal a set of glaring inadequacies in my relationship to the man I found waiting for me at home once I returned from my hospital visits.
The day our daughter Deborah Abbott was finally born, Dr. Hayes handed her to me before looking over at my husband. John shook Edward's hand vigorously before looking over at our new daughter.
"Thank you. And thank you for taking such good care of Mary," John finally said to my doctor.
Edward smiled. "I'll leave you two alone for a while with your daughter."
"Oh, there's no need for you to go," I said suddenly. "You've been so much a part of this process that I feel like you should be here when the baby first opens her eyes."
I then turned towards my husband. "That's alright with you, isn't it sweetheart?"
"Of course," John exclaimed.
Dr. Hayes conceded to stay. John glared at me as I admired the new life I held in my arms. He might not have been particularly bothered with my request that Edward remain were I not to have pointedly asked his permission.
A few years after Deborah was born, I took a job as a society writer at The Sentinel, a local Boston newspaper. I found myself pregnant once more. An article assignment required me to travel to a location in the western area of Boston. When I found the address I'd been given by my editor and emerged from my car, I realized that I was only a matter of blocks from the hospital. I was required to spend the week interviewing employees at a consulting firm. I decided that there would be no harm in inquiring if Dr. Hayes might like to have lunch.
That evening, I walked into the living room, where John was reclining in the ottoman reading the paper, and explained my intention. "Dear, I was planning on inviting my doctor to lunch tomorrow," I said in as flat a tone as possible to my spouse.
"I didn't know you had another appointment," responded John laying the Boston Globe in his lap.
"I don't," I said.
"Then where are you gonna' have lunch?"
"Actually, at Lamondas. It's a restaurant that's across the street from where I'm collecting information for my article."
"Oh," said John. "I didn't realize that you'd started to pursue social engagements with your doctor."
"It's just lunch," I insisted betraying my intention to avoid any hint of defensiveness.
"Sure, it's just lunch," John replied.
As Edward and I grew closer, John became more visibly disconcerted over my developing attachment to him. One weekend in the fall that year, we left Deborah with my parents and headed out for a romantic trip to the Berkshires. It was a vacation we'd been planning for months. During a lull in the housing industry, John had been let go from his position when his firm closed its doors. I hoped our trip would take John's mind off his professional troubles.
Following our return to a bed and breakfast after a day of sightseeing, John took a nap. With my husband out for a short spell, I decided to write a letter to Edward. Remembering a discussion we'd had at one point about the Civil War, I began describing an historic cottage we'd visited that day.
Just as I was finishing the note, my husband awoke. After a long stretch, John propped himself up on his elbows. He watched me for a few moments hunched over the room's 19th century oak desk detailing the historical significance of the house we'd toured.
"Writing a letter?" John finally asked.
"Mhmm," I said still partially lost in thought.
"To who?" he inquired.
"Edward," I replied casually. "I wanted to tell him about the landmark we saw this morning."
"Now the two of you are exchanging letters?" John exclaimed. The effect of learning of the epistolary aspect of our relationship left him with more than a sense of betrayal. He suddenly felt insulted at the notion that there were things about our excursions that I didn't believe he would (or could) appreciate that I wanted to describe to Edward. He stood up and walked over to me. I hardly believed I had anything to hide. Yet, for some reason, I still didn't want him to read it. Maybe the tone I'd used in explaining my activity gave away something I didn't even know consciously that I felt. Without even realizing I was doing it, I put my hand over the letter. His suspicions now supernovaing, John ripped my hand away and grabbed the letter off the desk. As I reached out for it in a moment of instinctual self-defense, John slapped me, knocking me off the chair.