Homeland Elegies(87)
SLAUGHTER
You were tested for cardiac problems?
CORINNE
Not the way I was after Kayleigh’s autopsy—and the episode Christine had.
SLAUGHTER
Could you tell us about that?
CORINNE
It was a few weeks after Kayleigh died. We were out in the front yard. It was Christine and her brother, the cousins, me. We were expecting the in-laws, and when they pulled into the driveway, we saw the front grille of the car was covered in blood and fur. They’d hit a deer on the way over. When Christine heard them say that, when she realized she was looking at parts of a dead deer, she just went down.
SLAUGHTER
She fell down?
CORINNE
Like a sack of potatoes. I couldn’t find a pulse on her. She had that limp look like Kayleigh did. I was in shock. I mean, I’d just lost one kid. Here I got the other on the ground. I started screaming, and, I don’t know—it seemed like maybe she heard me. She came back.
SLAUGHTER
That’s when you all had tests run?
CORINNE
On Kayleigh’s tissues, too. Turned out me and her had the gene for this thing. Long QT. I mean, I was already in my midthirties, and nothing’d ever happened to me. But I’d had it all along.
(She pauses, briefly glancing in the direction of Father’s table again.)
CORINNE
I mean, I know whatever happened to Christine in the driveway isn’t usual for the long QT we’ve all got—which I guess is supposed to happen when you’re sleeping. At least I know that’s what the doctor from the city thought.
SLAUGHTER
Dr. Akhtar? Sitting over there?
CORINNE
He kept mentioning that Brugada. I guess he’s some specialist of it.
SLAUGHTER
When did you see Dr. Akhtar?
CORINNE
After Christine saw him. She got pregnant and was worried about the beta-blockers. So she went in to get an opinion. He told her to get off it. She came over that night after the appointment and told me I should do the same.
SLAUGHTER
Get off the beta-blockers?
CORINNE
Yes.
SLAUGHTER
Why would she think you should be going off of them, too?
CORINNE
I mean, that’s what didn’t make sense to me, neither. But this new doctor was saying it was worse to be on them with our long QT. And even worse if we had this Brugada thing. I’d never heard of it. And anyway, we didn’t have any problems while we were taking the beta-blockers. For years we didn’t. Not her, not me. That’s what I told him.
SLAUGHTER
Do you remember what else you may have told him?
CORINNE
When he told me I should get off the beta-blockers, I told him what happened when another doctor tried to get me off them before. It was scary. My heart racing and whatnot. I ended up in the emergency room. I wasn’t going to do that again.
SLAUGHTER
What’d he have to say to that?
CORINNE
Frankly, not much…
(Her dry delivery draws an audible laugh in the jury box. I see Hannah shoot Father a sidelong look at the defendant’s table.)
CORINNE
Anyway, it was a short visit. He took a look at my chart. Made some diagnosis about maybe there being this Brugada problem. Told me I should get off the beta-blockers. I told him what happened that one time when I did. Then he was out the door. That’s what I remember.
SLAUGHTER
And you didn’t go off the medication like your daughter?
CORINNE
Hell, no. Anyway, I wasn’t pregnant, so there was that, too.
SLAUGHTER
Did you advise your daughter to stay on it?
CORINNE
She was a grown woman. Wasn’t my place to tell her what to do. That’s not the sort of parents we’ve ever been.
SLAUGHTER
Was that the last time you saw Dr. Akhtar?
CORINNE
We saw him again maybe a week after Christine died. Nick, her husband. My husband, Hal. The family doctor.
SLAUGHTER
What was the purpose of this second visit?
CORINNE
To figure out what to do about me. Now I had two kids dead from this thing. We wanted to make sure I wasn’t next. Though the way I was feeling then, I wasn’t sure I much cared if I did end up next.
(Pause. For the first time, the emotion Corinne has been fighting the entire time breaks through. Slaughter pulls out a pocket handkerchief and offers it to her. She considers the cloth square for a moment, then shakes her head. She’s not going to let herself cry. She dabs at the corners of her eyes with her closed fist. Slaughter folds the handkerchief and returns it to his inside jacket pocket. He steals a glimpse at the jury, and I realize his job with this witness is finished. Her portrait is complete, the various images of her now richly fused into the vivid personage seated before the jury: a devoted and still-suffering mother; stoic; humble; the scion of a beloved local dairy family; an appealing witness and reliable narrator of her own travails—and because of all the foregoing, a trustworthy guardian of her dead daughter’s continued interests among the living.)