CHAPTER 5

Harvey made it to New York Hospital in one piece saving his wife worry.

"Donna, honey, I made it here." Harvey said to her voicemail as he got out of his car. He thought she was probably busy with one or both the children.

Harvey entered the hospital and asked for Dr. Tulane. The office was on the fifth floor. Harvey thanked the receptionist, walked the short distance to the bank of elevators and entering the car alone hit the button for floor #5.

Harvey looked both sides as he disembarked from the car at the fifth floor. The directory straight ahead of him directed him to his left. He found himself in a small office with bare walls and one desk in front of him with a man around Harvey's age.

"Dr. Tulane?" Harvey asked.

"Harvey Specter?" Dr. Jeff Tulane asked in response.

"Yes," Harvey responded and shook the man's hand.

"I apologize for tightness of my office, but I'm new and I haven't much time to organize my stuff. Please sit down and we can discuss your mother's condition."

Even though he was sitting in the doctor's office, Harvey felt like this moment was surreal. He was actually going to talk about his mother. This woman he had not seen for upwards of twenty years until the other day when she walked into his life and thought that he would have forgiven her for all the years of deception and cruelty to him and especially to his father.

"Now I know this might be difficult to hear, Mr. Specter, but your mother is dying. Now I know from my conversations with her that you and she are not on the best of terms. She would like to make amends with you before her time is up."

Harvey's jaw clenched. How could he believe this doctor? How could he know that she did not put him up to this just to gain his sympathy and access to his children? He knew that's what she wanted most of all-to see his children and drive a wedge between him and his wife. Donna was already on her side it seemed to Harvey just by allowing Ray to drive her to her hotel and finding a doctor for her from a firm Pearson Specter Litt represented.

"Please allow for my skepticism here, doctor. How and why is she so sick all of a sudden? I never knew that woman to be sick a day in her life. I don't know how much of her past she brought up to you or the reason for our feud, but let me just say that the last thing that I thought would kill her would be a brain tumor."

"Please, Mr. Specter, she is your mother. No, I don't know the extent of your feud with her, but I think it is time to make amends for it."

Harvey shook his head. He was not a cold hearted man, but where his mother was concerned and how much she took from him and his father made it hard for him to show any sympathy or warmth for her.

"Why didn't she call for my brother, Marcus. He knows of her condition and there is no long standing feud between her and him. Why drag me into it?"

"I can only repeat what she said to me. She wanted to make up for all the wrong between you and she and see your children and meet your wife before she dies. I do not think that is too much to ask for in light of her condition."

"Which is?" Harvey said wanting to stop beating around the bush and get to the point.

"She has a brain tumor in the frontal lobe. Her doctor in Rhode Island has been treating it with drugs and radiation. It has helped a little, but she is losing some of her faculties and her physical mobility." Dr. Tulane told Harvey as he dug out his mother's chart from the bottom of his desk.

"I don't know. My mother is a good liar from long time ago. Did you rerun these tests to be sure that she is telling the truth."

"Mr. Specter! I know that in your profession the truth can be a fleeting thing, but in the medical field I know evidence of a brain tumor without seeing the test results confirming them."

"Well, in my profession, I need evidence before I convict or go for the jugular, so pardon me for being a typical lawyer."

"Mr. Specter, please!"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Tulane. I have a lifetime of memories of how bad this woman treated me and my father. The fact that she is dying just seems kind of strange to me. Can I go see her now?"

"Not if you are going to upset her again. She needs to be calm."

"Ok. I will not upset her. I will talk to her civilly."

"That's all she asks."

Harvey walked out of the office letting the doctor lead the way to her room.

Many years ago...

"Mom, mom," Harvey Specter, 16 years old, called from the bottom of the staircase. "I'm calling 911. Marcus got hurt in the middle of the street."

Harvey still heard no response from his mother. He had just pulled up in his used 1983 Ford Taurus fresh from school. He no sooner pulled up in the driveway of the house when he heard a car swerve and crash and then screaming from the kids in the middle of the neighborhood street calling Marcus' name.

Harvey turned around to see why his brother's name was being yelled from the middle of the street. He ran to see his beloved 10 year old brother lying unconscious in the middle of the street.

"Marcus, come on, brother," Harvey panicked and sturdily slapped his brother's cheek hoping to elicit a response from him. He finally picked him up and ran to the house with him in his arms. He laid Marcus on the couch in the living room, ran to the foyer where the phone was and began dialing and screaming for his mother simultaneously waiting for a response from his brother.

While waiting for his mother to descend the staircase, he managed to calmly give the necessary information to the 911 operator. After hanging up, Harvey went back to see if his brother had regained consciousness. He was still out cold. Harvey knew he should not have moved him until an ambulance came but he panicked.

The ambulance arrived and there was still no response from his mother. He knew she was there because her car was still in the driveway. He was not allowed to ride in the ambulance with Marcus as he was not a parent, however, he made some excuse that his mother was at work and their father was out of town. So he followed the ambulance to the hospital.

When Harvey arrived at the hospital, Marcus had awakened and had no recollection of what had happened to him. He panicked and called for his mother, but Harvey took over (as he normally did) and comforted the child.

"Harvey, where's mom?"

"I don't know, Marcus. I'm glad you're back. Now the doctor's want you to stay here overnight because it seems you have a concussion and your leg is broken. So I have to find mom and call dad so they can sign the papers."

The little blonde boy with the big blue eyes (unlike Harvey's deep brown ones) looked up to his brother in hero worship.

"You're coming back, right, Harvey?"

"Try to keep me away".

Present day...

Harvey walked into his mother's hospital room to find her lying in bed with her head against the pillow and her eyes closed. He thought she was asleep, but then she opened her eyes and saw him.

"Harvey, you came," Lillian Specter said as she eyed her eldest son in the doorway of her room.

"Not by choice. Donna had me call Marcus and then Dr. Tulane called my cell."

Harvey walked the few more inches to where his mother lay.

"I won't pretend you're glad to see me because I know you're not. However, take a seat. There are things you need to know."

Harvey looked for a chair in the private room and found one. Placing it next to the bed, he sat down and with a clenched jaw said, "So tell me".

Back in the past...

Harvey arrived back at home and looked all over and his mother was still nowhere downstairs. He had an inkling the entire time he drove home as to where his mother was hiding. Upon entering his house, he did not call for his mother, but when upstairs quietly and opened the first door on the right.

"Harvey!" Lillian Specter, blonde and built, lay on top of a man not her husband exclaimed at seeing her eldest son's shock at being caught in the act of infidelity.

Harvey ignored the man who immediately maneuvered himself out from under Lillian and quickly dressing while he said:

"Sorry, son, didn't mean for this to happen. Lillian, I'll call you later."

Harvey eyes blazing turned on the half- naked lover of his mother's and said in a low ominous voice.

"Get out before I call the police on both of you for trespass. Yeah, I don't give a shit you're my mother. You don't belong in this house! Now put on your clothes, mother! I'm taking you to the hospital to sign some papers for Marcus."

"What happened to Marcus, Harvey?" Lillian asked suddenly concerned that her youngest son, her baby, was suddenly in the hospital.

John Olivo, his mother's lover, summarily exited when he saw the panic on Lillian Specter's face when her elder son mentioned the condition of her baby.

Harvey reared on his mother who had escaped into the bathroom to dress.

"You didn't hear me yelling or the sirens from the ambulance. What were you so exhausted from your little illicit afternoon delight that you couldn't hear anything? The walls in this house are not that thick mother."

Lillian Specter walked out of the bathroom and proceeded to slap her eldest son in the face.

"You don't speak to your mother that way. It is none of your concern what I do or don't do when you're father is away. You show me some respect."

Harvey had rubbed the area where his mother's slap had landed. He narrowed his eyes at her. He was taller than her now at six feet and sneeringly looking down on her said, "You have to earn respect, mother. Right now you're not getting shit from me. Furthermore, I'm telling dad as soon as he is home."

"We'll talk about that later," Lillian hedged. "Right now, take me to Marcus. He must be scared."

With that Harvey walked out of the room, down the stairs, out of the house and waited for his mother to accompany him to the hospital to see Marcus.

Present day...

"Mother, what do I need to know?" Harvey wondered as he sat in the chair next to his mother's bed. As he sat there memory after difficult and horrible memory flashed through Harvey's mind culminating in the day when his mother left with her lover leaving his father and her sons behind. His father had been heartbroken and sad. He actually cried. His father was a musician and a passionate one at that. Harvey who did love music but loved his father more was a different man. He was hurt, but his hurt was not for show. He had to be strong because his father and little brother were not.

"I just wanted to let you know that I forgave you for all the years you have shut me out of your life. Every time I saw your name in the paper or heard another accolade laid upon you it made me proud to be the woman who had given birth to you. Also how you helped your little brother. You turned out to be a good man, Harvey. I just wanted you to know that ," Lillian said hoping her son would understand that despite all the years she had been without him he was still her son and she loved him.

Harvey looked at it from the side he had always seen it. His mother had been the one in the wrong not him.

"What do you mean you forgive me? I would think you would be asking me for your forgiveness after what you did. Leaving us emotionally and then physically after 18 years? You do realize that Marcus was all of 12 when you left. You left dad to handle two boys on his own. As for me, I can't tell you what that did to my psyche and emotion."

"You seemed to have come out all right. You have a beautiful wife and two children."

"Yeah. No thanks to you. You don't know how close I came to never having that."

Lillian rose up in her bed and turned to face her elder son.

"Harvey, I know you think I hurt your father, but you did not and still do not understand what our marriage was like."

"I don't care. All I know is when you supposedly love someone and marry them there is a little thing called fidelity. I don't think you know the meaning of the word."

"Harvey, please hear me out."

"Have you explained this to Marcus?" Harvey asked fuming and pushing the chair back rising in a temper. He was so close to just leaving knowing that whatever she could say for herself would never be enough for all the years he spent emotionally blocked. It was hard for him to sit there or to stand there and listen to this woman (albeit the woman who gave birth to him) tell him things about a marriage or about his father whom he adored with all his heart. A man who Harvey vowed he would never turn into, so he used women for his own pleasures for twenty years until he realized that he loved only one woman and to not tell her how he felt meant that he could have lost her in so many ways.

"Harvey!" Lillian exclaimed as she started to get out of bed.

"What!"

Suddenly a nurse came in and asked for them to be quiet or Harvey would be removed from the hospital.

Harvey apologized and decided that he had had enough.

"Look, mother, I have had a long day. All I want to do is go home. I don't care what you have to say because how can I believe it to be true? You lied so much to all of us that there is no way that I can believe whatever words come out of your mouth. I am going home. I will return tomorrow morning and maybe I will be in a better mood to accept what you claim to be an explanation for disloyal behavior."

Harvey walked out of his mother's hospital room. Lillian Specter began to cry because she understood fully how she had really damaged her family.