The clinic doors slid open with a squeaky whoosh and Ethan stepped through. “There you are.”
Nicole looked up at him from six feet over, seated in the same kind of curved vinyl seats he saw in the ER of his own hospital. A monthly twenty-four-hour shift sprinting through emergencies gave Ethan extra income that made paying down his student loans look like an achievable goal. A long-term goal, but a goal at the top of his list—right under being the best neurosurgeon in the country.
Nicole sat in one chair with her injured foot propped up on another and cushioned with a wadded sweatshirt. She looked tired and frazzled, but her face carried the same determination it always did.
“Thanks for coming,” she said.
“Of course.” Ethan looked around. “Where’s Lauren?”
“At the hospital pharmacy getting my drugs.”
“I hope they gave you something strong.” Ethan dropped into the chair beside Nicole.
“If it makes me woozy, I’m not going to take it.”
Stubborn as ever. “It’s going to hurt for a while, Nicole. Controlling the pain will also keep you comfortable enough to be still and let the break heal.”
“I don’t need drugs for that.”
“Maybe I should go talk to the guy who treated you.”
Nicole put a hand on his arm. “Thanks, but I don’t see the point. It’s broken. I have to wait for the orthopedist’s office to call about scheduling. I’m going to push for tomorrow.”
“They’ll want to wait a few days,” Ethan said, “for the swelling to go down.”
“Great.” She snatched her hand back from his arm, and instantly he felt cold rush into the place she had warmed.
“Every day will be better.” Ethan said what he told most of his patients in recovery.
“Not as long as Quinn is missing,” Nicole said. “What are we going to do about that?”
He had no answer.
“Are you leaving tonight?” Nicole asked.
Ethan gave a slow shrug and blew out his breath. Nicole’s injury changed his agenda—again. He would have to call Hansen, but Ethan wasn’t sure how many more favors he had in the bank with Hansen. He avoided Nicole’s question.
Instead he said, “Do you know how to use these crutches?”
“I’ll manage.”
Ethan swallowed and picked up Nicole’s hand. “It’s okay to accept help while you’re injured.” This was something else he often told patients. “Let people who care for you look after you.”
Her emerald eyes, fixed wide open, stared into his. He smoothed back the disheveled hair hanging over the side of her face. In the old days, this would have been a moment when he’d lean in and kiss her. The old impulse was still there, but he’d forfeited the right long ago.
Nicole’s eyes shifted to look over his shoulder. “There’s Lauren.”
Ethan released Nicole’s hand and stood up. He took the white paper bag from Lauren’s hands. “Let’s see what they gave you.”
“Thank you for coming,” Lauren said. “They said it’s a narcotic.”
Ethan read the label on the bottle. “They told you the truth.”
Lauren handed a package of crackers and a bottle of water to Nicole. “You’re not supposed to take it on an empty stomach.”
Ethan recognized conflict flickering in Nicole’s eyes as she gritted her teeth against the pain in her ankle and calculated its relief versus the prospect of losing her mental edge.
“Take it.” Ethan twisted the cap off the bottle, dumped a pill into his palm, and offered it to Nicole. “At least today.”
Nicole closed a fist over the pill and then tore open the crackers. She chomped down two of them before she swallowed the pill.
“Eat a couple more,” he urged.
To his surprise, Nicole complied. “Let’s get out of here.” She reached for the crutches leaning against her chair.
Ethan grabbed the crutches and held them steady. “Push up through the heel of your good foot.”
“I know, I know.” Nicole grasped the handles of the crutches and slowly brought herself upright.
Ethan assessed how well the crutches fit her height. “We should take these down a notch at the bottom.”
“You can fuss with them later,” Nicole said. “I just want to get out of here.”
Ethan wanted to put an arm around her waist, but an extra pair of feet at the base of the crutches would only increase her risk of stumbling. He glanced at Lauren. “My car is right outside the door. I’ll go get it ready.”
He stepped toward the doors and turned his head to watch Nicole’s slow progress. She knew how to handle the crutches—something must have happened during the last ten years to teach her this skill—but she winced at the pain of holding her booted foot off the ground. If Lauren didn’t have a comfortable chair for Nicole, he would go to Birch Bend and buy one.
Ethan had all four doors of his Lexus open by the time Nicole and Lauren conquered the few yards separating the clinic entrance from the vehicle. Nicole carefully maneuvered herself to sit on the edge of the backseat and handed her crutches to Lauren.
“I feel like I have to think about every stinkin’ move I make,” Nicole said.
“You do,” Ethan said. “Successful rehab begins now by not making things worse.”
Ethan was full of good advice for patients. Some of it he even believed.
Gently, an inch at a time, Nicole scooted back on the seat until she rested her injured foot on the padding. She twisted, looking for a seat belt. Ethan leaned into the car, found both ends of one, and fastened them across her lap. His face was inches from hers.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Ethan. It means a lot that you would come for me. But you never answered my question. Do you have to leave tonight?”
“Let me make some calls before I answer.” He gave the seat belt an extra tug to be sure it was latched.
Lauren settled in the front passenger seat, and Ethan started the engine. He glanced in the rearview mirror at Nicole.
“I had an interesting conversation with Dani Roose this morning,” he said.
Lauren twisted under the constraint of her seat belt so fast Ethan thought she might fly over the center console at him.
“You saw Dani this morning?”
“Yes.” He glanced at Lauren as he backed out of the parking spot. “What’s the big deal?”
“Have you been under a rock all day? Dani’s boat went over the falls.”
He nodded. “That’s what she said. Good thing she wasn’t in it at the time.”
Air swished out of both Lauren and Nicole.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“George Kopp found pieces of her boat, but no one has heard from Dani all day.” Lauren leaned against the headrest. “Have you told anyone you saw her?”
“She roused me out of a sound sleep, demanding to see the photos on my camera. We had breakfast at that old diner on the other side of the falls. I wasn’t the only person to see her.”
“There must have been a shift change at the diner,” Lauren said. “People have been looking for her all day. When we get Nicole settled, you have to tell Cooper Elliott what happened—or my aunt.”
“I don’t know what happened.” Ethan pulled out of the parking lot and turned south toward downtown. “She took a few images off my computer, and there wasn’t much more to it. Except she said Quinn has a friend who comes to fish with him once a year.”
“That’s something to work with.” Nicole slapped the seat. “If we can find Dani to tell us more.”
Ethan glanced in the rearview mirror again. Nicole’s head lolled slightly. The medication was kicking in. The best thing at this point would be to make sure she got a good night’s sleep.
“I live above the barbershop,” Lauren said.
Ethan tried to imagine Lauren’s life—an apartment in town, blocks from where she worked, walking as a primary form of transportation. Ethan hoped she at least had a bicycle. It seemed like a small life. She had been away to college, and so had her aunt. What would bring them both back to this small town with its limited prospects? Didn’t they have any ambition?
He parked and shut off the ignition.
Upstairs, Lauren cleared a stack of magazines out of a recliner, and Ethan helped Lauren ease into it and put the padded footrest up.
“I’ll get the bed made up in the guest room,” Lauren said.
“We should ice her ankle,” Ethan said.
“Plenty of ice in the freezer.”
Ethan put a throw pillow under Nicole’s ankle before leaving her alone in the living room. In the kitchen, he found ice, gallon-size Ziploc bags, and a dish towel. By the time he returned to Nicole to begin unstrapping the boot cast to expose her swollen ankle, she was on the phone with her office.
“What are you talking about, Terry?” she said. “Nobody said anything to me.”
Ethan couldn’t hear the response, but he didn’t like the way it made Nicole tense up. He folded the makeshift ice pack into the towel. As gently as he could, he lifted the ankle to secure the ice pack at the point of swelling. Nicole’s foot was well into a typical black-and-blue inflammatory response.
“I’ll have to call you again tomorrow,” Nicole said into the phone. “My meds are kicking in and I can’t think straight.”
She tossed her phone on the end table.
“Everything okay?”
“They killed my story.”
“You need to get some rest.”
“I wish everyone would quit saying that.” Nicole winced under Ethan’s touch as he arranged the ice. “Tomorrow we’re going to get back to looking for Quinn. We’ll start by figuring out who this guy is that Dani has seen.”
Nicole wasn’t likely to cooperate with her need for rest as long as Quinn was missing. Ethan would have to stay around to insist she behave sensibly.