CARRIE CHECKED HER WATCH—HALF PAST FIVE. IF SHE DIDN’T drag her feet on her hospital rounds, she should be able to get home, relax in a hot bath for a bit, then get ready to see Adam. The more she thought about it, the more she agreed with her best friend’s advice. How had Julie put it? There was risk to everything in life, even crossing the street. She had to consider not just the worst possible outcome, but the best.
Carrie didn’t want to lose Adam—no matter what. She still loved him—that much was becoming increasingly clear to her—and whatever it took, she was going to help him find out who wanted to kill him, then neutralize them. Together they’d put a stop to it. The reward was worth the risk.
She quickened her pace through the hospital corridors and soon was in the surgical ICU at Mrs. Lambert’s bedside. The figure lying there didn’t resemble the woman Carrie had seen so many times in her office. There she had been alert, animated, happy to be alive. Now she lay still as a wax mannequin, unmoving and pale. A ventilator controlled her breathing. IV lines and monitor wires were everywhere. But she’d survived the surgery, and that was important.
A quick scan of the chart showed stable vital signs and initial lab values that were no cause for worry. Phil’s operative note, although brief, indicated that the procedure went off without a hitch, with the patient tolerating the surgery as well as could be expected for her age and condition. There was no need for Carrie to add either orders or a progress note. Her patient was unresponsive, so conversation was neither necessary nor possible. Moving on to the waiting room to face her family, on the other hand, took a bit of willpower.
If Carrie had any doubt that she’d been replaced in the mind of Mrs. Lambert’s family as the primary caregiver, the reception she received in the waiting area removed it. Mrs. Stinson was polite, yet more distant than she’d been earlier. Yes, Dr. Rushton had been by. No, there was nothing Carrie could do, no questions she could answer. Almost as an afterthought, Mrs. Stinson added, “We’ve talked it over, and we’d like Dr. Avery to take over Mother’s care after she leaves the hospital. Dr. Rushton said that would be okay with you. I hope you don’t mind?”
Carrie swallowed the retort that was on her lips. “Of course not. The records are already at the clinic, so it’s just a matter of your making future appointments with Dr. Avery.” She shook hands with the woman, although it was the last thing she wanted to do, then beat what she hoped was a dignified retreat.
As she stepped out of the elevator, Carrie’s first thought, born of habit, was to retrace her steps back to the clinic. But she needed to save time, so she turned in the opposite direction, intending to reach her car by exiting through the Emergency Room. The door there emptied into the common parking area close to where she’d left her car that morning. As she hurried through the ER, her thoughts turned to her meeting with Adam. He would probably—
“Dr. Markham.” Doris, the ER charge nurse, bustled up to Carrie and touched her sleeve. “I know you’re not on call, but we need your help.”
Carrie fought the urge to pull away. She didn’t want to get caught, not now. “I’m in sort of a hurry to leave.”
“This should only take a minute,” Doris said. “The EMTs just brought in an elderly black man who collapsed on the street downtown. Erin thought she’d seen you with him in the ER a few weeks ago.”
Carrie looked at her watch. She really needed to go. Then again . . .
“The man’s comatose,” Doris said. “He has no ID. There’s no one with him. We don’t even know how to contact his family, so if you recognize him that would really help.”
Carrie took a deep breath. “Where is he?”
In a few moments Carrie looked down at a familiar face. She knew Garvin Burnett, knew him well. Mr. Burnett’s visits to her office had always turned into prolonged sessions where he talked and she listened. Apparently she was the only person who would sit still long enough to do that for him.
Mr. Burnett was in his early eighties. He had lived at Meadowbrook Acres for some years, clinging fiercely to his independence. He never called it a retirement home, never referred to it as anything but a place where the population all happened to be well up in years.
She’d asked him once about his family, but he shook his head. “No family. But I don’t need anyone. I’m fine on my own.” When she broached the subject of moving to a section in Meadowbrook where he could get help if he needed it, Burnett bristled. “When I can’t take care of myself, that’ll be the time to pull the plug on me.”
Two EMTs stood beside Mr. Burnett’s stretcher. One scribbled on a clipboard, the other adjusted the man’s oxygen mask. Carrie turned to Doris, who had taken up station at the foot of the stretcher. “You were right. He is a patient of mine. His name is Garvin Burnett,” she said. “How did he end up here?”
The first EMT spoke up. “Got a call that a man had been acting crazy, then collapsed on the sidewalk at Fourth and Mizell. Witnesses told us he had a convulsion right before we got there. Nobody knew him, nobody saw anything else.”
Carrie gazed down at the unconscious man. An IV was running, oxygen flowed into a mask over Mr. Burnett’s face. The monitor showed his blood pressure to be low, although not at shock levels. Quickly, she ran through the differential diagnosis. Then her memory dredged up the most important fact. The reason she’d seen Burnett in the Emergency Room previously was his diabetes. He had labile, type I diabetes, controlled with some difficulty by daily insulin injections.
Carrie turned to the lead EMT. “He’s diabetic. When you picked him up, did you check his blood sugar with your meter?”
“Part of the routine. His blood glucose was so low it was almost off the chart. We gave him glucagon and followed it with 50 percent dextrose, but he never came around.”
“Labs back yet?” Carrie asked.
Doris spoke up. “Ordered them stat when he hit the ER, but they aren’t back yet. We catheterized him but there was hardly any urine in the bladder.”
Carrie nodded. The bladder probably emptied with his convulsion—so much for a urine glucose and ketone. “Okay. My first thought was that his blood sugar plummeted—too much insulin, no food, whatever—and it caused his convulsion and loss of consciousness. But that should respond to the treatment he got from the EMTs. There has to be something else. Let’s start looking.”
John Sullivan, the ER physician on duty, entered the cubicle. “Carrie, thanks for looking in on him. If you want to give me his medical history, we can take it from here. I imagine you’re in a hurry to leave.”
Carrie thought about Adam. She should probably take a moment to call him. But before she could act on it, she glanced at the monitor displaying Burnett’s vital signs, and warning bells went off in her head. “Thanks, John, but I think I’ll stick around for a bit.”
Although he was neurologically intact when she examined him initially, Burnett’s pupils even then were the least bit sluggish in their response to light. Now his blood pressure was going up and his pulse was dropping. She watched his chest rise and fall, his respirations getting a bit ragged. Cushing’s triad. Increased intracranial pressure.
“We need to get him to radiology for a stat MRI of his head,” Carrie said to Doris.
Two hours later Mr. Burnett was in surgery, and the answers to the puzzle were clear. The elderly man had wandered away from Meadowbrook Acres, apparently suffered hypoglycemic shock, convulsed, and hit his head on the curb. Although his blood sugar and chemistries had righted themselves with the treatment rendered by the EMTs, the MRI Carrie ordered confirmed her clinical suspicion of a skull fracture with formation of a subdural hematoma—a collection of blood pressing on the brain.
The hospital social worker, working with the staff of Meadowbrook Acres, verified that Mr. Burnett had no family. Carrie and a neurosurgeon certified the operation as an emergency, their signatures on the operative permit substituting for that of Burnett or his next of kin. Tomorrow, if Burnett lived through the surgery, the hunt would begin for a facility to which he could eventually be transferred for long-term care. The sadness already in Carrie’s heart because of Burnett’s condition mounted as she realized this episode spelled the end to the proud man’s independence.
It was fully dark when she finally walked out of the Emergency Room entrance and headed for her car. Her watch showed almost nine o’clock. As she climbed into the driver’s seat, Carrie rummaged in her purse and retrieved her cell phone. She scanned the display, dreading what she’d see. Sure enough, there were five missed calls, all from what was shown as “Private Number.” No matter what the display showed, she knew what the number represented and who the caller was. It was Adam, on his throwaway phone.
Adam left a message the first two times his call to Carrie’s cell rolled over to voice mail. When each subsequent call did the same thing, he ended them without speaking. For what seemed like the hundredth time, he parted the blinds in his motel room and gazed out. The parking lot was as it had been just moments before when he’d last looked—dark, almost deserted.
He hoped Carrie hadn’t gotten cold feet. Adam needed to talk with her. He wanted . . . no, he needed to see her.
Of course, Carrie might have changed her mind. She might be coming to tell him she never wanted to see him again. If that were the case, he’d leave Jameson and find another town, try to start life all over . . . again. But how many times could he do that? Coming to Jameson had turned out to be the best thing he’d done since he began his journey. He didn’t want to leave. Adam was determined that the shooter couldn’t make him do so—but Carrie might.
He checked the time—eight thirty. There was probably a logical explanation for why Carrie was so late. After all, she was a doctor, he told himself. Doctors got caught on emergencies, and she probably didn’t have time to call. No reason to worry . . . yet.
But despite his rationalization, worry was exactly what Adam did. He loved Carrie, and the thought that she might have fallen prey to the gunman who’d been stalking him, once it popped into his head, was almost more than he could stand.
As darkness fell outside, Adam had kept the light off in the room. No real reason, he supposed, but somehow he felt better in the dark—safer, perhaps. He pressed the button on his digital watch to illuminate the numbers. Eight forty-eight.
Should he call again? No, he’d left two messages, and if she looked at her cell phone Carrie would see she’d had multiple missed calls from him. Just trust her, Adam.
He tried to still the panic rising in his chest.
It was two hours past the time she’d told Adam she’d come to his motel room. Carrie wondered if he’d still be there. Might he have taken her failure to appear as an indication that she wanted him out of her life? Maybe he was at his apartment right now, packing, loading his car, about to drop out of sight again.
Carrie punched in the number of Adam’s new cell phone. On the first ring an electronic voice repeated the phone number and invited her to leave a message. “Adam, it’s Carrie. I’m on my way. I’ll explain when I get there.”
She wanted this to be a face-to-face conversation. Carrie needed to apologize, explain. She’d tell him what she’d told him before, but now it would carry an additional message—she loved him with all her heart, and she was ready to stand with him in his fight to uncover the identity of his attacker and bring him to justice.
Carrie started her car and pulled out of the hospital parking lot. She’d printed the directions to the Rancho Motel before her first visit, but that paper was at home. Check the address on her iPhone? No, that would waste time when she could be driving. She thought she could find it, and after a couple of false turns, she did.
She parked in the back of the units as before, sneaked through the circle of light spilling onto the Coke machine and ice dispenser, and walked along the front row of doors, looking for Adam’s room. She thought it was number six, but she wasn’t totally certain.
She turned and scanned the parking lot. A few cars were scattered about, but none that she recognized as the black Toyota rental she’d seen Adam driving. Carrie walked back and forth in front of the units, watching for a light in a room, maybe even someone peeking out from between drawn curtains. But the darkness was unbroken.
Carrie pulled her cell phone from her pocket and pressed Redial. Even if Adam didn’t answer, she might hear the ring inside one of the rooms. But no sound reached her ears. Again, the call rolled to voice mail on the first ring. Either he was on the phone or had his phone turned off.
She scanned the area one more time. All the windows were dark. The parking slots in front of all the units in the row were empty. She drew the only conclusion she could—Adam was gone.
Where now? How about his apartment? Maybe he’d gone back there for more clothes, something he forgot.
She climbed into her car and started out for The Villas. Adam’s apartment was in a complex of four-plexes occupied primarily by young urban professionals. She found it easily enough, but now, with her brain racing a mile a minute, all the numbers seemed to be hiding from her in the dark.
Carrie exited her car and looked around, her confidence boosted only slightly by the container of Mace in her shoulder bag. She unzipped the purse and let her right hand rest gently on the metal cylinder. The lights were on in the apartment, and from behind the door she could hear classical music playing softly. Carrie found the bell and pushed it. Faintly, the first notes of the Westminster chimes sounded inside.
There appeared to be no response at first—no sound of footsteps, no change in the music, no voices. She poised her finger over the bell, ready to push it again, when the peephole darkened. Carrie moved so that her face was directly in the field of view of the person inside. “Adam?” she almost whispered. Then the door opened.
A young man who looked barely out of high school stood in the doorway. He wore faded jeans and a blue T-shirt with DHS written on it. His feet were bare. “Yes?”
Who was this? Adam didn’t have a roommate. “I . . . I must have the wrong apartment,” Carrie said. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“Who did you want?” Neither his voice nor his manner displayed any annoyance at having a stranger ring his bell. “I’ve only been here a few weeks, but I know a lot of the people in the units around me.”
“Adam Davidson,” Carrie said.
“Oh, you’re one unit off.” He smiled. “They all look alike in the dark, don’t they?” The young man stepped onto the porch and pointed to the next four-plex. “This is 402. He’s in 302.”
Carrie thanked him and hurried away. She ignored the sidewalk and crossed the lawn directly to the next unit. The front window was dark. She heard no sounds inside. Had Adam already left? Or could he be at her house, waiting for her to finally appear? Carrie took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and pushed the bell.
When there was no response, Carrie rang again . . . and again. Finally convinced that the unit was empty, she trudged back to her car. Where could he have gone? The next place to look was her house. Maybe he’d gone there, looking for her after she failed to keep their rendezvous.
By now she had the car moving, heading toward her house, driving almost by instinct. If he wasn’t at her place, either he’d left town or his stalker had caught up with him. She could picture Adam, lying in some dark place, bleeding from a gunshot wound, his attacker standing over him smirking.
As she neared her house, she slowed and looked around the neighborhood. His car was nowhere to be seen. She parked in the driveway, checked all around the house, including the backyard. No Adam.
Should she stay here and wait for him to call? Logic told her that was wise, but her instincts cried out for her to do something . . . anything. She’d try the motel once more. Carrie shuddered as she drove, praying for safety for Adam . . . and for her. God, keep him safe until I can find him. And when I do, I won’t let him go again.