6

 

The next day sped by with work and the clinic. I tried to push my conversation with Tom out of my head, but I couldn’t. The feel of his arms around me kept flashing back into a heartache I thought was gone with time. Angry at myself for worrying, I decided that if Tom chose to get wrapped up in something crazy again, I couldn’t stop him. I hadn’t been able to then, and I certainly had no business trying now. Then the memory of those thugs in his hospital room, his blood on my hands, and the worry flooded back.

By the end of the day, a shipment from the supply company hadn't arrived, and I got lost in the bureaucratic craziness of putting a trace through the shipping company. At closing time, I stood by the door waiting for Lilah to show up so I could go to work at the hospital. The position as my assistant served as her second job so she usually worked nights, restocking and doing paperwork. I wondered where she was. I paced the floor and looked at my watch for the fifth time in five minutes. She was never late.

Her white minivan pulled to a skidding stop in front of the clinic, and Lilah hopped out. Breathless, with puffy, red eyes, she stammered her apologies, and pushed past me to the office.

“Are you OK, Lilah?”

“Yeah, Ruby, I’m so sorry I’m late,” she murmured, and shoved her purse under the desk. Wiping her face with a sleeve, she slumped in the chair.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I stopped pulling on my jacket, concerned.

“No, you go on, Ruby. You’re going to be late.” Lilah sniffed and turned to face me, her eyes brimming.

“Spill it, Lilah.” I leaned against the desk.

“I don’t want to tell you.”

I didn’t expect that. “Why not?” I asked, insulted.

“Because you always think the worst, and I have to believe…” Her voice trailed off and she buried her face in her hands.

“Lilah, what is the matter?” I asked with growing apprehension. “Is it Brooklyn? Is Dakota’s father bothering you again?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Ruby. Just go.” She wouldn’t look up.

“Lilah,” I tried again. “I promise I won’t be a doom-and-gloomer.” Perplexed, I watched her for a few seconds. Lilah usually told me whatever was bothering her. We were good that way.

“In the morning, OK?” She lifted her gaze to mine, guarded. “It’s my day off from the hospital, and I need to finish up some calls, anyway. Besides, I need time to think.”

“OK. I’m here if you need me.” I nodded, trying not to let the hurt show in my face.

“I know, Ruby. We’ll talk later.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“Lilah—”

The phone on her desk rang. She picked it up with a relived expression. “Second Street Clinic,” she answered, and turned in her chair.

Clearly, our conversation was over.

I almost waited for her to finish the call and then thought better of it. I decided to give her some time and call later. Checking my watch, I bit my lip. I was late now. I patted her on the shoulder and slipped out the front door.

I headed to the hospital willing my car to get there on the fumes left in the gas tank. The needle wasn’t quite on red yet. I changed in the locker room and stepped out onto the ER floor. Blaine motioned me over to the reception area. Concern lined his face.

I steeled myself, thinking he was going to say something about tardiness.

“I heard you had an unwelcome visitor at the clinic,” he said.

“It’s not a big deal, Blaine, just a local guy.” My stomach churned and I blew out a slow breath. I hadn’t expected him to find out about Antonio so soon.

“You know that I’m lobbying for the clinic to get approved for the Sports Wing affiliation, Ruby, but I’m only one guy. I’m not sure I can convince the rest of the Oversight Board to vote my way if this guy keeps causing problems.” Blaine looked apologetic. “I know how you feel about involving the police, but…”

“No, Blaine,” I interrupted. “That will drive away all the kids I’m trying to help. I’ll take care of it. He won’t be a problem.”

“You’ll ask for help if you need it?” Blaine looked at me, worried.

“I’ve got it under control,” I promised.

“OK.” Nodding over at a curtained exam area, he winked. “I have a prize for the tardiest resident.”

I rolled my eyes when he turned away. He noticed after all.

“Come with me,” he called over his shoulder.

I followed him over to the curtained bed. Blaine put his hand up to pull it back, but paused to give me his ‘evil genius’ grin. The kind he wore when he handed off difficult patients.

“Dr. McKinney, this is your new patient, Carl Andrew. He’s refusing treatment.”

I looked at the man on the gurney. Clean cut, with an expensive suit jacket lying across his legs, he sat with arms crossed over his chest.

“Mr. Andrew, I’m Dr. McKinney, what brings you in to see us today?” I tried my best sympathetic smile.

Carl Andrew frowned at Blaine, who turned on his heels and slid through the curtain with a whoosh.

“My wife thinks I’m having a heart attack.” He checked his watch. “She’s on her way here, actually, and I’d like to be done before that happens.”

I nodded and looked at his chart. Blaine already ordered all of the relevant blood tests. “Well, we’ll just get some blood work done and go from there. Are you feeling any pain?”

“Yeah, I have pain. I have a monster headache and a sore back from basketball yesterday. Other than that, I just have the pain in my rear from being here for two hours.”

I made a mental note to make sure Blaine got the next food poisoned kid, and then unwrapped the stethoscope from around my neck. “Let me have a listen here.”

Carl put his hands up stopping me. “That older guy already did that. Look, I’m not refusing treatment. I’m just refusing all the unnecessary and expensive lab work you guys do to make more money. What you need to do is hook me up to one of those electro-do-hickey machines and rule out a heart attack right now. I’ve got a lunch meeting in an hour.”

I stepped back, gave Carl a stern look, and sighed.

“Carl, if you want to have this heart attack at the restaurant and nose-dive into your lobster bisque in front of your boss, then be my guest. There are plenty of other crabby people here who will at least let me help them.”

“What did you just say?” Carl’s eyes bulged in his head.

“Seriously, Carl, you’ve been having chest pains, haven’t you?” I crossed my arms and spoke softly.

“I never said that.” Carl’s eyes narrowed and he rubbed his shoulder unconsciously. That probably meant his pain radiated out from his chest.

“No, but you’re obviously a very busy and stressed-out guy. I doubt anyone could talk you into coming into the ER unless you were already scared. Now, are you going to cooperate or should I get the ‘We’re not responsible that he died’ paperwork for you to sign?”

Carl stared at me with his mouth open. “I want another doctor,” he demanded.

I shook my head. “You already alienated or annoyed anyone else that was here before me. My boss, Blaine, only gives me the patients that no one else wants.”

Carl looked at me strangely, and then unbuttoned his shirt. “You have a terrible bedside manner.”

I listened to his rhythm, jotted down an order for an echocardiogram, and smiled sweetly. “You get what you put into it, Carl.”

He snorted a laugh and shook his head. “You’re a piece of work, Dr. McKinney.”

A lab tech pulled back the privacy curtain and stepped next to Carl’s bed.

“Are you going to let this poor man do his job, Carl?” I asked.

Ned, a lab tech in our hospital for years, smiled at Carl winningly.

Carl sighed and rolled up his sleeve.

“Thank you, Carl. I promise to only order a few unnecessary tests. I do have to pay for my beach mansion though, so there’s that.” I smiled at him, even as he eyed me with a mixture of humor and suspicion. I nodded to them both and headed back to the reception area.

“Can I at least get a sandwich?” Carl called after me.

I spent the next hour checking in on the med students and listening to them present before signing off on their treatment plans. Part of my job in the ER was to help with the incoming interns as well, but they were currently flocked around Blaine on the other side of the floor. I walked over.

Blaine turned and nodded to me with a grin. His gray buzz cut rose when he bobbed his eyebrows at me. “How’s Carl?”

I squinted at him with a mock frown.

“I’m getting you back for that.” I looked over a female intern’s shoulder at the patient on the gurney. “Whatcha got?”

“This guy says he’s allergic to electromagnetic impulses. He wants us to write a note to his boss explaining that he can’t be near anything that is electronic.”

There was no such thing as an allergy to electricity. I looked at the patient with interest. “What do you do for a living?”

“I manage the arcade on Downing Street,” he responded.

“That could be a problem,” the female intern interjected.

“You going to run the test?” I fixed Blaine with a piercing gaze.

The patient, a young man who smelled like he hung out with Dakota, sat up on the gurney alarmed. “What test?”

Blaine stared at me and sighed. “Yes, what test, Dr. McKinney?” A slight smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.

I shrugged and gave Blaine a blank stare. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty getting him back for passing Carl off to me. This patient’s type of paranoia faded as the drugs moved out of the system. There was nothing to do but give him apple juice and wait it out.

“I heard there was a test, but if you don’t want to tell him about it…” I shrugged again.

The patient looked at Blaine accusingly. “Why won’t you tell me?”

Blaine rolled his eyes at me, and then Renee called my name. She motioned over by Carl’s curtain. I flashed a triumphant smile at Blaine before heading over.

The head nurse, with over two decades of experience, Renee kept the ER running no matter what came through the front doors. She looked like a militant Mrs. Santa Claus, with gray hair stacked on her head like a frothy helmet and half-moon spectacles that always slid off of her nose. She blew out a low whistle and handed me the results of the lab tests I’d ordered for Carl.

“Not what you want to see,” she whispered.

“Aw, really?”

She nodded.

I read it, sighed, and pulled open the curtain to face Carl. “Looks like your wife was right, Carl.”

He looked at me startled. “Oh, man.”

“Carl, you’re having what we call ‘a cardiac event.’”

“What in the world does that mean?”

“It means you’re heading up to the Cath-Lab right away.”

Carl’s face registered shock, then fear. He reached for my hand. “I thought…”

“We’ll get you through this.” I patted his hand and smiled.

Behind me, someone tapped my shoulder, and I turned around, surprised to see Lilah.

“Hey, Lilah, what are you doing here?”

She looked at me with red-ringed eyes and made a follow me gesture with her head.

I turned to Carl. “Uh, Carl, Renee here will take you to the lab, and we’ll get started on you right away, OK? I’ll be up in a while to check on you.”

He nodded dumbly and let go of my hand.

I followed Lilah outside, and she pulled me further onto the grass beside the ambulance bay. She looked terrible, like she’d had a crying jag after I left her at the clinic. A spike of apprehension skewered my stomach. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you trust me, Ruby?”

“That’s never a good way to start a conversation, Lilah.”

Her shoulders sagged, and she wiped her nose with a wadded up tissue. “I have to tell you something, but if I do, I’m afraid things will get really weird.”

Not what I was expecting. “That’s, uh, what?” I put my hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “You know you can tell me anything, Lilah.”

“Well, its Dakota. I think he’s in trouble.”

It took monumental strength not to sigh. Of course he was in trouble. He’d flown into a tizzy over his missing chips the other night and punched a hole in the wall of her apartment. That kind of reaction wasn’t a pot smoker’s reaction.

I took Lilah’s hand in mine and patted it, reassuring her. “OK, well, we can get him into treatment again. I can make some calls.” I mentally ticked through places I thought might have an open bed.

“You don’t understand. I think he’s doing something at the clinic.” Lilah looked at me with pleading eyes.

My stomach fell. “But all the drugs are accounted for in the cabinet, Lilah. I checked myself today. How would he—”

“No, Ruby,” Lilah interrupted. She shook her head vehemently. “There’s nothing wrong with the supplies on hand. There’s something wrong with the supply paperwork. Its…off, somehow.” She shrugged, a bewildered look on her face.

“Lilah, you’re going to have to be clearer.” I let go of her and rubbed my eyes with both hands.

Lilah shifted from one foot to another and cried a little more. I was dumbfounded. She never acted the least bit out of sorts, and here she was falling apart. I didn’t know what to do. I bit my lip, worry wrenching my stomach.

“Ruby, I was going over the supply orders from the last batch and there’s something off about the weight of the shipment, the freight charges are wrong.”

“Wrong how? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know quite yet.” Lilah sighed, frustrated. “Some of the charges are for more than what they should be, and some are for way less. I don’t get it myself, but something is going on.”

“Did you call the company? Maybe it’s just a computer glitch.”

“I did call them, and they said they’d look into it.”

“OK, then we’ll wait.”

“I didn’t want to talk about it earlier because this has to do with not only our gauze and medical supplies, but also our drug shipments. Lilah nodded and a nervous expression played across her face. “With Dakota just out of rehab, I-I just want to have a clear idea of what is going on before I hang my only kid out to dry.”

“We won’t hang him out to dry, Lilah. We’ll get him help.”

“But if this involves cross-state shipping…I don’t even know what he could be facing!” She wrung her hands together and tears slipped down her face again. “This is too complicated for a kid to be involved in, right?”

“We don’t even know that we have a problem yet,” I assured Lilah. “I think we should wait until the shipping company calls back before we start panicking.”

I quashed the worry bubbling in my gut. Dakota, if he was messing with shipping drugs, would definitely do some time. Not to mention that I’d fall under investigation, as would the clinic and Lilah. I hoped with all my heart it was a computer glitch.

“I know that you’re not really a religious person, Ruby, but I think that we could use some prayers right about now.” Lilah shuffled her feet and looked at me.

“I don’t suppose it would hurt to call your prayer chain.” Uncomfortable, I tried to shrug off her comment.

She nodded and let it go. I didn’t talk to Lilah about my faith, or the fact that I’d lost it long ago. I knew she went to the local church, she invited me often, but I always found an excuse.

“Thank you for not freaking out, Ruby,” Lilah said quietly. “You really are a wonderful friend.”

“I really do think that everything will be OK, Lilah. It’s actually pretty impressive you checked the freight.” I looked at her curious. “Why were you doing that, anyway?”

“Well, remember that shipment that got lost earlier?” She pulled out a tissue and blew her nose noisily.

“Oh, yeah.” I remember I’d tried to track the shipment down while obsessing…no, thinking occasionally, about Tom’s visit.

“Anyway, when it finally showed up, the truck guy said he had a hard time finding it ‘cause it was mislabeled. He said it might have something to do with the weight change.”

“Did he say why that would happen?”

“He said he heard that sometimes, supplies are packaged differently from the catalogues, like in bigger boxes, or smaller ones. They have to juggle the sizes at the shipping warehouse to meet our quantity orders.” Lilah knit her brows. “I just thought I’d check, since he mentioned it, you know? I didn’t know I was going to open up a can of worms for my trouble.”

No good deed goes unpunished. I felt for her. Dakota was the reason she worked so hard.

I reached out and hugged her. She leaned against me and sniffled. Looking into her worried face, I gave a final squeeze. “Don’t worry, Lilah. We’ll stay on top of it and sort it out. Like I said, it’s probably just a computer glitch. I mean, even more so now that you mention the quantity thing.”

“Yeah, it’s probably just a typo or something.” Lilah didn’t look convinced.

My heart ached. I didn’t know how to comfort her. I didn’t even know what was going on. “I have to get back to work, but don’t worry, Lilah. Everything will be OK.”

“Ruby...I was wrong to believe you’d think the worst.”

I stifled the guilty look that threatened to reveal that I did think the worst. “It’s OK. You’d do the same for me. Believe in me, I mean.”

She nodded silently, gave me a quick hug, and then left me standing on the crunchy brown grass. I watched her leave and wondered if I should have told her about Antonio’s visit. I touched my neck, and though it was sore, the bruise had faded to almost nothing.

“Everything all right?” Blaine poked his head around the corner, glanced at me, and the retreating Lilah.

“Yeah, just some mama drama.”

“So, you’re good?”

“Yes, Dad.” I teased him.

“Well, Carl’s upstairs asking for you.” He rolled his eyes.

“I’ll be right up.”

He left me alone and I stood there hugging myself, thinking. After work I needed to check on that paperwork. I also resolved to tell Lilah about Antonio’s visit when I got to the clinic tomorrow. Even though I didn’t want to add to her worries, she deserved to know that there was something going on. She deserved the truth, good or bad.

I never had the chance.