Chapter 2

Half an hour later, after I'd finished the rest of the interview and written a note, I paged the psychiatrist on call for the emergency room.

Dr. Gatien answered promptly. "I'm teaching the medical students. I'll be down in a minute."

"Great. See you then." I wondered why I hadn't gotten called to the teaching too, but I couldn't complain since I was starting the rotation late.

Twenty minutes later, I was still waiting for Dr. Gatien, when Nancy, the psych nurse, wandered out of the psychiatry office. She was a freckled blonde woman, the kind that you imagine playing tennis and drinking lemonade instead of hanging around in a windowless emergency room, talking to psychos. Still, the psych office was the only place in the emergency room that looked like an actual office, with an L-shaped desk and a rolling chair, so maybe she felt at home. She closed the door behind her and said, "There's another patient for us to see, a frequent flyer."

"Okay." I checked my watch. "Dr. Gatien said he'd be right down."

She nodded. "He'll be here before lunch."

Nice life. Why did I want to be an emergency doctor again?

The automatic emergency doors flew open, and a medium-built man with a light French accent said, "Hello, Nancy. Dr. Sze, I presume?"

I turned to meet Dr. Gatien. My eyes widened. He looked like Face from the A-team, all tan and white teeth. In other words, younger, more handsome and probably more conceited than I'd expected in a shrink.

I shook his hand and nodded hello at the medical students flanking him. Dr. Gatien introduced the two guys, a plump one named Robert and a medium one named Gary, plus a thin girl, Marcella. Then Dr. Gatien crossed to the nursing station and picked up the chart. "You've met Mrs. Lee. So what's your diagnosis, Dr. Sze?"

Some staff doctors make a point of calling you "doctor" once you graduate from medical school and get your Doctor of Medicine degree. Sometimes it's a sign of respect. Sometimes it's to up your status in front of the patient. And sometimes, like with Dr. Gatien, you get the feeling it's just because they're more formal in general.

I cleared my throat. Time to improvise. After all the talk about justice and murder, I didn't really have a diagnosis for Mrs. Lee, but I couldn't let that show. Medicine can be like a circus performance. You have to bark out the right answers and demonstrate the right tricks (intubation, IV insertion), often in front of an audience. You never get applause, mostly just nods of approval, but the criticism never stops. "Ah, some sort of adjustment disorder—"

"After eight years?" He smiled at the medical students. The three shiny, happy white young'uns in white lab coats beamed back at him. I felt a pang. They were only two years behind me in training, but I wished I could be innocent like them again. Even before I solved a murder last month, the patients' suffering, the staff attitude, and the sleep deprivation had sucked the naiveté out of my marrow.

My smile tightened. I didn't do psych well. I wanted to be an emergency doctor, not a Face Man. "I know adjustment disorders are usually due to a short-term stress."

"Within three months, not more than six months, and not representing bereavement, if you read the DSM-IV," Dr. Gatien supplied.

Gary whipped out his notebook and wrote that down.

Dr. Gatien pretended not to preen.

"She's definitely suffering from bereavement," I said, annoyed. "There's no question. Her daughter, a former medical resident, died in a hit-and-run accident eight years ago." I hesitated, then plunged ahead. "Mrs. Lee believes it was deliberate."

"Ah." Dr. Gatien's index finger stabbed the air. "There you have the heart of the matter. She has a delusional disorder."

I shifted from foot to foot and glanced at the medical students. Gary was nodding, fascinated. The other two looked blank. I said, "I thought delusions were based on paranoia or erotomania, that sort of thing." Everyone knows paranoia; erotomania is when you have delusions that your partner is in love with someone else. I know a lot of girls like that.

Dr. Gatien nodded. "Arguably, this is a sort of persecutory delusion. The patient thinks she—or in this case, someone close to her—is or was persecuted. Did you read her chart?"

"Her old chart hasn't arrived. Medical records are backed up today." I brushed imaginary lint off my white coat while I debated whether to fall into party line or not. I'd started this rotation one week late. I wanted a good evaluation at the end. But Mrs. Lee's intelligent brown eyes pricked my conscience. "Are you saying that for sure, the hit-and-run was an accident?"

He sighed. "We all miss Laura Lee. She was an excellent doctor. But as far as we know—which means as far as the police know—it was an accident. Or, at least, there's no proof otherwise." He stopped. His eyes narrowed and he smiled, showing a quick flash of his teeth. "Ah. That's right. You're the 'detective doctor!'"

My cheeks flushed. I was still getting used to my fifteen minutes of fame. In the olden days, after I introduced myself, people stared at me in confusion, as if I'd sneezed instead of saying my name, but now that I'd gotten some notoriety...

"That's right. I recognize you from the Gazette," said the chubby med student, Robert. Both local papers had done an item on me after I solved the murder last month of Dr. Radshaw, one of St. Joe's favourite doctors. I nearly got killed in the process, necessitating the week of R&R.

Dr. Gatien said, "Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with detective work. You need to be a detective in medicine, putting all the clues together. A patient comes in complaining of abdominal pain, you need to check the constellation of symptoms: location, radiation, nausea, vomiting, blood in the stools, as well as reviewing the systems—"

I knew that already. A wave of fatigue sideswiped me. I clenched my teeth, bit my inner lip, and widened my eyes, trying to fight it off.

"—because it could turn out to be something completely unrelated to the abdomen, such as diabetic ketoacidosis." He stopped and winked at me. "I imagine you thought I had forgotten my medicine, being a psychiatrist and all."

Gary chortled on cue.

I forced a smile. "Dr. Gatien, about Mrs. Lee—"

"Yes, of course. What I was going to say is, you should indeed investigate all avenues, as we have done over the past eight years. But be careful. We have a saying. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you want to be a detective, everything looks suspicious. Be careful not to fall into any delusions yourself, Dr. Sze." He smiled. "You know what we call that in psychiatry? Folie à deux."

Charming. "You two would be cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" always sounds better in French. After more talk, we ended up discharging Mrs. Lee and retreating to the psych office. I wrote another page in her chart, while Dr. Gatien pontificated to the medical students. Then I felt someone's gaze land and lock on my right cheekbone.

I swiveled in my chair to see who it was. My breath seized up and blood rose in my face.

It was John Tucker, staring right back at me. He was in the nursing station, behind Plexiglas, so he must have been fifteen feet away, but I could still feel his presence.

I forced myself to smile and nod at him like he was just another resident or friend or comrade. So what if he liked sausages and beer. So what if I'd scanned the emerg a dozen times, checking for his profile. So what if I had to fight the urge to lick my lips and straighten my collar. It don't mean a thing.

But now that he was here, with his intense brown gaze, crooked mouth and eyebrows lifted with a combination of humor and disapproval, I couldn't lie to myself. All day, I'd been waiting to see him.

He shook his head at me from across the room.

I knew why. He thought I'd come back to work too soon.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, but in my mind's eye, I could imagine his strong, capable fingers, his short nails and the slightly tanned skin. Not to mention his lean yet muscled body.

Down, girl.

I forced myself to concentrate on his flaws, like his spiky blond hair. It looked as if he'd been attacked by '80s hair gel this morning. But who was I kidding. Even that was endearing.

"Dr. Sze?" a man drawled.

If guys are too perfect-looking, you have to wonder if they're gay or at least narcissists. And anyway, I like a hint of non-conformity, that little F-U to the world of fashion police and humorless internists. Bring on the hair gel. Bring on red socks. Bring on the sausages and beer. When you've been in school all your life, even a tiny soupçon of revelry is a heady thing.

"Dr. Sze!"

Finally, I snapped my head around to focus on Dr. Gatien and the grinning group of medical students. "I'm sorry." I tried to hold my head up with dignity. No doubt he was about to interrogate me on the symptoms of Rett's syndrome or some other rare disease and make me look even more idiotic.

Instead, Dr. Gatien gave an almost imperceptible smile. "Never mind. I'll send one of the medical students to see the other patient, detective."

The girl, Marcella, giggled. I mentally crossed her off my friend list.

Dr. Gatien waved over the psychiatry nurse, Nancy, to tell us about the next case. By the time we finally emerged from the office, Tucker had disappeared.

And a good thing, too. We were just friends. I was on a strict, man-free, post-Alex diet. The fact that I couldn't stop scanning the emerg like a rabid security guard meant absolutely zip.

Then Marcella pointed to a note affixed to the Plexiglas above the psych counter. "Is that for you?"

I glanced at the note. DR. HOPE SZE. I snatched it and unfolded it to read Tucker's spiky handwriting, scrawled with his signature blue fountain pen.

5-7? Page me. T.