The hospital guards looked shell-shocked. They stared at Reena Schuster, fast-disappearing down Péloquin street, and then back at us for guidance.
"Oh, my God! Should we call a code?" I asked Nancy. With a code white, they could've wrestled Reena down.
Nancy hesitated. "It would be the police now. She's off hospital property."
Jodi snapped, "Don't bother. She's fine." She raced after her, blasting past an old couple hobbling into the emerg. The woman with a cane stumbled. The old man steadied her elbow.
"Hey!" I called, but Jodi's dirty blonde hair vanished after Reena. At that pace, we'd lose both of them before I could dial 911. I backed into the psych room and reached for the phone.
Nancy laid her hand on mine. "Wait. She wasn't suicidal during my assessment this morning or when you saw her yesterday."
"Right, but—"
"She's off hospital property now," she repeated.
Robert shook his head and shoved his hands in his pocket. He wasn't getting involved.
"What are you saying?" All I could think was that my patients were literally running away from me. What was worse, two code whites in two days or one code white and one taking off AMA (against medical advice)?
"I'll call Dr. Forbes," said Nancy.
I stepped back. She'd be better breaking the bad news. She claimed the phone and spoke in muted tones.
"It's not your fault," muttered Robert.
I rubbed my hand against my forehead. Wasn't it? Should I have sent the medical student in solo, knowing she was unwilling to see me, instead of going in myself to try and hurry up the cases?
And why did Reena hate me so much? I'd just met her.
I'd heard of projection and transference and vaguely understood the concept: patients had a lot of crap, and thought the therapist was doling it out, when in fact it was their own fears coming back at them. But I'd thought it only happened after long term therapy, especially Freudian. Reena had hated me on sight. Why did I make her so nuts?
She definitely seemed more unbalanced today. Why did she think I wanted her to go crazy or kill herself? I didn't even know her. I'd be happy if she stayed at home, eating Corn Flakes.
Nancy hung up the phone. "Dr. Forbes says there's nothing we can do. She's a borderline and a frequent flyer, and now she's off the premises. He's not going to send the police after her. She'll probably come back on her own."
Yes, probably tomorrow afternoon, when I was back on psych-emerg. My eyes ached with fatigue. This was supposed to be an easy rotation, but so far, it was worse than straight emerg. The ER was exciting. In, out. Boom, boom. Evening and night shifts took their mental and physical toll, but you got bragging rights and you had a set time to go home. At this rate, my next two months would be non-stop Reena Schuster refusing to see me and making everyone else think I was incompetent.
Nancy forced a smile. "You two should go eat. I'll call you when someone else comes in."
As we trudged up the stairs to the residents' room, Robert said, "Are you okay?"
Miniature golf face struck again. I shrugged. "I don't know why she bothers me so much."
"That's the borderlines' job, right? They make you nuts, too."
I hadn't even diagnosed her as a borderline. I had no instinct for psych. She told me she was depressed, so I went through the checklist for depression and thought about a few other diagnoses like bipolar disorder or substance abuse. That was it. But it was true, her chart was covered in borderline personality disorder.
Robert punched in the code for the resident's lounge and held the door open for me. "I knew someone who worked with borderlines. She said..." He hesitated and lowered his voice. "You can tell who they are because they make you so mad. If you want to strangle them, they're borderlines."
I half-laughed. "Yeah? The psychiatrist I worked with said to think of Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction." I passed through the door. "Thanks."
"That's good, too." He stood by the fridge door, obviously mulling over Reena, but more like he was interested instead of irritated. "I don't think she was typical, though. The scars on her arms were old. I doubt she's slashed herself for months, maybe years. Still, she was angry, and I think she had definite abandonment issues, so she does fit the profile."
He was going through the borderline diagnostic criteria. Anger, fear of abandonment, paranoid or suicidal under stress, a tendency to idealize or demonize people, and more often than not, wrist-cutting. Hey, that sounded exactly like Reena. And I shouldn't take all the hating personally—borderlines either loved you or hated you, and I just happened to end up on the hate list.
For the first time, I stopped to look at Robert, not as a pudgy medical student in a white coat, but as a human being who was a lot more psych-savvy than I was or ever would be. "Are you planning on doing psych?"
He smiled, seemingly undisturbed by the rotting food smell emanating from both the garbage can and the refrigerator. "Does it show?"
They say there are two types of doctors, internists and surgeons. Internists like to pore over books and think deep thoughts; surgeons like to act. I'm obviously a surgeon. I'd classified Robert as an internist, but now I wasn't sure. Maybe psychiatrists are a breed of their own.
I threw open the fridge door to hunt for my bottle of water. MuchMusic blasted in the background. Someone I didn't recognize, a med student, chewed lasagna with the remote in one hand and a fork in the other.
Tucker was nowhere to be seen. I glanced at my watch. Forty minutes had passed. No chance he was still in the gym.
I chugged my bottle and chanted to myself, I am not disappointed. I am not.
My pager went off. Not emerg, but an outside number with an area code 514. Who would be calling me from outside the hospital but within Montreal?
"Is it Nancy?" asked Robert.
I shook my head. I could think of one possible candidate who'd take my mind off of Tucker. I walked to the wall-mounted phone and punched in the number, my pulse already accelerating.
A familiar male voice said, "Hey."
"Hi, Ryan," I said, aiming for calm instead of eek.
"Hard at work?"
"Yeah. I already admitted one patient."
"Geez. Is that why you're listening to Britney Spears?"
I laughed and glanced at the TV, where Britney managed to dance and flash her cleavage with equal abandon. "Something like that. I actually get a lunch break when I'm on psych."
"Amazing. Listen, I was calling about the thing you asked me." Mrs. Lee. Business before pleasure. "Could I use your computer to start on the modeling? I'm leaving on Thursday, but I've got some ideas."
I twisted the phone cord around my finger. Hmm. Ryan in my apartment, waiting for me to get home. Business and pleasure? "Aren't you supposed to be on vacation?"
"It's boring."
Ha. He'd rather do work for me than score with Lisa. "I should make you do downtime."
"But."
"If you come by now, you can pick up my keys."
"Sweet."
I wolfed down my sandwich, continually checking my watch. If Ryan was late, he'd interrupt my family medicine clinic. He usually had a good sense of direction, but what if he got lost in a strange city? Or got waylaid by a petite girl with claws?
Oh me of little faith. Not only did Ryan page me from the parking circle in front of the hospital just over half an hour later, but when I bounced up to him, he handed me a single dwarf sunflower.
"Oh, Ryan." I surveyed the orange-yellow petals and delicate stamens and wanted to kiss him in the sunflower, if you know what I mean. How did I ever let this man go?
Still, I had to laugh at the sheer impracticality of me carrying a sunflower, even a dwarf one, around the hospital for the rest of the day.
He shrugged and smiled. "Better than Britney, right?"
"Much." I sniffed it. No sweet smell, but still wonderful. I twirled it between my fingers while we stood in the drop-off circle, inhaling exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke and smiling like idiots.
Having Ryan here felt like I'd clicked back into my usual orbit. I knew those intelligent brown eyes, that straight nose, those well-chiseled cheekbones and gently pointed chin. Okay, he hadn't tucked his T-shirt into his khaki shorts the way he always used to do, and the shirt was a little more fitted than in days of yore, but moving up a point or two on the fashion scale was a good thing, right? I should probably try that someday myself.
He took a step closer, staring into my eyes like he was remembering things a lot hotter than my old T-shirts. I could feel the warmth of his body even though he hadn't touched me.
I started babbling. "We grew sunflowers in front of our house one year, but the birds ate all the seeds."
He didn't move any closer, but didn't move away, either. "I remember."
I frowned. "That was before I knew you. I think my dad planted them when I was, like, in grade eight."
"I remember you telling me about them."
That was the other thing about Ryan, his memory for details. Like once I pointed out a postcard of a Valentine in the sand on the beach. When V-Day came up half a year later, he stamped my name in the snow, surrounded by a giant heart. Oh. Ryan. The first, the great, the only love of my life. I opened my mouth. "I lov—"
Holy crap.
I turned scarlet and tried to swallow my tongue.
He just stood and watched. He knew what I was going to say. I'd only told him a million times when we were together. Then he said, "It's okay, Hope."
No. Totally not okay to almost tell your ex-boyfriend you love him. Even if it was practically a reflex. I turned my head, swallowing hard, and crossed the pavement toward the grassy knoll across from the front entrance. A patient paused to stare at us, one hand steadying her IV. I glared at her.
Ryan kept pace with me. "Are you still all right with me borrowing your computer? My netbook is pretty basic, and if you've still got some of the programs I loaded up on yours—" He paused. "Unless you've upgraded computers? I should have asked."
He knew me so well. I hadn't upgraded or deleted anything. I stared at my scuffed sandals. "No, I still have same computer with the design programs and whatever else you put on it. It's all right. I'm sorry." I'm sorry I almost said I love you. I'm sorry I lost you. Wait, where did that come from? Did near-strangling make your lose your frontal lobe? "Don't listen to me. I'm—not myself."
I heard him shrug. "Who would be?" And when I opened my eyes again, he was looking at me such compassion and something else, something so deep and familiar I had to turn away before I could identify it as tenderness.
That was when I saw Tucker.