A Doctor's Watch

Chapter 4

About the time he pulled into the parking lot of the Eternal Emergency Care Clinic, Ty could have used a couple of toothpicks to hold his eyelids up. With the help of two pots of coffee and a Red Bull, he’d managed to land his updated patient-care charts in the Kaiser’s inbox just shy of 6:00 a.m. The winds had died down since last night and the snowplows had cleared the roads, so he’d made good time from Belier. Now all he had to do was give the good Ms. Serrat the once-over—professionally speaking, of course—and send her on her way, and with any luck her uncle Karl would have no cause to send his career down in flames.

This week.

Maybe he’d even get in a little catnap before his shift at the hospital.

A sheriff’s cruiser sat cockeyed in front of the employee entrance. Funny. He’d noticed another out front.

His guard was up a little, and the difference in atmosphere struck him like a slap when he walked into the corridor. Groups of orderlies huddled in the hall, their eyes darting back and forth as they whispered. A couple of pale-faced nurses tapped anxiously on each door as they moved away from Ty, opening and entering each room before coming back out and shaking their heads. A uniformed deputy strolled along behind, a hint of boredom barely showing beneath his stone-faced expression.

Ty tapped a nurse he recognized from last night on the shoulder. “What’s going on?”

She grabbed him by the elbows. “Oh, thank God you’re here. We’ve lost your patient.”

“What do you mean, lost her?”

“I mean she’s gone. Her bed was empty when the floor nurse went in for morning rounds.”

The blood drained from Ty’s head. “Have you called her family? Maybe she skipped out and went home.”

“We checked. They haven’t seen her. Her mother-in-law and uncle are on their way here.”

Great. Maybe he’d been premature in his prediction that his career would last another week.

“She can’t have gone far,” the nurse continued. “Her clothes and shoes are still in the closet in her room. She has to be in the building somewhere.”

Reflexively, Ty stole a glance out the glass door at the snow beyond and shivered. The mentally ill sometimes didn’t feel physical discomfort until it was too late. If she had left the building…

He threw his coat over the nurses’ counter and raked a hand through his uncombed hair. “All right. What areas have you searched so far?”

“Her whole floor. The common areas on other floors, waiting rooms, doctors’ lounges and such. The main lobby and the second-floor patient rooms.”

“So that leaves intensive care—I doubt she’s there, there are enough staff around someone would have noticed—the first-floor patient rooms and the basement.”

“We just sent a group to the first floor to look. The graveyard shift stayed over to search, and the morning crew is helping out, too. Everyone we can spare. They’ve got all the main floors covered.”

“Guess that leaves us with the basement, then.”

He gestured toward the stairwell and strode off after her. At least he wasn’t sleepy any longer. Amazing what a jolt of adrenaline could do to the human body.

The high he was riding didn’t subside, even after twenty minutes of searching for his wayward patient.

There was only one area left to search down here—the kitchen. Ahead a faint gruelish smell filtered around a stainless-steel swinging door.

He threw a glance at Nurse Renee. “Let’s go.”

His heart sank when they walked into the kitchen. A couple of cooks in grease-stained white aprons shuffled about, clanging pots and pans. Mia couldn’t be here; she would have been spotted. Maybe she really had left the building, in which case she was out in the snow, coatless and shoeless somewhere. He’d seen stranger things as a psychiatrist, but none had given him quite the same feeling of dread as picturing Mia shivering and alone did now.

“Mia?” he called out, helplessness loud and clear in his voice.

The cooks stopped and stared at him.

He walked down the aisle between stoves and sinks, looking left and right, studying. Ahead, the kitchen bent around in a narrow L shape. A row of stainless-steel cutting tables and cabinets lined one side of the room.

From beneath one of the tables, five bare toes wiggled against the tile floor.

“Mia?” Barely aware of the nurse jogging behind him, Ty hurried to where Mia sat huddled on the floor, but made himself slow down before he squatted next to her. He didn’t want to startle her.

When he did lower himself to her level, he was the one who startled.

Both hands wrapped around the handle, she clasped a butcher knife against her chest.

Though his heart thundered in his chest, he forced a professional calm into his voice. “Hey, what’cha doing down here?”

She blinked, her eyes vacant.

“Mia? Are you okay?”

This time he got a twitch out of her. A tiny sign of recognition.

“Can you tell me what you’re doing here?” He made no move toward her. Not with that knife so close to her heart.

Her lips trembled. “There was a…There was a man.”

“A man where?”

“In my room.”

“In your hospital room? Upstairs?”

She nodded, the movement jerky. At least he could see her breathing now, and a spot of color had returned to her cheeks.

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. He was dressed all in black. He had a hood.” Her gaze jumped up to his, suddenly electric. “He was going to hurt me.”

Damn. How could he have been so wrong about her? She’d seemed so stable yesterday, despite her confusion about being pushed down the bluff. That could be written off as a normal defensive mechanism. He wanted to write it off.

He wanted her to be normal.

But the paranoid delusion she described was anything but normal. Hiding beneath a stainless-steel counter with a butcher knife before dawn was anything but normal.

A knot tightened in his chest as he realized how long and painful the road to recovery would be for a person with an illness like this. And not just for her, but for her family, too. She had a son, she’d said.

“Mia, why don’t you put down the knife and we can talk about it, okay?”

Confusion clouded her green eyes. She glanced down, and looked at the weapon she held as if she’d never seen it before, hadn’t realized she held it. Her eyes went wide. The blade clattered to the floor.

Moving slowly, Nurse Renee leaned in and slid it away.

“There, that’s better.” Ty slowly raised his hand toward Mia. She hesitated to take his hand, to trust him, but he waited out her reluctance. Her shock.

What he wouldn’t give for a shower and a clean shirt. Yesterday’s clothes were getting a little ripe. He wouldn’t be leaving here for some time, though. When he did go, Mia Serrat would be going back to the Massachusetts Hospital of Mental Health with him—as a patient.

And she knew it—her green eyes had gone so dark they were almost black. He steeled himself against the urge to comfort her, to tell her everything would be all right. She had to face her illness, and he had to help her do it.

This was why he’d gotten into medicine. Into psychiatry. Because of people like Mia. People like his mother. Good people who needed help.

He just hadn’t known how it would eat his gut.

“Come on,” he urged. “Why don’t we go somewhere a little more comfortable and you can tell me what happened?”

Ten minutes later, Mia was tucked back between her covers with a mug of steaming tea and Dr. Handsome was perched on a stool next to the bed.

“You don’t believe me,” she said flatly.

“I’m just trying to understand—”

“Huh.” She gulped a mouthful of air. “Don’t give me the psychobabble. I’ve heard it all before.”

He raked a hand through his hair and stretched his back. “Okay, why do you think someone would want to hurt you?”

She cut him a sideways glance. “Oh, now you believe there is a man?”

“Just go with me here.”

She sighed, a wistful breath of air that rippled the tea. The steam above the mug swirled. “I don’t know.”

“Did he say anything?”

“No. He didn’t see me. Not at first.”

“How could he not see you?”

“I wasn’t in my room. I was in the hall…. Oh, what’s the use.”

“No, go ahead. You were in the hall.”

She blew on her tea and took a sip. “He stopped outside my door and looked around like, to see if anyone was watching.”

The doctor scrubbed his hands over his face. He looked tired, and he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday. “Are you sure it wasn’t a doctor? You were tired and had hit your head. Maybe you just thought—”

“How many doctors do you know that wear black hoodies pulled way up over their faces when they’re making rounds?”

“So you’re basing your assumption that someone is trying to kill you on one person’s bad choice of clothing?”

“He pulled a syringe out of his pocket!” She set her tea on the bedside table and crossed her arms over her chest. “Didn’t you tell me you left orders that I wasn’t to be given any medications so that you could clear me for release in the morning?”

He just stared at her, his eyes unreadable. Tired, but unreadable. The doctor look. She hated it.

“Fine,” she spat out and threw her head back on the pillow. “It was all my imagination.”

“Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Telling me what you think I want to hear.”

“Well you didn’t seem too pleased to hear the truth.”

“That someone is trying to kill you.”

“Well I’m not going to say that I was trying to kill myself.”

“I found you holding a knife to your chest.”

“For protection! Someone tried to kill me twice in one day!”

He frowned. “You said you slipped and fell off the bluff.”

“Then, I was telling you what you wanted to hear. Now, I’m telling you the truth.”

“How am I supposed to know which is the truth and which is the lie?”

She gritted her teeth, clenched her fists and groaned, then sank back against the bed, deflated. “Shrinks.”

He opened his mouth. She cut him off fast and hard. “Don’t you dare ask me how I feel about shrinks.”

He feigned innocence. “I was going to ask you if you’d like some more tea. Yours is cold by now.”

Terrific. A little humiliation to go with her mortification.

“No, thank you.”

He straightened and took a deep breath. She braced herself—she knew what that meant.

“Look, I think you should come to the MHMH for a few days. Straighten out in your head what really happened and didn’t happen yesterday and last night.”

Someone had dropped a bowling ball on her stomach. “No!”

He reached over and covered her clenched hand with his. His palm was warm, slightly rough. She jerked from beneath his touch.

“I’m afraid I have to insist,” he said.

She bolted upright in bed. She’d known this was coming, and still she wasn’t prepared. “You can’t do this!”

“On the contrary.” He stood, his shoulders rounded. “It’s my job to do this, whether I like it or not.” The expression on his face made her believe that in this case, he definitely did not. It was small comfort.

Every nerve in her body jumped. She was on fire. She licked her lips. “Look, you’re probably right. I slipped and fell on the bluff. And last night, I—I had a headache and I don’t sleep well in hospitals. It was probably just a nightmare. I didn’t really see anything at all. I overreacted a little.”

He stopped at the door. “I really hope that’s all it was. But I have to be sure.” His lips pressed together. “Not just for your sake, but for your son’s.”

If there was one thing in the world he could have said that would set her back, make her think about what was happening to her, that was it.

Her son.

If there really was something wrong with her, it wasn’t Todd’s fault. From the moment he’d been born, she’d vowed to protect him. Protect him she would—even if it was from herself.

Tears welled in her eyes. Dr. Handsome stayed in the door, looking torn.

“We’ll work it out,” he said quietly. “Don’t give up.”

Then he was gone.

Work it out? Hell, what was there to work out if she was losing her mind?

Chapter 5

Ty slapped the vending machine on the side trying to eke a few more drops of stale coffee into the paper cup.

“They’re waiting for you,” Nurse Renee said from behind.

He grabbed the cup, downed half, and turned. “I know.”

She grimaced. “How do you think they’re going to take the news?”

“Oh, about like a bad case of the stomach flu.”

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