Читать книгу Grave Risk - Hannah Alexander - Страница 11

Rex designated a biohazard receptacle and a sharps container as he collected used needles and tubing from the massage-room floor around Edith’s still body. He had to make do with what he had here at the spa and would place all the items in a proper receptacle later when they returned to the clinic.

The rest of the makeshift code team had dispersed to other rooms in the spa to make arrangements for Edith’s funeral. The place was quiet, filled with the aura of shock and grief with which he had become familiar as an internist.

The feeling of loss after a code wasn’t something he missed about his former life. He did miss other things, however. He’d loved the interaction with patients and their families and the chance to have a meaningful impact on a patient’s quality of life. Internal medicine had given him opportunities for that. Still, if he had it to do over again—which he might, someday—he would have gone into family practice.

A general practice didn’t pay nearly as well as internal medicine. With the diminishing returns from health insurance, the number of uninsured patients and the high cost of professional liability insurance, many of his colleagues complained that they would soon have to pay their patients for the privilege of treating them.

Cheyenne Gideon and Karah Lee Fletcher didn’t seem to have that attitude, however.

When everything was collected from the floor, Rex sank onto the stool beside Edith’s body. She looked almost alive. If he didn’t know better, he would expect to see her chest rising and falling. There was something about her…“I’m sorry I didn’t get to talk to you again,” he murmured softly. “Go with God.”

Footsteps echoed from the hallway, and Cheyenne stepped through the open threshold, mascara smudged around her dark eyes.

“Rex, I’m sorry you were dragged into this, but thank you so much for your willingness to help.” There was a catch in her voice.

“Thank you for including me. It’s been a while since I last did a code.”

“Someone from the funeral home will be here soon.” She reached for an empty syringe and placed it in the receptacle. “You don’t have to wait.”

“I’d like to, if you don’t mind.”

With a nod, she sank into a chair, her dark eyes shimmering with more tears.

“You must have cared a great deal about her,” he said.

“Everyone did. Jill and Edith were especially close, and I hate to think what she’ll be going through in the next few days.”

“She’ll blame herself,” Rex said.

Cheyenne nodded, her eyes narrowing fractionally as she gazed at him. “Yes.” There was a hesitation in the word. It wasn’t quite a question, but he could almost hear her thoughts. Then her gaze returned to Edith.

“When I was practicing medicine,” he said, “I made it a habit to ensure that the deceased patient was never left alone before being collected by the hearse or taken to the hospital morgue.” It hadn’t always been possible, of course, but he’d tried.

She nodded. “You were in internal medicine? I guess that means you did intubations.”

“Quite a few.”

“When I was a med student, I heard horror stories about ER docs and internists who left their intubated patients alone after a failed code in a room, where the tube was moved by a careless staff member.”

“Which set the doctor up for a malpractice lawsuit when he couldn’t prove he had the tube in correctly,” Rex said. “I heard the same stories.”

“You didn’t do this intubation.” Cheyenne gestured to Edith. “Obviously, you’re not staying to protect your liability.”

He shook his head. “Somehow, it just doesn’t seem right to leave her lying here alone on the cold, hard floor. It’s always been a hang-up of mine.”

“A tender heart? I bet you got teased about that in med school.”

“Not so much in med school as when I was a resident.” He hadn’t minded the teasing. His little eccentricity had actually been the first thing that had drawn Jill to him. It had taken weeks to realize why she’d been so understanding about his quirks—because she had some pretty interesting quirks of her own.

Karah Lee joined them in the room and sank onto the recliner. “Sheena’s not handling this well.”

“Is she going to be okay?” Rex asked.

Karah Lee nodded. “She’s on the telephone with her mother now. You know Jill’s got to be in agony. I’m just glad Noelle went with her.”

“I need to talk to Bertie, myself,” Cheyenne said.

“You’ll get your chance,” Karah Lee said. “And don’t worry, Bertie can handle this. She’s a trouper.”

“Blaze and I were the ones who found her husband dead,” Cheyenne said. “Red was the sweetest old man, deaf as a flowerpot, as Bertie liked to say. After his death, Edith was always there for Bertie, even willing to risk her savings to go into business with her at the bed and breakfast.”

“She was a wise and kind lady,” Rex said.

Karah Lee’s eyes narrowed. “You knew her?”

He looked down and studied the elderly, waxen face. There seemed to be just a hint of pink still in her cheeks. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought she was wearing makeup, but anything on her skin would have been removed with all that green stuff.

“You did know Edith?” Cheyenne asked.

“I met her years ago. I take it this was not completely unexpected? Heart failure?”

Cheyenne hesitated, watching him with those dark eyes, obviously trying to decipher the implication of his having known Edith. “She’s been struggling with chronic heart failure for the past year.”

“Was she taking her medication faithfully?”

“Yes, and I thought we were keeping a close eye on her numbers, so this was a shock.”

“You can’t place the human body on a schedule,” he said. “When the heart gives out, it gives out. You know that.”

“Yes, but when we’re especially close to the patient, we do tend to take on more responsibility for the outcome,” Cheyenne said.

“You’ve been in Hideaway before?” Karah Lee asked Rex.

He resisted a smile at the redhead’s evident curiosity. “Yes, and I actually stayed at Edith’s house a few times. Edith was one of the most hospitable people I’ve ever known. She not only fed me and gave me a place to sleep when I visited, but she invited me to return, even after…” He caught himself and fell silent.

Karah Lee and Cheyenne waited.

“You might as well tell us,” Karah Lee said. “We’ll drag it out of you one way or another. What’s up between you and Jill?”

He had hoped to speak with Jill before sharing this information with anyone else. Especially considering the cool reception he had received from her this afternoon, he didn’t want her to feel as if he had betrayed her confidence.

However, he had never sworn to remain silent about their past together. She had done nothing to be ashamed of, though he had been ashamed of his words to her in the hospital cafeteria that one heartbreaking afternoon.

“Don’t even try to tell us you and Jill didn’t have something going on,” Karah Lee said. “I saw her reaction when she realized who you were.”

“We met over twenty years ago, when I was doing rotations in Springfield,” he said, still reluctant to explain. “Jill was doing her clinicals at St. John’s.”

When he was silent for a moment, Cheyenne prompted, “And?”

He was far too conscious of Edith’s still form. “Perhaps it isn’t totally respectful to be talking about this—”

“Spill it, Rex,” Karah Lee said. “Edith would totally approve.”

He glanced at the outspoken young doctor and grimaced. “Jill and I were once engaged to be married.”

Jill stood as if rooted into the grass at the side of the road. The heat of late summer blasted her face, and yet she felt cold. The graceful lines of her sister’s face blurred before her.

“Are you okay?” Noelle asked.

Jill blinked to clear her vision, feeling moisture in her lashes. “Your tone implied Edith might have died from something other than heart failure.”

“Yes, but—”

“Something other than natural causes.”

Noelle gave a quiet sigh, then nodded almost imperceptibly.

“But we were right there in the next room. She was fine.”

“I know.”

“And then I thought I heard her laughing. It probably wasn’t laughter, but…but she might have been clearing something from her throat, and then—”

“Jill, I can’t tell you any more than that right now, because I simply don’t know.”

“So if it wasn’t natural causes, then that means someone or something else caused her death.” Suddenly self-doubt attacked Jill. “Could I have made a mistake? Could I have been wrong when I thought she’d stopped breathing, and when I initiated CPR I actually caused her heart to—”

“Stop that.” Noelle seldom raised her voice at Jill, but the sudden intensity of those two words halted the painfully familiar sense of panic.

“Remember I told you that especially this time you aren’t to blame?”

“Then someone else is?” Jill asked.

“I’m not saying that, either. Don’t put words in my mouth. I just think there’s something else wrong here.” Noelle hesitated, her expression clouding. Jill wasn’t the only one in this family who had an overwhelming amount of self-doubt. “But with Edith’s heart, we knew it was probably just a matter of time.”

Jill felt another twist in her gut, in spite of Noelle’s reassurance. “I might have done something wrong.”

“No. You did everything right.”

“How can you know that for sure? You weren’t there the whole time.”

“Stop second-guessing yourself. You’re the best—”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have started CPR.” Jill paced across the grass a couple of yards. “Maybe her heart was fine before I—”

“Jill!” This time Noelle did raise her voice, and she grabbed Jill by the arm. “Stop doubting yourself. That’s the OCD talking.”

“What if this time it isn’t the OCD?”

“Even that statement suggests that it is. You know better.”

“I’m handling everything appropriately.”

“No you aren’t! You don’t need to be going to Bertie in the state you’re in right now. You’ll upset her in your condition, and you’ll feel awful about it later.”

Jill looked across the street toward the general store. “What about Cecil? He’s going to be heartbroken. He and Edith have been such good friends for so many years. Someone needs to tell—”

“Cheyenne will call her husband. Dane can talk to Cecil.” Jill knew better than to try to stop the wild ideas that bounced around inside her head like poisoned arrows that confused and clouded her mind. I’ve killed my friend…. I’ve made some kind of mistake that I can’t remember…. I’m a worthless nurse…. I destroy everything I touch….

“You could be wrong this time, Noelle,” she murmured. The weight of responsibility, already heavy enough to crush her, increased yet again. “There’s something you aren’t telling me. I can see it in your eyes.”

Noelle released her then. “Have you stopped taking your medication?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“That is the subject!”

When they were younger—when Jill, barely past childhood herself, felt the responsibility for Noelle’s welfare resting solely on her own small shoulders—she had been much worse. Caught up in the conviction that something was horribly wrong at their home in Cedar Hollow, she had feared for Noelle’s life if other members of their family discovered Noelle’s gift, and had slapped her to keep her quiet about it.

Something had been wrong then. How could Jill be sure something wasn’t wrong now as well? She and Noelle were far too familiar with the specter of murder.

“Have you stopped taking your medication again?” Noelle repeated.

“I’m taking it, just not as much. I’m titrating down.”

“Why?”

“I don’t need as much. I can get a handle on this thing without chemicals flowing through my body all the time. You know how much I hate that stuff.”

“But you hate the OCD more,” Noelle said. “Look what it’s doing to you right now, and this is a horrible time to reduce the meds. You need to increase the dosage, not cut back on it.”

Voices reached them from the bed and breakfast, and Jill glanced in that direction, barely a block away, to see another familiar figure stepping out onto the broad front porch.

“Noelle?”

“What?”

“Please tell me I’m not hallucinating.”

Noelle followed her line of vision, then caught her breath in a tiny gasp. “Depends on what you think you see,” she said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “If you think that’s Attila the Hun, you’re hallucinating. It’s just a distant descendant of his. He was in the spa earlier this morning.”

“What was Austin Barlow doing in your spa?”

“Paying a friendly visit.” The sarcasm didn’t abate. Noelle had never liked Austin.

“We need to suggest an autopsy for Edith,” Jill said, softly, so her voice wouldn’t carry to Austin.

“For what? You think anyone’s going to listen to us?”

“We can try.”

“As you said, Cheyenne is sure it was an MI that killed Edith,” Noelle said. “Myocardial infarction. Nobody’s going to listen to my hunch. Remember, Cheyenne’s the doctor. I’m not. So that’s exactly what they’ll call it—just a hunch.”

“They’ll listen to you before they’d listen to me,” Jill said. “Remember, I’ve been a little jumpy since last year. I’ve called the sheriff a couple of times about noises around the house.”

“Well, I’m the one who admitted to breaking and entering last year,” Noelle said.

Jill shook her head. “You were tracking a killer. The sheriff knows that.”

Noelle nudged Jill. Austin was glancing toward them.

“I’ll talk to the sheriff myself,” Jill said. “I’m telling you one thing now, though, sis. I’m going to run lab tests on that blood I drew from Edith.”

Noelle nodded. “That’s something we can take care of as soon as we’ve spoken with Bertie.”