Читать книгу Intensive Care - Jessica Andersen - Страница 11

Ripley Davis stiff-armed the swinging doors that separated Radiation Oncology from Boston General’s central atrium and frowned at the unexpected death report in her hand. She’d gone over the case ten times since the day before and it still didn’t make any sense.

Ida Mae Harris shouldn’t have died.

The failure weighed heavily as she jogged down the spiraling stairs to the lobby, but her schedule left little room for a quiet moment. She had barely enough time to grab a coffee before she was due at another “emergency” Radiation Safety meeting—the second one this month. She’d heard that the head Radiation Safety Nazi had been replaced, but she held little hope for improvement. Rumor had it that the new guy, Zachary Cage, hated doctors.

Great, that was just what Ripley needed.

She didn’t have time for a meeting and she didn’t have time for a Radiation Safety Officer with an attitude shutting her down for a snap inspection. She was struggling to keep the Radiation Oncology department open as it was, following the last round of budget cuts. But R-ONC—pronounced Ronk—was her life. The patients were her family. The administration couldn’t shut her down. They just couldn’t.

The paperwork in her hand crinkled and Ripley knew they could shut her down unless she could defend Ida Mae’s death at the inquiry. The sixty-something grandmother had been scheduled for release. She’d been happy and fit following her treatment. She shouldn’t have died.

What had gone wrong?

Ripley shook her head as she turned the corner and strode across the hospital’s tiled atrium toward the café. The waterfall fountain burbled to itself, but she wasn’t soothed by the sound. Even shorthanded, her department’s survival rate was one of the best in the country. She was up to date with all the new methods and ran a ruthlessly tight ship. The trite explanation she’d been forced to give Ida Mae’s husband—sometimes these things just happen—was baloney.

She didn’t allow these things to happen to the patients she cared for, agonized over. She was determined to figure out why Ida Mae had died.

Ripley was halfway across the atrium when she heard running footsteps and her brain fired emergency! But before she could spin around to see what was wrong, a hot, sweaty body hit her from behind, and a man bellowed, “You killed my wife!”

She staggered forward with a shriek as the focused response of a doctor fragmented to sheer feminine terror. She fell to her knees beneath her attacker’s weight and smelled old, sour whiskey and unwashed man. Her shock was instant and complete. Paralyzing.

“You killed her!”

Half sitting on the cold tiles, Ripley struggled to face him. “Wait! Wait, I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t—” She broke off when she recognized the rumpled, teary man towering above her.

It was Ida Mae Harris’s husband. He’d brought flowers every day during visiting hours.

His mouth worked. Grief etched the deep grooves of his face. “She was fine, you said. She was coming home today.” He held out a glass rose, one of the many trinkets sold in the hospital gift store. “Our fiftieth anniversary was next week. I bought her a flower.”

A tear tracked across one wrinkled cheek as he snapped the glass rose in two with a vicious, violent motion. He pointed the stem toward Ripley. Light glinted off the wickedly pointed end and a manic rage sparked in his eyes. Alcohol fueled the flames to a blast that burned through her chest. “Now Ida Mae is dead. You killed her!”

Ripley struggled to her knees and held out both hands, barely aware of the gaping onlookers and the sound of the fountain behind her. Fear coiled hard and hot in her stomach. She saw the hands shake and was only dimly aware they belonged to her. No! she wanted to shout. I didn’t kill her! My patients are my life. They’re my family, don’t you understand?

But he was beyond understanding. So she tried to soothe. Tried to defuse, saying, “Mr. Harris. Losing your wife is a terrible, terrible thing, but this won’t make it any better.”

He’d seemed calm when she had called to break the news of Ida Mae’s death. But Ripley knew shock—and anger—could be delayed. And intense.

When another tear creased his cheek to join the first, Ripley thought she might be getting through. She rose to her feet and held out a trembling hand, palm up, and tried to steady the quiver in her voice. Tried to hold back her own scared tears when she said, “Give me the piece of glass, Mr. Harris. Ida Mae wouldn’t have wanted you to do this.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

“Ida Mae didn’t want to die!” the big man roared. He brought the makeshift knife up and leapt on Ripley with a snarl on his lips and fierce grief in his eyes.

The glass stem swept down in a glittering arc and chaos erupted.

A woman screamed. A nearby display of children’s watercolors crashed to the floor, overturned by the stranger who’d hidden behind it. Ripley lurched away from Mr. Harris, twisted and fell to the ground as the stranger charged across the tiles, grabbed Harris, and hurled him into the fountain.

Water smacked onto the tile floor and the onlookers shrieked.

There was another enormous splash as Ripley’s dark savior followed his combatant into the fountain. She struggled to her feet in time to see the man haul Harris up by his collar, punch him hard and drop the suddenly limp figure back into the water.

And the world stilled. Silenced. Even the fountain seemed muted. And Ripley stared as two pieces of information battled for control of her conscious mind.

She was safe. And the stranger was magnificent.

Breathing hard, six-foot-two inches of rugged male glared down into the roiling fountain with water sheeting down behind him. His long nose and heavy brow made his profile more fierce than handsome, and across the distance that separated them, she couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. They just looked…black.

The wet material of his cotton shirt and dress pants clung like a lover to the tight bulges of his biceps and the long muscles of his thighs and calves. Ripley’s mouth dried to sand when he leaned down and hauled Harris out of the water with a filthy curse and those muscles bunched and strained.

Paying no attention to the gathering crowd, the stranger stepped out of the fountain and dumped the now-weeping man on the tiles, leaving him for the uniformed police officers who poured into the atrium with guns drawn, only to find the situation under control.

Then the stranger turned toward Ripley and their eyes locked. A click of connection arced between them like a live wire. She felt a tremble in her thighs and an ache in the empty place between them. It didn’t feel like fear. Far from it. How could fear exist side by side with this sensation?

He walked toward her and Ripley was barely aware of the growing hum as the onlookers started talking in loud, excited tones about their own imagined bravery during the dangerous moments.

She saw only him. Dark, wet hair clung to his wide brow and the damp shirt hung from his chest like chain mail. He held out his hand. Glass sparkled on his palm.

“I’ll take that.” The nasal Boston twang jolted Ripley out of her trance, and she looked blankly at the officer who had materialized beside her. When he pointed at the glass rose stem, she shook her head and slid it into the breast pocket of her lab coat, though she couldn’t have said why.

The slight bump of a glass thorn pressed through the fabric to touch her skin, and she had to suppress a shiver. The imprint of Harris’s hands stung her side and shoulder. She could feel him against her, hot and sweaty and mad with grief. The fine trembles that began in her stomach threatened to work their way out, but Ripley knew she couldn’t let them take control.

She had to be a doctor now. She was Ripley Davis, MD. She couldn’t be soft. Davises don’t make public scenes, growled her father’s voice in the back of her mind, and the familiar anger helped her push the shakes aside.

She could be a frightened woman later. In private.

Gesturing toward the officers herding witnesses into the coffee shop, she said, “That’s not necessary. I won’t be pressing charges.” She focused on hospital policy. Head Administrator Leo Gabney’s policy. It was easier to think of policy than what might have happened if Harris had been a little quicker with the makeshift knife, the other man a little slower with his rescue.

The trembles in her stomach threatened to take over.

“Why the hell not?” The stranger’s voice was as dark and fierce as his face. It was steel and smoke and anger, with a hint of softness at the edges. In an insane flash, Ripley wondered what it sounded like first thing in the morning.

How it would sound calling her name.

And why in God’s name was she thinking about that? She didn’t need a man. Didn’t need sex. She was a doctor. She saved lives. She didn’t need a man to make her feel whole. That was a weakness, just like love. Like the need for rescue.

It was adrenaline, Ripley decided when the stranger’s brows drew together in a scowl that she felt all the way to her core. That’s all it was. Adrenaline and the shaky knowledge that he’d saved her life.

She couldn’t remember the last time a man had thought to rescue her from anything.

Fighting to keep her voice steady, she said, “Mr. Harris needs compassion more than he needs jail time.” She nodded toward the new widower, who was sobbing brokenly into his hands as a white-coated ER attending crouched down beside him and officers hovered above.

She could barely make out Harris’s words over the growing din. “Ida Mae. The phone call. Dr. Davis killed Ida Mae.”

Ripley closed her eyes. These things happen, she’d said over the phone when she told him his wife’s heart had stopped without warning. Cheap words. The disbelief in his voice had wounded her, because she had barely believed it herself. His sobs tore at her now.

She had failed her patient. Her department.

Herself.

The stranger spat a curse. “He could have killed you! What kind of hospital policy is that? What kind of safety do you people have here? The guy’s a nut. He should be punished!”

“He’s already been punished,” Ripley snapped over Harris’s rising howls. “He’s lost his wife.” Though she didn’t believe in happily ever after for herself, it worked for some. It had worked for the Harrises. She thought of the rose stem in her pocket. He’d bought Ida Mae a glass flower to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. Now he’d spend it alone.

The sting of guilt pierced like a thorn.

The stranger snarled, “That’s bull and you know it. Grief doesn’t give a man the right to hurt other people.”

“Give it up, pal,” the officer suggested. “We get these calls every few months. Boston General won’t press charges and we’ve never had anyone seriously hurt. For better or worse, their system seems to work. Now, if I could have your names for my report, I’ll get out of your hair.”

Ripley gave her name and department. The stranger clenched his jaw when she mentioned Radiation Oncology, but he merely glared at the officer. “My name is Zachary Cage. I think this is bull, I’m soaking wet and I’m late for a meeting.” With a final glance at Ripley, he stalked away, dripping.

That was the new Radiation Safety Officer? Ripley stared at him in disbelief. The rumors had been right on about his attitude, but they hadn’t said he was gorgeous.

“Hell,” she muttered, and lifted a hand to brush the hair away from her face. That was when she noticed the hand was still shaking. Her whole body was shaking. And she was going to throw up.

If you must fall apart, do it someplace private, Howard Davis’s stern voice said in her mind. Davises must never be weak in public. Never.

She was halfway across the atrium on her way to the ladies’ room when she saw the ER attending give Harris a sedative jab in the upper arm. The weeping man’s voice abruptly rose above the atrium din. “The voice on the phone said Dr. Davis killed my wife!” Then he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

Ripley made it to the bathroom, barely. But it was a long time before she stopped shaking.

“JUST WHAT I NEED. Another damn doctor trying to save her own hide. Typical. Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” Cage yanked the warm-up pants out of his gym bag and dragged them over his clammy legs. He cursed when his bad shoulder protested. The surgeons had repaired the joint as well as they could, but the ligaments just weren’t strong enough for underwater wrestling matches.

“What’s that, boss?” Whistler stuck his head around the corner but kept his butt firmly planted in the computer chair lest he lose the rhythm of his solitaire game.

“Nothing. Come on, we’re late for the meeting.”

“You wearing that?”

Cage scowled down at the faded baseball jersey, warm-up pants and scuffed sneakers. “Not much choice, is there? My work clothes are soaked. Come on.”

His nominal assistant obediently tagged along to the meeting Head Administrator Leo Gabney had set up.

“Why the hell won’t the hospital prosecute that guy?” Cage snarled. “He attacked one of your doctors with broken glass, for God’s sake.” He had told Whistler the bare bones of the story. The radiation tech, twentyish and faintly geeky, had barely batted an eyelash. Then again, Whistler hadn’t reacted to much yet, except to offer a small grin when Leo Gabney had announced that Cage was replacing George Dixon as Radiation Safety Officer.

The other five members of the team hadn’t been as kind. Two had rolled their eyes, one had made a pointed reference to the failed Albany Memorial lawsuit, and the others hadn’t bothered to look up from their card game. Cage had considered firing all of them on the spot.

The day had gone downhill from there, culminating in him stumbling upon a woman being held at knifepoint in the hospital lobby. He could still feel the echo of rage. Though Cage knew exactly how the widower felt, there was no excuse for physically harming a woman.

Even if she was a doctor.

“If the guy freaked out because his wife died unexpectedly, they’ll hush it up,” Whistler said with a sidelong glance.

“Why is that?”

“The administration doesn’t want a malpractice suit. They’re bad for business and for BoGen’s chances at Hospital of the Year.”

Cage stiffened, and when the memory tried to come, he stuffed it deep down, hidden where it belonged. He growled, “Malpractice my ass. Doctors shouldn’t ‘practice’ on anyone. They should know what the hell they’re doing before they start mucking around.”

Whistler shrugged. “Don’t see much of it here. Boston General has an excellent record. The administration has seen to it, one way or another.” He pushed open the door to the Radiation Oncology conference room and gestured Cage through.

“You’re late.” Head Administrator Leo Gabney pounced just inside the conference room. His scowl lacked some of its intended punch because he barely topped five-foot-six. “And what the hell are you wearing?”

Cage brushed past him. “Long story. But for the record, your security sucks.”

“Lucky for you, our security isn’t your problem. You’ll adjust to the way we do things here soon enough.” Gabney shooed Cage up to the front of the room. “Let’s get on with it, the natives are restless.”

That was an understatement, Cage decided as he took the podium. Fifty or so faces stared at him with varying degrees of annoyance, anger and downright hostility. Nothing unexpected. A few coffee-shop conversations and a scan of the files had shown him that his predecessor had been neither well liked nor particularly effective. It seemed that George Dixon had been more interested in women than radiation safety—whether or not the women returned his affections.

Well, Cage thought, the female population at Boston General was in no danger from him. His priority was the job. Period.

But as he adjusted the microphone to chin height and scanned the room, an unfamiliar tingling skittered through Cage’s chest, and he couldn’t help glancing at the only face that reflected something other than hostility.

She was here.

The woman hadn’t been far from his mind, he realized, since the incident in the atrium. She’d brushed it off and hidden behind hospital policy, but he had saved her life and they both knew it. The adrenaline still thrummed through his veins as he peered past the podium and focused on her face.

Dr. Ripley Davis. The statistics in her personnel file hadn’t prepared him for that first meeting. Hadn’t prepared him to see her as a woman instead of a doctor. A suspect.

In those first few seconds, he’d seen only a beautiful woman with dark, springy curls fastened behind her head, a few left free to brush her jaw and long, elegant neck. The moment their eyes had met, the water he’d been standing in hadn’t felt cold anymore. Neither had his body.

It had been a long time since sex had been a part of his vocabulary; even the need for it had been burned out of him. But desire had flowed through him then, as it flowed through him now when their eyes locked in the auditorium and the electricity surged again.

Dr. Ripley Davis. Radiation Oncology. He didn’t trust R-ONCs as far as he could pitch them, and he’d already heard rumors of suspicious doings in her department. His investigation was already underway. The fact that she was a beautiful woman shouldn’t matter one bit.

It wouldn’t matter, he told himself firmly. If she was responsible for the hidden radioactive material Dixon had supposedly found in the R-ONC broom closet, Cage would bring Dr. Davis down and be glad of it. He had no patience for sloppy doctors. Especially R-ONCs. And it was beyond unacceptable for unlogged radioactive materials to be scattered throughout the hospital.

Cursing the rev of his body when she smiled tentatively and mouthed, “Thank you,” Cage gritted his teeth and glared out at the rest of the assembly. He could deal with their animosity more easily than he could deal with Ripley Davis’s smile.

“Attention. Everyone, please!” The Head Administrator waved the crowd to silence. “As you know,” Gabney began, “the final ballots for Hospital of the Year will be cast at the end of the week, and Boston General is up for the title and the ten-million-dollar grant. This money would not only go far in easing our recent budget concerns, it would also fund the new Gabney Children’s Wing.” There was little reaction from the room, but the administrator beamed and nodded as though there had been a standing ovation. “Now, as part of my continued commitment to improving Boston General, I’d like to introduce Zachary Cage, who is replacing George Dixon as Radiation Safety Officer.”

There was a quick, speculative buzz, but it died when Cage cleared his throat and leaned toward the microphone. “I know there have been complaints about fines levied by the previous RSO, and I promise to look into those incidents.”

There were a few nods and a faint smile or two. These were wiped clean as Cage continued, “But…the radiation safety here is a joke. You know it, and I know it. I intend to bring each and every doctor in this hospital back into strict accordance with federal radiation safety guidelines. There will be no exceptions, no allowances. You will comply or you will be shut down until the guidelines are met.” An angry hum skittered through the crowd and Cage saw Leo frown. Undaunted, he barked, “Radioactivity is not a toy, ladies and gentlemen. It is a weapon.”

A quick memory of angry red burns on soft skin had his stomach clenching. He glanced down at the notes he didn’t need and ignored the hands that shot up around the room. He ignored the chocolate-brown eyes he could feel on his face like a touch and tried to imagine wounded blue ones in their place.

Heather. He was doing this for Heather. He hadn’t been able to save her. Hadn’t been able to punish her killers. But he could make the hospitals safer for other women. For other men’s wives. The widower’s cry echoed in his head. Dr. Davis killed my wife!

Cage leaned forward into the microphone and made the final pronouncement, the one that was likely to be the most unpopular. “I will be performing a full audit of your radiation use for the last two years, starting in the labs with the most recent fines and infractions.” He glanced up and was caught in her eyes. The sudden angry babble faded into the background when he saw the surprise on her face.

And the sudden flash of…worry?

He glanced down at the unnecessary notes again, needing to sever the contact. “My team and I will start our audit tomorrow.” He paused and his eyes found Ripley Davis again. It was as though he was speaking only to her. “We’ll begin with Radiation Oncology.”

This time, the fear was unmistakable and Cage felt an unaccountable thread of disappointment knife through him. Ripley Davis had something to hide.

She was just like all the others.

The meeting wound down quickly after that. Cage saw Dr. Davis slide from her seat as he opened the floor to questions, but she didn’t meet his eyes. She hurried from the room while he answered a query about waste containment systems and Cage had a sudden, mad impulse to follow her.

As quickly as he could, he turned the microphone over to the Head Administrator and walked to the door. There was no sign of her in the hallway. Gabney droned in the background, “I will be personally overseeing the public affairs events scheduled over the next two weeks as the Hospital of the Year voting draws near…”

Cage slipped out of the conference room and headed for the Radiation Safety office, intent on rereading her personnel file. Ripley Davis had piqued his interest. Not because of the way she looked, or because of how she’d handled the situation in the atrium, he assured himself, but because she was a doctor. A R-ONC. And because George Dixon had told several people about finding a jar of radioactive material in the R-ONC broom closet. Unlabeled. Unshielded. Unauthorized.

Unacceptable.

Now it was Cage’s job to figure out where the jar had come from. Where it had gone. And why.

He found the Rad Safety office deserted and he grimaced. Dixon had run a sloppy office in more ways than one. “Those technicians had better step up to the plate, or they’ll find themselves looking for new jobs,” he muttered into the echoing emptiness.

He crossed to the cardboard box that held his paperwork, pulled out the stack of files he’d requested from personnel, and thumbed through until he reached Davis, Ripley. He froze.

That morning, the folder had been thick with commendations and biographical material. But not anymore.

He pulled the now-thin folder from the box and opened it.

The file was empty.