Snapping back to the present, Maggie slammed the door shut and took her phone out. Sighing with relief as the timer continued to count upwards, she pressed stop on the phone before pulling the shaken Lindsay over to her desk and plopping her into the chair across from her desk.
“I should have just let him-”
Maggie held up one hand, silencing her. Taking a flask out of the bottom drawer of her desk, she produced two shot glasses and poured them each some of the amber whiskey.
“I don’t-”
Another silencing hand gesture. “Just one. Drink. It will take the edge off, focus your mind so you can cope today. And it won’t make you drunk, so your statement will be valid in court.”
Maggie didn’t think it would be possible, but Lindsay turned even paler than before. With a shaking hand, she brushed her long blonde hair away from her face, giving Maggie a full shot of how beautiful she really was.
Her beauty would, unfortunately, be a disadvantage in her chosen area of employment.
Bimbos didn’t have brains. So, a blonde couldn’t be a theoretical physicist.
“I should have-”
“Enough,” Maggie snapped, pushing the drink towards her student. “Drink.”
Lindsay reached for the glass, too shaken to argue anymore. With a swift motion, she shot the burning liquid. Maggie ensured she drank before doing the same.
“At least that made my hands stop shaking,” she said solemnly, looking down at her hands.
A small sob escaped her, and a single tear dripped onto her clasped hands. Maggie wanted to reach around the desk, wrap her in her arms and tell her it was going to be okay.
But it wouldn’t be.
And she was the Professor. The last thing this woman needed was a violation of a student-professor relationship.
“We are calling the police,” Maggie said, matter-of-factly.
“No,” Lindsay looked up from her hands, desperation replacing the fear. “No. Professor. All our work. All my work. That algorithm… I need this paper.”
“And you will keep all of that,” Maggie said. “Despite me being your professor.”
“We have no proof. And you…” Lindsay looked away sheepishly.
“My past has nothing to do with this. Also, you know as well as I do that another five TA’s came out of the woodwork five years after my accusations. You shouldn’t be affected.”
“He said he would fire me,” she said. “I can’t afford to restart my PhD.”
“He won’t fire you.”
“How do you know? It’s his word against mine… no one will believe me.”
Maggie made the quick decision to keep the video secret. The police would want to make sure that Lindsay’s statement corroborated the video. She would keep that bit to herself until the time was right to hand it over.
“I believe you,” Maggie said simply. “The Police will take this seriously.”
“I don’t want to make a big deal about this,” Lindsay sobbed, “I just want it to go away. I just want to forget. It’s not like anything happened, anyway.” She covered her face and sobbed into her hands.
Maggie’s heart lurched. But she needed to stay strong right now. Keep a level head. She let Lindsay cry for another minute, then silently held out a box of tissue. Lindsay smiled at the gesture and took one, blowing her nose loudly.
“If nothing happened, why do you feel like this?”
Silence.
Maggie nodded, “Exactly. So, police. They can decide what to do. But then it’s on record.”
“After the start-up this afternoon,” Lindsay said, voice showing a little of the fire that she kept hidden under all that beauty and brains. “Please. Let’s make sure it works. I’ll make a statement tomorrow. I just want to see our work. I want to see it perform. That’s the dream for a theoretical physicist. It’s something I may never see again.”
A few seconds ticked by as Maggie considered the ashen-faced student in front of her.
“Fine,” Maggie acquiesced. “Fine. But tomorrow morning we will go to the Police.”
“Deal,” Lindsay said, rising from the chair, “I need to go run my final numbers.”
“You’ll be okay alone?”
Lindsay headed for the door. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll be okay. Running the last algorithm through Greg2 will keep my mind busy.”
Greg2 was the supercomputer allocated to the team for the project. Maggie couldn’t smile when she heard the name, there was too much going through her head.
“When you’re ready, write everything as you remember. It will come in handy.”
Lindsay nodded and opened the door.
“Doctor Knight?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
Maggie simply nodded, and Lindsay hastened out the door.
No guilt rose in Maggie as she made a phone call. Maybe they wouldn’t go to the police, but she could damn well make sure the police came to them.
Chapter Five
John
“You can’t tell me I’m not as importanted as any of those fuckerssss you bring in by ambulance…”
John Porter tried to keep a straight face as the drunk slurred in front of him, potent smell of rotting teeth and cheap whiskey oozing out of him as he spoke.
This was not Jimmy’s first time at St. Paul’s hospital. Nor would it be the last.
“Jimmy, you know the drill,” John sighed, not looking up from his computer as he lazily filled out the triage report, completely ignoring the line of stuffy noses and upset tummies sitting in the emergency room. Just a normal morning at the hospital in the middle of Saskatoon.
“Hey, John. Fuck you,” the drunk said, voice rising. “I’m sick. My stomach hurts.”
John waved down the security guard that poked his head out of the circular station right by the Emerg.
“Jimmy,” John said, using his firmest dad voice. The drunk man snapped his mouth closed. “I know your stomach hurts. You have liver cirrhosis. The only way that it stops hurting is by not drinking and taking your medication. How much did you drink today?”
“A two-six,” Jimmy said, voice lowering with his eyes.
“Okay. A two-six. What did the doctor tell you yesterday?”
“That I need to stay in the hospital a few days.”
“And?”
“I left.”
“Okay. So, this is a triage system, meaning that the sickest person goes first. You’re sick, Jimmy. But you will not die today.”
“Yeah, you fucking told me about that yesterday,” he said.
John held up a hand. “Stop swearing. There are kids here. And there are sick people.”
“Okay, okay.” He stood.
“Want some juice and a sandwich?”
His face lit up, shooting John a toothless grin. “I like turkey. The egg stuff is nasty.”
“I agree,” John said, waving at the security desk.
A guard walked up to him at triage.
“Can you get Jimmy a turkey sandwich and some apple juice?” Jimmie’s eyes grew brighter as John relayed his favorite hospital meal. “You’re going to stay and wait to see the doctor tonight, right Jim?”
“Right,” he said, allowing the security guard to gently guide him away from the desk. “Nice haircut, Kevin,” Jimmy said to the security guard, who laughed.
John didn’t hear the rest of the conversation as they walked away. He was already focusing on the next patient in line, a wispy-haired woman who looked ninety at best.
“It’s people like that who make our healthcare system so slow,” she said as she sat, a woman in her sixties standing behind her looking embarrassed.
“Mmm,” John said, finishing up Jimmy’s triage report and opening the patient’s information. “What seems to be the trouble today, Ms. Hiebert?”
She leaned over to her shoe, “Well, I have this ingrown toenail-”
Thankfully, the ingrown toenail was interrupted by the radio on the wall crackling, �
�St. Paul’s Emerge from MD Ambulance.”
John held out a finger in a “hold that thought” gesture and answered the phone. “St. Paul’s emerge, go ahead.” John grabbed a pen and began writing.
“Hey, coming in bravo with respiratory distress. Fifteen-year-old male looks like a narcotics overdose but might be polypharmacy. Three rounds of Narcan roused him a bit. But he’s back down again. GCS of 15 post Narcan, currently 3. Giving another dose now.”
John let the paramedic catch his breath and heard the sirens change in the background. The ambulance must have been cut off in traffic. “Sats of 70 on room air,” the Paramedic driving said, recovering quickly, “pulse of 120, good pressure, breathing at 2. ETA is four.”
John nodded and hung up the phone of the radio. Standing, he grabbed his paper. “I’ll get back to you in a moment,” he said to the toenail pain.
“But my toe…”
John didn’t hear her. He strode out the glass doors over to the trauma rooms. This was the part of the hospital reserved for the sickest and most eminently dire patients. The nurses were at the station, with two of the rooms free and in reserve.
“I’m taking room one for a fifteen-year-old, overdose, narcotics and possibly polypharmacy,” he said quickly.
“They thinking fentanyl?” Abby, a junior nurse, piped up.
“They’ve given three rounds of Narcan and his GCS would rise to 15 then fall to 3, so I’m thinking so.”
The nurses at the station nodded and started getting into their gowns. Fentanyl wasn’t something to mess around with. The opioid derivative could be lethal if even a small amount ended up on the skin.
This kid coming in was sick. They were going to need to work fast.
The break was needed. John still hadn’t made it back to the triage desk after the respiratory distress in trauma one. His heart rate had slowed back to normal. The kid would be okay. His parents, however… John shook his head, trying not to put Mason and his family in the same situation.
“You okay?” Becky Lavalee asked, sitting down across from him in the break room, apple in hand.
“Fine,” John said, shooting her a small smile. “Just needed coffee.”
Becky took a bite of her apple, long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, giant engagement ring flashing in the light above. She let him sit, stewing. John and Becky had a thing. It was a flirty, tell each other everything, but that’s where it ended. Just shy of emotional cheating.
Becky would know what he was thinking.
When he said nothing and drank his motor oil coffee in silence, she piped up. “Kid looked a lot like Mason.”
“You noticed too, then?”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course I did.”
John looked up at her, careful not to get lost in her chestnut eyes…
Buzz. Buzz.
Welcoming the distraction, and pulling himself out of the vortex, he looked at his phone that was sitting on the table. Dr. Maggie Knight flashed across the top of his phone, a candid of her at their wedding popping up underneath.
“Hey Maggie, what’s up?”
Chapter Six
Jake
Jacob Porter sat at his desk at the Saskatoon City Police primary office, rubbing his forehead.
This headache was coming on hard and fast. He opened the drawer of his large desk and took out the Tylenol bottle, popping four extra strength pills into his mouth and swallowing them with a swig of coffee.
His brother, John, would give him shit about the amount of Tylenol he consumed in a day. It was way over the daily recommended dose on the back. He’d prattle on and on about Jake’s liver and “thinking about the future”.
Jake didn’t care. Tylenol was needed today. Hell, Tylenol was needed every day. Working almost twenty years as a cop in Saskatoon would make anyone want to pop pills. At least it was Tylenol and caffeine. There was way worse out there. Jake had seen it firsthand.
John’s face popped up on his personal cellphone sitting on his desk as his phone started vibrating. Brow furrowed; Jake answered it.
“Speak of the devil.”
“Hey bro,” John sighed into the phone. Jacob and his brother weren’t exactly close, not anymore. Not since… Jacob didn’t want to think about that day in the rain when he was eighteen. But he still knew his brother enough to know when he needed something.
“What’s up?”
“You at work today, Jake?”
“It’s a Friday and I’m a Sergeant. Of course, I’m at work.”
John laughed hollowly into the microphone on the other end. Jake sighed. He had work to do and hated when John stalled instead of just asking for the damn favor.
“Is Kevin home from Toronto?”
“He’s on the plane now,” Jake said, checking his watch to make sure he wasn’t lying.
“You picking him up from the airport?”
“He’s my husband, I always pick him up.”
“Ha. I guess-”
“John, what do you need? I’m busy and as I’m taking off early, as we just established, I need to get my work done today.”
“It’s Maggie.”
Jake’s stomach lurched. Something was always up with Maggie. It was Maggie’s M.O.
“What is it now?”
“Don’t,” John snapped, the sincerity surprising Jake. “Don’t say it like that. It’s not like she tries for this shit to happen to her. And besides, it wasn’t to her this time.”
“She lying this time?”
Jake knew he shouldn’t have said it. But the words were out before he could stop them. Fucking headache.
“You know what? It’s fine. I’ll fucking call someone else. Someone who cares about their job and fucking helping people.”
Jake sighed. This was NOT how he’d wanted to start his day. Apologizing to his little brother was never something he wanted to do.
“Look. I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair of me.”
“You know that I asked her to tell the media she was lying. She was ready to go to court and all that shit for what that pig did to her. I was the one who couldn’t take the attention. Not after Mase was being harassed at school.”
Guilt rose like bile, and Jake bit it back. So stupid. All of them were so stupid.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I’m sorry man, not myself when Kev is gone. What happened?”
“It was to a student of hers. Her TA, bright kid, really made a difference on this supercollider project.”
Jake nodded, grabbing a pen and paper. “That’s set to go today, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is. That’s why she wants you. Her TA doesn’t want to report, but Maggie wants it on record as soon as possible so this asshole doesn’t get away with it.”
This surprised Jake, and he nodded. “She learned from last time, then.”
John ignored the comment. “The TA’s name is Lindsay Black. Good kid, Jake. She wouldn’t make this up. And…”
Jake stopped writing and waited. When John didn’t continue his sentence, Jake asked, “And what?”
“Maggie got it on video.”
Jake was genuinely surprised. Maybe she would not make the same mistake again.
“I’ll send one of my boys down.”
“No, Jake. She wants you. She doesn’t trust the police, not since they sewered her in Toronto. She asked for you.”
Jake sighed and checked his watch. Three hours until Kevin got home from his two-week business trip East. Being married to a famous Psychologist had its perks… when he got to join him on his business trips. When he went alone, well, it made for a lonely life. Even though Jake threw himself into his work, it still wasn’t fun to go home to an empty house. His and Kevin’s relationship was strained right now. Having a Psychologist as a significant other meant that everything Jake did was analyzed and diagnosed. He had to be there to pick Kevin up from the airport. He had to make it on time. His marriage was depending on it.
“Look, John, I need to make it to the airport on time today.”
Jake sighed. The shit you do for family.
“Fine. I’ll leave right now. Where is she?”
“Her office. Science building of the University. Fourth floor. But she’s taking off to that remote station to fire up the collider soon.”
Jake shook his head. “I’ll start at the University. If I can’t find her, I’ll head to the remote station.” At least that was in the general direction of the airport.
“Thanks. I really appreciate it.”
Jake stood, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair.
“You better,” he said, hanging up the phone as John laughed. At least John sounded a little more like himself. The headache throbbed behind his eyes as he passed through his bullpen silently. No one started a conversation with him. They knew better, especially when he had this pissed off look in his eye.
Jake checked his watch. Three hours until Kevin landed, and he had to try desperately to save his marriage.
And instead of going and getting Kevin the good coffee from Broadway Roasters that he liked with a stuffed pizza bun from Honey Bun cafe, he was going to slam the beginnings of a sexual assault case together. With an admitted liar being the main complainant.
That also meant he had to spend three hours with his sister-in-law.
He took his phone out and sent a quick text to his husband, who he knew would have ignored the instructions to turn off his phone in the air.
I may be late. Trouble with Maggie. John asked… I had to say yes.
The three dots of Kevin responding to the text appeared on the bottom of his screen. Jake waited, passing up the elevator for the stairs, watching his phone.
The three dots disappeared.
No text popped up.
Lovely.
Chapter Seven
Prehistoric Survival | Book 1 | Doomed City Page 3