Death Grip

by Barbara Ebel

  Well, she thought, she had enough time to go back to her place, change, and go for dinner at Dustin’s. She dragged her stuff up the staircase and first knocked on her neighbor’s door.

  The door swung open. Travis grinned in the doorway, his eyes alert as usual.

  “Yo. Thanks for monitoring my place. There shouldn’t be too many footsteps up there lately.”

  “Yup. You’re not up there or you’re ‘dead-fully’ quiet.”

  “I’m alive and well and studying all over the place.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “I owe you. Thanks.”

  Travis nodded and Annabel went upstairs. Inside, she texted Bob.

  You better be studying and taking care of yourself.

  Big news today about my ICU patient. Dr. Enno should talk about him in her lecture on Monday.

  Annabel swung open her closet door and deliberated what to wear while a ding came back on her phone.

  I studied twice today between naps. More to come.

  I can’t wait to hear. Aren’t you going to tell me?

  No, she responded. No way have you heard about his disease!

  Have it your way. (As usual!)

  She smiled. There was some truth to that.

  She put down the phone and opted for a sexy look – a chest-hugging sweater, pair of black pants, and oval-shaped earrings alongside her natural curls.

  -----

  Dustin lived north and on the same side of the interstate as Annabel and several miles east of Bob’s apartment. The area, with small lots and houses, was more residential and his house wore a fresh coat of dark navy paint.

  Annabel pulled in behind the car port. The front door opened quickly after she knocked.

  “Welcome,” he said.

  She stepped in to a warm atmosphere with a narrow staircase to the right and a small room to the left with a cane chair and settee sofa.

  “Thank you,” she said, slipping off her light jacket.

  He draped it over his arm and followed her gaze. “Antique pieces from my mom’s chair collection. My dad died and Mom downsized from their house to an apartment. She collected many pieces over the years, but we only kept a few.”

  “They’re pretty. Does your mom live nearby?”

  “Forty miles from here, which is perfect for both of us. We visit each other a few times a month.”

  Annabel nodded and they went down the short hallway. The kitchen was modern yet compact. Two pots were on the stove and a bowl of salad greens sat on the counter.

  “It smells wonderful in here,” she said.

  He took the lids off and let her peek inside. The chicken with broccoli smelled like ginger and soy sauce.

  “How about a glass of wine?”

  “I’ll settle for a half glass.”

  “I’ve been here a few years. Redid the kitchen, as you can tell. The place is only two thousand square feet, split between here and upstairs. Plenty big for just me.”

  He popped the wine cork and poured. “Owning my own real estate gives me something to take care of when my head isn’t buried in police work.”

  She held her glass up to his and, at the same time, a couple of “meows” sounded from somewhere nearby in the house.

  “Do I hear a cat?”

  Dustin took her hand. “Come meet Solar.”

  He stepped her over to the corner of the family room as the “meow” changed to a “woof-woof.”

  It was no cat; nor was it a dog.

  On top of a wooden perch, walking back and forth, was a bird.

  “What’s your problem?” it said.

  “Annabel, meet Solar. He’s a yellow-naped Amazon parrot.”

  “What’s your problem?” Solar repeated.

  “Sorry. That’s his favorite thing to say … because I say that to him.”

  Annabel smiled with amusement and then the joy spread all over her face. And she thought that if Bob and she split ownership of a dog, that would be a big deal. As far as she was concerned, for a single guy, this was one heck of an exotic pet. He must know what he’s doing.

  “Dustin Lowe,” she said, “you are full of surprises.”

  “Full of surprises,” Solar said.

  CHAPTER 28

  Annabel sat at the dark wood table facing the rec room so that Solar would continue amusing her.

  “He sure is handsome,” she said. “His green hues, his yellow highlights, and his vigilant, vibrant eyes.”

  Dustin scooped more rice on his plate. “He’s also a conversation piece.”

  “Hmm. For the ladies you entertain?”

  “No ‘ladies.’ There’s only one woman I’ve been courting. The few people who ever come over are a few cops and we watch football. That’s where Solar gets his occasional trashy mouth from.”

  “He seems to be behaving himself.”

  Dustin rolled his eyes. “Just wait.”

  Annabel put down her fork. “You are a better cook than I will ever be. My best creations come from stirring ingredients into a crock pot.”

  “Help yourself to more.”

  “No thanks. But if you’re finished, I’m washing the dishes.”

  Dustin carried the plates over and Annabel grabbed both the wine glasses. She rinsed and washed while Dustin dried and put dishes away. As she stood in front of the window, the light from the hanging fixture caused the highlights of her hair to glisten.

  Dustin gathered one side of her curls in his fingers and tucked them behind her ear.

  “Where’d you get such shiny hair?” He leaned in, letting his fingers inch her head closer.

  “Where’d you get that dimple in your chin?”

  “I asked my question first,” he whispered.

  Annabel wrapped her arms around his firm shoulders and went straight for his lips. As he returned her embrace, their tongues met, and Dustin’s manhood stirred against her. They both scrambled to peel off their lower clothing, then he tightened his grip and raised her off the floor.

  Taking a step while holding her in his arms, Dustin moved a pottery bowl off a short sideboard and lowered her. Their foreheads touched and they looked down as he easily went inside her.

  Several thrusts later, Annabel arched her neck with sheer pleasure. Dustin grappled for her lips once again and soon they slowed their pace, their desire spent.

  She glanced up in time to see the bird alight on the top of the cabinetry. The two front toes on both his feet were hooked on the edge and he bobbed his head as if wondering what they were doing.

  Annabel tapped Dustin to look up. “Before Solar says anything, tell him you don’t have a problem,” she said.

  Dustin chuckled.

  “Do you want to stay the night?”

  “I would love to,” she said, “but not tonight. A big test is coming up as well as the end of my rotation. I better not mess up my sleep time any more than is needed. Can I take a rain check?”

  “I suppose,” he grumbled.

  “And may I see you the next weekend … when it’s all over and I can relax and celebrate?”

  “Let’s plan on it.”

  After each of them came back from the bathroom, Dustin pulled a plate out from the refrigerator.

  “One more thing. Would you like to share, or would you like your own?”

  Her mouth watered just looking at it. “A napoleon. What a way to top off sex.”

  “Top off sex,” Solar mimicked.

  Dustin looked up. “Don’t go saying that!”

  Annabel turned and took two forks out of the drawer. “How about we share?” They went to the table again and she dug her utensil into the layered custard. With each bite, they grinned at each other. By the time they finished, Annabel wanted to take back what she said about not staying over, but she knew she needed to be on her way.

  At his front door, they kissed, embraced, and said good-night. She tilted to the side and spoke louder into the back of the house. “Nice to meet you, Solar. Be a good bird for Dustin.”

>   How ironic, she thought, stepping to her car. She wasn’t going to sleep over tonight with the guy she was dating, but she’d been staying over at the apartment of the guy she studies with.

  And … at least there had been no mention of her study partner while she was at Dustin’s.

  -----

  Annabel was as prepared as possible. Whatever weak areas of internal medicine she possessed, the only way she was going to find out what they were was by missing questions on the test. After the date at Dustin’s, she crammed as much as she could when not on the wards.

  Bob also assured her that he did a solid overview of their notes and his handbook in the remaining hours. The only thing he wanted, or had left to do after the test, was to finish the remaining time on the wards that he had missed.

  She texted him one more time on Sunday night. He promised to sleep a solid ten hours before showing up in the department the next morning.

  Which was easy. He still realized that he was in the throes of recuperation and needed more rest because of Ehrlichiosis than under normal circumstances.

  Besides being test day, the team was on call. Annabel used an Uber driver and dropped her overnight bag in the front of the test-taking room. She pulled out her iPad. The room was wider than it was deep and she took a seat off a carpeted aisle. Students were peppered throughout the room, with or without their white jackets on.

  She waved Bob over as he came into the room and dropped a paper cup in the basket. In a pair of blue jeans, she could tell he had dropped a few pounds. He came around her seat and sat next to her, placing his device forward and plugging it in.

  “Are you up to it?” she asked.

  “I’ll try my best. Because of your help, I think I’ll pull through.”

  They tapped each other’s knuckles. Stuart passed across the front of the room and nodded and Annabel glanced around for Jordan, who sat at the end of a row.

  “We’re going to get started,” a man said, standing underneath one of the screens. He was a university doctor … not in an independent practice. “Does anyone not have their own student-owned device?”

  When he received no answer, he closed the remaining open door to the lecture hall. “You may all now open up ExamSoft’s secure test site and log in.”

  Within several minutes, not a peep could be heard. Annabel maintained a steady pace. She reread certain questions and mulled over the answers, but others she answered quickly. She was soon halfway through.

  Your patient is a 42-year-old overweight woman you send for ultrasonography. The results confirm gallstones. She comes back in a few months after eating a low-fat diet and presents with a 101 degree F fever, nausea, and right upper quadrant pain. You suspect:

  An acute gallbladder perforation

  Acute cholangitis

  Acute cholecystitis

  Acute pancreatitis

  Annabel chose the third option and rubbed her neck to relax for a moment. She glanced toward the side of the room and her eyes fell on Jordan. She caught a flash of the small handbook he used … off to the side of his lap … his fingers holding it open. Just as quick, he tugged the side of his lab jacket to rest over it.

  She felt anger rise in her throat. There he was again, using his own method to wiggle his way through medical school. She looked back down at her next question. There was no way she would allow his behavior to distract her.

  With only twenty-five percent of her test still remaining, Annabel again paused to take a break. A woman to the right, slightly familiar to her, rose from her seat and passed the two rows in front of her. She halted next to Jordan and addressed him in a low voice. His head jolted backwards and after she said something and wouldn’t go away, he rose and followed her. Out the front door.

  -----

  Annabel waited for Bob outside the lecture hall. When he came out, they walked shoulder-to-shoulder to the staircase.

  “What was that all about with Jordan?” Bob asked with a hushed tone.

  She swung open the door. “I don’t know. And that woman from the back of the room? She was not one of us. I think she works in the department.”

  “He couldn’t have finished his test.”

  “He was cheating again. I’m sure of it. Some compact medicine book hanging out on his lap.”

  “You serious?”

  “I believe so. Anyway, enough about him. How’d you do?”

  “Hard to say because my brain still isn’t up to speed.” He dragged behind her on the steps.

  “You go home to your apartment and nestle into bed again before coming back downtown this afternoon for Dr. Enno’s lecture. However, I hitched an Uber ride this morning. Can you drop me off at the hospital?”

  “Anything. I owe you and I promise to pay you back. Especially if I passed.”

  “Like two minus two, you owe me nothing.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  Bob drove her right under the awning of the front entrance. She pulled her bag from the back seat. “I’ll go by the office after call in the morning. I’m sure they’ll give me your test results if you want. I can call or text you.”

  “Okay. I’d appreciate that. In one way, I’m sorry our test is over with.”

  She gave him a quizzical look.

  “You won’t be staying over any more nights at my place.”

  “That sounds like something is going on between us. Other than studying.”

  I wish, he thought, but refrained from saying so. He only narrowed his eyes at her. “Poring over textbooks has been our agenda together, but now that is over. I’ll talk to you soon. Besides later and tomorrow, I mean.”

  “Absolutely.” She shook her head. “Just get better and finish your course of antibiotics. One thing I’ll never do again is ask you to go running with me.”

  “Sitting on the ground and letting a tick crawl into my clothes is my own fault. We’ll hit the pavement together in the future. Okay?”

  “All right,” she said. Immediately, she came up with an idea. To give him a present. “Go home now and take a nap because you don’t want to miss Dr. Enno’s lecture at three o’clock. I bet she’s going to be phenomenal.”

  Bob pulled away and she went inside. Jeez, she thought, that was like an Irish good-bye and they were going to see each other again in a few hours.

  -----

  This morning, Dr. Schott and the residents had taken care of all their patients while the students had taken their test, so Annabel figured she had the time to pop into the cafeteria and grab a late cup of coffee. She tilted the black lever and poured from the big dispenser.

  “No one will know it was because of you.”

  Annabel looked over her shoulder. It was Donn, holding a to-go cup like her.

  “What?” she said, not understanding the meaning of what he said.

  “You shouldn’t suffer any repercussions from Jordan. It was because of you saying that he cheated on the mid-term exam that Dr. Mejia and I planted a department spy in the back of the lecture hall this morning to monitor him.

  “As far as we’re concerned,” he hissed, “we consider any student cheating through their training to be guilty of breaking the Hippocratic Oath and to have accumulated the grounds to be kicked back out into the general public. The medical school board will see it that way too.”

  Annabel remembered her hand was still pressing down on the pour knob and she let go.

  “I saw him with an open book again,” she said, “and saw him escorted out. Dr. Mejia must be disappointed.”

  “Between you and me, Dr. Mejia needs to be less enamored by the likes of him. The best doctors can come from the quiet, scholarly ones like Stuart, or the ones carrying a smile and a humorous personality like Bob, or a smart, dedicated one empathetic to her patients like you. Not cheaters.”

  He sighed while she reached for the powdered cream and stirred some in her coffee.

  “Society is full of defrauders and schemers and charlatans,” he continued. “There is no way
I’m going to look the other way. I have a nest of students and residents who I feed every day. None of them will fledge away from my supervision if they can’t soar with the feathers necessary for flight and independently fly with character.”

  Annabel paid for her coffee. “Too bad it happened. We know how hard college students and others in the workforce prepare to gain admission. His spot could have been filled by another capable, honest med student.”

  “So true,” he said as they made their way to the elevator and the doors snapped open. “Don’t talk too much about this or malign him. Not that you would. But you never know if someone like him will hire an attorney and claim some type of discrimination for booting him out and make up some nonsense about his cheating.”

  “I understand.” She sipped the weak brew and the doors opened on the medical floor.

  “The lawsuit from the atrial fibrillation case, Mrs. Helm’s kids, was enough.”

  “How do you think it will end?”

  He half-smiled. “Our attorney says they are softening and there is less legal activity. Maybe as the family’s grief fades, so will their demands for retribution of what happened … which was natural and in God’s hands.”

  “I hope so, Dr. Schott.”

  It was too strange when they walked into the team’s office. Their numbers had fallen yet again.

  They were on call and the group was down to two medical students, two residents, one chief resident, and an attending who supervised like he should: not too much and not too little.

  After a discussion about the content of the final exam and how they think they fared, Stuart was the first one to ask. “Where’s Jordan?”

  CHAPTER 29

  By the time the group lugged up the hospital stairs, Stuart and the residents heard a shortened version of why Jordan wasn’t with the team.

  Stuart was the most dumbstruck and perplexed. “His actions don’t make any sense. Why risk everything he’s worked for by cheating? He couldn’t have gotten by solely finagling all this time on exams. The guy isn’t dumb. After all the preparatory years it took to get into medical school and then to land in the middle of his junior year, he took a chance to blow it all? Doesn’t make sense.”