A Doctor's Watch

by Taylor, Vickie

  She looked up and Ty nodded, encouraging her to continue.

  “When I came home, the garage door was closed. I thought Mia wasn’t home yet, until I opened it and I found her…I found her inside.” The tears ran freely down Nana’s face now.

  “And Todd wasn’t there?”

  She shook her head. “After I called 911, I realized he wasn’t in the house. I ran outside yelling for him, looking everywhere, but there was no sign of him.”

  “So you never saw him after they left to go sledding this morning?”

  She inhaled a stuttering breath, on the brink of an all-out cry.

  Karl gave him a look of warning. “That’s enough, Dr. Hansen. Don’t you think my sister has been through enough?”

  “I’m just trying to understand what happened.”

  Citria spoke up. “My sister-in-law tried to kill herself. That’s what happened. And she probably slaughtered my nephew—all we had left of my poor brother—before she did.”

  Ty’s fists clenched at Citria’s insensitive choice of words, but he held his temper in check. “That’s not what Mia says happened.”

  Citria laughed bitterly. “Mia is crazy, Doc. Don’t you get that yet? She’s a Looney Tune, and this is all your fault. You should have kept her locked up when you had her. This time when we put her away, we’re going to get someone to do it who will lock her up for good and throw away the key.”

  Ty looked from Serrat to Serrat, waiting for Nana or Karl to dispute Citria’s claim, to offer even a glimmer of sympathy for Mia, but it never came.

  Mia had lost another family, and with it what little support structure she had left in her life.

  Mia woke to a room nearly dark, lit only by a small light above the door, and a dark shadow looming over her. She gasped and threw her arms up reflexively.

  “Mia, shh. It’s me.”

  Her heart thundered against her ribs. “Ty?”

  “Yeah.”

  She sank back into the mattress. “What are you doing sitting in the dark?”

  “I’m not supposed to be here. Your family forbade me to see you. I had to wait until most of the staff was gone and sneak in.”

  Sleep still fogged her brain. “My family? Nana? Why—?”

  Realization finally sank in. “Oh, God. They think I—”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, no it’s not. They think I hurt Todd, and they blame you. Is there any word?” Her voice rose in pitch, as she suddenly wondered if Ty was there to break bad news to her. “Have they found him?”

  “No.” His low voice was soothing. “They’re still looking. Everyone is still looking.”

  She breathed a little easier. “They’re going to have me committed again, aren’t they? They’re going to take me back to MHMH.”

  “Not just yet. Dr. Smith is keeping you here for a few days. Your body chemistry is all screwed up from the carbon dioxide, and you need regular oxygen therapy or your lungs could be damaged permanently.”

  “A few days.” She felt as if she’d just been diagnosed with a terminal illness and had only a few days left to live. “We have to find Todd.”

  “You have to stay here. Don’t even think about walking out. Karl insisted on a security guard at your door. Cost me fifty bucks to get ten minutes in here.”

  She tugged at his sleeve. “Then you have to find Todd for me. Please.”

  “Can you think of any place special he likes? Kids like to go places they feel safe when they’re scared.”

  “He plays down by the creek a lot. Oh, God. It’s starting to ice over. What if he fell through…”

  “Easy. If he’s out there, more than likely it’s because he’s scared, not because he’s hurt.”

  “It’s going to be so cold tonight. He can’t stay out there. You’ve got to find him. Please.”

  “I’ll try, Mia.” A rap sounded on the door. “My time is up. I’ve got to go. I just wanted you to know I was here for you. Even if I can’t be here, in this room, for you. Don’t give up, Mia.”

  She wanted to tell him she wouldn’t, but to be honest, she couldn’t be sure. If something had happened to Todd…

  She stopped him at the door with a word. “Ty…do you believe me?”

  His face was cast half in shadow, half in light from the little lamp above him.

  “I’m trying, Mia,” he said. “I’m trying.”

  Chapter 11

  “Ty, man, we’ve got to get back to the command post. I can’t feel anything from the knees down.”

  “Yeah, me, either, and we’ve been out here what…two hours? Think what the kid must feel like if he’s been out here all night.”

  “You know as well as I do that if the kid is out here, he’s long past feeling anything. I don’t care how scared or pissed off at his mother he is. No one would stay out in this weather if they were able to get in.”

  “I’m not convinced she did it, Chuck.”

  “Jesus, what do you want, a video replay?”

  “That would help. Come on, even you had some doubts.”

  “After the first attempt, sure. After the second, not so much, but I was willing to go with it for your sake.”

  “You were investigating the Serrats. Did you find anything?”

  “Other than that they’re a little strange and a lot private, no. You know the old man gets control of the money if Mia dies?”

  “Yeah, I know. But he’s just the trustee, not the beneficiary. So if Mia and Todd were out of the picture, who would get the money?”

  “Nana. You’re not telling me you think that old lady could do this?”

  Ty shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Chuck threw his hands up. The beam of his flashlight bounced around the naked tree limbs overhead. “Then what are you telling me?”

  Ty stopped to catch his breath. “Hell if I know.”

  “Then let’s try something simpler. Why are we on a beeline for the creek?”

  “Because I said I wasn’t convinced Mia did it. Not that it wasn’t possible, and Mia said he likes to play down there.”

  “You don’t think he’s out playing. Or hiding.”

  “No.” Ty hated that his thoughts had even turned in this direction. Hated more to put words to them, give them credence. “Look, sometimes good people who commit horrendous crimes, especially against people they love, want to be caught and punished. They just can’t come out and say it.”

  It only took Chuck a couple of seconds to catch on. “Son of a—You think she told you where the body is. In her own way.”

  He swallowed the lump in his throat. “God, I hope not.”

  By dawn, exhaustion and frostbite had forced Ty and Chuck back to the command post. They stood huddled under a canvas shelter with steaming cups of coffee, watching the canine teams brief. After their fruitless trek up and down the banks of the creek in the dark, Chuck had called on a local volunteer search team.

  The black Lab, he was told, was a “live find” dog—trained to search for any living human in a given area. The two German shepherds were human-remains-detection dogs. Cadaver dogs, their purpose obvious and unthinkable.

  The coffee didn’t sit well on Ty’s empty stomach, and he threw the half-full cup in the trash. “I’m going to catch an hour’s sleep in my car,” he told Chuck. “Then I’m going back out.”

  When he woke to the sound of barking dogs, nearly three hours had passed. He hurried out of his car as the canine teams shuffled in, stiff from the cold. One of the handlers looked up at him as he walked by and shook his head.

  Ty let out the breath he’d been holding. They hadn’t found anything.

  Mia stifled another cough while she waited for the cameraman to adjust the lights and the reporter to freshen up her lipstick and primp her hair in the lobby of the Eternal Emergency Care Clinic. She’d asked for this opportunity to go on television, and the news channel had jumped at the chance for an interview. Word of the missing eight-year-old in Massachusetts was making headlines ac
ross the Northeast, and would probably be picked up by the national wires by evening.

  The cameraman motioned for quiet. “Four, three, two, one.” Then he pointed at the reporter, Marika Towne.

  After a brief introduction from the anchor in the studio, which only Marika could hear in her earpiece, the reporter turned to Mia, who sat in her wheelchair on a raised platform.

  “Ms. Serrat, tell us about your so.” She smiled as if she were interviewing the proud mom of a boy who’d just caught the game-winning touchdown for his team.

  Mia held up a picture, willing back her tears. “His name is Todd. Samuel Todd Serrat. He’s four foot one, ninety pounds and has sandy-blond hair and a few freckles on his nose.”

  “And he’s been missing since yesterday?” Again, the too-bright smile.

  “Yes, yesterday, early afternoon, after we returned home from sledding.”

  “You believe someone took Todd by force?”

  “Yes, he wouldn’t have left otherwise. Someone had to have taken him.” She bit her trembling lip and looked straight into the camera. She managed to get the words out, but she couldn’t stop a couple of tears from spilling onto her cheeks. “Please, whoever has him, let him go. Whatever you want, whatever you need, just tell me. Just let him come home.”

  “Folks, the number of the sheriff’s department is on the bottom of your screen now. Please call if you have any information on this missing child. Thank you, Mia, and God bless.”

  That was it? “Wait—” She wanted to ask the community to help. To beg her friends and neighbors to look out for a little boy. She wanted to offer money. She wanted to plead.

  Marika angled away from her. “That’s it, Steve, a passionate plea from the mother of the missing eight-year-old right here in Eternal.”

  The nurse behind Mia’s chair swept her away, but on the monitor in the waiting room, Mia caught the last bit of the interview as she rolled past.

  “—true the mother may be behind this disappearance herself?” the anchor asked from the newsroom.

  Marika’s eyes danced on the screen, clearly happy to dish out this juicy tidbit. “Yes, it’s a tragic story, Steve, but police believe Ms. Serrat may be behind her son’s disappearance, as part of an apparent murder-suicide attempt that failed. At least the suicide part. Unfortunately it may already be too late to help this beautiful little boy.”

  Bands of anger tightened around Mia’s chest.

  No.

  Her fists clenched on the arms of the chair. Now no one would believe her. No one would look for Todd. They would just cluck their tongues over the “poor child” and go back to their Sunday suppers without a second thought.

  Ty caught Mia’s interview on the portable TV a cashier had tucked behind the cash register at the Quickway gas and convenience store. He paid cash for the gas he’d put in his VW and the thick coffee he’d poured from the self-serve carafe at the back of the store. If the brew tasted as bitter as it smelled, it was likely to eat through his stomach, but he needed the caffeine and the warmth after a long night of fruitless searching for Mia’s missing son.

  The ordeal was taking a toll on her. He could see it in her eyes, which had lost their light, the creases on her forehead, the bloodless complexion of her cheeks. Yet her back was straight in the wheelchair, her shoulders square. Her voice trembled with the terror of a mother afraid for her child.

  That kind of emotion couldn’t be faked. Whether anyone else believed her or not, Mia Serrat was convinced she had not hurt her son.

  She made a good impression, he thought. Won some people over to her side. At least until the smarmy reporter closed out the interview with her own suppositions. Judge, jury and executioner, all rolled into one, she condemned Mia with a smile on her face and an eager gleam into the lens of the camera. The whole scenario reminded Ty of the old song “Dirty Laundry.” The only story bigger than a missing eight-year-old boy was a missing eight-year-old boy whose own mother was responsible for his disappearance, and that was the story Marika Towne reported, whether there was any evidence of its truth or not.

  Wondering if Mia had heard the end of the report, Ty flicked open his cell phone. Mia’s family had blocked him from seeing her at the hospital. He could only hope they hadn’t thought to stop her calls, as well.

  She picked up on the third ring, her voice tentative. “Hello?”

  “Mia, it’s Ty.”

  He heard her expel a breath. “Oh, I thought it was another reporter. The phone’s been ringing off the hook, but I didn’t dare not answer it, in case there was some news—Oh, God, are you calling about Todd? Have they found something?”

  “No,” he reassured her, if telling a mother that her son was still missing could be considered reassurance. “Nothing yet.” And there likely wouldn’t be, as the searchers had packed up and left Nana Serrat’s house.

  Not wanting to break the news that the search had been called off, he changed the subject. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better. It’s easier to breathe now, and my head is clearer.”

  “Have you remembered anything else? Anything at all?”

  “No, it’s all still a jumble. I just remember feeling something—someone—behind me, and then a funny smell and something over my mouth. Then it’s all black until I woke up here. I’ve tried.” The pitch of her voice rose in desperation. “I just can’t remember anything else.”

  “It’s all right.” Ty rolled his head around to release some tension. It had been a long night. It looked like it was going to be a long day, as well. “We’ll find him some other way.”

  “God, they took him, didn’t they? Whoever attacked me had to have taken him. I was hoping—this is a terrible thing to hope—but I was hoping he had just seen something. Seen whoever tried to kill me, or seen me in the garage and thought…I was hoping he’d just gotten scared and run away. But he’d have come back by now. He’s a smart kid and he knows his way around. He’d have found Nana or Citria, or shown up somewhere people know him, like his school.”

  “We’ve checked everywhere we can think of that he might go.”

  Ty heard tears in her voice when she continued. “They must have taken him. Why would anyone take him away?”

  Because he saw whoever attacked you, if someone attacked you, and he could identify them. The answer jumped into Ty’s mind, but he wasn’t about to voice it to Mia. He wasn’t sure he was ready to buy into the whole attack story. His heart wanted to believe, but his head and his training told him the tale wasn’t likely, given her history.

  Mia’s voice shrank. “They all believe I did it, don’t they? They all think I—I killed my son.”

  “Mia…” He didn’t know what to say. Reassure her, or ask her if they were right? Be her friend—hell more than a friend, or be her doctor? “We’ll get to the truth, Mia. We’ll figure out what happened to you and to Todd. You just have to hang in there.”

  “They’re going to lock me up again once I’m released from here, aren’t they? Nana and Uncle Karl. They’re going to make me go back to the loony bin, and this time I’ll never get out. I’ll never find Todd.”

  His stomach tumbled. “Maybe it’s for the best. You need to rest, you’re exhausted and…”

  “For the best?” she said harshly, then her voice quieted. “I’ll die in there, Ty.”

  “Mia—”

  “Not because I’m going to kill myself, and don’t even deny that’s what you thought I meant. I will never do that, not while Todd is out there somewhere. Not when he needs me. But because whoever is trying to kill me is eventually going to succeed. I can’t protect myself in there.”

  I’ll protect you. The words almost spilled out unbidden. Who was he kidding? Uncle Karl wasn’t going to let him near her. Still, he was in too deep to back away. Way too deep. All he had to do was picture her deep, soulful eyes, the thick, dark tumble of wavy hair and he knew he couldn’t walk away from her.

  “Then fight it,” he told her. “You have a right to
a competency hearing. Make them plead their case before a judge.” He gave her the names of two lawyers, men who’d represented some of Ty’s patients in similar proceedings.

  Mia promised to call them, and before she hung up eked a promise from Ty to keep looking for Todd. Never to give up.

  Damn it, he felt like a Ping-Pong ball. He’d gone from near certainty that Mia wanted to kill herself and take her son to the everlasting with her, to believing she’d been attacked—repeatedly—and her son kidnapped, or worse, in the blink of an eye. Worse, every time he landed on the anti-Mia side, guilt added another lead brick to his gut.

  He wanted to believe she was a perfect woman, perfect mother. A mother like he’d never had.

  He sighed and rubbed his right temple, soothing the ache building there. The bottom line was, he had to help her. He couldn’t stop himself from helping her, even if he wanted to, and his interest wasn’t purely professional.

  Hell, it wasn’t professional at all.

  But to help her he needed to get inside her head, and he didn’t have the luxury of six months of therapy sessions. He needed to know if she was really a victim here, or if he was making a gargantuan mistake, if he was helping someone who would hurt her own child. Someone like his own mother.

  Aw, Christ. Now his head really hurt.

  Nana. If anyone knew what was really going on with Mia and Todd, Nana would.

  He swung his VW in a U-turn and headed to the Serrat house. Maybe he could kill three birds with one stone. Get a read on Mia’s state of mind, convince Nana to ease up on any involuntary commitment plans she was cooking up with Uncle Karl, and pick her brain for more places Todd might go if he was scared. Like if he’d seen his mother unconscious in a running car in a closed garage, and thought she’d killed herself. Wouldn’t hurt to dance around the issue of who might want to get rid of Mia, either. Who would benefit from her death. Although he’d have to go easy on that one, since Nana was the most likely candidate to get Mia’s money, especially with Todd out of the way, too.