A Doctor's Watch

by Taylor, Vickie

  Mulling that thought over in his mind, he pulled up the Serrat drive, shut the car off and started up the walk. The windows were dark and no one answered his repeated raps on the door.

  So much for plan A.

  Without a plan B to fall back on at the moment, Ty walked back to his car and settled in to wait, still caught up on the thought that if Todd was out of the picture, Mia’s beneficiary wouldn’t have to worry about trust funds or audits.

  Huh.

  Shivering, Todd Serrat curled himself into a tighter ball on the musty old comforter; that and his coat were the only things that separated him from the cold concrete floor. His tongue was sticky and his head hurt. He couldn’t think straight, but when he heard a sound, he pried his dry eyes open to slits, searching the darkness.

  A sliver of light appeared above him, and for a moment he let himself hope. “Mommy?”

  But there was no answer, and when the door above him closed, plunging the room back into cold darkness, he squeezed his eyes shut, knowing the heavy footsteps on the stairs weren’t Mommy’s.

  He sniffled and barked at the shadow person. “Go ’way!”

  A hand grabbed the shoulder of his jacket and dragged him to a sitting position. He tried to push the shadow person, the black shape in the black room, away, but he was dizzy. “Leave me alone,” he whimpered weakly.

  Now that he was sitting with his back against a cement-block wall, the shadow person pinched his nose, and when he opened his mouth to breathe, poured a bitter tea down his throat. Todd sputtered and coughed, tried to spit it out, but swallowed enough. Enough, he knew, to make him sleepy again soon.

  Tears filled his eyes as he tried to slump down on his side again, but this time the shadow person held him up. His coat was stripped from him, and he pried one eye open. The person in the black hooded sweatshirt and ski mask pulled out something shiny and grabbed his hand tightly. A second later the knife blade stung his palm and he felt blood run down his fingers.

  “Mommy!” he cried, and kicked his feet, tried to pull his hand away, but the blade cut deeper. He howled, tears flowing freely now. “Aieee! Mommy!”

  The shadow person was wiping Todd’s hand on his coat when the door at the top of the stairs opened, wide this time. Instead of just a flicker as the door opened and closed, a steady shaft of light illuminated a familiar figure in the doorway.

  Todd’s sleepy eyes flew wide. “Nana?”

  Chapter 12

  “Ty-baby, come in!” Ty’s mother took his hands in hers and pulled him inside, then rubbed her palms over the tops of his hands. “You’re freezing! You shouldn’t have come out in weather like this, but I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Ty eased his hands out of his mother’s grasp. She took his coat by the shoulders, leaving him little choice but to shrug out of it, then hung it in the closet for him. For a moment he wished he could slide back into it and just go, but he really needed to spend some time with his mom. He needed the perspective of a crazy mother who loved her son and yet still hurt him, firsthand.

  He’d waited at the Serrat house for almost three hours, but Nana had never shown up. She was probably out looking for Todd, although he was surprised there was no one at the house in case the boy miraculously found his way home or the police called with news.

  By the time he’d finally given up, his stomach was rumbling and he’d run half a tank of gas out of his VW to keep the heater going.

  “Come, come sit down,” his mom said, waving him out of the foyer of her assisted-living apartment. “Let me make you some tea. Or would you rather have hot chocolate? I think I have some real chocolate, not that packaged stuff.”

  “No, nothing, Mom.”

  “Corn chowder, then. I just made a big pot yesterday. I can heat some up.”

  “I grabbed a burger in the car on the way up.”

  “Burger, shmurger.” She dismissed his protest with a wave. “A growing boy can’t survive on fast food. You know how much you love my chowder. It’ll only take a minute—”

  He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder in the kitchen doorway. “Mom, no.” She turned, that crestfallen look on her face that was like a needle in his chest every time it was turned on him.

  He recognized the pathology of his behavior. The more his mother doted on him, ingratiated herself to him, the more he rejected her efforts. On the outside he could be the concerned son, even the loving son, but deep down inside, a part of him was still the angry little boy that wanted to punish her for hurting him. But recognizing his behavior and being able to change it were not the same thing.

  Gently he turned her toward the living room. “Let’s just go sit down, okay? Visit a little.”

  A soap opera blared on the television. Ty picked up the remote and put it on mute. His mom sat on the end of the floral-print sofa and patted the cushion next to her. He lowered himself into the armchair in front of the window, instead. She sat with her hands in her lap and pulled her lower lip between her teeth.

  Sighing at his own belligerence, he slid over next to her. “So how are you, Mom?”

  Her eyes lit up. “Oh, fine. You know they take care of everything here. Mrs. Dunbar fell and broke her hip last week, so I’ve been helping her get along, watering her plants and such. The Kelly brothers in building four moved out—not by their choice, I don’t think. They just weren’t getting on here. Seems strange. They were always perfect gentlemen around me, but I heard they were harassing the female staff and not taking their medications and such.”

  Ty listened patiently to the rest of the gossip on his mother’s neighbors, then they talked about her “sessions” with her doctor—she refused to call it therapy or treatment. Ty took his time getting around to the conversation he really wanted to have. One he should probably have had with her ten years ago.

  “Hey, you know what I did the other day?” he said. “I went sledding. Haven’t done that since I was a kid, you know. You remember how much I used to love sledding?”

  “You would have pitched a tent and lived at the top of that hill when it snowed, if I’d have let you.”

  “Yeah, that was my favorite getaway. And sometimes I really needed to get away.” He looked her square in the eyes, gauging her reaction. “You know…from the other stuff.”

  She didn’t take the hook. “I remember one time you stayed out there so long it got dark and I had to come looking for you. I was so worried.”

  He pressed a little harder. “Yep, and then when we got home you locked me in a closet for fourteen hours because I didn’t hang up my coat.”

  Her smile fell. She stumbled over her words. “Why—I—”

  “You said if I had such an aversion to using closets that I could just live in one for a while.”

  She clutched a fist to her chest. “I never—”

  “It was dark in there, and I got really hungry, and had to go to the bathroom. But you remember what happened when I tried to come out? Do you remember what you did to me? How you hurt me?”

  “Ty! Stop it! Why on earth would you say something like that? Ty-baby, I love you. I would never be so cruel to you. I would never hurt you!”

  She said it with such conviction, and with such pain on her face that if he hadn’t known better, he might have believed her. He knew she loved him.

  He also knew what she’d done to him, even if she didn’t. He didn’t think she was lying—not in the traditional sense. She really believed what she was saying.

  He had his answer. Could a mother hurt, maybe even kill, her own child and be so deluded that she could not only convince others, but herself that she hadn’t done it?

  Yes.

  He’d always known this, but he’d had to check. Had to be sure. Because if it was true, if his mother could look and sound so honest when she denied what she’d done—if she could actually believe she hadn’t done it—then so could Mia Serrat.”

  He lowered his head and scrubbed his palms across his face. “Yeah, Mom. Sorry.”

&nb
sp; When he looked up, struggling to return to any kind of normal conversation, he noticed that the news had broken into the soap opera. The headline Breaking News scrolled across the top of the screen and Todd Serrat’s picture was in a little window in the corner. It looked like the reporter who had raked Mia’s name through the mud earlier was doing another live report from the hospital.

  Ty grabbed the remote control and put the sound back on.

  “…Marika Towne reporting live for News Nine here at the Eternal Emergency Care Clinic where the mother of the missing eight-year-old boy, Todd Serrat, is about to be discharged.”

  The anchor at the studio news desk chimed in. “The mother is the prime suspect in her son’s disappearance, right?”

  “That’s right, Chet, according to our sources in the sheriff’s department, she’s the only suspect at this time, and a three-way battle between the Serrat family, Ms. Serrat and her lawyer, and the police is being waged here over her immediate future. The family has asked a judge to commit her to a mental health facility, but Ms. Serrat and her lawyer are contesting that request. Meanwhile, the police would like to have her come stay in their facility—the county jail—but say they don’t have enough evidence yet to file charges, though they are considering detaining her pursuant to the investigation. Despite the protests of her family and the police’s suspicions, it appears this possible child-murdering mom is about to walk off scot-free.”

  Ty clicked the power off and the TV screen went blank. “I’ve got to go, Mom.”

  Mia pulled her shoulders back and her chin up before she stepped out the glass doors of the emergency clinic and into the frigid Massachusetts sunshine where a bevy of cameras and microphones awaited. Several more crews had joined the News Nine group she’d glimpsed earlier.

  A dozen questions were shouted before the door had closed behind her. She’d almost made it through the crowd without reacting when the last question stopped her.

  “Mia, did you kill your son?”

  Her blood ran as cold as the snow that lay like a freshly laundered blanket on the ground. “My son is the love of my life. I would never hurt him. Ever.”

  She knew she shouldn’t have responded to the reporters, shouldn’t have stopped. Getting one answer only increased the fervor of the feeding frenzy. The camera crews closed in around her to get close-ups, blocking her way. The reporters shouted more questions, more accusations.

  She shouldered her way through, shaking her head to say she wouldn’t speak again, and bit her lip to hold her resolve—and her stoic expression—in place. She was never so glad to see anything as she was to see Ty’s beat-up VW pulling up to the curb as she made her way past the last newsman. She walked around and got in the passenger side without question and he pulled back onto the roadway. Only then did she let herself slump.

  Her chest rattled as she took a deep breath.

  Ty cut his gaze off the road a second to check her out. “You okay?”

  She nodded, swallowing hard. She was fine except that her little boy was missing, no one believed someone was trying to kill her and she was about to be committed, arrested or both. “The wolves are circling, but thanks to the lawyer you recommended, they’re not biting. Yet.”

  Ty flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Mia, who gets your money if you’re out of the picture?”

  The question took her by surprise. She paused, then understood. “No, you can’t mean this is happening because someone is after my money.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it would all go to Todd.”

  “And if he were out of the picture?”

  “Oh, God.” She bit her lip. “No. No. Nana is my beneficiary. She would never hurt Todd. No. He’s just scared. He’s run away. Hiding.”

  Ty drove in silence a few moments. She couldn’t tell if he believed her or not. “So what now?”

  “I have to find Todd. I need to go home and get my car and look for him.”

  “Where are you going to look?”

  “Anywhere. Everywhere. I don’t know.”

  “You can’t just drive around aimlessly hoping to catch a glimpse of him.”

  She could do exactly that, if there was nothing else to be done. Desperation could make her do a lot of crazy things. “I can’t just sit around doing nothing.”

  “You can go home, rest, eat.”

  “No, I don’t think I can,” she said quietly.

  Ty frowned at her, then turned his gaze back to the road. “The police are doing everything that can be done. There’s nothing—”

  “That’s not what I mean.” She paused a heartbeat, quelling the panic that threatened to rise. “Nana signed the commitment request with Karl, didn’t she. She’s trying to have me put away.”

  She knew she was right when Ty didn’t deny it.

  She lowered her head. “Then I don’t have a home to go to.”

  He took one hand off the steering wheel, reached across the seat and laid his palm over her fingers. “Yes, you do,” he said gruffly, then cut another look over at her. “You can come home with me.”

  Chapter 13

  Mia hesitated on the threshold to Ty’s apartment. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

  “Mia, we’ve been driving around for hours. We’ve checked and rechecked all the places you thought Todd might go. Eventually you have to stop. Sleep. Let the police do their jobs.”

  He prodded her forward from behind, but she held her ground. Her gaze took in the battered brown leather couch, the coffee table littered with thick books—textbooks, they looked like—yellow pads of paper and pens, the running shoes lying sideways in the middle of the floor as though they’d just been kicked off, the dirty plate and fork next to another stack of textbooks on the two-seater dining table against the wall, the sweatshirt thrown over the back of a chair. Some might call it messy, but to her it was…unpretentious. Homey. Cozy, even.

  And small. The two of them would be sharing very close quarters, and she wasn’t sure either one of them was ready for that.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said. Looking up at him, she saw he understood. But it was too late. They were beyond the point of no return.

  “Come on.” He went around her shoulder and pulled her inside, then hurried through the room scooping up dishes, clothes and an empty soda can as he went.

  She studied the books on the dining table. Modern Mental Models. Pathology of Traumatic Brain Injury and Corresponding Emotional Disorders. The Physician’s Desk Reference. Just a little light reading for his evenings, she guessed, and traced a finger over the well-worn spine of the desk reference. “Uncle Karl is not going to like this.”

  “Don’t worry about him.”

  “You could be risking your career.”

  He dropped the dishes in the sink, the can in the trash and tossed the clothes behind a folding door she assumed hid the laundry facilities, then he turned to her and shrugged. “Actually, I think my career is already pretty much trashed.”

  “I’m sorry.” Was she destined to destroy every life she touched?

  “Hey, not because of you. That’s not what I meant.” He shrugged. “Karl’s pretty much had it in for me since day one.”

  “So I’ll just be the final nail in the coffin. I feel much better about that, then.” Sarcasm dripped through the words, and he rolled his eyes.

  “How about something to eat? I’ve got…” He opened the refrigerator door, then closed it and moved to a cabinet. “Oatmeal?”

  “You eat oatmeal for supper?”

  “I do when there’s nothing else in the house. I have maple syrup to go on it, though.”

  “Oatmeal it is, then.” Though she wasn’t the least bit hungry, she needed at least to pretend some level of normalcy.

  Five minutes later, he had cleared the books from the dining table and they sat across from each other with steaming bowls of lumpy cereal in front of them. The silence was deafening.

  “Kind of awkward, huh?”


  He peered at her over a heaping spoonful of oatmeal dripping with syrup. “Doesn’t seem right just to make small talk with everything that’s going on.”

  “And all the serious topics we should be discussing are too depressing for my fragile state.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  He set his spoon down. “You want to talk about Todd, fine. Let’s talk.”

  She shook her head. Her chest had grown almost too tight to speak at the mere mention of her son’s name. “No, you’re right. There’s nothing to say that hasn’t been said already.” She managed a small, fake smile. “Thanks for trying, though. And for putting up with me. I know I’m kind of a wreck right now. It’s just that it’s getting dark outside, and I’m sitting here nice and warm and comfortable with a man who—” She pressed her lips into a firm line. “With a friend. And I keep thinking that maybe Todd is out there in the cold somewhere, hungry and thinking I’ve abandoned him. Again.”

  He was quiet a moment, looked thoughtful, then he reached across the tiny table and took her hand in his. His grip was strong and warm. His fingertips and palms were slightly callused, but the sensation against her own skin was pleasant. Tingly.

  “That’s just fear talking. Don’t let it get the best of you. And don’t let it control you.” With his other hand he pushed her bowl closer. “Starving yourself won’t help, either.”

  She knew that, but still the sight of food had made her stomach turn. And the warmth of his brown eyes and the way he was slowly rubbing his thumb back and forth across her knuckles was making her stomach flip for an entirely other reason.

  After Sam died, she’d thought she’d never feel anything for another man. Had never wanted to, even. Because she never wanted to open herself to the pain of losing another man. Yet even though now was the worst possible time, she was beginning to open herself to possibilities again. But Ty Hansen was her doctor and worked for the man who was trying to commit her. And for that reason, she just couldn’t open herself to this possibility.