Inside, he was panicking. Something felt different, as though his body were less under his control than it had been before DemSec worked on him over the weekend. What had that “upgrade” consisted of?
If she kicked him out of the clinic, Satan would find another way in. She was safest with him here. He turned back to the computer and completed the log entries without issue. DemSec’s technology was no match for his knowledge and experience.
Chapter 44
Dara wasn’t sure what was going on with Ben, but the panic that flared in his eyes as he stumbled over the little girl’s insulin dosage made her triple-check his work. She reviewed every chart before she left that night but could find no flaws. To be safe, she would call Jeremy in the morning and ask him to do a chart review.
That evening, Ben seemed twitchy. Over dinner, he snapped at her. Finally, Dara said, “Would you rather go home tonight instead of coming back to the condo?”
“No, I want to stay with you.” It would have been touching if it hadn’t felt so out of character.
That night, his lovemaking had a touch of desperation to it.
The clinic had Spanish translators on hand for Tuesday, so they were full to overflowing. Wednesday was the same thing. To make things even more chaotic, two volunteer nurses called in sick, leaving Dara short-handed.
When she put Ben back on the schedule for the adult clinics, she planned to supervise his work, but on Wednesday, between acting as charge nurse and trying to ensure that all the docs had someone to draw blood or give treatments, she was spread too thin. When Lilith blew through, Dara stifled a groan. She still needed to coax Lilith over to see Nana, but tonight wasn’t the night to attempt that.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really don’t have time to talk.”
Lilith waved her off. “I can see you’re busy. I just brought some snacks.”
Andrew Walz, who’d always worked with Dr. Wilson, arrived before the rest of the doctors. Dara drew a sigh of relief. She assigned him to shadow Ben.
“I’ve seen some things that look like demonic activity recently,” she said in a low voice. “If you see anything that seems odd, no matter what the source, come and find me immediately.”
Andrew followed her gaze to Dr. Lyle, who stood on the far side of the Pit, talking to another doctor. He looked as angelically beautiful and supremely confident as he had the first night he’d come in. Some qualities were intrinsic.
Andrew swallowed, clearly intimidated. “I can do that if you want me to.”
He didn’t sound too sure.
“I want you to,” Dara said firmly.
Then she got caught up in triage and trying to figure out how they would see forty sick people, including her old buddy, Viola, in three hours with only three doctors. A half hour later, Andrew stopped her as she was coming out of an exam room.
“I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you were thinking about.” His face was almost as red as his hair. “But Dr. Lyle smells like he’s been drinking.”
She caught her breath. “Does he act drunk?”
“No.”
“Did you ask him if he’d been drinking?”
Andrew’s ears turned scarlet. “Of course not.”
“Where is he?”
“In room five, waiting for his first patient.”
She touched his arm. “You did the right thing.”
Ben smiled when she entered the room.
“Have you been drinking?”
His smile drained away. “Of course not.”
But she could smell what Andrew was talking about. “Your breath smells like alcohol.”
He curved his palm in front of his face and blew into it, squinting at the blow-back. “Whoa. I haven’t been drinking.” His eyes begged her to trust him. “I haven’t put anything in my mouth since lunchtime except for water and one of those pastries in the breakroom.”
“I believe you,” she said, “but patient safety has to come first. Why don’t you go back to the house and wait for me? I’ll even let you make me something healthy for dinner.”
He stood there for a moment, shoulders tense. His shoulders sagged and he nodded. On his way out the door, Viola spied him.
“You ain’t leaving, are you?” Her voice sounded like sandpaper. “I come to see you.”
Ben looked at Dara. For whatever reason, he liked Viola, and the other two docs who were on that night didn’t. Jeremy had dropped by over lunch and reviewed Ben’s charts from the night before and found no problems. And Andrew would be right there, watching.
“All right,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Twenty minutes later, Dara was drawing blood in room two when someone yelled, “Call nine-one-one!”
It was Ben’s voice. Her stomach clenched. She asked the student nurse to finish the draw and hurried out into the main area. On the far side of the Pit, the door to room five was open. Inside, Ben leaned over Viola, giving her CPR. Andrew stood beside them. She raced around the Pit.
“What happened?” She grabbed Ben’s arm.
“She has a respiratory infection.” Ben pressed and released Viola’s chest like clockwork, while Andrew held the diaphragm of his stethoscope to her jugular. “It had a pretty good head start, so I ordered a dose of erythromycin.”
Dara looked at Viola’s pale, still form, trying to understand what Ben was telling her. “What’s wrong with that?”
“I didn’t take into account the other drug she was on. It’s been known to interfere with the QT interval. Erythromycin can aggravate that. She had an infarction.” Ben looked at Andrew. Andrew shook his head. Ben renewed his efforts.
Dara tried to take in what he meant. The QT interval was a measure of the heart’s electrical system. Apparently, the combination of two drugs that could affect that cycle had caused Viola’s heart to stop.
On the table, Viola dragged in a noisy breath and her eyes blinked open. Relief washed through Dara like a warm tide. Breathing a prayer of gratitude, she looked at Ben. Horror filled her. His expression was not relief, but disappointment.
Outside the clinic, sirens wailed. Moments later, EMTs loaded Viola onto a stretcher. She was conscious, but in bad shape.
Ben left after that. Dara finished the evening clinic with her nerves sparking like a stripped wire. He had dinner waiting for her when she got home, but she didn’t sit down.
“Why were you disappointed when Viola’s heart started again?” she asked.
He gave her an odd, slanting look, and she remembered the listening device.
“I wasn’t,” he said. “You know how much I like Viola.”
She did know that. But she had checked Viola’s medical history and found a fat black checkmark in the “yes” box beside the question: Are you the oldest child in your family?
She grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and wrote the question out. She shoved the paper at him. He tried to ignore her, but she stabbed at it with her finger, not willing to let it go. Finally, he took the pen from her hand and scrawled a response.
“It was just a mistake. That’s the downside of being more human.”
Was that possible? Well, of course it was possible, but was it the real reason?
She looked at him, biting her lip. His eyes pleaded with her to believe in him. Hoping she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life, she nodded.
That night, when Ben made love to her, she couldn’t relax. She kept seeing Viola’s face, waxy pale and not breathing. Her muted response seemed to call forth a need in Ben to elicit an orgasm from her.
It felt less like lovemaking than like a power struggle. A memory of the first night she’d seen him, at the gas station, flooded her head. The image of him, dark and threatening in black leather, brought on her climax. As her spasms crested, he thrust into her like he was burying his own painful thoughts beneath an avalanche of desire.
When he rolled off her, she curled against him. His arms squeezed her as though he feared she’d slip away in the darkness. Sh
e fell into an exhausted slumber.
Dara had barely drifted off when a voice inside Belial’s head said, “Olly olly oxen free! Time to come home.”
“Not yet,” he said, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t wake Dara. “I’m not finished.”
Before he even got the words out, his body rose to its feet and donned its clothes. He fought for control, but Satan’s power had grown exponentially since the last time. Thrall wouldn’t even let him kiss Dara goodbye, wouldn’t allow him even one last look over his shoulder. He walked out the door like a robot, got into the Hyundai and drove straight to Hell. There, he got out of the car and marched into DemSec.
Inside the office, a young demon with massive grommets in his earlobes was sitting at Abaddon’s desk, playing a video game. The grommets transformed his lobes into pendulous bags that made Belial think of testicles. His thrall melted away.
“Where’s Bad?” Belial looked around but didn’t see DemSec’s director. He’d probably been promoted to a corner office, next to the boss.
Scrotum-Ears tugged at one of his grommets. “Bad’s in the maggot pit, man. The boss is not happy with that demon.”
“Why?”
Scrotum-Ears shook his head. His earlobes swung like bell clappers. “He gave some dude an upgrade that was supposed to let the boss run him like a drone, but it didn’t work like it was supposed to. The boss was pissed.”
Belial felt a tiny stir of triumph. At least he’d put up some resistance.
Scrotum-Ears scratched his tattooed neck. “Is that all you wanted, man?”
Belial shook his head. “I was ordered here. I guess you want your hardware back.”
Scrotum-Ears looked confused. “We usually just leave it in between gigs.” He checked his computer screen and his eyebrows rose. “Wow, I guess they want it back.”
Because Belial wouldn’t be going on any future missions.
He took his seat in the operating chair and endured the agony as Scrotum-Ears dug out the microphone. Once he was done, the floppy-eared demon wiped off his instruments with a grimy cloth. Belial cringed. Aboveworld medicine, flawed as it was, emphasized infection prevention and pain relief. Hell had no such goals. His ears rang like the bells of Notre Dame.
Scrotum-Ears checked his computer screen again. “It says here I’m supposed to collect your cell phone, too.”
The phone was Belial’s last tiny filament of contact with Dara. He handed it over, feeling like a door was slamming shut. It didn’t matter. In another twenty-four hours, he would take a swim that would free him from the life he’d lived since he joined the ranks of the damned. If all went well, the wager would end and the boss would lose.
Dara had succumbed to his wiles, taking the money, coming to his bed and corrupting her sanctuary with a demon. She had not cursed the Almighty, though, and she wouldn’t commit suicide. She might bend a little under pressure, but she would not break. The Almighty had chosen his vessel wisely. She was safe.
If all went well.
Chapter 45
When Dara awoke the next morning, Ben’s side of the bed was empty. He had been so upset the night before that he probably needed time alone to process what had happened with Viola.
She bit her lip. How was the old woman doing? Ben had promised her no one would die. She clung to that thought as she washed her face and got dressed.
He hadn’t harmed Viola intentionally. Dara was as certain of that as she was of the tide coming in. She’d seen it in his eyes. This was part of the “incidental damage” to the clinic Ben had warned her might occur as part of Hell’s mission to corrupt her. Well, neither one of those things was going to happen. As soon as he got back, they’d put their heads together and figure out how to end these attacks for once and for all.
Her first stop was the hospital, to check on Viola. An older gentleman in a teal lab jacket embroidered with Bermuda General’s logo manned the visitor’s desk. She asked for Viola’s room number.
He frowned. “Are you a reporter? They told me to send all the reporters who asked about Ms. Finch to the auditorium to wait for Ms. Rojas.”
Dara stared at him in confusion. Her brain felt like she’d walked into a fog bank. What was he saying? “I’m sorry—reporters?”
He leaned across the desk. “Ms. Finch went to that free clinic on the other side of town, and they let a doctor who was drunk work on her. Said he almost killed her.”
Dara’s chest seemed to freeze. Was that what people were saying? How had that rumor gotten out? She ran through the list of people who were present in the clinic the night before. They were all staff or longtime volunteers that were committed to the clinic. Except one.
“What does Ms. Rojas have to do with this?” Dara asked.
“The hospital funds that clinic. Ms. Rojas serves on their board. She’s giving a press conference.”
Dara thanked him and walked away. Instead of going to Viola’s room, she went to the auditorium, where she found a dozen reporters milling around. Alexandria had only a weekly paper. Even if you threw in reporters from the Jacksonville Post-Dispatch, that didn’t begin to account for all the people in the room.
A few minutes later, Lilith arrived, accompanied by a man in a dark suit. Lilith explained that he was from the Florida Medical Board. He was investigating allegations that the Matthew A. Strong Memorial Clinic had allowed an alcohol-impaired doctor to treat a patient. Dara listened in growing horror.
“Is it true that patients of the clinic are prohibited from suing because of the clinic’s status?” asked one reporter.
“Under Florida law, the clinic can’t be sued in civil court,” Lilith said. Half of the people in the room slumped in disappointment. So that was who they were—lawyers hoping to represent Viola in a lawsuit. “However, they may be subject to criminal prosecution. The Bermuda County district attorney is looking into that.”
Criminal prosecution? Was Lilith talking about Ben or Dara? Or both? As Lilith’s eyes swept the audience, they found Dara and widened. A couple of the reporters turned in their seats to follow Lilith’s gaze.
“What other questions do you have?” Lilith said, distracting them.
Dara’s conviction that Lilith was the demon plaguing the clinic wavered. If she were really after Dara, she would have fed her to the sharks. Dara slipped out of the room.
How had things blown up literally overnight? Medical malpractice, even with alcohol involved, wasn’t unusual enough to be newsworthy, not unless the patient was a celebrity, and Viola was hardly that. It didn’t make any sense.
Dara sagged as reality hit. This sudden interest by the press, and by the medical board, was part and parcel with all the other attacks on the clinic. Lilith may have called off the sharks just now, but she was also responsible for convening them in the first place.
Dara called Ben, but he didn’t pick up. She texted, asking him to call.
She went to Viola’s room, but the old woman was asleep. She looked so frail, her hair a gray smudge against the white pillowcase. She had tubes coming out of everywhere. Dara felt sick to her stomach at the situation Ben’s mistake, her mistake, had placed Viola in. She bit her lip. Whatever had happened the night before, Ben had not intended to harm Viola. She believed that with all her heart.
Her next stop was Mercy Care, where she told Nana what had happened.
“This is all part of the demon attack on you,” Nana said.
“I know.”
“What does Ben say?”
Dara frowned at her phone. It remained stubbornly silent. “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to get hold of him.”
Nana’s face said she had an opinion on that, but she didn’t share it. “Did anyone besides Andrew smell the alcohol?”
“Other than me?” Dara thought back to the previous evening. “I don’t think so. No one mentioned it.”
“Bring Andrew to see me tonight. Testifying against you would be doing Satan’s work. He’ll understand that.” Nana sounded so confident
a tiny bubble of hope rose. Andrew had been a member of Deliverance Mission Church since he was a small child. To the best of Dara’s knowledge, he still attended every Sunday. Maybe he would understand what had happened.
After she left Mercy Care, Dara drove out to the beach and knocked on Ben’s door, but no one answered. The hollow sound of the door knocker echoed the hollowness in her chest. Both said her lover had returned to Hell.
She spent the afternoon trying to work and facing the realization that Ben was gone. The evidence said he’d completed his mission and abandoned her, but she didn’t believe it. The man he’d become over the past six and a half weeks would not have intentionally hurt her or the clinic. She hated to think of him back in Hell, returning to his old demon ways.
Her sense of loss was a gaping wound, but she set that aside to deal with later. For now, she needed to protect her reputation, and the clinic’s. She went into the computer system and pulled up Viola’s chart. There, in red print, was a warning about a possible drug interaction and the initials “BL.” The computer had warned him what might happen, and he’d overridden it.
After leaving DemSec, Belial took the elevator down to Ring Nine. Andras wasn’t at her desk, but light gleaming beneath the boss’s door said he was in. For a moment, Belial considered walking to the end of the ring and simply throwing himself in the Lake of Fire, denying Satan the opportunity to execute him. The need to know that Dara was okay was too strong, though. He let himself into Satan’s office.
“You’re working late.” He dropped into one of the chairs that faced Satan’s desk, pretending a calm he didn’t feel. This was the only way he had of keeping in touch with what was going on.
Satan didn’t smile. “I had some work to finish up.”
“Why did you pull me back? I wasn’t finished up there.”
Satan looked him up and down, and a chill ran down Belial’s spine. “Lilith can take it from here.”
The Demon Always Wins: Touched by a Demon, Book 1 Page 30