Intensive Care

by Jessica Andersen

  But she might save her own life.

  Chapter Five

  Out in the hallway, Cage cursed the Head Administrator for putting money ahead of the patients’ safety. Then he cursed himself for having thought it would be different at this hospital. But just as he’d walked into the courtroom expecting the system to punish the doctors who’d killed his wife, he’d taken the Boston General job at face value.

  He should’ve known better. Idiot.

  “I can’t believe him.” To her credit, Ripley looked furious, though her red-rimmed eyes and rough voice probably owed as much to the chlorine gas. “The Head Administrator is supposed to run the hospital, not hide its problems.”

  “It usually amounts to the same thing.” Cage took a deep breath and leaned against the wall, feeling fatigue hit him all at once. Fatigue, frustration and a dull depression. Why had he thought things would be different? When Ripley yawned, he glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that it was well after 8:00 p.m. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

  Surprise, then wariness flickered across her face. “Why?”

  Because he didn’t believe the broom closet had been an accident. Because the Head Administrator’s motivations worried him. Because he didn’t know how Ida Mae Harris had died, or why she was radioactive.

  And because he didn’t want to let Ripley go just yet. Didn’t want to go home alone to the newly reopened penthouse he’d once shared with Heather. Depression dragged harder at the thought.

  But he didn’t say any of these things, because the wiser part of him still didn’t trust Ripley. Still insisted that she could be, if not solely responsible for the body’s contamination, involved in it—right up to her pretty little neck.

  So instead he scowled. “Because Gabney said we should work together. My options for help seemed to be limited to you or nobody.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “I’m no happier with it than you are, Cage, but I’m bound and determined to find out what happened to Ida Mae.”

  “And why is that?” he shot back. “It seems that your precious job would be safer if you just let it slide. Why the concern?” Was she truly upset for her patient, or was there a deeper, more sinister layer to it?

  Her eyes darkened as she marched right up to him and lifted her chin at a haughty angle. “I don’t have to explain myself to the RSO, Cage. You should be glad I’m willing to help you when Gabney’s made it clear he’d rather we just dropped the subject.”

  She stuck out her jaw, looked up into his eyes and paused. He knew the moment she realized they were nose to nose, practically kissing close. Her eyes widened fractionally and she sucked in a breath. All the reasons why this couldn’t possibly happen fled from Cage’s mind as he brushed a dark curl away from her face with a fingertip and felt his heart thunder in response.

  “I won’t drop it, no matter what Gabney wants,” he said, giving in to temptation and touching the springy curl again. “It’s too important.”

  He expected her eyelids to ease shut, as his wanted to, but she remained staring full at him. Seeing too much. Finally, she nodded, firmed her chin and stepped away from him. The single pace seemed to put her miles away. “Then it’s settled. We’ll investigate Ida Mae’s death together.”

  “Ripley…”

  She shook her head, and in a way he was relieved. The two of them together would be too dangerous. Too unwise. Too complicated. She turned and walked away, calling, “Thanks for the offer of a ride, but I’ve got my car in the garage. See you back here tomorrow morning to get started with our investigation?”

  He didn’t bother mentioning that the next day was Saturday. It didn’t seem important. Cancer and radioactivity didn’t take the weekends off. Neither did death.

  Or suspicion.

  But when she was halfway down the hall, he called, “Be careful, okay?”

  Though Gabney was correct that there was no evidence her attacks had been anything but a strange series of events, Cage couldn’t escape the nagging worry that they were something else. Something sinister.

  She sketched a wave without turning around. He thought she squared her shoulders. “I’ll be fine. See you tomorrow.” And she disappeared around the corner, bound for the garage. After debating with himself for less than half a minute, Cage strode after her. It didn’t matter if she saw him following her.

  He was going to make sure she got home safe whether she liked it or not.

  THE ANSWERING MACHINE was blinking when Ripley walked through the door to her first-floor apartment on the edge of Boston. She ignored the machine and collapsed on the couch instead. When Simon jumped in her lap, she gathered the Siamese cross close and buried her face in his fur.

  Then, finally, she could let herself fall apart.

  The deep shudders started in her aching stomach and radiated outward, clenching her muscles and wracking her torn throat with almost silent sobs that she muffled in the patient cat’s fur.

  Scared. She had been so scared. She could still smell the gas on her clothes. When she closed her eyes, she could hear the hiss of the chemical reaction and feel the burning suffocation.

  And she was alone. So alone. But when she was alone, she could be weak. She could be afraid. That was allowed.

  So she curled up in a little ball on the sofa, clicked the television on for background noise, and let herself be afraid.

  When a pair of headlights washed through the room a few minutes later, she shot to her feet, still clutching Simon. I’ll be fine, she’d told Cage, waving over her shoulder so he couldn’t see the fear in her eyes. See you tomorrow.

  What she’d really wanted to do was beg him to stay with her. Protect her. Be with her.

  There had been a moment in the hallway when he’d thought of kissing her. She’d known it, and had even welcomed the idea. But then sanity had reasserted itself. The attraction between them was another sort of weakness. Love was a weakness. Just look at her mother and father. Her mother was weak. Her father, invincible.

  Ripley had sworn never to fall into that trap. She wouldn’t, couldn’t let herself want Cage. Need him.

  The headlights moved on and she blew out a breath. It was nothing. Just someone passing by on the way to somewhere.

  The thought wasn’t entirely reassuring.

  Tears spent, breath hitching, she reached over and punched the play button on her neglected answering machine. She stroked the sleek line of chocolate fur along Simon’s spine as the bruises left by Mr. Harris’s fingers throbbed in time with her heartbeat.

  The machine beeped to indicate a message, but there was no recording. Just a long moment of silence and the click of a disconnect. Ripley shook off a shiver of nerves and changed the cable channel from a true crime show to a documentary on honeybees.

  There was another beep. Another silence and a click. She looked out the darkened window.

  The night was too quiet outside her small, ground-floor apartment. She held Simon a little more tightly. Was that a movement in the shadows outside? She shrank back away from the night.

  A sudden ring made her jump. She stared at the phone. What if there was nobody on the other end? It rang again. And again.

  Finally, she picked the handset up and answered with a tentative, “Hello?”

  “Caroline.”

  “Father.” Relief was immediate and overwhelming. It was so complete that she didn’t even remind him she preferred her middle name, though it was part of the war they’d been fighting much of her adult life. Ever since her mother had left. “How are you?”

  Howard Davis never wasted time on small talk or other soft, unimportant things. He barked, “I hear there was trouble at the hospital today.”

  Though he’d left his position as Head Administrator of Boston General for a cushy private practice a few years earlier, Howard had stayed on as the head of the Board of Directors. In addition, he had spies who seemed to do nothing but report on Ripley’s existence a
t the hospital. The problem was, they only ever reported her mistakes.

  But for a change, it seemed as though they’d reported something else. Something important. Although she’d ordered the ER attending not to notify her father, Ripley’s eyes welled at the thought that he’d found out anyway, and had called to make sure she was okay. His voice touched a young, needy chord within her. She sank down on the couch and curled her legs beneath her as she held the phone to her ear. The darkness outside the window suddenly didn’t seem as threatening anymore. Someone cared that she was okay.

  “I’m fine, Father, really. But thank you for asking.”

  “Asking about what?” he snapped. “Don’t be silly. You’ve had an unexpected death, a contaminated body and a crazed husband howling about you killing his wife. I hardly consider that fine, Caroline. Things like this don’t reflect well on your mother and I, you know.”

  The familiar, dismissive tone fell on Ripley’s soul like a lead weight and one fat tear crept to her cheek before she dashed the others away. He was talking about the problems in R-ONC. She curled up tighter on the couch and fought to keep her voice from cracking. “Are you aware that I was almost killed by Mr. Harris? And again today in a chlorine spill?”

  “I was told the chlorine was nothing, Caroline. An accident. Don’t be dramatic. We’re talking about important things here. We’re talking about your reputation.” And mine, was the unstated follow-up that buzzed on the line.

  Ripley closed her eyes. Why had she thought this time would be any different from the hundred other conversations they’d had before?

  Howard Davis was a controlling workaholic whose wife had left him for a grand tour of the world’s country clubs, yet Ripley was, and would always be, the embarrassment.

  Simon yowled when her fingers tightened on his fur. Tears pressed harder, but she willed them back, refusing to give her father the satisfaction. Davises must never make scenes.

  “Thank you for your opinion, Father, but none of this concerns you. I’ll handle it.” She wasn’t sure how she was going to fix the mess in R-ONC, but the last thing she needed was her father’s interference, which would most likely involve negotiating a severance package with Gabney. “And I don’t believe that it should reflect on you—or Mother—one way or the other.”

  In fact, Ripley doubted Eleanor Davis knew there was trouble at Boston General, or that it involved her daughter. Some doctors’ wives took up good works to combat their husbands’ long hours and career-mindedness. Others drank.

  Ripley’s mother played golf. Lots of it.

  “Well, you always have been naive, Caroline. What you do reflects on the Davis name, as well as on the reputation of Boston General. But don’t worry about it. I’ll have a word with Leo and fix everything for you.” Ripley could all but feel her father’s hand pat her on the head.

  She flared. “You’ll do nothing of the sort, Father. Do not speak to Leo Gabney on my behalf, do you hear me? This is my life, my problem. I’ll take care of it.” Her voice rose to a scratchy shriek, “And my name is Ripley!”

  As he always did when she spoke to him out of turn, Ripley’s father simply ended the conversation. The buzz of the disconnected line rattled in her head like the words she’d heard a thousand times. We’ll speak again when you’re ready to be reasonable.

  She swore viciously because she was tired of crying, and because anger felt more powerful than tears. Simon yowled in Siamese sympathy.

  The phone rang again. She snatched it up immediately and hissed, “I swear to God if you call me Caroline I’m hanging up this phone and ripping it out of the wall.”

  There was a pause, then a dark, gravelly voice said, “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Ripley’s heart sank. At least she thought that’s what the fluttery, sick feeling was. “Cage.”

  He didn’t bother with pleasantries either. He simply said, “We’ve got a problem.”

  She thought of her father lining up behind Leo to sweep the situation under the rug, whether or not it endangered the patients and the hospital staff. She thought about R-ONC, and the very real possibility that she could lose her job. Then she thought about Mr. Harris sitting on the tile floor of the atrium, sobbing into his hands. Dr. Davis killed my wife. She thought about the click of the closet door and the feel of Cage’s arms around her when she’d regained consciousness.

  The look in his eye when they’d almost kissed in the hallway.

  Her voice was dry when she said, “The way I see it, Cage, we’ve got more than one problem.”

  “You have no idea,” was his laconic response. “Can you come down here?”

  Ripley glanced at the digital display on the cable box. It was past ten o’clock. “Down where? You’re not still at the hospital, are you?”

  “I couldn’t relax at my place,” he said, and there was something soft and hurting in his voice. “So I came back here. I found something you should see.”

  Ripley thought about going back to the hospital in the deep darkness, and shivered, though she’d done a thousand night rounds before. Then she stiffened at a noise from outside the window. Simon arched his back and hissed.

  It’s only the wind, she told herself, a tree branch or a stray cat. But she found herself nodding into the phone. “Okay, I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  Before leaving, Ripley arranged to have Simon stay with her upstairs neighbor, who took care of the cat when she was away on business. She couldn’t have said why, but she didn’t want to leave him in the apartment.

  Just in case.

  DOWN IN BASEMENT LEVEL ONE, Cage stared at rows of sliding drawers that held samples from a thousand bodies. But he didn’t see the neat labels or the gruesome smears and bits. His mind kept showing him implacable gray eyes. His ears echoed with the words, You have no hard evidence.

  He’d heard those words before, from the judge who’d excused Heather’s killers. The words—and the echoes of failure—had driven him out of the penthouse, where he’d been wandering from room to room, looking at old photos of himself and wondering what had happened to the young kid in the baseball uniform.

  The ghosts had chased him back to the hospital, where only the ER seemed alive. Everything else was dead, like the bits of preserved flesh surrounding him.

  Like his wife.

  “Hey, Cage. What have you got?”

  He turned and tried to hide his reaction to the sight of Ripley Davis. Tired, rumpled and faintly red-eyed, she was still gorgeous. Her dark hair curled near her face, her narrow hands tucked into her pockets. Ever since he’d followed her practical navy sedan to the outskirts of town and seen that she was safely inside her home, he’d worked to steel himself against the jolt of her voice and the sharp spike of lust he resented her for causing because she wasn’t Heather.

  If he wanted Ripley, Cage knew, then Heather was truly gone.

  Gritting his teeth, he gestured to the workbench where he’d spread out the blood slides and matched them to tissue samples from the same patients. “I thought about the hot spots Whistler found in the morgue. The old bodies are long gone, but every tissue and blood slide that comes through here is archived. I scanned the drawers with the last six months’ worth of patients, and I found these.”

  Their fingers touched when she took the Geiger counter, and Cage endured the flash of heat, praying she couldn’t feel it. But he knew from her quick indrawn breath and averted eyes, he wasn’t alone in feeling the sizzle of chemistry.

  And he wasn’t alone in wishing they’d found the spark elsewhere.

  “Are they all hot?” Without waiting for his answer, Ripley passed the wand over each of the samples, watching the instrumentation flicker. She answered her own question, “They’re contaminated. But most of the readings aren’t very strong.”

  As he watched her separate the slides by tissue type and scan again, Cage silently acknowledged that the basement didn’t seem as cold anymore. Didn’t seem so quiet. And he hadn’t prepared himself for th
at.

  “It’s in their blood, isn’t it?” After a few more moments of scanning, she straightened and pressed both hands to the small of her back.

  “Yeah.” The word sounded thick and he cleared his throat, realizing he could smell her natural scent over the funk of chemicals and death. That frustrated him. Angered him. Who was she to be getting under his skin this way? “Not surface contamination or ingestion, which pretty much rules out accidental contact or tainted food.”

  She gazed down at the fragments of humanity spread out before her. “How many?”

  “Four other patients beside Ida Mae, all women. Their bodies are long gone, but the slides are hot as hell, even now.” He paused and felt the fury build, though he wasn’t sure who it was directed at anymore. He was frustrated, angry, and he wanted to lash out at someone. Something. Patients had died here. These women had been mothers and daughters.

  Wives.

  “Which department did they come from?” she asked, looking at him, eyes stark in her pale face.

  “R-ONC.” He handed her the list he’d pulled up from the Pathology computer and wished he could hold her. Wished he could punish her. “They were all your patients.”

  “My patients.” She drew a sharp breath and backed up until she bumped into the shield, which rattled at the blow. “No.”

  He followed and crowded her, glared down at her, wanting to scald her for having a doctor’s carelessness while playing God. Wanting to hurt her because she made him need again.

  Wanting to hold her despite it all. Damn it.

  The anger twisted inside him, mixed with something far more complicated. Cage held on to the anger because it was easier. Safer. “Yes. Your patients. Do you have an explanation for that, Dr. Davis? The cause of death listed for all of them was heart failure. Isn’t that what Ida Mae died of?” He leaned down until they were practically nose to nose. “Is there something you’d like to share with me?”