The Doctor's Deadly Affair

by Stephanie Doyle

  “Are you still in touch with your father?”

  “Christmas cards. Birthday calls. That sort of thing. He works for a cruise line. Spends his life sailing the world. He’s happy.”

  Pieces. Lots of different pieces to the puzzle that was Camille and finally they were all starting to come together. “You said your grandfather thought scares were silly. What does one do with a little girl who hears things go bump in the night?”

  He’d meant it as a casual joke. Little girls were always squealing about something, weren’t they? Spiders and bugs. Mice and scary shadows in the dark. But he could see her go to a place in her head that wasn’t pleasant.

  “He didn’t like to be woken in the middle of the night. If I had a bad dream, I had to deal with it. Rule number twenty-two—you have to conquer your fear. If you can’t, then you should be ashamed.”

  It sounded like she was quoting from a medical text. Wyatt knew that’s how it must have happened, too. Her grandfather’s solution to a bad dream was to tell her to conquer the fear and, if she didn’t, she should feel shame. Fear and shame mingling together in a little girl’s mind while she sat in the dark. Alone. Afraid.

  “Where is your grandfather?” Because when Wyatt met him he was going to kick his ass even if he had to pull him out of a wheelchair to do it.

  “He died three years ago. Congestive heart failure.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shook it off. “I don’t really like to talk about him. Wait, that sounds awful. I loved him, of course. And he was an exceptional mentor. I wouldn’t be the surgeon I am today without him.” A mentor? Had he raised her or groomed her?

  “You were with him from the time you were a baby. How does one mentor a baby?”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it. Please. I’m fine. I feel much more settled now. Thank you for the wine. You were right, it helped.”

  The wine, not the hug. Wyatt wanted to call her on it, but he could see she was already in defensive mode level two. If she got to level three, she would split.

  “Okay. We should talk about why you came over then.”

  “The cases.” Her eyes lit up and he could see that she was relieved to have a subject she could embrace.

  “I’ve studied them backward and forward.”

  “Did you have to speak to the families?”

  “I did. I wouldn’t have considered it a thorough job if I hadn’t. I made it seem like the hospital was doing a routine follow-up. And I spoke to Chuck.”

  “Dr. Montgomery. The medical examiner.”

  Wyatt nodded. “He said the autopsy revealed nothing conclusive. There was no leakage…”

  “Of course there wasn’t. I told you the surgeries were perfect.”

  “You also asked me to check every angle.”

  “Every other angle besides a surgical mistake. Because I didn’t make one.”

  Wyatt nodded indulgently. “And I spoke to Jeff and Marie.”

  Jeff had been the surgical nurse for Mr. Morose. Marie for Mr. Moss. It made sense that he would speak with them, but she couldn’t imagine how they might comment on the surgery. “You think they could tell you something about those operations that I couldn’t?”

  “Frankly, yes. A surgical nurse’s job is to stand by your side. Jeff and Marie would have the best view if you had messed up.”

  Camille slapped her hand on the counter. “I can’t believe this. You’re questioning me? My talent?”

  She wouldn’t have been this angry if he were questioning her womanhood, her ability in bed…hell, her entire personality. But call out her talent and his frightened little cat became a fierce tigress. It was sexy as hell, but that was a distraction right now.

  “You told me to look at everything,” he reminded her. “Everything.”

  “I thought you believed me,” she said tightly. “I wouldn’t have lied if I had made a mistake. I would never lie about that.”

  “Honey, I know you didn’t make a mistake. Jeff and Marie both said nothing unusual happened in either surgery.” Then again, neither of them could say without a doubt that the deaths hadn’t been caused by some mistake. Only it wasn’t a mistake either one of them made. So they claimed. Between the two of them, they were more worried about covering up their asses than they were about assuring him that Camille had done nothing wrong.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You made a face when you mentioned Jeff and Marie,” Camille accused.

  “I got the impression…”

  “Marie is probably upset with me.”

  “Why do you say that?” That was the impression he got. From both of them really. It had been as though they were secretly pleased that he was even questioning the surgery. Jeff and Marie were not fans of Dr. Larson. Marie especially acted as if she had a grudge against Camille.

  “Because she was sleeping with Logan. I caught them in the on-call room once. Marie is a highly skilled surgical nurse. She has a great future. I don’t know why she would let herself be used like that.”

  Wyatt didn’t figure now was a good time to remind her how good sex felt. It would only put her on edge and that was the last thing he wanted. Not when he’d gotten her to come here. Not when he’d been able to smell the scented lotion on her when he’d held her in his arms. He also didn’t want to make any comparisons between what Logan did with his women and what they had done together.

  “Did you know Delia was sleeping with him?”

  Wyatt shrugged. “The whole hospital knew. It wasn’t like Logan to hide his conquests.”

  “I didn’t. I thought Delia and I were friends. I thought… It doesn’t matter. But according to Ruby, Delia and the rest of the hospital all blame me for Logan leaving. So it’s no surprise that people aren’t going to go out of their way to back me up.”

  “Hey,” he said, lifting her chin with his knuckle and looking into her eyes. “I’m backing you up.”

  “You are. But you said yourself there is nothing there. No obvious reason why those two men died.”

  Wyatt had to agree. He couldn’t find anything in their histories. He couldn’t find any type of infection or medication issue. He didn’t see anything on the medical examiner’s report and he trusted Camille completely when she said there had been no complications during surgery.

  “Do you trust me?”

  Camille blinked a few times, which wasn’t the best answer. “Medically speaking…yes.”

  Also a sucky answer. “I have one last suggestion.”

  “Go for it. Anything that might help explain what happened.”

  “I want to dig them up.”

  Chapter 7

  “You want to dig up bodies?”

  Sheriff Mooney, the head of the police department in Westend, the town where the hospital resided, leaned back in his chair with his fingers steepled. He looked like a man whose day was about to get more interesting. In a small suburban hamlet, the township cops’ energies were mostly spent on teen vandalism, underage drinking—which caused teen vandalism—breaking up parties where teens could be found drinking underage and speeding tickets.

  Digging up dead bodies was not the norm.

  “I believe the appropriate term is exhumation,” Camille interjected.

  Wyatt put a hand on her forearm reminding them of their deal. This time he would do the talking. Camille had a tendency to use words people didn’t know, especially when she got nervous or was trying to make a case. For some it was off-putting. To him it was another piece of her puzzle.

  “I know what the proper term is, thank you. Do you have any idea what’s involved in exhumation?”

  Wyatt looked at Camille. “Uh…not really.”

  “Not really? Exactly,” the sheriff drawled. “There are these things called laws that we have that dictate this kind of stuff. But we’ll get into that. First, tell me why you want to do it.”

  Wyatt took a deep breath and prepared to deliver the speech again. They had al
ready struck out with both families, although he pretty much blamed that on Camille. She spoke in a language they didn’t understand and, at the end of the day, satisfying her medical curiosity wasn’t enough for them.

  Appealing to the sheriff to allow the exhumations was a last-ditch effort.

  “Look, two men died in our hospital of causes unknown.”

  “You said they had heart surgeries.”

  “Specifically multiple bypass surgery,” Camille interjected again.

  “Right. Did you cut open their chest and reroute some blood?”

  “I did.”

  “And they died,” the sheriff concluded.

  “Yes, but not because she opened their chests and rerouted blood. That’s what we’re trying to discover. Those men should have recovered and we would like to know why they didn’t.”

  “And you told me at the start that you had already talked with both families.”

  “Yes, they were very resistant to this idea.” Camille crossed her arms over her chest as if annoyed. “Irrationally so. They demanded we leave their homes immediately.”

  “Go figure.”

  Wyatt wanted to remind her why sometimes grieving widows didn’t like to discuss the topic of unburying their husbands, but he didn’t want to start an argument in front of the sheriff. They needed to appear united if they had a chance of succeeding.

  “Sheriff, I know this seems crazy but all we’re really after is some answers. What we have are two men with heart conditions that were successfully treated. There is no substantial reason for their deaths post-op. We want to take another look.”

  “These men weren’t autopsied?”

  “The autopsy was inconclusive,” Camille stated.

  “Inconclusive. That’s a fancy word for nothing obvious,” the sheriff said. “So you would have known if there was some drug foul-up or hospital staff infection or something like that?”

  Wyatt could see the writing on the wall but he couldn’t lie about it. The facts were too easy to check. One call to the medical examiner and he would know everything. “Yes. Any type of mis-dosing should have shown up in the blood work. Certainly an infection would have been detected. There was nothing.”

  “Oh, there was something,” the sheriff announced. “It’s called the Hand of God. And He decided those two were ready to go.”

  “That’s preposterous,” Camille muttered. “Even if there is a God it is highly unlikely He has hands.”

  “Look, Ms.—”

  “Doctor,” Camille corrected.

  “Doctor and Doctor, you both know what my answer is. First off, an exhumation can’t even be contemplated without the permission of the families. Then you would need a court order by a State Supreme Court judge, which I can tell you isn’t going to happen with the proof you’ve laid out. You have two men who died, who were autopsied, and nothing out of the ordinary was found. End of story. Go back to the hospital and concentrate on saving the lives you can.”

  Defeated, Wyatt stood and shook the man’s hand. “We’re not ghouls. We wanted answers and felt we had to follow every possibility.”

  The sheriff glanced at Camille as if he wasn’t too sure about her ghoul status, but then turned back to Wyatt. “I understand. I live around enough of you doctors to know that sometimes you think you can control everything. This one was out of your hands.”

  Camille’s face tightened with that comment, but she said nothing.

  Together they left the station that was centered in the middle of the town’s main street and headed for Wyatt’s Jeep parked on the other side of the road.

  “Well that was a big waste of time,” Wyatt said as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Once again, Camille was struggling to find a spot on the roll bar she deemed clean enough to put her hand on to lift herself into the seat. Eventually she gave in and used a wipe from her purse.

  “It’s not that dirty,” Wyatt grumbled. “I was off-roading in the Pine Barrens last weekend. It’s a little dusty.”

  “It is not a little dusty. It’s filthy,” she clarified as she settled into the seat. “Do you know how many germs are in dirt? It’s filled with bug and animal feces…”

  He noticed she even cleaned off the seat belt clips before buckling herself in. He shook his head in exasperation. “Okay, enough with animal feces.”

  “Sorry, but it’s true.”

  There was a pause between them and he could practically feel the gears spiraling in her head.

  “So what happens now?”

  Wyatt winced. He was hoping she had already come to the only possible conclusion. “Nothing.”

  “You mean we’re giving up?”

  He glanced at her. “Camille, there is nothing else we can do. I can’t look at the bodies. I’ve been over every piece of documentation, all the lab results. I can speculate on a few possibilities, but the point is, without evidence to back them up, they’re theories.”

  She sank into the seat. He knew she was disappointed, but there wasn’t any avenue left for them to take. All roads had dead-ended. No pun intended. What concerned him now was the more personal aspect of this mini-investigation.

  With her reason for initially seeking him out over, what was going to happen to them?

  He’d been careful with her last night. So much so that he thought he’d made some progress. He’d been able to hug her without hauling her over his shoulder and taking her to bed. Which showed he had restraint.

  He’d cooked for her, which showed he cared.

  And he’d kissed her cheek and let her leave after the evening was over, which showed…he was an absolute idiot. He should have done more to cement their relationship. Hell, he wondered if she even knew they were in a relationship.

  Weren’t they?

  He noticed she wasn’t moving, merely staring straight ahead.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I guess I’m sorry those two men lost their lives and I’m never going to know why.”

  Okay. Still on the patients. That wasn’t horrible. It meant she hadn’t moved on from him yet.

  “I was thinking,” he said casually as he thrust the key into the ignition. “Maybe we could go out to eat. There is this new BYOB restaurant in Old Town I wanted to try.”

  He felt it then. The slow turn of her head toward him as her incredibly intense focus shifted to him.

  “What are you suggesting?”

  Careful, he thought. Like the surgeon he used to be, he needed to do this very precisely. No jarring moves. “Dinner. Out this time. Because my place still reeks of fish. That’s all.”

  “That’s all.”

  “Why?” He flashed her a rakish smile. “You thinking of something else? Like maybe dessert?”

  There was no corresponding smile. No twitch of the lips. Not even a smirk at the immature nature of his innuendo.

  “I don’t think dinner would be a good idea.”

  The Jeep was beeping now because he’d put the key in the ignition but hadn’t started the engine. Violently, Wyatt pulled it out. He couldn’t drive and rage at her at the same time. It wasn’t safe. Because as externally calm as he was now, and as patient as he knew he had to be, he could feel where this conversation was going to end up.

  Her stubbornness would drive him quickly to anger.

  He wasn’t pleased with the foreknowledge. In fact, it made him as sad as it made him angry.

  “Why not? We had dinner last night.”

  “We were reviewing patient histories. It was work.”

  “We were also talking about hospital affairs, my knack for seasoning, the fact that eating fish isn’t the end of the world and your grandfather.”

  As soon as he mentioned her grandfather he regretted it. She stiffened, folding her hands carefully in her lap.

  “Can we get back to the hospital? I have a valve replacement surgery this afternoon and I want to review my notes before I start. Also, I want to visit with
Janet directly. She’s frightened of the surgery and I want to reassure her.”

  “You’ve got time before you have to be there. Tell me why you won’t have dinner with me. Tell me. Is it my breath?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “My aftershave?”

  “See, you’re being ridiculous. Maybe I don’t want to have dinner with you because of that.”

  “I’m only trying to find out what it is about me that put you off. I know it wasn’t my lovemaking.”

  He could see the pink rise along her neck and cheeks.

  Lowering his voice he raised his hand and softly brushed that pink cheek. “It wasn’t that, was it? You wanted me as much as I wanted you. Please admit that. I want to hear you say it.”

  “I…wanted you.”

  “Want me. Present tense.”

  “I—I can’t.” She closed her eyes as though she were bracing herself for impact. When she opened them, she pushed away the hand that he was caressing her neck with. “You don’t want dinner. You want dinner and sex.”

  “Not simultaneously.”

  “Stop being cute,” she scolded. Which, naturally, only turned him on more. “You want these things and I can’t give them to you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not who I am. I don’t date. I don’t have affairs or relationships. I cut people open. I save lives. That’s my work, that’s my life.”

  There it was, he thought. The anger that he had been trying to keep control of. “That’s being stubborn. And close-minded. You say you can’t do all that, but that’s not true. You’re afraid to have those things in your life and that’s an entirely different matter.”

  “So what? What does it matter if I’m stubborn or afraid or truly incapable of forming a relationship with a man? Either way it would never work between us. I don’t have any experience. I wouldn’t know how to behave. I wouldn’t know what I was supposed to do. At dinner, in bed, at a cocktail party. I wouldn’t know to say things girlfriends are supposed to say when you got sick, or know how to be supportive when you had a bad day. I would be useless. So why even attempt it?”