Warning Signs

by C. J. Lyons

  “Yeah, but Gina’s the most stubborn person I know. She always gets her way.”

  “That’s part of the problem, isn’t it?” Nora lifted the grate free and used the tongs to rescue the pepper and the fork. “Okay,” she said when she had replaced it and had everything arranged to her liking. “Ready to fire up.”

  “Don’t you want to preheat it?” Amanda asked. She’d almost said something sooner, but Nora had been so focused on arranging everything on the grill that she didn’t want to interrupt. “At least, that’s how my daddy does it.”

  Nora’s mouth twisted in a frown. “Yeah, guess that’s how Seth did it too.” She grabbed a platter, transferred all the veggies she’d arranged on the grill back onto it, closed the lid, and started the grill. “What do you think, high to preheat, then medium to cook?”

  “Sounds good to me. Anyway, that will give them more time to talk.” She nodded toward the kitchen window.

  Nora grabbed her beer and dumped herself into one of the chaise longues. “I think Seth is trying to make up or something.”

  Amanda sat in the other chaise, tugging her hem down. She kicked off her pumps, watching as the cat began to nudge them with his paws. “Did he ask you out?”

  “No. But the last few nights when I’ve gotten back to Mickey’s place there were flowers waiting for me—no card. Then today he put his arm around me and acted … well, I’m not sure how he acted.”

  “Do you want to go back to him? I mean, he and Karen—” She stopped when she saw the wince cross Nora’s face. Amanda hadn’t ever told Nora, but she’d also spotted Karen and Seth together herself.

  “He keeps trying to deny it, but I saw them, together, naked, in her call room. Does he think I’m that stupid?” She blew her breath out in a sigh and took a drink from her bottle of Yuengling. “Men.”

  “I’ve been living without for over a year now, and it stinks,” Amanda said. Nora glanced at her in surprise, and Amanda clapped a hand over her mouth, trying to suppress her giggle. Back home she’d never talked like this—her few girlfriends would have been aghast, and her brothers would have teased her endlessly.

  Enjoying herself, she abandoned her Dr Pepper and grabbed a bottle of beer. Why not? She wasn’t on call. “Between you and Seth, Gina and Jerry, and now Lydia and Trey, I’ve felt like a third wheel. Or a seventh. I’m so tired of being too tired to even think about trying to find a guy, much less never having the chance to meet anyone outside the hospital.”

  “What about you and Lucas?” Nora asked with an arch smile. “I saw the way you look at him. Except you know it’s against the rules.”

  “Actually, I thought about that.” She took another swallow of beer, the alcohol already buzzing through her system, making her feel giddy and reckless. God, she couldn’t believe she was talking to someone about this; she’d barely admitted it to herself. “I did some research. It’s only against the rules for him to date anyone he supervises or grades. So if I were an intern or resident, it’d be impossible, but as soon as I finish my neurology rotation and he’s no longer grading me… .”

  “He’s fair game? Poor Lucas, he’s not going to know what hit him.” Nora reached across and clinked her bottle against Amanda’s. “It will be good for him. He’s been moping ever since his divorce. You just have to promise me you’ll be gentle with him, let him down easy when you’re done with him.”

  “Nora! I would never—” She stopped when Nora began to laugh and she realized Nora was joking.

  Nora patted her arm. “I know, sweetie, that’s why you two would be so good together. Lucas needs someone to take care of him almost as much as he needs someone he can take care of.”

  “I don’t need taking care of by anyone, thank you very much.”

  “We all need taking care of, Amanda. You’ll see.” Nora sat up and turned away to set her bottle down, but not before Amanda saw the look of pain cross her face. “I think the grill is hot enough now.”

  As Nora fiddled with the grill, Amanda watched the cat stalk imaginary prey along the arborvitae hedge that stood between the yard and the wrought-iron fence that marked the boundary of the cemetery. Beyond the hedge, the top half of the towers that made up the medical center could be seen in the distance. Other than that they had complete privacy. It was nice, felt a little like sitting out on her own back porch, back home.

  “What’s with Lucas and Dr. Nelson?” she asked. Seth was Lucas’s best friend, so Nora might know. “Why don’t they get along?”

  Smoke billowed around Nora’s face and she waved it away. “I forgot you were helping Dr. Nelson with one of his studies. For godsakes don’t tell Lucas, he’ll flip.”

  “Too late. He called Dr. Nelson a quack, but that’s not fair. Dr. Nelson has a Ph.D. in pharmacology and is double-boarded in allergy and internal medicine. And he and his wife have been so kind and helpful to me—it feels weird being caught in the middle.”

  Nora finally got the heat where she wanted it and placed the vegetables on the grill. “It has nothing to do with what kind of doctor Dr. Nelson is. It’s about what kind of man he is.”

  She closed the lid to the grill and sat back down. “Lucas and Seth grew up in Monroeville. Blue-collar, working-class—Lucas’s father is a sanitation worker, and his mom worked the checkout at Giant Eagle. You can imagine how a kid with a genius IQ like Lucas fit in around there.”

  Amanda nodded—about as well as a girl fit into her male-dominated family.

  “At least Lucas was good at sports; that helped him make friends. Still, he graduated high school at sixteen; went to Pitt on a scholarship, and Emory for medical school. When he came back to Pittsburgh to start his internship, his mom got sick—ovarian cancer. He postponed his residency and went to work in Nelson’s lab. This was before Dr. Nelson hit it big with his patents that let him take those vitamin horse pills and compact them into one small, easy-to-swallow perle.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, according to Lucas, the perle delivery system was his design, not Dr. Nelson’s.”

  “Dr. Nelson stole it?” Amanda sat up. No, she couldn’t see it happening—Dr. Nelson honestly didn’t seem to care about the millions his delivery system brought him. She remembered when she had met him and Faith for the first time in the neonatal ICU, their grief over losing their baby, their generosity in donating a large amount to the NICU afterward, funding a grief counselor to help other parents.

  “Worse,” Nora continued, “when Lucas confronted him, Dr. Nelson claimed he had evidence that Lucas had tampered with his research results, and they almost kicked Lucas out of his residency program.”

  “Lucas would never tamper with research results. If anything, he’d repeat them twenty times to verify them.” Of course, the same could be said for Dr. Nelson—otherwise, why would he spend so much time and money on his clinical trials when he didn’t have to?

  Nora shrugged. “It all happened almost ten years ago—who knows the truth now? I think what hurt Lucas the most was that Dr. Nelson had been his mentor. Lucas thought he’d finally found someone who understood him, who wasn’t threatened by how smart he is.”

  “He felt betrayed.” No wonder Lucas was so touchy about her trusting Dr. Nelson. But what happened all those years ago had to be a mistake, some kind of clerical error or misunderstanding. She couldn’t believe either man would actually have done the things they were accused of.

  “The divorce last year didn’t help. Lucas actually met Stephanie because of Dr. Nelson. She was the lawyer he hired to defend him, to get him reinstated in the residency program. They married after he finished his internship, but then she left him because she didn’t think he was ambitious enough. Engaged to a rich lawyer now.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Ouch is right. So when I ask you to be gentle with him, I’m not kidding, okay?” Nora sent one of her “mother hen” looks Amanda’s way.

  “Don’t worry. Right now I’m not exactly on his radar anyway. He’s focused on hi
s patients. Took him all day to even remember my name.”

  “Oh, you’re on his radar all right. Lucas doesn’t miss a thing, believe me. If it weren’t for the fact that he plays by the rules, and that he’s probably a little gun-shy right now—”

  Amanda waved her hand in dismissal. “While he’s my attending, it’s a moot point.” Why was she suddenly so frightened? Was it because she now realized that Lucas Stone wasn’t just a fantasy, but a flesh-and-blood man with feelings that could be hurt?

  She changed the subject. “Tell me about this patient with symptoms similar to Tracey Parker’s and Becky Sanborn’s.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Thursday, 8:41 P.M.

  THERE WAS JUST SOMETHING ABOUT A COLD beer and steaks done on a grill, Gina thought, tipping back her bottle of Yuengling to get the final drop. Better than any four-star gourmet meal at Christopher’s. Especially now that it had finally cooled down a little since the sun went down. Not much—it was still muggy, and clouds hid the moon—but at least it felt more comfortable. She was actually starting to believe in the whole global warming nonsense—AccuWeather said they were due to break another record high tomorrow as well.

  Lydia’s crazy cat, the one that looked like a panther escaped from some jungle, curled between Gina’s legs as it made its way over to Lydia. The cat hadn’t shown itself much during dinner; instead it had amused itself by yowling from the shadows at irregular intervals, as if calling to the women to play hide-and-seek.

  It felt so—to use one of her mother’s favorite terms—civilized to sit back and enjoy a good meal with good friends. Well, friends minus one. Damn Lydia for getting in her face like that. She was almost as angry at Lydia as she was at Ken Rosen for dragging her into Homewood this afternoon. His attempt at shock therapy might have been well intentioned, but she could do without it. What a waste of time, all these months thinking he had the answers, building up her courage to go see him.

  She took another bite of her steak and sighed in contentment as she chewed and swallowed the juicy morsel. Despite being pissed as hell, somehow she felt relief that Lydia knew her secret—as if a weight had been lifted. She didn’t have to pretend anymore, didn’t have to be in control of anything. For the first time in days, she not only enjoyed her meal but had no compulsion to purge. And better yet, no guilt about eating or enjoying eating.

  See, she could be normal, damn it.

  Sudden laughter from Amanda startled her, and she thought for a moment everyone was laughing at her. Acid soured her taste buds.

  “No Name, scat!” Lydia was saying.

  They were all laughing at the cat. No Name had toppled Gina’s empty beer bottle over onto its side and was spinning it, catching the drops that flew free with its paw, then licking them. The cat resolutely ignored the humans around him, claiming the picnic table for his own, until Lydia scooped him up.

  He screeched, an unearthly sound that made Gina’s flesh crawl, raising the hair on her arms, but he didn’t show his claws to Lydia. Instead he glared at her as if they shared an unspoken language. Lydia set him out in the yard and turned the sprinkler on, aiming it so that it wouldn’t drench the women on the patio.

  “Only cat I’ve ever seen who likes getting wet,” Amanda said, taking another sip of her Merlot.

  The beer and two glasses of wine she’d had were flushing her cheeks and nose. It was good to see her relaxed, acting like a girl instead of a walking, talking textbook. Girl studied more than anyone Gina had ever met, as if her life depended on her grades.

  Nora handed Gina another bottle of beer and offered one to Lydia, who shook her head no. “If you’re going to keep him, you should take him to the vet, get him all his shots, maybe declawed or something.”

  “I’m not keeping him,” Lydia said as she resumed her seat, sending a fond glance in the direction of the cat. “I think it’s more like he’s decided to keep me. He hates Trey, but whenever I’m around he stays close like a dog.”

  “He protects you because you feed him,” Nora suggested.

  “It was Trey who started feeding him—he’s got the scratches to prove it.” Lydia shook her head. “I don’t know. But I can’t see getting him in a cage to go to the vet.”

  No Name seemed to sense they were talking about him. He stopped in the middle of the sprinkler, water flying from his fur, and raised his head to stare at them. Then he raised his tail, turned, and stalked away, disappearing into the arborvitae hedge.

  “You don’t let him inside, do you?” Gina asked, noticing that the branches didn’t seem to move as the cat flowed through them. As if he were a shadow or something.

  “Don’t have to,” Lydia said. “He finds his own way, in or out. I haven’t figured out how.”

  “Animals are smart,” Amanda said. “Look at Nora’s dog—”

  “Ex-dog. He’s Seth’s now.”

  “Oh, right. Anyway, we had this beagle once who was the laziest dog you ever met, but he could sniff out folks with cancer.”

  “Come on, really?”

  “Really.” Amanda waggled her wineglass in emphasis, making the Merlot dance. “Chigger would sniff at a person and give a little whine and they’d rush off to the doctor, find out they had cancer. Got to the point where folks were coming from miles just to let him smell ’em. They’d figure, why bother with the doctor unless they were sure there was something wrong. Doc Hadley got so mad ’cuz folks wouldn’t want to pay him when they could let Chigger sniff them for free. And Chigger was so accurate that they sometimes would just go home and put their affairs in order, instead of going to the doctor at all.”

  “I can’t believe a dog would be more reliable than blood work,” Nora argued. “Surely he was wrong some of the time. I mean, even lab results are wrong a percentage of the time.”

  Amanda was shaking her head vehemently. “No, ma’am. He was dead right every time. And you know, someone sneaked in one night and poisoned him because of it? My dad figured it to be Doc Hadley—hard enough to make a living without some old hound dog stealing your customers. But we could never prove it.”

  Lydia leaned forward, fists on the table. “He killed an innocent dog? What the hell kind of doctor does that?”

  “Doc Hadley didn’t kill Chigger. Just poisoned his nose. Poor old boy couldn’t smell anything after that—no good at hunting, no good at anything. My folks still kept him—he just ate and slept on the porch or down at the docks until he died of old age.”

  WHILE THE OTHERS WERE STACKING THE dishes, Amanda’s cell phone rang. A normal ring, like a normal phone, thank goodness. She checked the number and recognized Dr. Nelson’s clinic. Could he have her lab results back already?

  She edged out to the living room, out of earshot, and answered. “Hello, it’s Amanda Mason.”

  “Amanda, it’s Faith.”

  “Faith, hi. Do you have my lab tests back already? Any idea what’s wrong with me?” The words poured out as if she’d turned on a spigot; she put a knuckle between her teeth to stop herself and give Faith time to answer.

  “Amanda, dear, don’t worry. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with you that a few good meals won’t take care of. In fact, we should schedule a date for you to come to the house for dinner soon. I wanted to let you know that I did some checking about that other girl, your patient.”

  “Tracey Parker?” Amanda forced herself to relax. Faith was right; she was overreacting.

  “You wanted to know if she was a study patient?”

  “Right. Her boyfriend said she was, but he didn’t know which study.”

  “Well, I don’t know if it helps or not, but she actually came to only two clinic appointments—dropped out of the study almost immediately. And that was several months ago.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Faith. I appreciate your looking into it.”

  “No problem. And get some rest—that will do you more good than anything, I guarantee it. Good night.” She hung up, and Amanda returned the phone to her pocket.

  Well,
that ruled out any problems with a research project gone awry. Not that she’d really thought that was possible—there were too many checks and balances.

  Which meant they still had no way of connecting the three patients—or Amanda.

  Lydia and the others joined her in the living room. Gina took the overstuffed chair by the window, Amanda and Nora sat on the couch where they could have easy access to the patient files, and Lydia leaned against the fireplace mantel.

  “Which patient was first?” she asked. “How did they present?”

  “Becky Sanborn. I was there when she came in,” Amanda answered. “Presented to the ER unresponsive with what appeared to be focal seizure activity but was later determined to be myoclonus and muscle fasciculations. She was nineteen, a student at Carnegie Mellon, no history of drug or medication use, no past medical history other than asthma as a child, no allergies, no family history. She died the next day without regaining consciousness. Her symptoms began several weeks prior, and she was seen at the neurology clinic by Lucas Stone. Evaluation negative and no gross findings on the postmortem, but microscopic results are still pending—we’re hoping to have them tomorrow.”

  Lydia nodded at her presentation. Amanda felt pleased with herself; it had been short but covered all the relative points—without any of the emotional turmoil she’d felt while watching Becky die. Maybe she could learn to detach herself, treat patients as patients instead of getting too involved.

  “And the second patient?”

  Nora shuffled the papers in front of her. “Michelle Halliday. Twenty-two, grad student at Pitt, presented to the ER with sudden onset of muscle weakness and numbness after a workout. Muscle fasciculations noted in the ER.” She looked up. “Gina, you were the resident on her case.”

  Gina jerked herself as if she’d been asleep. “I was?” Nora passed her a copy of the ER record. Gina scanned it and shrugged. “Guess I was. Looks like I turfed her to neuro right away; it was an obvious admit.”