Side Effects

by Bobby Hutchinson

  Side Effects

  Bobby Hutchinson

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  "You asked for a transfer? Without even telling me?"

  Alex's voice was shaking. She stared at her husband. He looked the same, but she suddenly felt as if he were a stranger.

  Cam watched her in silence, and several more charged moments passed before he answered. "You met Perchinsky at the Christmas party, remember?"

  Cam's boss. Alex nodded, wondering what the connection was.

  "Well, Perchinsky's been an addict for over a year. He put one of my guys in jeopardy, and I blew the whistle on him. Last Monday I testified at orderly room proceedings. Perchinsky was discharged from the force and he's facing jail time. Now I can't stay on Drug Squad. I have to get out, get far away."

  Alex shook her head, frowning in confusion. "But I don't understand, Cam. You did the right thing. Why should you have to leave? You love your job."

  "Yeah, well, that's all changed now."

  "So if I want to live with you, I'll have to give up my job at the hospital and move to this—this place, this KorbinLake."

  "I'm afraid so. I can't undo what's been done. All I can tell you is that I love you. Will you come with me, Alex?"

  Dear Reader,

  In the coal-mining valley where I grew up, a girl had two career choices: she could be either a teacher or a nurse. I chose to be a nurse, and I actually went off to nurse's training for all of a week before I realized that although the idea of medicine fascinated me, nursing just wasn't where I belonged. Storytelling wasn't a career option in those days, in that place, and it took many years before I knew myself well enough to try.

  That early enchantment with the healing arts never faded, however. It made me an avid reader of ail things medical, but.. .a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. When the idea for this series occurred to me, I was elated—here was a chance to create an entire medical dynasty, to perform operations and deliver babies and prescribe remedies. But then it dawned on me that romance writing didn't exactly qualify me for brain surgery.

  That's when my good friends stepped in, many of them involved in medicine, with excitement and enthusiasm and generosity, they answered questions, read parts of the manuscripts and gently corrected both my terminology and my surgical skills.

  I've had the time of my life researching and writing these books. (The next one will appear this summer.) May you have just as much enjoyment reading them.

  Love always, Bobby Hutchinson

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  ISBN 0-373-70723SIDE EFFECTS

  Copyright © 1997 by Bobby Hutohinson.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work In whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter Invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  "The most fundamental principle of medicine is Love."

  -Paracelsus (1493-1541)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My deepest gratitude to the medical experts who so generously and patiently answered questions, advised, read, corrected and made gentle suggestions that prevented me, a nonmedical person, from committing unintentional surgical mayhem on the bodies of my poor characters.

  Particular and heartfelt thanks to Pat Ford, RN, MN, to Dr. Greg McCloskey, to Monica Adamack, BSN,to Richard Adamack, EMA 3, ALS 2, and to Ross Holloway, Unit Chief, Infant Transport Team.

  CHAPTER ONE

  St. Joseph's Medical Center sprawled in Vancouver's watery June sunshine like a gigantic gray toad, solidly situated on a large and expensive chunk of land smack in the center of the city's downtown core, a few short blocks from both skid row and some of North America's most breathtaking and expensive beachfront real estate. The hospital had none of the attractive patina aging sometimes endows on even the ugliest architecture.

  St. Joe's had aged badly, its vast assortment of buildings patchworked haphazardly onto the original six-bed infirmary founded in 1914 by Mary Margaret Constan-tine, an intrepid and invincible sister superior with the Angels of Mercy.

  It was eight minutes before eleven on a Tuesday morning, and the emergency room was abnormally quiet.

  Emergency physician Dr. Alexandra Ross had been at work almost four hours and she'd only seen one other patient besides the one she was presently treating. The first patient had been what the staff called a "man-down," an alcoholic from the nearby skid row area who'd suffered a seizure with resulting lacerations and minor head injury. She could hear him in one of the observation cubicles, intermittently cursing and begging the nurses for a drink.

  This quiet time was undoubtedly just a lull before the hurricane struck, Alex mused as she looked at the X ray and assessed the young and healthy specimen of muscular manhood sitting in the wheelchair in front of her.

  He wore purple jogging shorts, a green headband and a white T-shirt. His bare right foot was propped on the chair's extended footrest, and the middle toe was obviously fractured.

  "It's a clean break, Mr. Siddon. We can either anesthetize you to set it or—" She cradled the man's wide, long foot in one hand, steadying it, and gave a sudden sharp pull on the crooked toe. Just as Alex had known they would, the clean edges of the bone snapped into place and the toe was straight again.

  "Or we can just do this," Alex purred.

  "Ooowww. Son of a bitch—" The young man turned red in the face and glared up at Alex from the wheelchair. "Damn it all, Doc, that hurt like hell."

  "Sorry, Mr. Siddon, but that was so much easier on you than having to undergo anesthesia just to set a toe, don't you agree?"

  She grinned wickedly at him, and after a moment, he attempted a white-lipped smile and nodded.

  "All we need to do now is bind this to the next digit, to keep it steady while it heals." She swiftly wound a length of gauze around the injured toe and the one next to it and secured it with tape.

  "Now, I'll just give you a prescription for pain, and then you're out of here in time for lunch. You allergic to anything?"

  He shook his head and Alex scribbled on her pad, ripped a page off and handed it to him. "Take these onl
y if and when you need them. Keep off that foot as much as you can. You'll need a set of crutches for a while, but your toe'll be like new in about six weeks. And don't go running into any more bricks, okay? Now, did someone bring you to Emerge, or shall I have Lorraine call you a cab?"

  "My buddy's right over there, waiting for me. Say, you work here all the time, Dr... ?" His eyes dropped to the nameplate attached to her lapel, lingering an instant too long on her breasts. "Dr. Ross?"

  "Yup, I'm afraid I'm here all of my working hours."

  Actually, a large portion of her life had been spent here, she mused. She'd been born in this very hospital thirty-four years ago. She'd interned here, done her residency here, gotten this job in Emerge three years ago, and she'd even met her husband here. There were times when Alex wondered what it was about her and St. Joe's.

  "You look awfully young to be a doctor."

  It was a comment Alex was accustomed to hearing. "It's the excitement of setting broken toes," she said breezily. "Keeps a person from aging."

  Mr. Siddon was now looking at Alex in an entirely different fashion than he had a moment before, taking in the riotous mop of thick golden brown curls reaching past her shoulders, the delicate features devoid of any makeup, the wide mouth, naturally rosy and full lipped. She had thick-lashed dark blue eyes and graceful curves not quite hidden by the white lab coat. He liked what he saw.

  "So, Doc, you ever get any time away from this joint, like, say, for food?" His voice was husky, his tone suggestive, the anger of a moment before transformed into heat of a different sort. "I know this great Italian restaurant just over on Robson. I'd love to take you there for lunch."

  Alex raised her eyebrows and smiled at him again, a smile totally devoid of any flirtatiousness. It was obvious his toe was better if other parts of his anatomy were kicking in. "Once in a long while they let me out, and when they do, I tend to spend time with my husband."

  It was his turn to give her a rueful grin. "Can't blame a guy for trying. He's a lucky man. Tell him I said so."

  "Shall do."

  The triage nurse, Leslie Yates, interrupted them. There was a note of urgency in her quiet voice.

  "Paramedics are arriving with a young male MCA—" it was the term the team used for motorcycle accident "—ETA three minutes. We're set up in two."

  "Thanks, Les. There goes our quiet morning." Adrenaline poured through Alex as she hurried with her small group of nurses to trauma room two. Hastily they donned protective clothing, sterile gloves and glasses. The room had an outside port for the ambulance's arrival, and in seconds the attendants hurried in with a stretcher.

  Alex glimpsed one scuffed high-heeled cowboy boot. The other boot was gone. A blue stocking covered the foot, and it was immobilized in a pillow splint.

  "Blood pressure 80 over 50, heart rate 50, respiration 34 and shallow—"

  Voices called back and forth, nurses moved, quick and purposeful. Organized chaos reigned, and Alex assessed the injuries.

  Fractured right ankle—

  He had a young man's strong, long, muscular legs, dark hair covering the areas not bleeding from cuts and abrasions.

  Deep laceration of upper left thigh—

  What was left of his clothing had been entirely cut away.

  Sandbags surrounded him.

  Spinal injuries

  One torn and bloody hand clutched the side of the gurney. The other was wrapped in a loose dressing.

  Definite injury to extremities—

  His strong, naked torso was half covered in gauze trauma dressing with blood seeping through.

  Probable internal injury. Liver? Spleen? Bleeding—

  Alex heard the anguished, steady sound coming from him, a raw, choking cry of mingled fear and agony that would have torn at her heart had she not heard similar sounds countless times before here in the ER.

  All that registered now was that the sounds were a good sign. At least his air passages were open and unobstructed.

  "Let's have a look-"

  The trauma team were blocking her from a clear view of the man's head.

  "What's the story here? When exactly did it happen?" The first hour was crucial; she needed to know exactly how much time she had left of that hour.

  She was rattling off questions and instructions as the attendants stepped aside and she stood directly over the patient.

  "Sir, can you—" She looked down into what had been an exceptionally handsome face, torn now and studded with shards of glass. Brown curls, only a shade darker than her own, were matted with dust and blood. The left cheekbone was shattered, and tanned skin lay bare from temple to chin.

  For an instant, time stopped.

  Alex made a strangled sound and her knees gave way. She had to grab the side of the gurney to keep herself erect, and bile rose in her throat. She swallowed it down, and her voice came out in a wavery, high-pitched cry.

  "Wade." The name seemed to well up out of the dizzy sickness building within. "Oh, my God, it's my brother, it's my brother, Wade—"

  "Dr. Palmer, you take over here." It was trauma nurse Helen Kramer's authoritative voice that broke the horrified, frozen tableau Alex's words created in the small crowd of people now grouped around the stretcher.

  The young intern, Palmer, shot Helen a panicked look.

  "Susan, page Dr. Chan or Dr. Murdoch. Get one of them down here stat to take over for Alex." She grasped Alex's arm. "Come with me. Let the rest of the team take care of him."

  Alex threw off Helen's hand and bent low over the stretcher.

  "Wade, it's me. It's Alex. Listen to me, Wade." His blue eyes, so much like her own, were open, but agony was reflected there instead of recognition.

  She didn't think he could see her, and she wasn't sure he heard her, either. A mask of pain contorted his face, and the terrible moaning continued unabated.

  "Wade, we're going to help you. Just concentrate on staying with us, okay?"

  Please, God, help us keep him alive. Please don't let my little brother die...

  The doors burst open behind her, and Dr. Henry Murdoch charged into the room with bull-like authority.

  "Get that portable X ray in here now," he began. "I'll need a cut-down tray, and get him typed and crossed. Send for a neurosurgeon—"

  Helen again took Alex's arm and gently but firmly led her out of the room.

  SERGEANT CAMERON ROSS drove the unmarked police car down the Vancouver streets, automatically choosing the route that would most quickly take him to the courthouse in the city's downtown core. He hoped to obtain a search warrant for a house in a quiet, expensive neighborhood where quantities of cocaine were being distributed to dealers by the son of one of the city's foremost politicians.

  He drove with the easy grace of a policeman totally familiar with the city, one hand on the wheel, the other curled around a foam coffee cup. He was running on caffeine and nervous energy these days.

  After nearly ten years on the RCMP drug squad, he was accustomed to the wide range of emotional reactions his job could produce in any single shift, all the way from mind-numbing boredom to gut-wrenching fear, often in a matter of seconds.

  But it wasn't either boredom or fear that was bothering him now. It was more a constant anxiety, a deep, gnawing uncertainty in the pit of his gut that wouldn't go away.

  If he could talk about it with Alex, maybe it would ease his tension, but so far, he hadn't been able to bring himself to confide in his wife. Maybe tonight. She was on days at the hospital, and they'd have some time together this evening. He'd tell her the whole sordid story tonight.

  Trouble was, he'd wanted to reach some kind of resolution about the whole mess himself before he talked to Alex, and so far, that hadn't happened. He was just as screwed up over it as he'd been two weeks ago. Two long weeks of being wrenched from sleep every hour, his body wet with sweat, stale sickness roiling in his stomach, his mind going over and over his decision and the upcoming hearing. Had it been the only alternative? Even now, in b
road daylight, Cam wondered.

  Fink, snitch, pipeline. He knew all too well the labels his fellow policemen were using about him. The fact that what Cam had done was make their working lives easier and safer had no bearing whatsoever on the way his fellow members viewed his actions.

  The police radio burbled out a steady, nearly indistinguishable stream of sound as Cam stopped at a light, not conscious of either driving or listening, his brain still going over events for what seemed the billionth time.

  Along with a small percentage of the other officers on Drug Squad, he'd known for over a year that Staff Sergeant Emil Perchinsky, NCO in charge of street crews and Cam's immediate supervisor, had become a junkie. The word was that Perchinsky had been cutting exhibits with corn sugar to supply his ever-increasing heroin habit.

  Perchinsky had become almost arrogant about it, knowing that the strict code of silence and loyalty to a fellow officer would protect him, and it had—until two weeks ago, when one of the young recruits Cameron was responsible for had almost died because Perchinsky, on heroin, loose-tongued and publicity happy, had leaked information to the press about a major roundup that was about to occur. As a result, the dealers knew that an undercover man had infiltrated their organization, and Constable Norm Cardinal had come within inches of being snuffed out.

  Cam still shuddered at the memory. He'd managed to warn Cardinal, get him to a safe house, but it was touch and go. The moment he knew for certain the young constable was safe, Cam had made his decision. He'd gone to the inspector in charge of Drug Squad and made a verbal and written statement attesting to the fact that Perchinsky was using.

  He wasn't surprised when he was totally unsupported. No one else would give statements, adhering to the strict code of silence among fellow officers, but Perchinsky had cut his own throat by refusing to take a drug test. He was suspended with pay for disobeying a direct order and then, desperate for the heroin he'd filched so easily from the exhibit locker, he'd been arrested on the street buying from a dealer. He was now facing orderly room and criminal proceedings.