Heartbeat

by Joan Johnston

  He took a step to the left.

  “I’ll see you Monday,” she said as she walked past him, shoulders back, chin high. She pulled the door open, then turned to look at him. “Oh, and Jack . . .”

  “What?”

  “Don’t go to sleep tonight. You might not wake up.”

  Chapter 5

  Maggie was chagrined that for the second time in two weeks she was running late. This time, she was tardy for SAG’s Monday morning Bioethics Committee meeting, where she acted as counsel for the hospital. That was a problem because the chair, Roman Hollander, was never late. The meeting always started on time and latecomers had to catch up as best they could. Maggie had never like playing catchup.

  She bypassed the crowd at the elevator and headed up the stairs to the second-floor conference room. She was wearing a black double-breasted Nieman Marcus knit with gold buttons and a tuxedo-fronted white silk blouse. If she had to confront Jack Kittrick sometime during the day, and she did, she wanted all the armor and ammunition she could muster.

  Maggie had spent the rest of the endless night after she left Jack’s house trying to decide whether to keep his secret or tell Roman what was going on. She had tossed and turned, plagued by vivid memories of the Texas Ranger’s potent kisses. She had spent a groggy day Sunday doing housework and laundry and thinking unaccountably-and constantly-about having sex with Jack Kittrick.

  When her alarm had gone off at 6 A.M. this morning, she was still suffering heart palpitations from an incredibly vivid dream, but she was too keyed up to linger in bed. She had climbed into her jogging shorts and shoes for her usual five-mile run, determined to sweat Jack Kittrick out of her system.

  Maggie was halfway out the door when she had turned back around, grabbed the kitchen phone, hit the button for a frequently dialed number, and waited for the call to be answered.

  “Jack Kittrick is a Texas Ranger,” she blurted. “He’s looking for somebody killing kids in the ICU with potassium chloride.”

  She listened impatiently, rubbing at her bloodshot eyes. “Easy for you to say. He wants me to help him with his investigation.”

  She frowned and shook her head. “I suppose it makes sense to help him. At least that way I’ll know everything he knows.”

  Maggie hung up the phone and headed out the door for her run. But the conversation had left a bad taste in her mouth. She hated the secrets, all the sneaking around. To make matters worse, Jack Kittrick struck her as the kind who always got his man . . . or woman . . .

  Maggie had run out of time after she’d showered to dry her hair completely. She’d put it up in a French twist and pulled a few wisps free, but it felt heavy on her head. She had just stepped through the stairwell door onto the second floor of the hospital—a little breathless because she’d decided to haul up her skirt and take the stairs two at a time—when a voice stopped her.

  “You’re a disgrace.”

  Maggie had learned to expect the insult every time her mother-in-law—former mother-in-law—addressed her, but it didn’t make it any easier to take. She pulled down the skirt that was hiked halfway to her hips, turned, and faced her nemesis. “Good morning, Victoria.”

  Maggie struggled mightily, and frequently failed, to achieve the “old money” look Victoria seemed to manage effortlessly. Of course, Victoria cheated. She really was “old money.” Victoria Cobb Wainwright had been rich and privileged from the day she was born.

  Despite Maggie’s personal feelings about the woman, she couldn’t help admiring Victoria’s perfect, blond coiffure, short and off her forehead, the pearl studs in her ears, the soft rose Chanel suit bearing a simple pearl and diamond bow-shaped Cartier pin, the dyed leather heels from Italy, and the matching clutch purse caught beneath her elbow. Victoria didn’t have a wrinkle anywhere-not even on her face.

  “I’m in a hurry, Victoria. The meeting’s about to start,” Maggie said.

  “I know. I’ve agreed to serve another term on the committee myself.”

  Maggie managed not to sigh. Victoria sat on the SAG Bioethics Committee as a concerned citizen—and a major contributor to the hospital’s expansion fund. The Wainwright Trauma Center, devoted to neurological patients, had been named after her husband, Richard Woodson Wainwright, who had died of a stroke two days after his only son’s death.

  Sometimes Maggie felt sorry for Victoria, losing both her husband and her son in so short a time, and ashamed that she’d done nothing to help ease her mother-in-law’s grief. But the truth was, Maggie had been too devastated to deal with her own grief, much less someone else’s. They had been no comfort to each other then. And they were a thorn in each other’s sides now.

  Victoria glanced at her diamond-studded Piaget and said, “Since the meeting has already started without us, I want a word with you before we go in.”

  “Make it quick,” Maggie said, glancing just as obviously at Cinderella’s gloved hands, working to keep the irritation out of her voice.

  “Was it really necessary for you to expose yourself that way at the picnic, Margaret?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maggie said.

  “I am talking about the ’Daisy Dukes,’ ” Victoria said, her voice dripping with disdain.

  “I don’t see what’s wrong with wearing a pair of cut-offs to a picnic,” Maggie protested.

  Victoria pressed her lips flat rather than argue, and Maggie was left to accept the censure or continue a dispute she had no chance of winning. The situation was especially galling because she had known the cut-offs were over the edge.

  “I also heard you left the picnic with a strange man,” Victoria said. “Is that true?”

  Maggie knew explanations were useless, but she made them anyway. “I left the picnic with a man, but he wasn’t a stranger. Jack Kittrick is an insurance investigator for the hospital. I accidentally hit him in the head with a baseball, and I escorted him home to make sure he arrived there safely.”

  “I advise you not to do it again,” Victoria said. “So long as you bear the Wainwright name, you owe a responsibility to this family.”

  “I know exactly what I owe this family,” Maggie said in clipped tones. Ten years ago, in the throes of unbearable grief, Maggie had made a confession to Victoria that—with the help of her brother—she had used to keep Maggie from abandoning the Wainwright family. It was something neither of them would ever forget, something Victoria could never forgive.

  Tension simmered between them, while Maggie braced herself for the next attack. “Is that all, Victoria?”

  “Are you attending the Cancer Society Gala on Friday?”

  “I have tickets.” Because Victoria was hostess for the fundraising event, Uncle Porter had bought a table for ten and given two tickets to Maggie and the rest to associates at the firm.

  “Do you have an escort?” Victoria asked.

  Maggie knew from experience that Victoria had stringent ideas about what was and was not socially correct at a charity function. One did not arrive at an event like the Cancer Society Gala alone. One came as half of a couple, and one’s partner had better be someone socially prominent. If Maggie didn’t speak up, she was going to find herself saddled with some scion of a noble Texas house who would bore her to death before they had gotten through the shrimp cocktail.

  “I’ve invited Mr. Kittrick to come with me,” she said. Surely the Texas Ranger had a tux. And she already knew he wasn’t likely to be out with friends or have a date on Saturday.

  Victoria’s brows lowered in disapproval, but not enough to wrinkle her forehead. And she didn’t come right out and say an insurance investigator wasn’t blue-blooded enough to suit her, so Maggie considered her escort approved.

  She stared into Victoria’s pale blue eyes, wondering what went on behind them. The woman puzzled Maggie. She should have wanted Maggie to stay as far away from her as possible, yet Victoria seemed to thrive on their confrontations. Could anyone really be as self-controlled, as self-disciplined as
Victoria was? Maggie had never seen a hair out of place, never seen her mother-in-law flustered or frantic—not even during that bitter, wintry week in Minnesota when first her son, and then her husband, had died.

  Nor had Maggie ever met anyone as coldly calculating as Victoria. Mother Wainwright had done her best from the start to separate “that conniving female” and her only son. Until the day Woody died, the two women had done battle over him. Maggie had won his heart. Victoria had claimed his soul.

  They could never be friends, and Maggie refused to expend the energy it would take to deal with Victoria as an enemy. It was easier to allow herself to be bullied on occasion. She didn’t mind giving Victoria her way to keep the peace. Especially since moving away from San Antonio was out of the question-for the moment.

  “Shall we go in?” Victoria said.

  “After you,” Maggie replied.

  Maggie watched Victoria through the door, but before she could follow, felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned and found Jack Kittrick standing right behind her.

  Her heart speeded up to a trot. So much for armor. Her power suit wasn’t working worth a damn. She felt as pliable as Silly Putty, as gooey inside as a bowl of her grandmother’s cornmeal mush and black-eyed peas.

  Jack was close enough that she got a whiff of his cologne, a spicy smell that made her think of pine trees and mountains. Texas Rangers didn’t wear uniforms, but unless they had on a Western-cut suit—and she was beginning to wonder if Jack owned one—they stuck to buff or dark brown Wranglers, a white shirt, tie, light-colored Western hat, and cowboy boots.

  Jack was wearing denim Levi’s, and he had skipped the tie and put on a fringed calfskin vest. He wasn’t dressed as a Ranger, but he didn’t look like any insurance investigator she’d ever met, either. On the other hand, in Texas, where individuality was admired and freedom insisted upon, Western attire was always proper.

  “How long have you been standing there?” she asked.

  “Long enough to know I’m your date for the gala,” he said with a grin that crinkled his eyes at the corners and showed off the creases on either side of his mouth. “Will there be dancing?”

  “Victoria insists on an orchestra,” she said, “but I don’t usually dance.”

  “Don’t know how? Or haven’t had the right partner?” Jack asked.

  “Of course I know—Maybe it would be better if I tell Victoria your plans changed, and you couldn’t make it.” Maggie was distressed at the way the teasing laughter in his eyes tied her up in knots, like a homemade grass rope on a cold, wet morning. She stared at him, tongue-tied for maybe the first time in her life.

  “Dancing. Saturday. I know a good opportunity to hold you in my arms when I see it.”

  “Mr. Kittrick—”

  “Jack,” he said. “We’d better get moving, Maggie. We’re late for the meeting.”

  “You aren’t invited, Jack.”

  “I had a talk with your hospital administrator, Mr. Delgado, and I have the run of the place until my investigation is complete. Shall we?” he said, gesturing toward the conference room door.

  Maggie turned her back on him and stalked off, then waited at the door and motioned for him to go in first. As he sauntered past, he shot her a suggestive, lopsided grin that made her insides clench.

  Maggie stood frozen beside the doorway. When it came to matters of the heart, she set the rules herself. No dating. No involvement, because involvement led to commitment. She had proved ten years ago that she wasn’t capable of committing for the long haul. Three strikes and you were out. Maggie had retired to the dugout, but Kittrick kept dragging her back onto the field, demanding she play.

  And God, she wanted to play.

  Maybe it was some mid-life crisis thing. She had turned thirty-five last month and been forced to acknowledge her life was nearly half over. Maybe she wanted one last, desperately romantic fling before she hit middle age.

  That must be it. She missed the romance. Hell. She missed the sex.

  Maggie pursed her lips. What was wrong with that? It meant she was normal. If only she hadn’t ended up sprawled on top of Jack on Saturday. If only he hadn’t given her that toe-curling, early morning kiss. If only he hadn’t pressed his body against hers at the door and let her feel the irrefutable evidence of his desire.

  Maggie sighed inwardly. She was going to have to make some sort of decision about Jack Kittrick. But not right now. Right now she had business to attend to.

  Maggie hadn’t realized how long she’d hesitated at the door. The minutes of the previous meeting had already been read and approved by the time she took her place at the foot of a large, rectangular conference table. She set her black leather briefcase on the polished surface in front of her and opened it to retrieve a yellow legal pad and the silver Tiffany pen that had been her law school graduation gift from Uncle Porter. He had made her dream of becoming a lawyer come true, but his generosity hadn’t come without strings. She was paying him back every penny . . . with interest.

  Jack took a chair in the corner and winked when he caught her peeking at him. She was appalled at the way her body tightened inside. She averted her eyes, focusing on the pad in front of her. She doodled a daisy, something she used to do in college when she was daydreaming about the future. She clutched the pen, took a deep breath, and concentrated on what was being said.

  Once odds and ends of business had been dealt with, Roman introduced visitors to the meeting, including Jack.

  Then they went to work.

  Whenever a serious ethical dispute arose over treatment of a patient, the SAG Bioethics Committee, composed of doctors, nurses, social workers, and interested members of the community like Victoria, listened to the facts given by the doctor, the family, and whatever legal counsel might attend on behalf of the family, and came up with a nonbinding recommendation for action. The committee served as an arbiter of community feeling about medical procedures and hospital policy and helped to keep the hospital functioning within acceptable ethical parameters.

  This morning Joe Ray Belton and his mother sat near the head of the conference table, waiting for the committee’s recommendation on whether Joe Ray’s father, Sam, should be removed from life support.

  “Eighty-three-year-old Sam Belton suffered a heart attack at home and was put on life support in the emergency room at the hospital,” Roman began, stating the facts of the case. “Unfortunately, Mr. Belton suffered a stroke later that same day and slipped into a coma. Tests revealed the patient has no brain activity, and I recommended life support be discontinued. Mrs. Belton agreed.”

  It should have been a simple matter to turn off the machines at that point, except Joe Ray Belton had objected.

  Normally, this sort of decision never got as far as the bioethics committee. Texas law was pretty definite on the subject of unplugging folks who could be sustained on life support. The wishes of the patient were followed, or if those wishes weren’t known, the doctor and the family made the decision at bedside.

  Only, sometimes the doctor and the family didn’t agree what should be done. Or, as in this case, the doctor and one family member agreed, while another family member didn’t. Those cases were presented to the hospital bioethics committee for discussion and a nonbinding disposition that usually helped families come to some agreement.

  “I can understand Joe Ray’s concern for his father,” Roman said. “But I concur with Mrs. Belton in this matter. Machines are keeping Sam Belton’s body alive. The rest of him, the thought processes that made him who he was, are already dead. It’s time to let him go.”

  Maggie watched Joe Ray’s face as Dr. Hollander put the weight of his medical opinion on the side of Joe Ray’s mother in the decision to unplug his father. The forty-seven-year-old plumber’s mouth twisted in an agonized grimace. His eyes looked tortured, as though his own life were at stake.

  Maggie looked away to avoid his pain.

  “Maybe he’ll get better,” Joe Ray pleaded. “Maybe—”
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  “I’m very sorry,” Dr. Hollander said with authoritative finality. “Your father is legally dead, Mr. Belton. The machines keeping him alive are needed for other patients who can survive only with their help.”

  Joe Ray made a sound in his throat like a wounded animal. It was obvious he didn’t want to let go, and just as obvious he wasn’t being given much of a choice.

  Maggie’s job at the meeting was to make clear what legal options were available to the doctors and the hospital and to avoid legal pit-falls where they threatened. No legal issues were involved here, only the moral and ethical . . . and human ones.

  The committee didn’t take long to make its recommendation.

  “So we’re all agreed,” Dr. Hollander said. “Life support should be discontinued.”

  Joe Ray hissed out a long, rattling breath that sounded a lot like a dying man. “All right,” he said. “I give up.”

  “It’s all right, Joey,” Mrs. Belton said. “He’s with God already.”

  Joe Ray rose slowly, tears visible on his cheeks, and helped his mother from her chair. They left the meeting clinging to one another.

  “I’ll arrange for Joe Ray to have some time with his father before we turn off life support,” Roman said.

  Heads nodded and voices murmured assent for the doctor’s compassion.

  Maggie shot a sideways glance at Jack. Surely Roman’s consideration for Joe Ray Belton had convinced him the doctor was no murderer.

  “Since there’s nothing else for us to consider today,” Roman said, interrupting her musing, “this meeting is adjourned.”

  As the committee members dispersed, Maggie was surprised to see Jack approach Roman—his prime suspect—directly.

  “Doctor, may I have a word with you?”

  Maggie eavesdropped without feeling the least bit guilty. She had a stake in making sure Jack didn’t arrest the wrong man.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about the death of Laurel Morgan,” Jack said.