by Jaime Maddox
Ward patted Jeannie’s back. “I’m giving it six months, Jeannie. If she’s not ready to commit by then, I’m coming home.”
Their food arrived, and both of them dove in. “Tell me your plans,” Jeannie said after chewing and swallowing and wiping sauce from her mouth.
“I have a meeting today at four with the HR person, where I’ll get my ID badge and orientation and all that jazz. Computer passwords, policy manuals, you know the drill. I start work tomorrow morning.”
“You ER docs don’t know the meaning of the word Saturday, do you?” Jeannie deadpanned.
Ward smiled through the cheesesteak she was chewing, knowing well that most doctors, Jeannie included, had worked their share of weekends.
“So you’ll be there for the whole month?”
Ward cleared her throat. “Yes, I signed up for five months with the locum tenens company. I’ll spend a month at five different hospitals, all of them in the mountains, and then I’m taking August off. I’ll start back here in September.”
“Well, you’re a skilled physician, Ward. You should be able to handle the medicine. My concern is your heart. How will you handle seeing Jess?”
Ward forced a smile. “I have to do this, Jeannie. Maybe it’ll work out, and maybe not. But if I don’t give it a chance, I’ll never know, right?”
Jeannie looked skeptical as she chewed, and Ward spoke again, trying to convince Jeannie. Perhaps she was talking to herself, as well, trying to fortify her doubts. “I know you don’t like her, Jeannie, but have you ever thought about Jess? What she’s going through? She lost her mom, and she’s unsure of her future. Of everything. I’m sure she feels awful.”
“To answer your question, no. I haven’t thought about her. We all lose our mothers one day, and it sucks. But you don’t do this to someone you love. She could have seen a therapist, or taken some time off—”
“That’s exactly what she’s doing. She took some time to figure it out. I can’t blame her for that.”
“She’s hurting you,” Jeannie said softly, but then quickly changed the subject. “Anyway, I’m not here to preach,” she said, and handed Ward a large mailing envelope.
Ward took it and read the words lake house printed on the front.
“It’s self-explanatory. Directions, keys, alarm code, cable instructions, local restaurants, and shopping. All your questions should be answered when you read this.”
Ward smiled. “I really appreciate this, you know.”
Jeannie waved her hand dismissively. “I’m happy the house will get used. Bobby’s the only one who spends time there these days, and since he travels so much for his job, his time is limited. But if you come home to find a tall, incredibly handsome young man who looks just like me, that’s my son. I’ll try to warn you if he’s coming, or if anyone else is, but for the most part, you should have the place to yourself.”
“Well, I don’t know how much I’ll use it. They do offer housing at all of these hospitals, but who knows what it’ll be like. I could find myself in a dingy motel room.”
“Exactly. If you need a place, it’s there. If not, no big deal.”
“Will I see you and Sandy at all?”
Jeannie laughed. “Maybe one weekend a month, but who knows. We have two houses in Philly, one in New York, two in the Poconos, and now one in Rehoboth. I never know where I’m going until Sandy tells me. But I’d like to see you, so let’s try to make a date when you know your schedule.”
Ward picked up the bill and left money on the counter, then walked with Jeannie out into the cold final day of February. “Spring’s coming, Ward. New birth. New life. You’ll be fine.” Jeannie’s hug was fortifying, and Ward was thankful for her and all the good people in her life.
Driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s Northeast Extension, Ward pondered Jeannie’s words. She had no idea what they meant in her situation. What new life was in store for her? Starting over alone? Starting over with Jess? Jess had mentioned a baby. Was that in her future? She’d never seriously thought of it. Who knew?
Friday afternoon traffic was light, and Ward found herself at the hospital well over an hour early. The head of human resources seemed happy to see her, and Ward suspected the woman’s weekend would begin as soon as she’d finished orienting her. Sure enough, an hour later, after processing an ID badge and filing paperwork, issuing computer codes and guiding a tour, the woman slipped out the door and left Ward to inspect the emergency department where she’d spend the next thirty-one days.
“Hi, I’m Ward Thrasher,” she said to the slim, dark-haired man seated at the X-ray monitor. “I’m the locums doc.”
“Edward Hawk. You’re my replacement. Would you like to start now?” he asked, meeting her gaze, and Ward wasn’t sure if he was joking. She was startled by the intensity with which he stared at her and his striking good looks. He was small, and his build was slender, but his demeanor suggested a confidence and competence that made him seem bigger. He wore a suit, which surprised her. Surgeons and ER docs tended to get messy, and cotton scrubs were a lot easier to launder than wool pants. Ward supposed the administration liked the suit though. He’d be a tough act to follow.
Responding to his comment, Ward chuckled. The Friday festivities seemed to have started, and Ward noticed a few patients hanging out of doorways and a pile of charts that needed attention. She wasn’t credentialed to start until the next day, though, and she knew he understood that, so she didn’t respond to his question.
“Did you have a good month?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yes, I did. It’s a nice place to work. Steady volume, not usually overwhelming,” he said, and waved his hand to the stack of charts. “Competent staff, good back-up. I can’t complain.”
“Where do you go next?” she asked.
“Carbondale,” he said.
Ward smiled in recognition. That was the next leg of her journey, too. “So I guess I follow you, huh?”
“I guess. I don’t know all the rules. This is my first month with the company.”
“Gotcha. Well, I won’t keep you. I just wanted to introduce myself. Have a safe trip.”
He nodded as he walked away, and Ward talked to a few other staff members before heading out. The ER was busy, and no one had time to chat.
It wasn’t quite five o’clock on a Friday night, and it took Ward only half an hour to unpack and settle in at the quaint home provided by the hospital. It featured a stellar view of the parking lot. There was off-street parking, and she could walk to the hospital and the corner store. If Edward Hawk had stayed at this house, he had already packed his bags, because the place was empty. Everything was in place, and the surfaces sparkled as if recently attacked with a dust rag. As the lone occupant of the ten-room house, she wouldn’t be crowded, but she’d check out Jeannie’s lake house when she’d finished the last of four consecutive shifts the following Tuesday. For the moment, though, she had nothing to do.
A pile of DVDs sat next to a small, flat-screen television, and Ward leafed through them, but none were appealing. In the study, a wall of bookshelves was filled with volumes of old medical books as well as works of fiction. Normally, the texts would have fascinated her, but not today.
Being this near to Jessica was upsetting her equilibrium, and she felt an inexplicable pull to her. She knew she shouldn’t stop by without calling, but the fear that Jess would say no was too real to suppress. So Ward climbed into her SUV and programmed the GPS to direct her toward Garden. Forty-five minutes later, she was parked in the driveway of the Victorian that had been home for four months. Jess’s car was in front of hers.
The back door opened before Ward even reached the porch, but instead of the warm welcome she’d hoped for, Jess’s expression and her manner were neutral. “Hey,” she said.
Ward heard no emotion in her voice—no anger, surprise, happiness. Suddenly she regretted her decision to drop by and scrambled for an excuse. “I needed to pick up some clothes,” she said. “And my fi
shing pole.”
“Oh,” Jess said, nodding. She seemed relieved, as if Ward might have stopped by to assault her, or argue. Then she seemed to remember her manners and offered Ward a drink.
“No, thanks. I have a long drive.”
Jess nodded. “That’s smart. I guess you learned your lesson.”
Ward’s mouth dropped open in shock. They’d spoken of that night a few times during the two months since then, but it wasn’t usually the opening gambit. Either Jess was in a rotten mood, or Ward’s visit was really making her uncomfortable.
Ward shook her head, and when she spoke, her voice was low, choked with tears. “I still can’t believe that happened, Jess. I’ve never done anything like that. You know that. I almost feel like I was drugged or something.”
“Huh!” Jess said, and began to pace, waving her arms around. “You’re unbelievable, Ward, do you know that? You get drunk and assault two men, and then you try to blame it on someone else.”
Ward ran her fingers through her hair and studied the high windows looking out to the mountains beyond. They were still covered in snow, and in the fading light of day, the world looked as gray as she felt. “I guess it doesn’t make sense. It’s just so hard to understand. First the violence and then the blackout. There has to be a reason.”
“Why would anyone drug you? Do you think George wanted to rape you? Or was it Emory?”
Ward looked up and met Jess’s eyes. “No, Jess. Emory wants you, not me. If he was going to drug someone, it would be you.”
Jess’s head popped up, as if she’d been hit by the force of the words. Then she shook her head. “You’re ridiculous. Now maybe you should get your things and go.”
*
Pulling back the curtain, Jess watched Ward pack her car and back out of the driveway. The reel of their conversation replayed continuously in her mind. Emory wants you, not me. If he was going to drug someone, it would be you. Pushing her memory back a little further, she thought of a night two weeks earlier. Valentine’s Day and the dinner she’d shared with Emory to protect what little was left of Ward’s reputation.
He’d insisted on picking her up at her house, and then after she’d endured mediocre food and a stale monologue of childhood memories, he’d refused to take her home. Instead, they’d stopped at George’s pub, and he’d steered her to a table where some of his friends were celebrating the evening.
Jess knew most of them, but like the town, she’d left them behind when she went away to college. They were good people, though, and she quickly found herself engaged in conversation with two classmates who’d been together since tenth grade. While Em went to the bar to order beverages, they told her about their children, and she listened with interest. She was suddenly interested in everyone’s children. She was surprised when Em returned and placed a beer before her. “I don’t drink beer,” she said, annoyed. She’d asked him for a Coke and wondered if he was trying to get her drunk. He’d ordered a bottle of wine at dinner, instead of the glass she’d requested, and they’d ended up wasting most of it.
“Hey, no problem. I’ll take care of it for you,” their classmate said, and reached for the glass. Before he could grasp it, Emory reached out and knocked it over, spilling the beer not only on the table, but on Jess’s pants as well.
Fuming, she’d escaped to the bathroom and called one of her friends for a ride home. She hadn’t spoken to Em since then, in spite of his many calls and visits to the ER. She’d told him politely she wasn’t interested and hoped he was honorable enough to keep their agreement. So far he had.
Jess stared into the early night, focusing on the snow still piled against the sidewalk in front of the house. She’d assumed Em had reacted angrily at their classmate, not wanting him to drink her beer. But what if it wasn’t anger? What if it was fear? Emory wants you, not me. If he was going to drug someone, it would be you.
Had Em drugged her beer that night? Shaky legs carried Jess down the hallway and into the kitchen where her phone was plugged into the charger on the wall. Picking it up, she dialed a number she now knew by heart. “Medical center, how may I direct your call?”
“Hi,” she said. “This is Dr. Benson. Can I have the lab, please?”
Her call was answered on the first ring. “Laboratory, this is Dave speaking.”
“Hi, Dave. It’s Dr. Benson. Do you still have the spinal fluid on Dr. Thrasher?”
“Hold on, Doc. I’ll check. We usually keep that stuff for six months, so I’ll bet it’s here.”
Jess tapped the counter, waiting, wondering. How did her life get so fucked up? When did she become so unhappy? Why did Ward seem to make her so angry? Ward was never anything but kind to her, and other than the night she’d gone into attack-mode, she’d never done anything wrong. At least that Jess knew of. But everyone has secrets, right? She wondered if she was really mad at Ward at all. After all, Ward’s behavior that night had given her the escape she needed. Why was she so angry? Why did she say the cruel things she did? Was it just easier to be angry than sad? And if she thought about it, she supposed she was a little sad about how things had turned out with Ward. Or was she really just sad in general? It was too exhausting to think about.
It wasn’t so long ago that they’d been happy, that she’d wanted Ward. Back then she would have pulled Ward into her arms right there in the driveway and then offered her a coffee when she walked through the door. She would have built a fire in the living-room fireplace and spent an evening together, both of them doing their own thing, but with a comfortable companionship that Jess once enjoyed. Being close to Ward was dangerous, though. Ward’s drinking made Jess edgy. Ward was too soft, too. Jess needed more definition in her life, not someone like Ward who went along with everything and didn’t argue. Jess needed some accountability, someone who stood up for herself, stood up to her. Someone who cared enough to question her decisions, not just give in.
She longed for something else, too—to let her guard down and be free, to be herself. What would Ward say if she knew the real Jess? What would anyone say? Maybe being alone was her best option.
Shaking her head to remove the uncomfortable thoughts, Jess willed herself into the mind of Dr. Benson. Jess was really fucked up, but Dr. Benson was still a highly functional, exceptionally talented physician. Right now, Ward needed Dr. Benson. And if Ward was right about the drugs, Jess needed Dr. Benson, too.
“Doc?” Dave asked a minute later.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“We have a whole tube.”
Jess sighed in relief. Suddenly, she needed to know the answer that spinal fluid was hiding. At first she’d resisted the tox panel, because of possible legal issues, but she was no longer worried about that. Ward had left town, and Em and George weren’t pressing charges. It was time to know what really happened that night. “Can you send them out to the lab for a tox screen?”
*
Edward glanced at the tires on the Porsche Cayenne, assuring adequate inflation, and climbed into the driver’s seat, immensely pleased with himself. Happy. He had struggled for weeks after his termination, questioning his future, wondering when he’d work again. A deep depression—deeper than normal—had set in as he cruised the Gulf of Mexico aboard his father’s boat. And then his assistant had called about the locum tenens work, and suddenly, a world of possibilities had opened to him.
Locums work allowed him to move around frequently without raising suspicions. It was ideal for him, and he wondered why it had taken him so long to figure that out. Sure, he had to work in Pennsylvania, and in small hospitals, without the benefit of coverage in most specialties. But because of that, he was given tremendous freedom to practice emergency medicine as he saw fit. His time passed quickly as he filled his days and nights with work, inserting endotracheal tubes to breathe for patients, huge IV catheters for transfusion of blood and fluids, and pacemakers to make their failing hearts beat.
Best of all, he’d had the opportunity to commit murder, not once or
twice, but five times during the first weeks of work. He wondered if he might be doing too much, but then he watched his colleagues carefully and knew no one was suspicious. It was heavenly! The scent of the most recent death he’d caused still lingered in his nostrils, and the adrenaline flowing through his veins made him feel like he could fly.
Meeting Ward Thrasher had been interesting. She seemed so normal, but she couldn’t be. Why would anyone normal do this kind of work, away from friends and family, drifting from place to place like a migrant worker? Only someone like him, who had no friends and despised their family, would choose this work. Or someone who had a secret to hide.
What was Ward’s secret? He doubted she was a murderer like him. He was a student of murder, had read everything available on the great serial killers, and he thought it highly unlikely that a female physician would be grouped in his category. Drugs or alcohol? Highly likely. Impaired physicians often burned bridges, and starting over in a remote place where no one knew their secrets was a good idea. Or maybe she was just incompetent and trying to hide from the prying committees that constantly interfered in the practice of medicine.
Who knew? Likely, he’d never find out the truth about Ward. Then he felt a sudden chill as he realized she might be asking the same questions about him. Did people wonder why he was doing this sort of work, traveling instead of settling down, working in the country instead of the big city where he’d trained?
He’d have to think of a good story to tell people, something that would stop the questions before they started. Before people had a chance to become suspicious. A dead fiancé, perhaps? Or maybe just a bad breakup. Financial worries? He could hardly make that argument while driving the Porsche. He’d go with the girl problems; that made sense. He’d have to think of an entire story, like a screenplay. Names, dates, places. Maybe several sets that he could change monthly. It would be so exciting!
