A Doctor's Watch

by Taylor, Vickie

  “Thanks, Nance.”

  He headed to the office to log on to the computer. It looked like it was going to be another long night.

  “Let the interrogation begin!” Mia greeted Ty cheerily from the door to his office. It was smaller than she’d expected, and a little dingy, with worn carpeting and folders stacked a foot deep on his metal desk. Her room was nicer than this.

  “Ah, there it is!” he called back just as cheekily.

  She frowned. “What?”

  “That moxie of yours. I missed it this morning.”

  “Moxie?”

  “You know. Chutzpah. Courage.”

  She edged into the room. “You think I have courage?”

  “Yup. And this isn’t an interrogation room.”

  “Isn’t it where I stretch out on your couch—” She glanced around his dismal domain. “Which you seem to be missing, by the way. And you grill me about my domineering father, my submissive mother and how I feel about everything from global warming to rap music?”

  How on earth did he cure the infirmed without a leather couch?

  He picked a coat off the back of his chair—the coat that had been taken from her at the front door yesterday—and threw it at her. “Actually, this is where we take a walk.”

  She blinked. “Really?”

  “You’re a runner, right? Figured you’d appreciate a little exercise. I’d jog with you, but I’m afraid I’d collapse before we made it around the building.”

  What was it about him that he knew exactly how to throw her off balance? “And here I came with sword in hand ready to do battle, and you’re being nice,” she said.

  “Nice is bad?” He grabbed his own beat-up leather coat and ushered her out the door.

  “No,” she admitted. “Nice is good.”

  Nice was really, really good when she got outside and filled her lungs with fresh, crisp air.

  They walked in silence awhile, meandering down a path that had been blown clear of snow. A few hardy birds flitted among the fir trees and sun blazed off a crystal-blue pond not yet frozen over at the bottom of the hill.

  “Are you really not going to ask me any questions?” she finally blurted.

  He gave her an innocent look that was pure mischief. She should recognize the boyish expression. She’d seen it a thousand times on Todd’s face.

  “What should I ask?”

  “Very clever. Making me set the agenda.”

  “I’m serious. What do I need to know about you?”

  There he went again, upsetting her equilibrium. “That I’m not crazy?” she tried.

  “I never said you were.”

  “I have no desire to hurt myself.”

  “That’s good.”

  She stopped. “You are infuriating, you know that?”

  He nudged her along, toward the pond. “How so?”

  “You’re not following the rules. You’re supposed to ask stupid probing questions and I’m supposed to dodge them.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Look, you’ve been through this before. It’s obvious you had a doctor who was not, shall we say, very creative in his therapeutic technique. I’m just trying a different technique.”

  “What technique would that be?”

  “Getting to know you.”

  Whammo! Not just off balance, but knocked on her butt.

  “You want to know me?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, why not? You seem like an interesting person.”

  “I’m just used to doctors who would rather dissect me.”

  “Like I said…not very creative.”

  “Or sincere,” she added, and looked at him quizzically. “So if you get to know me, and I turn out to be a pretty normal, okay kind of person, are you going to break me out of this nuthouse and let me get back to my life?”

  “That’s the goal, yes.”

  “The goal, but not the plan.”

  “I don’t have a plan. We’re working on your agenda, remember?”

  “My agenda is to get home.”

  “You’ve made that clear.”

  She studied him as they walked. He had a good face. Not classically handsome, but kind eyes, a strong jaw. A little white scar beneath his lower lip to remind her that boys will be boys.

  “All rightie, then. Getting to know me. I’m five foot eight, one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. I wear a size-eight shoe and my favorite comfort food is macaroni and cheese. I pretend it’s a treat for Todd when I make it for Saturday lunch, but really it’s for me. What about you?”

  “What about me?” He jammed his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

  “My agenda, right? If I’m going to tell you all my secrets, I want to know something about you, too. Turnabout is fair play.”

  “Hmm.” He jammed his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he mulled it over. “I suppose. I’m five foot eleven and a half—it always pissed me off that I never hit six foot. A hundred and seventy-eight pounds and I wear a size nine. Good enough?”

  “Stat sheet. What about the good stuff?”

  “Right, comfort food. Sushi.”

  She made a gagging sound. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Seaweed and raw fish. Gotta love it.”

  “My husband liked sushi. He dragged me along whenever he found a new place, always insisting I’d find something on the menu I would like.”

  She wondered if he’d known about Sam’s sushi taste somehow, and was devious enough to use the little details of her married life to get inside her head.

  “Did you? Find something?”

  “Every time.” She grinned. “The sake.”

  “Ah, the liquid diet.”

  “What else do you want to know about me?” She found herself surprisingly willing to tell him. He was disarming that way.

  “No questions, remember? You decide what we talk about.”

  She sighed. “All right, let’s get to the meat of it, then. A few years ago, I was feeling pretty down because I’d lost my blood family. My mom, dad and sister were all gone. Then Sam was killed in a car accident on Highway 1, took a curve too fast in the dark and drove right into the ocean, they said. All of a sudden, the loneliness was overwhelming. I started to have a hard time doing the simplest things, like making the bed or reading Todd a story. That was the hardest part, knowing that I wasn’t giving my son what he needed. He’d lost his dad, and now it was like his mom was just fading away. I felt…transparent. And the more pressure I put on myself to get with it, the guiltier I felt when I failed. Eventually I just gave up. Trying was too painful, so I sent Todd off to day camp and swallowed a bottle of pills. I didn’t even know what I was taking.”

  She shook her head. “Now it all seems like a dream—a nightmare really—or a story I read or something. It doesn’t seem real. Even I can’t understand why I did it, so I don’t expect you to.”

  “I have a pretty good idea how desperate life can become when you’re in constant pain.”

  She wasn’t sure what that meant. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know that much about him after all. He was her doctor, and she needed his professional support to end this latest nightmare.

  “Luckily for me, I had totally forgotten my housekeeper was due that day. When I didn’t answer the bell, she let herself in with her key and found me on the floor in the bedroom. She’s the one who called 911.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t really luck.”

  “You’re saying it would have been better if Roberta hadn’t been there?”

  “Of course not. I’m saying sometimes our subconscious is smarter than our conscious mind. Maybe you didn’t really forget that the housekeeper was due. Subconsciously you knew she’d find you. I’m saying you didn’t really want to die.”

  “Maybe.” She wasn’t sure she believed that, but she’d take anything positive he offered. “I ended up in the hospital, as you know. For a while, I just felt sorry for myself, but eventually I knew I had to get out of there. I couldn’t live like that. I w
orked hard and got my body and my mind healthy again. Despite my doctor’s lack of creativity, I did everything he told me, everything he asked of me. He really was a good doctor, and in time, I got better. I did it for myself and for Todd. On the day I was discharged, I swore I’d never go back. I’d never let myself fall so far again. And I haven’t. I don’t want to kill myself, but apparently someone else out there does.”

  She tipped her chin defiantly, daring him to contradict her. He didn’t.

  More silence from him.

  “It’s okay. You can ask me questions now.”

  “Nope. I have a better idea.”

  She hooked one eyebrow at him.

  “Let’s head back inside. I want to get you some paper and a pen from the nurses’ supply.”

  “What for?”

  “You have a homework assignment. I want you to write down exactly what happened on the bluff and in the clinic in Eternal.”

  “Why?”

  “So that we can give it to the police. If someone’s trying to kill you, they should be investigating.”

  She stopped in her tracks. She just about had to pick her jaw up off the ground to talk. “You believe me?”

  He kept walking ahead of her. “We’ll see. Let’s just get it all written down for now.”

  She jogged to catch up to him. Her pulse hammered in her veins. Could he really believe her? She hardly dared hope, yet she couldn’t help herself.

  Hope, it seemed, was as hard to kill as she was.

  Chapter 6

  “You’re kidding, right?” Chuck Campbell, an old school friend who was now a senior corporal with the Fulmer County Sheriff’s Department, shot Ty a look of disbelief.

  “No. I want you to interview her.”

  Chuck laid the handwritten pages he’d just finished reading on the edge of Ty’s desk, kicked back in his chair and put his boots up beside them. “Old buddy, you wouldn’t be sending me on a wild-goose chase now, would you?”

  “Would I do that to you?”

  “Remember when we were in fifth grade and you told me you’d overheard a couple talking about burying a bag of money they’d stolen down by the old covered bridge? And then there was the time in junior high when you pretended to be a secret admirer and left a note in my locker saying you’d be waiting for me. Only the note just led to another note and so on. I spent all day chasing the wind.”

  “All right, all right.” Ty waved his hand. “Can we focus here?” he said, though he was smiling, too. Those were the days…and he’d had precious few of them as a child.

  Turning serious again, he chose his next words carefully. He was treading a fine ethical line here. “You know that by law I can’t discuss the specifics of any illness Mia might or might not have.”

  “Mia now, is it?”

  Ty ignored the insinuation. Mostly because it was true. “Or her treatment. But speaking in general terms, you can’t just convince a delusional person that what they saw—or believe they saw—didn’t happen, because to them, it did happen. It’s that real to them.”

  “I get it. But if that’s the case, what good is my interviewing her going to do?”

  “First of all, it will reassure her that there are people who want to help her, that there are people who will listen.”

  “Isn’t that just playing into her delusions?”

  How did he explain a graduate course in psychotherapy in thirty seconds or less?

  “I’m not saying every doctor would agree with the approach. But I believe that a patient like Mia—a patient—” he corrected himself, remembering this was supposed to be a hypothetical discussion “—who is smart and is generally grounded in reality will figure out that something isn’t right about that false memory if they can take the emotion out of it.”

  Chuck pulled Mia’s account of what had happened closer with his fingertips. “Like writing it down?”

  “And telling it to a cop.”

  “I’m not a shrink, Ty.”

  “Good, because she’s already got one of those.”

  “What if I make her worse? Screw her up?”

  “Just get her to tell you what happened the way you would any witness. You don’t have to tell her you believe her story, but don’t belittle her for it, either. Just…keep an open mind.”

  Chuck sighed and dropped his feet off the desk. “Open mind. Right. Let’s get this over with.”

  Ty followed him to the door, where the deputy stopped, leaning on the jamb. “This is just some weird witch-doctor ritual you’re using to help this girl, right? You don’t really think someone tried to kill her.”

  He didn’t, he had to admit, if only to himself. He wanted to—even catching a would-be assassin seemed a less daunting task than curing a difficult mental disorder.

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt her.”

  “Only three motives for murder—passion, power or money.”

  Ty shook his head. “Nothing’s clicking for me. I could ask around, talk to the family. If you think there’s a chance—”

  Chuck grinned. “Tell you what. You handle the witch-doctor rituals. Leave the detective work to me.”

  Sound advice, Ty figured, yet his mind wouldn’t stop spinning those three little words. Passion. Power. Money.

  He ruled out power. The one love of Mia’s life—excepting her son—was gone. She didn’t have power over much of anything. But money…

  From what he’d read in her file, Mia Serrat had lots of money.

  Mia jogged little circles around Ty. “Come on, just pick up your feet a little. Just a little bounce in the toes. You can do it.”

  “I prefer to walk, thank you.” He sounded stern, but the wrinkles at the corner of his mouth gave him away. He’d shown up this morning and again in the evening at her door to get her. She had a feeling he enjoyed their walks almost as much as she did.

  She stopped running and fell into step beside him. “Lazy.”

  He raised his right hand. “Flag-carrying, chest-thumping proud member of the lazy doctor club.”

  She pinched his bicep. Even through his leather jacket she could feel the firm bulge of muscle. “I doubt that.”

  “How did it go with Deputy Campbell this afternoon?”

  “It was nice of him to pretend to take me seriously.”

  His frown told her she’d caught him off guard. “You don’t think he believed you?”

  “He’s a friend of yours, right? The kind who couldn’t turn you down no matter how crazy a favor you asked?”

  “Perceptive little thing, aren’t you?”

  “Little thing?”

  “Sorry. Perceptive young woman, aren’t you? But friend or not, he’s also a cop. Believe me, he takes attempted murder seriously.”

  She grinned up at him, suddenly wanting to laugh at him, at herself, at the whole ridiculous situation. The sun was going down across the pond, she was out of her little room, away from the disinfectant smell of the hospital, breathing clean air. If all went well, she only had one more night to spend in this place before she could go home.

  “It’s nice of you to pretend, too,” she told him.

  He walked in silence a few strides. His lack of an answer was an answer in itself.

  “Have you thought any more about what happened?”

  “You mean, do I still believe it happened?”

  “Okay, now you’re getting downright scary. I’m supposed to be the expert here.”

  This was the tough part of the conversation. The part she’d rehearsed in her mind all afternoon. “It all still seems very real to me, but I’ll admit to the possibility that it could have been a clump of snow falling off a tree branch that hit me at the top of the bluff.”

  She’d admit to arriving on Earth in a capsule from Mars if it got her home to her son.

  “And the man in the hospital, maybe it was just a dream. You know how real dreams can seem when you first wake up.”

  Had he bought it? Queen of stage and screen, she w
as not.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Don’t play me.”

  “This is no game.”

  “No,” he said after studying her for a long moment. He pulled his coat tighter across his body. “Come on, let’s head back. It’ll be dark soon.”

  He walked her all the way to her room, then stood in the doorway as though they had unfinished business. If this had been a date, she would have thought he was deciding whether or not to kiss her.

  Her cheeks immediately warmed at the silly thought. This was no date. She was no sweet-sixteener and he was no pimply-faced boy.

  Her gaze lingered on the wide shoulders, then traveled the length of the slim hips and long, jeans-clad legs.

  No, that was definitely not the body of a boy.

  “Did you…want something else?” she asked.

  “Mia.” His eyes had darkened a shade, along with his expression.

  She waited for him to continue.

  “Yes?” she finally prompted.

  His jerked a little as if he’d nearly fallen asleep—or had just woken from a daze—and cleared his throat.

  “Nothing.” He took a step back, out of her doorway. “I mean, good night.”

  She cocked her head. What in the world had gotten into him? “Good night.”

  When he was gone, she closed the door behind him and leaned her back against the cool steel.

  Whatever it was, she’d felt it, too.

  Ty stalked down the hospital hall, each step a little angrier than the one before.

  What the hell had gotten into him?

  He’d been about to ask her if she had a will. Who, besides Todd, would get her estate if she died.

  And if he hadn’t done that, he damned sure would have kissed her.

  He’d nearly lost his mind, watching her stand there with her cheeks flushed from the cold and dark hair damp with melted snow, her chin tipped up, green eyes looking deeply into his. She was a patient. She was supposed to look weak and needy. Dependent on the big, bad doctor to save her.

  Instead she’d looked strong. And desirable.

  He was getting too close to her, losing his objectivity. The last thing she needed was for him to feed her paranoia by giving her a reason to think someone might want her dead.