Intensive Care

by Jessica Andersen

  They watched him bend over to peer at the electrical hookups. With a fleeting spark of her usual manner, Tansy murmured, “I wouldn’t mind being the witch he’s hunting for, if you know what I mean.” She leveled a telling glance at her friend. “But I get the feeling he’s already picked her out.”

  “Did you just call me a witch?” Ripley deflected the quick jolt with sarcasm, but Tansy’s knowing look told her the sparks flying in the little office hadn’t been her imagination.

  What a time for her libido to wake up. What a poor choice for it to make.

  “Just calling it how I see it, Dr. Davis.” Then Tansy so bered. “I’m just glad he was there for you yesterday. When I imagine what might have happened…”

  “Let’s not think about it right now, okay?” Ripley patted her friend’s arm and tried to summon a reassuring smile. “It’s over.”

  Then she remembered Harris’s words in the atrium, and thought of her desk chair that morning. The closed files. The subtle disarray. And she wondered.

  Was it really over? Or was it just beginning?

  FINGERS POUNDING on the keyboard of the linear accelerator, Cage congratulated himself on learning three things in the first two minutes he’d been in the Radiation Oncology department. One, Ripley Davis didn’t want him auditing R-ONC. Two, she didn’t want him to know about the papers on her desk. And three, she was so goddamn beautiful she made his chest ache.

  The first two were no surprise. The third was shocking. Cage had thought all the softer emotions had been burned out of him long ago with a single pencil-thin beam of radiation and a tidal wave of guilt.

  “I keep the programs updated.” Her voice at his shoulder was a jolt he refused to show, but the buzz of her nearness sliced through him and set up a greedy alarm in his brain.

  “So I see.” And it was true. She’d upgraded the software every time another glitch in the treatment equipment had come to light. “Too bad it takes people dying for Radcorp to debug these death traps.” He slapped the shielding of the linear accelerator with a scowl.

  She sucked in a breath on what he thought might have been a growl. “I think those stories are exaggerated, don’t you, Mr. Cage? And let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of patients who are helped each year by radiation treatment.”

  “But it’s okay to forget about the people who died because Radcorp and a group of R-ONCs at Albany Memorial ignored the reports and kept treating patients with a broken accelerator?” Cage’s fingers were beginning to hurt from punching the keys so hard. He paused, clenched his fists and blew out a breath. “Never mind. The programs look fine and your fixes are up to date. Where are your disposal logs?”

  “I get it.” Ripley’s voice sharpened and the air between them snapped. “You dislike R-ONCs in general. And here I thought it was me you didn’t like. Because let me tell you, Cage, I’m grateful for your help yesterday, but—”

  Whatever she’d planned to tell him was lost in a flurry of noise and color from the outer office.

  “Dr. Rip, Dr. Rip!” With lots of “vroom-vroom” noises and imaginary squealing tires, a purple-haired girl flew toward the treatment room, pushing a small boy in a hospital-issue wheelchair. They skidded to a halt and the girl’s hair slid off her head and landed on the floor.

  Ripley and the kids took one look at the purple road-kill and started laughing.

  Cage took one look at the girl’s naked pink scalp and the fine blue veins beneath, and shuddered.

  “Livvy, what are you doing here? I thought you were between treatments. Is everything okay?” Ripley hugged the girl and bent to pick up the purple wig. “Hey, Milo. What’s up?” She didn’t touch the boy, who sagged back as though exhausted by the shared laughter. A Boston baseball cap looked ridiculously large on his bald head.

  Cage’s stomach clenched on the three cups of coffee he’d poured into it that morning. One of the reasons he’d chosen Rad Safety was its distance from the actual patients. He could help them without ever seeing them. Without remembering.

  “Belle called my mom and said Milo wasn’t feeling so hot.” The girl was older than she looked at first, Cage realized as she adjusted the purple wig on her slippery scalp. She was probably in her early teens, though her painful thinness and large eyes made her seem younger. “So a few of us came in for a visit. We were just talking about the game next week, weren’t we, Milo?”

  The boy in the chair nodded limply. “Yep.” The word was no more than a breath, but Ripley didn’t seem to notice. Her callousness made Cage think of other doctors. Other times.

  She glanced at him and explained, though he hadn’t asked. “The Tammy Fund has a box at the ballpark and they give it to a different R-ONC department after each game. The kids love it. We’ve got tickets for next week.”

  Cage shrugged. “Baseball’s okay.”

  He felt the damaged ligaments in his pitching arm ache. The pain was duller than the throb in his soul, but both reminded him of a man who’d cared more for his career than his family.

  “Do I know you?” The soft question pulled Cage from the memory of broken promises and busted dreams, but he had no answer for the girl. Nor did he take the hand she offered when she said, “I’m Olivia Minton.”

  “Cage. And no, we haven’t met.” He backed away on the pretext of flipping the green binder open and studying an unseen column of numbers.

  “Don’t worry, kids. He’s rude to everyone.” Ripley glared at him and herded the children away. “Did you just stop by to say hi, or did you want something?”

  “We wanted to say hi,” Livvy said staunchly at the same time Milo breathed, “We wanted some markers.”

  Ripley laughed and the sound zinged through Cage. “Going to tattoo yourselves again?” She crossed to a desk drawer and pulled out a handful of pens. “Just remember, these are the permanent ones we use to mark you for radiation treatment. The ink takes weeks to fade.”

  Milo cheered softly and clutched the pens in his lap like a prize. Livvy thanked Ripley and cast one long look back at Cage before she pushed Milo out the door, but Cage didn’t tell the girl where she’d seen him before.

  He was five years, one court battle and a master’s degree in Health Physics away from being that man. His love of the game had faltered, leaving behind a need for revenge.

  “They’re not contagious,” Ripley said without preamble as she stalked back over to him, holding a thick binder as if she wanted to smack him with it. “You won’t catch cancer from shaking hands.” She didn’t say you jerk, but it was implied.

  “Those your wipe logs? Thanks.” Ignoring the dig, Cage grabbed the ledger and opened it on the nearest table, though he knew what he’d see. Nothing. He’d already figured he wasn’t going to find a single digit out of place in the R-ONC department. He’d bet that every sheet was filled in to the last MilliCurie of radioactive material and the last tenth of a rad of waste. He’d find every bottle of neutralizer filled to the brim and every employee’s training up to date.

  And he’d bet his job she was hiding something.

  He hefted the logbooks and ignored the twinge of protest from his shoulder. “I’ll get these back to you when I’ve gone over everything.”

  “Fine. Just don’t shut me down, okay? I have patients that depend on me.” She glanced over and tucked a strand of curly dark hair behind her ear. The gesture was strangely vulnerable. “We do good things here, Cage. We save lives.”

  Cage didn’t say anything, because his answer would have been you don’t save all of them, and that would never do. Instead, he repeated, “I’ll get these back to you when I’m done with them,” and escaped out into the hall beyond the R-ONC doors.

  Once he was outside her offices, he leaned against a decorative column and concentrated on breathing air that didn’t carry a faint hint of her scent. He had to clear his head. He didn’t have time to get tied up over a woman. Any woman. Especially a R-ONC.

  “You okay, boss?” As seemed to be his habit, Whi
stler appeared out of nowhere.

  “Fine.” Cage didn’t want to talk about R-ONC, or about the way Ripley Davis made him feel mad and guilty and horny all at once. Nor did he want to talk about the rumors of radioactivity gone astray. He wasn’t sure who he could trust in the Rad Safety department yet. If anyone. “Any calls this morning?”

  “Nothing exciting or I would’ve paged you.” The young man shrugged. “A few gray egg deliveries.” The radioactive material arrived in lead-lined capsules. It was delivered to Rad Safety, checked in and dispersed to the labs.

  Everything was checked and double-checked. There was no radioactivity in the hospital that couldn’t be accounted for each and every moment of the day. So where the hell had the nukes supposedly found in the broom closet come from? Cage had no idea, but the concept was unnerving. Since he was working on coffee-shop rumor and speculation, he had no evidence, either.

  When he’d brought it up with the Head Administrator, Gabney had stared at him, hard, and prattled on about the Hospital of the Year award. Cage had gotten the message.

  Don’t rock the boat.

  Too bad for Gabney it was Cage’s mission in life to do exactly that. Heather had died because a group of doctors hadn’t wanted to make waves. Cage had vowed it wouldn’t happen again.

  The doors to the R-ONC department swung open and there was Ripley Davis, marching across the foyer to the stairs. Cage’s head came up. “Here. Take these.” He shoved the R-ONC radiation logs at Whistler. “Check them against our databases, but don’t worry if you don’t find anything. I bet they’re up to date.”

  Whistler’s eyes cut from Ripley to Cage and back. “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m going to have a little chat with Dr. Davis,” Cage said, feeling an unfamiliar tingle of anticipation. “I think she and I have gotten off on the wrong foot.”

  Whistler snorted. “Good luck. She can be a real hard case with people who’re trying to interfere with R-ONC. Her head tech used to say Dr. Davis treats that department like it’s her husband, and the patients like her children.”

  Cage’s eyes followed her figure down the stairs, admiring the long, no-nonsense stride and the gentle sway of hip and hair. He grimaced. Husband. Children.

  In his experience, doctors gave little value to family.

  TANSY WAS LATE for their midmorning coffee break, so Ripley sat alone at the rear of the hospital café with her back to the room and hoped everyone got the hint. She was in no mood for company.

  She scowled at her muffin and wished the new Radiation Safety Officer to the devil. It was his fault she felt out of synch today. She was tired because she’d dreamed about him and she was behind schedule because he’d insisted on testing each of the treatment machines separately, though there hadn’t been an accelerator-related death in four or five years.

  And she was worried because she couldn’t help feeling Zachary Cage had seen more than she wanted him to, both in the lab and in her. If he and the Head Administrator ganged up against R-ONC, she’d be out in a minute. Her patients would be farmed out and forgotten, and she’d wind up doing a hundred Pap smears a day in her father’s practice.

  Ripley bowed her head as tears threatened and the bruises left by Ida Mae’s husband throbbed.

  “There you are!” The dark, rough voice spoke close at her shoulder for the second time that day, but she didn’t give Cage the satisfaction of seeing her flinch. Somehow, she’d known he was there. A hint of electricity in the air, a shadow of heat had warned her of his presence.

  “Go away,” she muttered as he slid onto the wall bench opposite her, “I’m waiting for someone.”

  She could meet rude with rude any day.

  “I saw Dr. Whitmore in the hall. She asked me to tell you she was on the way to an autopsy and she’d see you at lunch.” He grinned, but the motion of his face didn’t lighten the darkness of his eyes one bit. He knew very well she didn’t want him there. “So I’ll keep you company instead.”

  His legs were so long his knees bumped hers beneath the tiny table, sending a buzz of warmth through her thighs. Her chair was bolted to the floor. She couldn’t slide away, and Cage didn’t seem in any hurry to move.

  “Why should I want your company?” She remembered the look in his eyes when Livvy’s favorite wig fell off. Scowling, she tried to scoot away from the warm pressure of the knees bracketing hers.

  Cage took a hit of his coffee and grimaced as though it didn’t go down quite right. “We both know I won’t find anything when I look over those logs.”

  She slanted him a look as wariness sizzled through her. He was fishing. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that your records are clean and your protocols are up to snuff, yet I think you’re hiding something. Care to let me in on it? You can start by telling me about those papers on your desk.”

  Ripley wrapped her hands around her coffee cup and wished it were his neck. She decided to meet rude with angry. Anger was better than the guilt of knowing she couldn’t explain Ida Mae’s death. She snapped, “I don’t like your tone, Mr. Cage, and I don’t like your implication. I—” Her cell phone rang. “Excuse me.” She flipped open the slim phone. “Dr. Davis.”

  “Ripley! You’ve got to get down to autopsy right now.” Tansy’s voice was tight with tension and Ripley fought the quick panic as she remembered where her friend had gone.

  To oversee Ida Mae’s autopsy.

  Ripley kept her voice steady, professional, all too aware of the RSO sitting across from her. Aware of the pressure of his knees against hers, the accusation that hung in the air as she said, “I’ll be right there. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

  “It’s Ida Mae.” Tansy paused and in the live silence Ripley heard Cage’s beeper sound. He looked at the display, cursed and stood just as Tansy said, “The body’s radioactive, Rip. She’s so hot she’s practically glowing.”

  Chapter Three

  “I hope this is Whistler’s idea of a joke,” Cage muttered as the elevator descended. His beeper read 911C-B110, which translated to “emergency—contamination in room B110.” Nukes in the basement? That didn’t make any sense.

  Aware of two nurses and a civilian sharing the car, he didn’t ask about Ripley’s phone call, but she was headed down to the basement on the double. The thought that they were bound for the same place bothered him, though he couldn’t have said why.

  “Coming?” Ripley held the door with obvious impatience. He stepped out into the long, damp hallway, aware of the faint hum beneath his skin, a tingle left over from the intimate press of her knees beneath the café table. He frowned.

  This was neither the time nor the place for desire. And it certainly wasn’t the right woman.

  Still, he moved closer to her side as they strode down the hall. Harris had said something about a phone call, and her file was missing from his desk. His instincts, which he’d learned to heed, gave him a sharp poke, a hint of suspicion. What if Ripley Davis wasn’t a sloppy doctor after all?

  What if she was in trouble?

  His mind rejected the idea, but his heart wasn’t so sure. And he’d be damned if he let another woman be hurt while he concentrated on other things.

  “Rip!” Tansy Whitmore was waiting in the hall, and Cage thought she looked even worse than she had that morning, when he’d noticed the dark shadows beneath her eyes and the deep grooves beside her mouth. Pretty and blond was one thing. Pretty, blond and haunted was another. It made him wonder just what Dr. Whitmore might be hiding. What she knew. “Ida Mae’s body is—”

  “Tansy!” Ripley interrupted with a quick look back at Cage. A line had just been drawn with him on one side, the women on the other. Inclining his head in acknowledgement, he opened the door to B110 and gestured them into the autopsy room. He grimaced when the smell hit.

  Death, with a pathetic overtone of air freshener.

  “Hey, boss.” Whistler leaned over a body bag with no apparent regard for the funk in the room or the smear of…som
ething on his shirt. Cage had thought before that his nominal second-in-command was a tad strange. Now he was sure of it.

  “What’ve we got?” He hadn’t meant to bark the question, but it echoed in the fetid room and battled with the cheerful hip-hop blatting from a radio sitting high above the metal slabs.

  Whistler straightened unhurriedly. “We started the radiation sweeps you ordered down here in the basement. You know, work the hospital from bottom to top?”

  Cage noticed that the pathologist and the women were huddled at the end of the room. “You paged me for contamination. Where is it?”

  And why the hell was there radiation in the morgue?

  Whistler jerked his chin at the body, which had been only partially unzipped from its bag. “Right here. Ida Mae Harris is hotter than a Las Vegas showgirl.”

  What the—? “Then stand back,” Cage snapped. “You’re not wearing a protective suit, you idiot.” No wonder the others were plastered against the far wall. When Whistler obligingly ambled out of range, Cage said, “Where’s she contaminated?”

  “Not ‘where,’ boss.” The tech shook his head and shrugged to indicate that he didn’t understand it. “She’s hot everywhere, and I don’t think it’s surface contamination.” He picked up a portable Geiger counter, cranked it on and waved the wand toward the body bag.

  The machine’s howl drowned out both the music and Ripley’s gasp. Cage looked over at her and their eyes met and held. He saw surprised horror. Confusion. And…guilt? Then she glanced over at her friend, and Cage saw the curtain drop over her emotions.

  He’d get no more from Ripley Davis. Her priorities were clear. Herself first, the members of her department second and the hospital third. Then maybe the patients fourth or fifth.

  Just like every other R-ONC he’d ever dealt with.

  With unaccountable disappointment sliding through him, Cage glanced down at the pathologist’s notes. The woman’s name jumped out at him. Ida Mae Harris.