Intensive Care

by Jessica Andersen

  “Ripley, there are twelve entries that don’t match the Rad Safety database. In fact, they look as though they’ve been changed recently.” He glared at her with murder in his eye. “When Whistler checked the records, he found radioactive material unaccounted for. The radioactivity we’re finding in your patients came from R-ONC.”

  The information hit her like a blow, as did the accusation in his eyes. For a moment, shock paralyzed her. Her nukes? Those were her nukes in the dead patients? Her records had been altered and she hadn’t noticed? How had she missed such a thing?

  On the heels of shock came a surge of anger. And how dare Cage roll into her office like a battering ram, spewing accusations and glaring at her as though she was the murderer?

  To hell with him.

  And yet, beneath the anger there was hurt. He had held her so tenderly in the night. Loved her so well that morning. And now this. She balled her fists at her sides and held the tears at bay. She wouldn’t show him weakness now. He’d swept the right aside. “Cage, you don’t honestly think I had anything to do with changing those logs, do you?” she asked, giving him one last chance to step back and think about what he was saying. “I thought you believed—”

  He cut her off with a sharp, angry gesture, and flipped one binder open to a marked page. “See for yourself.”

  She wasn’t sure which was more hurtful, reading the altered entries with her own eyes and knowing that one of her trusted employees must be a killer, or the fact that Cage had come into her office with guns blazing. She jerked her eyes up to his. “Even after everything that’s happened the last few days. Even after Harris, the gas, the chapel and the phone call…” Even after we slept together. “You still could think for a moment that I knew about this.”

  She refused to cry. But, oh, it was a battle.

  A muscle beside his jaw ticced. “You said yourself that most of that could be explained away. And I wasn’t there when you got the phone call. You could have…” He faltered to a stop, but the message was clear.

  You could have made that up.

  She had forgiven him for his initial wariness. Rudeness. She had even forgiven him for calling her Heather. But she would never forgive him for this distrust. It cut too deep.

  “Right.” Ripley slammed the binder shut. “After I goaded Mr. Harris into attacking me, locked myself in the broom closet with chlorine gas, and faked a panic attack in the chapel, is that it?” She advanced on him, wanting to scream at him. Wanting to hit him, to hurt him for making her feel this way.

  She’d only known him a few days, and had understood from the beginning that the end was only a matter of time.

  So why did this hurt so much?

  He flinched, but didn’t deny her claim. “I—”

  “Dr. Davis?”

  Cage and Ripley snapped their heads up with identical snarls, and the man in the doorway backed up, startled. “I’m sorry, is this a bad time? I could come back later. I just wanted to… I need to apologize to you, Dr. Davis.”

  Ripley closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and searched for the doctor’s calm she’d practiced so long and so well.

  It wouldn’t come. It was too tangled in her feelings for Cage and the hurt that he’d thought, even for a minute, that she’d harm a patient or cover for lost radioactivity. So instead she drew on her tattered pride, forced the tears away and waved the burly, ashamed man into her office.

  “Mr. Harris. Come in, please.”

  Baseball cap in one hand, Ida Mae’s husband edged into the office. “Dr. Davis. I want you to know how sorry I am for what happened the other day. I don’t even really remember it. You called to tell me Ida Mae had passed away, and the rest is a blur. The doctors say I tried to hurt you.” The lines around his eyes and mouth were deeper than they’d been the week before, and Ripley felt a tearing inside her chest at the stark pain in his face.

  If love felt like that, she wanted no part of it. Maybe her parents had the right idea, after all. Maybe she had just gotten lucky, and Cage’s mistrust was a godsend in disguise. She could get out of this before she fell in any deeper. She could escape with her heart intact. Mostly.

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing to forgive, Mr. Harris. Your wife died. Grief takes many forms.” She tried to offer the tired-looking man a chair, but he declined. His fingers crumpled the baseball cap, and something about his manner made goose bumps prickle to life on her arms.

  He wanted to tell her something. But he was afraid. Ripley didn’t think it was possible for her stomach to roil any harder than it already was. She was wrong. “Mr. Harris? What is it?”

  “I…I wanted you to know…” He glanced back toward the hallway as though afraid he’d be overheard.

  “Know what?” Cage prompted, leaning forward as though he was eager to solve the mystery. But that was a lie, wasn’t it? He’d already tried and convicted her.

  Harris coughed and twisted the hat in his hands. “That administrator, the bald one who visited me in Psych, said I was drunk, that none of it happened. He said my brain made it up so I’d have an excuse to attack you.” Harris stared grimly at his knuckles. “But it’s the truth. I got a call the morning after Ida Mae…the morning after she passed. The voice on the phone said Dr. Davis killed Ida Mae. There was more, but I don’t remember all of it. Just the voice said she should be punished. I should wait near the elevators in the main lobby near lunchtime, that she always came for coffee then.” He glanced up at Ripley. “Sure, I was drunk. But not so drunk that I’d make up something like that.”

  Ripley swayed as the room spun, but instead of leaning on Cage as she needed to do, she batted his hands away and sank to the couch. She barely heard Harris ask, “It’s not true, is it, Dr. Davis? Ida Mae died from the cancer, didn’t she?”

  Cage’s eyes burned her and Ripley knew he was waiting for the lie. Waiting for sometimes these things just happen, Mr. Harris. And sometimes they did. But not this time.

  Ida Mae Harris had been murdered.

  Ripley hugged herself and gave Harris a partial truth. “The autopsy hasn’t been completed yet. As soon as I know her exact cause of death, I’ll be in touch, Mr. Harris.”

  He nodded and said an awkward goodbye laced with more apologies. She watched him go, wishing she could do more.

  Wishing she could feel less. For him. For herself.

  Aching, she turned and grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair. “I’m going home.”

  Cage’s fingers bit into her arm, and she could feel the barely leashed anger vibrating through him. “The hell you are! We need to talk about this! We need to make a plan and call the police. You’re in danger, Ripley. You’re not going home.”

  “Oh, so now you believe me?” She didn’t yell, but her tone brought him up short. “Well, the hell with you. You lost your claim on me the minute you thought, even for an instant, that I’d fudged those logs. I’m not the doctors who screwed up your wife’s treatment, Cage, and I’m not your wife.” She yanked the jacket over her arms. “You want to call the cops? Go ahead. Tell them everything and see how well Leo twists it around to make you look like a fool. See how long he drags his feet and how many other patients die while he’s tap-dancing around the cops. Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not, but—”

  “But nothing.” Ripley felt her shoulders sag. “I’m tired, Cage. So tired I can barely think. Ida Mae is dead. Janice is dead. I’ll discharge the rest of the R-ONC in-patients and reschedule the others. There won’t be anyone left to kill.”

  Except me. The words were left unspoken, but they hung between Ripley and Cage like a tangible force.

  He stepped forward and lifted a hand as though he wanted to stroke her cheek. When she leaned away, he let the hand drop. “Then at least stay with me, Ripley. My building is guarded. It’s secure. You’ll be safe with me.”

  His place, Ripley thought with a yearning combination of attraction and repulsion. The place where he’d lived with the wife he h
adn’t yet let go of. Safe? Perhaps she’d be protected from the unknown fiend at Boston General who was killing her patients with injected cocktails of adrenaline and radioactive waste. But she wouldn’t be safe from the greedy hunger that even now begged her to take his offer. To take him.

  She wouldn’t be safe from herself.

  So she shook her head and stepped away, creating the final distance between them. “Frankly, I’d rather stay with my father.”

  CAGE WATCHED her go and hated himself for reacting the moment Whistler had shoved those logbooks under his nose. Despised himself for not giving her a breath of a chance to explain. To defend. Hated her for making him question the basic tenets that had driven him the last five years.

  Hated her for making him feel. Worry. Care.

  “Damn it.” He slammed the logs back on her desk, and strode down the echoing corridors to the garage.

  She didn’t seem to notice him as they weaved their way through light traffic on the Mass Pike, but he didn’t think it wise to slide into Howard Davis’s gated driveway on her bumper. So he parked across the street and waited. Watched, though he didn’t know what he was watching for.

  After a moment, a uniformed guard crossed the street with a harnessed, lethal-looking German shepherd at his side. Seeing that the man had come from a clever door concealed in the ivy beside the gates, Cage rolled down the window. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Cage, Dr. Davis wants you to go home. She said she doesn’t need your help and she doesn’t want you here.” The guard’s tone brooked no argument. Neither did the gun at his hip.

  “Apparently so. Did she tell you that her life is being threatened by a murderer at the hospital?”

  There was a flicker of response, a lift of one eyebrow and a subtle stiffening of the guard’s erect carriage that screamed ex-military. Dangerous. Good protection. “No, sir. She did not.”

  Cage relaxed a fraction, knowing she would be safe within the compound. “Didn’t think she would. Look out for her, okay?” He slid a business card out of his wallet and handed it to the guard. “Call me if there’s trouble.”

  “I’m not allowed to do that, sir,” the guard replied, but he took the card, glanced at it, and tucked it into his pocket, saying, “She’s a nice lady, Mr. Cage. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her.” And he turned on his heel and returned to the guard station hidden in the ivy wall, the shepherd slinking on his heels like leashed liquid fury.

  She’s a nice lady, Cage thought as he gunned the engine and fled her father’s house. Yeah, a nice lady who was tying him in knots. A nice doctor lady. What had he gotten himself into? A murder investigation he couldn’t take to the police, and a woman he didn’t want to want. A woman who didn’t want to want him.

  Cage cursed and pulled into a convenience-store parking lot. He punched in a now-familiar number and snarled, “Damn it, Dixon. I know you’re there. I got your address from your file and I’ll be there in ten minutes with a goon squad if you don’t pick up. I need to talk to you. Now.”

  RIPLEY WAITED FOR Rico to wave from the guardhouse to indicate that Cage was gone before she slid out of her car. She was touched that he’d followed. Touched and vaguely disquieted. What did it mean? Did he still think she was involved with the deaths? Was he following her in hope she’d rendezvous with an accomplice?

  Or was he trying to keep her safe the way he hadn’t protected his Heather?

  Once again, Ripley felt the line between her and his first wife blur and shift. If he had become an RSO to save his wife over and over again, then it stood to reason that he was trying to protect her for the same reason. Penitence.

  “My name is Ripley,” she whispered fiercely as she walked up the granite steps to the massive front door. “Ripley. Not Heather, not Caroline. Ripley.” The mantra soothed her for a moment. Then her father met her in the entryway and her equilibrium fled.

  “Caroline.”

  “Father.” There was no embrace, just the knowledge that she’d failed to live up to his expectations.

  “What is this I hear about another unexpected death in R-ONC? Really, Caroline. That doesn’t make your department look very professional. And it could hurt Boston General’s chances in next week’s vote. Leo is very concerned.”

  “He should be concerned,” she snapped, then took a deep breath. She needed to tell someone. She couldn’t lean on Cage anymore, though the knowledge made her heart ache. So she’d tell her father. Maybe he’d come through for her this once. “Janice Cooper wasn’t the second death, Father, she was the sixth. My patients are being killed with a combination of adrenaline and nukes, and whoever’s doing it wants me dead. But does the administration want to deal with it? No. Gabney wants to avoid it until after the voting. He says we’re making it all up.”

  For a brief instant, Howard’s face changed. For a second, he looked sad, vulnerable, worried, all those things she’d wished for over the years. Then he cleared his throat and it was as though the moment had never happened. He frowned and barked, “I know all about your allegations. I have my sources, you know. But the way I hear it, you forged the R-ONC logs to whitewash the disappearance of radioactivity, and you’ve invented this ridiculous story to cover up the real truth that you haven’t a clue why your patients are dying.”

  Ripley felt the words like blows. So that’s how the Head Administrator was going to spin the story. She should have known, just as she should have known her father would take his side rather than hers. Clutching her coat around her shoulders, she gritted her teeth and refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Father. I was hoping to stay here tonight, but I can see that’s not a very good idea. I’ll just grab a few things from my old room and go to a hotel, then.”

  She started up the stairs, halting when he said, “Caroline.” His voice cracked on the word, but she didn’t turn back. She just waited. He continued, “You’ll stay here, of course. And…and just in case there is a threat, Leo and I have decided it would be best to disband R-ONC after the Awards voting. I’ll expect you to begin work at my clinic the first of next month. It won’t be oncology, of course, but I think you’ll find general medicine just as rewarding.”

  Ripley turned back, and was surprised by the almost pleading look in her father’s eyes. He wanted her out of R-ONC, she’d always known that. But there was a new level of pressure here, almost desperation.

  Then it hit her. Gabney believed her. He knew there was a killer loose in R-ONC, and he had decided to close the department rather than investigate. Bastard. She took a step down, nearer her father. “So that’s it? He’s just going to let the killer walk with a layoff notice? What about my patients? What about the next set of patients? What about them, Father? Don’t you care about them?”

  Howard fell back a pace, paling almost to gray. He lifted a hand to touch his left arm, and a faint warning bell went off in the back of Ripley’s mind, but she was too angry to hear it. She dropped another step, until their eyes were almost level when she whispered, “Don’t you care about me?”

  Howard drew back as though he’d been slapped, and paled further. Instead of answering, he turned away. His voice cracked in earnest when he said, “We dine in an hour. I’ll expect you to be dressed properly.”

  The sound of his study door thunking closed covered the single sob that escaped her throat. She turned and hurried up the wide, carpeted stairs to the room she’d grown up in.

  The soft orange paint on the walls reminded her of the look on her mother’s face when she’d picked out the color, and Ripley longed for those days, when her parents had at least shared the same room once in a while. She and her mother had been close back then, but time and distance had stretched the bonds thin.

  Tears prickled and Ripley cursed, knowing they were as much for Cage as for herself or her parents. Her father at least believed she was in danger, though his answer was to play ostrich and hope the problem went away, as his wife had done.

  C
age didn’t even believe her.

  “You’re not going to cry for him,” she told herself through a haze of tears. “He’s not worth it. You knew from the start that there’s no such thing as happily ever after. Doctors and relationships are a bad mix.”

  Well, she’d show him, Ripley thought as the idea took root and determination washed some of the self-pity away. She’d show both of them—her father and Cage. She’d figure this out herself and bring all of Boston General crashing down, if that’s what it took to protect her patients. She dug through the pile of castoff medical journals on her childhood desk, pulled out an old hospital roster and flipped it open to D. She slid her finger along until she reached Dixon, George, and smiled slightly when she saw the number under “emergency contact.”

  If anyone knew what was going on in the Rad Safety department, it was the head geek himself. He’d been avoiding Cage, but she had a weapon Cage lacked.

  She had breasts.

  Ripley pulled out her cell and noticed that both Tansy and Cage had called. She promised herself she’d call her friend back later and deleted Cage’s message without listening to it. Nothing he could say at this point would interest her. Not even, “I was wrong. I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

  She wasn’t a big believer in second chances. Her mother had given her father a hundred second chances and he’d blown every one of them by coming home too late—or not at all—from the hospital. Ripley had no intention of following in those family footsteps, even if the thought of never seeing Cage again made her want to curl up in a little ball and howl. She’d get through this alone, somehow. She always did.

  Hoping Dixon hadn’t moved away as soon as he’d been fired from Boston General, she dialed the number and let it ring. And ring. Finally, his machine picked up. When it beeped, Ripley forced a seductive purr into her voice.

  “Helllooo, George.” She gasped a girlish breath and made a face as she continued, “Are you there, baby? It’s been sooo long since we’ve seen each other, and I was wooondering—”