Intensive Care

by Jessica Andersen

  The dead patients were all female cancer patients in their fifties and early sixties. Was the killer trying to punish someone from the past?

  Or perhaps trying to save them?

  Ripley’s indrawn breath told Cage that she’d made the connection. Was Whistler gaining his revenge against women who could afford the opportunities his mother had missed? It seemed plausible. But they still had little hard evidence, and Cage didn’t see Whistler as a killer.

  Then again, what did killers look like? They didn’t all wear white coats and stethoscopes.

  “Can we see the roses, Whistler?” Cage stood and gestured toward the break room.

  “This is about the hot bodies, isn’t it?” There was a hint of fear in the young man’s eyes now. “You don’t think I’m the one doing it, do you? Because that’s just plain crazy. I wouldn’t inject hots into anyone.” He stood and backed up against the far wall. “Why me? Just because I know how to inject an IV bag? Come on, ninety percent of the people in this building can do that.”

  “Nobody’s accusing you of anything, Whistler,” Cage said, though all three of them knew that was a lie. “We just want to see the roses.”

  “This is bull,” Whistler spat, and spun for the door. Cage moved to intercept him, but the young man marched into the break room instead and yanked open his locker. He shoved an arm way back on the top shelf. And stilled. Groped around again. “Oh, hell.”

  “They’re gone, aren’t they?” Cage should’ve been relieved since he liked Whistler, but instead he was more confused than ever.

  The young man paled to the color of milk. “I swear to you I haven’t done anything wrong, Mr. Cage. I bought the roses for my girlfriend, honest. She collects glass flowers,” he repeated with his hand still pawing frantically in his locker. “Our third anniversary is next weekend. You can call her and ask.” He pulled out a limp set of green scrubs that might have once been wrapped around a trio of glass roses. “Honest.”

  Ripley cleared her throat. “Who else has access to your locker? Who has the combination?”

  “The lock doesn’t work, ma’am. It was broken when I was assigned the locker, but Mr. Dixon said not to worry about it, so I didn’t.” Whistler was looking younger and more scared by the moment. Was it an act or the truth? Cage couldn’t tell anymore.

  “Can just anyone walk right in here?” The censure in Ripley’s voice rubbed Cage the wrong way, as though she was assessing his security and finding it lacking.

  Well, he wasn’t the one with dead patients, was he? On the heels of that uncharitable thought came a flush of shame, and Cage knew it was past time to get help. He and Ripley couldn’t handle this alone. They shouldn’t even have tried.

  “Yeah,” he said, answering her question. “There’s never been a need to lock down Rad Safety before.” He waved Whistler out. “You’re on solid-waste collection today, right?” The young man nodded. “Get on with it. And don’t talk to anyone about the roses or our conversation, got it?”

  Whistler nodded vigorously. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir!” He bolted for the door and the empty green scrubs fluttered to the floor.

  “You’re letting him go? Didn’t you hear what he said about his mother? She fits the profile, Cage! Her illness kept him from pursuing his dream of being a doctor. And I saw him outside the chapel that day. He could’ve been in there with me. What more do you need?” Ripley was up in his face now, poking him in the chest with every other word, and Cage couldn’t decide whether he wanted to kiss her into silence or gag her with the scrubs.

  “Some hard evidence would be nice,” he said, fighting to keep his tone reasonable. “And the last time I checked, being angry about a loved one dying doesn’t automatically make a man a killer.”

  She curled her lip at the obvious parallel. “This isn’t about you, Cage!”

  “You’re right,” he agreed, taking her by the arm and aiming her not too gently at the door. “And it’s not about you, either. It’s about your patients and their safety. Try to remember that, Doctor.”

  They stood nose to nose in the doorway, breathing heavily, until the fight suddenly went out of her and her shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry, Cage. That was unkind of me, and not fair. I know you’re doing your best.”

  “We both are,” he agreed, giving in to the temptation and resting his forehead against hers. “And if you’re done yelling at me, you can call me Zack.”

  She sighed hollowly and looped her arms around his waist. “Zack then. What happens next? We haven’t got another good suspect, and I don’t know about you, but I feel like we’re running out of time.”

  “Ditto.” Cage kissed the tip of her nose. “I think we need to talk to Leo. Again.”

  “You think he’ll listen now?”

  “We’ll find a way to make him listen,” Cage vowed, but he didn’t feel as certain as he’d like.

  “I guess if he won’t, then we go to the feds ourselves,” Ripley said.

  “Even if it means both our careers?” Cage lifted an eyebrow.

  “Yes,” Ripley said with solid conviction. “Even if. The patients’ safety is worth more than a doctor’s career. Isn’t that what you’ve always said, Zack?”

  He nodded, “Yeah, but—”

  Her pager shrilled, interrupting. She glanced down at the display and he saw her shoulders tense. She swore, low and bitterly.

  Cage’s own pager was silent. “One of your patients?”

  “No. Worse.” Ripley stepped away from him and scrubbed a hand across her face. “My parents. My mother and father are downstairs in the café when I specifically told them to stay the hell away from the hospital.”

  “Your mother?” Cage asked, surprised.

  One side of her mouth tipped up in a wry grimace. “Yeah. She showed up at the house last night after I made the mistake of calling her in a weak moment. Now they’re both trying to fix my life.”

  “They love you. It’s not a bad thing, Ripley.”

  The wry smile twisted higher. “They don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  He caught her arm as she tried to slip past him. He could feel the tension humming through her and wished he could soothe the crease between her eyebrows. “Why do you insist that love doesn’t exist? Why does the idea scare you so much?”

  She jerked away. “I’m not afraid of much, Cage, and you’re way off on this one.” Halfway out the door, she turned back. “Why don’t you come see our touching family reunion for yourself? That should explain everything.”

  Cage thought of the three missing roses, and of the fact that two were still unaccounted for. He thought that he needed to meet with Leo, and that he hadn’t yet asked Ripley whether she would consider skipping the ballgame that afternoon.

  Then he thought of waking with her in his arms, and of the fierceness of her lovemaking the night before. Of the certainty that she was taking each night as it came and rejecting the idea of ever after, which he’d barely begun to consider himself.

  And he nodded and held out his hand. “Okay. Lead on.”

  THIS WAS A REALLY, really bad idea, Ripley thought as she snaked through the early morning crowd to a table at the back of the café. She should’ve ignored the page. They were in the middle of a crisis. Someone was trying to kill her. She didn’t have time for family drama. Calling her mother had been a mistake. The latest in a string of mistakes that had begun the moment she’d laid eyes on Cage.

  “Darling!” Ripley’s mother stood for an exchange of air kisses before she turned to Cage. “And who is this?”

  “Zachary Cage, ma’am.” He bowed over her hand and Ripley rolled her eyes when her mother beamed.

  “Oh, Ripley. I like him!”

  “I don’t,” Howard Davis grunted from his seat at the small table.

  Ripley plopped down in a chair opposite him and glared. “Well, that’s fine because I don’t like you very much right now. Why are you here? I told you to stay away, and I told you I wasn’t coming to work at your cl
inic. Why is this so hard for you to understand?”

  Her tone bordered on belligerent, but it was sharpened mostly by fear. Her father didn’t believe in the danger, but she did. If anything happened to him, she might never forgive herself. He was a pain, but he was her father. It was that simple.

  And that complicated.

  In an insane moment of clarity, she glimpsed the guilt Cage must live with every day. Then she felt him take her hand beneath the table and squeeze, hard.

  Across the table, her father looked somehow smaller than he had the day before, and with a shock, she realized he was getting old. New lines creased his face, and his color wasn’t good. Guilty concern washed through her, easing the irritation and she asked, “Father? Are you feeling okay?”

  He waved the question aside with typical imperious ness. “Your mother and I stayed up late last night. We worked out a few things, but she thinks that you and I need to talk.”

  Ripley felt a filial headache inch closer, waiting to pounce. “Can we do this later, Father? Cage and I are in the middle of something and I don’t have time for an argument.”

  “I don’t mean to argue with you, Caroline.” The hated name flushed away whatever softening his gentle tone might have brought. “I never do.” Howard rubbed an absent hand across his left shoulder. “I just want what’s best for you.”

  The headache caught Ripley dead center between the eyes and her vision grayed for a moment. She stood, brushing off Cage’s hand when he tried to stop her. “No, Father. You want what you think is best for me. There’s a big difference.” She turned to her mother, feeling a spurt of the resentment she hadn’t even recognized before. “And what gives you the right to tell me anything? You taught me that marriage was two people with nothing in common locked in a big house together. Then you hired a cook and left.”

  “Ripley,” Cage’s hand clamped on her shoulder. “Maybe now isn’t the best time or place for this.”

  She brushed him off. “That sounds like something he’d say.” She nodded at Howard, who’d surged to his feet, clutching his left arm. She turned back to Cage and bared her teeth. “What are you going to do now, hang up on me? Or are you going to sneak out again and leave a note?”

  Ripley was aware of the anguish on her mother’s face and the rapt attention of the morning coffee crowd. Davises don’t make scenes. She turned away. “I told you not to come here, Father. Go home. I’ll call you in a few days.” She gestured for Cage to accompany her. “Come on. We need to talk to Gabney.”

  At first she thought the crash behind her was her father upending the table in fury. But when she turned back, all she saw was chaos.

  Slow-motion chaos.

  Howard Davis’s chair was in its place, still bolted to the floor. But Howard himself lay sprawled on the tiled floor at the center of a growing, squawking crowd.

  “Father!” She was on her knees beside him in an instant. His lips were blue. His right hand was locked on his left arm.

  Idiot. She should have seen it. She had seen it, but the signs hadn’t registered in time. “Someone get a gurney and call Cardiac,” she snapped at the breakfast crowd, snarling when nobody moved. “Now!” She made sure her father’s airway was clear and cursed when she couldn’t find a pulse. “Compressions! I need someone to do compressions.”

  “I’m here.” Cage nudged her aside and started pumping the motionless chest in the proper rhythm. “You breathe for him.”

  The actions were automatic. Tip the head back and pinch the nose. Inhale. Exhale. Count. Repeat. Ripley blinked back the tears and did her job. Inhale. Exhale. Count. Repeat.

  “Dr. Davis!” Hands were pulling her away from her father and Ripley fought them, knowing she had to breathe for him. Knowing she had to save him. “Dr. Davis!”

  “Ripley!” Cage’s voice finally penetrated. “He’s breathing. Let go.” He tugged her aside. “They need to take him up to Cardiac now, okay? He’s breathing. You did it. He’ll be okay. Let the other doctors do their jobs now, Rip. You did it.”

  She nodded dizzily and stood, gulping air to make up for the oxygen she’d forced into her father’s lungs. Her mother caught her in a fierce hug. “Thank you, Ripley. Thank you.”

  The sentiment was no more surprising than the gleam of tears in Eleanor’s eyes, and Ripley watched dumbly as Howard Davis was wheeled toward the elevators with his wife at his side, holding his hand.

  “Come on, Rip. Let’s get out of here.” The crowd blurred as Cage swung her toward the exit and bullied her up the stairs toward the dark, deserted halls of R-ONC. It wasn’t until he’d herded her through the deathly calm of the outer office that Ripley felt herself begin to crumble.

  “Oh, God, Cage. I almost killed him.” When her knees buckled with the knowledge, Cage swept her up into his arms. She heard him groan as her weight settled on his bad shoulder, but the sound seemed very far away.

  The sight of her father lying on the floor seemed very close.

  Cage collapsed on her office couch with Ripley on his lap and held her close. “You saved him, Rip. You saved him.”

  “But I was so awful to him. And to my mother.” She tucked her head under Cage’s chin so she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye. “And to you.” Hot tears leaked from behind her eyelids and she snuffled. “I’m a horrible, horrible person.”

  She thought she heard him chuckle before she began crying in earnest, and caught the faintest whisper of an answer.

  “We’re all horrible at one time or another, Dr. Davis. It’s called being human… It’s what you do with the guilt that counts.” He paused and gathered her closer. “At least that’s what I keep telling myself.”

  “NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT!” Leo Gabney punched the desk in front of him as though it was responsible for the problems Ripley and Cage had brought to his attention. “This is an internal problem and it will be dealt with internally.”

  “Internal problem my foot,” Cage snarled. “Your patients are being killed with injected cocktails of adrenaline and radioactive waste. If that’s not grounds for a criminal investigation, then I don’t know what is.”

  “Well, we both know your judgment has been called into question before, Mr. Cage. Didn’t that judge in New York throw out your case for lack of evidence? Those doctors didn’t kill your wife any more than Dr. Davis here killed Ida Mae Harris and Janice Cooper. Isn’t that right, Dr. Davis?”

  Cage rapped out a bitter curse and Leo turned to Ripley. “Are you sure this is what you want to do? Remember, if Boston General doesn’t win the Hospital of the Year Award, I’m afraid I won’t have the funding to continue to support R-ONC.”

  “Have you no sense of responsibility for the patients?” Ripley hissed, surprising Cage with her vehemence. Ever since she’d washed her face, checked on her father’s condition and declared herself ready to face the Head Administrator, she had been quiet, almost passive.

  It seemed she’d been saving the venom up for Leo Gabney. Cage felt a surge of pride when she leaned across the desk and Leo leaned back.

  “This is a hospital,” the administrator pointed out, shrinking back and waving his finger for emphasis. “Sick people come here for treatment. Some of them die. Our survival rate is one of the best in the country, and you, for one, should be very proud of that, Dr. Davis.”

  “I bet you fudged the numbers,” she spat, before settling back into the chair beside Cage.

  “Well, you’d know about fudging numbers, wouldn’t you? The R-ONC radiation logs are proof of that.” Gabney grinned slickly and straightened up in his chair. “None of us is beyond reproach, Dr. Davis. None of us. So I’ll ask you again, are you sure you want to call in the authorities without my backing?” He cracked his knuckles. “I’d hate to see any of the publicity reflect badly on your father, you know, especially now that they’ve scheduled him for bypass surgery.”

  Cage surged to his feet, “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “I would and you know it. Boston General will be the Hospita
l of the Year, and the ten-million-dollar grant will fund the new Gabney Wing. But,” the administrator held up a finger, “I agree that we have a problem that needs to be dealt with. Quietly. So I’ll make you a deal.”

  Cage could feel Ripley vibrating next to him, strung tight with fury and frustration. He touched her hand to keep her from exploding, and asked, “What sort of deal?”

  “You two put on a good show this afternoon for the committee, and I’ll contact a friend of mine in the police department and explore our options.” Gabney touched his fingertips together, considering. “Yes, I think if we work carefully and control all the players, we should be able to spin this little incident to the hospital’s benefit.”

  “Spin?” Cage barked, just as Ripley asked, “What’s happening this afternoon?”

  Gabney chose to ignore Cage’s growl and answer her question. “Today is your day to take all the cute little sick children to the ballpark, remember? I’ve arranged a photo op for us, and a quick meeting with the Hospital of the Year committee just before the game. They’ll be in the box next to yours.” He flicked a glance at Cage. “Having a former Major League pitcher at my side will be an excellent touch, don’t you think?”

  “Bastard,” Cage hissed.

  Gabney leaned forward and grinned. “The committee chair was a huge fan of yours, Cage, though God only knows why since you only pitched a year in the majors. If your presence helps me win the Hospital of the Year, it was worth hiring you, even if you have made a bigger mess of Rad Safety than Dixon ever did.” He flicked his fingers toward the door. “I’d suggest you two run off and get ready for the game. The bus leaves in half an hour.”

  They stood slowly. Ripley leaned down, but this time Leo didn’t back off. She said, “If we play your game today, you’ll call in an official police investigation of the deaths and the bodies. No more tricks. You’ll call the po lice and you’ll keep my father’s name out of it. I want your word on it.”