To Obey

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

“In these situations, ambiguity is the norm. I’m off duty, dressed in street clothes. Who’s the cop? Who’s the perp?” He sat on the floor, gun holstered, and gestured for Susan to come down beside him. “When the elevator and stairwell doors open, I plan to have my shield in hand and to say the magic words to keep us from becoming targets.”

  Susan settled down beside him. She wanted to be as close as possible to the guy with the badge and the magic words.

  Chapter 17

  Susan visited Jake Carson’s room at Manhattan Hasbro Hospital as soon as his well-wishers from the police force had dispersed. She found the detective sitting up in bed, blankets covering his hospital robe and gown. His heart monitor blipped a steady rhythm at a fit sixty-two beats per minute. His breathing was a bit erratic, consistent with the moderate pain the chest-wall motion probably caused him, but his oxygen saturation was 100 percent.

  Clearly surprised to see Susan, Jake waved her to the bedside. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be all monitored up for observation, too?”

  Susan came to his side. She had refused admission, a luxury she had not allowed him. “After a shower, they couldn’t find any reason to keep me. None of the blood was mine. A couple quick jabs to protect me from blood-borne pathogens, and I was good to go.”

  Jake smiled dully. “I got those, too. Along with six X-rays and three consults, the end result being the exact same conclusions you made in forty seconds, under duress.”

  Susan shrugged. “I had the advantage of being an eyewitness. They had to put the pieces together based on your memory and the results of their exam and studies.”

  Jake chuckled. “Most people would consider being trussed up at a shootout a disadvantage.”

  “Yeah, well. Panic can make some people a bit distracted.” It was the sort of reply Kendall Stevens would have given. Susan wondered if her fellow resident’s sense of humor was rubbing off on her, and that made her think of him. She realized she missed him. He was surely worried about her, and she needed to explain her disappearance.

  Jake glanced around, then leaned toward Susan, as if he worried someone might overhear. “Susan, who were those men? What did they want from you?”

  Susan gave him a wide-eyed look, wondering if the wound had addled him. “How should I know? They obviously weren’t friends of mine. Isn’t it your job to figure that out and tell me?”

  Jake’s nostrils flared. The hostility of her response clearly surprised him. “When’s the last time you psychoanalyzed someone without any input from the patient? Come on, Susan. I can’t question those men now, can I? How am I supposed to figure anything out without knowing what happened?”

  Jake had an irrefutable point, but Susan was not yet sure who to trust. The police, specifically Jake Carson, had lied to her about her father’s death and the disposition of his body. Clearly, they had an agenda besides ferreting out the truth. “Two men, strangers, grabbed me, tied me up, and threatened me. What more do you need to know?”

  Jake lay back with a sigh. “I’m assuming my colleagues have already questioned you.”

  “Nope.”

  Jake rolled his eyes to Susan again. “No? They didn’t have a single question for you?”

  Susan remembered the whirlwind of activity when the police had arrived at the building. They had focused on Jake, barraging him with questions, packing everyone off into ambulances, and rushing them to Manhattan Hasbro. Susan guessed the police had intended to descend upon her hospital room, if she had taken one. She imagined they had a million questions, most of which she could easily anticipate and none of which she wished to answer until she understood the motivations of the people sworn to serve and protect.

  Susan had turned off her Vox. It would not make a sound, would not alert her in any fashion, but it still informed her she had twenty-seven messages waiting in her queue. Three or four of those, she guessed, came from Kendall. Another one or two might be Lawrence Robertson. The rest, she felt certain, were attempts by colleagues of Jake to piece together what had happened during the time between his leaving her apartment and returning to kill two gun-toting strangers who, at least at one point, claimed to be agents of the United States government.

  Were they? Susan could scarcely believe she was considering the possibility. When she ran back through her memories of the encounter, she could not help finding the moments when they claimed as much. Snippets came to her mind in the voice of the man who had crouched in front of her: “We are not the bad guys. We’re on the same side here. Honest.” “We thought if we explained we worked for the government, he might choose to cooperate.” “FBI. I’m on the job!”

  Were they government agents? Susan asked herself again. Is it just possible? She could not wholly deny the possibility. The man had denied killing John Calvin, a claim she had not believed at the time. Even if he had spoken the truth, he clearly had a hand in trashing their apartment, and had obviously sawed off and retained the head, stealing the positronic brain and making it virtually impossible to revive her father.

  When Susan did not speak for several moments, Jake intervened again. “Listen, Susan. I’m sure they’re looking for you. It’s imperative you go to the station and talk to them.”

  Though she had no intention of doing so, Susan simply said, “Okay.”

  The response clearly did not convince Jake Carson. “Susan, it may not seem like it, but we are trying to help you, to do what’s best for the investigation.”

  “I said okay,” Susan repeated with a hint of vehemence. Jake’s words sounded too close to the ones her captor had uttered. Now that the excitement had died down and pure adrenaline no longer coursed through her veins, she felt exhausted, spent. The last thing she wanted to do was waste hours answering the endless questions of second- or third-shift police officers just waiting for her to slip up and say something foolish. “Get some sleep. I’ll come back to visit you in the morning.”

  “You’d better.” Jake looked tired, too. “You’re the best doctor on my case.”

  Susan turned with a parting wave, not bothering to correct his misconception. She had nothing to do with his medical care any longer. Even in the highly unlikely case his attending physicians wanted a psychiatry consult, she was not on the right rotation to accept it. She left the room, with no clear idea where to go next. She finally decided on the first-floor charting room, even though she knew she would no longer find Nate there. She did not have the courage to return home or the energy to explain all of the night’s events to Kendall.

  Susan awoke disoriented, her mouth gluey and her back stiff from lying on a couch never designed for overnights. A general-surgery resident sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room, a palm-pross balanced on his knees. Susan glanced at her Vox. It read 12:46 p.m. and blinked to alert her to forty-six messages waiting in the queue.

  Susan sat up, yawned silently, and stretched her limbs. She could not recall the last time she had slept so late, probably during medical school after a late-night study session. A cursory glance through the numbers revealed an even dozen calls from Kendall Stevens, three from Lawrence Robertson, seven from the hospital, and most of the rest from various numbers that probably represented the police. Likely, the hospital had attempted to reach her at the request of the authorities.

  Feeling filthy, Susan showered in the on-call bathroom and donned the pink scrubs that labeled her off duty as well as nonsterile. She had no clothing other than what she had been wearing, she realized, and no desire to shop for more. Her wrists still throbbed, abraded by the ropes, her head buzzed as if with fatigue despite, or perhaps because of, fourteen hours of sleep. She brushed her teeth with borrowed toothpaste and one of the individually wrapped, disposable toothbrushes designed for patient use.

  Jake had probably been discharged in the morning, so there seemed no point in looking in on him again. Besides, Susan worried she would find police waiting for her there, and she still had no desire to speak with them. Returning home seemed dangerous as well
as futile. Her best option appeared to be Kendall’s apartment. He would have left for work, but he had given her a key. At the time, she had rolled her eyes at his antiquated locking system. Now, with the issues of her thumbprint protections exposed, she appreciated the old technology in a way she never previously had. She needed some time to think, to consider her next step, to contemplate her life in light of new information and make appropriate decisions about the future. No one other than Kendall would expect to find her there.

  Apparently, even he wasn’t expecting her. At approximately 6:20 p.m., the front door swung open. Susan peered out from the kitchen, still clutching the casserole she had prepared but not yet popped into the oven. Spotting her, Kendall wrestled the key from its lock and barely managed to keep his balanced palm-pross from hitting the floor. “Susan!” He tossed his gear onto the couch, shutting the door with his foot.

  Susan put the casserole dish on the table, anticipating a hug.

  Kendall’s welcoming expression turned uncertain, then suspicious. He approached her, but the exuberant hug she expected seemed limp and weak. “Where the hell have you been?” He stepped back, clutching only her shoulders. “Why didn’t you answer my calls?”

  “It’s a very long story.” Susan rescued Kendall’s things from the couch, placing them neatly on the coffee table. “I’ll tell you over dinner. First things first. How are you? What’s going on at Winter Wine, and how are the patients doing?”

  “How am I?” Kendall shook his head. “I’m worried sick about you. How the hell do you think I am? Tell me where you’ve been.”

  “Over dinner.” Susan hoped her tone made it clear this was the last word. “We both need to be sitting, and I want to look you in the eye. Give me the rundown on Winter Wine while I’m working. Okay?”

  “Fine.” Kendall flopped into a kitchen chair, looking as exhausted as Susan had felt hours earlier. “Mitchell Reefes is still lazy as a sloth and mean as a snake.”

  Susan headed for the cupboards to set the table. “No surprises there.”

  “He’s ranting about you having made a commitment, how you should be there to fulfill it. In his day, they didn’t mollycoddle residents, blah, blah, blah…”

  Susan chuckled. The problems of her obnoxious attending seemed unimportant and distant after the previous day’s adventures. “He actually used the term ‘mollycoddle’?”

  “Yup.” Kendall also laughed. “He seems to have completely forgotten he was the one who told you to leave.”

  “The same way he forgot who ordered the MRI on Chuck Tripler and who discharged Jessica Aberdeen.”

  Kendall tipped his chair slightly backward, balancing it on two legs. “It’s a memory of convenience, although it could come back to haunt you, depending on what he writes in your recommendation.”

  “I’m not concerned.” Susan placed two plates on the table, surprised to find she spoke the truth. She knew better than to gamble her entire future on the events of a single day, even one as eventful as hers had been. But the ravings of one entirely self-motivated doctor no longer seemed to matter. “Tell me about the patients.”

  Kendall brightened a bit. “Chuck Tripler’s conscious. He’s never going to become a rocket scientist, but they’re planning to discharge him home, with rehabilitation.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time.” Susan pulled open Kendall’s silverware drawer.

  “Then you’re going to love this. Remember Thomas Heaton?”

  Susan gave Kendall a sideways glance over her shoulder. “Of course I remember Thomas Heaton. The former conductor with the middle cerebral artery stroke that rendered him unable to read.”

  “He read me three signs today, as a well as the first page of a pamphlet.”

  “What kind of a pamphlet?” Susan pulled out two forks and headed for the table.

  “A pamphlet on sexually transmitted diseases.”

  That stopped Susan cold. “What?”

  “Kidding. The boring one about nursing home procedures. Does it really matter? He was reading.”

  Susan placed the forks beside the plates, then grabbed the casserole dish. “How?”

  “Just like we suggested. Rehab’s been working with him on equating musical notes with letters and translating simple melody bars into common phrases.” Kendall’s gaze followed Susan to the oven. “He’s already a lot happier. His family was with him, and he was asking about you. Probably wanted to bandy a few more crappy conductor jokes.”

  Susan smiled. “I’m sure you obliged him.”

  “Who me? Miss a chance to get a laugh? Never.” Kendall had regained his jovial manner, but Susan could still sense unspoken discomfort. He was reserving judgment until he heard Susan’s story, but he did not intend to wait forever.

  “How about Jessica Aberdeen?” Susan looked for more things to do. She wanted to keep Kendall talking about medical work as long as possible. For a while, at least, she could pretend the events of the previous day had not occurred.

  Kendall blew out a noisy breath. “I was trying to avoid that.”

  “Well?” Finding nothing, Susan fiddled with a holder in the shape of a circus dog, though it contained plenty of napkins. “What did her father do this time?”

  “Nothing, really. She backslid a bit, and he’s making essentially idle threats so far. A bit of dirty lawyer talk; nothing he can win.” Kendall brightened suddenly. “But you were right about Kado Matsuo. I did the test, and when it confirmed your diagnosis, I acted as if Reefes had personally ordered it. That got Kado right onto the liver-transplant list. I spent most of the afternoon modifying his diet and arranging ammonia detoxification. Reefes is strutting around like some kind of demented peacock genius.”

  Susan smiled. It did not matter who got the credit as long as the patient received the necessary treatment.

  “It’s more of the same for all the other patients. Unlike you, I can’t pull some brilliant diagnosis out of my butt every single day.”

  Susan rolled her eyes amid a sudden wave of irritation. “There’s nothing magical about unearthing a few treatable medical problems on a chronic psychiatry unit headed by an indolent moron. All it takes is observation—”

  Kendall ticked off one index finger with the other as if making a list. “Sherlockian scrutiny.”

  “—a modicum of intelligence—”

  Kendall tapped the middle finger. “Sheer brilliance.”

  “—curiosity—”

  Kendall moved on to the ring finger. “Catlike focus.”

  “—and the willingness to persistently surf for answers.”

  Kendall added his pinky to the others. “And an anal-retentive focus.”

  Susan continued to glare. “So, basically, you’ve just called me a smart but catty ancient detective who spends hours staring at my own rear end. No wonder you claim I pull these diagnoses out of my butt.” Sick to death of people demeaning her one talent, she went on the attack. “Look, Kendall. Of all people, I expect better from you. I’m smart, yeah, and I’m a decent diagnostician. So sue me. Just because most people are too stupid and sluggish to bother distinguishing themselves doesn’t make me a caricature. When did study and hard work become crimes, and mediocrity the highest ideal a female is allowed to strive for? If intelligent, capable women scare you, you’re in the wrong business.”

  “Whoa!” Kendall raised his arms in mock surrender. “I’m not belittling your diagnostic acumen; I’m praising it. Forgive me for mentioning the feature of my girlfriend that impresses me the most.”

  “Sorry,” Susan grumbled. “I had a rough day.”

  “I love you, Susan, but you’re hardly flawless. I got more than a couple earfuls of your many and varied faults from our esteemed attending. That is, when I wasn’t rushing around trying to do the work of three and cursing you under my breath myself.”

  Susan took offense. “Cursing me? What the hell did I do?”

  “What did you do?” Kendall stared, clearly incredulous. “
What did you do? Well, let’s start with pissing off the man currently in charge of my future. Why can’t you ever just swallow your pride, nod your head, and pretend to have a modicum of respect for your superiors, even if they are indolent morons? It’s Sunday. Remember? I was supposed to work a half day and go the hell home. Instead, not only do I get all of our work piled on my shoulders, but I’m stuck in the position of having to either agree that you’re the most irritating, obnoxious, stupidest puke who ever lived or risk my medical license, too.”

  Irritation blossomed to an anger that took precedence over any attempt to moderate her speech. “So, what am I supposed to do? Forget my father was murdered three days ago so you don’t have the burden of tending a garden of gorked-out patients solo?”

  “Of course not!” Kendall was shouting now. “But you can at least not bite my head off when I’m telling you about my day after you asked me to! And where the hell were you last night, anyway?”

  Susan had intended to tell him the entire story from beginning to end, to share the craziness and find solace in his inevitable jokes. Now she only wanted to incite him. “If you have to know, I spent the evening with a gorgeous hunk of policeman!”

  Kendall’s face turned a vivid shade of scarlet. She had never seen him so angry. “What?! I’m doing all your work, worried about your mental state, and you’re out sleeping with another man?”

  Even through the fog of rage, Susan knew she could not leave Kendall with that impression. “I didn’t sleep with him, you dimwit! He saved my life.”

  “So you slept with him in gratitude?”

  Susan made a wordless noise of frustration and fury. “I just told you I didn’t sleep with him. And, anyway, he’s ‘gay as a nightingale.’”

  “Gay as a…” Kendall’s eyes narrowed. Veins stood out on his face, and an artery throbbed rhythmically in his neck. “How the hell do you know that?”

  Susan huffed out a strident breath. “The same way I know all homosexuals when I see them. It’s written on his forehead.”