by Chaz McGee
“Everything. Meeting you when I did. Coming to you the other night like a crazy person. Not being able to help more when I know it means so much to you to find the boy.”
She stared at him, not knowing what to say.
“Please just come have a cup of coffee with me. I need to sit across from you for fifteen minutes and act like a normal person. I need to hear you talk about your life, something that has nothing to do with people dying or hurting each other.”
As he spoke, I felt the loneliness in him rise and seek out her own. I thought she would turn away, but the fire had unnerved her, and she needed the contact as much as he did. “All right,” she said. “Just a cup. And we’ll have to pretend I’m asking you about Fiona Harker. I can’t be seen with you under any other circumstances.”
“Fair enough,” Fletcher said. Something inside him stirred to life, something light-filled and breathtaking. It was a hope he had not felt in a long time.
“I was going to go home and shower,” Maggie confessed as they walked back into the hospital. “But I don’t think I want to be alone right now. I can’t stop thinking about that little boy.”
“I know,” Fletcher said, taking her arm for the moment it took them to reach the bright lights of the emergency room entrance. This time, it was something inside of Maggie that stirred at his touch, something she had not felt in a long time.
“I spend most of my life alone,” he explained. “Even when I’m surrounded by others. And I don’t mind it. In fact, I prefer it. I’m not sure I could do what I do if my head was cluttered with other people’s lives. But there are times when I feel like I can’t stand myself another moment, when I become so sick of my own obsessed need to keep doing the impossible, day after day, that I can’t bear myself any longer. That’s when I can’t be alone.”
“Exactly.” Maggie stopped in the waiting room and stared at him. They smiled at each other. He was the first to drop his gaze.
“Come on,” he said, guiding her by the elbow. “We’ll go upstairs to the cafeteria. If we hide it, people will just talk more.”
They sat at the back of the nearly deserted hospital cafeteria, surrounded by the smell of boiling cabbage and lemon floor disinfectant. The food looked bleached out and overcooked under the fluorescent lights. It made me glad I no longer had to eat.
They didn’t seem to notice the atmosphere. They sat next to each other at a small table for two, chatting away as if they were sipping espresso at a Paris bistro.
A third wheel by fate, I could not bear also to be a third wheel by choice. I considered sitting at their table and turning their tête-à-tête into a threesome known only by me, but that seemed pathetic, even by my low standards. Instead, I sat a few tables over, across from an overweight Chinese man who was eating his third bowl of tapioca pudding. It quivered in his bowl like a lab specimen and made me even gladder I no longer had to eat.
I could smell their coffee from where I sat. It reeked like the boiled-down sludge I used to drink at the station house. I let the aroma fill me. How I missed the bitter taste of my morning ritual.
That wasn’t what I envied most, of course.
Maggie and Fletcher sat only inches apart, but drawn in on themselves, as if they wanted to make the boundaries clear to anyone who might see them. That didn’t fool me. Their energies were as intertwined as lovers curled up in bed. They talked about all the mundane details of their lives, the kinds of things you do not tell strangers, or even acquaintances, the kinds of things you only tell your lovers, because only a lover would find them fascinating. She told him all the things I already knew about her, the quirks and habits and daily rituals I had learned by watching her week after week. She was giving away what it had taken me so long to hoard, but I was helpless to stop it. There was something happening between them, fed by their shared proximity to death and their mutual concern for others.
I will kill him if he hurts my Maggie. I will find a way to make him pay.
They had just finished their coffee when Fletcher’s cell phone rang. He started to ignore it, then saw the number and answered reluctantly. “What is it?” he asked. His face grew still. “What?” His voice rose. “Tell me exactly what he said.” He was silent, listening. “Are you sure?” He glanced up at Maggie, his face grave. “No, you did the right thing,” he assured his caller. He hung up and stared across the table at Maggie, as if not knowing how to begin.
“Who was that?” Maggie asked. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
“Your gunshot victim recovered consciousness briefly on the way to surgery. He said something I think might be important.”
“Then tell me,” Maggie said quickly. “What did he say?”
“It makes no sense.” Fletcher’s voice betrayed both his fear and his confusion. An interesting combination, I thought.
“What did he say, Christian?” Maggie asked again. She touched his arm and left it there.
“He said, ‘I know who killed the nurse. I was at the playground that day.’ ”
Maggie froze, as if not comprehending.
“Did you hear me?” Fletcher asked.
“Yes.” Her thoughts were already elsewhere. “Did he say anything else at all?”
Fletcher shook his head. “Not really. Nothing that made much sense. That was one of the nurses who actually heard him. She said he kept repeating: ‘By the lake, by the lake, by the lake.’ ”
“What lake?”
Fletcher shrugged. “That was all he said.”
“Why did the nurse call you?” Maggie asked, unable to ignore the flicker of suspicion her experience caused.
“She said it was because the other nurse told a few people, and she knew it would start going through the hospital like wildfire. Since he was my patient, she wanted me to know.”
“Why did she really call?” Maggie asked more quietly.
Fletcher looked embarrassed. “Everyone assumes Fiona and I were having an affair. I think she was trying to be kind and thought I’d want to know.”
I knew what Maggie was thinking: Well someone was having an affair with her, and whoever he is, he probably has heard about it by now, too.
“I have to put a guard on him,” Maggie said. She sat up straight. “His life might be in danger.”
“It is in danger,” Fletcher said. “But not from whoever killed Fiona. He’s in surgery by now and there’s no guarantee he’ll pull through. But at least no one can get to him, not for several hours.”
“What if it was one of the surgeons?” Maggie sounded out of breath, even a little bit panicked, which was not like her at all. She never showed her vulnerability. Did it have something to do with Fletcher being here, with knowing he could comfort and sustain her?
For the first time, it occurred to me that maybe Maggie was stubborn and strong and stalwart—not because she wanted to be, but because she had to be.
Fletcher smiled sadly at her. “One of the surgeons? I’m starting to be glad I’m a doctor instead of a detective. All I have to do is fix people. You have to decide whether they’re good or bad.”
“Christian,” she said, unwilling to give up her fears. “If that man dies, we may never know where the boy is or who killed Fiona Harker. He must be protected.”
“He’s not in danger from the surgeon,” Fletcher assured her. “The guy just started his residency last week. He lived seven hundred miles away before then. With his boyfriend, I might add. And the nurses will be watching your man every moment. He will be okay. Don’t forget that you won’t be able to talk to him at all unless you let the surgical team do its job. You’re just going to have to wait and accept that his fate is in other people’s hands right now. There is nothing you can do but breathe.”
“I can’t just sit here and wait,” Maggie said.
“You don’t have a choice,” Fletcher told her. “People come into this hospital all the time, thinking they have choices when they don’t. Sometimes life doesn’t give you any choices. You either live or
you die and there’s only one thing you can do to determine which it is. After that, it’s up to God, or fate, or whatever you want to call it.”
Oh, that wasn’t going to work with Maggie. She wasn’t one to give up control of anything, especially not to a force as nebulous as fate. It wasn’t that she lacked faith. She just didn’t trust it. She had seen the dark side of fate once too often.
The Chinese man sitting across from me eating tapioca pudding grunted. I looked at him and realized that he had a staff badge clipped to his shirt. I wondered how much he had overheard of their conversation and why he suddenly looked so alarmed.
For a moment, I thought he sensed my presence. He was staring right at me with a look on his face that clearly meant trouble. But then I realized he was staring past me. And no wonder. Serena Holman was standing at the end of the cafeteria line, cup of coffee in hand, dressed in an emerald green satin dress that clung to her as if it were painted on. She was staring straight at Maggie and her soon-to-be-ex-husband. Her heels were at least three inches tall and, I had to admit it, the woman was smoking hot. If she’d been at a fundraiser in that getup, which was my guess, I was willing to bet she had raised a lot more than money.
The look she was sending Christian Fletcher radiated hostility. Whether it was aimed at him or at Maggie or both, I could not tell. But I was about to find out. She started walking their way in that smooth, controlled gait women who wear high heels learn, like they intend to eat you when they get to you.
Fletcher saw his wife coming. “I apologize,” he said quickly.
“For what?” Maggie asked.
“For what’s about to happen.”
“Christian?” Serena Holman towered over them in her heels. Her voice was carefully nonchalant, but I could feel the anger simmering in her. It was a little over the top, I thought. After all, she had left him.
“Serena.” Fletcher’s voice was as neutral as hers. It was the vocal equivalent of two dogs circling each other. “Been out rubbing elbows with board members again, or are you planning to start a riot on the geriatric ward?”
“For your information, I was having dinner with our largest benefactor.”
But not his wife. That would have been counterproductive.
“My condolences,” Fletcher said. “I’ve met him.”
“Somebody’s got to suck up to him if you want your salary paid,” she snapped back.
Oh, no neutrality there. Miss Tall Blonde Doctor had slid right into nasty. She stared at Maggie and extended a hand. “Dr. Serena Holman. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Liar. She knew who Maggie was. She didn’t fool me. She didn’t fool Maggie, either.
“Yes, I know who you are,” Maggie said pleasantly. “We’ve met. Yesterday.”
“Did we?” She peered down at Maggie. “The last few days have been a whirlwind. We’ve had a foundation grant up for review, tours of the wing, the dinner tonight, and, to top it all off, I’ve got a patient who’s taken a turn for the worse who has to take precedence over everything else. I apologize for not remembering who you are.”
Maggie smiled but said nothing. She was not going to engage. She was going to let Serena Holman’s aggression wash over her like a wave until it receded back to sea. Not because Maggie was a student of Zen, but because she knew it would piss the lady doctor off royally.
“Oh, yes, I remember you now,” Serena Holman said into the awkward silence. “You were asking around about that nurse’s murder.”
“Fiona Harker,” Fletcher interrupted. “Her name was Fiona Harker.”
His wife waved a hand gracefully, dismissing the information. Nurse’s names, apparently, were one of the minor details she just didn’t have time for on busy days.
“Have you made any progress?” she asked Maggie.
“Working on it,” Maggie said, then looked at Christian Fletcher as if to say, Let it be. She’ll be gone soon enough.
“Interestingly enough, I heard a rumor on the way in,” Serena Holman said brightly, taking a sip of her coffee with a practiced gesture that had been perfected at endless cocktail parties. There would be no stains on her designer dresses.
“Did you?” Maggie said. She pretended to stifle a yawn. Serena Holman noticed, and the anger in her flared. She took herself very seriously.
“Apparently, some man was brought into the emergency room muttering about knowing who killed that nurse,” Serena said, looking first at Maggie and then focusing on her estranged husband. “I imagine you saved his life, Christian. Surely you got the dirty details?”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Fletcher said promptly, not needing Maggie’s warning glance to profess ignorance. “I just fix their bodies.”
“That’s right,” Serena Holman said coolly. “You’re above all that gossip, aren’t you? Saint Christian. Ironic, isn’t it?” When no one asked her what was ironic, she flicked her spite on them anyway: “Ironic that a man who lets all the gossip go right over his head should be the single most popular subject of gossip in this entire hospital.”
She smiled at them as if they had protested the truth of this statement, though both Maggie and Fletcher were staring resolutely at their coffee cups. “Oh, yes, it’s true,” she assured Maggie. “My husband here has ascended to the rank of most eligible bachelor in town. There seems to be a virtual sweepstakes to see who will land him next. In fact, I’m thinking of auctioning him off to raise money for the hospital. Would you like to put in a bid? Surely you can outbid a bunch of nurses? Even on a cop’s salary.”
“That’s enough, Serena,” Fletcher said sharply. “Don’t you have a dying patient to attend to?”
“Of course. There’s nothing I can do for her, though. Poor thing. But one must keep up appearances.”
Why do I think that’s her life philosophy?
Serena Holman turned on her three-inch heels and floated off, as if she had spotted someone across the room at a party and was just dying to confide in them.
“Like I said, I apologize,” Fletcher told Maggie when they were alone again.
“It’s okay,” Maggie said. “My ex-husband was drop-dead gorgeous, and he taught me that incredibly beautiful people are often incredibly self-absorbed people. The world lets them be that way.”
“She’s not beautiful,” Fletcher said. “Not on the inside and not the outside, either. She’s plastic. Everything about her is an act. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself. I was a fool to marry her.”
No, my friend, I thought, moved by his humility. You were human. What man under eighty would have been able to say no when a woman that perfect came after him? Sure, I know better now. Death can do that to you. It can open your eyes about what beauty really is. But you, my friend, you still live in the land of pheromones and self-delusion. I do not blame you for taking the bait.
“It’s easy to be blinded by the light,” Maggie agreed. “Believe me, I’ve been there.”
“She doesn’t even care about her patients,” Fletcher continued, either needing to confess his stupidity or wanting Maggie to know he was after something deeper with her. “It took me a long time to figure that out. Sure, she’ll put on a show if the parents are around or, even better, donors. But when she’s alone with them? She doesn’t even like kids. Wouldn’t have any of her own. Can you imagine? A pediatric surgeon who doesn’t like children? She went into the field for the show. Because she knew she could go the fastest and the furthest with that specialty, that it would be her ace in the hole when it came to raising money. All she has to do is trot out some poor dying kid and people empty their pockets. But believe me when I say, she doesn’t really even see them. They’re invisible to her.”
I knew how that felt, for sure.
Maggie was staring at Fletcher. He misread her look. “I sound bitter and petty, don’t I?” he said.
“No,” she assured him. “It’s not that. It’s just that I saw her in action yesterday, with some of her patients. I was waiting to talk to her in a play
room near the nurse’s station. A little girl was there, drawing with crayons. She was precious, but very ill, I think. She made me a picture. It was lovely. She drew me a house by a lake with flowers and shrubs everywhere. And a little boy who lived in the house. She was telling me about it when your wife came in. She sent the little girl off with a nurse without so much as a smile because the girl had missed her radiation appointment. She seemed so angry at the child. I thought it was cold.”
“And that story shows the difference between the two of you,” Fletcher said. “You were in that ward for how long? Ten minutes? And you got presented with a picture some child lovingly drew for you? Serena has been there twelve years and she’s never even brought home one memento. She probably throws them in the trash when she does get them. While I bet you put yours up on the refrigerator when you got home, didn’t you?” He smiled. “That says a lot about you.”
Maggie laughed. “Actually, I put the picture in Fiona Harker’s case file. That says a lot about me.”
Fletcher smiled. “Good luck explaining that in court.”
“Yes, I will have to come up with a good reason why a map of a house by a lake is relevant to . . .” Maggie’s voice trailed off and I could feel words connecting to ideas and then forming thoughts, tumbling through her brain in a millisecond. She made the connection. Then she discarded it. Then she made the connection again.
Come on, Maggie, I willed her. Have a little faith. Have a little faith in me. Have a little faith in those things you cannot see.
She stood abruptly. Fletcher looked alarmed. “I have to go,” she said.
“You have to go?”
“Now.” She glanced at him. “I can’t tell you anything more, but I have to go. I’ll send in someone to guard the gunshot victim’s room when he’s out of surgery. Can you clear that?”
“Sure,” Fletcher said. “But where are you going?”
“I can’t tell you. It would sound crazy anyway. I just have to go.”
By the time she hit the parking lot, Maggie was running. I was right behind her.
