Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) (10 page)

He just stood and watched. He knew what I
was going to say. I'd only told him a million times when we were together. Then
he said, "It's okay, Hope."

No. Totally not okay to almost tell your
ex-boyfriend you love him. Even if it was practically a reflex. I turned my
head, swallowing hard, and crossed the pavement toward the grassy knoll across
from the front entrance. A patient paused to stare at us, one hand steadying
her IV. I glared at her.

Ryan kept pace with me. "Are you
still all right with me borrowing your computer? My netbook is pretty basic,
and if you've still got some of the programs I loaded up on yours—"
He paused. "Unless you've upgraded computers? I should have asked."

He knew me so well. I hadn't upgraded or
deleted anything. I stared at my scuffed sandals. "No, I still have same
computer with the design programs and whatever else you put on it. It's all right.
I'm sorry."
I'm sorry I almost said
I love you. I'm sorry I lost you.
Wait, where did that come from? Did
near-strangling make your lose your frontal lobe? "Don't listen to me.
I'm—not myself."

I heard him shrug. "Who would
be?" And when I opened my eyes again, he was looking at me such compassion
and something else, something so deep and familiar I had to turn away before I
could identify it as tenderness.

That was when I saw Tucker.

Chapter
9

I leaped away from Ryan as if he'd given
me
C. diff
which, if you don't know
it, is not bacteria you want to get up close and personal with.

Not that Ryan and I were doing anything
wrong, but guilt seared my gut anyway. Ryan reached for my arm, but I stepped
away and shook my head.

"Hope?" said Ryan.

"Not now."

Ryan turned his head to follow mine. We
both watched Tucker push through the hospital doors and stride right over to
us, his brown eyes narrowed and jaw clenched.

Tucker wasted no time. "Hey, Hope,
how's it going?"

"Okay—"

"Hi, I'm Tucker, who are you?"
His hand shot out between me and Ryan.

Ryan glanced at me.
Who is this guy?

"John Tucker's one of the residents
in my year and, um...a good friend."

Ryan nodded and shook the hand, stepping
forward and forcing Tucker's arm back. "Ryan Wu." Both of them squeezed
hard enough for their knuckles to blanch.

Ryan paused. I realized he was waiting to
see if his name registered with Tucker, but of course, why would I mention my
ex-boyfriend? Tucker already had enough problems with Alex, who fell more into
the enemy with benefits category.

I felt obligated to add, "Ryan and I
did undergrad together and, mm—"
We
used to love each other, in every sense of the word
.

Tucker rocked back on his heels,
surveying Ryan. "Oh, an ex-boyfriend?" He placed a slight emphasis on
the
ex
.

I knew I should cut out the testosterone
fest, but I was curious how Ryan would bury that one.

Ryan didn't disappoint. He looked
straight at Tucker and said, "I'm not into labels."

Tucker's lips tightened, but before he
could say anything, Ryan raised an eyebrow at me. Thanks to our old telepathy,
I realized he was signaling me to give him the key to my apartment.

Yeah, right. I've heard of suicide by
cop, where you want to die so you pull a move in front of a police officer,
just begging him or her to blow you away. But I had no desire to hand over my
key to Ryan just so we could commit suicide by potential lover.

I looked from one lickable guy to the
other, and I'll tell you the truth, I wanted both of them. Ryan, who could
represent my past, present and future; Tucker, who had just met me last month
and had witnessed the worst of me, but somehow still understood me. Not to
mention that I could happily spend the rest of my life underneath (or on top,
or beside, or astride) either of them.

Both of them.

For the first time, I wondered why I had
to choose.

I'd already picked the bad apple the last
time with Alex. My judgment was obviously impaired, to use a psych term. So the
best thing I could do was delay my decision.

I started to smile. Both guys looked at
me like I was crazy, then edged closer, certain I would pick him.

Since I still wanted Ryan to help me with
Mrs. Lee, I needed to give him my key without triggering either of them to
think he was the master of my universe.

First, I turned to Tucker. "Hey, I'm
glad you to see you." He looked smug until I said, "I wanted to talk
to you about some psych stuff. If you have a minute, I'll join you in the
bookstore." St. Joseph's has a teeny used bookstore where battered
children's books can go for a quarter. Tucker usually poked around in the
mystery section while I debated over Lois Duncan or Ellen Emerson White.

Tucker folded his arms. "That's
okay, I'll wait."

I couldn't help admiring his forearms
again. His skin was a bit pale for my tastes, but I liked his definition.

"If you'd just give us a
minute," said Ryan, with a hard stare.

Damn. I'd never seen Ryan facing another
guy down, and he did it well. I might have assumed he'd be all cheery and
Christian about it, but he didn't give a millimetre. Also, I already knew the
feel of Ryan's body, which could be classified as a lethal weapon. I liked
that, too.

I had to bite my lip. For a girl who
spent high school dances dreading the slow songs because guys almost never
asked me to dance, revenge sure tasted sweet.

Tucker turned to me. "Are you ready,
Hope?"

I waved my hand in front of my face in my
best imitation of a Southern belle. "Fellas, I'm about to pass out from
the testosterone."

Tucker snorted. Ryan looked confused, but
my bad accent did break the tension a tad.

"T-man, I'll be with you in two
shakes. Could you give us a sec? I'll bet they've got another Jeffrey Deaver in
for you."

Tucker shook his head, but he sort of
laughed. "I'll check on my bike." He stalked about two feet away, to
the bike racks, and bent over a silver one. I hadn't known he biked to work. I
had to give him points for that and for the fact that he knew how to give me
some space without giving up.

Ryan grinned and held out his hand for
the key.

I handed him the sunflower while I scribbled
down my address and worked my key off its chain. I'd almost forgotten the
flower, what with all the vying for my attention. "Thanks for helping Mrs.
Lee. Help yourself to whatever's in the fridge. Sorry, I haven't gone shopping
lately."

"
De
nada
," he said. He paused and leaned his face over me for a second. I
knew he wanted to kiss me goodbye. In Montreal, it's normal to kiss both cheeks
hello and goodbye, but in Ottawa, you usually just wave or hug. Ryan was
sending me a clear signal.

I ducked out from under him without
trying to make it too obvious. "Thanks again."

Tucker called, "Ready?"

Ryan nodded slowly. "Ready." He
wasn't talking about computer modeling.

I held my finger up at Tucker, signaling
that I needed another minute. Neither of these guys were boy toys. This was
going to be tougher than I thought.

"Want to grab dinner after?"
Ryan asked.

I shook my head. "I'm on call. It's
home call, so I'm not sleeping at the hospital, but I don't know when I'll be
back."

Ryan squinted at me. "Sometime in
the evening?"

"Probably."

He shrugged. "I'm not picky."

I almost laughed. Ryan wasn't a foodie
like me. He could get wrapped up in a problem set and forget to eat until he
ordered a pizza at two a.m.

"Let's play it by ear, okay?"

"Sure. I have to get this key back
to you, anyway."

"Yeah. The concierge has an extra if
I really need one, though."

Ryan frowned. "This whole thing
doesn't sound very secure to me. Is there some sort of security code I need to
get in?
 
Do you have a guard?"

I burst out laughing. The residents'
lounge had better locks than my place. "No and no. Wait 'til you see
it."

The frown lines deepened. "Why, what
sort of security do you have?"

"You'll see." I gave him a
gentle shove at the small of his back. "Do you understand my map?"

He rolled his eyes. Engineering boy,
naturally gifted at directions. "I'll manage." He handed me the
sunflower again. I clenched it between my teeth and grinned at him. He shook
his head, smiling, and waved goodbye.

When I walked over to Tucker, unsure of
how to approach him, he rang his bike bell. The peal made everyone stare, from
pedestrians to an idling taxi driver, even before he said, "'Detective
doctor,' incoming!"

"Shh!" I hurried to his side,
tucking the flower under my arm.

He smiled at me, looking more like a
sunny, blond, surfer dude than a caveman fighting over a woman. "Just
trying to help, Buffy."

"Don't call me that."

"Why not?
 
It's a compliment."

"It sounds like I should be prancing
around in a miniskirt carrying a dog in a matching outfit."

He pursed his lips. "I could go for
that." He offered me the crook of his arm.

I shook my head. Ryan's dark head and
lean body was nearly out of sight, but I didn't want to play too many games and
lose both of them. Of course, maybe I'd lose both of them anyway. I pushed away
that depressing thought and focused on Tucker, who shrugged and waved me ahead
of him.

"Where to, Sherlock? You still want
to go to the bookstore?"

I shook my head. "I want to talk to
you about psych, Watson, but family medicine clinic starts in ten
minutes."

His gaze turned from mild to piercing.
"Confidential stuff?"

I nodded.

He smiled. "I'll walk you to the
FMC."

We weaved through the parking lot, away
from the
hoi polloi
, while I outlined
my woes with Reena Schuster. "I guess what I'm wondering is, have you ever
had a patient who seemed to hate you so much on spec? As far as I know, I've
never done anything to her." I paused between a BMW convertible and a
beat-up VW Golf. "Did you ever have her? It would make me feel so much
better if she kicked your ass, too."

He shook his head. "The name is
familiar, though. I wonder if I saw her as a med student."

"Did you do psych here?" Med
students rotate through different teaching hospitals throughout Montreal,
unlike residents, who spend most of their time at one "base
hospital."

He shook his head. His gelled hair hardly
moved, but that was part of his charm.

"Well, that's it, then. She belongs
to our sector, so you wouldn't have seen her there, except maybe as a
one-off." I'd heard that if you got another sector's patient, you did an
assessment and then sent him or her right back to home base. It was unlikely
Tucker would remember someone he saw so briefly, unless Reena raised hell back
then, too.

"I could've seen her at the
Douglas," said Tucker. "I did an elective there."

At a psych hospital?
 
Hard core. "I didn't know that." I
almost tripped over a Vespa.

"Yeah." He put his hand over
mine and guided me into the next lane, confident and graceful, almost like we
were ballroom dancing. I opened my mouth to ask him if he'd ever taken lessons,
but his fingers trailed over the fine hairs of my arm.

That one stroke, so light I could barely
feel it, electrified my skin and made me clench my teeth together. I pulled
away from him.

His hand dropped back to his side, his
face innocent.

He knew exactly what kind of effect he'd
had on me. I tried to match his expression. I preferred him and Ryan dueling
over me from a safe distance.

I stepped up my pace toward the concrete
stairs of the Family Medicine Clinic, but he led me to the ramp sloping its way
up off the side. "The scenic route," he explained.

I laughed. Tucker was such a weirdo, but
I liked it.

He said from behind me, just before we
reached the FMC's front doors, "You might not think of it to look at me,
but when I was a young grasshopper, I considered psych at one point. That was
before I realized the big bucks were in family medicine."

I twisted around to goggle at him. He met
my eye with a deadpan expression.

We both burst out laughing. The sun highlighted
his jaw and slanted across his eyes, lightening them to golden brown.

He bent forward.

I hesitated, unsure whether to lift my
lips toward his, or step aside like I had with Ryan.

He reached past me to grab the latch of
the ornate front door and swing it open with a bow. "Milady."