Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) (3 page)

"How was your first day back?"
he asked.

I considered several responses, at least
one of them lecherous, but settled on, "I could use a drink."

He laughed. "Thought so." He
quirked an eyebrow at me and I knew he wanted to ask about the big P.

In my case, that P stood for the panic
attacks I'd been suffering during the past week, since Dr. Radshaw's the
murderer had nearly strangled me. I could have ignored his hint, but I felt
compelled to say, "Don't worry, I didn't get triaged as a psych patient
myself."

"Good. I wouldn't want to have to
see you." He meant as a patient. Like I said, Tucker did psych last month.
Now he was doing psych combined with family medicine while I rotated on to pure
psych. Tucker hesitated and added, "Like that, I mean."

Our eyes met and I looked away first. In
July, when he was interested and I wasn't, it was so straightforward. Now, only
a month later, we didn't know what to do with each other. He'd visited me lots
of times while I was off last week, but usually with another friend, like Tori
Yamamoto, in tow. Today, it was just us.

We sat in silence. The sun warmed my face
and arms. For once, I hadn't reapplied my sunscreen and I didn't care. I closed
my eyes and basked in the warmth. When I opened my eyes again, Tucker was
staring at me with a mix of confusion and tenderness before his gaze slid away.

"You want to keep waiting here?
 
We could always go ahead, get a drink by
ourselves and tell Tori and Stan to meet us there," I said, trying to
sound off-hand.

"Probably not a good idea."

My heart dropped before I caught the look
in his eyes and he added, "You, me, alcohol. I'd have you pinned to the
floor before you could say
'Uff-da.'
"

I let the Norwegian or whatever slide.
"Tucker—"

He stood up and shoved his hands in his
pockets. "Just friends, remember?
 
It's only been a few weeks since you and Alex."

I stubbed the toe of my shoe in the
grass. I'd only been with two guys, in the carnal sense, in my entire life, but
right now, I felt like I had a scarlet letter shining on my forehead. How 'bout
a great big W, for Whore.

He bent over so he could look me in the
eye. "Hope. Whatever you're thinking, forget it. I'd love to have a drink
with you. Hell, I'd love to have a drink
off
you and bend you over this bench—"

My thighs tightened. Oh, he was nasty. In
a good way.

"—and God knows, I'm no saint
myself. But I'm trying. You're worth waiting for." He stopped short and
ran his hand through his hair. Even with the hair gel, the top strands ended up
endearingly askew. I reached my hand up to touch them before I caught myself.

He was saying the things I longed to
hear. Before Alex, and maybe before my ex-boyfriend, Ryan, I would have jumped
him. But now we were both gun shy. Part of me wished we could just go back to
flirting without consequences or any possibility of a future. I cleared my
throat. "Thanks. I'll put that on my c.v."

He leaned close enough to kiss me. I
caught my breath. He said, "Hope—"

"
There
you are!" Stan Biedelman hollered from across the parking lot, hands
cupped around his mouth. "Did you turn off your pagers or what?"

I checked mine, but it hadn't gone off.
Sometimes, the incompetent operators couldn't figure out how to page me. Tucker
didn't bother to check his. "Saved by the Stan," he murmured.

I pretended not to hear. I waved at Tori,
who popped out from behind Stan and frowned like she knew what I'd been
thinking.

Within the hour, the four of us were
ordering drinks on a bar-café’s
térasse
under a striped umbrella on St-Denis Street. I marveled how a café managed to
cast a spell negating the exhaust fumes and rumbling car engines.

When Tucker's legs bumped into mine, I
edged my chair closer to Tori. He grinned at me like he could read my impure
thoughts.

I turned away from him to sip my water
and mop up a circle of condensation on the green plastic table. I glanced
around to make sure no one else was within earshot before I said, "I can't
wait for my drink. I deserve one after Dr. Gatien."

Stan snorted. "What about me? I did
ICU today."

"How was that?" asked Tori.

"Same old. Saved some lives,"
he said.

I refused to be impressed. "Yeah. It
must have been so taxing, you were out of there almost before I got out of
psych."

He shrugged. "When you're good, you
don't have to write five pages of notes."

"You do when you're on psych. At
least if you're trying to make up for missing the first quarter of the block.
If I miss one more week, I'll have to make up this entire rotation."

Tori made a disapproving noise low in her
throat.

I balled up my wet cocktail napkin.
"C'mon, Tori, you promised me no more guff when I came back to work. It
was my decision."

"Yeah, but we can still make you
feel guilty about it," said Tucker.

"No need." I flicked the wet
napkin at him with my thumb and index finger. He caught it and slapped it on
the table while I said, "I'm already being punished."

"Yeah, you got Mrs. Lee," said
Stan. "I saw you guys in emerg. That poor woman."

I straightened in my seat. "You know
her?"

He laughed. "Since I was a med
student."

Right. Stan was from Montreal, born,
bred, and trained, so of course he knew Mrs. Lee after nearly a decade of ER
visits. "Did she ever tell you about Laura?"

"Yeah, but I didn't really know her.
She was a few years ahead of me."

My jaw practically dropped open.
"You knew Laura Lee?"

"Well, she played the piano in an
end-of-year play in med school. She was pretty good. Back then, I was doing
accounting and thinking about going medical. I didn't actually know her. But
after she died, if Mrs. Lee came in when I was doing psych, we talked about
Laura playing the piano and it made her feel a little better."

I don't know why, it hadn't occurred to
me until then, that Laura had been a flesh and blood presence at McGill until
she died. "How about you, Tori? Did you know Laura too?"

She shook her head. "I'm from
Alberta, remember?"

I laughed. Some detective I made. It
wasn't that small a world.

Tucker's dark blond eyebrows drew
together into a single line before I could ask him. "Oh, no. Don't tell
me."

"What?"

He sighed. "I didn't know Laura. But
I know Mrs. Lee, and I know you. You believe her, don't you? That someone
killed her daughter?"

It sounded so unscientific, like I
believed in Ouija boards and spirits rapping the table, once for yes, twice for
no. "I don't know. I don't have any evidence to the contrary yet. I'm just
keeping an open mind."

He narrowed his eyes. "But you're
not going to see Mrs. Lee again, unless she comes in—oh, my God. Did you
offer to help her find out if Laura was run down on purpose?"

Instead of answering, I turned to Tori.
"Have you ever met Mrs. Lee?"

Something about Tori is an oasis of calm
and precision. She'd started drawing on her still-dry cocktail napkin with a
black, felt tip pen while we spoke. Now we all shut up and watched her. She
finished a few strokes before replying. "I know who you're talking about.
I saw her in the emergency room because she'd cut her hand."

"And did she talk about her
daughter?"

She shook her head and picked up her pen
again. "I just sutured her up and updated her tetanus shot."

"It didn't look like a suicide
attempt, did it?"

She raised her eyebrows. "No, just a
cut in the web space between her thumb and index finger. She was washing a
glass and it broke." She added a few lines. It looked like a bird's wing.

"So how did you know it was Laura
Lee's mother?"

"One of the nurses told me the
story."

The emergency room was a cauldron of
gossip. Not that our foursome was any different. But she told me what I needed
to know. Mrs. Lee was lucid then and now. She did not go around telling all
Asian women they looked like her daughter and must read her file.

Tucker threw up his hands. "So you
did offer to help her. God, Hope. You want to give yourself an MI before you're
thirty?"

I ignored the heart attack crack. "I
didn't offer. She asked," I replied with dignity.

"You didn't have to say yes."
He stared at me, and I could see his thoughts marching across his face. The
same things he'd said when he told me to take a longer stress break:
you almost died. Look after yourself.
There's only one you. The patients will take care of themselves
. I found his
transparency refreshing, but I didn't need his bossiness.

"I'm not doing anything," I
told Tucker. "I'm just reading Mrs. Lee's file. If it doesn't go anywhere,
neither do I."

"And if you do find a lead, or think
you do?" Sarcasm laced the last part.

I hesitated. He had a point. I hadn't
thought it all through. But I knew the right answer. "I'll talk to the
police."

"Bullshit," said Tucker.

Just then, the waitress arrived with our
drinks, so he got to look like a cursing barbarian while I smiled sweetly. Still,
he was right in that I might not leave Laura's case in the police's hands.

The waitress set down a martini for me,
the first in my life. I took a sip. Yuck. Not sweet at all. Well, at least the
olive should be good, and the triangular glass was amusing.

Stan held his beer mug up in a toast.
"I guess you're taking that 'detective doctor' thing seriously. Well,
à chacun son goût
." His French was
terrible, but at least he wasn't giving me a hard time. I clinked my glass
against his and he gulped his Guinness.

Tucker muttered under his breath.

Stan turned to him. "What's it to
you, bud? She's a grown-up."

Tori said, "He's worried about her.
We both are." She laid down her pen.

I glanced at her drawing. It was a bird
in a cage. Was that supposed to be symbolic or something? I suspected as much
from the way she refused to meet my eye. I made a face.

Meanwhile, Tucker was so mad, his
nostrils flared. "Look. We all go into medicine thinking we're going to
save the world, but most of us figure out it's not worth grinding ourselves
into powder. Especially if you're already—"

Do
not mention the panic attacks. I will kill you.

He caught himself, glanced at Stan and
finished, "—in a vulnerable state."

"You're in a vulnerable state?"
Stan said. "Let me guess. The Gaza Strip?"

I hardly heard him because I was so busy
staring Tucker down. He blinked at the venom in my glare, but he didn't back
down.

Neither did I. I'm old-fashioned enough
that I like guys looking out for me. But that doesn't mean
patronizing
me. Tori and Tucker were the only people who knew about
my panic attacks. Now that Tucker had almost told Stan the Mouth, I could see
my secret spewing forth into the halls of St. Joe's.

Forget about the 'detective doctor.' I'd
be the
defective
doctor.

Tori put her hand on Tucker's arm, but it
was too late.

"I'll put
you
in a vulnerable state," I said to Tucker.

"Hope. Tucker," said Tori.
"We've probably all said things we regret. Let's try and enjoy our
afternoon."

I fixed my eyes on Tucker and enunciated
very clearly. "I haven't even gotten started. For the past week, I've been
listening and listening to you guys while I tried to get my head together.
Well, I decided to come back to work. You don't have to agree with me, but for
Chrissakes, if you're my friends, just support me. Don't tell me I'm wrong,
I've screwed up, or I practically belong in a psych ward myself. I'm twenty-six
years old, okay? I'm a medical doctor. I survived this long without you mapping
out my every move. Lay off."

Tucker opened his mouth. "It's
just—"

I stood up so fast, I rocked the patio
table. The others grabbed their drinks. My martini stayed standing without me
laying a finger on it. "Save your prescriptions for your patients."

Tori reached out as if to lay her hand on
my arm, but hesitated and let her fingers flutter back into her lap.

Stan banged his mug on the table.
"Hey, I don't have a problem with you investigating Laura Lee. It probably
won't do any good, it's been what, almost ten years? But who cares. It's your
funeral."

Funeral. Yep. I could have died last
month.

I didn't say anything. Neither did Tucker
or Tori.

After a frozen minute, even Stan figured
out he'd just said something inappropriate to a woman who'd had a near-death
experience. "Sorry. I'm an ass."