Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) (4 page)

"Me too," said Tucker, mouth
twisting.

"Me three." I sat back down.
Tucker handed me my glass. I took it, careful to avoid brushing his fingers. I
wanted him. I hated him. And I hated him even more for pointing out I was more
out of control than I'd thought. In my mind's eye, I saw myself writing a psych
note on Dr. Hope Sze. Judgment: impaired. Insight: poor.

"So how about them Expos?" said
Stan.

"They don't exist anymore," I
said. I'm not a baseball fan, but even I knew that.

"Sucks, huh?" he said brightly.
And conversation sort of turned back to normal, but after half an hour, I threw
my money on the table. "Thanks. It's been a slice."

Tucker said, "Do you
want—"

I cut him off. "I have to grab a few
things before I head. Feminine hygiene products."

Oldest trick in the book: invoke
menstruation and the men will melt away. It even works on doctors. Tucker sank
back into his chair. I marched away to the sound of Stan's laughter.

I had to think. Thinking was easier
without Tucker around.

Should I have stayed off longer?

Should I tell Mrs. Lee to forget it?

While these thoughts buzzed through my
head, a man walked by with a brown dachshund in a carrier strapped to his
chest. It doesn't get more metrosexual than that. I had to laugh.

Montreal was a lot different from London,
Ontario. On St-Denis alone, I could hardly count the number and type of
restaurants. Vegetarian Thai. Afghan. Vietnamese. A gelato shop. Plus cute
clothes and stores selling mainly French CD's and books. If I had money instead
of our resident's slave wages, I'd be in heaven.

Maybe literally. A cyclist nearly mowed
me down as I crossed the street. He didn't say sorry or even turn around, just
kept speeding down the street in his helmet and Spandex. I thought about giving
him the finger, but what was the point?

I'd rather window-shop. Tori had
mentioned a medieval clothing store. I felt like surrounding myself in brocade
and satin and fantasy instead of real life.

"Hope!" called a male voice.

Was that Tucker? I spun around, already
gritting my teeth, ready to face him.

But it wasn't Tucker. Or Stan. Or any guy
from my residency program.

The guy walking toward me was one I'd
know anywhere, any time, even though I hadn't seen him in almost two years. My
breath froze in my throat.

His face seemed almost as familiar as my
own, maybe more so, since I'd spent hours, days, even years memorizing it, from
his gentle eyebrows to his well-shaped lips. I missed his hair, though. It was
still crisp and black, but he'd pared it down to a crew cut instead of letting
it touch his collar in the back.

Ryan Wu, my first love. My first lover.
My only real boyfriend. Live in Montreal.

He was breathing a little faster from
chasing after me. That made me think of other, more intimate times I'd seen him
breathless.

We stared at each other. I couldn't
believe how little he'd changed. I could see the same laughter in his brown
eyes. He'd retained his slim build and long runner's legs. A few times I'd
wished him fat and bald after we'd broken up, but now I was glad he looked
almost exactly the same. I could mentally rewind the clock three, four years,
before it all went sour.

I said, stupidly, "You cut your
hair."

"So did you."

True. My hair used to spill past my
shoulders, but I'd tried a chin-length bob and liked it.

He smiled. I smiled back. Then, suddenly
shy. I glanced back at the café I'd just left. We were a few blocks away, so I
could barely make out our table, let alone Tucker.

Ryan nodded at me. "You look
good,"

He said it first, thank goodness, which
let me admit, "You too."

Ryan sticks to the truth. He was brutally
honest, annoyingly Christian sometimes, but not a liar. Such a tonic after
Alex, the first Montreal bad boy I got mixed up with.

I wanted to eyeball every detail of
Ryan's body. Part of me wanted to make sure he was really here and now, within
licking distance. The other part of me wanted to sprint far away from him.

I exhaled. "So what are you doing
here?
 
I mean, I didn't know you were in
town."

His smile hitched up at the corner and he
glanced over his shoulder. A girl in a miniskirt marched toward us on coltish
little legs, black hair swinging with every step. She was pretty and she was
pissed. I'd never met her, but her expression told me exactly who she was with
respect to Ryan.

"Sorry, Lisa," he said. "I
didn't want Hope to get away."

"No, we wouldn't want that,"
she agreed in a high-pitched voice. I looked down at her. She wasn't just
short, she was made miniature all over. In other words, the stereotypical Asian
doll-like build that made even me feel like a tank, even though I was just as
Chinese as she was.

"Hi, Lisa, I'm Hope Sze." I
tried to smile. I hadn't so much as glimpsed Ryan in over a year and a half, so
why did I feel so bereft, meeting his girlfriend?

To my surprise, she held out her hand and
pumped mine. She had a good grip for someone sparrow-sized. She said,
"Pleased to meet you. I was just taking Ryan on a tour of Montreal."

He smiled. "I'm here with some
buddies. I gave Lisa a call."

Well, that didn't sound too lovey-dovey.
Neither did their stance, side by side but not touching. Not to mention him
racing after me. My heart lifted, even as I scolded it.
No men. Not even ex-boyfriends.
Especially
not ex-boyfriends.

"We're having a great time,"
she said.

He smiled. "Yeah, Lisa's an awesome
tour guide. Listen, Hope, I'm here two more days. Maybe we could catch up
sometime?"

I knew the mature, responsible,
Lisa-friendly thing to do. Instead, I gave him my phone numbers, home and
pager, with my best smile. "Definitely. Call me."

Chapter 4

Once I decided to kill her, I got pretty
excited about it. There are so many ways to off someone. Think about it.

You could do it with your hands, like
strangling, beating, or a karate
 
chop.
That one would be pretty funny, unless she knows karate too.

You could go totally hands-free and not
be in the same room if you did poison or a fire.

I kinda like weapons like guns and
knives. I even heard of using an ice pick.

Man, so many choices. It's like losing
your virginity. You only get to do it for the first time once.

***

The phone rang twice that night, but both
times, the caller hung up without leaving a message. I was too cheap to get
caller ID, so all I could do was cross my fingers that Ryan would contact me
before he left.

The next morning, I swung into the emerg
nursing station and found a plain brown envelope propped against the printer.

DR. HOPE SZE. CONFIDENTIAL.

Mrs. Lee had written my name in indelible
black marker. She'd printed her return address just as clearly in the upper
left hand corner.

I lifted the envelope. She'd chosen the
padded kind, as if she needed to insulate the documents within. It felt
surprisingly heavy for a bunch of paper.

"Mrs. Lee dropped that off last
night," said Nancy, the psych emerg nurse. Psych patients need a lot of
one-on-one that the regular emerg nurses are too busy to provide, so they get
their own nurse. I'd vaguely noticed Nancy sitting next to the printer when I
rotated through emerg last month, but I'd never registered what service she
belonged to until I sat in her chair one day and a doctor told me the error of
my ways. "That's the psych nurse's chair," he'd told me. "She
always sits there." Now I sat there with her.

This envelope was the first concrete sign
that Mrs. Lee meant business. Last chance to listen to Tucker.

Forget Tucker. I started to rip open the
envelope flap.

Nancy shook her head and waved a
clipboard at me. "Hot off the press."

I reached for the chart and laid the
envelope on the table, both disappointed and secretly relieved. "What've
you got for me?"

"Reena Schuster. A twenty-nine
year-old female who says she's depressed."

I was already scanning the triage note.
Normal vitals, allergic to Haldol, nothing else remarkable. I hadn't done any
psych-emerg before, but I'd done enough emerg last month to figure out the ER's
no-nonsense approach to young, healthy, mildly depressed women: see if she's
suicidal and if she's not, give her the boot.

In a nice way.

I could give her a prescription or tell
her to make an appointment with her doctor for a change in medication. If she
didn't have an M.D., I'd hook her up with someone. And I'd make a "suicide
pact." It sounds like something teenagers do with loaded shotguns under
their arms, but actually, it boils down to, "Promise you'll come back if
you feel like killing yourself."

So I already had vague plans for Reena
Schuster before I even met her.

Room 14, the psych room, was a white box,
usually empty except for the bed with restraining straps. Today its lights were
off, which was kind of weird, but the surrounding emerg's fluorescent lights
brightened the gloom of the room.

A heavyset woman paced the room like a
caged lion. Another woman, thin with bad blonde highlights visible even in dim
light, sat on the bed and snapped her gum.

I knocked on the open door. The
lion-pacer rounded the room to face me. She gasped and grabbed her chest so
suddenly, her Medic Alert bracelet clinked against her watch.

Uh-oh. Ten-to-one, she was Reena
Schuster, dramatic before we even started.

The skinny one narrowed her eyes at me
without unfolding her legs from the bed. "Are you the doctor? You look way
too young."

I forced a smile as I flicked on the
light. We all blinked. "Hi, I'm Dr. Sze. I'm a medical doctor doing my
residency training." I turned back to the lion-pacer. "Are you Reena
Schuster?"

"Oh, God." she said instead of
answering. "Oh. My. GOD." She threw herself on the bed and wrapped
her head in her hands, rocking back and forth so hard on the edge, the gurney's
wheels shifted. "It's fate. I know it is. I'm being punished."

"Reena. Chill," said the
friend.

I cleared my throat. I'm not saying all
patients love me, but was she really saying I was a punishment? Maybe it was
the depression talking, although from what I've seen, truly depressed people
don't have energy to pace or apply blue eyeliner like Reena. I tucked the
clipboard under my arm, an uncertain smile pasted on my face.

Reena grabbed her own wavy brown hair
with her hands and twisted it with her fingers until I saw her knuckles blanch.
"Jodi? You see it too, don't you? We're coming full circle."

The friend, Jodi, put her arm around her.
"Reena..."

"No. I know you think I'm nuts, but
I'm serious. This is it. This is
it
!"
Her voice rose to a scream. She dropped her hair and pounded her hands on her
thighs.

I glanced at the door. I didn't dare
close it. Rule number one: if you're worried, leave the door open.

Nancy stood behind the Plexiglas,
frowning at us. So at least rule number two was covered: get help.

"Reena—"

"Don't say my name!"

Jodi drew Reena's head toward her chest
and glared at me. "Could we get another doctor?"

It would look weak to go back without
even asking one question. "I haven't done an assessment—"

Reena burst into noisy, messy tears.

"For God's sake, what do you want
from her? She can't talk to you!" Jodi's voice was so hard, it cut through
Reena's sobs.

Both Reena and I got very still.

I swallowed hard. Technically, I'm an
M.D., but so many times, I just didn't know what to do. My instinct was to
flee. I steeled myself against it.

Reena's crying softened. I hovered in the
doorway. Maybe I could just wait her out. If, for some reason, I'd upset her,
she could get over it and we could talk.

Still, I was relieved when Nancy's flats
tapped into the room. "Is there a problem?"

"Her!" Reena said, pointing at
me. Her red-rimmed, accusing eyes stabbed me from behind her curtain of hair.

"She hasn't even had a chance to
talk to you yet, Reena. Would you rather come to the interview room?
 
We've finished working in there and you're
welcome to come in." Nancy offered her a tissue.

Reena blew her nose loudly. "I
can't. Not with
her
."

"She's the resident on today, Reena,
and you've already talked with me—"