Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) (9 page)

Of course I would try, but my stomach
tightened. I felt light-headed. I pinched my wrist to ground myself. I'd
inserted tubes down people's airways and shocked people's hearts. Why did I
have so much trouble on psych? "Sure. I just wonder why she keeps coming
back here, if she refuses to see me."

She pointed to the address on the chart.
"She's in our sector."

That made me think of Mrs. Lee again. I
rubbed my forehead. Nancy gave me a strange look. "Headache," I said,
trying to act as normal as possible. I checked my watch. It was almost 11:30
a.m. I asked Robert to come with me. It would be faster if we did it together,
and he could take over if she refused me.

I strode in the office. Reena was sitting
in the corner with a coat over her shoulders despite the heat outside. The same
friend took the chair closest to the door. "Hi, Reena—"

She put her hands to her mouth and almost
screamed. "I don't want to see you!"

My teeth clenched together so abruptly, I
bit the skin inside my lower lip. Why did she hate me so much?

Robert gasped and almost bumped into my
back. "Sorry!"

I ignored him. I clutched her chart
harder to my chest. I would not drop anything this time. "I know you don't
want to see me. I'm sorry—"

Reena covered her eyes. "Oh, God,
you're
sorry!"

Jodi slid off her chair and put her hand
on Reena's arm, her body blocking me. "Chill."

Reena shoved her away. "I will
not
fucking chill, you bitch!" Her
face was blotchy, as if she'd been crying or sleeping face-down. Her pupils
were dilated and her lips were cracked. I wondered if she was on something. I
started to glance at her chart, to check her vital signs, but Reena twisted her
hair around her fists again, arresting my eye. Was she going to hit me next?

I stood frozen in the doorway, blocking
the medical student, until I heard Nancy's heels tapping toward us.

I relaxed a smidgen and let her through.
She said, "Now, now, Reena."

Reena pointed at me, her index finger
trembling. "You want me to confess. You want me to go crazy. But I
won't!"

Why would I want that? I shook my head.

"Of course you won't, Reena."
Jodi threw her arm around her. "Everything is fine."

"
LIAR!
"
She launched her head back and I could hear her gnashing her teeth. She was an
animal.

I gulped. Jodi tried to draw her into her
arms, but Reena shoved her away, shouting over her shoulder at me, "You
should just give me drugs! I'm not fucking talking to you! You can't make me!
Do you want me to
get
suicidal? Is
that what you want, bitch? Would that make everything even? Well, I
won't!"

She pounded to the other side of the exam
room and wrenched open the door to the hallway. Two people waiting for their
X-rays looked up, startled, as she rushed toward them.

Reena veered sharply to the right, then burst
out of the emergency department exit on to the street.

Chapter
8

The hospital guards looked shell-shocked.
They stared at Reena Schuster, fast-disappearing down
Péloquin
street, and then back at us for guidance.

"Oh, my God!
 
Should we call a code?" I asked Nancy.
With a code white, they could've wrestled Reena down.

Nancy hesitated. "It would be the
police now. She's off hospital property."

Jodi snapped, "Don't bother. She's
fine." She raced after her, blasting past an old couple hobbling into the
emerg. The woman with a cane stumbled. The old man steadied her elbow.

"Hey!" I called, but Jodi's
dirty blonde hair vanished after Reena. At that pace, we'd lose both of them
before I could dial 911. I backed into the psych room and reached for the phone.

Nancy laid her hand on mine. "Wait.
She wasn't suicidal during my assessment this morning or when you saw her
yesterday."

"Right, but—"

"She's off hospital property
now," she repeated.

Robert shook his head and shoved his
hands in his pocket. He wasn't getting involved.

"What are you saying?" All I
could think was that my patients were literally running away from me. What was
worse, two code whites in two days or one code white and one taking off AMA
(against medical advice)?

"I'll call Dr. Forbes," said
Nancy.

I stepped back. She'd be better breaking
the bad news. She claimed the phone and spoke in muted tones.

"It's not your fault," muttered
Robert.

I rubbed my hand against my forehead.
Wasn't it? Should I have sent the medical student in solo, knowing she was
unwilling to see me, instead of going in myself to try and hurry up the cases?

And why did Reena hate me so much? I'd
just met her.

I'd heard of projection and transference
and vaguely understood the concept: patients had a lot of crap, and thought the
therapist was doling it out, when in fact it was their own fears coming back at
them. But I'd thought it only happened after long term therapy, especially
Freudian. Reena had hated me on sight. Why did I make her so nuts?

She definitely seemed more unbalanced
today. Why did she think I wanted her to go crazy or kill herself? I didn't
even know her. I'd be happy if she stayed at home, eating Corn Flakes.

Nancy hung up the phone. "Dr. Forbes
says there's nothing we can do. She's a borderline and a frequent flyer, and
now she's off the premises. He's not going to send the police after her. She'll
probably come back on her own."

Yes, probably tomorrow afternoon, when I
was back on psych-emerg. My eyes ached with fatigue. This was supposed to be an
easy rotation, but so far, it was worse than straight emerg. The ER was
exciting. In, out. Boom, boom. Evening and night shifts took their mental and
physical toll, but you got bragging rights and you had a set time to go home.
At this rate, my next two months would be non-stop Reena Schuster refusing to
see me and making everyone else think I was incompetent.

Nancy forced a smile. "You two
should go eat. I'll call you when someone else comes in."

As we trudged up the stairs to the
residents' room, Robert said, "Are you okay?"

Miniature golf face struck again. I
shrugged. "I don't know why she bothers me so much."

"That's the borderlines' job, right?
They make you nuts, too."

I hadn't even diagnosed her as a
borderline. I had no instinct for psych. She told me she was depressed, so I
went through the checklist for depression and thought about a few other
diagnoses like bipolar disorder or substance abuse. That was it. But it was
true, her chart was covered in borderline personality disorder.

Robert punched in the code for the
resident's lounge and held the door open for me. "I knew someone who
worked with borderlines. She said..." He hesitated and lowered his voice.
"You can tell who they are because they make you so mad. If you want to
strangle them, they're borderlines."

I half-laughed. "Yeah? The
psychiatrist I worked with said to think of Glenn Close from
Fatal Attraction
." I passed through
the door. "Thanks."

"That's good, too." He stood by
the fridge door, obviously mulling over Reena, but more like he was interested
instead of irritated. "I don't think she was typical, though. The scars on
her arms were old. I doubt she's slashed herself for months, maybe years.
Still, she was angry, and I think she had definite abandonment issues, so she
does fit the profile."

He was going through the borderline
diagnostic criteria. Anger, fear of abandonment, paranoid or suicidal under
stress, a tendency to idealize or demonize people, and more often than not,
wrist-cutting. Hey, that sounded exactly like Reena. And I shouldn't take all
the hating personally—borderlines either loved you or hated you, and I
just happened to end up on the hate list.

For the first time, I stopped to look at
Robert, not as a pudgy medical student in a white coat, but as a human being
who was a lot more psych-savvy than I was or ever would be. "Are you
planning on doing psych?"

He smiled, seemingly undisturbed by the
rotting food smell emanating from both the garbage can and the refrigerator.
"Does it show?"

They say there are two types of doctors,
internists and surgeons. Internists like to pore over books and think deep
thoughts; surgeons like to act. I'm obviously a surgeon. I'd classified Robert
as an internist, but now I wasn't sure. Maybe psychiatrists are a breed of
their own.

I threw open the fridge door to hunt for
my bottle of water. MuchMusic blasted in the background. Someone I didn't
recognize, a med student, chewed lasagna with the remote in one hand and a fork
in the other.

Tucker was nowhere to be seen. I glanced
at my watch. Forty minutes had passed. No chance he was still in the gym.

I chugged my bottle and chanted to
myself, I am not disappointed. I am not.

My pager went off. Not emerg, but an
outside number with an area code 514. Who would be calling me from outside the
hospital but within Montreal?

"Is it Nancy?" asked Robert.

I shook my head. I could think of one
possible candidate who'd take my mind off of Tucker. I walked to the
wall-mounted phone and punched in the number, my pulse already accelerating.

A familiar male voice said, "Hey."

"Hi, Ryan," I said, aiming for
calm instead of
eek
.

"Hard at work?"

"Yeah. I already admitted one
patient."

"Geez. Is that why you're listening
to Britney Spears?"

I laughed and glanced at the TV, where
Britney managed to dance and flash her cleavage with equal abandon.
"Something like that. I actually get a lunch break when I'm on
psych."

"Amazing. Listen, I was calling
about the thing you asked me." Mrs. Lee. Business before pleasure.
"Could I use your computer to start on the modeling? I'm leaving on
Thursday, but I've got some ideas."

I twisted the phone cord around my
finger. Hmm. Ryan in my apartment, waiting for me to get home. Business
and
pleasure?
 
"Aren't you supposed to be on
vacation?"

"It's boring."

Ha. He'd rather do work for me than score
with Lisa. "I should make you do downtime."

"But."

"If you come by now, you can pick up
my keys."

"Sweet."

I wolfed down my sandwich, continually
checking my watch. If Ryan was late, he'd interrupt my family medicine clinic.
He usually had a good sense of direction, but what if he got lost in a strange
city? Or got waylaid by a petite girl with claws?

Oh me of little faith. Not only did Ryan
page me from the parking circle in front of the hospital just over half an hour
later, but when I bounced up to him, he handed me a single dwarf sunflower.

"Oh, Ryan." I surveyed the
orange-yellow petals and delicate stamens and wanted to kiss him in the
sunflower, if you know what I mean. How did I ever let this man go?

Still, I had to laugh at the sheer
impracticality of me carrying a sunflower, even a dwarf one, around the
hospital for the rest of the day.

He shrugged and smiled. "Better than
Britney, right?"

"Much." I sniffed it. No sweet
smell, but still wonderful. I twirled it between my fingers while we stood in
the drop-off circle, inhaling exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke and smiling
like idiots.

Having Ryan here felt like I'd clicked
back into my usual orbit. I knew those intelligent brown eyes, that straight
nose, those well-chiseled cheekbones and gently pointed chin. Okay, he hadn't
tucked his T-shirt into his khaki shorts the way he always used to do, and the
shirt was a little more fitted than in days of yore, but moving up a point or
two on the fashion scale was a good thing, right? I should probably try that
someday myself.

He took a step closer, staring into my
eyes like he was remembering things a lot hotter than my old T-shirts. I could
feel the warmth of his body even though he hadn't touched me.

I started babbling. "We grew
sunflowers in front of our house one year, but the birds ate all the
seeds."

He didn't move any closer, but didn't
move away, either. "I remember."

I frowned. "That was before I knew
you. I think my dad planted them when I was, like, in grade eight."

"I remember you telling me about
them."

That was the other thing about Ryan, his
memory for details. Like once I pointed out a postcard of a Valentine in the
sand on the beach. When V-Day came up half a year later, he stamped my name in
the snow, surrounded by a giant heart. Oh. Ryan. The first, the great, the only
love of my life. I opened my mouth. "I lov—"

Holy crap.

I turned scarlet and tried to swallow my
tongue.