Obsession (Southern Comfort) (8 page)

Justin was pretty sure that had broken some sort of hospital policy, but to be honest, he didn’t much care.  It obviously made her feel better, and outlook was critically important when recovering from a life-threatening event and subsequent surgery.

“It’s very becoming,” he told her.

“Oooh, don’t you just
love
the way he talks,” Shelley cooed.

“You’re embarrassing him,” Hannah chided,
leaning her platinum head toward Shelley. Justin felt ridiculous.  None of the three women could be a day older than twenty-two.  He was at least a decade their senior.  And he was a medical professional, for cripes’ sake.

“I brought you a going home present.” Justin sat the happy little flower on the tray beside
Natasha’s bed, causing the other girls to go into raptures. 

Natasha
burst out in tears.

“I’m sorry,” Justin said, hastily passing her the box of tissues off the tray.

“No, no.”  Natasha waved her hands in front of her face. “It’s so sweet.  Thank you.  You saved my life.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“
Your surgeon might have something to say about me getting all the credit.”  In more familiar territory, Justin patted her arm.  “It’s pretty common for post-surgical patients to experience emotional upheaval and a certain amount of instability, especially given the nature of your wounds.  It’s normal and generally temporary.  I’m sure you’ve been given exit paperwork regarding what to do and who to contact, however, if these feelings seem to worsen or persist?”

“Yes, yes. My sister has it.  She – ”

“Has it right here,” a voice said from behind him.  Justin turned to see Natasha’s older sister – Anne, if he remembered correctly – entering the room, holding aloft a folder with the hospital’s logo on it. In her other hand she clutched a briefcase. She looked like a considerably taller, more mature, more professional version of Natasha.  Minus the blue streaks, of course.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said to her sister after she’d flashed a smile of greeting at Justin. Hannah and
Shelley she basically ignored.  “I had a few errands to run after I left the office.” She laid the briefcase on the tray table.  “Why are you crying, sweetie?” She moved closer to Natasha, frowned briefly at her sister’s hair before running a well-manicured hand over it.

“I don’t know.  Doctor Wellington brought me some flowers and I started bawling.  He said it’s normal.”  She hiccupped a sob again
and Shelley stepped up beside the bed to hold her friend’s hand.

Turning a slightly alarmed look on Justin, Anne
motioned toward the hall.  “Would you mind terribly if I spoke with you for a moment?”

“Not at all.” He followed her out the door.

“She’s okay?” she asked him, nervously chewing on her lip.  “She’s never been given to histrionics.  Rebellion, yes.  Fits of, temper – her specialty.  But tears?  Not even when she was a little girl.  I’m sorry.” Her smile was rueful in her pretty, tastefully made-up face.  “Our parents died in a car crash a week before my nineteenth birthday.  Natasha was nine – the sole survivor of the crash.  I raised her from that point on, and I guess you could say I’ve been more mother than older sister.  A fact which has annoyed Natasha to no end.  Hence the rebellion. She’s made some unwise decisions in order to spite me, which she is unfortunately paying for right now.”

Justin gathered that Anne was referring, at least at the moment, to her sister’s choice of career.  And explained why she’d been less than friendly to the other women. Although
violence could happen anywhere, so he didn’t necessarily believe that Natasha getting shot correlated to her place of employment. Or qualified as some sort of punishment, for that matter.  More like a random piece of unfortunate luck.

“She should be fine.  Her body has experienced a serious trauma, which often translates, emotionally, into bouts of anxiety or depression.  It could be a reaction to anesthesia and narcotic painkillers,
to pain and discomfort, or simply an undetermined biological process. In Natasha’s case, this is compounded by the violent manner in which she sustained her injuries. I’m not attempting to make light of it, but it
is
relatively common and should go away on its own, provided she has proper support.”

“I’ve
always
supported Natasha.”

Justin blinked at the defensive tone.  “I didn’t mean to imply
otherwise.  But if you need help in dealing with her, if she doesn’t seem to be getting better, emotionally speaking, within the next month or two, then do not hesitate to call the numbers listed in the paperwork you received.”

“I’m sorry.”
Anne blew out a sigh as she rubbed her fingers across her puckered brow.  “I didn’t mean to bark at you.  I guess I’m just a little stressed out myself, given what’s happened. And you of all people don’t deserve my irritation. You’ve been… wonderful, really, considering Natasha isn’t even your patient.  And you saved her life.  I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough.”

“There’s no need.  As a job, it’s self-rewarding.”

“Humble, too.” She flashed him another smile.

“I need to get going, so I’m going to say goodbye to
Natasha now.  You take care of yourself.  Don’t forget that the caregiver needs care as well.”

“I’ll try to remember.” 

With that promise, she followed him back into her sister’s room.

CHAPTER SEVEN

JUSTIN
pulled into his driveway, frowning as his headlights illuminated a familiar black SUV.  Cutting the engine, he climbed out of the truck, his confusion escalating when he realized the SUV was occupied.

He
tapped on the driver’s side window.

“What,” came the muffled yell
. James blinked the sleep from his gray eyes as he looked around a little wildly.

Noticing Justin peering at him through the glass, he turned the ignition so that he could roll down the window. 

“What are you doing?” Justin asked without preamble. “It’s freezing out here, you idiot.  And why aren’t you at school?”  His brother had left for Virginia several days ago to return for his final semester.

James,
usually confident to the point of cockiness, looked distressed.  “I quit.”

“You what?”

“I dropped out, okay? I… look, can we talk about this inside? I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour.  I’m exhausted and I’m cold.”

“Any reason you didn’t just let yourself in?” Justin asked after his brother rolled up the window and climbed stiffly out
of the vehicle, his bulky black parka making him look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man turned ninja. “You know where I keep the spare keys.”

“I didn’t feel right just barging in without consulting you
first. Especially given what I have to ask you.”  He looked both mulish and somehow vulnerable.  The same expression he’d worn through most of their childhood, when he’d tried so determinedly to keep up with his older brothers, who, given the age gap, had mostly looked at him as a thorn in their collective side.  A thorn of which they were inordinately fond, but a thorn nonetheless.

Justin sighed, but
nodded toward the darkened house.  “Let’s go.”

“
OKAY
.  Spill it.”

Justin plopped down at the kitchen table across from his brother, who’d just wrapped his hands around a mug of fresh coffee.  There were purplish circles beneath James’ eyes.  The kid did not look well.

“I dropped out of law school.”

“Yeah, I got that part.  Why?”

James studied him over the rim of his mug. “Because I wanted to. Aside from the fact that there’s an attorney under every rock these days, I’ve known for a while that my heart wasn’t in it.  But after you’ve invested that much time and that much money, you kind of feel stuck. Then I got to thinking, if I feel stuck now, what the hell will it be like in ten years? Twenty?  So I got myself unstuck. And I don’t regret it.”

The last words were a little defiant, and
Justin realized that James was waiting for Justin to treat him as he always had – with the vague sense of superiority typical of elder siblings.  Justin leaned back, studied his brother’s face – so very similar to his own.  And realized that the kid was no longer a kid. He was almost twenty-five. And old enough to make his own decisions.

“Okay.”

“Okay? “ James sat the mug down. “That’s it? No lecture? No
you’re screwing up your life?”

“It’s your life,” Justin said.  “I figure if you screw it up, that’s your business.”

James’ shoulders slumped in obvious relief.  “Thank you.”

“I’m your brother, not your keeper.”

“Somehow, I don’t think Mom and Dad are going to feel quite so blasé.”

“Maybe not,” Justin agreed.  “But like I said, it’s your life.  And ultimately, they just want you to be happy.”

“So, uh, how would you feel about a roommate?”

“What?”

“Only
temporarily,” James clarified hastily, even as Justin started picturing piles of dirty socks springing up on his floors like a malodorous mountain range.  Images from his noisy, brother-filled childhood flashed like horror movie freeze frames before his tired eyes. “Just until I figure out what I want to do.  My lease for my apartment was up at the end of last month,” he explained.  “I didn’t renew it. I’ve been crashing with a friend the past couple nights.”

Justin stared.

“I can help you out around here,” James added, obviously having mapped out his plan of attack.  “There’s still a ton left to do on this place, and you never have the time.   You said yourself that I do good work.”

Justin closed his eyes
, knowing that his solitude – his glorious, sanity-preserving solitude – was a thing of the past.  At least temporarily.

“I assume your stuff is in your SUV?”

“Most of it.” James looked hopeful.  “I put some of the bigger things in a storage unit.  And I booked a room at a hotel down the beach.  In case you said I couldn’t stay.”  

“Who are you kidding?”

“No one,” James admitted with a grin.  “I’m your favorite baby brother.”

“You’re my only baby brother.”

“Exactly.”

Shaking his head, Justin pushed back from the table.  “Let’s go unload your truck
and then you can cancel your reservation.” 

The phone on the wall behind him rang, and Justin frowned at it before crossing the floor.  The only calls he got on his land line were generally from telemarketers. 

“Hello?”

Silence greeted him on the other end.  Thinking the call had dropped, he was just about to hang up when he heard breathing. 

“Hello?”

Still nothing.  He didn’t have time for this.

“What are you wearing?”

The voice was breathy,
soft, feminine. And probably belonged to a thirteen-year-old accepting a dare from the other slumber party denizens.  He hung up without responding.

“Who was that?” James was shrugging back into his parka.

“Prank call.”

“They want to know if your refrigerator was running?”

“Something like that.” Justin followed his favorite baby brother out the back door.

KATHLEEN
drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she drove through the city, the candy box colors of the buildings lined on either side, like architectural confections, buoying her already bright mood.  She should probably be tired, given how many hours she’d put in over the past few days, but conversely she felt energized. As it sometimes happened in her line of work, all the puzzle pieces had come together to form a clear, if terrible, picture. She and Mac had nailed the black widow they’d been investigating.  The woman slowly murdered her husband, poisoning the coffee he’d taken by thermos every day to work.  All because she had a thing going with his brother.  She would like to pin an accessory charge on the brother – a nasty piece of work if she’d ever seen one – because she was pretty sure he’d been pulling the proverbial strings, but they hadn’t yet been able to dig up enough evidence.  And the woman refused to point the finger.

Kathleen tried to imagine by what twisted thought processes one would decide that murder, rather than divorce, would be the least objectionable course for ending a relationship. 
Particularly murder by poison.  It would take balls of steel – and a heart of stone – to watch the cumulative results of your handiwork day by day.  Not to mention that given the relative sophistication of modern forensics, poison – at least the types which most people could readily lay their hands on – was pretty easy to detect with an autopsy.

But then people were batshit crazy.  She saw evidence of this almost every day.

Whistling in accompaniment to her drumming, Kathleen turned the corner.

And
eased her foot off the gas pedal.