She clicked out of her account and headed down the short hallway to the examination rooms. Helen Ingles complained about being tired all the time. “Goddamned fatigue, it’s killin’ me,” she admitted, though she swore she was monitoring her glucose levels religiously and eating right and exercising. “Then again, maybe it’s because my daughter and her eight-year-old moved in. She’s separating from her husband and doesn’t have a job.” Worry shadowed Helen’s eyes.
“Let’s talk about that,” Kacey said and spent the next ten minutes listening. After determining that worry was as much a part of Helen’s problem as her diabetes, Kacey ordered more lab work for the following week and suggested a consultation with a family psychologist.
“A shrink?” Helen said, horrified. “I’m not crazy.”
“You’ve had a change of lifestyle. That’s always hard. Here, take the doctor’s card, and make an appointment, if you want to.” When she saw her patient’s hesitation, she added, “What would it hurt?”
“My pride, I guess. I’ve always thought I could handle all my problems.”
“We all need someone to listen sometimes.” Kacey left her to mull it over, then plucked the new patient’s chart from the basket on the door of exam room one. Elle Alexander was thirty-five, fifteen pounds overweight, and complaining of a persistent cough that was keeping her up at night. Her previous physician was located in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Knocking on the door, Kacey was still skimming the chart. “Mrs. Alexander? I’m Doctor Lambert.”
The patient was seated on the examination table, her legs swinging over the edge. A little plump, with short red hair and rosy cheeks, she smiled broadly.
Kacey’s heart nearly stopped because the woman resembled her enough to be noticeable. Again? she thought in disbelief.
“Hi,” Elle greeted her.
Kacey tried to tell herself that she was imagining things, that she’d been too caught up in Heather’s conviction that Shelly Bonaventure was her twin, or Nurse Rosie Alsgaard’s fears that the Jane Doe patient lying near death in the hospital was Kacey, before Trace O’Halleran had identified her as Jocelyn Wallis. She might have blown it all off as coincidence, but now, staring at Elle Alexander and seeing Randy Yates’s expression as he was removing the blood pressure cuff from her arm, she wasn’t so sure.
“Are you two related?” Randy asked, and Elle laughed as she eyed the doctor.
“Oh, no,” Elle dismissed. “I’ve just got one of those faces, you know. I remind everyone of someone.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess it’s just my curse.” She grinned. “Besides, we really don’t look that much alike. Way different body types, for one thing.”
That much was true. Kacey was three inches taller and twenty pounds lighter, but the bone structure of Elle’s face, the slope of her cheeks, point of her chin, and shape of her eyes, mirrored Kacey’s. Elle’s hair was lighter, redder, but that could be changed, and Elle’s eyes were more blue than green, but there was just something. . and she was around the right age.
For what?
“You know, though, I think I could start a lookalike club,” she went on. “Since I’ve been in this town, I’ve met a couple of people who look a lot like me.”
“Is that right?” Kacey asked carefully, her pulse elevating.
“Oh, yeah, well, take that poor teacher who died, and then there’s a woman at the gym I go to. She’s one of the trainers, I think. Her name is. . Oh, what is it? Gloria, maybe.” She puckered her face in annoyance. “Well, I just started at Fit Forever, so I’m not sure, but now there’s you.” She shrugged, as if it were all a normal occurrence.
As Randy made notes to Elle’s chart on his laptop, Kacey tried to ignore the alarm bells jangling in her mind, alarms that said, Something here is just not right, and continued the examination, listening to the woman’s lungs, hearing about how her cough had persisted for the past three months despite several rounds of antibiotics, swabbing her throat twice. “You were under a doctor’s care in Coeur d’Alene?”
Elle offered up the physician’s name, then searched in her purse and handed Kacey a business card for a doctor and clinic in Idaho. “I saw him before we moved here,” she explained.
“Did you have any chest X-rays?”
Elle shook her head. “No.”
“Let’s start there, rule out strep and pneumonia, if we can.”
“Pneumonia? Oh, I can’t have. .” She looked stricken. “I mean, I’ve never had pneumonia in my life! Bronchitis a time or two, but. .”
“Let’s wait to see what the X-rays show. Our lab isn’t open on Saturdays, but I’ll order it out and you can come by on Monday and they’ll shoot the images over to me. We’ll send the swabs to the lab for the strep test.” To Randy, she said, “Please set up with the X-ray technician.” She slipped the two swabs into individual plastic bags. While Elle was adjusting her gown and Randy’s eyes were on the screen of his laptop, she slid one bag into the pocket of her lab coat. “And this needs to be checked for strep.” That bag she set on the counter next to his computer.
Not looking up, Randy clicked the information into his keyboard. “You got it.”
“Good.” Kacey turned back to Elle as Randy swept up the bag and headed out. “Once I look over the films, and we get results back on your tests, I’ll give you a call. In the meantime, I’m prescribing a stronger antibiotic. That should start things working.” She wrote out a prescription, then asked Elle to return the next week. “You can make an appointment at the front desk.”
“I will,” Elle promised.
Feeling as if the extra swab were burning a hole in her pocket, Kacey nevertheless asked, “Did you grow up in Coeur d’Alene?”
“Boise. Why?” she asked.
“Just wondering.” Kacey lifted a shoulder, as if she were only mildly curious, when her mind was spinning. You’re hypersensitive this week. She doesn’t really even look that much like you. Not like the actress and Jocelyn Wallis.
“I’ve lived in Idaho all my life,” Elle said. “Born and raised there. That’s what made the move so difficult, I guess. But Tom — that’s my husband — he took a job over here and uprooted us all. The kids had just settled into the school year, and then we had to go.” A trace of sadness colored her gaze. “It’s the economy, you know. It even affects lawyers.”
“I’m sure you’ll make friends here fast, and the schools are great.”
“I hope so. My son, he has no trouble fitting in, but my daughter. . It’s more difficult for her. She’s thirteen, just kind of trying to figure out who she is, and, well, it’s tough.” She sighed.
“Grizzly Falls is a great town.”
“I hope you’re right.” She didn’t seem convinced.
“Just give it a little time.”
“I guess I don’t have any choice.” She shrugged and started reaching for her clothes, and Kacey headed for her office. Then she waited until Elle Alexander, the last patient, had left, the exam rooms were cleaned, and both Nadine and Randy had gone home as well.
Telling herself she was making a mountain out of a molehill, she locked the door behind her. All her life she’d been fascinated with conspiracy theories, and they’d always landed her in verbal debates and lectures with her mother, in the beginning, or more recently, with her ex. JC thought she was out of her mind, but she was still half convinced that there was more than one shooter in the JFK assassination, that Princess Di was killed by her enemies or someone within the royal family, and that Kurt Cobain did not commit suicide.