It was after 6:00 p.m. and getting dark when I walked through the hospital's main entrance. I had the fleeting impulse to stop in at the emergency room and grab a Percocet prescription from Colin Bain, to dull the pain from the injuries to my body and psyche-my savaged back, my hurt pride, my broken friendship. Any addictions counselor would forgive me the slip, given the circumstances. Luckily, I realized that staying sober might be one of the few things still within my control. No sense burying a knife in my own back when other people were doing such a good job of it.
I took an elevator up to the PICU and instinctively walked toward Tess's room. But I stopped short, noticing that a five- or six-year-old Asian child was lying in that bed. I scanned the other rooms around the PICU perimeter, but Tess wasn't in any of them. My mind jumped to the most dire conclusion-that her heart had given out. I stopped a young, female nurse walking by. "I'm a doctor working on the Bishop case," I said. I couldn't bring myself to ask the obvious question. "She was here yesterday," I said.
"Do you have identification?" the woman asked.
Her response seemed to confirm my fear. She wanted proof I was a staff member before delivering bad news. I felt lightheaded.
"Are you all right?" she said. "Do you need to sit down?"
Before I could answer, John Karlstein strode through the PICU's sliding glass doors. "Frank!" he called out, from behind me.
I turned quickly, without thinking, and stretched my lacerated muscles. "Jesus," I muttered, between clenched teeth.
"My mother thought I was," Karlstein said. "Nobody since."
I straightened up, as best I could.
"It's good to see you," Karlstein said. "Bain told me what happened in the alleyway out there. You should sue."
The nurse apparently got the idea I was part of the team. She smiled and walked away.
"Sue?" I said. "Who? For what?"
"They've had trouble in that spot before," Karlstein said. "Remember? A mugging less than a year ago. They should have lighted it like day. Sue the hospital, man."
"I think I'll pass," I said.
"It's a payday from some goddamn insurance company," he said. "What do you care? They've been sticking it to us pretty good, haven't they? You should give me a finder's fee for suggesting it."
Karlstein was probably joking, but I could never quite tell with him. My mind focused back on Tess. "What happened to the Bishop baby?" I said. I steadied myself for the worst. "Bad news?"
"Only for my census," he said. "We transferred her to Telemetry. She's out of the woods. Pacemaker's working like a charm."
Telemetry is a "step-down" cardiac unit where patients' hearts are still monitored, but in a more laid-back setting. "Thank God," I said.
"We did have a little trouble before she left," Karlstein said.
"What sort of trouble?"
"The billionaire. He wanted to see the baby-badly."
"Who was stopping him?" I asked.
"Your friend. She turns out to have some real backbone of her own."
"My friend…"
"Julia. The mother." Karlstein winked, making it obvious he had intuited she was special to me. "She had already hustled down to Suffolk Superior Court a couple hours before her husband arrived. Picked up a temporary restraining order against him. She had all the paperwork in a neat manila folder. Security showed him and his bodyguards to the door."
"He came here with his bodyguards?" I said.
"I assumed that's who they were. They were bigger than I am."
I knew we hadn't heard the last of that confrontation. "How did Julia handle things?"
"She was a rock while her husband was here. Then she fell apart. Just wracked with tears. I had Caroline Hallissey visit with her again, just to make sure she would be able to pull it together."
"And?"
"Hallissey is her own person," Karlstein said evasively.
"What did she have to say?" I pressed.
"Nothing sensible."
"C'mon, John. Just tell me."
"She thought Mrs. Bishop was acting upset," he said, "manufacturing her emotions to manipulate us into doting on her."
"Did you think so?" I asked.
He shook his head. "If that was an act, she deserves an Academy Award. You know me, I'm no bleeding heart. For me to call in a psych consult, twice, you have to be in pretty bad shape."
"Well, thanks for letting me know Hallissey's take on things, anyhow," I said. "The more information I have, the better." I paused. "And thanks for helping Tess."
"Don't thank me. Sue the hospital and cut me in." He smiled in a way that made it clear he was pulling my leg. Then he leaned closer and dropped his voice. "Get some rest," he said. "You look like you're about to collapse. And we really can't afford to lose you around here."
I took the stairs up to Telemetry, a unit that looks a lot like any other inpatient ward, with private rooms off a central corridor. I stopped at the nurses' station, found Tess Bishop's room number, and walked to the doorway. Julia was seated by Tess's bedside, watching her intently, just as she had been in the PICU. I monitored my internal reaction to seeing her. The expected anxiety was there, along with a flash of anger, but those negative emotions were eclipsed by another feeling, which I hadn't anticipated-an edgy sort of comfort. It was something you might experience arriving home in the midst of a family tragedy, when you know things have gone bad, but you also know they are your things, together. Owning a share of trouble can be an oddly warm and centering experience.
As for Tess, she looked more like a normal infant than before, with fewer leads and lines emerging from her extremities. Her sleep seemed substantially more restful than in the PICU. Her respirations were less labored and more regular, centered in her chest rather than her abdomen. And her color had moved toward pink from ash.
Julia turned and saw me in the doorway. She stood up, took her own deep breath, and smiled. "How long have you been standing there?" she asked.
"I just got here." I walked into the room. I nodded at Tess. "Dr. Karlstein told me she's doing well," I said.
"He was remarkable," she said. "I couldn't have asked for anything more." She looked down at the ground, then back at me. " Darwin came to the hospital. Luckily, we were the second item on his agenda, as usual. He called before he went into a board meeting at some company headquartered here in Boston. That gave me time to go to court and get a restraining order."
"Karlstein told me about that, too," I said. "Good for you."
She started to smile, catching her lower lip between her teeth. "There's no way I would have had the strength to do anything like that if it weren't for you."
I wanted to believe her, which told me how hard I had fallen for her. I was fresh from learning of at least one other romance of hers, with North Anderson. And there was probably a third man in the mix, assuming the letter Claire Buckley had shown us was intended for someone other than North. Yet I still felt like her relationship with me was of a different order and exponentially more important to her. "Didn't you ever see The Wizard of Oz?” I said. "No one can give you courage-or a heart or a brain. You must have had it all along."
"Hold me?" she said.
I walked closer, coming within a few feet of her, then stopped and just stood there.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"We need to talk," I said.
She tilted her head. "What about?"
" North Anderson," I said. "For starters."
She nodded, as if she had known we would eventually arrive at this moment. "He told you we spent some time together," she said.