“Already one it,” Marcus said, pacing the worn patch of carpet in front of his desk. If he weren’t already balding, he would’ve been pulling his hair out for the past few hours. Instead, the few hairs horseshoed around his pale head were graying by the second.
Usually a quiet and reserved man, Marcus knew his quiet charm was what won him points with doctors and patients’ families. Staring at an Ecosphere and listening to a Frank Sinatra CD usually relieved work-related stresses. Not that day. “What is the police saying?” “At the moment, I don’t know any more than you do.” “Which is nothing.” “Bingo.” Rae clasped her hands behind her back while her forehead wrinkled. “Poor Meredith. I just can’t believe no one saw anything.”
“We’re pretty sure everything happened during a going-away thingy for one of the employees. Everyone claimed they visited the cafeteria for no more than a few minutes at a time for cake and ice cream.” “Just long enough for some crazy person to murder one of our prominent doctors and snatch a patient.” “Assuming the two incidents is related.” “How can they not me?”
Marcus shrugged and felt his lower abdomen bubble with anxiety. There was no sense in trying to take anything for it. There was no sense in trying to take anything for it. No pharmaceutical company had developed a powerful enough drug to placate his rattle nerves.
When a light rap sounded at the door, his heart plummeted to his knees in fear of more bad news. At the rate he was going, he would have to check himself in as a patient before the day was out.
“Come in,” Rae instructed, when Marcus failed to do so.
Dr. Ambrose Turner gently pushed the door open. His brilliant head of flaming red hair was always a focal point for attention, second to the intriguing blue of his eyes. “The press is here,” he said in his usual think English accent.
Marcus didn’t know how he managed it, but he gave Ambrose a quick nod and watched as he disappeared back behind the door.
“Boy, that was quick,” Rae mumbled, and adjusted the black-rimmed glasses that made her look like an intense owl.
“Too quick,” Marcus added, returning to his desk—maybe guzzling a bottle of Mylanta would bandage his intestinal problem.
“Should we talk to Ms. Ferrell before she actually hears about her missing sister on the news?”
He glanced over at Dr. Coleman, halfway wishing he could stuff a sock down her throat in order to stop her from stating the obvious. “Yes, I suppose we should.”
“But before we talk with our attorneys?”
Marcus took a deep breath and trained his full attention on her. “It seems that we have little choice in the matter, Dr. Coleman. Now, I hate to delay you from your patients any further…”
“No, no. This is definitely more important…”
“There is nothing more important than the care of our patients, Dr. Coleman,” he said, forcing steel and patience, of which he was bankrupt, into his voice. “I’m rather surprised to hear you say such a thing.”
A rush of burgundy bloomed against Dr. Coleman’s creamy cocoa complexion as she raised her five-foot-two frame from her chair.
On any other day, the morning would have been a routine dance of harmless flirtation between the two, but this implausible crisis changed all of that.
Rae’s reluctance to leave was nothing more than a sad attempt to gather enough juicy detail to crown her queen of water cooler gossip for the day,
“I guess on that note, I’ll leave you to deal with Ms. Ferrell on your own.”
Marcus’s temples throbbed at the woman’s name. The woman was more than a handful, especially since she opposed her sister’s transfer to the facility in the first place. He could practically smell the pending lawsuit. “I’m more than capable of dealing with Ms. Ferrell,” he said, and winced at the hollowness of his words. Dr. Coleman laughed. “Sure you are.” She headed for the door, but before her hands landed on the knob, there was another knock. “Come in,” Marcus shouted. His irritation was at an all time high. When Dr. Turner’s burning bush reappeared, Marcus suspected the good doctor was actually eavesdropping. “Yes, what is it?”
At Dr. Turner’s grave expression, Marcus braced himself to hear that the police had discovered that another doctor had been murdered and stashed in the trunk of their car, but instead Ambrose delivered worse news. “Ms. Josephine Ferrell is here to see you.”
Chapter 4 William didn’t dare go to sleep.
Instead, he spent the first few hours in his brother’s home, tending to the needs of his patient. So far, the hardest part was changing her out of the wet hospital gown and into a full-length flannel number he found in his sister-in-law’s dresser drawer.
His professionalism was challenged while he glanced at a body he once knew intimately. Even now, as she lay sleeping, he was drawn to her fragility and innocence.
William stared at her full lips and could feel his body give into a magnetic force, but shame was an equally powerful weapon in his arsenal, and he backed away.
He sighed and rechecked the dilation of her eyes, satisfied with his assessment of a mild concussion.
Once he’d finished tending to the cut along her right brow, he went to change out his disguise and clean up.
All the while, his mind never strayed far from the woman in the other room. He exhaled in a heavy breath and hung his head low beneath the steady stream of hot water.
“Josie,” he murmured, as water trickled down around his face. The sound of her name had a way of ripping open a wound he’d long thought healed. More than a decade had passed since he experienced pain with such intensity.
“A man should never wear his heart where his robs can’t protect it,” His father’s voice rang clearly in his head.
William didn’t listen the first time around, but conceded that at this point in his life it was sound advice.
Scrubbed clean, he finally shut off the shower and slid into one of his brother’s robes. Minutes later, he was back beside her bed, staring at a face seemingly untouched by time. His eyes lifted to the full-length mirror on the other side of the bed to stare at his own reflection.
Time had done a number on him.
Though good genetics, at thirty-seven, William possessed a full head of dark, wavy hair; though there were growing shocks of gray along the temples. He had the long hours at Grady Hospital to thank for the permanent thin grooves etched around his eyes. Character lines, someone told him. For years, he had dealt with people commenting about his strong resemblance to George Clooney, except for the color of his eyes. Where the popular actor’s were a dark brown, William’s were a bright baby blue.
What would she see when the drugs finally wore off? How would she feel?
Expelling a weary breath, he stood and crossed the plush carpet for his leather duffel bag and withdrew something else he’d snatched from Keystone: a medical chart.
Another look at the name on the chart and an avalanche of questions, possibilities, and doubts buried his good intensions. Suddenly, he had a vivid image of prison bars clanking with a note of finality.
“Stop it,” he commanded. “You’re doing the right thing.”
He returned to the chair next to the bed, made another quick assessment of Josie’s vitals, and settled back for a good read.
“Michelle Andrews,” he read, and was unable to stop his glance from briefly sliding over to the bed. Patient transferred from Northside Hospital after stabilization of an apparent suicide attempt. His eyes lingered on the word “suicide.” In now way did it describe the woman he knew. It was like trying to force a large square box into a small triangle. It just didn’t fit.