While she’s logging back into her workstation, I glance at the bed numbers, hanging off the foot of the beds. Nine, ten, eleven…
Twelve.
I can see it from where I’m standing. I look back over at Meagan, who is still on the computer. She’s not paying attention to me, and even if she were, she has no reason to be suspicious. I wander away from the nurses’ station, over to bed twelve.
The man lying in bed twelve is in bad shape. He has bruises circling both his eyes and the endotracheal tube is taped to his mouth, pushing air into his lungs to keep him alive. His left ankle is in a white plaster cast and his rightarm is in a sling. His eyes are slightly cracked open, but he’s clearly under heavy sedation. I look down at his greasy black hair, and at the curve of his jaw, which is covered in dark stubble.
He looks familiar. I’ve seen this man before.
But I have no idea where.
“Dr. Davis?”
I take a step back from bed twelve, jerking my head away so Meagan doesn’t see what I was doing. She’s standing behind me, giving me a curious look.
“Oh,” I say quickly. “I… I thought this was Dr. Corey’s patient. He looked familiar to me.”
Meagan gives me a strange look. “I checked on the computer and Dr. Corey doesn’t have any patients on the unit right now.”
I swallow. “He doesn’t?”
She shakes her head. “No. He hasn’t had any patients here in the last few weeks.”
“Typical.” I let out what I hope sounds like an exasperated sigh and look down at my watch. I’m late for my surgery. “Just as well. I’ve got to be in the OR five minutes ago.”
I smile at Meagan, but she doesn’t smile back. But I don’t care what she thinks. Meagan is the least of my problems. The man lying in bed twelve was following me for two nights in a row, and I have no idea why.
He can’t hurt me anymore—he’s barely alive.
But he wasn’t working alone.
Chapter 40
The stench of rotting flesh still clings to my car as I drive from the hospital to the outpatient office. I have to drive with all the windows down, but it doesn’t matter. It’s still overwhelming. I spend most of the drive trying not to gag. I’m definitely not about to eat a burrito in my car.
The rest of my morning was hectic after I left the surgical ICU. I was ten minutes late getting to the OR for my surgery, which ended up running long. I spent the rest of the morning playing catch-up. But it was impossible to focus the way I usually do.
Somebody was following me. Somebody planted blood in my basement. Somebody planted a severed hand in my car.
And I have no idea why.
When I park in the lot outside the building, I consider leaving the windows down. But then I remember that the last time I was parked here, my tires got slashed. I don’t want to make it any easier for somebody to have access to my car. So the windows have to go up. I’ll air the car out again tonight.
When I get upstairs to the waiting room, before I caneven get to the front desk, a woman jumps up to talk to me. She looks familiar, but it takes a few seconds to place her.
“Mrs. Kellogg,” I say. “How are you doing?”
The older woman smiles at me. That bruise under her left eye has faded since the last time I saw her, when I slipped her that note to ask if she was okay. She looks like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders.
“I’m well, Dr. Davis,” she says. “I came here because I wanted you to know that… well, Arnold passed.”
My mouth feels suddenly dry. This isn’t the kind of news I need right now. “He did?”
“Earlier this week.” Her voice is soft. “He died peacefully in his sleep. From a heart attack.”
My shoulders sag. A heart attack. A quiet heart attack in his bed. He wasn’t murdered and his hands weren’t sliced off. He died about as peacefully as could be expected. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Yes,” she sighs. “Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for the excellent care you gave him. Obviously, the heart attack had nothing to do with the surgery he had. It’s just one of those things, you know?”
