“I can think of a third alternative,” she said, stepping around behind him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m kind of tired, and I know you need your rest.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, kissing the nape of his neck. It sent tingles through his whole body.
“Now, that’s not fair,” he said.
“I never said I was fair,” Clancy replied, kissing him again, working around toward his ear. She reached around his chest to pull him against her.
“Fine,” he said, “let’s try this so-called third alternative.”
Afterward, she nestled against him, and he felt himself starting to drift.
It felt nice, but there was something possessive about it that worried him. He liked Clancy—she was fun, smart, sexy, and very accommodating in bed. She was also pretty casual. She knew he saw other people, and she didn’t seem to care. She never asked anything of him that he wasn’t willing to give, and there was never any implication that this was going in any particular direction, or that she had a goal in mind.
At least, it had never felt that way until now.
“I’m going to be gone for a while,” she said, drowsily. It was eerie, as if she had read his mind.
“I thought you just had an appointment downtown.”
She was silent for a moment.
“Look,” she finally said. “I know you’re a reporter, but if I tell you something, can we keep it—you know—off the record?”
“Sure,” he said, feeling alert now.
“I’m not supposed to tell anyone about this,” she said. “I signed a non-disclosure document.”
“About what?”
“I’ve been hired by the city to go up to Muir Woods and check out the apes.”
“Check out the apes?”
“Yeah. They’re trying to figure out the best way to capture them. Me, I’m just interested to see how they’re adapting to an environment so different from what they evolved in.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” he asked. “Aren’t they violent?”
“Not usually,” she said. “Not unless they’re pressed, or feel threatened. Whatever happened on the bridge—that’s not normal. Hey,” she added, “I know my stuff—I’ll be okay.”
“The Dian Fossey of the Muir Woods,” he murmured.
“Dian Fossey was hacked to death by gorilla poachers with machetes,” Clancy pointed out. “I think maybe in this case you should think of me as the Jane Goodall of the Muir Woods. Better ending.”
“Or maybe just Jane, like in Tarzan,” he replied.
“Does that make you the Lord of the Jungle?”
“If I remember right, that would make us cousins,” he said.
“Eew. Well, you are from the South.”
“Hmmf,” he said.
“I’m excited about this,” she told him after a moment.
“I can tell,” he said. “I hope you have fun.” He yawned then, and closed his eyes.
“Thanks for letting me sleep over,” she said. “I know it sort of freaks you out.”
“Does not.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You have nothing to worry about.” She squeezed his shoulder.
“Call when you get back,” he said. “We’ll do something. We’ll hang out.”
“That sounds good,” she said. “Okay, that’s enough—let me catch another hour of sleep.” Then she rolled over, and within just a few minutes he heard her breathing even out.
A few minutes later, he was dropping off, too.
Talia blinked as sweat stung her eyes, and for a moment all she saw through her blurred vision was the blood. Sometimes she felt her whole life was about blood. She knew other emergency-room doctors who would have nothing red in their homes—drapes, carpets, tomato sauce, grenadine. At least one trauma surgeon she knew had become vegetarian, because seeing so much raw human meat made the idea of steak or hamburger unthinkable. Once she had considered that to be silly. Now she was starting to sympathize.
“Wipe,” she said. Tran dabbed her forehead with a cloth as she went back to examining the chest cavity. The kid was a holy mess—and he was a kid, probably no more than fifteen. She wondered why anyone would want to put three bullets in him.
But that wasn’t her concern, was it? Her job was to put him back together.
“This is going to be a long one,” she said. “See if you can find Dr. Selling. I want him to look at this spleen.”
Six hours later, close to shaking with exhaustion, she pushed back from the patient.
“I’ll close him up,” Selling told her. “You go get some coffee.”
She nodded and slipped out of the operating room. She went first to the lavatory to splash water on her face and put her long black hair back up, wondering if it would be better to cut it short. Then she proceeded over to the little room they called the Café Trauma. Someone had actually put a sign up, written on cardboard and picturing a coffee cup above a crossed femur and scalpel. Café Trauma consisted of a sink, a small fridge, a coffee maker, a snack machine, a drinks machine, a card table with four chairs, and a smallish flat-screen TV.
There wasn’t any coffee brewed, so she started a pot herself, then stepped out to see what was incoming. Fortunately, there was nothing as serious a triple gunshot wound, but there was plenty more lined up, and she still had three hours on shift.
She returned to the café and gulped down some of the somewhat disgusting coffee. Randal from Acute Care came in just in time to see her expression.
“Not exactly Starbucks, is it?” he said.
She shook her head, making a face and staring into the cup.
“Every time I drink this swill I swear I’m going to go straight from work to buy a grinder and some decent beans to bring in,” she said. “But I always forget. This stuff just makes it all the more tempting to switch to speed or something, which wouldn’t be good.” Then she turned toward him. “What’s up?
“You went to that symposium on respiratory infections last month.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Sexiest symposium ever. Better than that rectal bleeding thing, even.”
“I’ve got a woman I’d like you to take a look at.”
“What are her symptoms?”
“She’s sneezing up blood,” he said.
“Allergic rhinitis?”
“She says she never has trouble with allergies—I had a look, and didn’t see anything,” he said. “I’ve ordered a CT scan, but they’re backed up. Plus, she has a temperature of a hundred and four. She’s also showing some signs of subcutaneous bleeding.”
Talia was about to take another grudging drink, but stopped with the coffee cup halfway to her mouth.
“How old is she?” she asked.
“Thirty-two.”
“Let me see her,” she said.
Judging from her fair hair, the woman was probably light-skinned anyway, but at the moment she was positively pallid—except in places where light-greenish patches had developed. Her eyes were dull and moved around sluggishly, so Talia knew immediately that this wasn’t just a bleeding polyp in her sinuses. Or if it was, she had some other, unrelated illness, as well.
“Have we bled yet?” Talia asked softly, standing at the room’s entrance.
“I was about to,” Randal replied.
“Send for labs, priority,” she said. “I’ll take a look.”
She went into the room, glanced at the chart, then at the patient.
“How are you feeling, Celia?” she asked.
“Not so good,” the woman managed, weakly.
“Any idea where you got this bug?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t usually get sick,” she said. “I don’t have a GP, so I waited, hoping it would go away.”