A long canine sigh greeted her effort.
She'd decided. Not only would she stop work, but her leave would begin as soon as she could farm out her patients.
She tried to tell herself what had happened at the hospital last night didn't affect her, that her body had been telling her for weeks to slow down, that this pregnancy would be different, demand she rest more. And now she finally found the common sense to listen.
But something had changed. Her nothing-stops-me bravado wore a little thin in the face of what could have been if Susanne hadn't set the rescue in motion.
Remembering the iciness of the morgue, she shivered and clasped her cup with both hands so its warmth would flow into her.
A chill completely separate from the night air remained.
Hunching up inside her robe, she adjusted some throw cushions at her back in a vain attempt to get comfortable, and received a kick from within for her trouble.
"Sorry, little man," she murmured. Knowing her voice would sound like talking underwater to him, she started to hum. The random notes evolved into the tune for "Puff the Magic Dragon." His movements settled, and she giggled. "In another five weeks you'll hear your momma's real singing voice. That'll be a shocker."
He gave her another little nudge.
"Let you sleep, right?" she whispered, and quietly resumed the song, this time with words.
He settled again and stayed quiet.
Her thoughts drifted.
To Brendan, whose young eyes had ignited with delight when he found Mommy and Daddy at home after school. She would give him more of those days with her. Many, many more.
She stretched and rested the nape of her neck against the top of the sofa, savoring images of all the fun they'd have- setting up his old crib, preparing the tiny bedding, digging out all the stuffed animals that he still loved but carefully hid away so his six-year-old friends wouldn't see them when they came to play.
Smiling, she also experienced a hint of relief. For once he could be her little boy, she'd be his mom, and there wouldn't be the demands of an obstetrical practice competing for her attention. Maybe, she thought, just maybe, she'd be able to create a magic interlude for him, an oasis where he could store up on all he'd missed from not having her around. "Yeah, right," she said aloud, having counseled enough mothers through the demands of career and kids to recognize a guilt fantasy when she conjured one up for herself. Still, she liked the idea. A couple of months stretched like a lifetime for a six-year-old. Not that he didn't already feel safe, confident, and loved. But you can't ever have too much of that stuff, she thought, then laughed out loud.
Muffy raised her head and looked up at her.
"I've become exactly like my own mother," Janet told her. "Now, she was a woman who knew how to make you feel loved. Drove me and my two brothers crazy, never missing an opportunity to give us a big smooch."
Muffy put her head back down, not at all interested.
Of course Brendan could react the same way as her brothers, Janet thought, and find that Mommy turned into a big, embarrassing bore when she hung around him all the time. Wouldn't that be a kick in the head.
She took another sip.
As for Earl, he'd be relieved to get her out of the hospital. He was so fastidious about tiptoeing around the question, never intruding on her right to make the decision, but his studied neutrality practically shrieked, "Get the hell out of there, woman!" What's more, the lovable goof would actually believe he'd been the epitome of a noninterfering husband.
But she damn well intended to interfere with him. She'd known when he became VP, medical that the combination of his instinct to sniff out crap and a complete inability to let shit slide would suck him into a ton of trouble sooner or later. Yet she'd encouraged him to take the job. Not just because he'd be miserable under the kind of hotshot MBAs that ran hospitals these days, but because the work would take him out of ER now and then. She knew he needed the rush of extreme medicine, the exhilaration of "raising the dead," as some of them called it, but as magnificent as he'd become at it, that addictive allure sometimes frightened her. What of the day he couldn't do it anymore, once he flamed out like a lot of his colleagues? They'd been equally exhilarated by the job, but past triumphs didn't save them when they ultimately stayed on one year too many. That's why people in the business calling emergency "the pit" seemed so apt. It eventually consumed all who worked there.
She'd decided the best to be hoped for with Earl would be to slow the process down a bit, maybe buy time to wean him off what had become like oxygen to him. A new challenge with fresh demands seemed just the ticket. But the expanded responsibilities appeared to be engaging him quicker and more than she ever predicted. Between their lovely romantic interlude earlier in the day and Brendan coming home from school, she'd listened with unease as he explained why recent clusters of deaths in palliative care troubled him. Since his suspicions ranged from a nurse playing an angel of death to Stewart Deloram covering up stories of near-death experiences, and the five patients who might have shed some light on the matter were conveniently dead or in a coma, this problem meant exactly the sort of trouble that would eat at her husband. She'd lived with his doggedness long enough to know he wouldn't back off until he either proved or disproved his worst imaginings. She also knew to never attempt to divert him head-on. And most sobering of all, she'd learned to trust his damned uncanny instinct to read patterns where others saw only a maze of unrelated events. Because more often than not, whenever he sensed rot and dug after it, he found exactly that.
But he hadn't a clue of what he needed most now- a sidekick. Someone to carry out all that rooting around he felt so compelled to do himself, but who could fly below the radar of Hurst or Wyatt. Those two, if they guessed what he'd be stirring up, would make his life a living hell, and by extension, hers and Brendan's.
Earl in battle mode meant having Hamlet in the house, he became so preoccupied. Worse, if he had stumbled onto foul play, a backlash from an angel of death who felt threatened could be bloody dangerous.
Yes, she'd make a good sidekick, one with time to spare during her son's school hours and who also had her own authority to quietly snoop through nursing work schedules and death records. She would be just the perfect answer to keep him out of trouble. And if the focus of her inquiry should stray a little outside her usual realm of obstetrics, who the hell would know? Best of all, if by some slim chance she found he'd been on a wild-goose chase, they could all relax.
But first she'd have to convince her Lone Ranger to accept his new Tonto. Being brighter than most people around him, he had an infuriating yet deeply ingrained propensity to solve a problem, even in ER, by barging ahead on his own. Well, maybe she could make him want to barge after his wife for help.
She drained her mug and stared outside.
The fog had lifted slightly, thinning into tendrils that reached out of the darkness and curled through the light of the street lamps, tentatively exploring the muted glow with a cautious touch. Then a breeze caught the swirls, and they languidly drifted away, joining more of their kind to swim through the night like bad dreams.
Chapter 10
Three days later, Saturday, July 12, 12:45 a.m. Palliative Care, St. Paul's Hospital
Earl pressed back into the darkness.
He had seen something move through the shadows at the far end of the hall.
His muscles ached as if someone had winched them tight, and he shifted his weight for the hundredth time since he'd sneaked into the room nearly an hour ago.
Yet he kept his gaze locked on the black recesses where a person could hide.
And waited.
He'd initially felt foolish coming here at all. But his idea about a cluster study hadn't yielded much so far. At least Janet hadn't found any obvious patterns in the duty rosters and mortality figures, but they had a ways to go.