Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe (2 page)

"I'd like to meet the cruel administrator who scheduled us on opposite shifts," Jesse said. "We never see each other lately."

"It makes you two appreciate one another even more." 

Jesse narrowed his eyes at Mark. "Spoken like someone in charge of scheduling."

Mark raised his hands, begging off. "It wasn't me."

"But it's worked out for you. There's nothing to get in the way of me devoting all my free time to those files you want me to go through."

"See—there's a positive side to everything."

Jesse still regarded Mark suspiciously. "After I've had a couple hours of sleep, I'll get back to it."

"Let me know when you find something."

"I can't help noticing that you said
when,
not
if,"
Jesse said. "You still think there's something there?"

Mark nodded. "I
know
there is."

Jesse studied Mark. "I believe it. You've got that look." 

"What look?"

"Like you're staring right through me at the sonofabitch." Jesse gave Mark a smile and glanced at his watch. "Yikes! I've got to go. I'll meet you at Barbeque Bob's for lunch." 

"I'm buying," Mark said.

"At the restaurant your son and I own," Jesse said. "Do you really think I'd take your money?"

"You didn't have a problem taking it when you were looking for investors."

Jesse pondered that for a moment. "Come to think of it, you're right. Now that I'm saving up to buy a house, the idea of
you
slowly paying off
my
debt to you makes sound financial sense to me. I'll show up for lunch hungry."

As Jesse hurried towards his car, he caught a movement in his peripheral vision. It was a car coming down from the next floor. The old Camaro glided out of the murk like a shark, picking up speed. The driver was hidden behind deeply tinted glass, which only added to the car's aura of menace.

There was also something unsettlingly deliberate about the way it was rolling forward. It took a second before Jesse realized consciously what he knew instinctively.

The driver was adjusting his steering, keeping Mark dead center in front of him.

Dead center.

At that instant the car shot forward, the engine roaring, the tires squealing, the deafening sounds echoing off the walls of the parking structure.

Jesse shouted Mark's name in warning.

Mark turned and saw the car bearing down on him, the dirty chrome grill like fangs with flesh caught between the teeth, and he knew several truths at once.

This wasn't an accident. There was no time for escape. And he was going to die.

But the impact he felt next wasn't from the car. It came from the side, knocking him off his feet. Mark saw the concrete rushing up to his face and took an instant of solace in the knowledge that he wouldn't hear the sickening, wet smack or feel the excruciating pain. All he would know would be a deep, never-ending night.

And as he was thinking that, his night came.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

The first thing Mark became aware of was the pain. He grabbed it like a rope and used it to climb his way into awareness. The closer he got to consciousness, the greater the pain became, until it felt like an ax was buried in his skull.

He wanted to shrink away from the pain and fall back into the senseless depths from which he'd risen. But he fought the temptation. He kept his grip on the rim of consciousness by trying to recognize other sensations sharing the bandwidth with his pain.

He smelled the aroma of disinfectants, soap, and rubbing alcohol and recognized it as what passed for fresh air within the walls of Community General Hospital. The realization grounded him, strengthening his hold on consciousness. He was in the hospital.

Was he asleep on his office couch?

No, the sounds were wrong. He was hearing electronic hums, clicks, and beeps, the cicadas of the intensive care unit.

Had he fallen asleep in a chair while watching over a patient? Was his head aching from lolling at an uncomfortable angle for too long?

No, he was lying flat. His head was on a pillow.

As the murk in his mind began to clear, he became aware of other irritations: the catheter, the IV in his left arm, the electrodes on his chest, and the oxygen cannula in his nostrils.

With those sensations came an obvious realization that nonetheless came only gradually to him: He was a patient in the ICU.

How could that be? What had happened to him?

He tried to open his eyes, but it was like bench-pressing weights with his eyelids, an effort that required the full measure of his meager concentration and nearly sent him plummeting back into unconsciousness.

What saved him from slipping back was someone dabbing a wet towel against his brow. He focused on that, the moisture and the relief, and then his eyes opened and he found himself trying to focus his blurry vision on a woman's face.

Mark blinked hard and the image sharpened. It was an ICU nurse that he knew. But he couldn't remember her name; he was having a hard enough time just keeping her face in focus. Seeing her, however, confirmed his conclusions about where he was and his present circumstances.

The nurse was a slender Asian woman in her early thirties with a bright smile and perfect teeth.

"Welcome back, Dr. Sloan."

He tried to speak, but couldn't summon his voice. She placed a hand gently on his chest to soothe him.

"Take it easy. I know you've got lots of questions. I'll get Dr. Noble."

She left before he could try to say anything.

Mark glanced at the machines around the room and studied the readout from the cardiac monitor. There was nothing irregular about his EKG or his blood pressure, and there was no breathing tube down his throat.

That was a good start.

Besides his agonizing headache, which probably accounted for his blurred vision and disorientation, he wasn't aware of any other pain.

He tried flexing his fingers and toes, then lifting his arms and legs. They were stiff, but otherwise normal. No broken limbs or paralysis. He made fists, then rubbed his hands together to test his sense of touch. Everything was okay. In fact, he was even able to reach out, pick up a plastic cup from his bedside table, and take a sip of water.

The headache seemed to be his only ailment. He raised a hand and gingerly explored his head. There were stitches above his brow and some swelling.

He let his gaze drift around his cubbyhole in the ICU. There were several fresh bouquets, the "get well" arrangement from the gift shop downstairs, and two others that were wilting. There were also some gift boxes of candy neatly stacked next to the flowers. Two of the boxes had been opened and freely sampled, suggesting that someone got bored sitting at his bedside. A paperback copy of John Irving's
A Prayer for Owen Meany,
with a deeply creased spine, was on the chair, suggesting that his visitor wasn't Steve. His son would have left some issues of
Sports Illustrated
and
Guns & Ammo.

"So, what's your diagnosis?" a woman asked as she entered his room. The Community General photo ID clipped to her lab coat identified her as Dr. Emily Noble, but the rest of the print was too small for him to make out with his blurred vision.

Studying her slender nose, her sharp cheekbones, and the gentle curve of her chin, Mark could see exactly what Dr. Noble had looked like as a child, a teenager, and a young woman. Her face was like a painting that stayed the same while the lighting that illuminated it changed. In all phases of her life she must have been beautiful, as she was now.

There was a certain elegance and authority in her eyes, and yet he saw that smiles came easily to her. The laugh lines gently etched at the edges of her mouth revealed her overall contentment and her age, which Mark estimated to be early fifties. She was wearing a black dress under her lab coat, which seemed a little formal for making rounds.

When he tried to speak this time, he was relieved to discover that his voice came easily.

"I've got a whopper of a headache. I'm disoriented, dizzy, and nauseous. I'm suffering from mild photophobia and I've got a nasty contusion on my head," Mark said. "I'd say I've suffered blunt force trauma and a concussion."

He knew that a concussion was simply a catchall description of a blow to the head that causes a brain malfunction, which could be as simple as a headache or as serious as a prolonged coma, and anything in between. The concerns would be internal bleeding and swelling of the brain.

"Judging by the flowers and the candy, I'd say I've been out a few days."

"Three days, off and on. It's nice to know that your deductive skills remain intact."

"What did my CTs and MRIs show?" Mark asked. 

"Some mild brain swelling. We've been keeping you on diuretics and Decadron, eight milligrams IV twice a day," she said, holding up the index finger of her right hand. "Follow my finger with your eyes."

He did as he was told as she moved her finger this way and that.

"You can save yourself the trouble of doing any more of those basic tests," Mark said. "I just gave myself a neurological examination and I passed."

"Humor me. As I recall, hospital rules clearly state that the doctors are supposed to do the exams, not the patients." 

"I am a doctor," he said.

"Glad you remember. That's a good start. Can you tell me your name?"

"Dr. Mark Sloan. I'm chief of internal medicine at Community General Hospital, where I am now residing in the ICU."

She asked him to move his arms and legs for her and to make fists. He reluctantly complied, a scowl on his face. "I've already done all this," he said.

"Stop complaining, Mark. After three days of lying around, you can use the exercise."

Her overly familiar manner surprised him, but he let it slide. He would have a serious talk with her about it when he wasn't a patient anymore and was back at work as a hospital administrator.

She tested the strength in his legs by asking him to extend his legs while she pushed against his feet.

"Can we please move on?" Mark said, unable to hide his impatience.

"Not yet. Besides, in your current mood, you'll like this one," she said. "Stick your tongue out at me."

He did.

"I think you liked that so much, you want to grin. Go ahead, indulge yourself."

He did what she asked, giving her an exaggerated grin, knowing she wasn't teasing him but rather testing his cranial nerves. This was a test he'd forgotten in his own quick self-exam. There was another one, too, that he'd overlooked, so before she could ask, he extended his left arm, touched his nose with his finger, and then repeated the exercise with his right arm. The actions tested the functioning of his cerebellum.

"Very good," Dr. Noble said. "You must have smacked your head against concrete before."

"Is that what happened to me?"

She stiffened, as if she regretted the words immediately after she'd spoken them. "What do you remember about how you got hurt?"

Mark searched his mind. "Nothing."

He wasn't concerned by his lapse of memory. Not recalling how the injury occurred was an extremely common symptom among those who'd suffered concussions. The recollection of recent events is wiped away by the trauma, at least temporarily. He often compared it to writing something on your computer just as the system crashes. Whatever fresh information you're in the midst of inputting is lost.

He'd treated more than a few car accident victims who couldn't even remember leaving home. Their last memory was reading the morning paper and enjoying a cup of coffee. In some cases, that was a blessing.

Dr. Noble began to press on his legs, abdomen, and face, asking him repeatedly as she did so if he could feel her touch.

"Yes, yes, and yes," he said irritably. "You can stop these tests now. I'm fine. You haven't answered my question yet."

"There's just one more sensory test I need to perform first," Dr. Noble said, her hands still cupping his face. "Tell me if you can feel this."

He thought she was going to pinch his cheeks. But that wasn't what she did. She leaned down and kissed him gently on the lips, lingering for a moment to look intimately into his eyes.

"Is that always part of your neurological exam, Dr. Noble?" Mark asked.

"Only with my sexiest patients, Dr. Sloan." She smiled coyly.

He didn't know how to deal with this and wasn't in any shape to try. It was time to get rid of her.

"I'd like to see Dr. Travis," Mark said.

She leaned back and hesitated. "Jesse isn't here."

Dr. Noble said Jesse's name as if they knew each other well. If that was the case, why had Mark never heard of her before?

"Then get Amanda," Mark said. "Dr. Amanda Bentley, the staff pathologist."

"I know who she is." Dr. Noble cocked her head at an angle, regarding Mark strangely, her expression bordering on fear.

Was she only now realizing how far over the line she'd gone, how inappropriate her behavior had been? What if she wasn't even a doctor at all but some crazy person pretending to be one?

"Amanda is on her way up. I called her right after I called Steve," Dr. Noble said. "They should both be here soon."

Mark was relieved to hear that, though surprised again by the easy familiarity with which she used his son's first name.

"Thank you," he said.

"What's the last thing you remember, Mark?"

He thought for a moment. "The wedding."

"Whose wedding?"

He wondered if he should say, since Jesse and Susan might not appreciate him spreading the word before they got a chance to announce the news themselves. All it would take was Dr. Noble telling one nurse or doctor and the whole hospital would know about the nuptials within the hour.

"A fellow doctor's, out in Las Vegas. It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing."

Jesse and Susan had been in Las Vegas, along with Steve and Amanda, helping Mark in an elaborate plot to trick a murrder suspect into confessing. The trick worked, and within moments of solving the case, Jesse asked Susan the big question.