Stress Test (10 page)

“Oh, I knew the technique for the procedure,” Matt answered. “But you always figure it’s going to happen to somebody else.” He touched his skull well away from the staples. “This must make me look like something out of a horror flick.”

“Just be glad you’re alive,” Sandra said. “Now let’s get you out of here.”

The discharge went as smoothly as any hospital procedure could. That is to say, it moved at the speed of a glacier, but at least it moved forward. Finally Matt was settled in the front seat of Sandra’s Volvo SUV. “See?” she said. “No police. No reporters. Nothing.”

The scrub suit he’d worn when found in the alley was somewhere in a police evidence locker, so Matt wore a fresh one with Parkland Hospital stenciled on the top and bottom. Ken Gordon had loaned him an extra pair of the clogs favored by surgeons and operating room personnel. Matt had no wallet, no keys, nothing of his own. He’d never felt so helpless.

“I looked up the address of your house,” Sandra said. “I presume that’s where we’re going.”

“I don’t know how I’ll get in. My keys were in the car, and the police impounded it as evidence.”

Sandra pulled a shiny key from the pocket of her stylish green pantsuit. “They insisted on keeping the key ring intact, but I finally convinced a sympathetic evidence tech to make a copy of your house key for me.”

“You amaze me. How did you manage that?”

“Criminal defense lawyers build up a pretty good network. This guy owed me a favor—and he likes me.”

Sandra wondered if she should explain further.
Don’t be silly. It
doesn’t matter to Matt just how much someone likes me, or why
. She decided to let it go.

Guided by her GPS and occasional input from Matt, Sandra soon pulled up outside a modest brick home in a quiet residential neighborhood. Mature oaks dotted the yards all around. There were no tricycles and skateboards lying helter-skelter on sidewalks and porches, no evidence that children lived nearby. Most of the people in these homes were probably the original owners. Their children were long since gone, and the occupants of the houses planned to live out their lives here.

“This is an awfully nice house,” Sandra said.

“I bought it when the owner passed away. His children were anxious to sell it, and I made them a decent offer. I’m probably the youngest person in the neighborhood, but that doesn’t bother me. I’m never home anyway.”

“Well, this is another asset,” Sandra said. “You could borrow against it if you need to.”

Matt started to shake his head, but stopped and winced with apparent pain. “Afraid not. The bank made me a good deal, let me get the house with a very small down payment. Property values around here have dropped since then, and I’m close to upside-down on the mortgage.”

Matt opened the car door and waved away Sandra’s offer of help. The twisting involved in his exit brought a grimace of pain, but in a moment he stood resolutely on the sidewalk. “See, I’m fine.”

As he shuffled up the walk, his progress was slowed as much by Ken’s size 11 clogs on his size 10 feet as his condition. Matt paused at the door, the key in his hand.

“Want me to go in first?” Sandra asked. “Think your potential killers might be in there?” She pulled out her cell phone. “We can call the police and have them check the house if you want.”

“No. I can’t live the rest of my life in fear.” Matt turned the key in the lock, eased the door open, and shuffled inside with faltering steps. In the living room, he dropped onto the sofa. The movement made him screw up his face, but he said nothing. He gestured Sandra to a nearby chair.

“Are you going to be able to make it on your own?” she asked. “Is there a friend or relative we can call to stay with you until you get your strength back?”

Matt waved away the offer. “I’ll be fine. Thanks, though.”

Sandra made no move to leave. “Why don’t I fix some lunch for you? At least let me do that.”

Over Matt’s protest, Sandra made her way to the kitchen, where she found that Matt’s cupboard was about as full as Old Mother Hubbard’s. The refrigerator held a quart of milk that was out of date and a few bowls that served as petri dishes for the mold covering their contents. The food in the cabinet would have been sufficient had she wanted to feed Matt dried cereal full of weevils or a can of soup with saltines that had lost their crunch.

She tossed the cereal and crackers into the trash, poured the milk down the sink, and marched back to the living room. “I’m taking you out for lunch. Can you get dressed by yourself, or do you want some help?”

Matt’s eyes widened. “I don’t need any help, but I’m not sure I’m ready to go out into the world on my own.” His hands strayed to his stubble-covered scalp, and he gently fingered the staples closing his incision. “And certainly not like this.”

“Don’t worry about your appearance. And you’re not on your own,” she countered. “I’m with you. We’re a team. Now find some clothes and change.”

After a few more halfhearted attempts to dissuade her, Matt gave
in and headed for his bedroom. “And get some shoes that you can walk in,” Sandra called after him. “It’s time you got used to meeting the public, and I don’t like you to shuffle.”
It reminds me too much of
the way a shackled prisoner shuffles. And that may be coming soon enough
.

NINE

Matt dipped a french fry into ketchup and bit off the end. Although Sandra wanted to take him someplace “nice” for lunch, he’d finally convinced her that a burger was more his speed. They were settled at a back table of a Dairy Queen, the remains of their lunch in front of them.

“I like your new look,” Sandra said. Matt had decided that having only half his head shaved made him “look like a freak,” as he put it. With her help, he’d used the clipper part of his electric shaver, and now his whole scalp was covered by black stubble. “Sort of a Jake Gyllenhaal effect.”

“Now all I have to do is add one of those little beards on my chin to complete the look. More like a young Hector Elizondo.” He rubbed his unshaven chin. “Anyway, it looks better than it did. I just hated to ask you to help.”

“You’re going to need help, so get used to it,” Sandra said. She ticked off the points on her fingers. “You don’t have transportation. You don’t have your credit cards or driver’s license. You don’t have cash. You don’t—”

“No need to remind me. I should have gotten some of this figured out while I was in the hospital, I guess, but I couldn’t really get my head around it. It all seemed so unreal. Mainly, when I was awake, I just worried.”

Sandra slurped the last drops of her chocolate shake and pushed the cup away. “So it’s time to stop worrying and start getting your life back.”

“What life?” Matt said. “The police think I’m a suspect in a murder case. My practice is gone, sold to another doctor. My academic position is on indefinite hold. The woman I thought I’d ride off into the sunset with won’t talk to me. So I ask again, what life?” He drained his glass of Coke and crunched on a piece of ice. “But you don’t want to hear this.”

“No, what I want to hear you say is, ‘I’m ready to rebuild my life.’”

“How do I go about that?”

“The same way you eat an elephant: one bite at a time. Get new credit cards. You can do that with a few phone calls. Get a replacement driver’s license. Borrow a car, or rent one if you’re able. Find a job.” She crumpled her napkin and shoved it into her empty cup. “And stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

Matt shook his head. “Why are you doing this? Taking me home was beyond the call of duty. Now you’re treating me like a person, not a client.” He spread his hands wide. “I had this mental image of lawyers as cold, calculating creatures that prey on society. But you’re actually acting human. Why?”

Sandra didn’t answer. She stood and pointed toward Matt’s lunch in a “have you finished?” gesture.

Okay, don’t answer me. But I’m going to find out
. “Sure. Let’s go. We might as well get started with the process of putting Matt Newman back together.”

Matt thought about opening the curtains in his living room, but decided he didn’t want to see the outside world or vice versa. Time to get to work. He settled at his desk, pulled a lined pad toward him, and started a list. As ideas came, he jotted them down, sometimes drawing arrows to move items up or down so they were in the order he’d tackle them. Soon he decided it was time to stop writing and start doing.

Money was first on his list. His wallet was gone, and with it his cards and cash. He could get new credit cards, but he’d need money in the meantime. Go to an ATM machine? Not until he’d replaced his debit card. Cash a check? He wasn’t ready to face the world again. Not today, at least. Then he thought of the extra cash he had stashed away.

He started for the bedroom, his thoughts flying ahead of his steps. What if the money wasn’t there? The police had searched his house. What if one of them put it in his pocket? Or decided it was evidence and slipped it into a plastic bag like he’d seen on
CSI
.

He opened his sock drawer. There it was, tucked into the corner in an old wallet, his emergency fund. Well, this certainly qualified. Even with the cash in it, the wallet was so flat that, once it was in his hip pocket, Matt reached for it twice to assure himself it was there. He’d feel better when new cards formed a reassuring bulge.

A few phone calls, and Matt was promised a new VISA and American Express card delivered to his home in a day or two. Next, he needed to replace his ATM card. He had a little cash now, so he could wait a bit for the card. He decided to apply online for the replacement.

Transportation came next. He could try to borrow a car, but first he had to get a new driver’s license. That meant arranging a ride to the Department of Public Safety office tomorrow. He was about to move on to the next item on the list when it dawned on him: he’d need
identification at the DPS office. He scrabbled through the middle drawer of the desk and pulled out his passport. Thank goodness the police hadn’t asked him to surrender it . . . yet.

An important purchase crossed his mind, but that would have to wait until he had transportation and a little more money. He scribbled a note in the margin of his pad and circled it. He wouldn’t forget that one.

He kept crossing things off his list until eventually he reached the one he’d put at the bottom because he dreaded facing it:
Get
a job
. There was no hope of reclaiming his private practice. It was gone, the deal done a few weeks before that fateful trip to the emergency room. Matt told the doctor assuming his practice he’d cover that night for him.
If only . . . No, don’t go there. It happened.
Move on
.

There was no need to call Brad Franklin at the medical school again. That decision seemed pretty final, and Matt’s head understood the logic behind it, although his heart rebelled at the action. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Maybe one of the surgeons in town needed someone to cover his office while he was gone on vacation, a
locum tenens
. That should be good for a week’s income. Then Matt thought back to his own experience. When he was gone on vacation, he’d referred his patients to one of the other doctors with whom he’d shared call. And it hadn’t cost him a cent. No, covering for another doctor and getting paid for it was out.

He put his head in his hands. Maybe he should have stayed in the hospital. He might have been able to get a job as an orderly. Or—

An idea struck him. He had been on the staff of Metropolitan Hospital for four years. In that time, he’d made a lot of contacts. Matt decided to call one of them and ask for his help. And he knew
just the man to call—a guy who’d been his friend since they were in medical school.

If Matt hadn’t tutored him in physiology, Rick would have flunked out his sophomore year. If Matt hadn’t pulled a number of all-nighters with Rick, the man couldn’t have squeaked through the junior medicine final, the wash-out exam for their med school class. If Matt hadn’t introduced them, Rick would never have met his future wife. The years and their career choices might have made their paths cross less frequently, but Matt still considered Rick a friend. He hoped the feeling was mutual.

He reached for the phone and dialed a number he didn’t have to look up.

“Emergency Room, this is Judy.”

“Judy, this is Dr. Newman. Is Dr. Pearson available?”

“I think he just finished with a patient. Hang on.”

Matt could hear snatches of conversation overlaid by the ringing of phones and the strident beep of pagers. Then, “Matt, is that you? Are you out of the hospital? How are you doing? I heard about what happened to you, and I was going to call. How can I help?”

Matt took a deep breath and plunged forward, filling in his old friend. “To top it all,” he said, “my job at the medical school sort of fell through. I’m looking for work, Rick.”

The silence on the other end of the line made Matt wonder if the connection had been broken. Then Rick said, “Do you have access to the hospital grapevine? I only got word yesterday.”

“What word?”

“Hector Rivera, one of my ER docs, quit, and I need to fill his position.” Rick paused, apparently considering the implications of what he was about to say. “You know, I’ll probably catch some flak for this, but I’ve known you a long time. Just assure me you didn’t murder Cara Mendiola.”