My Soul to Keep (23 page)

I stuffed No-Nose in my bag and lit out toward radiology, figuring that was as good a place to start as any. If they were there, I’d be able to follow the screams and find Christine and Liz in short order.

Interestingly, I made the same series of mistakes I’d made the first time, though, of course, I should have known better. Followed the indigo stripe instead of the purple one. Took the quicker elevator on the left rather than the sluggish one on the right, my chronic sense of urgency and legendary lack of forbearance winning out once again over any shred of common sense I might possess.

I was relieved to see that Patrick the gender-ambiguous guard dog was not at his post. In his place stood a fairly fluffy and pleasant-looking woman with a tight black bun, skin the color of Duncan Hines brownies, and a name tag that had a bright yellow happy face on it. I sized her up, checked the tag, and decided to go with one of the techniques a rabid stalker client of mine had used to trick women into falling for him: forced teaming.

“Hi, Bernadette,” I said sweetly, as though we were old friends.

“Well, hello now.” She stopped what she was doing and beamed at me. “What can I do for you?”

I pasted on a wide-eyed look of innocence. “We’ve got a little problem.”

Her eyes widened a bit. “Do we now?”

“Yes we do. We have a little girl in there right this minute who’s having a terrible time of it.”

“Is that so?”

“Our little sweetie—she’s my niece, actually”—lie number one—”is having a procedure today, and she’s just downright terrified.” I pulled No-Nose out of my bag and held him out for her to see. “You don’t mind if I just nip in real quick and give her a hug and her teddy bear before she goes in, do you?”

She smiled apologetically. “Why no, honey. I’m sorry. I can’t let you do that. It’s not allowed. You know how that is.” She winked at me as though we were just suffering this minor little indignity together, the two of us.

She’d forced-teamed me right back. Bernadette was tougher than she looked.

“Would you like me to give her a message for you?” she said with apparently genuine sympathy. Brilliant move.

“Maybe you could just check the visitors list? I think they might be expecting me. Dr. Dylan Foster?”

“Honey, we got no visitors list up here at this desk today. We’re runnin’ two hours behind, and those technicians are working so hard, they got no time for such things. You know how that is. I’m just as sorry as I can be.”

“Could you just call back there and check? I hate to be any trouble.” Lie number two.

“It won’t do any good, sweetheart. Why don’t you just let me take that on back to her? What’s her name?”

“Christine Zocci.”

She flipped through several pages on her clipboard. “No one here by that name today.”

“Oh. You’re sure?”

“Yes, honey. I got the whole list right here in front of me. What’s she having done today, darlin’?”

“Um … Dunno.”

She shrugged. “I sure don’t know what to tell you.”

I thanked her for her help and started to leave, then turned and walked quickly back to the desk. “Hey, do you have the lists from previous days also?”

She nodded. “It all goes in the computer.”

“My brother-in-law”—lie number three—”was in here the other day. I wonder if you could just check and see if he’s still in the hospital anywhere.”

“I don’t have that record here, but I can call down to patient information for you if you’d like.”

“That’d be great.”

“Name?”

“Joe Riley. I just want to see what room he’s in. I think they might have moved him.”

She picked up the phone. “Check-in date?”

“I’m not sure. I know he was here yesterday.”

She spoke into the phone, nodded, and said, “I see,” a few times, then looked up at me. “No one registered by that name, darlin’.”

“So he’s checked out, then.”

“No, I mean we don’t have a patient record for anyone named Joe Riley on that date. You sure you got the name right?”

“Could you check outpatient? Maybe he was just in for the day.”

She spoke into the phone again, then shook her head and hung up. “No outpatient record either, honey.”

“That’s for the entire Parkland system, right? Not just … whichever part I’m standing in right now? Aren’t all these buildings connected?”

“That’s for the whole caboodle. Maybe you got the wrong hospital, sweetie. Why don’t you try calling over to Baylor?”

“I’ll do that. I guess I’ve got some bad luck going today. Thanks for your help.”

I put No-Nose back in my bag and walked out slowly, puzzled. I was standing in the hallway, my brain spinning, when my phone rang. I checked the number and sucked in a breath. It was David.

I fluffed my hair, straightened my shoulders, and wet my lips, then waited for the fourth ring before I flipped open my phone.

“Hey, you,” I said, wincing even as the words left my mouth.

He paused. “ ‘Hey, you’?” He let out a laugh. “Hey, you, yourself.”

I made a note to shoot myself at the first opportunity. “That sounded incredibly stupid, didn’t it?”

“I would say
credibly
stupid. But stupid nonetheless.”

I prayed silently to the Good Lord Jesus to let me sink quietly into the floor and disappear forever.

“I can’t think of one time,” he was saying, “in all the time I’ve known you, that I’ve heard you say ‘hey, you.’ ”

“I choked.”

“Clearly.”

“I’m nervous.”

“Why? It’s just me.”

“I was trying to avoid the whole nickname thing.”

“What nickname thing?”

“You want me to call you back and start over?”

“What nickname thing?”

“You know, that thing when you’re so close to someone you never use their real name? You always say sweetie or babe or sugar pea or something instead?”

“Ah. The dreaded nickname thing.”

“You only use the real name when you’re mad. That’s the rule.”

“You know, I never noticed that.”

“All my nicknames for you seemed too …”

“Intimate?”

I sighed. “Just the word I was searching for.”

“We
are
intimate, Dylan. We were together a year and a half.”

“See what I mean? You just said Dylan.”

Another pause. “Point taken.”

There was a long, awkward moment of silence.

David, bless his heart, bailed us out. “So … I got your message. Was there a reason you called me? Or were you just hoping to work out the whole nickname thing?”

“A reason. Fair question. I don’t have my strategy mapped out, exactly.”

“What a surprise.”

“Yes, quite a shock, I’m sure. Maybe we could meet later for coffee or something.”

“Give you a little time to work on your speech?”

I grinned. The man was absolutely disarming. “I need to go through a couple of drafts, then rework it. You know, do the spit and polish.”

“And then there’s the test-market process …”

“Exactly. I’ll have to run it by my focus group.”

“That would be Maria and Liz.”

“Christine, mainly. She’s the one with the good instincts.”

He laughed. “Good call. How is she? I was going to try to get up there today, but I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

“She’s okay. She’s had some complications, though. I can’t get anyone
to tell me anything. All I know is they took her for more tests. I was just trying to track her down.”

“Will you let me know?”

“I’d love to tell you in person.”

He paused. “You’re not going to freak out on me, are you?”

“You mean if we meet or if we don’t meet?”

“Either. And please don’t freak out because I’m asking you about freaking out. This is going pretty well so far.”

“It’s a fair question. I’m not taking it personally. Note how calm my tone of voice is.”

I heard him chuckle. A good sign.

“I am definitely not going to freak out,” I said. “Not if we meet, I promise. And if we don’t—well, I guess that wouldn’t be your problem, would it? So it’s looking to me like a no-risk proposition for you.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t make me beg. Be a sport.”

“When and where?”

“You busy tonight? I’m asking in a general sense only—not digging for information about your personal life. I’d like that to go in the official record.”

“So noted.”

“Well, are you? Busy tonight?”

“As it happens, I am. What about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow will do just fine. Can I take you to supper?”

“I think that might be a little ambitious.”

“A drink, then. Or coffee?”

“You don’t drink coffee.”

“Work with me here.”

“I think we should avoid food and beverages entirely. How about we meet at SMU? Are you working tomorrow? I’ll be over there anyway.”

“At the school?”

“Just in the neighborhood.”

For once I held my tongue, reminding myself firmly that it was none of my business what he’d be doing in the neighborhood.

“How about the Meadows?” he said.

“The Meadows? On campus? You are aware that’s a museum?”

“And your point would be …”

“Last time we went to a museum, you were insufferable.”

“They had a toilet on a platform in the middle of the room.”

“It was modern art.”

“It was a toilet.”

“See? You’re a redneck in disguise. I’m not taking you to a museum. Bowling maybe.”

“No, really. I’m growing. We can walk around and, you know. look at art. I can improve my mind while you’re busy not freaking out.”

“I think there’s some sort of visiting exhibit. It’s supposed to be a big deal.”

“Well, then, you’re on.”

“I’ll see if I can snag us free tickets.”

“Professor perk?”

“One of the few. Two o’clock?”

“You’ll be late.”

I feigned indignation. “I will most certainly not be late.”

“Okay. You won’t be late. See you at two thirty.”

“Right. See you then. And David?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“See you tomorrow, Dylan.”

I
CAME DOWN HARD
from my nervous high after my conversation with David and found myself standing in a bustling hallway full of strangers, feeling embarrassed and alone.
Hey, you?
Who had I become? I used to be witty. Interesting. Interested. I had sharp social skills and an innate ability to connect with people. I was a confident, assertive woman. Not a nervous, giggling simpleton who generates inane remarks in a simple exchange with an ex-boyfriend.

And I had never in my life been afraid of anything. Ever. Not until that ill-fated August day when I met Peter Terry and learned that fearlessness is almost always based on denial.

Only the ignorant are unafraid.

The crucial error, of course, was that I had ignored my better instincts completely and given that pasty, invasive stranger the time of day in the first place. I should have cold-shouldered him the instant he showed up in the water and stood too close to me—the very second he pushed me to talk to him. I’d known in that moment that he was bad news. And I hadn’t listened to myself.

Anyone who won’t take no for an answer never, ever deserves a yes.

Idiot
, my mind said to me.

“Exactly,” I said out loud. “You are a grade-A prime idiot.”

I tried Christine’s room again and then Liz’s cell phone. No answer at either number. On a hunch, I decided to hike the considerable distance to the Parkland main patient-information desk. My feet were blistering under the straps of my flip-flops by the time I arrived.

Maybe it was the smell of the film-developing chemicals wafting through radiology that had triggered the impulse. Smells carry powerful associations with time, place, and memory. Just the smell of canned
green beans can knock me back to the lunchroom in my junior high, whether I want to go there or not. Whatever the cause, standing there in the waiting room on the worn, maroon carpet, trying to worm my way back there to see Christine, I had been overcome by a conviction that I needed to find Joe Riley. A man I’d met only once. A man who, at least according to the Parkland Hospital patient records, didn’t exist.

The woman behind the desk tapped the keys with her long, pink fingernails and scowled at the computer.

“No Joe Riley,” she said triumphantly.

“You checked Joe and Joseph, right?”

“No Joe, no Joseph. I checked four different spellings of Riley.”

“Can you see if you have any record of his having checked in at all? Maybe you have a patient record from some other visit?”

“No ma’am. I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

“Oh. Why not?” I felt strangely indignant, like I did when I was nine and accidentally slammed my bicycle into a wall.

“I can’t go in there and look for just any old Joe Riley ever. Not without an address or a date of birth.”

“Why not?”

“Patient confidentiality just doesn’t allow for that sort of thing. If you had the DOB or maybe the Social, I could tell you if he
wasn’t
here. But I can’t tell you if he
was
here. If you get my meaning.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”