Code Blues (13 page)

It was a mammoth undertaking. I wondered
what made Dr. Radshaw care so much.

Alex was still talking. "He was always
around. He even came in on weekends. He didn't have time to be a
junkie. I'm telling you."

Even dead, Dr. Kurt inspired a lot of
emotion. I tried to bring Alex full circle. "Okay. Say I believe
you. What does this have to do with Mireille?"

His shoulders sagged. "I
don't
know
. But
she's part of it. I'm sure of it." He smiled a little. "Man's
intuition."

I smiled back, but Dr. Radshaw could still
have been a user. Some buzz from speed or crystal meth, and he
could do the FMC and Mireille and Vicki and the treadmill woman and
still have energy to burn.

During med school, at a doctors and
addiction presentation, they told us about an anaesthetist at
Western. He was shooting up in a closet between OR cases. He meant
to inject Fentanyl, a narcotic, but by accident, he'd grabbed
succinylcholine. He ended up paralyzing himself. He couldn't scream
for help. He couldn't even breathe. No one knew where he was. The
last thing he remembered was falling like a cut tree and knowing he
had inadvertently committed suicide.

His colleagues heard the crash. They secured
his airway, saving his life. After that, his addiction was
literally out of the closet. He got help.

Before I could tell Alex, he brushed the
hair out of his eyes and said, "I know for sure about him and
Mireille. We followed her the next day, okay? Me and my friend. On
the metro. She went right from her hospital to Kurt's house and
spent the night."

I imagined Alex skulking outside Dr.
Radshaw's place until dawn. It wasn't pretty.

Alex shrugged. "I know. It was lame. Anyway,
my friend got over her after that. The point is, Kurt and Mireille
were serious. When he broke up with her and went out with Vicki,
Mireille was upset. Had to take some time off." He lowered his
voice. "I heard she was maybe even suicidal."

I felt a pang for her. She acted so tough at
the orientation.

"I've been in school with her for the past
four years. She was a competitive swimmer. She doesn't give up.
When she gets mad, she gets even."

Okay. I could see that. There was something
hard about her. A lot of women cover it up with smiles and honey,
but Mireille let it ride closer to the surface. Still, that was
true of a lot of doctors. Med school trenches strip off sweetness
really fast. I used to think I could save the world. I lost that
sometime during clerkship.

Overall, I didn't trust Alex, but I was
willing to play ball. "All right, let's say Kurt was murdered, and
that Mireille had something to do with it."

He nodded and ripped up a handful of grass.
"Yeah."

"How would she have killed him? Alex, I saw
him. There weren't any signs of struggle. Do you really think he
would have just let her stick him with a needle? He would have kept
his distance, and he would have been stronger than her."

He tossed the grass away and rubbed his
forehead. "I know. I've been thinking about it, too." His grey eyes
met mine again. "But I do know he was murdered, Hope. And I want to
find whoever did it. We can't let them get away with it." He held
out his hand, palm up. "Will you help me?

I looked from his hand to his face. "Where
did you go on Friday night?"

He sighed. His hand curled, but he didn't
withdraw it. "I told you. I'm sorry."

"Yeah, but what happened?"

He dropped his hand to the grass and curled
his fist around another tuft. "You know already. Family emergency.
I called you."

Not until I got home. Although, to be fair,
he probably didn't know I hadn't been wearing my pager. "What kind
of emergency?"

"I can't say," he said to the grass. "I just
can't. It's not my story to tell." He brought his gray eyes up to
meet mine, steady now.

It wasn't like I needed details. If he'd
just say, My dad had an MI (heart attack), I wouldn't press for
more. The one-liner told me enough info. But a total information
blackout, after ditching me? I wanted more.

I tried to make a joke out of it. "You can't
even say if it was a Code Red, or a Code Blue, or Black?" Red is
fire. Blue is a cardiorespiratory arrest. Black means bomb
threat.

His lips twitched. "I guess kind of Black.
Seriously, Hope, I can't say any more. Do you trust me?"

Kind of. Black could mean mourning. Maybe
someone died in his family. "I guess."

He smiled. "Thanks for the vote of
confidence. Are you in?"

If there was a murderer among us, I wanted
to know it. There wasn't much risk in asking questions. And I liked
Alex. So I nodded. "I'm in."

He wrapped his arm around me and kissed the
top of my head. "Good. I don't know how we got onto something so
heavy."

I looked up at him. The wind blew my bangs
into my eyes. I pushed them out of the way and he smiled. "So.
Let's talk about you."

"What about me?" He smelled good. Warm.
Masculine.

"What do you like to do?"

You, I thought, and quelled it. "Uh. I like
to rollerblade. In London, I used to go up and down these great
footpaths by the Thames River."

"Yeah?" He rested his cheek against my head.
"I heard about those paths. Don't they get flooded sometimes?"

"Yeah. In the spring. Once, I was trying to
bike, but it was so deep, a family of ducks came swimming along." I
pulled back to look at him. "How did you know about that?"

He shrugged. "A friend."

He had a lot of friends. But he was from
Kitchener, only about an hour away from London. It wasn't so
surprising. "Do you like to blade?"

He shook his head. "I'm a klutz on wheels.
You can teach me."

I smiled at the thought. He pulled me close
again. "I like soccer. You?"

I made a face. "Lots of running. And why
would I want to hit a ball with my head?"

He rolled his eyes. "Boy.
Have I got a lot to teach
you
. Did you want your
dessert?"

I groped beside me for
my
millefeuille
.
"Just try and stop me."

He snatched it away and held it up above my
head.

I stood up to grab it. He stood, too, and
held it out of range. His half-foot on me made all the
difference.

I twisted and dove for his rum ball. He
bellowed with rage, but I was too fast. I snatched it up and held
it behind my back. Then I stuck my tongue out at him.

He sidled closer. I moved away just enough
to keep the same distance between us.

"You don't even like rum balls," he
said.

"Well, you promised to be sober for the rest
of your life. It would be my moral duty to keep the demon rum away
from you." I held it up in front of my nose. "Smells pretty good,
actually."

"Not as good as
your
millefeuille
." He closed his eyes and took a deep sniff. "Mmm. Real
whipped cream."

"You can't
smell
that," I
protested, but he opened his mouth wide and took a bite. Cream
squished out between layers of pastry.

"You bastard!" I yelled, swiping my pastry
back. He laughed with his mouth full. I examined his teeth marks
gloomily. "Now it's got your cooties."

"Oh, yeah?" He grabbed my
chin and kissed me. I was so surprised that it took me a second to
respond. His lips were softer than I'd expected. He ran his tongue
along my lower lip, a quick flick, and drew away. "Now
you've
got my
cooties."

I swallowed hard. He was smiling, so I
smiled back, a little tremulously, and showed him his rum ball. I'd
squashed it in surprise. Cocoa and chocolate stained my fingers.
"Sorry."

"It was worth it," he said. He took the rum
ball, but looked at my fingers. "I can clean those for you." He
licked his lips.

"Uh..." I remembered those lips on my feet.
I swayed toward him before I checked the park. Three mothers were
watching us. One turned away with a sniff, but two others continued
to glower. The kids were mostly oblivious, except for a little boy
whose mouth hung open.

I knew I was blushing furiously. "Better
not."

Alex grabbed a napkin and took my empty hand
in his. "Better luck next time."

He patiently wiped away the chocolate while
my body hummed with the promise.

Under his breath, he said, "I still can't
believe Kurt's gone. I know he's dead, but whenever I go to the
FMC, or get ready for work, or think of something I have to tell
him..."

I nodded. Our picnic had taken another
melancholy turn. I wondered if it would always be this way between
me and Alex, if we could never just talk and have fun without Dr.
Radshaw's shadow over us. Maybe if we looked into his death, it
would help free Alex.

My hand was still sticky, but reasonably
clean. Alex offered me a bite of his rum ball. I took a nip. It
tasted like chocolate, made darker and more complex by the
liquor.

Alex kissed the tip of my nose. My eyes flew
open, startled, and he laughed.

I walked him back to the hospital, hand in
hand. At the main entrance, he squeezed my hand. "I'll call
you."

That was it. No kiss. I walked away, happy
but curiously disappointed. I never knew what to expect from Alex.
In some ways, he was the complete opposite of my ex.

Ryan and I had basically been set up by our
grandmothers. He was a smart, hard-working, good-looking Chinese
boy. In other words, Grandma's idea of manna from heaven, and not
far from mine, either. We were friends before we started dating in
university. He was going to Ottawa U for engineering and I was at
McMaster, at the other end of the province. He tolerated the six
hours' drive for two years, but he wanted me to come back to Ottawa
for med school. So did I. The only hitch was, they put me on the
waiting list and never took me off of it, while Western accepted me
outright.

"So come back. Do your Master's at Ottawa.
They'll take you next year," said Ryan.

I ground my teeth. "Ryan,
it doesn't work like that. It's a crap shoot. I could get a crazy
interviewing team, or they could raise the MCAT score I need. You
know how many good people don't get into med school? There was a
woman at McMaster who applied for
eight
years
in a row! I have to take
this."

He just looked at me with flat, brown eyes.
"You could defer for a year. You mean you don't want to wait."

"I can't."

"You don't want to." He didn't add, You
won't wait for me. He wasn't into drama. But that was the turning
point. We tried for another two years, on and off, but it only got
worse in clerkship, when I worked in the hospitals for up to 36
hours straight. We finally cut each other loose. Last I heard, he
was dating a girl named Lisa. "Very serious," said my grandmother
accusingly. "They might get married." Like Ryan and I might have.
If I hadn't been stubborn. If I hadn't put my career first. But if
I wasn't true to myself, who would I be?

One thing about Ryan, he was dependable. If
he said he'd call at 8 p.m., he'd call. I never thought he'd cheat
on me. He was thoughtful, brought me flowers on our anniversary,
daisies the first year, roses the next, then lilies, and finally
carnations. The last one was the death knell for me. Carnations are
about the cheapest flower you can find.

Ryan said, "The lady in the shop told me
they'd last a long time."

I raged. "What? You bought me flowers to be
practical? Flowers aren't practical! That's the whole point!"

Alex was the reverse of
Ryan. He understood romance. He understood women. But
I
didn't
understand
him
.

OTOH, Alex was obsessed with Kurt's death.
Once we unraveled that mystery, he'd be back on track.

I coasted home along
Péloquin. Around Côte-des-Neiges, I noticed a Mediterranean
restaurant with a
térasse
alongside more modest Lebanese and pizza joints.
A travel agency. A fruit and vegetable store with paper signs in
its window advertising everything from pears to beer to toilet
paper. Cars lined up at the parking meters, except on the corner
where a truck unloaded its wares.

I was more used to cars
and malls, but I liked this better. I smiled at the people on
the
térasse
. They
sat at white plastic tables, shaded by green umbrellas, drinking
beer and laughing.

Farther along, Péloquin became quieter, more
residential. Brick or stone-faced duplexes lined the street. From
my apartment hunting, I'd figured out that a duplex held two
separate apartments in one building, so one family could live on
the ground floor and another on the upper level. The wrought-iron
stairs stretching to the second floor meant that both groups had a
private entrance. Although the duplexes pressed against one
another, and each only had a small front yard, they generally
boasted neat lawns and petite gardens. A few guys in shorts and no
shirts balanced their bare feet on their balcony railings. I dodged
a sprinkler and smiled some more. This wasn't Orleans, the suburb
where I'd grown up, but it wasn't such a distant relation,
either.

When I got home, I read
about two pages of Guy Gavriel Kay's
Sailing to Sarantium
before I
crashed.

I awoke to a harsh buzz ripping throughout
my apartment like a giant mechanical wasp. It took me a minute to
recognize it as my buzzer. Someone was here to see me.

I groaned. My teeth felt fuzzy and wrong. My
breath was probably enough to make a dog's hair stand on end. But I
dragged myself out of bed for Alex. I brushed the sleep out of my
eyes, finger-combed my hair, and rinsed with mouthwash. Then I
threw open my front door.