Code Blues (29 page)

I hesitated.

"It doesn't have to pick you up here, if you
want."

A woman approached us with a miniature dog
on a leash. The dog stopped to root in Alex's pizza boxes. She
jerked it away with some difficulty, and glared at me like it was
my fault.

"Thanks but no thanks, Alex. I'll see you
later." I headed south, where I could hear traffic and see people
crossing the sidewalk. I flagged the first taxi I saw.

The black male driver hardly glanced at me
in the rear view mirror. He just stared at the traffic while his
radio deafened us with information about other pick-ups. Fine with
me.

When he came to a stop on Mimosa, I handed
him some money and ran down the small, lantern-lit concrete path to
my apartment.

I threw the bolt on my door.

What just happened tonight?

When I lifted my phone receiver, the dial
tone beeped. I had messages.

Alex, probably.

I threw the phone on the couch and started
washing dishes. But then I had to get it over with. Not knowing was
stressing me out. I scooped up the phone and punched in the
numbers.

"For
your—
two
—new—voice messages, press
one
one
, now."

My heart hammered.

"First message," said the recording.

"Hope. It's Mom," my mother yelled. I closed
my eyes and lowered the volume on her voice. "Where are you? I hope
you're not working too hard."

My brother piped up. "Guess who we saw today
at Yangtze?" That was our favourite restaurant. "Ryan!"

I choked. They won the "worst timing ever"
award. No, wait. Maybe that was me.

Mom said, "I know you said it's, ah, over,
but he looked very nice! Handsome. And he was with his family. No
girlfriend. We asked his mother."

"Mommy," my father chastised under his
breath and added, louder, "Anyway, we were just calling to say
hello! We'll call you tomorrow."

The second message was from the moving
company, promising that they'd come tomorrow. My temples throbbed.
The Zippy company that did zip.

As soon as I hung up, I checked the dial
tone in case Alex had just called. He hadn't.

Thank God.

Right?

I walked to the living room without turning
on the light. Somehow, the darkness soothed me. The street lamp
beamed through the window between tree leaves, allowing me to skirt
the few boxes near the doorway and pick my way to my desk. The
floor was cool and smooth beneath my feet. I picked Henry up and
pressed him against my cheek. "I guess I was better off with you as
my boyfriend."

He didn't answer.

"Right. You're the strong, silent type." My
voice echoed in my empty apartment. I heard someone scraping
furniture across the floor in the apartment above, and felt
lonelier than ever. I stretched Henry full-length, his arms above
his head, and laid him gently on his stomach.

Tonight, I needed someone more alive than
Henry, but just as safe. I opened my laptop and brought up an old
e-mail from Ryan.

Dear Hope,

Thanks for coming to my grandmother's
funeral. It meant a lot to all of us. I love you....

I tore off Alex's T-shirt, my buttonless
dress shirt, bra, white skirt, and soiled panties and launched them
in the hall closet. I'd never wear any of them again. Back in my
trusty nightshirt, I propped myself up in my sleeping bag, reading
Ryan's e-mails until I fell asleep.

Chapter 16

By Friday, every minute of my ER shift, my
head pounded, hangover-style. My back ached from the unforgiving
bedroom floor. My tongue felt thick and furry, even though I'd
brushed it, and my breath probably reeked of misery.

I tugged at the sleeves of my white coat,
grateful that at least my cleavage was no longer on display for all
of Montreal. A girl has to have some standards.

Dr. Dupuis was on. He cast me an appraising
glance when I fumbled my presentations, but said nothing until I
told him I was leaving for my family med clinic after one more
patient. His face seemed to lengthen even more. I could hardly read
his eyes as the fluorescent light bounced off his glasses. "Are you
all right?"

I shrugged and tried to
smile. "As well as can be expected, under the circumstances." It
was a loose
Anne of Green Gables
quote.

He eased the last clipboard out of my hands.
"I'll take care of this. Go have lunch."

I was too tired to argue. It was almost
noon, which was the end of my shift. I'd only picked up the chart
because I was trying to make up for my lackluster performance.
Until now, I'd been humming along on barbed wire and bug juice, as
Jack Nicholson put it. But after Alex, this bug had run out of
juice.

I revived my spirits by sipping some
literal, apple-flavored, juice from a glass bottle while sitting
around the back of the FMC, under an anemic birch tree. I hadn't
packed a proper lunch and didn't want to buy one. These calories
plus my liver's gluconeogenesis would carry me through the
afternoon.

The fresh air and grass under my feet buoyed
me slightly, and I strode into my FMC clinic a few minutes
early.

Dr. Levine, a tanned, barrel-chested man
with bristly brown hair, shook my hand and boomed, "Pleased to meet
you, Hope!"

I liked him better than Dr. C. already. Too
bad Dr. Levine was no longer our team leader.

"How are you settling into Montreal?"

Until last night, I would have chirped,
"Great!" As it stood, I demurred. "It's, ah, interesting. I'm not
settled yet. I still don't have my furniture."

"Why's that?" he bellowed.

So then I summarized my saga of
furniture-in-limbo, wishing I could pick another story that made me
look smart and in-control.

"That's terrible! You don't even have a bed?
I'll lend you a futon!" Dr. Levine looked distressed. "My son's
home from university. We have some furniture just sitting
there."

Tempting, but I didn't want handouts. "It's
supposed to come today. I'll let you know."

Stan shook his head. "You should threaten
them with small claims court. That'll get them moving."

We laughed at his inadvertent pun. Dr.
Levine held out a mixing bowl. "At least have some microwaved
popcorn. I didn't have time to bring anything better today."

I laughed. "I'll wash my hands first. Thank
you."

He shook the bowl, rustling the popcorn.
"Hygiene first. You're off to a great start already."

I shook my head and smiled. Why, oh why,
couldn't he have stayed our team leader?

Even fueled by popcorn and a friendly
supervisor, I ran a slow-mo, cotton-brained clinic. Dr. Levine
prodded and encouraged and eventually sighed, "Have more popcorn"
before feeding me the answers.

"Thanks," I said. Now I had an inkling of
what the other residents were missing, after Kurt's death. Ideally,
the FMC would be a refuge from our other rotations, our chance to
learn family medicine and follow patients for two years. Dr.
Callendar and the eroding building made it feel more like bamboo
shoved under the fingernails. I'd settle for somewhere between the
two.

I hid in my room, waiting for my last
patient and writing my charts. 76 y.o. male, DM II, HT, COPD. CC:
glycemic control. Even my writing was slower and more cautious than
usual.

While I was surrounded by
other people, I was okay, but as soon as I was alone, I started
ruminating about the light in Alex's eyes, his smell of cedar and
musk, his nimble fingers and tongue. He felt so
right
in bed and so wrong out of
it.

I hated books and movies where women seemed
to be punished for premarital sex. Nothing as obvious as a bolt of
lightning, but they were still made to feel ashamed and defiled. So
why was I living the stereotype?

Oh. Suddenly, I wanted to cry. I bit the
inside of my cheek and blinked ferociously. You will not. You will
not.

Two sharp raps on my door.

Alex. No. It wasn't his clinic day. I took a
deep breath. "Come in."

Tori's face popped around the imitation oak
door. Her kind expression made me grip the edge of my wood-veneer
desk.

She sank in the patient's chair beside my
desk and crossed her legs toward me. "I'm not going to ask you how
you are. It's pretty obvious."

I hiccupped something between a laugh and a
sob. "Don't you have a patient?"

"Mrs. McNally was my last one. So." She
studied me. I cleared my throat and gripped my pen, its plastic
edges making ridges in my fingertips. She said softly, "Alex,
right?"

I laid down my pen, taking extra care to
minimize the noise. "I know you warned me. I know I'm stupid."

She shook her head. "You're not stupid. Alex
can be very charming when he wants to be." She hesitated, pressing
her lips together. "I wish Kurt was around."

I frowned at her. "I didn't even know
him."

"I know." She twisted her only ring, a topaz
set in silver. "But he was great with this kind of stuff."

I snorted. "People getting fucked over?" I
wanted to shock her, make her sniff and leave me alone.

She didn't hesitate. "Pretty much. Even
people you wouldn't expect to open up, like Robin—"

She stopped there, as if regretting her
words, but I pounced on them. Lily-white, geek-of-the-year Robin
Huxley? "What did he talk to Kurt about? Type I and type II
errors?"

She pressed her lips together. "We all have
problems."

Well, whip my politically incorrect ass. "Do
you know what his were?"

Tori shrugged. "Robin never talked to the
rest of us. But Kurt used to talk to Robin, and it seemed to
help."

Since I felt so selfish and miserable, I
said, "Well, it's too late for me. Kurt's not coming back."

"Yes." Tori's brown eyes were level. "So I'm
going to try and step into his place."

I blinked at her. "Why?" I was surprised
enough she'd gone to the Jazz Festival with me. She might have been
too polite to say no, but she didn't seem to have a stellar
time.

She glanced at the closed door before
turning back to me. "It sounds silly. But now that Kurt's gone,
it's the least I can do for him. His memory."

I eyed her. It was all so strange. I
couldn't deny I needed a friend. A real friend, though. Not a pity
party. "I'm not a charity case."

She smiled slightly. "No?" She laughed at my
injured face. "Just kidding. Look. Kurt helped us all the time, and
not once did he make us feel pathetic, like he was too busy for us,
or whatever. If he could do that for all the residents and all the
medical students, I can handle being friends with you."

Gee, thanks. But at least she was honest and
I respected her. I said heavily, "Okay."

"Okay." She smiled at me.

I smiled back. I did feel better. It feels
good to have someone believe in you, even if you don't quite
believe in yourself. "Does this mean you'll massage my feet?"

She gave me a strange look.

I laughed. "What, was that something even
Kurt didn't do?"

"Not to me!"

We giggled together. I sobered. "Do you have
any idea who held a grudge against him?"

She shook her head. "I doubt it's anyone we
know. He must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Everyone had their pet theories. Alex and
Mireille pointed their fingers at each other. Tucker suspected Dr.
Bob Clarkson. But who had an alibi? And how could I possibly ask in
a tactful way? "Yeah. What a crazy night. Did you and Tucker and
Anu hang out at the Jazz Festival all night?"

"Until midnight," she said, pressing her
lips together for a second. She knew where I was going with this,
but she was willing to play ball for now.

"Alex and I went out for sushi, but then he
took off," I said. "Do you know what the other residents were up
to?"

"Well, one of the second years had a party,
so a lot of people went to that," she said, surprising me.

"Really?" No one had invited me. Never mind
that it had been my first day and Alex had whirled me away on a
date. I still felt left out.

"It was sort of a spur of the moment thing,
I guess," she said, reading my mind. "Anu and Tucker and I wanted
to hang out at the Jazz Festival anyway, so we called you. But
Mireille and Robin—"

"Robin Huxley?" Even the town nerd got
invited before me?

"Yes." She hesitated. Her head dipped before
she met my eyes again. "I heard Alex showed up too."

My head spun. "On Friday night."

"So I heard. I wasn't there."

He ditched me for an "emergency" that was a
resident party? If I hadn't already written him off, this would
have sent him straight to jail, do not pass GO, do not collect
$200.

Tears sprang to my eyes. I blinked them back
and shook my head. The guy wasn't worth crying over, unless it was
tears of joy that I'd escaped him. "I should make a spreadsheet of
where everyone was that night."

She looked pained. "The police will find
out."

I shook my head. "Yeah, they've done a great
job so far."

"Even so, they've been trained far more than
you or I."

"True." I paused. "Uh, did you spend all of
Friday night with Tucker and Anu?"

"Of course not." She suppressed a smile.
"You want my alibi for your spreadsheet?"

I shrugged, but of course I did.

"Anu went home before midnight. Tucker and I
watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD until we fell asleep."

I didn't like picturing them on the couch
together. Clearly, the guy had yellow fever. "So you were together
all night?"

"He went home eventually. I didn't wake up
enough to check the clock."