Could I Have This Dance? (53 page)

C
laire stopped by Dr. Rogers’ lab, hoping to see Brett before she headed home. She knocked gently at the door. “Hey, pal, how’s the grant search?”

He shook his head. “I got an answer today.” He held up a letter.

“Well?”

“Rejected again.”

Claire frowned. “I’m sorry.”

“Not half as sorry as I am. I might as well pack my bags. Rogers will never rank me in the elite eight.”

“You’ll probably get my spot,” she groaned. “Not that I had one to give.”

“Bad day?”

“I was deposed by Ramsey Plank. He made me feel like a fool. Somehow he got the data from the trauma registry or something. He told me Sierra Jones was the only pediatric trauma patient I took care of all year. I didn’t even realize that until he pointed it out.”

“Ouch.”

“That’s not the worst. Somehow, he found out about my father and Huntington’s disease. He basically alluded to the idea that I might have the disease myself, and may not be suited to be an intern.”

“How did your attorney handle that?”

“I think he was upset that I hadn’t shared it with him, but honestly, I didn’t think it was relevant.” She sighed. “Now Rogers is going to find out for sure.”

“There is a way out.”

“What?”

“Get tested.”

“Right. That will only help if I test negative. If I test positive, what are my chances of staying in the program?”

“Why would you want to? Why go through the torture?”

“You know why,” she said, folding her slender frame onto Brett’s desktop. “Because I love this stuff more than anything else.” She smiled as her
mind drifted momentarily. “I saw Dr. Keim do a rectus abdominus free flap to create a new breast for a cancer victim yesterday. It was incredible.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. The same thing I always do. Work hard and try not to think about HD or being sued.”

“How was Mr. Jones?”

“Out of control. I just sat there watching him today, trying to understand what’s inside his head. I’m sure he’s the one who called me.” She shook her head. “My attorney asked him about it, just to see his reaction. I thought he was going to come over the table for a second. He accused Franklin Peters of trying to hide the truth.”

“I wish I could have seen that.”

“It wasn’t pretty.” She sighed. “My attorney thinks we should settle the case before trial. I think he’s worried that I’ll collapse on the stand and say something that will ruin our case.”

“What do you want?”

“I want this to be over.”

He reached forward and tapped her leg with the side of his hand. “So are you off call?”

“Yep. Dr. Keim gave me the evening off because of the deposition.”

Brett pushed back his chair from the counter. “So we’ve both had rough days. What say we go cry in our beers over at McPherson’s Pub?”

She held up her hand. “Not me. No way. I seem to have bad memories of the way I acted the last time you talked me into a drink.”

He smiled. “Why do you think I’m asking?”

She slipped from the desk and walked to the door, but she could feel his eyes following along.

“I guess that means no?”

She pointed at him from the doorway. “That means no.”

She stopped in the hall and pivoted, before sticking her head back in Brett’s small office.

“Change your mind?”

“No.” She hesitated. “I need to know what you really think. What’s Rogers going to do when he finds out about my HD risk?”

“He’ll want you to be tested. If you’re negative, you’re okay. If you’re positive, it’s going to be very hard for him to keep you on.” Brett sighed. “Even from a medicolegal standpoint, Rogers doesn’t want to be responsible for training a surgeon who might get dangerous.”

“That’s discrimination. I could sue.”

“Nobody sues for a spot in surgery and stays in very long. Even if you prove it, they find other reasons to kick you out. An African-American
intern tried that a few years back. He claimed he was kicked out because of racial discrimination. He sued, and a judge forced Rogers to let him back in. But by then, every attending had it in for this guy. His life was pure misery. He couldn’t be good enough for them. He never made the third-year cut.”

Claire pushed a rebellious strand of blond hair behind her ear. “That’s what I figured.” She turned around again and mumbled to herself as she started down the hall, “The only problem is, I don’t want to be tested.”

I’m too afraid to know.

A few minutes later, Claire evaded the grasp of the hospital and stepped into the cool air. There was a breeze coming from the shore, filling her with a desire to escape the city. The opportunity to see Lafayette before sunset presented a rare dilemma. Deciding what to do with spare time created an unexpected challenge.

Claire mulled her options as she walked to her old Toyota. She desperately needed to clean house and shop for groceries, but that seemed a boring way to fill a free spring evening. She longed to head for the beach, but she needed to get home and change first, so she really didn’t have time for that, and the idea of walking alone on the beach at night was too scary. Perhaps she should go to a movie, or treat herself to a meal at a downtown restaurant.

She thought about the upcoming trial and wondered whether she could stand up to Ramsey’s questions in front of a jury. He made her feel so incompetent. She wondered whether she could possibly make the first pyramid cut when Ramsey finished convincing everyone that she was an overconfident, in-over-her-head, incompetent, first-month intern with a hidden past and a practice of deceiving her superiors.

She thought about John and her failed engagement.

And she thought about her family and her risk for Huntington’s disease.

And suddenly, her desire to spend a happy hour of free time evaporated. The urge to go home and sleep, the idea that she could pull the covers over her head and forget her problems, tugged at her weary soul.

It was a common problem for the interns to remember exactly where they parked, so it wasn’t too alarming that Claire looked through three rows of cars before coming to her small sedan. A siren screamed in the background and Claire shifted her focus to identify the ambulance which undoubtedly would deliver more business to her trauma colleagues. The noise pierced her, reminding her of sleepless nights spent baby-sitting broken
patients in the CT scanner and a little girl who wanted a purple bicycle for her birthday.
I shouldn’t be torturing myself. I should just go back to Brett and take him up on the offer to have a night out. A listening friend and one drink couldn’t hurt.

She threw her call bag in the back seat and planned to go back and find Brett, when she stopped to check her appearance in the reflection of the car’s window. She wished for a better mirror so she could primp herself properly. As she flipped her hair behind her ear, she was struck with an odd familiarity. She’d seen her father make the same move a hundred times. He’d done it as long as she could remember, flipping his unruly hair behind his ear with nervous regularity. The thought that she was anything like her father chilled her and extinguished her plans to share a drink with Brett.
How often did Wally McCall say, “One drink couldn’t hurt"?

She groaned and opened the car door. She sat for a minute staring ahead without bringing anything into focus. Then she experienced a gentle nudge. It was an odd sort of feeling, indescribable. Vague, but recognizable. A subtle impression that she’d experienced before in the early hours of the night when she’d found herself suddenly awake for no apparent reason. Like a soft breeze, the sensation lingered, forming an idea.
You were made for something more. I love you.

The hairs on her arm stood up. “God,” she whispered, looking around the car. After a few seconds, she shivered, and the idea evaporated.

She drove south through the city, oblivious of the traffic around her. She pulled to a stop at a prominent intersection. On her right, her eyes were drawn to a sign in front of Lafayette Community Chapel. It was a large white sign with changeable black letters. She supposed she had passed it many times without noticing. There, in large block letters, the message read, “CHEER UP!” Claire squinted to read the words beneath. “You are worse than you think.”

“Great,” she mumbled sarcastically. “That’s encouraging.”

A car horn prompted her attention back to the green light ahead, but instead of going on, she veered right into the church parking lot. Another horn sounded, but Claire didn’t care. She wanted to see the other side of the curious sign. She drove through the parking lot so she could read the next message.

“CHEER UP! God’s grace is much greater than you can imagine.” Claire looked at the large brick building and realized that cars were filling the parking lot. She looked at her watch and imagined a midweek service was about to begin. Maybe this was what she was supposed to do with her free evening. She had yet to attend church in Lafayette, and it wouldn’t hurt to go to a meeting or two in hopes that God would smile on her,
especially since she was facing a malpractice trial. She pulled into a parking space and checked her appearance in the rearview mirror. She was rarely this well dressed, but her attorney had insisted on it for the deposition. She freshened her lipstick quickly, aware that a car had pulled in beside her on her right. She looked over, preparing to offer a friendly smile.

Instead, her mouth dropped open as her eyes met the unmistakable steel gaze of Roger Jones. Her throat turned to cotton as she quickly looked away. A dread settled as the realization hit.
Has he been following me? Was he the one beeping?

She fumbled with her door locks and grasped her keys. She risked one more glance at Mr. Jones, whose face was frozen in her direction. What did she see there? Anger? Surprise? She could hear the muffled tone of his voice. She couldn’t understand the words, but the emotion of anger was unmistakable. She started the car and slammed it into reverse. With a squeal of rubber, she backed up, then lurched forward, turning out of the parking lot.

She stole a look in the rearview mirror. Roger Jones was pulling out too!

Claire focused on the busy traffic, weaving in and out with her accelerator to the floor. At the next light, she made a right, then an immediate left and up a tree-lined subdivision. At a stop sign, she made a left again and cut behind a convenience store and back out onto the main road leading back to the university. If Mr. Jones was going to follow her, he’d have to be quick. She glanced in the mirror and took a deep breath. Roger Jones was nowhere in sight.

The speedometer edged further to the right as she clipped through two yellow lights on her way downtown. At the hospital entrance, she used her magnetic ID to raise the bar preventing passage into the resident’s lot, and slowed to a crawl.

After parking, she quickened her pace across the lot toward the research building.
I sure hope Brett hasn’t left yet. I should have taken Brett up on his offer in the first place. Now I really need a shoulder to cry on.

Brett walked Claire back to her car in the parking lot of the hospital. They’d taken his orange truck to McPherson’s, where Claire spilled her story. She ate a chicken Caesar salad and a side of “Phierse Phries,” the restaurant’s version of fried potatoes, a spiced variety touted among the surgery residents as the food most likely to produce a gallbladder attack. Claire’s gallbladder remained quietly submissive, and she cooled her thirst
with two diet Cokes, purposefully avoiding stronger drink known to be a snare to the McCall family.

Claire rested her hand on the hood of her old Toyota. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it. When I left the hospital earlier this evening, it was hard to kill the urge just to go back to Stoney Creek.”

“You spent your life trying to get out of there, remember?”

“I know,” she sighed. “But on days like today, it wouldn’t take much to push me over the edge.”

He chuckled and looked away. “If you leave, can I have your second-year spot?”

She launched a playful jab to his spleen. “Don’t you wish?”

She opened her car door.

Brett cleared his throat. “Will you be okay?”

She nodded. “As long as I don’t see Mr. Jones, I’ll be fine.” She sat in the car and started the engine.

“You’ll be okay,” he said, leaning to her window. His voice didn’t sound convinced. “Call me once you’re home. I’ll come if you need me.”

She waved and headed for home.

As she drove, she checked the locks on the car and looked repeatedly in the rearview mirror. It was past dark, and she couldn’t distinguish one vehicle from another by the headlights. Several times, she made extra turns, just to be sure she wasn’t being followed.
This is crazy. All Roger Jones has to do is wait for me at my house.

She tried to quiet her pounding heart.
I’m just being paranoid. He’s suing me for more than I’m worth, so why would he want to torture me like this?

She sighed and checked the locks again.
Is he so blind with anger over his daughter’s death that he can’t act rationally.?

She reasoned herself out of the obsession that Roger Jones was crazy enough to harm her.
The painted message on my door, the threatening phone call, and the way he acted in the church parking lot are just reflections of his inability to handle his grief appropriately. He’s just acting out to scare me. He wouldn’t really harm me.

Claire turned into her driveway still trying to talk herself out of her fear.
I’m being irrational. Roger Jones is a depressed father, not a cold-blooded killer. He’s harmless.
She unlocked her door and looked at the eerie shadows cast by the trees in front of the street lamp. “He’s harmless,” she verbalized to convince herself.
Isn’t he?

She gathered her call bag and stepped from the car. Her brownstone was dark, and she wished she had left on a porch light. Her grandma McCall claimed that if you whistled, your teeth couldn’t chatter, and your fears would flee. It hadmade perfect sense when Claire was ten, but now
she doubted the science behind Grandma’s promise. But it couldn’t hurt to distract her runaway fears, so she began to whistle. She started with a short scale, and then, satisfied that she could actually whistle without her lips quivering, she started in on the first thing that came to her mind, a whistled version of “Don’t worry, be happy.” She scurried across the grass and reached for her keys.