Johnston - Heartbeat (8 page)

Victoria’s brows lowered in disapproval, but not enough to wrinkle her forehead. And she didn’t come right out and say an insurance investigator wasn’t blue-blooded enough to suit her, so Maggie considered her escort approved.

She stared into Victoria’s pale blue eyes, wondering what went on behind them. The woman puzzled Maggie. She should have wanted Maggie to stay as far away from her as possible, yet Victoria seemed to thrive on their confrontations. Could anyone really be as self-controlled, as self-disciplined as Victoria was? Maggie had never seen a hair out of place, never seen her mother-in-law flustered or frantic—not even during that bitter, wintry week in Minnesota when first her son, and then her husband, had died.

Nor had Maggie ever met anyone as coldly calculating as Victoria. Mother Wainwright had done her best from the start to separate “that conniving female” and her only son. Until the day Woody died, the two women had done battle over him. Maggie had won his heart. Victoria had claimed his soul.

They could never be friends, and Maggie refused to expend the energy it would take to deal with Victoria as an enemy. It was easier to allow herself to be bullied on occasion. She didn’t mind giving Victoria her way to keep the peace. Especially since moving away from San Antonio was out of the question-for the moment.

“Shall we go in?” Victoria said.

“After you,” Maggie replied.

Maggie watched Victoria through the door, but before she could follow, felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned and found Jack Kittrick standing right behind her.

Her heart speeded up to a trot. So much for armor. Her power suit wasn’t working worth a damn. She felt as pliable as Silly Putty, as gooey inside as a bowl of her grandmother’s cornmeal mush and black-eyed peas.

Jack was close enough that she got a whiff of his cologne, a spicy smell that made her think of pine trees and mountains. Texas Rangers didn’t wear uniforms, but unless they had on a Western-cut suit—and she was beginning to wonder if Jack owned one—they stuck to buff or dark brown Wranglers, a white shirt, tie, light-colored Western hat, and cowboy boots.

Jack was wearing denim Levi’s, and he had skipped the tie and put on a fringed calfskin vest. He wasn’t dressed as a Ranger, but he didn’t look like any insurance investigator she’d ever met, either. On the other hand, in Texas, where individuality was admired and freedom insisted upon, Western attire was always proper.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.

“Long enough to know I’m your date for the gala,” he said with a grin that crinkled his eyes at the corners and showed off the creases on either side of his mouth. “Will there be dancing?”

“Victoria insists on an orchestra,” she said, “but I don’t usually dance.”

“Don’t know how? Or haven’t had the right partner?” Jack asked.

“Of course I know—Maybe it would be better if I tell Victoria your plans changed, and you couldn’t make it.” Maggie was distressed at the way the teasing laughter in his eyes tied her up in knots, like a homemade grass rope on a cold, wet morning. She stared at him, tongue-tied for maybe the first time in her life.

“Dancing. Saturday. I know a good opportunity to hold you in my arms when I see it.”

“Mr. Kittrick—”

“Jack,” he said. “We’d better get moving, Maggie. We’re late for the meeting.”

“You aren’t invited, Jack.”

“I had a talk with your hospital administrator, Mr. Delgado, and I have the run of the place until my investigation is complete. Shall we?” he said, gesturing toward the conference room door.

Maggie turned her back on him and stalked off, then waited at the door and motioned for him to go in first. As he sauntered past, he shot her a suggestive, lopsided grin that made her insides clench.

Maggie stood frozen beside the doorway. When it came to matters of the heart, she set the rules herself. No dating. No involvement, because involvement led to commitment. She had proved ten years ago that she wasn’t capable of committing for the long haul. Three strikes and you were out. Maggie had retired to the dugout, but Kittrick kept dragging her back onto the field, demanding she play.

And God, she wanted to play.

Maybe it was some mid-life crisis thing. She had turned thirty-five last month and been forced to acknowledge her life was nearly half over. Maybe she wanted one last, desperately romantic fling before she hit middle age.

That must be it. She missed the romance. Hell. She missed the sex.

Maggie pursed her lips. What was wrong with that? It meant she was normal. If only she hadn’t ended up sprawled on top of Jack on Saturday. If only he hadn’t given her that toe-curling, early morning kiss. If only he hadn’t pressed his body against hers at the door and let her feel the irrefutable evidence of his desire.

Maggie sighed inwardly. She was going to have to make some sort of decision about Jack Kittrick. But not right now. Right now she had business to attend to.

Maggie hadn’t realized how long she’d hesitated at the door. The minutes of the previous meeting had already been read and approved by the time she took her place at the foot of a large, rectangular conference table. She set her black leather briefcase on the polished surface in front of her and opened it to retrieve a yellow legal pad and the silver Tiffany pen that had been her law school graduation gift from Uncle Porter. He had made her dream of becoming a lawyer come true, but his generosity hadn’t come without strings. She was paying him back every penny . . . with interest.

Jack took a chair in the corner and winked when he caught her peeking at him. She was appalled at the way her body tightened inside. She averted her eyes, focusing on the pad in front of her. She doodled a daisy, something she used to do in college when she was daydreaming about the future. She clutched the pen, took a deep breath, and concentrated on what was being said.

Once odds and ends of business had been dealt with, Roman introduced visitors to the meeting, including Jack.

Then they went to work.

Whenever a serious ethical dispute arose over treatment of a patient, the SAG Bioethics Committee, composed of doctors, nurses, social workers, and interested members of the community like Victoria, listened to the facts given by the doctor, the family, and whatever legal counsel might attend on behalf of the family, and came up with a nonbinding recommendation for action. The committee served as an arbiter of community feeling about medical procedures and hospital policy and helped to keep the hospital functioning within acceptable ethical parameters.

This morning Joe Ray Belton and his mother sat near the head of the conference table, waiting for the committee’s recommendation on whether Joe Ray’s father, Sam, should be removed from life support.

“Eighty-three-year-old Sam Belton suffered a heart attack at home and was put on life support in the emergency room at the hospital,” Roman began, stating the facts of the case. “Unfortunately, Mr. Belton suffered a stroke later that same day and slipped into a coma. Tests revealed the patient has no brain activity, and I recommended life support be discontinued. Mrs. Belton agreed.”

It should have been a simple matter to turn off the machines at that point, except Joe Ray Belton had objected.

Normally, this sort of decision never got as far as the bioethics committee. Texas law was pretty definite on the subject of unplugging folks who could be sustained on life support. The wishes of the patient were followed, or if those wishes weren’t known, the doctor and the family made the decision at bedside.

Only, sometimes the doctor and the family didn’t agree what should be done. Or, as in this case, the doctor and one family member agreed, while another family member didn’t. Those cases were presented to the hospital bioethics committee for discussion and a nonbinding disposition that usually helped families come to some agreement.

“I can understand Joe Ray’s concern for his father,” Roman said. “But I concur with Mrs. Belton in this matter. Machines are keeping Sam Belton’s body alive. The rest of him, the thought processes that made him who he was, are already dead. It’s time to let him go.”

Maggie watched Joe Ray’s face as Dr. Hollander put the weight of his medical opinion on the side of Joe Ray’s mother in the decision to unplug his father. The forty-seven-year-old plumber’s mouth twisted in an agonized grimace. His eyes looked tortured, as though his own life were at stake.

Maggie looked away to avoid his pain.

“Maybe he’ll get better,” Joe Ray pleaded. “Maybe—”

“I’m very sorry,” Dr. Hollander said with authoritative finality. “Your father is legally dead, Mr. Belton. The machines keeping him alive are needed for other patients who can survive only with their help.”

Joe Ray made a sound in his throat like a wounded animal. It was obvious he didn’t want to let go, and just as obvious he wasn’t being given much of a choice.

Maggie’s job at the meeting was to make clear what legal options were available to the doctors and the hospital and to avoid legal pit-falls where they threatened. No legal issues were involved here, only the moral and ethical . . . and human ones.

The committee didn’t take long to make its recommendation.

“So we’re all agreed,” Dr. Hollander said. “Life support should be discontinued.”

Joe Ray hissed out a long, rattling breath that sounded a lot like a dying man. “All right,” he said. “I give up.”

“It’s all right, Joey,” Mrs. Belton said. “He’s with God already.”

Joe Ray rose slowly, tears visible on his cheeks, and helped his mother from her chair. They left the meeting clinging to one another.

“I’ll arrange for Joe Ray to have some time with his father before we turn off life support,” Roman said.

Heads nodded and voices murmured assent for the doctor’s compassion.

Maggie shot a sideways glance at Jack. Surely Roman’s consideration for Joe Ray Belton had convinced him the doctor was no murderer.

“Since there’s nothing else for us to consider today,” Roman said, interrupting her musing, “this meeting is adjourned.”

As the committee members dispersed, Maggie was surprised to see Jack approach Roman—his prime suspect—directly.

“Doctor, may I have a word with you?”

Maggie eavesdropped without feeling the least bit guilty. She had a stake in making sure Jack didn’t arrest the wrong man.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions about the death of Laurel Morgan,” Jack said.

Maggie’s jaw dropped. She closed her mouth and ogled the Texas Ranger. If Jack was just going to come right out and ask like that, why was it necessary to hide his identity?

Jack identified himself as an insurance investigator for MEDCO and thanked Roman for his examination at the ballfield.

“How’s your head?” Roman asked.

“Still attached to my shoulders,” Jack answered with a friendly smile. “I need to know everything there is to know about the Morgan case, doctor, if I’m going to save you a big malpractice claim.”

Roman smiled. “I’d appreciate whatever you can do, Mr. Kittrick. I did everything I could to save Laurel Morgan. I treated her as carefully, as skillfully, as though she were my own daughter.”

As the two men walked out the door engrossed in conversation, Maggie realized why Jack wanted to stay incognito. She couldn’t imagine Roman talking so freely with Jack if he’d announced he was a Texas Ranger who wanted to question Roman as the prime suspect in a murder case. Maggie supposed she had a lot to learn about the police business. She intended to ask Jack plenty of questions when he returned to the conference room for the scheduled 10
A.M.
meeting between MEDCO’s insurance investigator and SAG’s attorney.

“Are you sleeping with him?”

Maggie looked up to find Victoria staring after Jack as he walked down the hall with Roman. “That’s none of your business.”

“Make sure he wears a decent tuxedo on Saturday. I imagine he’ll have to rent one, so send him to Anthony’s.”

Maggie felt the heat rising at her throat. Embarrassment on Jack’s behalf? She had wondered herself whether Jack had his own tuxedo, and, to her chagrin, had been thinking about having a tux from Anthony’s delivered to him. Had she really become as class-conscious as her mother-in-law? What had become of poor, good-hearted Cinderella?

“I’m sure Jack will be able to come up with something appropriate,” Maggie said. “Anything else, Victoria?”

“You’re missing a button.”

Maggie looked down. All that remained of the accent button on the upper left-hand pocket of her power suit was two black strings. “Thank you for pointing that out,” she said.

“Don’t mention it,” Victoria replied.

Victoria continued looking at her, and Maggie asked, “Is there something else?”

“Be discreet.”

Maggie lurched from her chair. “My personal life—”

“I can see why you find Mr. Kittrick attractive, Margaret. There is something coarse and primitive about the man—the possibility of being carted off by a barbarian in civilized clothes?—that is quite appealing.”

Was that why she found Jack so attractive? Maggie wondered. Because he would take all the choices out of her hands?

“But really,” Victoria continued, “Jack Kittrick is not at all the sort of person you should be associating with.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Maggie said. “What difference could it possibly make to you whether I dance, date, or sleep with the man?”

“You’re a Wainwright,” Victoria said. “Wainwrights have a certain position to up-hold in this community.”

“I’ve never done a thing to cause gossip since I came here,” Maggie said between clenched teeth, furious that she felt the need to defend herself, but unable to resist doing so. “What makes you think I’m going to start now?”

“I recognize that look, Margaret,” Victoria said.

“What look?” Maggie demanded.

“Although one can hardly blame you,” Victoria murmured. “He looks at you the same way.”

“What way?” Maggie asked, wanting Victoria to name what it was she saw in Jack’s eyes.

“Don’t be coy,” Victoria said. “You know perfectly well ‘what way.’ Satisfy your craving for the man if you must, Margaret, but beware your sexual prey doesn’t tum and gobble you up, along with your reputation.”