Dr. Bodyguard

“Gentlemen?” The strange voice echoed in the E.R. waiting room and Nick shot to his feet. It wasn’t the cops this time. It was a doctor in bloodstained greens.

It was too soon. They couldn’t possibly have stopped all that bleeding in so little time. She must’ve died.

Genius Watson was dead.

Nick remembered that he’d been rude to her that morning in the elevator, more out of habit than any real rancor, and perhaps also because for one brief moment he’d thought she looked nice in the soft gray wool skirt and high-buttoned blouse. Pretty. Touchable.

When a man started thinking of gray wool and lace collars as sexy, he needed to get laid. Fast. Or so he’d thought at the time. Now all he could think was that he’d do anything to go back in time and murder the guy in the darkroom for trashing their experiments and injuring Dr. Watson.

Killing her?

He had a sudden, sharp image of Watson’s bloody hand lying in his as they rode to the hospital in the shrieking ambulance. She had begged him not to leave when she should have been cursing him for not finding her sooner. How had he not known something was wrong? He’d been sitting in his office wrestling with that damned journal article. How had he not sensed something? Heard something?

“Is she—” Even Leo Gabney, the most insensitive man Nick had ever met, was unable to finish the question.

“Eugenie Watson is one tough lady.”

Nick glanced quickly at the doctor. “Then she’s—”

“Going to be fine.” Apparently the doctor was familiar with this fill-in-the-blanks form of conversation. “She has a whopping headache and a few stitches to close up the laceration across her eyebrow, but there’s no indication of more serious damage.”

“But what about—”

“The blood?” The doctor grinned. “Very little of it was hers. Her attacker must’ve been a mess when she was through with him. I’ve discussed it with Detective Sturgeon and he’ll put area hospitals on the lookout.”

Nick thought about the panty hose torn half off her body. He hated to ask. “Was she—”

The doctor shook his green-capped head. “No evidence of further sexual assault. I’d say she changed his mind by fighting back.” Both Nick and Gabney relaxed marginally. The doc continued, “But we can’t be sure exactly what happened. She doesn’t remember anything about the attack, which isn’t surprising if you consider what a horrible experience it must have been. The brain has its own way of protecting itself.”

“She doesn’t remember anything?” Nick spun toward the new voice, having not realized that Detectives Sturgeon and Peters had entered the room. Sturgeon was sucking one of the peppermints he’d been working his way through ever since he’d arrived at the lab on the heels of the paramedics. His sallow cheeks, moving in and out with each peppermint suck, made him as if he should be behind glass at the Boston Aquarium rather than at the helm of a major investigation. “Is she conscious?”

The doctor wasn’t intimidated by Sturgeon’s scowl. “She doesn’t remember the attack, and she’s conscious now but not in any shape to answer questions. You’ll have to wait.”

Then, just as Nick was coming to like the doctor, the guy said, “You can make do with this gentleman. He found Miss Watson.”

The cops turned with identical fishy looks and Peters flipped to a new page on his pad. “And your name would be?”

Nick sighed. “Dr. Nicholas Wellington the Third, Ph.D.”

Sturgeon raised an eyebrow. “Any relation to the Nicholas Wellington that ran for president a few years ago?”

Feeling that helpless mix of guilt and anger that always came with thoughts of the Senator, Nick nodded. “He’s my father.”

“I’M FINE.” Genie batted at the nurse’s hands and shooed the blood-pressure cuff away. “I’m a doctor, I should know when I’m okay to leave, don’t you think?” The nurse rolled her eyes and glanced at a nearby man in green scrubs as if to say Not frickin’ likely. The frazzled intern who grinned in reply didn’t look a day over fourteen.

Genie winced at the unkind thought. She hadn’t been much older than that when she interned—a fact her colleagues never let her live down. She was the last person who should be complaining about her doctor’s age, particularly when he was agreeing with her.

“That’s correct, you’re perfectly fine. Now.” He paused for emphasis. “But you know as well as I do that after a concussion of such severity you should be monitored for at least the next twenty-four hours in case there is additional swelling of the brain.”

She hated how he said “the brain” as if it belonged to someone else. It was her brain damn it, and it had no right to swell without her permission. Since she hadn’t given it permission to get any bigger than it already was, she should be able to go home.

But the fourteen-year-old intern remained firm. He crossed his arms over his weedy chest and frowned. “The only way I’m going to release you is if there’s somebody with medical training to observe you. Do you have any colleagues you could call? Any friends that could help you?”

Genie opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out. How pitiful it sounded to say, “No. There’s no one.” But it was true.

Sure, she had acquaintances. She chatted with the elderly Chinese lady who cleaned the lab each night and she knew the names of all the grandchildren in the pictures that lined Ben’s desk at the security kiosk. And she had colleagues that she nodded to in the halls and smiled at in the lunchroom.

But there was nobody to call and say, “I’ve got a concussion. Will you come stay with me so I can sleep?”

Nobody.

Inexplicably, a low, intimate voice floated through Genie’s mind. She didn’t clearly remember anything after hearing the rubba-thump of the darkroom door behind her when she’d gone to develop the day’s films, but she did have a sketchy recollection of a comforting presence in the ambulance. She remembered a large, warm hand holding hers and a gentle voice saying she was going to be okay.

She assumed it had been a paramedic, and made a mental note to thank him for his excellent bedside manner—though with the way her bruised brain was working, it could be a few weeks before that particular note surfaced.

The nurse and the young intern left in a swirl of white and green, and when the door swung the other way, it revealed the face of Genie’s least favorite administrator.

She tried to summon a convincing scowl, one that would soothe the worried look on his face. “Jeez, Leo, don’t I rate anyone better? Couldn’t they have sent Hetta from personnel or Louie from accounts payable? Even one of Dixon’s goons. Anyone would be a better deathbed visit than you.” Though she didn’t like him much as an administrator, Leo was one of her favorite acquaintances and he smiled at her feeble snarl.

“Nope, everyone else already had plans. Since neither you nor I have a life, we were unanimously chosen for the roles of visitor and visited.” He tried to grin, but it faltered and his hand trembled as he wiped a handkerchief across his sweating head. “Jesus, Genie. I… I…” He couldn’t finish, just shrugged, and she wondered if he had been the one to find her in the darkroom.

She’d seen the bloodstained lab coat before the police had taken it away, but when she tried to imagine the attack, her mind slid away and showed her other things instead. Fields. Butterflies. Flowers. The hazy shape of a man holding his hand out to her.

Since Genie’s greatest source of pride was her well-ordered, methodical mind, she did not like this open rebellion and planned to make her brain behave at the earliest possible moment. But to do that, she had to go home. She’d never get any peace at Boston General. There would be candy stripers trying to cheer her up until she wanted to throttle them, doctors shining lights in her eyes every five minutes to make sure she wasn’t in a coma, and that big woman nurse with the mustache and the sponge baths…

She had to get out of here.

“Will you take me home, Leo?” It was worth a try, but even before the words were out, he shook his head.

“No. No. I don’t think that’s a good idea, Genie. You’re pretty banged up.” He paused and she could read the words, Although it could’ve been a whole lot worse, in his gaze. “No. I think you should stay right here and let the doctors look after you while the police find whoever did this.”

Genie didn’t want to think about who had attacked her. Even the word police made nausea swirl higher and sweat bead. She didn’t want to think about being attacked. Not here, not now. She needed to go home.

Needed to be alone so she could fall apart in private.

She frowned to keep the tears away, but the movement pulled at the stitches on her forehead and made her headache worse. “Then go away. I don’t want any visitors unless they’re going to take me home.” She stopped Leo on his way out. “Hey. Can you find the guy that rode with me in the ambulance? I want to thank him.”

Leo looked surprised. “You do? But I thought you didn’t…” He trailed off, then shrugged. “Okay, I’ll go get him.”

“He’s here?” Didn’t paramedics hang out at fire-houses? Or in ambulances? She thought so, though her E.R. experience was limited to a quick three-week rotation and taped reruns of the popular television show.

“Yeah, right outside. He’s been waiting around to make sure you were going to be okay. He was real worried about you.”

“Then send him in and go away, Leo.” The administrator headed for the door and Genie called after him, “And, Leo? Thanks for coming. Thanks for looking upset.” Even though he was probably more concerned about lawsuits and PR nightmares, it was nice to think that someone cared.

When he was gone, the nausea subsided and was replaced with a warm, fuzzy feeling Genie thought might be due to the little pill Nurse Walrus had given her a few minutes earlier. Her mind drifted.

She needed, she thought irrelevantly, to get a life. If nothing else, this…incident had brought home the fact that she’d let important things slide while she’d pursued her medical degree, then her Ph.D., becoming the youngest Primary Investigator that Boston General had ever seen.