Undercover M.D.

Terrance took the older woman’s hand and shook it, offering a disarming smile. Wanda, he’d noted, had been giving him the once-over from across the room. He wondered if he passed inspection.

Wanda returned his handshake, nodding in approval. “We can always use another set of good hands.” Wanda cocked her head, peering at his face. “Are you wet behind the ears?”

This was a woman who didn’t take lies well, he thought. But he had a feeling that she appreciated humor.

“Maybe a little,” he allowed.

Alix narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. “I thought Dr. Beauchamp said you had a glowing record at Boston General.”

“I’m new here,” he pointed out.

He could always turn words around to his advantage, Alix thought.

“One E.R. is like another, more or less,” she heard herself saying.

She wasn’t ordinarily this annoyed, this distant and impatient, Alix thought with a touch of self-deprecation. But the sight of Terrance after all this time had sent her reeling. It had also sent her sense of humor into a tailspin.

“Don’t you listen to her,” Wanda contradicted gruffly. “They all have their own personalities. Just like doctors,” she added, looking pointedly at him. “Boston General, eh?” When he nodded, she said, “I hear it’s a fine hospital.” Wanda crossed her arms before her ample chest. “What brings you here?”

Terrance had discovered that when confronted with questions he couldn’t answer truthfully, it was best to keep his replies simple. That way there was less to trip him up later.

“I needed a change,” he told her.

“Of weather?” Wanda asked.

Terrance smiled, managing to completely charm her and every other women within a quarter-mile radius. Except for Alix.

“Yes.”

He was lying, Alix thought. Something else had brought him here. She could feel it. But lying or not, she reminded herself, it made no difference to her. His reasons for doing things had long since stopped being any business of hers.

Changing the subject, Alix nodded at the sign-in board. “Who needs attending, Wanda?”

Wanda didn’t bother looking at the chart. At any given moment she knew exactly what was going on in her E.R. and who was in which bed. She didn’t think of them as patients, or even by their last names. To her they were conditions in need of curing.

“Got your choice of a bad case of stomach cramps in bed K, possible urinary track infection in bed L, some woman complaining of the worst back pains she’d ever had in bed M or—”

The electronic back doors flew open as four paramedics charged in, pushing two gurneys between them. A much-battered woman lay very still on the first, a screaming child on the second.

“Incoming,” Alix announced, snapping to life. “Looks like you’re on, Doctor.”

Terrance wished she’d stop calling him that. She sounded so formal, so distant. He fell into step beside her, wondering if he could get used to the new Alix.

But he supposed that he had it coming to him.

He couldn’t afford to dwell on the past now. This was a bona fide emergency he had before him. Terrance prayed that the week he’d spent at the hospital in Boston was enough to refresh his memory about how to deal with whatever came his way.

“Oh, God,” Alix groaned. Her eyes were focused on the second gurney, on the child who looked to be just a little older than her own daughter. “What happened?” she demanded of the closest paramedic.

“Mother’s got a history of unstable mental behavior,” the man with “Jerry” stitched on his uniform pocket answered. Details came spilling out as quickly as vital signs ordinarily did. “Happened at the courthouse. She was despondent over a custody hearing. Grabbed the little girl and ran up to the roof. Jumped holding the kid’s hand.” He saw Alix looking from one gurney to another. “She’s DOA, Doc, just waiting for you to make the official call.”

“And the little girl?” Alix wanted to know, raising her voice above the screaming child.

The head of the second team rattled off the small victim’s vital signs. The readings could all be far better, but there was reason to hope.

“How is it she’s still breathing?” Terrance marveled.

“Kid fell on top of the mother,” he was told by the paramedic on the gurney’s other side.

“Probably saved her life,” Alix commented. She looked up. “Wanda?”

The head nurse understood her shorthand and pointed. “Room four’s free.”

Sliding her arms through the sterile, yellow paper gown one of the nurses was holding out for her, Alix never took her eyes off the child.

“You know the way,” she told the second team. Together they hurried down the corridor.

“Hey, what about Mom?” the first paramedic wanted to know.

Alix spared the dead woman a glance. “She wasn’t a mom, she was a monster.” She looked at Terrance. For a moment she thought he almost appeared lost. “I’ll leave the honor of calling it to you, Doctor. Welcome to Blair,” she added dryly.

With that Alix hurried alongside the gurney into Room Four to do everything in her power to save the life of an innocent child whose only sin was to have the misfortune of being born to the wrong woman. Mentally she recited a prayer as the doors closed behind her.

A moment later a man came tearing in through the same electronic doors that had parted to admit the two teams with their gurneys. Frantic, he grabbed the first person he encountered, an orderly who spoke next to no English and looked terrified by the man’s demeanor.

“My little girl, they just brought her in.” The man looked up and down the hall. Everything blurred before him. “She’s only two—”

There was barely harnessed hysteria in the man’s voice. Terrance looked up from the bloodied woman on the gurney. Even if he were the most skilled doctor in the world, he could do nothing for her now.

But there was something he could do for the father.

Placing his body between the gurney and the man, he stopped the latter from plowing into it. Terrance clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder. “They’ve taken her into the exam room.”

It took a second for the words to process. “Is she…is she…?” He couldn’t bring himself to utter the unutterable.

Terrance’s hand remained on the man’s shoulder, holding him in place. “She’s alive,” Terrance assured him.

“And my wife?” Utterly beside himself, the man was blind to the still figure that lay on the gurney directly behind Terrance.

Terrance noted that the man referred to the woman as his wife, not his ex-wife. There were feelings there, he judged, vividly brought out by the tragic events of the moment.

He wondered if there were doctors who got used to saying this. He knew he didn’t. “I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.”

For a second Terrance thought the man was going to crumple before him at his feet. He seemed to get weak at the knees and sagged against Terrance as he saw the body of his wife.

“Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe Jill’ll finally be at peace.” There were tears in his eyes as he turned them toward Terrance. “But why did she have to try to take Wendy with her? She’s just a little girl, a baby.” His voice hitched badly. “She’s got her whole life in front of her.”

It never made any sense, but Terrance tried to find an explanation for him.