Chapter 24 #2
A chill raced up my spine, and I bolted from the locker room and ran for the ER doctor’s lounge. I didn’t pause or look over my shoulder to see if anyone followed. My only thoughts were of escape.
Dan was already there, waiting for me. His face creased into a stiff frown of concern when he met my gaze, and he sprinted to intercept me, then grabbed my arms.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” His eyes darted up and down the length of the hallway.
“My coat…my lab coat…someone….” I pressed my back against the wall and struggled for breath.
“Dr. Finney? Are you ok?”
I nodded. I glanced at Dan’s brown eyes, then hovered on the swirling tattoos that peaked out from under the neck of his business shirt.
He had a scar running from his jaw to the center of his cheek.
He wasn’t terribly tall, but he was thick, muscular, and imposing in that I can and will kick your ass kind of way.
He was a scary-looking guy. His presence and scariness made me feel better.
“I’m ok.” I finally ceased gulping air and took a long steadying breath. “My lab coat. Someone cut up my lab coat. I was in the locker room and opened my locker. It’s hanging up, completely shredded.”
Dan absorbed this information then ushered me into the doctors’ lounge. “Stay here. Call the police. I’ll go check it out.”
I nodded, happy to find the lounge busy and occupied. I grabbed a cup of coffee with shaking hands, sat in a couch at the far end of the room, and dialed the number for Detective Long. I kept my voice low as I left her a voicemail to tell her about the coat.
As I was finishing my coffee, Dan peeked into the room and motioned for me to come into the hall. He was holding a lab coat with my name embroidered on the pocket. It was completely fine and untouched.
I blinked at it, incredulous. “But…but I…but it was cut up.” I gazed at Dan imploringly. “I swear. I was just there, and it was in tatters, like someone had taken a knife and—”
“Shh, I believe you. Your craft bag, the knitting stuff and yarn, was still there, all torn up.” He pulled me a little ways down the hall but withheld the coat. “Did you call Detective Long?”
“Yes. I left a message.”
“Good. I think whoever did it must have been in the locker room with you. They waited until you saw the shredded coat then replaced it with this one. They were long gone when I arrived.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I studied my big guard. Abruptly I blurted, “Nico wants me to get a restraining order.”
Dan nodded. “I agree. In fact, I’ll let our legal department know so they can start working on it. Maybe we can get it pushed through today.”
“Quinn has a legal department?”
Dan eyed me warily. “Yeah.”
“What for?”
“Legal stuff.”
I frowned at him, confused by his vague response. My hands were shaking so I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Hey…maybe you should go home.” He placed a hesitant hand on my back.
“No. I’m fine, really—just a little on edge.”
His concerned brown eyes moved over me in plain surveillance, and I tried to give him my best impression of a brave face.
“Ok. Fine. I’ll be here the whole time. Hell, I’ll even follow you into the bathroom.” His words were tinged with a faint Bostonian accent. “But if you need to go home—”
“No. It’s ok.” I balled my still shaking hands into fists. “I’ll be ok.”
Dan grimaced, cursed under his breath. “I’m just glad we briefed the hospital security team earlier this week. They sent an updated email out to all staff with her picture, so hopefully someone will see her and call it in.”
“Yeah.” I said. “Hopefully.”
I was ok. Well, I was mostly ok.
Admittedly, I was jumpy at first. But as patient after patient filtered through the ER and my attention was yanked from my own concerns to those of helping families deal with sick children or spouses work through a difficult diagnosis, my nerves evened out. Mostly, I felt exhausted.
Detective Long arrived just after noon. I felt foolish, telling the story a second time. She brushed for prints around my locker, questioned me, collected my statement for the restraining order, and took the eerily perfect lab coat and disturbingly shredded knitting bag with her when she left.
By the time Nico and Rose brought Angelica to her afternoon appointment, I did my best to suppress the roller coaster of my emotions. I didn’t hug Nico, but I did hold his hand a bit too tightly when he extended it to shake mine; I did stare into his eyes a bit too long.
He frowned, his brow creased with concern. I could read worry in his eyes. We weren’t alone, surrounded as we were by our security guards, the clinical research unit staff, and his family. I tried to give him a heartening smile. This only served to increase the hardness of his features.
After I hooked Angelica to the infusion line and stepped away to find her a blanket, he caught me and pulled me slightly to the side in the small space. “Hey. What’s wrong? Are you ok?”
I nodded, swallowed, fiddled with the stethoscope around my neck. “Yes. I’m fine.” Except my voice was shrill and strained, even to my own ears. I winced then tried again. “Really.”
He took an impatient breath. “Is this about earlier—about what I said?”
“No! No, not at all.” I hoped he would somehow read my thoughts and guess at the events of the morning.
It was a completely ludicrous hope. I noted that we were being watched by the nurses.
Fleetingly, I considered pulling him into an encounter room and filling him in on the details, but good judgment prevailed.
I didn’t need any of the hospital staff recording us, and I certainly didn’t need to give any hints or suggestions of inappropriate behavior.
Instead, I did my best to reassure him. “Really. I just…listen, we’ll talk when I get off. ”
“What time do you get off?”
“Three.”
“You mean in an hour?”
“No. Three in the morning.”
“Oh.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Can’t we talk now?”
My eyes flitted around the room, scanned the hovering nurses. I thought back to the pictures of Nico and me taken after our friends-without-benefits conversation. I didn’t want any more pictures. I didn’t want to add any more fuel to the fire by separating ourselves for a private conversation.
It could wait.
“We’ll talk later. I’ll…I’ll call you during my next break.”
His frown increased in severity, and he glanced at Angelica. “Let me get her a blanket.”
I nodded and stepped to the side so that he could find what he needed on the shelf. I only halfway succeeded in arranging a mask of calm over my features.
All through the rest of the visit, I stole glances in his direction. He didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, he held Angelica’s hand and kept his attention focused on the My Little Pony episode playing on her iPad.
When the visit was over, I allowed an obliviously happy Rose to pull me into a brief hug and walked the trio plus their guards to the staff elevator.
On the way down, Rose made chitchat about a recent outing to the Natural History Museum and the impressively huge stuffed lions she’d seen in the basement.
Just as the elevator reached our floor, Nico threaded his fingers through mine and squeezed my hand.
I met his big green eyes and found them devoid of twinkle.
I returned his hand squeeze, but he seemed to grow more agitated the more I tried to reassure him.
He held us in place as everyone else exited the elevator, and I didn’t realize his intent until it was too late.
I started to exit, but his hand pulled me back, his arm wrapped around my middle, and I—confused, caught, stunned—watched as the doors closed. Rose, Angelica, and all our guards were on one side, and we were on the other, alone in the elevator.
“Nico! What—wait—what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking you need to tell me what’s going on right now. There is something wrong.”
I spun and hit his chest; the elevator and my anxiety began their ascent. “That was incredibly stupid! All of our security is on the other floor. We’re alone!”
He gripped my wrists. “What is going on? You look petrified. I don’t know what I can say about this morning, ok? I was being impulsive; it was stupid. I never should have said it.”
“This isn’t about that. I had someone…damn it!” I darted to the other side of the elevator and hit the wall, furious. “Don’t you care at all about your safety?”
“Yes…wait, what?”
“This. This right here is the problem! There is a crazy person running around this hospital! You have a nutty Fancy Stalker who is completely unhinged, cutting up lab coats and leaving creepy pictures all over the place, and you’re dodging your security!
” I had no control over the volume of my voice. I was screeching like a banshee.
“What the hell happened?”
“You push and you push, and you know what? Maybe I wasn’t ready for this!
I told you over and over again that I didn’t want to do this, but you wouldn’t listen!
You just kept pushing me, and now I’m not going to let you do this to me, do you understand?
I’m not going to be left! You are going to start taking your safety seriously.
If you get hurt or die, I will kill you! ”
Just as I finished my screaming tirade, the elevator dinged, announcing our arrival at the fourth floor.
The doors slid open. I could see several people in my peripheral vision hovering at the entrance to the lift.
They didn’t get on. Something about the way Nico and I were glaring at each other must have warned them away. The doors closed.
He swallowed. I could tell he was trying to school his expression; he was attempting to build a wall between us. He broke eye contact first and punched the button for the basement, where we’d left our guards, Rose, and Angelica standing there wondering what was going on.
I huffed, blinked against the stinging moisture in my eyes, and took a step toward him. “Nico…I—”
“No.” The single word was a sharp reprimand; a line in the sand. “We’ll talk when you get off work.”
“Something happened this morning.”
“I said we’ll talk about it later, when I’m not pushing you.” He wouldn’t look at me. Instead, he stood in the opposite corner of the elevator and glared at the doors.
I leaned heavily against the wall. “I didn’t mean that.”
Silence.
“I mean I did, but I didn’t….” After a brief second of indecision on how to continue, I threw my hands into the air. “Why are we always having these conversations in elevators?”
The doors opened once again, revealing two security guards—one of them was Dan—who breathed a visible, audible sigh of relief when they saw us.
Without glancing back, Nico left the elevator and followed his guard to a waiting black SUV.
Dan stepped into the elevator, his expression stern. It was obvious he was perturbed.
But I didn’t care about Dan’s silent disapproval. I cared about Nico’s silent departure, and I felt crushed by how he’d disappeared into the big vehicle without giving me a backward glance.