A Man to Die for (5 page)

“Damn it.”

The lights were on. Casey wanted to pull right back out and go someplace else. Anyplace else. Maybe Poppi and Jason would still be up. Maybe she could go into the city where the bars stayed open late. Maybe she could just run away from home. She didn’t want to have to face her mother tonight.

She didn’t want to face her mother any night. Casey remembered pulling up to this driveway three years ago, seeking asylum from a disastrously misadvised marriage. Seeking peace. Conveniently forgetting why she’d run in the first place.

It was a prison here, a stifling, airless limbo that smelled of despair and evasion. This sprawling Victorian confection of porches and windows, which young married couples slowed in the street to envy, was nothing but a shrine to decay.

It hadn’t changed since she’d been a girl, since the very day her father had died at the dinner table. The very next day her mother had bought her first bandanna, made her first novena for forgiveness. The great Irish disease that had only lain dormant in the vague, maternal little woman had flared, malevolent and deadly, upon her husband’s death and taken her soul with him.

Guilt, the Catholic motivator, the national suppressor, the parental rod. The cancer that sent her brother Benjamin first to the seminary and then to the road, figuring first to face it and then, finally, to outdistance it.

Casey knew better. There was no more running. No appeasement or atonement. There was only worship. And since her mother took care of that, she figured there was nothing left for her to do, either with guilt or the God who had thought of it.

But with her mother under the roof, there would be no ignoring it. Casey knew she should run. She knew she should get as far away from the madness as she could, just leave her mother to her prayers and her fasts.

Gathering her nursing bag and purse, Casey opened the car door and stepped out onto the driveway. The night was cool, the breeze fluttering the big elm tree that shaded the front porch. She could smell the hyacinth on the night air, cloying and heavy, like an old lady’s perfume. She could hear the Jackson’ poodle yipping a few yards down. She saw a silhouette in the third-floor window and knew that Sister Helen was praying for her tonight.

Sighing with the weight of it, she walked on up to the house.

IT WAS HIS
eyes.

Casey didn’t realize it until a couple nights later when she was sitting in the lounge eating her dinner. There had been Hunsacker sightings earlier in the evening, and Millie and Barb had been fighting for time at the bathroom mirror. Casey watched and wondered why she seemed to be the only one in the entire building who didn’t want Dr. Hunsacker’s manicured fingers on her arm.

It might have been as simple as the fact that Casey didn’t trust beautiful people. There was something about a man who just assumed that everyone would find him attractive that put her off. She had to work like a dog for every one of her advances. She had to try twice as hard to be noticed, and took none of her gains for granted. People like Hunsacker considered their looks not so much a gift as a right, and assumed that their fortune would naturally correspond. And, unfortunately, the world around them usually complied.

Growing up with the onus of coppery red hair and freckles, Casey knew that she was intimidated by physical beauty. She had never really had it, and never really would. In time the red had become fashionable and the freckles dimmed, but the gawky, shy girl in Casey had never died. She had gained a certain presence over the years, but she’d never know that effortless poise, that natural ease when dealing with her body or anybody else’s.

Casey envied Hunsacker the swirl of attention, remembering all too painfully what it felt like to be invisible in a crowd. She resented him because a man with less talent than she thrived when she still struggled.

She hoped, though, that she had a less selfish reason for not liking him.

Hunsacker strolled into the lounge just after dinnertime. Casey was slouched in one of the swivel chairs, her feet up on an end table, reading a book and munching on moo goo gai pan, relishing the rare isolation.

Which meant that it was inevitable that he’d join her. He was in scrubs, somehow making those look as upscale as his chinos. Tonight, instead of fascinating her, it irritated her.

“Hey, babe,” he greeted her smoothly. “Good to see you.”

She’d had just about enough of that, too. Setting down the book, Casey eyed him as levelly as she could. “Casey,” she said evenly.

He pretended not to understand. Affecting a wonderful expression of confusion, he settled into the next chair. “Pardon?”

Casey. smiled. “My name. If you can’t remember it, then ‘hey you’ is just fine.”

On clicked the old electricity. He whipped out that smile faster than a sleight-of-hand trick and displayed it with just a modicum of hurt. “That’s just the way I am,” he protested, reaching out.

Casey backed away and returned his smile with a more cost-effective variety. “I’d also prefer not to be stroked unless we’re formally engaged. Call me frigid, I’m just funny that way.”

He tried one more time. And that was when Casey saw the disparity. The intangible she hadn’t been able to put her finger on the other night.

It was his eyes. No matter what the rest of his face did, no matter how much energy or empathy or delight he radiated, his eyes just didn’t match it.

They glittered, like flat stones, a completely separate entity from the rest of him. It was as if while his body acted, his eyes watched. Unaccountably, Casey remembered her mother’s words from a few nights earlier. “Not everybody is kind.”

“Oh, Casey.” He sighed, settling back into his chair and automatically recreasing his pants as he crossed his legs. “You obviously don’t know me well yet. When you do, you’ll get used to me.”

Casey shrugged with a deprecating smile, intrigued by her instinctive reaction. She quelled the urge to move to a chair farther away. He was just too facile, too readily intimate. He was crowding her space, as Poppi would say. “I just don’t like being called babe,” she explained. “You understand.”

He said the only thing he could without being considered a jerk. “Of course.”

“You have a patient down here?” Casey asked, returning to her carton of food.

Hunsacker had pulled out his little notebook and begun making notations in it. “A patient upstairs,” he admitted with a smile. “She’s not progressing as fast as I’d want, but she insists on trying to do it her way, walking around the birthing room with her husband and kids. I’m also waiting to hear from postpartum at St. Isidore’s on a lady I have there.” Snapping his pen closed, he looked up. “Didn’t I hear you worked at St. Isidore’s?”

Casey nodded. “About four years ago.”

He nodded back and smiled. “Great people over there,” he said, and his expression took on a curious cat-in-the-cream look. “Great people.”

Must have been thinking of those three nurses he was chasing around Izzy’s parking lot. He certainly seemed to derive a rather creepy satisfaction from the picture. Casey heartily wished that some of his acolytes here could see that look. Then she wished that they were self-assured enough to recognize it.

“So,” he said with a brisk move to put his notebook away, “anything interesting going on here?”

Casey shrugged, wondering why she still felt so uncomfortable. Hunsacker had deliberately retreated, his attention now on a magazine he’d picked up.

“I’ve been in here for fifteen minutes,” she said. “Before that I was holding a two-year-old
for
one of the plastic surgeons. Nothing to call out the news minicam for.”

“Quiet, huh?”

Casey’s head instinctively snapped up. “Don’t ever say that,” she warned, looking out the window by her head just to make sure.

Hunsacker’s smile was disbelieving. “Oh, come on, you don’t believe that, do you?”

“More than Einstein’s theory of relativity.”

No lights, no sirens. It wouldn’t be long, though. Not the way that man courted disaster. Like Casey’s supervisor said, it was worse than calling a game a no-hitter in the top of the ninth. The minute Hunsacker had said the word “quiet,” a busload of hemophiliacs had undoubtedly slammed into a truckload of lawyers.

“Have a little respect for superstition,” she begged. “Don’t ever use that word down here again. Not if you want to live till morning. We’ve only had two codes so far tonight.”

It was one thing the Irish were absolutely right about. People did die in threes. Which meant that they were still short one for the shift. In fact, they were still short another overdose, too, because death wasn’t the only pastime that occurred in predictable numerical patterns.

“Did either of the codes make it?” Hunsacker asked, interested now, the magazine unattended in his lap, his attention once again hers.

“Nah,” Casey answered, returning to her food before the disaster had a chance to interrupt her. “If you come in the door in cardiac arrest, chances are you’ll go out the same way.”

“Kind of fatalistic, aren’t you?”

She shrugged. “Twelve years’ worth.”

His eyes widened with astonishment. “That’s how long you’ve been doing this?”

She nodded, not wanting to face him and that charisma, preferring the safety of her water chestnuts. He was being pleasant, unaffected, and impressed. Casey shouldn’t have still felt like somebody was walking on her grave. But she did. No matter what he said, he still gave her the creeps.

“That’s incredible,” he offered with what sounded like admiration. “I can’t imagine surviving trauma medicine for that long. Sometimes obstetrics is more than I want to handle.”

To Casey’s left, the door opened. “I’ll bet you lunch that that guy has an appendix,” she heard.

Casey looked up with relief to see Janice and Barb walk in. When she saw who was sharing space with Casey, Janice stalled. Right on her heels, Barb bumped into her and cursed. Then she looked up, too.

Magic.

Casey silently watched as Hunsacker came to his feet to greet the newcomers. Barb smiled like a tiger with prey in sight, and Janice seemed to gain height and poise.

“Barb, hi,” Hunsacker greeted her. “You’re looking great. What did you do to your hair?”

Barb’s hand lifted instinctively as she gave him the nasty eye. “You’re looking pretty good yourself,” she purred.

He was already reaching out to bridge the gap between himself and the two women. Casey forgot the food on her lap. Barb she could understand simpering. Barb hadn’t gained the nickname the Barracuda because she liked salt water. Janice, on the other hand, still had some explaining to do. Janice was just too damn intelligent to fall for this stuff.

“Congratulations,” Barb was still purring. “I hear they’ve decided to add four new delivery rooms upstairs because of you.”

Hunsacker flashed that self-effacing grin of his, the perfect reaction for flattery and Oscar acceptances, and Casey saw the bones actually soften in Barb’s knees. “Don’t kid yourself,” he demurred, stroking her arm as if it were the nose of a horse. “They were going to do that anyway. But I do like the new wallpaper a lot better.”

“Anything’s better than that early, institutional they had before,” she agreed, doing her best to fill his entire field of vision. “Besides, you don’t catch rich flies with bargain honey. Make ’em think they’re delivering in Bloomingdales.”

“Triage to the front desk. Triage to the front desk.”

Barb immediately puckered up. “Damn. Don’t go,” she warned Hunsacker and whirled for the door to answer her page.

Hunsacker intercepted Janice before she got a chance to sit. “How are you feeling?” he asked quietly, his voice rippling with concern.

Janice ducked her head a little, gave off an ineffective little wave. “Oh, I’m fine,” she said with the carefully flat tone of somebody protecting a hurt very close to the core, like holding an arm close to broken ribs.

Hunsacker made contact. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “Thanks.”

Caught by the revelation in their scant words, Casey remembered the promise she’d made to herself. She never had asked Janice what had been wrong. And, somehow, Hunsacker had.

She felt ashamed. She and Janice weren’t especially close, but she should have talked to her before the resident gigolo did, should have followed up on a fragment of conversation that suddenly made unhappy sense.

She shouldn’t feel resentful that he might have helped Janice when she hadn’t. But she did.

Hunsacker and Janice still stood. “I was worried about you,” he admitted in that same soft voice, his head bowed a little to her, his eyes on hers. Casey couldn’t see his expression, couldn’t tell if it still betrayed that troubling flatness. She wanted to think that Janice would have seen if it had. But Janice was still protecting herself too carefully to be perceptive.

Janice laid her hand on Hunsacker’s other arm and smiled for him. “I appreciate that, Dale. You were a big help.”

“Dr. Hunsacker, outside call. Dr. Hunsacker.”

“Jan?” Casey said once Hunsacker had swung from the room.

Bent over the refrigerator, Janice turned to answer. “Yeah, Casey.”

Casey wasn’t sure exactly how to begin. “What do you think of Hunsacker?”

Surprised, Janice straightened a little. “He’s nice. At least he has been to me.”

Casey wished for subtlety. Normally, Janice would have been the first one to see through Hunsacker. “He’s been helping you out with something?”

Janice turned back to the refrigerator, preventing Casey from seeing her expression. “He listened. He really seems to understand…”

“Are you and Aaron having problems?”

Rather than answer right away, Janice continued her perusal of the refrigerator’s contents. Considering that it consisted of various half-empty bottles of condiments and a couple cans of soda, it shouldn’t have needed that much concentration.

Janice took a good three or four minutes to straighten and close the door.

“How long were you married?” she asked, turning to face Casey.

Casey had come to Mother Mary on the heels of her separation. Nobody really knew her ex or their history. She’d been more than happy to leave it that way. The look on Janice’s face portended change.

“Four years,” she admitted. “Why?”

With that Janice sat down, hands wrapped around each other, gaze on her knees, brows taut and troubled. “He was a doctor?”

Casey couldn’t help a quick grin. “There’s some discussion about that. He was a psychiatrist.”

Janice was too preoccupied to catch the joke. She seemed to be looking into something yards away, assessing it, questioning it. Finally, she lifted her head.

“Can I ask why you left?”

If it had been anybody but Janice, Casey wouldn’t have answered. Her ex still practiced in St. Louis, and nothing would infuriate him more than hearing about his more interesting idiosyncracies over the hospital grapevine. But there was something important behind Janice’s question, something desperate.

“It was a lot of things,” Casey finally admitted with a half smile. “Ed had a lot of problems that I couldn’t solve for him.”

Janice watched her now, eyes intense, dark. Casey wished she knew what Janice wanted to hear.

“You finally gave up?”

“Oh, in a manner of speaking. To give you an idea of the scope of things, he, uh, well, among other things—that the medical community doesn’t know—he’s a cross dresser.”

Well, at least she’d pulled Janice’s attention away from her own problem. The brunette’s wide brown eyes widened even more. Her face compressed into a silent exclamation of astonishment.

“So…” She gulped down the surprise like raw fish and started again. “You, uh, divorced him because you caught him in your underwear?”

“No,” Casey answered equably. “I divorced him because I kept catching him in other women’s underwear.”

“Code blue, emergency room four. Code blue, emergency room four.”

“Oh, shit,” Casey snapped, on her feet and out the door behind Janice before the announcement was repeated. “I knew it, I just knew it!”

“What is it?” Janice asked Barb as they rounded the corner by triage at a run. The lights were still flashing from the ambulance, washing the walls in red. The people who had been milling around triage stood back looking a little stunned.

“Gunshot to the face. He arrested at the door.”

“All right,” Casey agreed with a nod, following Janet into the work lane. “At least it’s going to be fun.”