Love Is in the Air (9 page)

Without thinking, Sal placed her wrist in his palm, this time knowing what came next. “Of course.”

“You must think of him. Feel in all the ways you love him as you speak his name.”

Which became difficult, since Tyr’s warmth stirred a longing she hadn’t known possible. Sal didn’t rattle easily. Yet, she stood trembling at his touch. Sal had to close her eyes in order to even picture her fiancé.

Richard was shorter, slimmer, and you couldn’t smell the testosterone on him. But that’s not what Tyr had asked.

What was the single, most appealing characteristic that she could name about Richard? The answer came in the form of their captivity. They wouldn’t have been trapped in the office if her fiancé hadn’t been so concerned about her that he searched her out. If he didn’t measure up in any other way, Richard
did
love her.

“Richard Updike.”

This time, the blade cut sharply into her flesh and each drop of blood stung as it fell from her skin into the vial. Tyr tenderly fit the crystal stopper as he met her eyes.

“Even though you shall remember none of this once we are parted, I shall be eternally grateful.”

Sal knew that Tyr might be right, but only partially. At night, in her dreams, the worst memories would return. Those flashes of the death and despair would haunt her, and she wouldn’t even remember why.

She glanced through the blinds. Richard and the nurse were moving off. In just a few moments, Sal would be left with the sight of Maria’s dead eyes forever. If knowing all that she had learned didn’t lessen the pain, why keep such a memory for an eternity?

“I know I told you not to…” She didn’t even know how to ask. “But is there any way to make me forget?
All
of it?”

Tyr’s lips turned downward. “I am bound by my promise.”

“I release you.”

To Sal’s surprise, Tyr’s hand slipped under her hair to grasp the back of her neck. He pulled her close, so close she both feared and thrilled at the idea that he would kiss her. Their bodies pressed so close together that the leather lapel of his coat dug into her skin. Breath mingling, Sal didn’t know if she’d rebuff or accept his advance.

Instead, he brought his palm to her forehead. “Forget.”

CHAPTER 26

“Sal! What are you doing up here?” Richard asked as he rushed over.

But she wasn’t sure where she was, let alone what she was doing. The last thing she remembered was charting. “I was just…”

As Richard pulled her into a hug so tight that he nearly squeezed the breath from her, Sal heard a baby’s cry, then another. Glancing around, she realized she was up on the peds ward. Over his shoulder, she spotted the NICU. What was she doing up here?

Then she found the chart in her hand. Dimitri Rollins.

“Hey, that’s one of ours,” the nurse announced, snatching the metal-backed record from her.

They both looked at her, but she had no idea how where she had gotten it. Near panic, she spouted the first lie she thought of. “I was just checking on a patient.”

The nurse studied the chart. “There are orders here for a CT scan stat, but I can’t read who wrote them.”

Richard glanced over. “That’s Sal’s writing.”

Again, they both looked at her for answers she simply didn’t have.

Granted, something nagged at the back of her mind. Like she had forgotten to turn off the stove or lock her car in the Filmore district.

“I didn’t realize we’d asked for an ER consult,” the nurse said with as much condescension as she could pack into the words.

Her fiancé raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure Dr. Calon has her reasons.”

If only she did. Sal wasn’t about to admit she was having some kind of stress-induced blackout, so she kept up the lie. “The mom’s a friend of the family. She asked me to come up and take a look at him.”

While it was clear that the nurse didn’t want to take on Dr. Updike, she also didn’t like an emergency doc treading on her turf. “And I’m supposed to wake up a radiologist for an emergency CT because…?”

Sal ran out of lies, so she told the truth. “I’ve just got this gut feeling.”

Richard smiled, and then turned to the nurse. “Are you really going to risk that she’s right?”

“Fine. I’ll call the attending.”

While the nurse went to schedule a test that Sal didn’t even remember ordering, Richard escorted her down the corridor. As they ran out of hallway, Sal went to open the stairwell door when Richard hit the button to the elevator.

“Since when did you take the stairs?” Richard asked.

For the life of her, Sal didn’t know.

CHAPTER 27

Sal bolted upright in bed, drenched in a cold sweat. Panicked to the point of abject terror, it took a few moments for her to realize that she was in Richard’s bedroom. Next to her, he still slept.

She couldn’t remember a nightmare, yet her heart pounded against her sternum. There was a dread deep in her belly. A sense of doom.

Then she remembered her charts.

Crap! She hadn’t finished them.

How could she have left the hospital with all that paperwork still pending? To the Badger, the only sin greater than killing a patient was leaving your charts unsigned. If Sal had any chance of getting that attending position, Stacy would make sure this oversight cost her dearly. She could just hear Manning’s taunting. The superior tone.

Not if Sal finished the charts before the Badger got in at five. Throwing back the covers, she pulled on a robe and went into Richard’s home office.

Sal might have forgotten her laptop at the hospital, but if she’d left it on, she could network and finish the charts without anyone the wiser.

As Richard’s PC booted up, she looked out over San Francisco. It was so quiet. Peaceful. A fog replaced the rain clouds of yesterday, shrouding the City in a blanket of gray.

How many times after a swing shift would she and Maria go over to Treasure Island and climb up on Indian Rock? As strange as it sounded, the best spot out of all the Bay Area to view the City was sitting atop that huge boulder. Most of those spectacular photos of San Francisco that sold millions of postcards were shot from that vantage point.

In a fog like tonight, the City’s lights would twinkle a surreal yellow. It was so easy to see how George Lucas had soaked up this view, then imagined the cloud city of Bespin for
The Empire Strikes Back
. No matter how many times they sat up on that rock, Maria would tell her that story.

Then, invariably her friend would launch into a rant over the Ewoks in
Return of the Jedi
, but those moments were still some of Sal’s most savored.

Ones that would never be repeated.

Tugging her robe tighter over her shoulders, Sal turned her back on the picture window and set about connecting to her laptop. She typed rapidly, accessing the Internet, tapping into the hospital’s network, then onto her laptop’s virtual desktop.

Wasn’t technology grand? She might as well be sitting on that hard metal chair in the residents’ office. Only Richard’s ergonomic mesh chair was far kinder to her bottom.

Rapidly, Sal flipped through her open programs. If memory served her, she had at least another twenty charts to finish typing up.

Sal glanced to the clock. It was only 3:00 a.m. Plenty of time to get the paperwork in order before the Badger arrived at his den to review the night’s work.

However, when she went to call up the unfinished records, there were none. Not a one. Had she screwed up so badly that she didn’t log them properly? If that were the case, she would have to go down to the hospital and complete them by hand.

“Remember.” A widget popped up on the screen.

Sal’s heart sank. Before tears could well, she turned the prompt off.

Since she had little to no social life, the widget could only be reminding her about Maria’s birthday. Because her friend didn’t just have a party on the day, she rocked the house for the full month. Over the past few years, Sal had tried to get more and more creative. For Maria’s thirtieth, they were going to New Orleans.

Sighing, Sal returned her attention to her overdue charts. First, she did an overview of the emergency room’s records to figure out exactly what happened, when she found all forty-three of her charts were signed off.

How could that be?

Clicking on a gallstone patient she knew that she hadn’t finished entering, Sal found the signature stamp.

S.C. Manning
.

Stacy. The ice queen had helped her. Not just helped her, but potentially pulled Sal’s ass out of the fire. Who knew she had it in her?

Sitting there, she felt overwhelming relief and irrational anger fight one another. Then tears that she had narrowly fought off spilled over.

Everything came back to her friend, Maria. Even Stacy’s help stemmed from one place. Pity. Pity for Sal’s loss.

As sobs racked her body, Sal realized that maybe Richard had been right. She had gone back to work too soon. She’d tried to fill the gaping void of Maria’s loss with work rather than honest grief. Sal felt bone-weary.

“Remember.”

Sal slammed the widget off. As a matter of fact, if her charts were done, she could completely turn off her laptop. No more horrible reminders of how much she had lost. How much she would miss.

Besides, she didn’t need any intern finding an open Internet portal and charging eight hundred dollars worth of porn, like what happened to Yakasuma last year. Closing out the programs, she found one that shouldn’t have been there. An ME’s report. A confidential ME’s report.

Sal certainly hadn’t hacked into the morgue’s files. Who had?

Then she remembered the signature on her charts.
S.C. Manning
.

Why would Stacy nose around the ME’s files? And how had the resident gotten past the password protection?

Sal didn’t know, but there were autopsy after autopsy reports opened and reviewed. Why would Manning do that? Why risk it?

Another reminder widget popped up. Sal slammed it down. Couldn’t anything go normally? At this point she almost wished she had forgotten her charts. Going down to the hospital would have been easier than trying to figure out Manning’s new game plan. For no matter the kind act that Stacy showed tonight, the resident had an agenda. If these files were worth Manning risking immediate termination, Sal wanted to know why.

It took another few minutes to skim the causes of death to realize the enormity of what lay in those reports. Building one case of idiopathic anemia on top of growing encephalitis, the case grew that San Francisco was in the grip of a new epidemic. To spot this new disease and be the one to report it to the CDC could make your career. Make Stacy’s career.

Another widget flashed. “Remember.”

Sal groaned. Her computer just added insult to injury. Plus, when did she animate the widget? And wasn’t it supposed to say “reminder?”

Whatever
, she thought as she brushed past it to check on the ME’s conclusions. Yet the coroner hadn’t correlated all the unusual deaths into a pattern. It was a virgin find.

Torn, Sal stared at the screen. On one hand, Stacy had done her a huge favor by finishing her charts. On the other, the resident had used Sal’s computer to hack into official files for her own career advancement, leaving Sal with all the liability and none of the benefit.

Another “Remember” widget. Sal x-ed out this one, but another just replaced it. Typical. Just when she was on the brink of something really important, her laptop always fritzed.

As if reading her mind, a dozen new widgets popped up. She couldn’t knock them down fast enough. Rapidly, the entire screen filled with them, flashing, almost seeming desperate.

There was nothing left to do but sever the connection. When she hit the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys, another pop-up sprang to the center of the screen.

“Tyr.”

The name kept expanding until it filled her vision.

CHAPTER 28

The name hit her in the gut—just like that baseball bat had back in the third grade. She’d lain out on the field, gasping for breath, with all the parents circled around as her mother wailed. Sal could acutely remember her childish fear that she would never breathe again. The sense of panic that eclipsed all else. Even conscious thought.

Then her carefully crafted amnesia crashed down, filling her mind with memories best left forgotten. The ache was back, painful and restless.

Painful for Maria. Restless for Tyr.

And for what? She would never see either of them again. Doubled over, she tried to rock away the hurt, but she couldn’t blink without the sight of Maria’s blood-splattered eyes staring to the ceiling or the feel of Tyr’s hand in hers. When she did open her eyes, his name flashed across the screen.

That was it. Her laptop had gone too far. Tomorrow, she was chucking it and buying a Mac. For right now, Sal made it her mission to close each and every one of the reminders, as if erasing them from the screen would seal off the font of pain.

Screen clear of widgets, Sal began closing the autopsy reports. How naïve she’d been just a second ago. San Francisco wasn’t looking at a viral infection, but an epidemic of violence. An outbreak that no medicine of hers could cure.

No matter how many times she tried, the reports simply reappeared.

Over and over again they came back, no matter what keys she hit. The files stared back at her, accusing her, as if Sal hadn’t done enough to stop the deaths. But what could she have done?

So many dead, and if Tyr was right, so many more to come.

Anger rose. Maria was dead. Worse, no detective would ever capture her killer. No jury would ever convict the beast. What prison could hold him? Just the thought of the deep, rumbling roar made her muscles spasm and a desperate urge to run take hold.

Even if a dying baby’s blood held power, could Tyr really kill the beast before it took another black-streaked blonde?

Her hands began to shake as the fear burned itself out, leaving behind only a charred and unyielding sense of helplessness. She would remember this horror for the rest of her life without being about to do anything about it.