The Missing Year (9 page)

Ross tore off his sweater, so fueled on adrenaline he didn’t even notice his pain.

“Lila!” He rushed headlong into the lake, the cold water soaking through his clothes and making it harder to move with each step. His pants and shoes filled, his feet sinking as if rooted in cement. “Lila!” He dove clumsily beneath the water, unable to make out anything through the mud and murk. He broke the surface, his vision blurred and his eyes burning. He felt around blindly, making broad strokes through the water, shouting for Lila to answer him. He swam, covering as much ground as he could, repeatedly calling her name. He wiped the water from his face and gasped when he saw the white knit sweater less than four feet away. Lila was face down, floating. Ross forced his way through the waist-deep water and pulled her to him by the sleeve. He scooped her up, cradling her like a child.

“Lila, can you hear me?”

She draped over his arms; her head back, her left arm dangling, and her wet clothes suctioned to her skeletal body. She felt even frailer than she looked, weightless, like one of the sparrows they’d seen bathing in the dust.

“Lila, say something. Please.”

She spat out a mouthful of water and whispered, “Marco.”

Ross pulled her to his chest and said, “Polo.”

He was so relieved he could have cried.

Lila wrapped her arms around Ross’s neck, barely hanging on as he carried her to shore, shivering from the cold. The pains of his blistered foot and aching back returned, his labored breathing replacing the serene silence. Ross lowered Lila to the ground and the reality of the situation set in. She could have drowned and it would have been his fault. He had taken too big a risk, removing her from the center with no idea of what was going on in her head.

It was a mistake he wouldn’t make again.

“What were you thinking?” he said.

Lila crossed her arms, her teeth chattering and her lips turning a dusky blue. A few stray hairs clung to the side of her face and her clothes sealed to her frail body.

The wind cut through Ross’s clothes. His skin erupted in gooseflesh. “Lila, what were you doing in the lake?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Tears spilled from her eyes, mud streaking her face as she wiped at them.

Ross held out his sweater, the only dry thing between them. “Put this on,” he said. “You need to get warm.”

“What about you?”

Ross tried not to let on that he was freezing. “I’ll be fine.”

Lila pulled the sweater over her head, the knit fabric swallowing her. She rolled on to her knees and struggled to get to her feet. Ross offered her his hand.

“Thank you,” she said, wringing out her braided hair.

The sweater hung so far past her fingertips she had to cuff the sleeves several times. The waistband settled halfway to her knees.

Ross sat on a nearby rock and removed his socks and shoes, convinced barefoot was better than wet socks and shoes against the now ruptured blisters on his heels.

“Are you all right?” The gravel pierced his tender feet, each step magnifying the pain of the embedding rock.

“I’m fine.” Lila moved out ahead of him, leaving a gap large enough to quell the need for conversation. It was clear she had said all she intended to, though Ross didn’t nearly consider the matter closed.

He navigated the path, seeking the comfort of smooth stepping stones and finding them few and far between. He stopped twice to remove shards of shale from his now bleeding forefoot behind his big toe.

Lakeside came into view and the panic of having to answer for what had happened gripped him.

“Lila, wait.” Ross wanted to get their stories straight, or at least
formulate
a story that might cast reasonable doubt.

Lila kept walking.

“Lila, please. I need to know what you plan on saying to Dr. Oliver. He’s going to ask what happened. What do I tell him about why you’re drenched?”

Lila pulled the front door open and was inside before he could stop her.

Ross followed and caught the immediate look of horror on Chelsea’s face.

“Oh gosh, what happened? What should I do? Should I get a towel? Should I call Dr. Oliver?” She rushed from behind the reception desk to where Lila and Ross were standing.

“You don’t need to do anything,” Ross said. “Lila slipped. She’s fine. We’re both fine.”

“Slipped? Slipped where?” Chelsea reached for Lila’s arm.

Lila pulled away, her canvas sneakers squeaking against the white tile floor.

“The lake,” Ross said, the words coming before he thought to stop them.

“What were you doing all the way at the lake?” Dr. Guy Oliver peeled off his glasses and put them in the breast pocket of his white dress shirt.

Lila glanced at him, then at Ross, and headed upstairs.

“Lila, wait.” Ross went after her.

Guy followed them. “Ross, we need to talk.”

“Lila, please. Wait,” Ross said.

“Ross, I’m serious.”

“Guy, give me a minute here.” Ross followed Lila into her room and her bathroom door slammed shut.

“Lila, open up.” Ross knocked, but Lila refused to answer.

“What happened?” Guy asked. “Why are you soaking wet? And why aren’t you wearing any shoes?”

“Blisters.” Ross knocked again. “Lila, open up.”

“You had no business taking Lila out of here without permission.”

“I tried to find you to ask first. You were nowhere to be found. You need to trust me.”

“
Trust
you? I have trusted you, Ross. You know things no one else does, but what do you think is going to happen to the center if someone gets hurt, or worse?”

Ross didn’t need Guy to spell out what he was implying. “It won’t happen again. It was an accident. We were too close to the water and I slipped on rock.”

“And Lila? Did she
slip
, too?”

Lila opened the bathroom door stared Guy down. “No,
she
didn’t slip.
She
wanted to go swimming.”

“Thanks for not throwing me under the bus,” Mark said, extending a pair of green scrubs to Ross who had holed himself up in his office.

“For what?” Ross changed behind a supply cabinet door. “You told me to ask for permission and I didn’t get it.” He set his wet shoes next to the heater vent and hung his dripping clothes from the coat rack. Underwear would have been nice, but he’d settle for being dry. He sat in the chair behind his desk and examined the ruptured blisters on the backs of his water-logged heels. “I take full responsibility for what happened. There’s no point in bringing anyone down with me, especially when they’re not at fault.”

“I feel like I should have stopped you. I didn’t know Lila would go into the lake, but I should’ve known something could happen. If Dr. Oliver knew you mentioned taking her outside to me, I’d have been fired.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Mark. Besides, Lila’s okay. Guy’s upset, but I think he’s happier that she said something to him than he is angry that she went in the lake.”

“What did she say?”

“That she wanted to go swimming.”

Mark laughed. “Who knew she had a sense of humor?”

“Let’s hope it charms Guy enough that he doesn’t fire me.”

“If that was his intention he’d have done it by now.”

“Well, you were worried.”

“With good reason,” Mark said. “This thing with Lila would have been my second strike. I already upset Ruth Wheeler.”

Ross hadn’t heard. “What did you do?”

“I made a few calls to Merrick Memorial after Lila transferred here. I wanted to see if there was anything in her medical history that might help Dr. Oliver. A clerical error had me in touch with the medical records supervisor who said Blake’s records were restricted. The receptionist confused the Wheelers’ accounts and had medical records looking into the wrong one. The supervisor’s reaction was enough to make me curious.”

“How did that upset Ruth?”

“I went to the hospital after getting nowhere by phone. I did some asking around. That’s when Ruth got mad. She called Dr. Oliver, irate, insisting he fire me. If I were less useful, he would have. He told me to stay away from anything to do with Blake.”

“What did you find out?”

“One of the OR techs told me Blake took a sabbatical a few months before the shooting. He had made a fatal surgical error that had his patient hemorrhaging to death.”

Ross couldn’t believe his ears. The pressure of something like that would have affected Lila, especially if a malpractice case threatened Blake’s estate. “Did the patient’s family sue?”

“I’m not sure,” Mark said. “A lawsuit hardly seems a reason for Lila to try to kill herself, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“It’s a stretch, I agree, but there had to be a catalyst. Nothing about this case adds up. Lila attempted suicide the day of her husband’s funeral, a sort of knee-jerk reaction. I understand the grief. Honestly, I do. But why isn’t she getting better? She was on medication, in therapy, and nothing changed, right?”

“Nothing,” Mark agreed.

“And the minute Blake comes up, Ruth flies off the handles. What does this have to do with Lila? What ties Blake’s death, his secure medical file, and Lila’s suicide attempt to Ruth?”

“Good luck solving the riddle, Doc, but Ruth Wheeler, in my experience, is off-limits.”

“I think it’s time to change that.”

Ross slipped his laptop into his bag and scribbled out a note: “Be back in the morning,” for when Guy inevitably came looking. He hurried down the hall and had thought he made a clean getaway when he reached the front door.

“Dr. Reeves,” Chelsea called after him. “Dr. Reeves, wait. I have a message for you.”

Ross let his hand off the door handle and returned to the reception desk. “What is it?” he said, the tile floor radiating ice cold through his bare feet.

“A woman by the name Camille McKenzie called while you were out. She left a number and says it’s important you call her back.”

Ross set his shoes on the counter, tucked the message into the breast pocket of his scrub shirt, and picked them back up. “Anything else?” He alternated his gaze between the stairs and Guy’s office door.

“No. That’s it.”

“If Dr. Oliver asks, tell him I had to go back to the motel to change.”

Ross hurried to the car and drove as fast as he could, barefoot, to the motel.

* * * * *

Ross opened the door and sneezed when the pine air freshener went off. Housekeeping must have put it back when they cleaned his room, which, from the conflicting bleach and pine smells, couldn’t have been long ago. The bed had been made, towels folded, and a stack of “while you were out” papers sat piled next to his laptop. Four messages from Camille had him wondering what was so important.

He would call her back, but first things first.

Ross set his laptop on the desk and powered it on. He entered a search string and sighed with relief when only one Ruth Wheeler showed up in the town of Edinburgh. He dialed the number, holding the cordless phone between his ear and shoulder as he hung his soaking wet laundry over the shower curtain rod. The clothes smelled of dirt and lake water. He rinsed off his hands, about to hang up when the machine finally answered. He waited for the beep before speaking.

“This message is for Ruth Wheeler. My name is Dr. Ross Reeves from the Lakeside Psychiatric Center—”

“Hello?” A stern female voice interrupted him.

“Ms. Wheeler?”

“Mrs. Wheeler,” the woman corrected.

Ross had in his mind that Ruth Wheeler would be soft-spoken, matronly and perhaps even sad, but the woman on the other end of the line, in two short sentences, sounded callous and overwhelmingly annoyed. “Mrs. Wheeler, my name is Dr. Ross Reeves—”

“From Lakeside, you said.”

“Yes, well, I’m working with your daughter-in-law, Lila, and I wonder if I could talk to you about what happened with your son, Blake.”

“I’m aware of who Blake is, Dr. Reeves. What I’m not aware of is what bearing he has on Lila at this point and why you’re wasting my time.”

“Please, I think Lila’s having such a difficult time because of something that may or may not have happened before—”

“My son’s murder?”

“I’m sorry for your loss Mrs. Wheeler, but I need information if I’m going to help Lila.”

“Dr. Reeves, does Dr. Oliver know you’re making this call?”

Ross took a deep breath. “Well, no.”

“Then you may want to speak to him before I do. I’m tired of every attempt at getting through to Lila ending in a call to me, so I’ll do you a courtesy and make things easier on you. I’m not concerned with Lila’s
difficult time
, nor am I interested in conjecturing what effect losing Blake has had on her.” A small dog barked in the background. “Come here, Princess.” Ruth patted her hand against something soft, the sound echoing. “What I am interested in is Lila recovering enough to explain the decision she made about my son.”

“Decision?”

“Lila shut me out of Blake’s life. She had my only child removed from life support.”

The news came as Ross’s second shock of the day. Of all the things he imagined Lila feeling conflicted or guilty about, the possibility that she had a hand in ending Blake’s life hadn’t even made the list.

“She told me she was honoring Blake’s wishes, that there were things he didn’t want me to know,” Ruth said. “What isn’t she telling me?
That’s
the question I’ve been paying to find out. A son doesn’t keep secrets, Dr. Reeves. Not from his mother.”

Ross’s gut said otherwise. There were plenty of things he didn’t tell his mother to preserve her feelings. “Can I ask you something?” He had nothing to offer at the moment on the subject of secrets. “Why did Blake’s obituary request donations to the Huntington’s Society in lieu of flowers? Was that something he wanted?”

“It was something
I
wanted, and the only time my requests were heard during this entire ordeal. Blake’s father died of Huntington’s. Blake spent a good deal of his time fundraising. He would have wanted his death to make a difference.”

“I’m sure it did.”

“Dr. Reeves, I understand you want to help Lila, but she took away the only person I had left to love in this world. If you want to know why she isn’t getting better, it’s probably because she can’t forgive herself. The truth is, I can’t forgive her, either.”

“But—”

“Blake didn’t have to die. He needed more time.”

“Mrs. Wheeler—”

“Good day, Dr. Reeves. Please don’t call again.”

Ross set the phone on his bed and buried his face in his hands, which smelled of lake water. Earlier that day, he’d have believed Lila to be the most fragile person he had ever known, a wife so distraught over the loss of her husband that she’d have rather died than live without him.

It seemed to Ross now he might have been projecting.