Notorious D.O.C. Page 3

  I fixed my eyes on Tucker and enunciated very clearly. "I haven't even gotten started. For the past week, I've been listening and listening to you guys while I tried to get my head together. Well, I decided to come back to work. You don't have to agree with me, but for Chrissakes, if you're my friends, just support me. Don't tell me I'm wrong, I've screwed up, or I practically belong in a psych ward myself. I'm twenty-six years old, okay? I'm a medical doctor. I survived this long without you mapping out my every move. Lay off."

  Tucker opened his mouth. "It's just—"

  I stood up so fast, I rocked the patio table. The others grabbed their drinks. My martini stayed standing without me laying a finger on it. "Save your prescriptions for your patients."

  Tori reached out as if to lay her hand on my arm, but hesitated and let her fingers flutter back into her lap.

  Stan banged his mug on the table. "Hey, I don't have a problem with you investigating Laura Lee. It probably won't do any good, it's been what, almost ten years? But who cares. It's your funeral."

  Funeral. Yep. I could have died last month.

  I didn't say anything. Neither did Tucker or Tori.

  After a frozen minute, even Stan figured out he'd just said something inappropriate to a woman who'd had a near-death experience. "Sorry. I'm an ass."

  "Me too," said Tucker, mouth twisting.

  "Me three." I sat back down. Tucker handed me my glass. I took it, careful to avoid brushing his fingers. I wanted him. I hated him. And I hated him even more for pointing out I was more out of control than I'd thought. In my mind's eye, I saw myself writing a psych note on Dr. Hope Sze. Judgment: impaired. Insight: poor.

  "So how about them Expos?" said Stan.

  "They don't exist anymore," I said. I'm not a baseball fan, but even I knew that.

  "Sucks, huh?" he said brightly. And conversation sort of turned back to normal, but after half an hour, I threw my money on the table. "Thanks. It's been a slice."

  Tucker said, "Do you want—"

  I cut him off. "I have to grab a few things before I head. Feminine hygiene products."

  Oldest trick in the book: invoke menstruation and the men will melt away. It even works on doctors. Tucker sank back into his chair. I marched away to the sound of Stan's laughter.

  I had to think. Thinking was easier without Tucker around.

  Should I have stayed off longer?

  Should I tell Mrs. Lee to forget it?

  While these thoughts buzzed through my head, a man walked by with a brown dachshund in a carrier strapped to his chest. It doesn't get more metrosexual than that. I had to laugh.

  Montreal was a lot different from London, Ontario. On St-Denis alone, I could hardly count the number and type of restaurants. Vegetarian Thai. Afghan. Vietnamese. A gelato shop. Plus cute clothes and stores selling mainly French CD's and books. If I had money instead of our resident's slave wages, I'd be in heaven.

  Maybe literally. A cyclist nearly mowed me down as I crossed the street. He didn't say sorry or even turn around, just kept speeding down the street in his helmet and Spandex. I thought about giving him the finger, but what was the point?

  I'd rather window-shop. Tori had mentioned a medieval clothing store. I felt like surrounding myself in brocade and satin and fantasy instead of real life.

  "Hope!" called a male voice.

  Was that Tucker? I spun around, already gritting my teeth, ready to face him.

  But it wasn't Tucker. Or Stan. Or any guy from my residency program.

  The guy walking toward me was one I'd know anywhere, any time, even though I hadn't seen him in almost two years. My breath froze in my throat.

  His face seemed almost as familiar as my own, maybe more so, since I'd spent hours, days, even years memorizing it, from his gentle eyebrows to his well-shaped lips. I missed his hair, though. It was still crisp and black, but he'd pared it down to a crew cut instead of letting it touch his collar in the back.

  Ryan Wu, my first love. My first lover. My only real boyfriend. Live in Montreal.

  He was breathing a little faster from chasing after me. That made me think of other, more intimate times I'd seen him breathless.

  We stared at each other. I couldn't believe how little he'd changed. I could see the same laughter in his brown eyes. He'd retained his slim build and long runner's legs. A few times I'd wished him fat and bald after we'd broken up, but now I was glad he looked almost exactly the same. I could mentally rewind the clock three, four years, before it all went sour.

  I said, stupidly, "You cut your hair."

  "So did you."

  True. My hair used to spill past my shoulders, but I'd tried a chin-length bob and liked it.

  He smiled. I smiled back. Then, suddenly shy. I glanced back at the café I'd just left. We were a few blocks away, so I could barely make out our table, let alone Tucker.

  Ryan nodded at me. "You look good,"

  He said it first, thank goodness, which let me admit, "You too."

  Ryan sticks to the truth. He was brutally honest, annoyingly Christian sometimes, but not a liar. Such a tonic after Alex, the first Montreal bad boy I got mixed up with.

  I wanted to eyeball every detail of Ryan's body. Part of me wanted to make sure he was really here and now, within licking distance. The other part of me wanted to sprint far away from him.

  I exhaled. "So what are you doing here? I mean, I didn't know you were in town."

  His smile hitched up at the corner and he glanced over his shoulder. A girl in a miniskirt marched toward us on coltish little legs, black hair swinging with every step. She was pretty and she was pissed. I'd never met her, but her expression told me exactly who she was with respect to Ryan.

  "Sorry, Lisa," he said. "I didn't want Hope to get away."

  "No, we wouldn't want that," she agreed in a high-pitched voice. I looked down at her. She wasn't just short, she was made miniature all over. In other words, the stereotypical Asian doll-like build that made even me feel like a tank, even though I was just as Chinese as she was.

  "Hi, Lisa, I'm Hope Sze." I tried to smile. I hadn't so much as glimpsed Ryan in over a year and a half, so why did I feel so bereft, meeting his girlfriend?

  To my surprise, she held out her hand and pumped mine. She had a good grip for someone sparrow-sized. She said, "Pleased to meet you. I was just taking Ryan on a tour of Montreal."

  He smiled. "I'm here with some buddies. I gave Lisa a call."

  Well, that didn't sound too lovey-dovey. Neither did their stance, side by side but not touching. Not to mention him racing after me. My heart lifted, even as I scolded it. No men. Not even ex-boyfriends. Especially not ex-boyfriends.

  "We're having a great time," she said.

  He smiled. "Yeah, Lisa's an awesome tour guide. Listen, Hope, I'm here two more days. Maybe we could catch up sometime?"

  I knew the mature, responsible, Lisa-friendly thing to do. Instead, I gave him my phone numbers, home and pager, with my best smile. "Definitely. Call me."

  Chapter 4

  Once I decided to kill her, I got pretty excited about it. There are so many ways to off someone. Think about it.

  You could do it with your hands, like strangling, beating, or a karate chop. That one would be pretty funny, unless she knows karate too.

  You could go totally hands-free and not be in the same room if you did poison or a fire.

  I kinda like weapons like guns and knives. I even heard of using an ice pick.

  Man, so many choices. It's like losing your virginity. You only get to do it for the first time once.

  ***

  The phone rang twice that night, but both times, the caller hung up without leaving a message. I was too cheap to get caller ID, so all I could do was cross my fingers that Ryan would contact me before he left.

  The next morning, I swung into the emerg nursing station and found a plain brown envelope propped against the printer.

  DR. HOPE SZE. CONFIDENTIAL.

  Mrs. Lee had w
ritten my name in indelible black marker. She'd printed her return address just as clearly in the upper left hand corner.

  I lifted the envelope. She'd chosen the padded kind, as if she needed to insulate the documents within. It felt surprisingly heavy for a bunch of paper.

  "Mrs. Lee dropped that off last night," said Nancy, the psych emerg nurse. Psych patients need a lot of one-on-one that the regular emerg nurses are too busy to provide, so they get their own nurse. I'd vaguely noticed Nancy sitting next to the printer when I rotated through emerg last month, but I'd never registered what service she belonged to until I sat in her chair one day and a doctor told me the error of my ways. "That's the psych nurse's chair," he'd told me. "She always sits there." Now I sat there with her.

  This envelope was the first concrete sign that Mrs. Lee meant business. Last chance to listen to Tucker.

  Forget Tucker. I started to rip open the envelope flap.

  Nancy shook her head and waved a clipboard at me. "Hot off the press."

  I reached for the chart and laid the envelope on the table, both disappointed and secretly relieved. "What've you got for me?"

  "Reena Schuster. A twenty-nine year-old female who says she's depressed."

  I was already scanning the triage note. Normal vitals, allergic to Haldol, nothing else remarkable. I hadn't done any psych-emerg before, but I'd done enough emerg last month to figure out the ER's no-nonsense approach to young, healthy, mildly depressed women: see if she's suicidal and if she's not, give her the boot.

  In a nice way.

  I could give her a prescription or tell her to make an appointment with her doctor for a change in medication. If she didn't have an M.D., I'd hook her up with someone. And I'd make a "suicide pact." It sounds like something teenagers do with loaded shotguns under their arms, but actually, it boils down to, "Promise you'll come back if you feel like killing yourself."

  So I already had vague plans for Reena Schuster before I even met her.

  Room 14, the psych room, was a white box, usually empty except for the bed with restraining straps. Today its lights were off, which was kind of weird, but the surrounding emerg's fluorescent lights brightened the gloom of the room.

  A heavyset woman paced the room like a caged lion. Another woman, thin with bad blonde highlights visible even in dim light, sat on the bed and snapped her gum.

  I knocked on the open door. The lion-pacer rounded the room to face me. She gasped and grabbed her chest so suddenly, her Medic Alert bracelet clinked against her watch.

  Uh-oh. Ten-to-one, she was Reena Schuster, dramatic before we even started.

  The skinny one narrowed her eyes at me without unfolding her legs from the bed. "Are you the doctor? You look way too young."

  I forced a smile as I flicked on the light. We all blinked. "Hi, I'm Dr. Sze. I'm a medical doctor doing my residency training." I turned back to the lion-pacer. "Are you Reena Schuster?"

  "Oh, God." she said instead of answering. "Oh. My. GOD." She threw herself on the bed and wrapped her head in her hands, rocking back and forth so hard on the edge, the gurney's wheels shifted. "It's fate. I know it is. I'm being punished."

  "Reena. Chill," said the friend.

  I cleared my throat. I'm not saying all patients love me, but was she really saying I was a punishment? Maybe it was the depression talking, although from what I've seen, truly depressed people don't have energy to pace or apply blue eyeliner like Reena. I tucked the clipboard under my arm, an uncertain smile pasted on my face.

  Reena grabbed her own wavy brown hair with her hands and twisted it with her fingers until I saw her knuckles blanch. "Jodi? You see it too, don't you? We're coming full circle."

  The friend, Jodi, put her arm around her. "Reena..."

  "No. I know you think I'm nuts, but I'm serious. This is it. This is it!" Her voice rose to a scream. She dropped her hair and pounded her hands on her thighs.

  I glanced at the door. I didn't dare close it. Rule number one: if you're worried, leave the door open.

  Nancy stood behind the Plexiglas, frowning at us. So at least rule number two was covered: get help.

  "Reena—"

  "Don't say my name!"

  Jodi drew Reena's head toward her chest and glared at me. "Could we get another doctor?"

  It would look weak to go back without even asking one question. "I haven't done an assessment—"

  Reena burst into noisy, messy tears.

  "For God's sake, what do you want from her? She can't talk to you!" Jodi's voice was so hard, it cut through Reena's sobs.

  Both Reena and I got very still.

  I swallowed hard. Technically, I'm an M.D., but so many times, I just didn't know what to do. My instinct was to flee. I steeled myself against it.

  Reena's crying softened. I hovered in the doorway. Maybe I could just wait her out. If, for some reason, I'd upset her, she could get over it and we could talk.

  Still, I was relieved when Nancy's flats tapped into the room. "Is there a problem?"

  "Her!" Reena said, pointing at me. Her red-rimmed, accusing eyes stabbed me from behind her curtain of hair.

  "She hasn't even had a chance to talk to you yet, Reena. Would you rather come to the interview room? We've finished working in there and you're welcome to come in." Nancy offered her a tissue.

  Reena blew her nose loudly. "I can't. Not with her."

  "She's the resident on today, Reena, and you've already talked with me—"

  "So why does she have to go through it again?" demanded Jodi.

  "This is a teaching hospital. You know how it works, don't you, Reena?" Nancy's body language, her comments, were all directed at Reena. I realized part of my mistake was probably that I was trying to talk to both of them instead of concentrating on the patient. "We have medical students, residents, and staff physicians at St. Joseph's. It's part of the process."

  "Yeah, but why her?" Reena's voice had turned more nasal, more whiny. My shoulders relaxed. I could handle brattiness, not hatred. Thank goodness for Nancy.

  Jodi said, "Aren't we allowed to refuse?"

  I gulped. Nancy said, "Yes, that's true, but we like there to be a reason. Do you have a reason?"

  Silence. Jodi looked hard at Reena, who said finally, "I just can't."

  Nancy glanced at me. "I'm sorry, Dr. Sze. Would you mind—?"

  "No, no, that's all right." I handed her back the chart. Oops. I still had Mrs. Lee's envelope underneath. I tried to grab it back and flip it over, but it skittered off my fingers and landed on the floor, face up, with a bang.

  I snatched it back, covering it with my body. "Excuse me."

  Reena was already screaming, her hands welded into fists, her mouth one giant O, her body arched in misery, while Jodi yelled at me, "Get out, get out, get out!"

  Chapter 5

  My hands were still shaking ten minutes later.

  I paced the resident's room. It was smaller than Room 14. It was also dominated by a bed. But the door locked and I could be alone. So no one could see me gasping. The whites of my eyes. My heart throbbing in my throat, choking off my words.

  Breathe.

  I checked my watch. Twelve minutes. Long enough for them to subdue Reena. I should be back there. I should be running it.

  Instead, I was alone with my panic attack.

  "CODE WHITE. EMERGENCY ROOM. CODE BLANCHE, SALLE D'URGENCE."

  The words had echoed through the room. Men in white uniforms had descended. For one wild moment, I'd thought they were coming for me.

  "Two of Ativan? She's allergic to Haldol," Nancy had said.

  I'd nodded yes and bolted.

  Some doctor I was, yelling at Tucker, telling him to respect me and my decision to return to work.

  I couldn't even do psych.

  Hell, I was too busy being psych.

  Something about the room, the screaming, the loathing emanating from the two women threw me off.

  Breathe.

  I pressed my back against the white con
crete wall and forced myself to take my own pulse, pressing my fingers against my carotid while I stared at my watch.

  One hundred and twenty-four beats per minute.

  Normal is usually between sixty and one hundred.

  Breathe.

  Well, at least pressing on my neck and providing some vagal stimulation might slow me down.

  Lame medical humour.

  Breathe.

  I took my pulse again. One hundred and twenty-six.

  Come on, Hope.

  I glanced at my watch. Sixteen minutes away. Long enough for them to start asking, "What happened to the resident?" Nancy would have given medication already.

  Even though the emerg doctor was always in-house, and the psychiatrist was presumably on the way, I had to get back there.

  On top of everything else, I felt terrible about dropping Mrs. Lee's envelope. I hadn't even realized I'd brought it into the room. It seemed like a violation of Mrs. Lee's privacy, although all it showed was her name and address. For all they knew, she could have been sending me Jehovah's Witness flyers.

  Breathe.

  Count: one twenty-two.

  Better. Come on.

  Even though I still felt sick, I unlocked the door leading back to emerg and stood just inside it. The acid green walls of the room seemed to push in on me. I could hear someone flushing the toilet of the staff washroom across from me. The opposite side of the resident's room faced the main hospital hallway, so I could hear people talking in stereo, from the emergency department on one side and St. Joe's passers by on the other.

  "—got to make a phone call—"

  "I told him, no way. You want to, you do it."

  "They're going to tap it under ultrasound. You might want to be there."

  The key to the resident's room dangled from my hands. It was attached to a foot-long stick painted bright yellow, to prevent someone from accidentally walking away from it.

  Footsteps approached the residents' room. "—think she's in here."

  My breath hitched in my throat. I threw open the door and stepped into the hallway. My favorite emergency doc, Dr. Dupuis, gave me a quizzical look. He was pointing at the conference room just beyond both the resident and staff room. It had nothing to do with me.