Dr. Bodyguard. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ he’d stepped further into the room and his foot had slipped on something dark. Something trailing. A black ribbon that led directly to the crumpled lab coat under the sink. He’d flicked on the fluorescents and the red of the dark lights had become a patchwork of macabre crimson splashes on the floor and walls.

      Blood. Lots of it. And the motionless body of his archnemesis, Dr. Eugenie Watson, M.D., Ph.D.

      “Gentlemen?” The strange voice echoed in the E.R. waiting room and Nick shot to his feet. It wasn’t the cops this time. It was a doctor in bloodstained greens.

      It was too soon. They couldn’t possibly have stopped all that bleeding in so little time. She must’ve died.

      Genius Watson was dead.

      Nick remembered that he’d been rude to her that morning in the elevator, more out of habit than any real rancor, and perhaps also because for one brief moment he’d thought she looked nice in the soft gray wool skirt and high-buttoned blouse. Pretty. Touchable.

      When a man started thinking of gray wool and lace collars as sexy, he needed to get laid. Fast. Or so he’d thought at the time. Now all he could think was that he’d do anything to go back in time and murder the guy in the darkroom for trashing their experiments and injuring Dr. Watson.

      Killing her?

      He had a sudden, sharp image of Watson’s bloody hand lying in his as they rode to the hospital in the shrieking ambulance. She had begged him not to leave when she should have been cursing him for not finding her sooner. How had he not known something was wrong? He’d been sitting in his office wrestling with that damned journal article. How had he not sensed something? Heard something?

      “Is she—” Even Leo Gabney, the most insensitive man Nick had ever met, was unable to finish the question.

      “Eugenie Watson is one tough lady.”

      Nick glanced quickly at the doctor. “Then she’s—”

      “Going to be fine.” Apparently the doctor was familiar with this fill-in-the-blanks form of conversation. “She has a whopping headache and a few stitches to close up the laceration across her eyebrow, but there’s no indication of more serious damage.”

      “But what about—”

      “The blood?” The doctor grinned. “Very little of it was hers. Her attacker must’ve been a mess when she was through with him. I’ve discussed it with Detective Sturgeon and he’ll put area hospitals on the lookout.”

      Nick thought about the panty hose torn half off her body. He hated to ask. “Was she—”

      The doctor shook his green-capped head. “No evidence of further sexual assault. I’d say she changed his mind by fighting back.” Both Nick and Gabney relaxed marginally. The doc continued, “But we can’t be sure exactly what happened. She doesn’t remember anything about the attack, which isn’t surprising if you consider what a horrible experience it must have been. The brain has its own way of protecting itself.”

      “She doesn’t remember anything?” Nick spun toward the new voice, having not realized that Detectives Sturgeon and Peters had entered the room. Sturgeon was sucking one of the peppermints he’d been working his way through ever since he’d arrived at the lab on the heels of the paramedics. His sallow cheeks, moving in and out with each peppermint suck, made him as if he should be behind glass at the Boston Aquarium rather than at the helm of a major investigation. “Is she conscious?”

      The doctor wasn’t intimidated by Sturgeon’s scowl. “She doesn’t remember the attack, and she’s conscious now but not in any shape to answer questions. You’ll have to wait.”

      Then, just as Nick was coming to like the doctor, the guy said, “You can make do with this gentleman. He found Miss Watson.”

      The cops turned with identical fishy looks and Peters flipped to a new page on his pad. “And your name would be?”

      Nick sighed. “Dr. Nicholas Wellington the Third, Ph.D.”

      Sturgeon raised an eyebrow. “Any relation to the Nicholas Wellington that ran for president a few years ago?”

      Feeling that helpless mix of guilt and anger that always came with thoughts of the Senator, Nick nodded. “He’s my father.”

      “I’M FINE.” Genie batted at the nurse’s hands and shooed the blood-pressure cuff away. “I’m a doctor, I should know when I’m okay to leave, don’t you think?” The nurse rolled her eyes and glanced at a nearby man in green scrubs as if to say Not frickin’ likely. The frazzled intern who grinned in reply didn’t look a day over fourteen.

      Genie winced at the unkind thought. She hadn’t been much older than that when she interned—a fact her colleagues never let her live down. She was the last person who should be complaining about her doctor’s age, particularly when he was agreeing with her.

      “That’s correct, you’re perfectly fine. Now.” He paused for emphasis. “But you know as well as I do that after a concussion of such severity you should be monitored for at least the next twenty-four hours in case there is additional swelling of the brain.”

      She hated how he said “the brain” as if it belonged to someone else. It was her brain damn it, and it had no right to swell without her permission. Since she hadn’t given it permission to get any bigger than it already was, she should be able to go home.

      But the fourteen-year-old intern remained firm. He crossed his arms over his weedy chest and frowned. “The only way I’m going to release you is if there’s somebody with medical training to observe you. Do you have any colleagues you could call? Any friends that could help you?”

      Genie opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out. How pitiful it sounded to say, “No. There’s no one.” But it was true.

      Sure, she had acquaintances. She chatted with the elderly Chinese lady who cleaned the lab each night and she knew the names of all the grandchildren in the pictures that lined Ben’s desk at the security kiosk. And she had colleagues that she nodded to in the halls and smiled at in the lunchroom.

      But there was nobody to call and say, “I’ve got a concussion. Will you come stay with me so I can sleep?”

      Nobody.

      Inexplicably, a low, intimate voice floated through Genie’s mind. She didn’t clearly remember anything after hearing the rubba-thump of the darkroom door behind her when she’d gone to develop the day’s films, but she did have a sketchy recollection of a comforting presence in the ambulance. She remembered a large, warm hand holding hers and a gentle voice saying she was going to be okay.

      She assumed it had been a paramedic, and made a mental note to thank him for his excellent bedside manner—though with the way her bruised brain was working, it could be a few weeks before that particular note surfaced.

      The nurse and the young intern left in a swirl of white and green, and when the door swung the other way, it revealed the face of Genie’s least favorite administrator.

      She tried to summon a convincing scowl, one that would soothe the worried look on his face. “Jeez, Leo, don’t I rate anyone better? Couldn’t they have sent Hetta from personnel or Louie from accounts payable? Even one of Dixon’s goons. СКАЧАТЬ