Kitabı oku: «A Doctor's Watch», sayfa 2

He stilled the pencil he’d been twirling between his fingers and looked her right in the eye. “Well said, and with lots of feeling. You’re very good. How many doctors have you used that shtick on?”

The accusation took her aback. Until she recognized it as the truth. “A few.”

“Did it work?”

“More times than not.”

He strolled toward her, his tongue in his cheek. “Then you’ve been seeing the wrong doctors.”

He locked his golden gaze on hers and she couldn’t look away.

“Let’s try this again,” he said, towering over her. “How were you feeling just before you fell?”

The irrational urge to run swept over her. He was too close. Physically and emotionally. He smelled like Polo cologne.

And tasted like fear. Her fear.

She was not crazy. She wouldn’t let anyone say she was.

“If you want me to say I was depressed, you can go to hell,” she said.

“Been there. Didn’t care for it.” His face remained impassive, but his eyes changed. Cool intellect gave way to a dark, hot fury that burned somewhere deep inside him. The kind of fury only someone who has suffered could feel.

“Me neither,” she said. “Depression was my hell. I almost had to die to do it, but I escaped. I won’t ever go back.”

He looked away as if he suddenly found their linked gazes too intimate. “You’re one of the lucky ones, then.”

“I am.” She touched the scars on his right forearm and he flinched as though she’d burned him. “What about you?”

“I’m working on it.” He raised his head, cupped her chin and looked into her eyes again, his own fires now banked. “I—” His fingers tightened on her face. “Damn.”

“What?”

“Did the ER doctor give you something when he treated you? Pain medication? A sedative?”

“No.”

“Your pupils are big as dinner plates.” He let her go and cursed again. “I can’t sign off on the evaluation if you’re medicated.”

She followed him when he turned his back and marched away. “I don’t need to be evaluated. I just need to go home. To my son. Please.”

He groaned like a man in pain. “I can’t. I have to talk to you when your head is clear. I can’t afford to mess this up. Director Serrat—”

“Uncle Karl?”

He stiffened, and she knew she’d made a mistake mentioning her uncle. His boss.

He picked up his jacket and shrugged into it without turning. “I’ll come back to finish the evaluation tomorrow.”

“Let me go home and I’ll come to you in Belier in the morning.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I just can’t risk it.”

Understanding exploded with a burst of bitterness on her tongue. “Worried about my life or your career?”

“Neither,” he said stiffly. “You have a son.”

Rage rose to the surface. “I would never hurt my son. Never!”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He headed toward the door, but stopped just inside, shoulders stiff.

“Wait. Please!” Desperation propelled her across the room after him. She stopped just short of touching him, her arm extended.

“Tomorrow,” he said without turning. “Try to get some rest. I’ll be back early.”

He was gone before she could argue. Before she could plead.

Alone again, Mia propped her hips on the edge of the bed, fighting back the desperation. The humiliation.

Maybe he was right. Maybe they were all right, and she’d imagined someone else with her on the bluff. A sinister shadow behind her.

Three hundred and ten days, she thought, her eyes welling with tears. She’d had three hundred and ten good days.

And tomorrow, she’d have to start over again at one.

Chapter 3

Ty felt like a heel as he left the Eternal Emergency Care Clinic. Not because he’d admitted Mia Serrat for overnight observation when she so clearly wanted to go home—standard procedure was standard procedure, and he dared follow nothing but when the patient was Karl Serrat’s niece. There was also her son’s safety to think about.

What troubled him was the niggle of pleasure he’d felt at the knowledge that, by admitting her, he’d have to see her again in the morning.

She was a patient, for Christ’s sake. He knew better than to think of her in any other terms.

She was also a woman, though. A spirited, strong-willed, self-reliant woman.

Exactly the kind of woman he liked.

Shivering, he turned the heater on full blast in his ancient VW Beetle and pulled out onto Highway 18 toward Belier. Snow swirled furiously around his little car, falling faster now than when he’d driven in, and whipped into a frenzy by a fierce north wind. Windshield wipers and headlights hardly penetrated the miasma.

He leaned forward, peering into the blizzard to make out the road, but instead he kept seeing her defiant green eyes, the determined set to her full lips.

He shook his head at himself. Mia Serrat was completely off-limits.

She also had a history of mental illness. She’d backed off her story about being pushed off the bluff this morning without argument, but she wasn’t convinced. He could see it in her eyes. She just knew the psychiatry game well enough to know better than to sound paranoid.

The sooner she was out of his life, the better.

Still, she pulled at him on a lot of different levels. Sure, she was beautiful. But she’d also overcome a lot of tragedy. She was a survivor, Mia Serrat. No way a woman trying to pick out a Christmas present for her kid had tried to kill herself. Suicidal people didn’t make plans for a future they wouldn’t be around to see.

On his left a steep rock wall angled back from the roadway. He slowed, squinting up at what he could see of Shilling’s Bluff. On impulse he swerved to the shoulder, parked and got out for a closer look.

More than the cold made him shiver as he stared up at the rough slope. How the hell had she come down that and into a busy road without being seriously hurt?

Killed.

It would, he thought, be a good place to kill someone.

He crossed the road and found a trail in the woods to one side of the bluff. Without stopping to question why, he climbed to the top.

He knelt. Lots of footprints in the snow here. Rounded and shallow as the wind smoothed off the edges and new snow filled the impressions, but definitely more than one person’s prints. Someone could have waited. Hidden in the trees—

His cell phone chirped, nearly sending him headfirst over the edge of the cliff.

He stood and turned away from the precipice to answer. His mother’s voice screeched at him across the line.

“Ty-baby? Is that you? You sound like you’re sitting on the wing of an airplane.”

He capped one ear with his hand. “I’m outside, Ma. It’s windy.”

“Outside?” she chattered. “In this weather? You’ll catch your death. What are you doing outside?”

He looked over his shoulder at the bluff, the nothingness beyond. What the hell was he doing? Trying to prove that Mia Serrat was as stable as she seemed? That she hadn’t imagined someone pushing her?

Or trying to eliminate one of his reasons for keeping her at arm’s length?

He swore and pulled his collar up as he started back toward his car. It was friggin’ freezing out here. Sure there were lots of footprints. The sheriff’s deputies would have checked out the scene after the accident.

“I’m headed back in, Ma. What did you need?”

He could hear Beethoven’s Fifth playing in the background. It always played in the background.

“I was thinking you could come see me this weekend,” she said, her voice more like a child’s than a mother’s now. “Maybe stay a little longer, even.”

His shoulders tensed. “I have a lot of work, Ma. Besides, you have an appointment with Dr. Calvin.”

“You’re a doctor. You can look after me.”

His free hand fisted in the pocket of his coat. He struggled to keep his voice steady. “I’m a resident, Ma. You know what that means? It means I have no life. No time. It means if I don’t keep my mind one-hundred-percent on the job, I might never be a doctor for real. Do you understand?”

“I could cook for you.” Her voice took on a dreamy tone. “I bet you haven’t had a decent meal in months. Do you remember when we used to make cookies together? I’d mix the batter and you’d lick the bowl?”

Ty bit his tongue. She’d never baked cookies for him in his life. Much less fixed him a decent meal. But she didn’t know that. She thought all her little imaginings were fact.

For a moment, he almost wished it were true—that his childhood had been idyllic. That he’d been her golden child and she’d been his storybook-perfect mother.

Only for a moment, though. If his mom hadn’t been the way she was when he was a kid, he wouldn’t have become the man he was now. What better motivation was there for becoming a psychiatrist than growing up in the clutches of a crazy mother?

Intellectually, he knew that her psychosis was a disease, an illness she hadn’t asked for and couldn’t prevent, but as a kid he’d only known the effect, not the cause. He’d known her mood swings, her temper. His mother had been sick, but too often, he’d been the one to suffer.

And yet, she was still his mother. He’d never been able to turn his back on her. Not completely. He closed his eyes. “Sure, we can do it again sometime,” he said softly. “But not right now, okay? I just don’t have time to b—”

He stopped himself just short of saying babysit.

“—to be with you. I should have a break around the end of the month. I’ll drive out for the day.”

“Only for a day? But I miss you, My Ty.”

He reached his car and ratcheted the door open with numb fingers. His stomach tightened. The assisted-living complex she lived in was only about ten miles from here. She was his mother, and she was lonely.

He was a doctor and he had responsibilities. He had patients to see and a whole caseload of patient files to update before 8:00 a.m.

“Look, Ma, I gotta go,” he said, ashamed to feel grateful for the Kaiser’s last-minute assignment, but grateful all the same. He just didn’t have the time, or the mental energy. Not right now. “I’ll try to get out there next week.”

He hung up without waiting for her acknowledgment. He folded himself into his car, blew on his hands and rubbed them together, wishing he could warm the cold knot of guilt in his chest as easily as he could warm his frozen fingers.

He started the car.

He’d give her a call and have a long chat when he got a break tomorrow, he promised himself.

Day after that, at the latest.

Mia jogged along the trail at the top of the bluff, her muscles burning, blood singing, breath puffing in front of her face. The view was beautiful from up here. The snow on the trees, the roads winding toward the valley, the village—

A hand hit her in the back. She felt the impression of the palm distinctly. Five fingers.

Falling. Pounding against rocks. Grating against frozen earth. Pavement—

Mia lurched to wakefulness, her heart pounding.

But she wasn’t on Shilling’s Bluff. Wasn’t falling into the road with a pickup truck bearing down on her.

She was in her hospital room. In the dark.

Her mouth was dry, so she sat up to search the bedside table for water. She could make out a chair beside the bed and a monitor—not active, thank goodness—on a cart across the room. A slice of light angled in through a narrow window on the door.

Her heart stalled, then raced as she stared at the door. She couldn’t see the handle.

She had to know.

Silently she slipped out of bed and padded into the light. Holding her breath she reached for the doorknob and turned it.

Not locked.

Her breath exploded in relief. For a minute she’d thought…

But, no. Thankfully, she’d been wrong. It wasn’t locked.

She should go back to bed. There was no reason to worry. She wasn’t a prisoner here, she hadn’t been involuntarily committed. She’d agreed—albeit with little real choice in the matter—to stay for observation of her own accord. In the morning, she’d make nice with Dr. Handsome and be on her way. She had to be calm. Composed.

Rational.

Unfortunately there was nothing rational about the fear skittering up her spinal column like a monkey on a vine. Or about her growing certainty that her fall hadn’t been an accident, despite what anyone else thought.

She hadn’t slipped; she’d been pushed.

Was she losing it again? Going crazy?

She couldn’t. Wouldn’t let herself.

She glanced at the bed, but the restlessness inside her wouldn’t let her sleep. What was the point of lying there and worrying?

She raised up on her toes and looked out the narrow window in the door. The nurses’ station down the hall sat abandoned. Silently she pushed the door open and padded toward the desk. Maybe her medical chart would hold some clue as to what had really happened. At the very least it would tell her what the doctors—Ty Hansen, in particular—were thinking about her.

Tightening the drawstring on her yellow flannel pajamas, she shuffled over to the cluttered workstation. On the upper level of the desk area, coffee rings topped untidy stacks of folders. Yellow sticky notes and phone message slips papered the lower tier.

Mia fingered the files until she found what she was looking for. She scanned the pages quickly. History of depression. Prior commitment to a mental-health facility. Mother-in-law concerned about her current state of mind.

What?

Oh, Nana…

Before she had a chance to read exactly what Nana had told the doctor, a shuffling sound around the corner caught her attention.

Footsteps.

Fear paralyzed her until it was too late to scurry back to her room unseen. She wouldn’t have worried about being caught by a nurse or orderly, but these footsteps didn’t sound as if they belonged to a hospital employee. They were too slow, too measured.

It seemed almost as if the person around the corner was sneaking down the hallway. Toward her.

Maybe she really was paranoid. She debated standing her ground, but gave in to fear, the memory of this morning’s shove firm in her mind—and on her back.

Out of time, she ducked behind the nurses’ counter. The footsteps shuffled slowly closer, but didn’t turn at the intersection of the two hallways. Instead they moved forward.

Toward the door to her room.

Heart thundering so loudly she thought surely whoever was out there would hear it, she raised up high enough to peek over the counter.

A slight man in baggy black sweatpants and an oversized black jacket stood outside her door. He looked over his shoulder as if to check whether he’d been seen. The hooded jacket hid his face, but Mia saw menace in the stoop of his shoulders, his careful step.

She held her breath as he pulled a vial out of his pocket. He uncapped a syringe with his mouth, drew the contents from the vial and tapped the bubbles to the top of the syringe. When he turned to check over his shoulder one more time, Mia ducked again.

That was no doctor. Even if it was, Dr. Hansen said she wasn’t to be medicated.

A feeling that something was very, very wrong crept over her. The intruder turned his back to her and flattened a hand on the door to her room, easing it open.

She hugged the wall with her back, then slid sideways, away from her room. Away from that man.

She was just about to turn the corner when her foot connected with the ball on a rolling chair. The chair clattered and crashed into the desk.

The intruder turned.

Mia gave in to panic and ran. Her bare feet slapped the cold tile, her footsteps in synch with the squeak of the intruder’s sneakers as he followed her. She banged open the door to an emergency stairway and launched herself toward the ground floor.

Even as she ran she realized she should scream. Find someone to help her. But the sound froze in her throat.

She’d screamed before. No one had heard her. Or if they had, they hadn’t cared.

The Eternal Emergency Care Clinic operated overnight with a skeleton staff. Most patients in need of extended treatment transferred to larger hospitals in Belier or Kyacy. Rarely did a patient stay overnight.

The building was virtually empty, except for her and a man with a syringe.

Mia ran faster.

The door to the stairwell clacked open behind her. Footsteps matched her hurried descent. She stopped at the ground floor and pushed through the exit.

A blast of frigid air hit her like a slap in the face. She had no way of knowing what time it was, but it was still dark. In the distance, a single streetlight lit the empty parking area. Drifting snow danced in its glow.

Mia backed inside the building and let the door close. She couldn’t go out there. She had no coat, no shoes. The parking lot was empty, the street deserted. Who knew how far she would have to run before she found help in a sleepy little village like Eternal?

A hysterical laugh bubbled out of her. She might be crazy, but she wasn’t stupid.

Hugging herself, she hurried down the final flight of stairs to what appeared to be the basement. There was no sign of the man chasing her, but he was coming. She could feel it. Gooseflesh bubbled on her skin.

Maybe she had imagined it, the way she had imagined someone pushing her on the bluff.

Somewhere above her, a door creaked open.

Giving in to her dread, she raced through a door marked Cafeteria. She yanked open drawers in the empty kitchen until she found a knife and then settled herself between a huge stainless-steel double sink and a stand of metal shelves.

She didn’t know who was after her, or why. If he really even existed or if he was a figment of her imagination, a bump on the head and medication.

But real or not, she was going to be ready.

Chapter 4

About the time he pulled into the parking lot of the Eternal Emergency Care Clinic, Ty could have used a couple of toothpicks to hold his eyelids up. With the help of two pots of coffee and a Red Bull, he’d managed to land his updated patient-care charts in the Kaiser’s inbox just shy of 6:00 a.m. The winds had died down since last night and the snowplows had cleared the roads, so he’d made good time from Belier. Now all he had to do was give the good Ms. Serrat the once-over—professionally speaking, of course—and send her on her way, and with any luck her uncle Karl would have no cause to send his career down in flames.

This week.

Maybe he’d even get in a little catnap before his shift at the hospital.

A sheriff’s cruiser sat cockeyed in front of the employee entrance. Funny. He’d noticed another out front.

His guard was up a little, and the difference in atmosphere struck him like a slap when he walked into the corridor. Groups of orderlies huddled in the hall, their eyes darting back and forth as they whispered. A couple of pale-faced nurses tapped anxiously on each door as they moved away from Ty, opening and entering each room before coming back out and shaking their heads. A uniformed deputy strolled along behind, a hint of boredom barely showing beneath his stone-faced expression.

Ty tapped a nurse he recognized from last night on the shoulder. “What’s going on?”

She grabbed him by the elbows. “Oh, thank God you’re here. We’ve lost your patient.”

“What do you mean, lost her?”

“I mean she’s gone. Her bed was empty when the floor nurse went in for morning rounds.”

The blood drained from Ty’s head. “Have you called her family? Maybe she skipped out and went home.”

“We checked. They haven’t seen her. Her mother-in-law and uncle are on their way here.”

Great. Maybe he’d been premature in his prediction that his career would last another week.

“She can’t have gone far,” the nurse continued. “Her clothes and shoes are still in the closet in her room. She has to be in the building somewhere.”

Reflexively, Ty stole a glance out the glass door at the snow beyond and shivered. The mentally ill sometimes didn’t feel physical discomfort until it was too late. If she had left the building…

He threw his coat over the nurses’ counter and raked a hand through his uncombed hair. “All right. What areas have you searched so far?”

“Her whole floor. The common areas on other floors, waiting rooms, doctors’ lounges and such. The main lobby and the second-floor patient rooms.”

“So that leaves intensive care—I doubt she’s there, there are enough staff around someone would have noticed—the first-floor patient rooms and the basement.”

“We just sent a group to the first floor to look. The graveyard shift stayed over to search, and the morning crew is helping out, too. Everyone we can spare. They’ve got all the main floors covered.”

“Guess that leaves us with the basement, then.”

He gestured toward the stairwell and strode off after her. At least he wasn’t sleepy any longer. Amazing what a jolt of adrenaline could do to the human body.

The high he was riding didn’t subside, even after twenty minutes of searching for his wayward patient.

There was only one area left to search down here—the kitchen. Ahead a faint gruelish smell filtered around a stainless-steel swinging door.

He threw a glance at Nurse Renee. “Let’s go.”

His heart sank when they walked into the kitchen. A couple of cooks in grease-stained white aprons shuffled about, clanging pots and pans. Mia couldn’t be here; she would have been spotted. Maybe she really had left the building, in which case she was out in the snow, coatless and shoeless somewhere. He’d seen stranger things as a psychiatrist, but none had given him quite the same feeling of dread as picturing Mia shivering and alone did now.

“Mia?” he called out, helplessness loud and clear in his voice.

The cooks stopped and stared at him.

He walked down the aisle between stoves and sinks, looking left and right, studying. Ahead, the kitchen bent around in a narrow L shape. A row of stainless-steel cutting tables and cabinets lined one side of the room.

From beneath one of the tables, five bare toes wiggled against the tile floor.

“Mia?” Barely aware of the nurse jogging behind him, Ty hurried to where Mia sat huddled on the floor, but made himself slow down before he squatted next to her. He didn’t want to startle her.

When he did lower himself to her level, he was the one who startled.

Both hands wrapped around the handle, she clasped a butcher knife against her chest.

Though his heart thundered in his chest, he forced a professional calm into his voice. “Hey, what’cha doing down here?”

She blinked, her eyes vacant.

“Mia? Are you okay?”

This time he got a twitch out of her. A tiny sign of recognition.

“Can you tell me what you’re doing here?” He made no move toward her. Not with that knife so close to her heart.

Her lips trembled. “There was a…There was a man.”

“A man where?”

“In my room.”

“In your hospital room? Upstairs?”

She nodded, the movement jerky. At least he could see her breathing now, and a spot of color had returned to her cheeks.

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. He was dressed all in black. He had a hood.” Her gaze jumped up to his, suddenly electric. “He was going to hurt me.”

Damn. How could he have been so wrong about her? She’d seemed so stable yesterday, despite her confusion about being pushed down the bluff. That could be written off as a normal defensive mechanism. He wanted to write it off.

He wanted her to be normal.

But the paranoid delusion she described was anything but normal. Hiding beneath a stainless-steel counter with a butcher knife before dawn was anything but normal.

A knot tightened in his chest as he realized how long and painful the road to recovery would be for a person with an illness like this. And not just for her, but for her family, too. She had a son, she’d said.

“Mia, why don’t you put down the knife and we can talk about it, okay?”

Confusion clouded her green eyes. She glanced down, and looked at the weapon she held as if she’d never seen it before, hadn’t realized she held it. Her eyes went wide. The blade clattered to the floor.

Moving slowly, Nurse Renee leaned in and slid it away.

“There, that’s better.” Ty slowly raised his hand toward Mia. She hesitated to take his hand, to trust him, but he waited out her reluctance. Her shock.

What he wouldn’t give for a shower and a clean shirt. Yesterday’s clothes were getting a little ripe. He wouldn’t be leaving here for some time, though. When he did go, Mia Serrat would be going back to the Massachusetts Hospital of Mental Health with him—as a patient.

And she knew it—her green eyes had gone so dark they were almost black. He steeled himself against the urge to comfort her, to tell her everything would be all right. She had to face her illness, and he had to help her do it.

This was why he’d gotten into medicine. Into psychiatry. Because of people like Mia. People like his mother. Good people who needed help.

He just hadn’t known how it would eat his gut.

“Come on,” he urged. “Why don’t we go somewhere a little more comfortable and you can tell me what happened?”

Ten minutes later, Mia was tucked back between her covers with a mug of steaming tea and Dr. Handsome was perched on a stool next to the bed.

“You don’t believe me,” she said flatly.

“I’m just trying to understand—”

“Huh.” She gulped a mouthful of air. “Don’t give me the psychobabble. I’ve heard it all before.”

He raked a hand through his hair and stretched his back. “Okay, why do you think someone would want to hurt you?”

She cut him a sideways glance. “Oh, now you believe there is a man?”

“Just go with me here.”

She sighed, a wistful breath of air that rippled the tea. The steam above the mug swirled. “I don’t know.”

“Did he say anything?”

“No. He didn’t see me. Not at first.”

“How could he not see you?”

“I wasn’t in my room. I was in the hall…. Oh, what’s the use.”

“No, go ahead. You were in the hall.”

She blew on her tea and took a sip. “He stopped outside my door and looked around like, to see if anyone was watching.”

The doctor scrubbed his hands over his face. He looked tired, and he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday. “Are you sure it wasn’t a doctor? You were tired and had hit your head. Maybe you just thought—”

“How many doctors do you know that wear black hoodies pulled way up over their faces when they’re making rounds?”

“So you’re basing your assumption that someone is trying to kill you on one person’s bad choice of clothing?”

“He pulled a syringe out of his pocket!” She set her tea on the bedside table and crossed her arms over her chest. “Didn’t you tell me you left orders that I wasn’t to be given any medications so that you could clear me for release in the morning?”

He just stared at her, his eyes unreadable. Tired, but unreadable. The doctor look. She hated it.

“Fine,” she spat out and threw her head back on the pillow. “It was all my imagination.”

“Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Telling me what you think I want to hear.”

“Well you didn’t seem too pleased to hear the truth.”

“That someone is trying to kill you.”

“Well I’m not going to say that I was trying to kill myself.”

“I found you holding a knife to your chest.”

“For protection! Someone tried to kill me twice in one day!”

He frowned. “You said you slipped and fell off the bluff.”

“Then, I was telling you what you wanted to hear. Now, I’m telling you the truth.”

“How am I supposed to know which is the truth and which is the lie?”

She gritted her teeth, clenched her fists and groaned, then sank back against the bed, deflated. “Shrinks.”

He opened his mouth. She cut him off fast and hard. “Don’t you dare ask me how I feel about shrinks.”

He feigned innocence. “I was going to ask you if you’d like some more tea. Yours is cold by now.”

Terrific. A little humiliation to go with her mortification.

“No, thank you.”

He straightened and took a deep breath. She braced herself—she knew what that meant.

“Look, I think you should come to the MHMH for a few days. Straighten out in your head what really happened and didn’t happen yesterday and last night.”

Someone had dropped a bowling ball on her stomach. “No!”

He reached over and covered her clenched hand with his. His palm was warm, slightly rough. She jerked from beneath his touch.

“I’m afraid I have to insist,” he said.

She bolted upright in bed. She’d known this was coming, and still she wasn’t prepared. “You can’t do this!”

“On the contrary.” He stood, his shoulders rounded. “It’s my job to do this, whether I like it or not.” The expression on his face made her believe that in this case, he definitely did not. It was small comfort.

Every nerve in her body jumped. She was on fire. She licked her lips. “Look, you’re probably right. I slipped and fell on the bluff. And last night, I—I had a headache and I don’t sleep well in hospitals. It was probably just a nightmare. I didn’t really see anything at all. I overreacted a little.”

He stopped at the door. “I really hope that’s all it was. But I have to be sure.” His lips pressed together. “Not just for your sake, but for your son’s.”

If there was one thing in the world he could have said that would set her back, make her think about what was happening to her, that was it.

Her son.

If there really was something wrong with her, it wasn’t Todd’s fault. From the moment he’d been born, she’d vowed to protect him. Protect him she would—even if it was from herself.

Tears welled in her eyes. Dr. Handsome stayed in the door, looking torn.

“We’ll work it out,” he said quietly. “Don’t give up.”

Then he was gone.

Work it out? Hell, what was there to work out if she was losing her mind?