A Man to Die For Read online

  Pulling over one of the beanbag chairs, Casey collapsed into it. "Are you into dream interpretation?"

  Silence. Poppi's hands drifted down. "Heavy."

  Casey focused her own eyes on the intricate Celtic knot of a new Irish artist Poppi favored. Never ending, never beginning, it seduced you with its flow until you found yourself completely lost within the internecine tangle of its design. Once in, never able to escape.

  "What haunts?" Poppi asked.

  Casey rubbed between her eyes. The rain had picked up, silvering the light in the airy room. "My apartment in Creve Coeur."

  "That makes sense. There's an aura, you know"—the hands fluttered again, as if caught in a languid dance—"red, with shimmers of green... like your very own aurora borealis..."

  Taking a long slug of soda, Casey just shook her head. "No wonder I could never understand Magical Mystery Tour. When do you expect touchdown?"

  "Fading. In another twenty minutes I'll be... on the phone to the League of Women Voters." Meaning sanity was returning fast. Poppi always slid to a three-point landing from these things. She'd been studied in the seventies and warned in the eighties, a person without addictions, one impervious to the worst effects of experimentation.

  "Apartment?" she asked suddenly, her head turning fractionally. "That is heavy. What's it been?"

  "Seven years. You know that. I dreamed I was locked in and couldn't get out. I kept fighting, yelling, you know. Couldn't touch the furniture, couldn't get out the door."

  "Mmmm."

  Which meant, processing. Poppi knew Casey better than anyone. She'd been there through it all, sharing the dreams, buffering the defeats, brightening the monotony.

  "Work?" she asked.

  "No more ludicrous than usual. I was chastised for doing my job and praised for not rocking the boat."

  Good team playing was how Tom had put it. He didn't like hotshot players, none of this one wing down stuff when rounding the bases. Everybody pulled together, which meant that Casey shouldn't stand up and scream about inadequate staffing. It only reflected poorly on the rest of the club. It was a philosophy amazingly similar to that of the administration's. The only good nurse was a quiet nurse.

  "Home?" Poppi asked.

  Casey snorted. "We're into novena season there. I wouldn't mind so much if she didn't remind me every time she puts on her bandanna that it's my soul she's praying for."

  "Echoes from the past?"

  "Not a one. Ed is perfectly happy pretending he never knew me."

  "Ed didn't live with you in Creve Coeur."

  "I was getting to that." An even more difficult memory than Ed's massive passive-aggression. A real foray into denial. "Nothing there, either."

  "Social life?"

  "You're looking at it."

  "Ah."

  So, was the dream that mysterious after all? She did feel trapped, caught between a job she'd been at too long, a family more comfortable in the Middle Ages, a history of relationships that had worked out just about as well as her family, and a future that for all purposes looked like more of the same.

  "Could be worse, you know," Poppi philosophized.

  "I wish you wouldn't say that," Casey begged, taking another good swallow of caffeine and focusing her own attention on the patterns of rain against the big window. "Every time somebody says it could be worse, it usually is. The way my life is running, Benny will come home a Moonie."

  "You have the power to change what you want," Poppi intoned. "Only you."

  "Easy for you to say," Casey retorted. "You don't need anything changed."

  "You came home," her friend countered with deceptive laziness, "From what I can remember, that didn't entail shoveling dirt on your head and chanting the Dies Irae."

  "I want religious metaphors, I'll go home, thanks. Remember my talking about Hunsacker?"

  Pause, grin. "Yeah. The man with the hands."

  "I have to go pay obeisance to him the next time I see him at work. He intervened on my behalf."

  "Nice guy."

  "I don't think so."

  Poppi's head made it all the way over now, and her eyes were fairly clear. "Why?"

  But ail Casey could offer was a shake of her head. "I still don't know. It's just a gut feeling, little things that don't mesh. It's the way he wraps everybody around his finger—especially the people who should know better."

  "Jealous?"

  Casey grinned. "Sure. But I've already gotten past that. This is something that bristles the hair on my neck. It's like instead of food, he ingests groveling."

  Poppi turned back to her ceiling. "Check his forehead for the sign."

  Casey gave up on the window and just settled her head back against all those beans, her eyes closing. Funny, the whispers of that claustrophobia still nagged at her. The dream hadn't quite let loose.

  What was she so afraid of?

  "I met him, ya know."

  That brought Casey's head back up with a snap. "What?"

  Poppi smiled lazily at the ceiling. "We favor the same fund-raisers. He's quite the golden boy."

  Casey sat all the way up, feet flat on the floor, arms hanging over the sag of the chair. "What did you think of him?"

  "Did you know"—Poppi's hands lifted slowly, as if tracking something in the air, and finally catching it—"that butterflies have teeth? Big, vicious ones."

  Casey paused, not sure just what Poppi was addressing. It was always a hazard when getting an opinion from her.

  "You can't see them, of course, until they bite you."

  Then she smiled again, that dreamy smile of self-satisfaction that told Casey she'd made some enormous philosophical statement. Sometimes Casey thought she should show up here with an interpreter.

  Then Poppi turned her face toward Casey's, and the smile dimmed. "Don't get bitten," she warned, and her eyes were as clear as a cold night.

  At least Casey left Poppi's knowing that somebody else in this world didn't think Dr. Dale Hunsacker walked on water.

  * * *

  "I love him," Ms. Elliott gushed. "He's just so good to me."

  Casey stood a bit stiffly, clipboard in hand, wondering at the chance of Hunsacker coming down to see this doyen of the volunteer set for her leg cramp.

  "I know he's busy," the little woman continued, plump hands fluttering about her Adolpho attire, her dark hair damn near spray-painted in place, and her face swept clean of lines by Fernando Alvarez, the plastic surgeon to the stars. "I even hate to bother him about it, but he did say to call him and only him about anything. He did say that he knew what was best for me."

  Casey knew just what to say. "Mmmm."

  "You don't think he'd really mind that I called him, do you? I mean, his nurse said he'd be here, after all. And it does bother me. You'll tell him that, won't you? That it really bothers me?" Her sudden smile was coquettish in a rusty sort of way, as if she were getting back into practice. "I don't want him mad at me."

  Casey smiled and pulled out her stethoscope for vital signs. "Why don't I get all the basics and then call him, okay?"

  Ms. Elliott hopped right up on the cart. Casey wanted to scream. After living with her mother for all these years, she had a really low tolerance level for passive-aggressive people. And the more she saw Hunsacker's patients down here, the more that particular trait showed up. Simpering, whining, executing elaborate flanking maneuvers just to keep from displeasing him when they needed to see him.

  Casey slipped the stethoscope into place and wrapped the cuff around Ms. Elliott's arm. What she really wanted to do was tell her to be an adult. But of course she hadn't been thus far, so after fifty years what were the chances?

  Casey was trying to figure out how she could arrange her dinner to escape Hunsacker, when she walked right out the patient door and found him at her desk. She hadn't seen him since that night she'd talked to Evelyn about him, and yet the hair on her neck went right back on alert.

  "I hear you have a live one for me," he greeted her,
his smile expectant, his legs crossed, his notebook out.

  "Virginia Elliott?" she countered, freezing on the spot. Now that she was faced with thanking him, she didn't want to do it. She didn't know how to do it and keep her pride, because she was irrationally afraid that no matter how she handled this, he'd walk away with a piece of her.

  She stood before a door, and couldn't get out, and it swelled in her chest like hot acid.

  "Oh, yes, Virginia," he answered with a knowing nod, his face curling into a slight smirk. "The cocker spaniel of the Junior League. I often wonder how she decides what underwear to put on without consulting somebody on it."

  Casey wondered whether she was supposed to answer. Did he have anything nice to say about any of his patients? Was he intentionally cruel, or just thoughtlessly? And should she feel worse because her own thoughts had so closely paralleled his words?

  "She has a persistent cramping in her right thigh," Casey said carefully, handing over the clipboard. "She said that you told her to contact you about anything, so here she is. Want a potassium or calcium level?"

  Slipping his notebook back into his monogrammed shirt, he pushed away from the desk. "Let me talk to her first. Go ahead and get the pelvic stuff."

  Casey knew her mouth dropped. Her obligation to thank Hunsacker was lost.

  Hunsacker seemed to be anticipating her. Leaning a little close, he smiled with some superiority. "Sometimes Virginia gets pelvic cramps that radiate to her thighs. I'll do a pelvic."

  Casey hated him, right there on the spot, for controlling Mrs. Elliott, for controlling her.

  "Why are you thinking of doing it?" she asked, knowing damn well she was going to get into trouble again for the loose hold she kept on her opinions. "To get back at her for something, or to get back at me?"

  The light went out in his eyes. "It seems to me that I told you once, I do pelvics on all my patients."

  "No matter what's wrong with them?"

  He seemed to grow somehow, to harden. "I'm a gynecologist," he answered as if he shouldn't have to answer at all. "I do pelvics."

  And what else? she wanted to say. Casey held her tongue just in time. Still, she didn't move. "I don't see any reason for a pelvic," she countered as calmly as she could, fists balled at her sides, back as ramrod stiff as Hunsacker's.

  And just that fast, the dark emptiness in his eyes flooded with animosity. A hate so virulent that it left Casey shaking. The handsome man who was so good at flattery and affection suddenly became unrecognizable.

  Casey looked around for witnesses, for verification, but for once the hall was empty. Everybody was in with patients, leaving only Casey to see the livid emotion in Hunsacker's eyes.

  "I don't think you understand," he warned, bent so that his face was within inches of Casey's, his voice low and cold. "You really shouldn't challenge me on this. You don't have any idea how difficult I can make things for you."

  If he'd screamed and ranted, Casey couldn't have been more shaken. Just the control in that soft voice of his was enough to make good his promise. But then, Casey had never been known for discretion. Her own temper got the best of her. After all, this was a public place, not an alley. This was the twentieth century.

  "I know how difficult other doctors have tried to make it for me when I disagreed with them," she countered just as coldly, shaking with the effort to maintain her composure. "And I'm still here."

  His smile was chilling. Cold and flat and frightening. "You still don't understand," he promised in a breath that fanned her cheek like a fetid wind. "You really don't. You don't want me mad at you. Now, go get the pelvic equipment, or believe me when I say I'll take matters into my own hands."

  Casey was left standing alone in the hall, trembling and flushed. Afraid. She'd walked the halls for twelve years, been shot at, beaten by a drunk, threatened by innumerable addicts, prisoners, and belligerent relatives, gone one on one with manic depressives in full cry. But she'd never really been gut-deep afraid. No matter what, she'd managed to maintain a certain control. She was the one, after all, with the restraints, with the sedatives and the security guards.

  Something about Hunsacker's warning, though, scared her. Really scared her. Something illogical gripped her, a cold snake of dread born of Hunsacker's words. More, of his voice, his eyes. Casey had seen deadly earnest before. She'd faced killers who promised to do it again. She'd talked down delusional psychotics who vowed revenge. Something in Hunsacker's expression reminded her of them. It wasn't the usual threat she heard from an insulted doctor—her job, her future, her salary. He'd struck something primal.

  For the first time in a week, Casey thought of Wild Woman Wanda. She wondered if this had been what Hunsacker had looked like during that famous white trash fight. Had he leaned in really close and threatened her so that only she was afraid? Had Wanda, who wasn't afraid of anything, felt fear? Had she walked into the fight with her blithe assurance, her voice as sharp as his scalpel, and walked away trembling and uncertain, unnerved by his sudden silence, by the frozen wasteland behind Hunsacker's threats and promises?

  What did Casey do about this threat? Did she tell somebody? Did she try and communicate just what had happened?

  Nobody had seen it; nobody would believe it. So a doctor had threatened to make things very difficult for her. If nurses made out reports every time that happened, they'd have more documentation than the Library of Congress.

  And this was not just any doctor. Tom likened Hunsacker to Steve Carlton. The administration didn't think to look further than the dollar signs the OB represented, and the community at large was dazzled by the way he looked in a tux. As for the other nurses, who could be counted on when no one else could for support in a situation like this, they were blinded by that smile, those nice biceps.

  Maybe Evelyn. Casey hadn't talked to her since the last time she'd seen Hunsacker, and Evelyn seemed to have no love lost for the man. Maybe she'd heard more about Wanda, or maybe she had some insight into Hunsacker Casey didn't. Suddenly Casey had to know.

  k was Millie who found Casey at the desk. Spinning on one toe, charts in hand, the tiny blonde came to an uncertain stop, her smile of greeting dying.

  "Casey, are you sick?" she asked, her uniform skirt swirling to a stop after her.

  Casey started badly, foundering for a minute. Rubbing the dampness from her palms, she turned a wry eye on the young nurse. "Dr. Hunsacker and I seem to have had a disagreement."

  Millie's eyes widened in astonishment. "Oh, no," she retorted, though the tone was more "that couldn't happen" than "how bad for you." Millie was a definite acolyte, new to nursing, struggling for acceptance, uncertain of her attraction as a woman or abilities as a nurse. Perfect medium to cultivate Hunsacker worship.

  Casey thought to tell her. She came close to explaining just what Hunsacker had looked like when he'd spoken, how he'd leaned so close that only Casey could hear his venom. But seeing those guileless eyes, she knew she wouldn't. Nobody'd believe her anyway.

  "Can I help?" Millie asked.

  And Casey knew that because Millie was still too new to question Hunsacker's judgment, she could help. It didn't do Mrs. Elliott any good, but it got Casey off the hook.

  She was being passive-aggressive, avoiding conflict, skirting away from confrontation. Just like Ed. Just like Helen. Just like her when she'd stood in that damned living room so many years ago, eyes focused on the red slash of an afghan, fighting for courage and knowing she wouldn't find any.

  * * *

  "So, then they went in to check why this sixteen-year-old chickie hadn't been peeing," Marva was yelling over the music and crowd noise, "and pulled out six birthday candles!"

  Casey burst out laughing. Evidently she'd missed all the fun up at the front end of the hall tonight.

  "The best part," Marva said, waving off the laughter with her beer, "is that the mother says, 'Well, I never seen her eat them candles.'"

  Both of them laughed now, oblivious to the jostle of bodies aro
und their tiny table at the back of the bar. Casey saluted the story with her own beer. "Gee, Marva, for my birthday, I'd be just as happy if they'd put the candles in a cake."

  "What I want to know," Marva retorted, "is who she got to blow 'em out."

  Casey was feeling better. It had taken six hours of unrelenting hell—three traumas, two MIs, and an assortment of hot bellies, fractures, and chronic lungers—not to mention a jaunt with Marva to the Body Shop, Mother Mary's local hangout, to effect it, but she found the persistent urge to look over her shoulder was easing. The further she got from Hunsacker's threat, the more she questioned it, the more she doubted her own impression.

  She didn't like him, she didn't trust him, and she'd had her reason why tonight. The guy couldn't deal with it when he couldn't manipulate the people around him. Casey seemed to especially piss him off. She didn't like his familiarity or his greasy smiles or his control games with his patients, and he knew it.

  So he was being a jerk. Casey'd known one or two doctors before him who'd been jerks. She was sure she'd trip over a few more before she hung up her guns.

  But just the same, she was glad Evelyn had promised to meet them at the Body Shop for drinks. Casey needed to talk to somebody on her side. She needed to hear that Wanda had walked back into work unscathed and unrepentant.

  "And this kid's mother says that little April hasn't ever known a man, so why isn't she intact in the 'you-know-where' place?" Marva continued, eyes sharp and wry, her head shaking. "Why do those people name their children like that?" she demanded. "April. Shit, that's almost as bad as Crystal and Dawn."

  "You should talk," Casey retorted, "Your middle name's Placenta."

  Marva's grin was wide and unabashed, lighting her whole face. "My mama thought it was the nurse's name," she explained yet again. "She saw the nurse walk in, and the doctor yells, 'Oh, look! Placenta!' He seemed so excited she thought he must really like her."