Could I Have This Dance? (61 page)

“I don’t know, Brett. It seems that over and over, you’ve been there when I was in trouble. Why did you stop at my house after Roger Jones threatened me? Why were you the one to help my brother? I can’t seem to shake the feeling that maybe God keeps putting you in my path.”

“These aren’t coincidences, Claire.”

The thought chilled her, bringing excited tingles to her shoulders again. God?

He coaxed her forward, kissing her again, caressing her lips, his mouth warm, seeking more.

“We need to go slow, Brett,” she cautioned, her mind a whirlwind of confusion. Brett was right. He could sense her desire to give in. But she knew she needed space, an opportunity to regain balance in her life, balance that had been upset by her dedication to surgery, and the overhanging cloud of risk that HD had become.

She gently extended her arm, moving her hand against his chest. “If this is right … if we are right for each other, I’m sure God will keep bringing you in my path.”

His eyes were searching. “I’m here now.”

“Don’t tempt me, Brett,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to be distracted from my goal. A romance with you is so appealing, but—”

“But what? How can you resist what’s in your heart?”

She took a deep breath. A deep, cleansing breath. “HD is changing the way I look at my future. It complicates things, Brett. It complicates love, marriage, having kids, my life as a surgeon, and the way I look at the future. I may only have a few years left. I want to be sure I make the right choices.”

“That’s why you should only live for today. Embrace love today, Claire. We don’t know what tomorrow holds.”

She could see the hurt in his eyes. And knowing he yearned for her so badly made it agonizing to say no. She shook her head. “I need time, Brett. I want to be sure.”

He looked away. Was he shielding his eyes, to hide his hurt? He walked to the entrance to the den before he turned around, his manly physique perfectly framed in the doorway. “Remember when we first met, how we walked on the beach?”

She nodded.

“Let’s do it again, Claire. I’ll make dinner Saturday night, a celebration of sorts, a toast to your commitment to making the right choices. We can stroll along the beach and dream about the future.”

“The future,” she muttered. A dream or a nightmare? “It scares me, Brett.”

“Don’t be afraid. I’ll be there to hold your hand.”

She nibbled her lower lip. She didn’t want to cry.

“Seven o’clock?”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “It sounds wonderful.”

Billy Ray Davis wasn’t used to being discarded like junk mail. Sure, he’d opened his mouth when he shouldn’t have, but he was doing it in an honest attempt to get Ramsey another case. If you could call anything that Billy Ray did “honest.” How was he to know that the tearful young woman in the chapel was Claire McCall?

He huffed and yanked open a drawer of the metal filing cabinet in front of him. Ramsey couldn’t say he didn’t know what Billy was doing. In fact, over the years, Billy had honed the craft of squeezing his prey in just the right way to get the information he needed. And he’d done it under the tutelage of Ramsey Plank. So what gave Ramsey the right to blame everything on Billy Ray?

He shuffled through the files in front of him, investigations past, the secret lives of clients, the dirt he’d dug, enough manure to fertilize a large vegetable garden. There had to be something here he could use to his advantage.

Billy Ray paused and shoveled a handful of peanuts out of a glass container on his desk. He popped the nuts into his mouth, one by one, thinking of ways to even the score.

He thought about Claire McCall, and her mistake which would cost the university a fortune.

And he thought of Ramsey taking his third to the bank. Without Billy Ray.

He thought about his unfortunate encounter with Claire McCall after she’d lost her brother.

Hmmm. She asked me to talk to the Joneses and tell them about the doctor’s brother. She wanted to know if they were pleased with Ramsey’s services.

An idea began to formulate. He slowly chewed a mouthful of peanuts. Hard thinking like this definitely demanded more calories.

Ramsey seems to forget that I was the one who convinced Celia and Roger Jones to file this suit. I was the one who found them huddled in the hospital chapel after losing their little girl.

Maybe it is time I paid Celia Jones a little visit, just to have a little chat about Ramsey and poor young Dr. McCall.

The following day, Claire spent the morning nurturing her African violets and cleaning her neglected house. It wasn’t exactly her favorite vacation activity, but things had deteriorated to a level of intolerance for her, and the minuteness of sweeping and dusting seemed to settle her soul.

At noon, she called Detective Beckler. She wanted an update, and he hadn’t returned her call.

His voice was muffled, and she imagined him at his desk with a large deli sandwich. “I haven’t had much in the way of luck, Dr. McCall. Everything seems to check out okay.”

“What about the skid marks? A sleeping man doesn’t brake.”

“He does if startled awake just before running off the road.”

Claire nodded. “Brett Daniels told me you talked to him about his truck.”

“Another dead end,” he groaned.

She heard a slurping noise.
Make that a large deli sandwich and a drink. You probably don’t do diet soda, do you, sir?

“What about Roger Jones? Did you ask him about chasing me?”

“He’s got an alibi. His wife claims he was at church all evening.” He paused, and Claire could hear the rattle of a foil bag.

Make that a large deli sandwich, drink, and a bag of chips.

“I’m no judge, Mr. Beckler, but Roger Jones doesn’t seem the type to spend a midweek evening in church.”

“His wife claims that she’s been trying to get him to come for a long time. He hadn’t gone since the funeral of his little—Oh, say, Dr. McCall, I’m sorry to bring that up.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “Anyway, she says that her niece was being baptized, or something. He agreed to come and stood in front of the whole congregation for the ceremony. She said she’d give me a list of members if I wanted to question witnesses.”

“Oh, I saw him at church. He chased me out of the parking lot.”

“But that’s not her story. She says seeing you there flipped him out, that he wasn’t about to go in if you were there. So he stormed off. She says they weren’t chasing you.” He paused and slurped his drink. “Ms. Jones said she finally got him calmed down enough to return to the church.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I’m not sure. They seem sincere. But something’s bothering that woman big time. She feels guilty about something. I’ve got a few more leads to check. Maybe I will talk to someone in the church, just to make sure his alibi checks out.” He paused. Claire heard more crunching before he continued. “But I’ve got to tell you, I have a feeling that all of this is going nowhere. I think your brother just ran off the road. Maybe a bee stung him or something. Maybe he was lost and was looking for a map in the glove box. There are a hundred reasons why he could have been momentarily distracted.”

“I guess so.”

“Try not to worry.”

His voice became muffled again, before he came back. “Listen, I’ve got to run. I have your cell phone number. I’ll call you if I get anywhere.”

Claire hung up the phone and stretched. The detective’s work hadn’t solved the questions that she feared would remain unanswered forever. She drummed her fingers on the kitchen counter.

It was time to do a little snooping of her own.

The clerk in medical records pushed the patient record across the counter. “This can’t leave the department. It hasn’t been completely coded yet, and that means there’s a lot of money outstanding.”

“Sure.” Claire smiled sweetly and carried the record to the physician dictating area.

She opened to the history and physical exam, reading the details of Clay’s resuscitation and the frantic efforts to keep him alive. She saw a handwritten noteby the paramedics which documented their failed efforts
to secure an appropriate airway, and the emergency cricothyroidotomy performed by Dr. Daniels at the crash scene. Her skin bristled as she visualized the drama unfolding.

She turned to the next section, consultation notes, to read reports from the neurosurgeons and the orthopedic surgeons who assisted in Clay’s care. She read through Beatrice Hayes’ dictation, which detailed Clay’s family history of Huntington’s disease and alcoholism. Claire felt her blood begin to boil. Beatrice had asked her all those questions in front of Dr. Rogers, all the while knowing the answers! Claire hadn’t given her any satisfaction, except to report that the family history was noncontributory, but Bea’s report was full of the details that Claire had declined to give her. Bea just wanted to make sure Dr. Rogers found out about her father’s HD.

She looked carefully at the lab data, noting the absence of any alcohol or drugs on the screening test. There went her theory about Clay overdosing on the medication Dr. Jenkins gave. Unless the Zoloft wouldn’t be detected on the routine screen.

She turned the pages, flipping through the transfusion records, with a slip completed for each of the multiple units of packed red blood cells that Clay received. Each slip recorded signatures of the transfusionist, start and stop times, and his blood type. Everything was documented carefully to avoid a transfusion mismatch catastrophe. Wow. They must have gone through his entire blood volume three or four times.

She turned to look at his X-ray reports when the information she’d just read began to claw its way back into consciousness. Something didn’t feel right. Her gut tightened. Her palms began to sweat. Dread had crept upon her, and she sensed a rising tide of panic.

Wait a minute! She flipped back to the transfusion slips. They had given Clay type-A blood.

Claire closed her eyes, attempting to remember. She was type O, the same as her mother. Wally was type B. She was almost certain. She’d done the blood-typing herself for a college project. No, it couldn’t be. She needed to look at her genetics project again.

Clay couldn’t be type A if Daddy was B and Mom was O. They gave Clay the wrong type of blood! That could have caused a problem with clotting, leading to the bleeding that he experienced and, in turn, his death.

She flipped the pages looking at each transfusion slip. Each one was the same. Type A. Clay was a victim of a fatal transfusion reaction.

Who was responsible?

She read through the progress notes documenting the nursing notes chronicling Clay’s last hours. Yes, all of these things could have been the result ofa blood-bank mistake.

Unless … A thought struck her head-on, derailing her initial assessment.

She stood, shoved the chart back across the counter at the records clerk, and stumbled from the room in a daze. It couldn’t be.

She jogged across the parking lot to Brett’s Mercedes and completed the trip to her rented brownstone, trying desperately to quell the terror rising within her.
I must have remembered wrong. Or could I have made a mistake when I typed Daddy’s blood in my old genetics class?

She jumped from the car and ran into her house and up the stairs to the bedroom closet where she dropped to her knees to pull out the old genetics project. Wally was type B. Della was type O.

Her hand went to her mouth as the realization struck.

Her mind raced with thoughts of betrayal, deception, lies, and cover up.

Was someone trying to cover the truth?

Slowly she stood and went to the phone to dial her mother. After six rings, Claire was about to hang up.

After eight rings, she heard a voice. “Hello.”

For a moment, she thought she’d dialed the wrong number. “Uh … hello.”

“Claire!”

When he spoke her name, she recognized her father’s voice. She hadn’t known him to answer the phone in months. “Daddy?” She hesitated. “Is Mom there?”

“Sssheese at the ssstore.”

Claire could hear a bump, bump, bump. Is he having trouble holding the phone still? Or striking it against his head?

“Could you have her call me? It’s important.”

“Sssure.”

“As soon as she gets in.”
Will you remember?

“Okay.”

She was about to say good-bye when she heard him begin to speak again. He spoke mechanically, and Claire could imagine his face twitching, refusing to obey, not allowing him to express his emotions through a normal smile or frown.

“Cllaaire,” he started. “I llove yyyou.”

The message caught her off guard. It had been years since she’d heard him say it.

“Daddy, I—”

It sounded like Wally was crying. His words were normally slurred, but his voice had thickened to the point where Claire had to concentrate
to understand. But after a moment, she understood. He hadn’t told Clay. Told him what?

He was upset about something.

Because he didn’t have a chance to tell Clay he loved him.

The realization pierced her heart. He didn’t want to make the same mistake again. Wally cried, and the sound began to break her heart.

“Don’t cry, Daddy,” she pleaded. “I understand. I do.” She wiped away her own tears, weighing her reply. She didn’t speak until she knew it was true. She searched her heart, and in amazement the perception grew. She’d forgiven him! Somehow in the hearing of those three little words, her heart had melted. The icy bitterness was gone.

“I love you too, Daddy. I love you too.”

She said good-bye and laid down the phone.

As she walked to the bedroom, she felt her heart would burst. Her body retched with sobs, a release of emotion she could not and would not control. Oh, how she wondered at the impact of those three little words, the words she was certain her father would never speak again! She looked at the blood-typing poster on the floor. The message which had seemed so important a moment ago, now was almost forgotten, lost in the wake of the gift from Wally.

She studied the poster for a moment before gazing at her own reflection in the mirror. She lifted her index finger and traced the outline of her face upon the glass surface.