Part 16 (1/2)
They brought me in after a traffic accident.”
-That probably explains it then. I never forget a face.” He smiled ather. ”Well, you look fine now.
Was there some reason why you-”
”Faith.” Kane was suddenly there, and she was a little surprised when heput an arm around her and drew her toward him-and away from the youngdoctor-in a gesture that was curiously protective. ”I see you found Dr.Blake.”
Faith blinked at the name tag on the doctor's green scrubs. ”I guessso,” she murmured, feeling oddly out-of-sync.
Kane said, ”Doctor, if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions aboutthe day Miss. Parker was brought in here-”
Sound seemed to be fading in and out. She'd hear a few words of whatKane or Dr. Blake said, then the words would fade and she could hearonly a distant rus.h.i.+ng sound, like ... water? Maybe. Like water from afall, or gus.h.i.+ng out of a pipe under great pressure ... It was thestrangest experience, not frightening but unsettling. She looked aroundher, seeing people talking, seeing noises she should have heard and yetdidn't, like the crash of several boxes falling from a shelf, and thedespairing wail of a woman bent over the still body of an injured child.
All she could hear was the rus.h.i.+ng water. It went on and on, filling herears, all her other senses, her mind. She looked at Kane, watching hislips move, saw Dr. Blake respond, his face serious and a bit perplexed.
She realized she was barely aware of Kane's physical nearness; she stoodin the shelter of his arm, yet felt as if she were somewhere else, where water rushed and the musty smell of cold earth surrounded her. Where shefelt a smothering sense of claustrophobia, the panic of being trappedand helpless. She was alone. And she didn't know which was worse, theawful musty smell and cold or the devastating knowledgee that shecouldn't ... that she'd never ... Faith groped for knowledgee just out ofher reach, and found only blackness. She could hear the water, smell themoldy earth all around her, but the emotions had faded once more intosilence. Part of her wanted to close her eyes and concentrate, butremembering the abrupt unconsciousness of another such attempt stoppedher.
That wasn't all that stopped her. She was afraid and she knew it. Afraidof what she might see if she closed her eyes and really looked at thatplace she could hear and smell. Afraid of what awaited her there. It wasfear of the unknown, of a nightmare, of the darkness that lay justbeyond what the mind understood.
She didn't want to look, didn't want to go there.
Didn't want to feel those horrible emotions or to see- ”Faith?”
Like a soap bubble popping, the sounds of rus.h.i.+ng water were gone, andas she looked up into Kane's concerned eyes, what she heard was thenormal activity of a busy emergency room. ”Yes?” Her voice soundedabsentminded even to her.
”Are you all right?”
”Fine. I'm fine.”
Kane frowned at her. ”Are you sure?”
She wondered when the doctor had left them.
”Quite sure. But I'm afraid I ... I wasn't listening.
Did Dr. Blake tell us anything helpful?” He looked around and said,”Let's get out of here.”
He put her in his car and drove them a few blocks to a restaurant thatwasn't crowded; they were given a booth near a window, where thewaitress quickly brought them coffee and left them alone.
Still distracted, Faith said, ”What did Dr. Blake say about theaccident?”
”The way he remembers it, preliminary tests showed some ambiguousresults. Maybe there were alcohol and muscle relaxants in your system,and maybe not. All he knew for sure was that your vital signs werestrongand was fairly normal that something had put you into a coma. He didn'tthink it was the head Injury and suspected something more toxic tha.n.a.lcohol and medication in your system, so he ordered further tests. Hewent off duty shortly afterward. When he came back the next day, he wastold you'd been transferred upstairs. He a.s.sumed that happened becauseyou were stable, and that your regular doctor had taken over your case.”
Kane paused. ”Funny thing, though. The paperwork that's supposed to bekept there 'in the ER seems to be missing.” 'Could it have been sentupstairs with me?”
”A copy should have been, and some paperwork was certainly part of thefile that ended up with Dr. Burnett. But the admitting records should beon file in the ER. They aren't.”
”I don't suppose we have much chance of finding out what happened tothem?”
”You saw how busy that place was-and on a Monday morning, hardly theirbusiest time. My guess is that we'll never be able to trace whathappened to those records between the time you were admitted and whenyou were put under Burnett's care. But we can a.s.sume any number ofpeople had access and could have tampered with the test results.”
”What about the lab that did the tests?”
”It's there in the hospital. Their procedure is to keep a copy of allresults in their own files. But in this case ”
”Let me guess. Missing paperwork.”
”Afraid so. And the blood and tissue samples they used for the testswere destroyed afterward, per standard procedure.”
”Am I being paranoid in thinking all this missing and misplacedpaperwork means something other than simple human error?”
”I don't think so. When there are this many glitches in a normallyefficient system, it usually means someone's been tampering.”
Faith sipped her coffee, grateful for the warmth because she'd feltchilled ever since her strange experience in the emergency room. ”Thenit's a safe bet that we'll never know for sure if there was actuallyalcohol in my blood or I was drugged intentionally.”
”Probably not. But I'm willing to put my money on your having beendrugged.”
”It seems strange to hope that that's what happened, but I really didn'twant to find out I'd been stupid enough to drink and get behind thewheel.”
Kane's gaze was intent. ”No, I doubt you were so reckless.”
She wondered what he was basing that doubt on, but didn't ask. Instead,she said, ”If I was drugged, the question is, who did it? I guess thewhy is obvious-they wanted me out of action.”
”Yeah. Grabbed you in the parking garage would be my guess. It was a bitafter hours, the area likely to be deserted, so it's a goodpossibility.”
”So why didn't I 'just go for a phone and call the police once they letme go? Why did I attempt TO drive?”
”You may have already been disoriented from the drug, not thinkingclearly. They probably held on to you long enough to make sure of that.
We do have half an hour or so unaccounted for, from the time you leftthe garage to the crash only six miles away.”
”I suppose.” But Faith remembered the flash in which she had remindedDinah that they couldn't trust the police. Had she, even in a druggedand panicked state, felt that the only thing she could do was get toDinah as soon as possible?
It might have been better if you had. It might have been so different... ”That's the answer then,” he said with bitterness rather thanrelief, calling from another pay phone.
”Just like you thought. She's gone to Macgregor.
”They're 'in a restaurant right now, heads together and talking up a storm.”
”Get back here now.”
”But shouldn't I follow-”