Killer Move - Michael Marshall [120]
So where was she?
Had someone got here before I did?
I couldn’t find any sign of her clothes, which I hoped was a good thing. I ran back into the corridor, nearly colliding with a man in a white coat. Recognition cut in and we swung back to face each other. It was the doctor I’d talked to that morning.
“Where is she?” he demanded angrily.
“You’re asking me?”
“You don’t know?”
“Of course I don’t know—or I wouldn’t be looking for her, would I? I called the hospital half an hour ago. I got put through, so she was here then.”
“I came by your wife’s room ten minutes ago but it was empty. I’ve been all over the floor looking for her.”
“Christ,” I said. “Have you seen anybody up here? Anybody who shouldn’t have been?”
“The entire hospital is full of people who shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Right now nobody has any idea who’s supposed to be here and who’s not.”
He seemed to suddenly clock my level of desperation, and took a mental step back. “But . . . what kind of person would you be talking about, anyway?”
“Never mind. I’ll find her,” I said, starting to back away up the corridor. Putting this guy on high alert wasn’t going to make anything easier. “Sure she’s just gone for a walk. She’s like that, hates being cooped up. If you find her, tell her to stay put, okay? Tell her I’m coming.”
“I will. Her condition’s improving, but there’s work to do. She needs more treatment, right away.”
“Gotcha.” I’d stopped listening by then—this guy had no idea of the real level of danger Steph was in, jeopardy that had nothing to do with the contents of a wine bottle—and hurried out into the reception area.
There was no point hurtling randomly around the hospital, however: run in the wrong direction and you’re getting farther away from where you need to be. Much though I wanted to keep myself in constant movement, to be doing something, I had to stop and think first.
Assume no one had come for her.
I had to assume this. If I started to think otherwise, then I was too late and nothing I did could make any difference. I couldn’t bear to go down that road.
So then, assume she moved herself.
This was a woman who’d been poisoned. I wasn’t sure if she’d actually been told this, or if she’d properly absorbed the fact, but half an hour ago she’d received a semihysterical (or at least throttled and intense) phone call from her husband, telling her to get dressed. Thinking, “Okay, that’s weird, but he seems serious,” she does what he asks. He takes longer to arrive than she expects (I’d driven up from the house as fast as I could, but evening traffic stopped me from hammering it all the way). So she gets twitchy. She can’t sit there in her room fully dressed, either, because a nurse could come in and read the riot act, ask what the hell she’s doing, and insist she get back into bed like a good patient. So she takes herself for a walk around the ward or the floor, to wait for me, catch me as soon as I arrive.
I liked that version. I certainly preferred it to the scenario in which someone got there before me.
I wasn’t sure what it meant I should do next, though. The doctor said he’d looked around the floor. How thoroughly? He’d presumably only been looking in the areas a patient might normally be expected to go (restrooms, the snack machines) and wouldn’t have checked every nook and cranny. A hospital would have a lot of nooks and crannies. Did I have time to check them all—when Steph might not even be on this floor?
The area around the nurse’s station was less crowded now. Someone was getting a grip on the situation, and one of the nurses gave me a hard stare as I passed, as if to check I was legitimate. I wasn’t sure what the answer was. It seemed like everyone was looking at everyone suspiciously, and for a moment I was seized by the vertiginous conviction that nobody was here legitimately, that everybody was involved in something I didn