orders?’
‘What orders?’
‘I’m the boy’s physician now,’ snapped DelRay. ‘Dr Elliot has no authority. She shouldn’t even be in here.’
The trooper stared at Claire, and his anger was unmistakable. You used me.
Paul thrust out his hand. ‘Give me the blood tubes, Dr Elliot.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m following up an abnormal test. It could affect your son’s treatment.’
‘You’re no longer his doctor! Give me the tubes.’
She swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Darnell. But I can’t.’
‘This is assault!’ Paul turned to the others in the room, and his face was florid with outrage. ‘That’s what this is, you know! She assaulted my son with that needle, and she knows she has no authority!’ He looked at Claire. ‘You’ll be hearing from my attorney.’
‘Paul,’ interjected DelRay, playing the role of diplomat to the hilt. ‘I’m sure Dr Elliot doesn’t want this kind of complication in her life.’ He turned to her and spoke with the smug voice of reason. ‘Come on, Claire. This is turning into a circus. Just give me the tubes.’
She looked down at the two tubes she was holding, weighing their value against a charge of assault. Against the probable loss of her hospital privileges. She felt the gaze of everyone in the room watching, even enjoying, her humiliation.
In silence she handed over the blood tubes.
DelRay took them with a look of triumph. Then he turned to the Maine state trooper. ‘The boy is my patient. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly clear, Dr DelRay.’
No one said a word to Claire as she walked out of the ward, but she knew they were staring at her. She kept her gaze focused straight ahead as she turned the corner and punched the down button. Only when she’d stepped into the elevator and the door slid shut did she finally allow her hand to slip into her coat pocket.
The third blood tube was still there.
She rode the elevator to the basement lab and found Anthony sitting at his lab bench, surrounded by racks of test tubes.
‘I’ve got a sample of the boy’s blood,’ she told him.
‘For the drug screen?’
‘Yes. I’ll fill out the requisition myself.’
‘The forms are on that shelf over there.’
She took one off the stack and frowned at the letterhead, Anson Biologicals. ‘Are we using a new reference lab? I’ve never seen one of these forms before.’
He glanced up from a whirring centrifuge. ‘We just switched over to Anson a few weeks ago. The hospital signed a new contract with them for our complex chem and radioimmunoassay work.’
‘Why?’
‘I think it was a cost issue.’
She scanned the form, then checked off the box for gas chromatography/mass spectrometry; comprehensive drug and tox screen. In the space for comments at the bottom of the page, she wrote: ‘Fourteen-year-old boy with apparent drug-induced psychosis and aggression. This lab test is for my personal research only. Report results directly to me.’ And she signed her name.
Noah answered the knock on his front door and found Amelia standing outside in the dark. She was wearing a bandage, a bright slash of white across her temple, and he could tell it hurt her to smile. In her discomfort, the best she could muster was a crooked lifting of one side of her mouth.
He was so surprised by her unexpected visit, he couldn’t think of a single intelligent thing to say, so he just gaped at her, as dazzled as a peasant who suddenly finds himself in the presence of royalty.
‘This is for you,’ she said, and she held out a small brown package. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t find anything nice to wrap it in.’
He took the package, but his gaze remained on her face. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m okay. I guess you heard that Mrs Horatio…’ She paused, swallowing back tears.
He nodded. ‘My mom told me.’
Amelia touched the bandage on her face. Again he saw a flash of tears in her eyes. ‘I met your mom. In the emergency room. She was really nice to me…’ She turned and glanced over her shoulder at the darkness, as though expecting to see someone watching her. ‘I’ve got to go now –’
‘Did someone drive you here?’
‘I walked.’
‘You walked? In the dark?’
‘It’s not so far. I live just the other side of the lake, right past the boat ramp.’ She backed away from the door, blond hair swaying. ‘I’ll see you in school.’
‘Wait. Amelia!’ He held up the gift. ‘What’s this for?’
‘To thank you. For what you did today.’ She took another retreating step, and was almost swallowed up in darkness.
‘Amelia!’
‘Yes?’
Noah paused, not knowing what to say. The silence was broken only by the rustle of dead leaves scattering across the lawn. Amelia stood on the farthest edge of the light spilling from the open doorway, her face a pale oval eclipsing into night.
‘You want to come inside?’ he asked.
To his surprise she seemed to consider the invitation. For a moment she lingered between darkness and light, advance and retreat. She looked over her shoulder again, as though seeking permission. Then she nodded.
Noah found himself panicking over the disorder in the front parlor. His mom had been home for only a few hours that afternoon, to comfort him and cook dinner. Then she’d driven back to the hospital to see Taylor. No one had tidied up the parlor, and everything was still lying where Noah had dropped it that afternoon – backpack on the couch, sweatshirt on the coffee table, dirty tennis shoes in front of the fireplace. He decided to bypass the parlor and led Amelia into the kitchen instead.
They sat down, not looking at each other, two foreign species struggling to find a common language.
She glanced up as the phone rang. ‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’
‘Naw. It’s another one of those reporters. They’ve been calling all afternoon, ever since I got home.’
The answering machine picked up, and as he’d predicted, a woman’s voice came on: ‘This is Damaris Horne of the Weekly Informer. I’d really, really like to talk to Noah Elliot, if I could, about that amazing act of heroism today in the classroom. The whole country wants to hear about it, Noah. I’ll be staying at the Lakeside B and B, and I could offer some financial compensation for your time, if that would make it more worth your
