AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mary said, "I'll catch up with you. She's in three," before letting herself get pulled away by an elderly woman on a stretcher.
Sara knocked on the open door of exam room 3—privacy: another perk afforded cops. A petite blonde woman was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed and clearly irritated. Mary was good at her job, but a blind person could see that Faith Mitchell was unwell. She was as pale as the sheet on the bed; even from a distance, her skin looked clammy.
Her husband did not seem to be helping matters as he paced the room. He was an attractive man, well over six feet, with sandy blond hair cut close to his head. A jagged scar ran down the side of his face, probably from a childhood accident where his jaw slid across the asphalt under his bicycle or along the hard-packed dirt to home base. He was thin and lean, probably a runner, and his three-piece suit showed the broad chest and shoulders of someone who spent a lot of time in the gym.
He stopped pacing, his gaze going from Sara to his wife and back again. "Where's the other doctor?"
"He got called away on an emergency." She walked to the sink and washed her hands, saying, "I'm Dr. Linton. Can you catch me up to speed here? What happened?"
"She passed out," the man said, nervously twisting his wedding ring around his finger. He seemed to realize he was coming off as a bit frantic, and moderated his tone. "She's never passed out before."
Faith Mitchell seemed aggravated by his concern. "I'm fine," she insisted, then told Sara, "It's the same thing I said to the other doctor. I feel like I've been coming down with a cold. That's all."
Sara pressed her fingers to Faith's wrist, checking her pulse. "How are you feeling now?"
She glanced at her husband. "Annoyed."
Sara smiled, shining her penlight into Faith's eyes, checking her throat, running through the usual physical exam and finding nothing alarming. She agreed with Krakauer's initial evaluation: Faith was probably a little dehydrated. Her heart sounded good, though, and it didn't seem like she'd suffered from a seizure. "Did you hit your head when you fell?"
She started to answer, but the man interjected, "It was in the parking lot. Her head hit the pavement."
Sara asked the woman, "Any other problems?"
Faith answered, "Just a few headaches." She seemed to be holding something back, even as she revealed, "I haven't really eaten today. I was feeling a little sick to my stomach this morning. And yesterday morning."
Sara opened one of the drawers for a neuro-hammer to check reflexes, only to find nothing there. "Have you had any recent weight loss or gain?"
Faith said "No" just as her husband said "Yes."
The man looked contrite, but tried, "I think it looks good on you."
Faith took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Sara studied the man again, thinking he was probably an accountant or lawyer. His head was turned toward his wife, and Sara noticed another, lighter scar lining his upper lip—obviously not a surgical incision. The skin had been sewn together crookedly, so that the scar running vertically between his lip and nose was slightly uneven. He had probably boxed in college, or maybe just been hit in the head one too many times, because he obviously didn't seem to know that the only way out of a hole was to stop digging. "Faith, I think the extra weight looks great on you. You could stand to gain—"
She shut him up with a look.
"All right." Sara flipped open the chart, writing down some orders. "We'll need to do an X-ray of your skull and I'd like to do a few more tests. Don't worry, we can use the blood samples from earlier, so there won't be any more needles for now." She scribbled a notation and checked some boxes before looking up at Faith. "I promise we'll rush this as much as we can, but you can see we've got a pretty full house today. X-ray's backed up at least an hour. I'll do what I can to push it through, but you might want to get a book or magazine while you wait."
Faith didn't respond, but something in her demeanor changed. She glanced at her husband, then back at Sara. "Do you need me to sign that?" She indicated the chart.
There was nothing to sign, but Sara handed her the chart anyway. Faith wrote something on the bottom of the page and gave it back. Sara read the words I'm pregnant.
Sara nodded as she crossed through the X-ray order. Obviously, Faith hadn't yet told her husband, but there was a different set of questions Sara needed to ask now, and she couldn't do so without giving away the news. "When's the last time you had a pap smear?"
Faith seemed to understand. "Last year."
"Let's take care of that while you're here." Sara told the man, "You can wait outside."
"Oh." He seemed surprised, even as he nodded. "All right." He told his wife, "I'll be in the waiting room if you need me."
"Okay." Faith watched him leave, her shoulders visibly slumping in relief as the door closed. She asked Sara, "Do you mind if I lie down?"
"Of course not." Sara helped her get comfortable on the bed, thinking Faith looked younger than her thirty-three years. She still had the bearing of a cop, though—that no-nonsense, don't-bullshit-me squareness to her shoulders. Her lawyer-husband seemed like an odd match, but Sara had seen stranger combinations.
She asked the woman, "How far along are you?"
"About nine weeks."
Sara put this in her notes as she asked, "Is that a guess or have you seen a doctor?"
"I took an over-the-counter test." She changed that. "Actually, I took three over-the-counter tests. I'm never late."
Sara added a pregnancy test to the orders. "What about this weight gain?"
"Ten pounds," Faith admitted. "I've kind of gone a little crazy with the eating since I found out."
In Sara's experience, ten pounds usually meant fifteen. "Do you have any other children?"
"One—Jeremy—eighteen."
Sara made the notation in the chart, mumbling, "Lucky you. Heading into the terrible twos."
"More like terrible twenties. My son is eighteen years old."
Sara did a double take, flipping back through Faith's history.
"Let me do the math for you," Faith offered. "I got pregnant when I was fourteen. I had Jeremy when I was fifteen."
Not much surprised Sara anymore, but Faith Mitchell had managed to do it. "Were there any complications with your first pregnancy?"
"Other than being fodder for a Lifetime movie?" She shook her head. "No problems at all."
"Okay," Sara answered, putting down the chart, giving Faith her full attention. "Let's talk about what happened tonight."
"I was walking to the car, I felt a little dizzy, and the next thing I know, Will's driving me here."
"Dizzy like the room spinning or dizzy as in light-headed?"
She thought about the question before replying. "Light-headed."
"Any flashes of light or unusual tastes in your mouth?"
"No."
"Will's your husband?"
She actually guffawed. "God, no." She choked on an incredulous laugh. "Will's my partner—Will Trent."
