Read Critical Judgment (1996) for Free Online

mean?”
    “Nothing. You just sounded tired.”
    “I’m sorry. I was on the couch. I … I guess I must have fallen asleep.”
    On the couch … fallen asleep
 … The Josh Wyler she had fallen in love with probably hadn’t taken a nap since he was two months old.
    “Well, you left for work at five-thirty this morning,” she said. “Maybe you should start a little later.”
    “Do you want to do my job, too? Is that it?”
    Abby refused to allow him to push any of her buttons, although lately he’d become something of a virtuoso at it. She wanted to ask him about the headacheshe’d been having. But that might well have pushed one of
his
buttons, and she simply had no time or desire for a battle.
    “I’ll be home by eight-thirty,” she said instead. “How about I bring home some Chinese food and rent a movie?”
    “Sure. That’d be great.”
    There was no enthusiasm in his voice. The problem
had
to be his job. For the first few months after he’d started as director of new product development at Colstar, the job had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. Then, suddenly, there were constant deadlines—new products that always seemed to be at a make-or-break stage. He had never been particularly vulnerable to pressure at work. Now he seemed overwhelmed, disorganized.
    Meanwhile Abby’s decision to apply for the sudden opening in the ER at Patience Regional Hospital seemed only to have added to Josh’s stress. Since her move up to Patience, there had been almost constant tension between them. Perhaps he had never expected her actually to give up the job she loved out of deference to their relationship. Maybe, over the months they’d been apart, he had simply discovered he liked being on his own. Or maybe, she sometimes allowed herself to think, he had met someone else.
    The doors to the ambulance bay glided open, and the rescue squad wheeled in a stretcher. The man on it had his face swathed with blood-soaked gauze. Protruding from beneath the gauze, over the cervical collar, was a full, gnarled gray-black beard, matted with drying blood. Old Man Ives.
    “Look, Josh, I gotta go,” she said. “I’ll tell you what. Count on me to provide dinner and X-rated entertainment. If you want to watch the movie afterward, we can do that, too.”
    “I’ll be here.”
    Abby started to tell him that she loved him. Instead what came out was, “Great, see you later.”
    She set the receiver down and headed out to evaluate her new patient, thinking that she shouldn’t have called home. The last thing an ER physician needed at work was to be distracted. The job was hard enough, the traps were everywhere. From now until her shift ended she would have to be especially vigilant.
    The PRH emergency room had a row of five treatment bays separated by curtains, and five individually numbered rooms, reserved for minor surgery and orthopedics, special procedures, major medical, pediatrics, and codes. Abby felt some relief at seeing Bud Perlow direct the rescue squad to wheel Mr. Ives into room one, where most of the routine suturing was done. She just wasn’t up for anything major.
    She paused to check on some of the lab results on the two enigmas. To no surprise, they were all normal.
    “Ouch! Hey, easy. You just took half my hair off on that tape!”
    Perlow met Abby beside the door to room one. From behind him she could hear their new patient jawing at the rescue squad.
    “Some hikers found him facedown on a trail. Apparently two men followed him out of town, started yelling at him to stay away from Patience, and then beat him unconscious with their fists.”
    “I guess different isn’t one of the best things to be around here.”
    “Pardon?”
    “Oh, nothing. How does he look?”
    “He’s awake and alert, in case you couldn’t tell. Deep lacs on both cheeks, through one brow, and across his chin.”
    “Alcohol?”
    “I couldn’t smell any. But, then, Ives is a few months short of a