Read Lethal Remedy for Free Online

depositing his tray across the table from her.

"Actually, I've been wanting to talk with you. This is the second day that Chelsea Ferguson's been on your 'wonder drug'— what is it? EpAm something. She seems to be better, but how does Dr. Ingersoll think she's doing?"

Rip spread salsa liberally over his scrambled eggs, then forked a generous portion into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and washed it down with coffee before answering. "Sorry. But you know the drill. Eat when you can—"

"Sleep when you can. Yes, I know. Now, what about Chelsea?"

"I think she's improving. As for Dr. Ingersoll, I can't say. He got some kind of urgent phone call when we were seeing Ms. Ferguson, and he's been gone since." Rip added more salsa and took another bite of eggs.

"What could make Jack take offlike that?" Sara had known Jack Ingersoll as intimately as was possible, and she couldn't think of anything more important to him than his patients and his practice. If he'd only been willing to pay the same attention to his family . . . but that was water under the bridge. "Anyway, how long do you anticipate keeping Chelsea on therapy?"

Rip chewed the last bit of egg, finished his last triangle of toast, and dabbed his lips with a napkin. "For Staph luciferus cases, treatment is given daily via intravenous infusion for a total of ten days." He said it as though by rote, and Sara realized he was parroting back the protocol Ingersoll and the drug company had written.

Rip shoved his tray aside and took a satisfied sip of coffee. "Now, how have you been? We don't see much of each other anymore."

Sara remembered when she'd first met Rip. She was sitting with a hundred other freshmen undergoing orientation at Southwestern Medical School. The Dean, resplendent in three-piece suit with a chain draped across the vest to display his Phi Beta Kappa key, had just said, "We didn't ask you to come here. But we may be asking some of you to leave."

She heard a muffled chuckle to her right and looked at the man sitting there. His wavy blond hair was fashionably long. In contrast with the casual dress of others in the class, he wore a button-down collared blue oxford cloth shirt open at the neck. His khakis sported ironed creases that could cut cheese. Top-Siders worn without socks completed the Ivy League look. He leaned toward Sara and whispered, "Sorry. Actually, they did ask me to come here. They recruited me, so I doubt they'll be asking me to leave."

After the lecture, he'd invited her for coffee, where she learned he was indeed the product of an Ivy League background. Roswell Irving Pearson III graduated magna cum laude from Yale. He broke the family tradition of working in investment banking, choosing instead to come to Southwestern to study medicine. "And please call me Rip. I'm trying to adapt to my new surroundings, and Roswell doesn't fit that image." Thinking back on that encounter, Sara decided that was probably when he began to put salsa on his eggs. It was more Texan.

"Sara? You went quiet on me. How have you been doing?" "I've been staying busy. Isn't that the recommended method for getting over a loss in your life? I think I recall that from the lecture on depression."

Rip reached across the table and touched her hand. "It's been two years since the baby died and Jack left you. Don't you think you should be over it by now?" Rip's words were soft, his touch even softer.

"Please, let's not talk about it. There's just so much—" The buzz of a pager cut through the din of the cafeteria.

Both of them consulted the tiny boxes they carried. "It's me," Sara said. "The ICU."

"Funny, I've got the same call," Rip said.

They looked at each other for a moment before Sara said, "Chelsea."

They left their dishes on the table and headed for the stairs at a brisk pace.

 

 

Rip pushed through the swinging doors of the ICU a half step ahead of Sara. The crowd of people in Chelsea's room confirmed their fears.

The head nurse, holding a chart,