Doc in the Box by Elaine Viets Read Free Book Online Page B

odor? Some compound of chilled air, cherry-scented disinfectant, something chemical, and something else—hospital lotion? A bleach-based cleaner? Whatever it was, the separate smells weren’t bad, but mixed together, they turned my stomach.
    We followed the blue line and opened the door to the radiation oncology waiting room. This time, the nasty receptionist wouldn’t let Georgia walk back into the patients’ waiting room. She had to wait with me. No reason was given, just a rude “you can’t go back there now.” It was almost noon, and the department must close around twelve or twelve-thirty for a lunch hour. The dreary pink “caregivers” room was empty except for the two of us and the exhausted magazines. We sat with our backs to the receptionist, so we wouldn’t have to look at her, but we could still hear her talking on the phone to a friend about her date last night. I heard her say, “…  and then I said, ‘Listen, I just met you. What makes you think I’m so hard up, I’d …’ ”
    “Can you do me a favor?” Georgia asked, and I abandoned my easy listening.
    “Sure,” I said.
    “Would you go to the cafeteria and get me a Coke? I have this funny chemical taste in my mouth and soda helps get rid of it.”
    “Sure. I have to make a call and see if Leo’s turned up yet, anyway. I’ll be back in five.”
    I was back in fifteen, actually. The cafeteria was busy. The Heart’s Desire phone was busy. Everything took longer than I expected. A skinny bald guy in a hurry brushed by me and I knocked part of Georgia’s Coke down the back of a tall blond woman. I apologized, but her even bigger blond husband looked like he wanted the death penalty for spilling a spoonful of Coke on a silk blouse. At least I missed the woman in the wheelchair. The boney guy pushing her gave me a dirty look.
    I balanced the rest of the Coke on a metal shelf at a pay phone, dug out my phone card again, and called the Heart’s Desire, hoping I could get my two questions answered: Where did Leo go to school? And what made him start stripping? Damn, I was getting careless. I’d spent all that time with the guy and didn’t bother to ask. I wanted to believe it was because I was worried about Georgia. But there was no point in being noble. I knew the sight of a seminude stripper had shorted out my brain cells.
    I finally got through to the Heart’s Desire and talked with Steve the manager. No one had seen hide nor hair of Leo D. Nardo. He hadn’t called in yet, Steve said. Officer Friendly was scheduled as the main act for that evening, unless they heard from Leo, of course. Marlene had raised my consciousness, and I was really starting to worry. This was a long time for Leo to be missing: two days at the rate of twelve hundred dollars minimum. This vacation wascosting him at least twenty-four hundred in lost income. I wanted him back for purely selfish reasons. If he didn’t show up soon, I’d have to do a day in another stripper’s life.
    It was twelve-fifteen when I made it back to radiation oncology. I opened the door, balancing the Coke carefully. The place was dead quiet. No patients were in the waiting room. Georgia was not in her chair. They must have called her inside, finally. I went to ask the receptionist how long it would be. She was sitting at her desk, with an open romance novel in front of her. She didn’t look up.
    She never would again. She’d been shot in the back of the head.
    “Oh, my god,” I said, the horrifying sight finally registering. “Oh, my god. Georgia! Georgia! Where are you, Georgia?”
    I ran inside to the patients’ waiting area, but she wasn’t there. I ran down the inner hall, calling her name, and threw open the door to the radiation therapy room. The flirtatious radiation therapist from yesterday was lying on the floor, shot in the chest. A doctor was lying crumpled behind him, shot in the head. It looked like the doctor had his hands on the therapist’s shoulders. Had he