noises and imaginary squealing tires, a purple-haired girl flew toward the treatment room, pushing a small boy in a hospital-issue wheelchair. They skidded to a halt and the girl’s hair slid off her head and landed on the floor.
Ripley and the kids took one look at the purple road-kill and started laughing.
Cage took one look at the girl’s naked pink scalp and the fine blue veins beneath, and shuddered.
“Livvy, what are you doing here? I thought you were between treatments. Is everything okay?” Ripley hugged the girl and bent to pick up the purple wig. “Hey, Milo. What’s up?” She didn’t touch the boy, who sagged back as though exhausted by the shared laughter. A Boston baseball cap looked ridiculously large on his bald head.
Cage’s stomach clenched on the three cups of coffee he’d poured into it that morning. One of the reasons he’d chosen Rad Safety was its distance from the actual patients. He could help them without ever seeing them. Without remembering.
“Belle called my mom and said Milo wasn’t feeling so hot.” The girl was older than she looked at first, Cage realized as she adjusted the purple wig on her slippery scalp. She was probably in her early teens, though her painful thinness and large eyes made her seem younger. “So a few of us came in for a visit. We were just talking about the game next week, weren’t we, Milo?”
The boy in the chair nodded limply. “Yep.” The word was no more than a breath, but Ripley didn’t seem to notice. Her callousness made Cage think of other doctors. Other times.
She glanced at him and explained, though he hadn’t asked. “The Tammy Fund has a box at the ballpark and they give it to a different R-ONC department after each game. The kids love it. We’ve got tickets for next week.”
Cage shrugged. “Baseball’s okay.”
He felt the damaged ligaments in his pitching arm ache. The pain was duller than the throb in his soul, but both reminded him of a man who’d cared more for his career than his family.
“Do I know you?” The soft question pulled Cage from the memory of broken promises and busted dreams, but he had no answer for the girl. Nor did he take the hand she offered when she said, “I’m Olivia Minton.”
“Cage. And no, we haven’t met.” He backed away on the pretext of flipping the green binder open and studying an unseen column of numbers.
“Don’t worry, kids. He’s rude to everyone.” Ripley glared at him and herded the children away. “Did you just stop by to say hi, or did you want something?”
“We wanted to say hi,” Livvy said staunchly at the same time Milo breathed, “We wanted some markers.”
Ripley laughed and the sound zinged through Cage. “Going to tattoo yourselves again?” She crossed to a desk drawer and pulled out a handful of pens. “Just remember, these are the permanent ones we use to mark you for radiation treatment. The ink takes weeks to fade.”
Milo cheered softly and clutched the pens in his lap like a prize. Livvy thanked Ripley and cast one long look back at Cage before she pushed Milo out the door, but Cage didn’t tell the girl where she’d seen him before.
He was five years, one court battle and a master’s degree in Health Physics away from being that man. His love of the game had faltered, leaving behind a need for revenge.
“They’re not contagious,” Ripley said without preamble as she stalked back over to him, holding a thick binder as if she wanted to smack him with it. “You won’t catch cancer from shaking hands.” She didn’t say you jerk, but it was implied.
“Those your wipe logs? Thanks.” Ignoring the dig, Cage grabbed the ledger and opened it on the nearest table, though he knew what he’d see. Nothing. He’d already figured he wasn’t going to find a single digit out of place in the R-ONC department. He’d bet that every sheet was filled in to the last MilliCurie of radioactive material and the last tenth of a rad of waste. He’d find every bottle of neutralizer filled to the brim and every employee’s training up to date.
And he’d bet his job she was hiding something.
He hefted the logbooks and ignored the twinge of protest from his shoulder. “I’ll get these back to you when I’ve gone over everything.”
“Fine. Just don’t shut me down, okay? I have patients that depend on me.” She glanced over and tucked a strand of curly dark hair behind her ear. The gesture was strangely vulnerable. “We do good things here, Cage. We save lives.”
Cage didn’t say anything, because his answer would have been you don’t save all of them, and that would never do. Instead, he repeated, “I’ll get these back to you when I’m done with them,” and escaped out into the hall beyond the R-ONC doors.
Once he was outside her offices, he leaned against a decorative column and concentrated on breathing air that didn’t carry a faint hint of her scent. He had to clear his head. He didn’t have time to get tied up over a woman. Any woman. Especially a R-ONC.
“You okay, boss?” As seemed to be his habit, Whistler appeared out of nowhere.
“Fine.” Cage didn’t want to talk about R-ONC, or about the way Ripley Davis made him feel mad and guilty and horny all at once. Nor did he want to talk about the rumors of radioactivity gone astray. He wasn’t sure who he could trust in the Rad Safety department yet. If anyone. “Any calls this morning?”
“Nothing exciting or I would’ve paged you.” The young man shrugged. “A few gray egg deliveries.” The radioactive material arrived in lead-lined capsules. It was delivered to Rad Safety, checked in and dispersed to the labs.
Everything was checked and double-checked. There was no radioactivity in the hospital that couldn’t be accounted for each and every moment of the day. So where the hell had the nukes supposedly found in the broom closet come from? Cage had no idea, but the concept was unnerving. Since he was working on coffee-shop rumor and speculation, he had no evidence, either.
When he’d brought it up with the Head Administrator, Gabney had stared at him, hard, and prattled on about the Hospital of the Year award. Cage had gotten the message.
Don’t rock the boat.
Too bad for Gabney it was Cage’s mission in life to do exactly that. Heather had died because a group of doctors hadn’t wanted to make waves. Cage had vowed it wouldn’t happen again.
The doors to the R-ONC department swung open and there was Ripley Davis, marching across the foyer to the stairs. Cage’s head came up. “Here. Take these.” He shoved the R-ONC radiation logs at Whistler. “Check them against our databases, but don’t worry if you don’t find anything. I bet they’re up to date.”
Whistler’s eyes cut from Ripley to Cage and back. “What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to have a little chat with Dr. Davis,” Cage said, feeling an unfamiliar tingle of anticipation. “I think she and I have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
Whistler snorted. “Good luck. She can be a real hard case with people who’re trying to interfere with R-ONC. Her head tech used to say Dr. Davis treats that department like it’s her husband, and the patients like her children.”
Cage’s eyes followed her figure down the stairs, admiring the long, no-nonsense stride and the gentle sway of hip and hair. He grimaced. Husband. Children.
In his experience, doctors gave little value to family.
TANSY WAS LATE for their midmorning coffee break, so Ripley sat alone at the rear of the hospital café with her back to the room and hoped everyone got the hint. She was in no mood for company.
She scowled at her muffin and wished the new Radiation Safety Officer to the devil. It was his fault she felt out of synch today. She was tired because she’d dreamed about him and she was behind schedule because he’d insisted on testing each of the treatment machines separately, though