Katie finished rounding at twelve thirty. She hadn’t even started until almost noon because of her impromptu pancakes and planning session with Caleb. She was lucky that she knew all three patients and they were all stable.

Her afternoon clinic started at one, and she was too full to think about lunch. So with a half hour to spare, she decided to take a walk through the woods surrounding the hospital. There was a pathway through the grounds with a small garden not far from the back door. A family who’d lost their father after a long battle with heart failure had donated the benches and paid for the landscaping.

Katie wandered the familiar path, lost in thought. She loved walking in these woods, especially in the fall when the leaves were just starting to turn. During her residency rotation at Baxter Community Hospital, every time she got a chance to escape the hospital even for ten minutes, it had been like a minivacation. Most of her rotations had been at University Hospital in Ann Arbor, but she had managed to schedule a few here. Just being outside away from the noises and smells and sounds of the hospital had saved her mental health.

She tried to stop thinking about Ellen’s death, Nick secretly inventorying the drug cabinet, and the mysterious prescription. Just focus on the trees and birds and the sound of a fall breeze through the leaves.

She stopped short when she got to the garden. Sometimes she would find a family sitting there, but usually it was deserted. This time Matt Gregor was there. He hadn’t seen her yet. He’d draped his white coat over the back of the bench, and the remains of his lunch sat next to him. He was hunched over a notebook, scribbling madly.

She wasn’t sure whether to interrupt. She realized she was happy to see him. Then she remembered what Gabrielle had said. Well, regardless of whether he’d want to date her, she still liked talking to him. During this dithering, she took a step backward and snapped a branch. Matt looked up and scanned the area. He shut the book and slipped it into the canvas messenger bag that sat at his feet. When his eyes fell on her, his face broke into a warm smile.

“Dr. LeClair! How nice to see you again.” He gestured at the seat next to him.

“Dr. Gregor,” Katie said. She walked to the bench and sat, feeling awkward that she had interrupted his break. “I was just out for a quick nature fix. I didn’t mean to intrude.” She slipped her messenger bag strap over her head and dropped the bag on the ground next to Matt’s.

Matt waved off her apology. “No worries. I have to head back in a couple of minutes anyway. I’m in the ER again this afternoon.”

“Oh, more locums work?”

“The regular guy is on a two-week fishing trip,” he said. He leaned over and lowered his voice. “The rumor is that the nursing staff took up a collection and paid for his cabin in the woods. He was so burned out, none of them could stand to work with him anymore.”

Katie remembered a cantankerous older doctor in the ER earlier in the summer. He’d admitted one of her patients for a “rule out MI,” which meant he had thought there was a chance the guy was having a heart attack, but none of the tests could confirm it. He had been pleasant enough on the phone, but Katie had overheard the nurses on the floor complaining about his grouchiness.

“Do you think he’ll come back?” Katie asked.

Gregor shrugged. “Probably. He’s been at it for almost forty years. Hopefully he just needed a break. Or maybe he’s ready to retire.”

He sat back against the wooden slats of the bench and closed his eyes. “I love this little garden,” he said.

Katie grinned at him even though he wasn’t looking at her. “Me too. I used to come here during my residency. It was like heaven after a long night on call.”

“It does help to put things back in perspective.”

“There’s a train that comes through around midnight,” Katie said. “I used to wait for it before going to sleep—if I was able to go to sleep at all. I liked to think of it traveling far from the worries of being on call. It was reassuring. Reminding me that there is life outside of the hospital.”

Katie felt her cheeks growing hot. Why was she telling him this?

He sat forward and looked at her, smiling. “I know that train! I listen for it every time I’m working in the ER. I have this idea that if I hear it go by, I won’t have any major disasters come through the doors that night. If I don’t hear it, and I realize it later, I get this nervous anxiety that doesn’t stop until my shift is over.”

Katie laughed. “It seems every doc I know has some kind of superstition.”

“Of course. How else can we control the uncontrollable?”

They fell silent for a moment, listening to the woodpeckers tap-tapping deeper in the woods and the squirrels and chipmunks rustling through the leaves.

“You seem more relaxed today than when I saw you over the weekend.”

“I suppose I am, somewhat.” Katie met his gaze. “I found out this morning that Ellen Riley was likely murdered.”

“What?” Matt sat up straight. “I hadn’t heard. And why would that make you relaxed?”

“I didn’t write the prescription for diazepam,” Katie said. “I don’t know how she got it, and I’ve been worried about it since she died. At first I thought I’d forgotten, which was concerning enough. Then I thought maybe someone had called it in from my office. But now that I know she didn’t die from the diazepam, it’s like a weight has been lifted.”

“I’m sorry you were so worried,” Matt said quietly. “You know that even if you had prescribed it, it wouldn’t have been your fault. We can’t control everything.”

Katie sighed. “I understand the theory, but it’s hard to put it into practice—I like to imagine that if I just try hard enough, I can keep my patients safe and healthy.”

Matt turned and looked up into the trees. “That’s a pretty heavy burden you’ve chosen.”

“I know.”

“How did she die? If it wasn’t the diazepam?”

“The chief said it was a Demerol overdose. It was injected, and since there were no vials or syringes at the scene, he’s treating it as a homicide.”

Matt nodded. “That makes sense. I was surprised that there was so little in her stomach when we were treating her. But murder? That’s not something you see every day in Baxter.”

“You don’t think it would have made any difference if you knew you were dealing with something other than diazepam?”

Matt shrugged. “Maybe. We would have used different meds to counteract the Demerol. I was surprised that she crashed so quickly, but now it makes sense. I think by the time she was found, she was already pretty far gone, but maybe we could have saved her if we knew. Actually, I knew Ellen, and I didn’t think she was depressed either. She was such a nice person, I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt her.”

“How did you know her?”

“You know, small town and all . . .” Matt glanced at his watch. “I’d better head back. I was supposed to be there twenty minutes ago.”

“Me too. I have clinic starting in five minutes, and it’s a ten minute walk.”

Katie reached for her bag at the same time Matt reached for his. The straps got tangled, and they sat laughing with their heads together while undoing the mess. It seemed the more they pulled or threaded the straps, the worse it got. Katie’s heart was racing, and she knew it wasn’t because of the tangled messenger bags. Sitting this close, he smelled like fresh laundry and the breeze through the woods. She would have been happy to sit there all day.

“Here, wait,” Matt said. “The buckles are stuck.” He deftly unclipped the buckles, and the bags separated.

Slightly disappointed, Katie stood and put her bag over her shoulder.

They walked back along the path, crunching the few leaves that had fallen.

“How did it go when Chief Carlson had you in for questions?” Matt asked.

“Terrible,” Katie said. “He put me in an empty gray room and shined a light in my eyes. But I didn’t tell him a thing.”

“Okay, Bourne. I didn’t realize you were so tough,” Matt said. “I had the impression he was more likely to offer you tea and cookies.”

“He thinks I saved his dog’s life,” Katie said, “so he owes me.”

“That was you?” Gregor stopped and turned toward her. “I heard about a doctor who rescued Carlson’s dog from a burning building, carried him on her shoulders several miles to a clinic, and resuscitated him using a suture kit and IV fluids.”

Katie laughed. “It gets better every time I hear it.” They started walking again. “There was no burning building, and I only carried him about ten feet to my car.”

“That’s not a very exciting story.” Matt frowned dramatically. “I’ll stick with the one I heard.”

When they came to the fork in the path that led to the hospital and Katie’s clinic, Matt slowed.

“It was nice to be interrupted by you,” he said.

Katie looked at her feet and felt herself blush again. “It was nice to barge in on your solitude.”

She headed down the path and turned just before the bend that would take her past the hospital and toward her clinic. Matt still stood just where she’d left him. He raised his hand, turned, and walked toward the ER.