She had a few other life-support cases to worry about aside from her sister. There were two of them on her rounds that morning, two nonresponsive heroin overdose cases. A man and a woman. Both young, both relatively good-looking. It went against what Fiona was taught about drug abusers, heroin especially. Maybe they were new to the game.

The sad truth was that they were seeing it spread to more people. Sometimes people she’d just treated a year or two ago. They’d be sent away from the hospital after surgery, armed with a prescription for painkillers. And then, when the prescription ran out, and the money ran out, they’d come back to the hospital after their street solution backfired. Sometimes overdosing on their first try.

It was the first hour of her shift and Fiona was still feeling groggy from a mostly sleepless night. That, coupled with the worries of her sister, and of these two others, meant that the day’s first screwup was just waiting to happen. She could almost tell it was going to happen.

What would it be this time? Another catheter clamp?

Incorrect medications?

Falling asleep while standing?

Her head felt like a goldfish bowl: heavy, water slopping around with each movement. Her feet felt like two little bricks, shuffling along the hallway, in and out of various rooms. Her voice, when prompted to be loud and cheery for its audience of patients, struggled against sleepiness and melancholy, a slide into monotone dreariness. She dealt with her sickest patients first, the two coma victims. They wouldn’t require much conversation. Nor would the elderly patients, who were as sleepy as she. Or that guy who didn’t like her enough to want conversation.

Someone like Marva, certainly, was out of the question. Fiona would need a few coffee breaks before waking up enough to be on Marva’s level. To give her the care she needed and the support she deserved. What Marva needed, also, was that insulin pump. Fiona wasn’t very excited about coming to see her again empty-handed. The cries about the injections and the blood tests were beginning to wear on her.

Fiona could think of a few other people she’d like to torture. Death by a thousand pricks.

“Hi, Fiona.” It was Dr. Wahl, smiling, walking toward her in the hallway. There was one of them, right on cue. There was no escape.

“Hi.” She winced a smile at him as he approached.

“How’s everything? Good?”

She nodded.

“Good morning so far? Um, I just wanted to . . .” his voice trailed off, and then lowered in volume as they both stopped awkwardly in the hallway. “I just wanted to ask about your sister. I heard about it from Wendy. So terrible. How’s she doing?”

Fiona kept smiling, offering up the same stock answers that he seemed to be looking for. Yep, she’s hanging in there.

“Does she need anything?” he asked quietly.

“Like what?”

“How about you? Do you . . . need anything?”

She needed him to back away and leave her the hell alone.

“Do you need some time off?” he asked.

“No, I’m . . . I’m fine.”

“Let’s take a walk,” he said, motioning down the hall.

The two of them set out awkwardly, Fiona forgetting where she was even trying to get to in the first place.

“You know,” he began, talking quietly and mysteriously, as if they were both in some secret club. “I was in the same predicament with my mother.”

She hated how he used the word “predicament,” as if her sister was Fiona’s problem, rather than the coma being her sister’s problem. Whatever. She let him continue.

“She was very sick, near the end. Very frail. She slipped into a coma for seven days. Complete vegetative state.”

That’s where she was supposed to be. Room 422D. Arthur Alphonso. Post cataract surgery. She and Dr. Wahl were walking in the opposite direction, toward the elevator. Maybe Fiona would just head straight to the break room, dive into her book, and try to recover at least some semblance of sanity.

Would the doctor follow her there, too?

“It’s such a difficult decision,” he said, staring down at his feet as he walked.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes it is.”

“She had brain activity, so it wasn’t brain death. But one has to question what that really is.”

“What, brain death?”

“No, the activity. What is that really? Is it really activity? Or perhaps just some residual energy?”

Fiona nodded, not really sure what to say.

“I play the electric guitar sometimes,” the doctor said. “And when I'm done and I turn off the amp, there’s that little die-off type sound that fades away even after the power cuts off.”

He was comparing his mother to a guitar amp?

“Do you know what I mean?” he asked. “Or maybe like an old-fashioned TV?”

“Well, she still responds to my voice. So, you know, that’s the good thing.”

“Yeah,” he said, almost sounding like it wasn’t a good thing. “Anyway, I just want to offer my condolences.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh,” he said, stopping. “Were you headed to break?”

She didn’t know. Was she? Her main priority was to break free of Dr. Wahl. She stared at the elevator as if it were a trap, asking, “Do you have something else for me to do?” There was always something.

“I’ve been told that we have a priority patient,” he said. “Room 314. Do you know anything about this?”

Priority patient? It sounded like Wendy’s warning about the undercover evaluators was coming true. But she didn’t expect their covers to be blown so early, and by the head doctor nonetheless.

“Priority in what way?” she asked, trying to sound casual about it.

“That’s what I’d like to know. I’d like it if you could keep a special watch over him.”

She might as well. After all, he’ll certainly be keeping a special watch over her. She’d have to watch the watcher, while at the same time watching her own ass even closer. What a great work environment.

“Sound good?” asked Dr. Wahl with a smile.

* * *

Dr. Wahl’s priority patient was asleep when she entered Room 314. Rolled to one side, his muscular back facing her. She could tell by his frame, the solidity of his shoulders, that he was young and well built. Most likely in the prime of his life. A departure from her usual patients. She expected to see some sniveling little weasel of a man. But he was not skinny, or bald, or awake, as she’d expected. Perhaps that was part of the plot, the mask of the decoy, the unexpected appearance. He probably wasn’t even sleeping. Most likely he’d been lying there, awake and alert and surveying her actions.

She glanced at the name on his charts, Rick Delaney, which was as unfamiliar as any fake name should be. And what was wrong with Rick today? Dislocated shoulder that he’d fixed himself? That sounded pretty fishy. He was waiting on the results from a scan of his arm and wrist. Complications from a slip-and-fall accident.

“Mr. Delaney?” she called quietly. Though she’d really rather not be so polite about it. She wanted to grill him about his injuries. Who he was, where he was from. How he could in good conscience spy on someone so small in the grand scheme of this major hospital, how he could ruin someone who was just struggling to make a dollar. The more she thought about that last part, the more she had wished that his arm was actually broken—and broken badly.

She watched for a moment as his shoulder rose and fell with each deep breath. He wore a tight black tank top, his bare tanned and toned shoulder sticking out of the sheets to expose the top half of a tattoo. It wasn’t like that was anything new. It was common these days, especially with her younger patients.

But there was something about this tattoo that caught her attention. The design was unusual, unique. Where had she seen that before? On another patient? Perhaps the design was more common than she thought. Perhaps even a template at a local tattoo parlor. And she wanted to just pass him off in that same way, as just another patient. But something about the design . . . It had captivated her.

She’d seen it before, yes. But not in the hospital.

Fiona called his name again, and after another lack of response, she walked closer to get a good look at her spy. Maybe his face would jog her memory. She crept around the bed silently, her eyes now taking in every inch of his freshly exposed real estate. Over his smooth shoulder and around, over his chest and to the stubble forming on his chin, his relaxed mouth, the warm tan of his skin, the depth of his closed eyes. There was something almost frighteningly familiar with it all. Especially his unmistakable red hair. And that damned tattoo.

It was horribly awkward, staring at the man as he slept. And she’d begun to feel a creeping anxiety, a fear that he would suddenly wake up and catch her ogling him like a sexual predator. No, that wouldn’t do. She’d definitely hear about it at the next meeting.

She moved to turn around, quickly—too quickly—and on her way she knocked into the table. She immediately swung back to check whether he was still sleeping, to check his eyes, which were now wide open. And that was when she remembered, or thought she remembered.

It was his eyes that did it, that jogged her memory, that deep, dark emerald green. She stumbled into the table again, this time not turning back on her way out of the room.

In the hallway, holding on to the railing, Fiona tried to regroup her thoughts. They raced through her mind, the questions, the worries. Then there was the overwhelming embarrassment, that she was caught hovering over and staring at him like that. But there was also some deeper, not-yet-understood reason. She thought again of the tattoo. She’d seen it before, in a medical setting. But it was dark. Night. And exhilarating.

The name Rick Delaney didn’t ring a bell. But there was some connection that she couldn’t quite place her finger on. She knew the man, whoever he was, spy or not, who was now lying on the bed in room 314.

Fiona followed the handrail back to the doorway, looking around to make sure that no one was watching. Then she peeked her head around the corner of the door frame, stealing one last glance at her patient. He was sitting up now, yet facing away, that strong, muscular back showing through his tank top. She could see the tattoo again.

He’d had short cropped hair back then, military style. She remembered that. It had grown out some now. And his long, thick arms. She remembered those too. In low light. And his muscles flexing underneath her hands as she clasped on and explored and devoured more and more of him. She felt a rush of wetness at the memory. But as much as she wanted to see his face again, she turned away, shakily, and began walking away.

She needed to regroup.

Rethink.

Relax.

He might not have been a spy, but he was still more than she bargained for.