After She's Gone (West Coast #3)

After She's Gone (West Coast #3) Page 108

Finally, as the bathwater cooled, she climbed out of the tub and didn’t bother to towel off, just slipped on the plush robe and bent down to blow out the candle and whisper softly, “ ’Night, Love.”

CHAPTER 23

“Do you know what time it is?” Dr. Sherling asked. Her voice was groggy with sleep.

Cassie had dialed the doctor’s cell phone number on impulse. She really hadn’t expected the psychiatrist to answer. She’d gotten lucky. She glanced at the readout on Trent’s DVR player. It read nine forty-seven.

“I know it’s late,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Grumpily, Dr. Sherling said, “All right. I’m awake now. Sort of. But I have rounds tomorrow at six.” She yawned. “I suppose you’re calling about that television documentary, or docudrama, or whatever it’s called these days, and my advice is to not watch it. If you want, you can schedule a session and we’ll discuss it. Call my office. In the morning.”

“What docudrama?”

“On one of those mystery channels. You know, unsolved cases or whatever. The woman . . . oh, what’s her name, the nosy reporter, she’s on it.”

“Whitney Stone.”

“Yes, yes, that’s the one.”

Cassie’s insides tightened. “It’s on tonight?”

“Yes, in a few minutes, I think, but it might be best if you don’t watch it. I saw a preview for it, and the story isn’t about your sister going missing, but about the near-death experience when you and your mother were kidnapped.”

Cassie’s pulse sped up. “I wasn’t calling about the program,” she said, and explained about her visit to the hospital during the day, how she’d wanted to see Steven Rinko and not being allowed, how she’d been thwarted and belittled by the receptionist.

“Constance can get a little territorial,” the doctor admitted.

“Downright nasty. And judgmental.”

“Really? I don’t think so.”

“For sure. Tre—my husband was with me. He can confirm.”

“You’re back with him?”

Cassie ignored the question. “The truth is I was so rattled I forgot to ask for the security tapes of my room.”

“There are none.”

“But there was a camera.”

“Never operational. New laws. No tapes.”

Cassie was flummoxed. She felt the air go out of her lungs. The tapes would have proven that the nurse out of the last century was inside her room.

“I think I was being watched.”

“Nonsense.” She said it as if it were fact, that anything untoward that Cassie may have felt or seen was paranoia and hallucinations. “The only ones watching you were the nurses who were assigned to you, and then not by camera. Only in person. We have hallway monitors and cameras, of course, but nothing in the patient rooms.”

“So if a nurse or doctor or aide slipped something they shouldn’t into my IV or food or whatever, there would be no record of it?”

“Not by camera. But we’d know from your monitors or lab results.”

“It might be too late then.”

“Too late?”

“If someone put something in my meds and I, you know, ended up dying.”

Dr. Sherling sighed audibly. “But you didn’t die.”

“Of course not. That was just a hypothetical situation.”

“All of our staff members, including Ms. Unger, go through rigorous background checks before they’re hired. Is that the reason you called so late on my private number?”

Didn’t she know that everything in Cassie’s life was an emergency? “I know it’s not life and death, but I need to know some things. Does anyone on the staff ever dress in uniforms from the past?”

“What?”

“Like the uniforms nurses used to wear,” Cassie went on doggedly.

“Not the scrubs they have on most of the time, but the outfits with heavy white shoes and white stockings and white dresses. Sometimes pointed caps and a blue cape.”

There was a long hesitation, then finally, very seriously, “Why are you asking?”

The truth would not help her cause. “Just curious.”