The Doctor's Guardian

Throughout what was left of his childhood and then adolescence, Ericka Baker had been an outstanding, dynamic creature—the one constant in his life. The one person he knew he could always come to with anything if he needed to.

She’d wanted him to become a lawyer, like his grandfather had been. But when he joined the police force, there’d been no one prouder or more supportive than his grandmother. He had the feeling, deep down, that his grandmother would have been just as supportive of him if he’d decided to be a beekeeper or a musician. She was supportive of him, the person, not some ongoing plan. For that very reason, he’d allowed himself to love her even while he successfully shut out the rest of the world.

Oh, he functioned and interacted and was the best possible policeman and then police detective that he could be. But he let no one into his inner sanctum. No one had access past the barriers he’d erected long ago. He didn’t want to care about anyone, except for his grandmother.

Cole had lost his father to a roadside bomb in a foreign country, his only brother to a car-versus-bicycle hit-and-run accident, and his mother to a bullet she’d put in her own head—after shooting one at him. Her attempt at a murder/suicide had just missed its mark, but not the lesson that came with it.

All that, especially the last, had forever changed him.

When Cole grew older, he began to understand that his mother’s grief was just too great for her to handle and that she’d shot at him because she hadn’t wanted him to be left behind to face the world on his own.

But the bullet she’d fired at him had bypassed all his vital organs and he had lived, even as she had died. Lived, once he had come out of his coma, with an incredible emptiness and a lack of desire to continue living in this cruel existence that had deprived him of everyone he loved.

That was when he discovered that his grandmother—his father’s mother—had entered his life. She’d flown in from New York to be by his bedside, which was where she’d remained, keeping vigil, until he came out of his coma, both the literal one and then the self-imposed, emotional one that followed.

She’d embraced him, wept over him and then informed him that they would both move on. She made sure that he knew that there was no other option left to him.

In a strange sort of way, his grandmother gave him life. Again. And while he kept the rest of the world at arm’s length, he would have literally given up that life that she’d restored for him years ago in an instant for her without being asked.

It pained Cole to see his grandmother like this. To see her looking so fragile, so pale and all but fading against the white sheets. Lying there, Ericka Baker seemed somehow smaller, even though she wasn’t exactly a large woman by any standard of measurement other than an emotional one.

But G, as she’d instructed him to call her—she hated being referred to as Grandmother, saying it made her feel old—had, in the last few years, developed a heart condition: atrial fibrillation. He’d found out about it quite by accident. In the neighborhood, he’d stopped by for a surprise visit and found her medication on the kitchen counter. She’d forgotten to put it away. Added to that, there were times when she just seemed to drift away, sometimes even right in the middle of a conversation with him.

It wasn’t because she was preoccupied, the way he’d first hoped. She just seemed to be mentally “away.” After conferring with her primary care physician he finally had to admit to himself she was developing Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s, that dreaded disease that ultimately robbed a person of their identity, while the family lost a loved one years before death put in the ultimate claim for them.

But this morning, thank God, the woman’s blue eyes weren’t vacant, they were vividly alive, taking in everything. His grandmother was here, with him, and not overly happy about the location she found herself in. Hospitals, she’d always maintained, were for sick people and she never thought of herself as falling into that category.

“Of course I’m going to be all right, Coleman,” she declared firmly. She knew she had no choice—she needed to have this procedure done to finally put an end to those heart palpitations that she’d been putting up with, the ones that had become all but disabling. “We just need to get this damn thing over with,” she added. “Where’s that doctor they said was coming? The one they promised was going to be here—” she paused to look at the clock on the wall, its numbers purposely oversized to accommodate the patients on this part of the floor “—ten minutes ago?”

It was getting late and he needed to get going. But not before he had a few words with the doctor who, for the most part, would be taking care of his grandmother. G was far too precious a human being for him to leave her welfare in the hands of an unknown stranger.

“I’ll go find out what’s keeping him,” Cole volunteered.

But Ericka’s fingers, still strong, tightened around his hand, keeping him in place. “You’re going to be late for work,” Ericka insisted.

She didn’t like being the cause of that. She’d already told him more than once that she was perfectly capable of getting to the hospital by herself and handling her own admission, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted on coming with her.

Cole was such a good boy, she thought, but she couldn’t be selfish with him. He had a life that went beyond her and she needed him to remember that, just in case…

Well, just in case, she told herself, letting the thought go unfinished.

Cole looked at his grandmother. His mouth curved in an affectionate smile.

“Work’ll keep, G. I took a few personal hours off and I’m not leaving until I get to talk to this doctor, who doesn’t seem to have any sense of time,” he said, ending in a somewhat irritated note.

Cole glanced over his shoulder at the door that wasn’t opening to admit anyone. Nothing got to him more than those who thought their time was more valuable than the people they dealt with.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised, taking his grandmother’s hand off his own and gently laying it down on top of her bedclothes.

Striding toward the nurses’ station in the middle of the floor, Cole found only one harried-looking nurse manning the area.

As he approached, one of the phones started ringing. He swallowed a curse as the woman picked up the receiver before he got to her.

“Geriatrics Unit. This is Estelle,” she said in a somewhat hoarse voice.

Masking an exasperated sigh, Cole tried to look patient as he stood on the other side of the desk and waited for the woman to be finished. Judging by the put-upon, distressed look on her face, this was not a personal call. The dialogue bore out his assumption.

“Yes, as soon as I can. Really. No. If you could just send me someone to help out over here, I—hello? Hello?”

With a deep sigh, she hung up the phone, looking even worse for wear.

The second the nurse removed the receiver from her ear, Cole stepped up to lay claim to her attention. “Excuse me, my grandmother’s in room 412. We’ve been waiting for the last two hours for some mythical doctor to materialize. Just how much longer is she supposed to wait for this doctor?” he asked with as much restraint as he could muster.

“Who’s your grandmother?” the woman asked, her voice strained.

“Ericka Baker. She’s in room 412,” he repeated, struggling to rein in his impatience. “I’m Detective Cole Baker with the NYPD and I want to talk to whoever they’ve assigned to her case before I leave,” he told her gruffly. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask. Now where the hell is he?”

The nurse, he noticed as he grew progressively more irritated, looked uncomfortable. Why? Was she about to snow him, saying something about how busy this missing doctor was or something equally as unacceptable?

“Stuck,” the nurse responded.

“Stuck where? In some paper-pushing meeting?” he asked contemptuously. He was ready either to demand another doctor or ask where the meeting was so that he could go there and speak with this so-called “really excellent physician” as his grandmother’s doctor had called this person. And then carry the man back if need be.

“No, in an elevator,” Estelle corrected. “Maintenance just called to tell me that she had set off an alarm because she was stuck in an elevator.”

So that was what all the noise earlier had been about. Why wasn’t anyone doing anything about it? “Get her unstuck.”

Estelle shook her head. “Not that simple. They just told me that they can’t get a repairman here for at least another hour. Maybe more.” The answer, she could see, was not the one he wanted. “Between the flu and cutbacks, it’s like the whole world is shorthanded,” she explained, obviously far from happy about the state of affairs herself.

Another hour spent waiting was unacceptable. Especially the “maybe more” part. There had to be something that could be done. It took him less than a minute to think about it. Cole was accustomed to taking matters into his own hands. G had raised him that way.

“Where’s the elevator now?” he asked.

“They said it’s stuck between the third and fourth floor.”

“Show me which one it is,” he instructed. There was no room for argument.

Estelle looked at the police detective uncertainly. Then, compelled by the no-nonsense expression on his face, she rose to her feet. She didn’t have to be told that this was not a man people said no to.

“This way.”

It surprised Nika how fast the temperature could rise within the enclosed elevator car. She’d already taken off her lab coat and unbuttoned her blouse as far as she could and still remain decent for the repairman when—and if—he showed up.

She was grateful that she wasn’t overly claustrophobic, but this little incident could definitely send her in that direction. Growing increasingly restless, Nika raised her eyes to the ceiling. In between the two waning fluorescent lights there was what looked to be a trapdoor.

Was it a way out?

Not that it did her any good, she thought darkly. She had nothing to stand on in order to access it. Not even if she stood up on her toes. At her tallest, she measured five foot six, the ceiling was at least a good foot and a half above her, if not more.