Dead Certain

trouble understanding what Claudia had found so attractive about him. She certainly wasn’t the first woman who’d been fooled by him, and she surely wasn’t going to be the last.
    “I’m fine,” I said. “How’s your wife? Has she had the baby yet?”
    “She sure did,” he grinned. “A beautiful baby girl. We named her Gloria, after my mom.”
    “Congratulations,” I replied with a brittle smile. “I’ll be sure to tell Claudia. I’m sure you’ll understand if she doesn’t offer you her congratulations herself.”
    “Why’s she still so sore at me?” he asked, with a hurt expression with which I’m sure his wife was highly familiar. Hell, for a split second I found myself wondering whether to spank him or give him a lollipop. “I didn’t mean for her to get her feelings hurt—”
    “I don’t think you get it,” I replied. “Claudia’s not the kind of girl you snack with. If she wants to sleep with married men, she has her pick of doctors.”
    “So what you’re saying is that she was slumming when she went out with me,” he replied, getting angrily to his feet in order to get in my face.
    “What I’m saying is that she thought you were telling her the truth when you told her that you were single,” I said in a voice loud enough to compete with the TV playing in the corner. “What I’m also saying is that if you don’t want to find yourself in court slapped with a restraining order, you’d better stop calling our house and Pestering Claudia. And if you take one step closer to me, I m going to scream like hell for Security. When Claudia told you it was over between you, she meant that if she never sees your lying face again, it’s too soon. Have I made myself clear?”
    Two old ladies and a hooker who looked like she’d been hit by a car burst into applause, and Carlos’s face turned deep red. I couldn’t tell whether it was from embarrassment or anger, and I was in no mood to find out. But as I turned to walk away he grabbed hold of my upper arm, squeezing it so hard I knew there’d be a bruise.
    “You tell your roommate from me,” he whispered, his voice little more than an angry hiss, “that we had a good thing going, the two of us. You tell her that I know what she needs and I’m the one to give it to her.” He dropped his voice even lower still. “You tell her that it’s never over until I say it’s over.”
     
    I used my cell phone to call Mark Millman from a relatively quiet corner of the waiting room. Luckily I caught him at home just as he was getting ready for bed. I couldn’t think of how to soften the blow, so I just told him what had happened. From the silence on the other end of the line I could tell that I had just handed him the worst news of his life.
    If you didn’t count his ex-wife, Bill Delius had no family, certainly not in town, so Millman said he’d come. While I waited for him to make it down to the hospital I killed time by pacing the floor. Was Carlos just an angry guy? And now that he was mad, was he more or less* likely to take it out on Claudia after the dressing down I’d given him that night?
    Mark Millman pushed through the emergency room doors, looking for all the world like a heart attack waiting to happen. Pasty faced and out of breath, he pulled at his tie as if it might help him get more air. Without even looking for me, he made a beeline for the triage nurse and loudly demanded that he be allowed to see Bill Delius. I caught him by the elbow and steered him away, long enough to explain that Bill was still in surgery and I to fill him in on the little I knew about his treatment. Then I said good night. Mark was Delius’s partner. I was just the hired help, a stranger who just happened to be there when the big one hit. The image of Claudia’s hand thrust deep inside Bill Delius’s chest suddenly pulsed across my brain. I’d already been witness to more than I had a right to.
    As I made my way through the parking lot it occurred to me that although I’d long considered the hospital a fixture in my life, this was the first chance I’d had to really see it. Suddenly my lunchtime conversation with Joan Bornstein seemed much less abstract. What, I wondered, would be different when it became HCC-Prescott Memorial? Would someone like Claudia still be waiting at the door?
    As I got into the car I slid a CD into the slot and watched it disappear. The sound of Elvis Costello’s smoky voice filled the car and soothed me like a