Dead Certain

legal pad in front of him. “Anybody else you can think of?”
    I considered for a moment. “Farah Davies.”
    “You mean the woman we met the other night? The one with the hair and the eyes?”
    “Yes. She’s the head of obstetrics and gynecology at Prescott Memorial, as well as a professor at the University of Chicago medical school. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some kind of history between her and McDermott. Not only that, but if I remember correctly, she was pretty steamed when she got passed over and Carl Laffer was named chief of staff at Prescott Memorial. There was even some talk about her filing suit for sex discrimination, but in the end she decided against it.”
    “I just wish I could remember where it is I know her from,” sighed Elliott, shaking his head.
    “Maybe she was one of your old girlfriends’ gynecologist?” I offered helpfully.
    “Very funny. What made her decide not to sue? She didn’t exactly strike me as the type who’d run from a fight.”
    “They bought her off by making her head of OBGYN.”
    “Interesting...” mused Elliott.
    “Why is that so interesting?”
    “Because if someone bought her off once, then somebody else could buy her off again.”
     
    That night I stopped on my way home and picked up Thai food from the storefront across the street from the apartment. After I’d put her in a cab outside of Joan Bornstein’s office, Claudia had gone home and tried to nap on the couch, only to be woken by yet another hangup call. By the time I got there, her nerves were such a mess that I dragged out the bottle of Absolut we kept in the freezer for just such emergencies and poured her a healthy shot. After we’d knocked back a couple and helped ourselves to pad thai, the conversation turned to Carlos.
    When I mentioned that I’d run into him at the hospital on the night of Bill Delius’s heart attack, she confessed that he’d taken to hanging out in the ER even on the nights he wasn’t working if she was on trauma call. Not only that but she’d found roses in her locker and love notes on the windshield of her car.
    “Your locker in the on-call room?” I demanded. “Isn’t that off limits to everyone but house staff?”
    “Yes,” agreed Claudia. “After it happened, I went to the head of security about it.”
    “What did he say?”
    “He practically laughed me out of his office. There was no note left with the flowers, no way of proving that Carlos was the one who’d left them. I’m sure he was thinking that women should be thrilled to have someone leaving them notes and flowers. He told me to come back if Carlos threatened me.”
    “I’m sure you found that reassuring,” I remarked as I refilled her glass. Claudia might be a ninety-eight-pound weakling, but she could drink like a stevedore.
    “Absolutely,” replied Claudia. “I can sleep so much better at night knowing that if Carlos decides to beat me up in the parking lot, I’ll be able to go back to that jerk in security and tell him ‘I told you so.’ ” She drained her glass. “You know, before this happened with Carlos, I used to be so smug. I’d see these women in the ER who’d been abused by their boyfriends, and I’d ask myself why they didn’t just get out, or worse, why they got mixed up with these losers in the first place. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I figured they showed up on the first date wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘I beat women.’ ”
    “So what are you going to do?”
    “I was thinking of calling his wife, except that I’m afraid that if she says anything to him, he may end up taking it out on her....” She groaned. “This whole thing is making me crazy. Half the time I think I’m being stalked, and the other half I think I’m just being paranoid.”
    “You’re not being paranoid,” I said. “There has to be somebody else you can go to. What about Dr. Laffer? Isn’t he in charge of the fellowship program?”
    “Yeah, but I hate to go to him after this whole thing with Mrs. Estrada. He’s going to end up thinking that I’m some kind of wacko—killing patients, being stalked by married ex-boyfriends....”
    “I thought you said he stood up for you in the M&M conference. Besides, you’re always telling me what a good guy he is.”
    “You’re right,” said Claudia. “That’s the trouble with being stalked by a psycho. It actually does make you paranoid.”
     
    * * *
     
    I couldn’t speak for Claudia, but the next