(no subject)
Well, it's the last day of the month, so here's the next update of Best Forgotten. I'm sorry to be dragging this story out so long and posting such incomplete updates, but it's been hard to find time to write (much less revise. Essentially, you're getting a rough draft here.) This chapter was supposed to have another section, but rather than miss my deadline, here's what I have.
And as you know . . . AU, don't own, etc.
Best Forgotten, Part 18
“Lucy! There you are! Nurse Cree has been looking all over for you. Didn’t you hear your page? You were supposed to start handing out the afternoon meds ten minutes ago--”
The nurse paused, her friendly voice turning quizzical when Lucy failed to respond. “Lucy?” she prompted, calling even louder when Lucy did not even look at her. “Hello? Lucy?”
Intent on reaching the break room, Lucy continued striding down the hall. A dozen turbulent emotions darkened her face, and all she could hear were her own hectic thoughts.
“Perhaps I should try to call Mr. Cohen first. No, no, that will not help Ryan, not right now. Even if I am able to reach him, Mr. Cohen is in California. He could not get here in time to stop the operation, and he could do nothing over the phone. No, I must find some proof, something Dr. Keller will believe. There must be some record online--”
“Lucy!”
A hand caught Lucy’s arm, stopping her mid-step. She spun around, her cheeks flushed, her gaze unfocused. It took her a moment to recognize the woman staring at her and another second to register her obvious concern. Lucy shook her head like a diver emerging from deep water, surfacing, trying to catch her breath. When she spoke the words came in soft gasps.
“Celia” she stammered. “I am sorry. I did not hear you . . . But I am in a great hurry. Is something wrong?”
“That’s what I was about to ask you, Lucy. The afternoon meds? Remember?” Celia gestured a reminder, pointing to the cart beside her. “My shift is over. You’re supposed to take over and dispense these, not race through the halls, training for a track meet. Or is it a marathon?” Chuckling softly, she tried to coax an answering smile, but instead Lucy stiffened. Panic flitted across her face and Celia’s laughter dissolved. “Lucy, what is it?” she asked, quiet and concerned. “What’s going on?”
A wave of scalding guilt broke over Lucy. She covered her mouth, flinching. “Oh no! My shift. All my patients,” she murmured. “I forgot, but . . . No. No, I cannot, not now . . . Celia, please could you cover for me? I do not have time to explain right now but it is--” Lucy bit her lip. Her eyes pleading, she cast a longing glance backwards toward the break room. “It is an emergency.”
Celia hesitated, troubled. “An emergency?” she repeated. “What kind of--” She broke off, startled, as Lucy grabbed her hands, squeezing them in entreaty.
“Please,” she begged. “If you could just handle my shift for the next-I cannot say how long, perhaps all afternoon-but if you could do this for me . . .”
“Lucy, you’re scaring me. Are you ill? Do you need to go home? Because Nurse Cree would--”
“No! I just-I need to do something here. Right now. Please!” Lucy’s voice, hushed and earnest, trembled slightly and she clasped Celia’s hands tighter. “Just do me this favor. I will make it up to you. Celia, I promise, it is so important.”
Celia studied Lucy for a second. Her brow puckered, anxious and wondering. Then she nodded. “All right. Go ahead, Lucy. Whatever it is, I’ll cover for you.”
Lucy exhaled a swift breath of relief. “Thank you,” she sighed, already starting to turn away. All at once, she stopped. Her gaze swept the area anxiously and her body tensed again. “Celia,” she added, almost whispering, “you will not tell Nurse Cree about this? Please? I do not wish anyone to look for me now.”
“Tell her what?” Celia shrugged, smiling reassurance. “Lucy, I’ve got no idea what’s going on. But I do know you. And you wouldn’t neglect your duties like this unless it was a matter of life or death. Just go.”
“A matter of life or death,” Lucy said softly. “Yes. That is it.”
She clasped Celia’s hands again, pressing them gratefully before she wheeled around and dashed down the hall.
The break room was just around the corner. When she reached the door, Lucy peeked inside first, murmuring a prayer of thanks when she saw that the room was empty. She slipped inside, falling onto the chair in front of the first computer and simultaneously turning the monitor so that it blocked her face. Her fingers fumbling, she logged onto the computer.
It took Lucy three clumsy tries to produce the right password.
“Slow down,” she warned herself. “You cannot afford to be careless. How will you help Ryan if you make mistakes and waste time this way?”
That one word, time, echoed ominously in her mind. Lucy’s eyes flitted to the clock on her screen for an instant. As she did, the number changed, and she felt her throat start to close.
Another second lost.
“Ah, mon Dieu. Ryan,” she moaned silently. One hand slipped off the keyboard. It fell to her lap and she touched the syringe and small vial, now empty, hidden in her pocket. “How could I have done this to you? It was wrong . . . But I could not think of any other way to stop the surgery. . .”
Abruptly, fiercely, Lucy yanked her hand away, and sat up straight. Her eyes narrowed. She forced herself not to think about the time ticking away, not to think about Dr. Keller or the surgical team on their way, probably at that very moment, to Ryan’s room. She did not even allow herself to think about Ryan himself. It hurt too much to recall the way she had left him and how she saw him last, lying deathly still in his bed. Only his eyes moved. A bottomless, agonized blue, they had locked on hers, dark with entreaty, struggling desperately to stay open, but slowly, inexorably, emptying.
Closing.
The image made Lucy’s heart clench. Her body buzzed, shot with a of hot, heedless panic, and her muscles jumped.
But she could not afford to act impulsively.
Lucy needed control.
She needed to be cool, careful, methodical.
She needed to find something, right now, that would make Dr. Keller stop the operation.
And she needed, right now, to decide where to start.
Lucy’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. She allowed herself a half-second of silent debate. She wanted to begin with Ryan, but even though she had not found the news story Mr. Nichol had fabricated, there still might be something . . .
With quick, decisive strokes, she typed “Brandon McConnell” into the search engine.
Almost immediately, she felt a tingle of cold despair.
It was too common a name.
Over 400,000 results appeared, most of them apparently about some spray paint graffiti artist. Lucy tried adding a qualifier, “murder,” but all she found were blurbs declaring that the painter was “guilty of making art” and entries about another Brandon with a different last name, who had been accused of killing somebody named Lawrence King.
Scrolling swiftly from page to page, Lucy scanned the results, adding the names “Cohen” and “Atwood” in an attempt to narrow the search further.
She found nothing.
There were no links she could follow, nothing about Brandon McConnell murdering Ryan Atwood, nothing at all to connect their names.
Lucy sat back, shivering, simultaneously relieved and horrified.
“He lied about everything,” she concluded grimly. “Mr. Nichol lied. Surely if such a crime occurred, there would be notice of it somewhere. But there’s not. And if there was no murder that means everything else Mr. Nichol told us about Ryan-about ‘Brandon’-all of the medical records and legal documents he produced-they must be lies too. Only. . .” Lucy shook her head, struggling for comprehension, “Why would he do that? How could he destroy an innocent boy? To claim he is crazy and arrange for this operation . . . What kind of man is Mr. Nichol? And, oh God . . .” She took a hissing breath. Her hands clenched into fists and she stiffened, rigid with defeat. “How can I prove all this to Dr. Keller? There is nothing here I can print, nothing that I can show him . . . Ryan! Perhaps if I can find something about Ryan--”
Lucy moved her cursor with feverish haste. She started to delete Brandon McConnell and insert Ryan’s name, but then, struck by a sudden hunch, she typed “Brandon McConnell + Caleb Nichol” instead.
She found nearly two dozen results that matched.
Her skin tingling, Lucy skimmed the summations. Most of the reports went back more than thirty years. Several of them concerned an aborted takeover of Mr. Nichol’s company, The Newport Group, by a businessman named Brandon McConnell.
“So Mr. Nichol knew a man named Brandon McConnell-a man he must have despised,” Lucy concluded, wondering. Automatically she hit the print command, saving the article, but she didn’t take time to puzzle its significance. She just clicked back to the search page, skimming down to the other articles, almost holding her breath.
It exploded in a rush as she read.
The other articles reported Brandon McConnell’s suicide.
Lucy pulled up the first one that included Caleb Nichol’s name, her gaze flying over the first paragraphs, then jolting to a stop when she came to short interviews with people at the funeral.
“Brandon McConnell invested everything he had in his effort to gain control of my company,” Mr. Nichol was quoted as saying. “When he failed, he went bankrupt, I’m afraid. That’s the risk someone takes in situations like this, but obviously McConnell couldn’t deal with his losses. It’s a shame. I can imagine what a tragedy his death must be for his family.”
Lucy stared at the screen. She reread Mr. Nichol’s words four more times, trying to infuse them with some compassion, some basic humanity, but it was impossible. They remained the same: calibrated, smug, and completely cold.
A slow chill spread through Lucy’s body as their meaning registered.
Caleb Nichol had known a man named Brandon McConnell-a man he had obviously seen as a threat, a man he had hated.
A man whose death he had clearly welcomed.
It could not be a coincidence.
He had chosen that name, assigned it to Ryan for a reason.
Rushing now, no longer trying to contain her urgency, Lucy printed the page. It was something-not enough yet, not proof of anything exactly, but at least a start. Without pausing to retrieve the copy, she began another search, this time using “Ryan Atwood + Sanford Cohen.”
Once again, Lucy was overwhelmed by the results.
There were so many Cohens, so many entries about Sandy himself-his cases, his activism at Berkeley, legal articles he had published, his marriage to Kirsten Nichol, all the charity events they attended in Orange County. Lucy examined the blurbs quickly, looking for any that highlighted Ryan’s name as well.
She found only two. The first was a legal record, a terse announcement that Sanford and Kirsten Cohen had become the legal guardians of the minor ward of the state, Ryan Atwood. That much corresponded to Mr. Nichol’s story, so it told her nothing that she did not already know. Lucy sped on to the second link, headlined “Chaos at the Cotillion: Jimmy Cooper Attacked at Daughter’s Debutante Ball.” Sandy’s name appeared in connection with the fight at the event, and Ryan was identified as “escort of Marissa Cooper.”
Her fingers trembling slightly, Lucy clicked onto the full article. She started to read, but then her eyes widened and she scrolled down rapidly.
The article included two photographs.
One was a shot of Julie Cooper, vivid, elegant, and glowing with apparent pride as her daughter was introduced. She was seated next to another couple: a slim, almost fragile blond woman with a slight, wondering smile, and, holding her hand, a broadly grinning man. His alert eyes crinkled under thick brows and a shock of unruly dark hair tumbled on his forehead.
The caption identified the couple as Kirsten Nichol Cohen and her husband, Sanford Cohen.
Ryan’s Kirsten and Sandy.
Even in the brief glimpse she got of them, Lucy could sense couple’s warmth. She wanted to study them more closely, but the companion photo commanded her gaze.
It showed the scene that the Cohens were watching: Jimmy Cooper with his daughter Marissa at the moment that she was being presented to Newport society. They were the focus of the picture, but Lucy barely glanced at them. Instead, she stared at the corner of the picture because there, bowing, was Marissa’s escort.
Ryan Atwood.
It wasn’t a good photo.
His face was half-hidden, ducked away from the camera, and his body was masked by an awkward, formal bow, but it didn’t matter. Lucy recognized him anyway. The curve of his cheek, the tumble of dark-blond hair, even the sturdy line of his shoulders-she was sure that the well-dressed teenager in the picture, that debonair, uncomfortably proper Ryan Atwood was the same boy she knew, the one in their clinic.
The same boy who now lay unconscious in the Annex.
The one about to have brain surgery that would destroy him forever.
But not now-Lucy’s breath quickened-not when she could prove exactly who he was.
Her lips parted. Raising one finger, Lucy touched the computer screen, as if trying to keep the image from disappearing.
For a moment she worried: Did she have enough, even now? The articles about Brandon McConnell proved nothing by themselves-Caleb Nichol could claim that the name was nothing more than an awful, bizarre coincidence. And the cotillion picture was blurred. Ryan appeared almost out of frame, vague enough to be mistaken for any one of a dozen other attractive blond teens.
Perhaps that is what Dr. Keller would do: shrug away the article and the photo.
Lucy’s nails bit into the flesh of her closed fists. Opening her hand, she touched the monitor again, tracing a line from Sandy Cohen to Ryan and stopping there.
Ever since “Brandon McConnell” had been admitted, she had seen an obsessive glint grow in the doctor’s eyes. Lucy recalled all the times she had been with him in Ryan’s room, watching as he conducted his examinations. Never once had Dr. Keller listened to Ryan or empathized; never once had recognized the living, suffering boy in front of him.
All he saw, Lucy feared, was the passport to his future and beyond that, his own life after he completed the surgery: acclaimed, respected, admired, juggling interviews, accepting endowments and praise and job offers.
Dr. Keller had become so intent on proving that his procedure would work that these flimsy bits of evidence might not be strong enough to stop him.
How could he recognize Ryan in the picture if he did not see him even now, not as a person?
Lucy sank back, sick with certainty. Her gaze flitted to the clock on her computer screen.
“I do not have enough to stop him,” she thought. “And I do not have time to look further. Dr. Keller will proceed with the surgery anyway.”
The image on screen seemed to waver under her fingertips. Jolted, Lucy yanked her hand away. She straightened her shoulders, her jaw tightening.
“You cannot give up, Lucy,” she told herself sternly.“You promised Ryan. This operation is so very wrong. If you cannot stop it, you must stall it at least. Dr. Keller might dismiss this evidence, but perhaps members of his surgical team will find it suspicious. They could force him to postpone the procedure so that they could confirm Ryan's identity.”
She had no doubt that Mr. Nichol would find some way to dispute the evidence she had found, but even a delay, Lucy decided, might be victory enough. If Dr. Keller rescheduled the surgery she would have time to reach Mr. Cohen, the real Sandy, the compassionate man she glimpsed in the photo.
He would come to the clinic just as Ryan hoped. Sandy would identify Ryan, arrange his release and, finally, take him home.
Where he belonged.
Warmed by the image of their reunion, Lucy’s uncertainty disappeared. All she and Ryan needed was time. The information she’d found must be enough to give them that.
Galvanized, breathless with excitement, Lucy pressed the print command and sprang up from her chair. Already starting to sprint out of the room, she grabbed the sheets so rapidly that she tore the papers in half. “Merde,” she muttered, wheeling around to print them again. She was waiting, impatiently counting the seconds while the machine whirred out the copies, when the intercom sounded.
This time Lucy heard the code and the terse, urgent page.
Room 2-D.
Ryan’s room.
She wasn’t called, but she ran anyway.
TBC
And as you know . . . AU, don't own, etc.
Best Forgotten, Part 18
“Lucy! There you are! Nurse Cree has been looking all over for you. Didn’t you hear your page? You were supposed to start handing out the afternoon meds ten minutes ago--”
The nurse paused, her friendly voice turning quizzical when Lucy failed to respond. “Lucy?” she prompted, calling even louder when Lucy did not even look at her. “Hello? Lucy?”
Intent on reaching the break room, Lucy continued striding down the hall. A dozen turbulent emotions darkened her face, and all she could hear were her own hectic thoughts.
“Perhaps I should try to call Mr. Cohen first. No, no, that will not help Ryan, not right now. Even if I am able to reach him, Mr. Cohen is in California. He could not get here in time to stop the operation, and he could do nothing over the phone. No, I must find some proof, something Dr. Keller will believe. There must be some record online--”
“Lucy!”
A hand caught Lucy’s arm, stopping her mid-step. She spun around, her cheeks flushed, her gaze unfocused. It took her a moment to recognize the woman staring at her and another second to register her obvious concern. Lucy shook her head like a diver emerging from deep water, surfacing, trying to catch her breath. When she spoke the words came in soft gasps.
“Celia” she stammered. “I am sorry. I did not hear you . . . But I am in a great hurry. Is something wrong?”
“That’s what I was about to ask you, Lucy. The afternoon meds? Remember?” Celia gestured a reminder, pointing to the cart beside her. “My shift is over. You’re supposed to take over and dispense these, not race through the halls, training for a track meet. Or is it a marathon?” Chuckling softly, she tried to coax an answering smile, but instead Lucy stiffened. Panic flitted across her face and Celia’s laughter dissolved. “Lucy, what is it?” she asked, quiet and concerned. “What’s going on?”
A wave of scalding guilt broke over Lucy. She covered her mouth, flinching. “Oh no! My shift. All my patients,” she murmured. “I forgot, but . . . No. No, I cannot, not now . . . Celia, please could you cover for me? I do not have time to explain right now but it is--” Lucy bit her lip. Her eyes pleading, she cast a longing glance backwards toward the break room. “It is an emergency.”
Celia hesitated, troubled. “An emergency?” she repeated. “What kind of--” She broke off, startled, as Lucy grabbed her hands, squeezing them in entreaty.
“Please,” she begged. “If you could just handle my shift for the next-I cannot say how long, perhaps all afternoon-but if you could do this for me . . .”
“Lucy, you’re scaring me. Are you ill? Do you need to go home? Because Nurse Cree would--”
“No! I just-I need to do something here. Right now. Please!” Lucy’s voice, hushed and earnest, trembled slightly and she clasped Celia’s hands tighter. “Just do me this favor. I will make it up to you. Celia, I promise, it is so important.”
Celia studied Lucy for a second. Her brow puckered, anxious and wondering. Then she nodded. “All right. Go ahead, Lucy. Whatever it is, I’ll cover for you.”
Lucy exhaled a swift breath of relief. “Thank you,” she sighed, already starting to turn away. All at once, she stopped. Her gaze swept the area anxiously and her body tensed again. “Celia,” she added, almost whispering, “you will not tell Nurse Cree about this? Please? I do not wish anyone to look for me now.”
“Tell her what?” Celia shrugged, smiling reassurance. “Lucy, I’ve got no idea what’s going on. But I do know you. And you wouldn’t neglect your duties like this unless it was a matter of life or death. Just go.”
“A matter of life or death,” Lucy said softly. “Yes. That is it.”
She clasped Celia’s hands again, pressing them gratefully before she wheeled around and dashed down the hall.
The break room was just around the corner. When she reached the door, Lucy peeked inside first, murmuring a prayer of thanks when she saw that the room was empty. She slipped inside, falling onto the chair in front of the first computer and simultaneously turning the monitor so that it blocked her face. Her fingers fumbling, she logged onto the computer.
It took Lucy three clumsy tries to produce the right password.
“Slow down,” she warned herself. “You cannot afford to be careless. How will you help Ryan if you make mistakes and waste time this way?”
That one word, time, echoed ominously in her mind. Lucy’s eyes flitted to the clock on her screen for an instant. As she did, the number changed, and she felt her throat start to close.
Another second lost.
“Ah, mon Dieu. Ryan,” she moaned silently. One hand slipped off the keyboard. It fell to her lap and she touched the syringe and small vial, now empty, hidden in her pocket. “How could I have done this to you? It was wrong . . . But I could not think of any other way to stop the surgery. . .”
Abruptly, fiercely, Lucy yanked her hand away, and sat up straight. Her eyes narrowed. She forced herself not to think about the time ticking away, not to think about Dr. Keller or the surgical team on their way, probably at that very moment, to Ryan’s room. She did not even allow herself to think about Ryan himself. It hurt too much to recall the way she had left him and how she saw him last, lying deathly still in his bed. Only his eyes moved. A bottomless, agonized blue, they had locked on hers, dark with entreaty, struggling desperately to stay open, but slowly, inexorably, emptying.
Closing.
The image made Lucy’s heart clench. Her body buzzed, shot with a of hot, heedless panic, and her muscles jumped.
But she could not afford to act impulsively.
Lucy needed control.
She needed to be cool, careful, methodical.
She needed to find something, right now, that would make Dr. Keller stop the operation.
And she needed, right now, to decide where to start.
Lucy’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. She allowed herself a half-second of silent debate. She wanted to begin with Ryan, but even though she had not found the news story Mr. Nichol had fabricated, there still might be something . . .
With quick, decisive strokes, she typed “Brandon McConnell” into the search engine.
Almost immediately, she felt a tingle of cold despair.
It was too common a name.
Over 400,000 results appeared, most of them apparently about some spray paint graffiti artist. Lucy tried adding a qualifier, “murder,” but all she found were blurbs declaring that the painter was “guilty of making art” and entries about another Brandon with a different last name, who had been accused of killing somebody named Lawrence King.
Scrolling swiftly from page to page, Lucy scanned the results, adding the names “Cohen” and “Atwood” in an attempt to narrow the search further.
She found nothing.
There were no links she could follow, nothing about Brandon McConnell murdering Ryan Atwood, nothing at all to connect their names.
Lucy sat back, shivering, simultaneously relieved and horrified.
“He lied about everything,” she concluded grimly. “Mr. Nichol lied. Surely if such a crime occurred, there would be notice of it somewhere. But there’s not. And if there was no murder that means everything else Mr. Nichol told us about Ryan-about ‘Brandon’-all of the medical records and legal documents he produced-they must be lies too. Only. . .” Lucy shook her head, struggling for comprehension, “Why would he do that? How could he destroy an innocent boy? To claim he is crazy and arrange for this operation . . . What kind of man is Mr. Nichol? And, oh God . . .” She took a hissing breath. Her hands clenched into fists and she stiffened, rigid with defeat. “How can I prove all this to Dr. Keller? There is nothing here I can print, nothing that I can show him . . . Ryan! Perhaps if I can find something about Ryan--”
Lucy moved her cursor with feverish haste. She started to delete Brandon McConnell and insert Ryan’s name, but then, struck by a sudden hunch, she typed “Brandon McConnell + Caleb Nichol” instead.
She found nearly two dozen results that matched.
Her skin tingling, Lucy skimmed the summations. Most of the reports went back more than thirty years. Several of them concerned an aborted takeover of Mr. Nichol’s company, The Newport Group, by a businessman named Brandon McConnell.
“So Mr. Nichol knew a man named Brandon McConnell-a man he must have despised,” Lucy concluded, wondering. Automatically she hit the print command, saving the article, but she didn’t take time to puzzle its significance. She just clicked back to the search page, skimming down to the other articles, almost holding her breath.
It exploded in a rush as she read.
The other articles reported Brandon McConnell’s suicide.
Lucy pulled up the first one that included Caleb Nichol’s name, her gaze flying over the first paragraphs, then jolting to a stop when she came to short interviews with people at the funeral.
“Brandon McConnell invested everything he had in his effort to gain control of my company,” Mr. Nichol was quoted as saying. “When he failed, he went bankrupt, I’m afraid. That’s the risk someone takes in situations like this, but obviously McConnell couldn’t deal with his losses. It’s a shame. I can imagine what a tragedy his death must be for his family.”
Lucy stared at the screen. She reread Mr. Nichol’s words four more times, trying to infuse them with some compassion, some basic humanity, but it was impossible. They remained the same: calibrated, smug, and completely cold.
A slow chill spread through Lucy’s body as their meaning registered.
Caleb Nichol had known a man named Brandon McConnell-a man he had obviously seen as a threat, a man he had hated.
A man whose death he had clearly welcomed.
It could not be a coincidence.
He had chosen that name, assigned it to Ryan for a reason.
Rushing now, no longer trying to contain her urgency, Lucy printed the page. It was something-not enough yet, not proof of anything exactly, but at least a start. Without pausing to retrieve the copy, she began another search, this time using “Ryan Atwood + Sanford Cohen.”
Once again, Lucy was overwhelmed by the results.
There were so many Cohens, so many entries about Sandy himself-his cases, his activism at Berkeley, legal articles he had published, his marriage to Kirsten Nichol, all the charity events they attended in Orange County. Lucy examined the blurbs quickly, looking for any that highlighted Ryan’s name as well.
She found only two. The first was a legal record, a terse announcement that Sanford and Kirsten Cohen had become the legal guardians of the minor ward of the state, Ryan Atwood. That much corresponded to Mr. Nichol’s story, so it told her nothing that she did not already know. Lucy sped on to the second link, headlined “Chaos at the Cotillion: Jimmy Cooper Attacked at Daughter’s Debutante Ball.” Sandy’s name appeared in connection with the fight at the event, and Ryan was identified as “escort of Marissa Cooper.”
Her fingers trembling slightly, Lucy clicked onto the full article. She started to read, but then her eyes widened and she scrolled down rapidly.
The article included two photographs.
One was a shot of Julie Cooper, vivid, elegant, and glowing with apparent pride as her daughter was introduced. She was seated next to another couple: a slim, almost fragile blond woman with a slight, wondering smile, and, holding her hand, a broadly grinning man. His alert eyes crinkled under thick brows and a shock of unruly dark hair tumbled on his forehead.
The caption identified the couple as Kirsten Nichol Cohen and her husband, Sanford Cohen.
Ryan’s Kirsten and Sandy.
Even in the brief glimpse she got of them, Lucy could sense couple’s warmth. She wanted to study them more closely, but the companion photo commanded her gaze.
It showed the scene that the Cohens were watching: Jimmy Cooper with his daughter Marissa at the moment that she was being presented to Newport society. They were the focus of the picture, but Lucy barely glanced at them. Instead, she stared at the corner of the picture because there, bowing, was Marissa’s escort.
Ryan Atwood.
It wasn’t a good photo.
His face was half-hidden, ducked away from the camera, and his body was masked by an awkward, formal bow, but it didn’t matter. Lucy recognized him anyway. The curve of his cheek, the tumble of dark-blond hair, even the sturdy line of his shoulders-she was sure that the well-dressed teenager in the picture, that debonair, uncomfortably proper Ryan Atwood was the same boy she knew, the one in their clinic.
The same boy who now lay unconscious in the Annex.
The one about to have brain surgery that would destroy him forever.
But not now-Lucy’s breath quickened-not when she could prove exactly who he was.
Her lips parted. Raising one finger, Lucy touched the computer screen, as if trying to keep the image from disappearing.
For a moment she worried: Did she have enough, even now? The articles about Brandon McConnell proved nothing by themselves-Caleb Nichol could claim that the name was nothing more than an awful, bizarre coincidence. And the cotillion picture was blurred. Ryan appeared almost out of frame, vague enough to be mistaken for any one of a dozen other attractive blond teens.
Perhaps that is what Dr. Keller would do: shrug away the article and the photo.
Lucy’s nails bit into the flesh of her closed fists. Opening her hand, she touched the monitor again, tracing a line from Sandy Cohen to Ryan and stopping there.
Ever since “Brandon McConnell” had been admitted, she had seen an obsessive glint grow in the doctor’s eyes. Lucy recalled all the times she had been with him in Ryan’s room, watching as he conducted his examinations. Never once had Dr. Keller listened to Ryan or empathized; never once had recognized the living, suffering boy in front of him.
All he saw, Lucy feared, was the passport to his future and beyond that, his own life after he completed the surgery: acclaimed, respected, admired, juggling interviews, accepting endowments and praise and job offers.
Dr. Keller had become so intent on proving that his procedure would work that these flimsy bits of evidence might not be strong enough to stop him.
How could he recognize Ryan in the picture if he did not see him even now, not as a person?
Lucy sank back, sick with certainty. Her gaze flitted to the clock on her computer screen.
“I do not have enough to stop him,” she thought. “And I do not have time to look further. Dr. Keller will proceed with the surgery anyway.”
The image on screen seemed to waver under her fingertips. Jolted, Lucy yanked her hand away. She straightened her shoulders, her jaw tightening.
“You cannot give up, Lucy,” she told herself sternly.“You promised Ryan. This operation is so very wrong. If you cannot stop it, you must stall it at least. Dr. Keller might dismiss this evidence, but perhaps members of his surgical team will find it suspicious. They could force him to postpone the procedure so that they could confirm Ryan's identity.”
She had no doubt that Mr. Nichol would find some way to dispute the evidence she had found, but even a delay, Lucy decided, might be victory enough. If Dr. Keller rescheduled the surgery she would have time to reach Mr. Cohen, the real Sandy, the compassionate man she glimpsed in the photo.
He would come to the clinic just as Ryan hoped. Sandy would identify Ryan, arrange his release and, finally, take him home.
Where he belonged.
Warmed by the image of their reunion, Lucy’s uncertainty disappeared. All she and Ryan needed was time. The information she’d found must be enough to give them that.
Galvanized, breathless with excitement, Lucy pressed the print command and sprang up from her chair. Already starting to sprint out of the room, she grabbed the sheets so rapidly that she tore the papers in half. “Merde,” she muttered, wheeling around to print them again. She was waiting, impatiently counting the seconds while the machine whirred out the copies, when the intercom sounded.
This time Lucy heard the code and the terse, urgent page.
Room 2-D.
Ryan’s room.
She wasn’t called, but she ran anyway.
TBC