Rota Fortunae (12/?)
=====
Reid’s first full day among the officially living began much the same as the days before-awakening in his hotel room, a shower and change of clothes, then off to the hospital for a quick breakfast in the cafeteria before his shift began. Though Reid was now fully restored to active status at the hospital, with the private office and the loss of babysitter that change entailed, he had yet to develop a full load of patients in need of his expertise. Instead, his day would be spent mostly in his office, reviewing case files from other doctors in need of a consult, with the occasional break to spend time in the clinic or to check in on his latest surgical success.
It was on one such trip to the pediatric wing that he heard his name called by a cheery voice, and he turned to find Katie Hughes approaching with a bright pink box held in her hands.
“Happy birthday, Reid!” she cried merrily as she drew near, opening the box to reveal a dozen absolutely scrumptious-looking cupcakes.
“U-uh…” Reid began uncertainly, wanting to correct the obvious mistake but not wanting to say anything that might risk getting the cupcakes taken away from him.
“I know, I know,” Katie said, saving Reid the internal debate, “it’s not your real birthday. But I thought we should celebrate, and ‘Happy Revoking Your Death Certificate Day’ just didn’t sound as nice. Anyway, try one.”
Moral dilemma resolved, Reid lost no time in reaching for the box, pulling out one of the luscious red-with-cream-topping cupcakes and setting the rest behind him on the counter of the nurses’ station.
“Ooh, wait!” Katie interjected, fumbling in her purse for a candle and lighter. She stuck the candle on Reid’s cupcake and lit it with a flourish. “Make a wish!” she urged.
Reid closed his eyes and wished that the cupcake would taste just as wonderful as it looked.
In fact, it was even better. Red velvet, with a cream cheese topping, and so rich and thick and gooey it was almost impossible to chew. “You like?” Katie asked knowingly, obviously recognizing the look of sheer heaven on Reid’s face.
“Mmm!” was all he could manage in response.
“They’re from this little bakery over on Front Street, makes them up fresh every afternoon. The other Reid used to bring these home every so often when he was living with me.”
Reid savored the feel of the sugary perfection sliding down his throat, then gave an understanding nod. “I knew there had to be some reason my alter ego stayed in this miserable dump-Ow!” He cast a baleful look at Katie as he reached up to rub the spot on his arm where the blonde had just pinched him.
“He stayed because of the people, Reid,” Katie scolded, “and you know it.”
Reid couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Then he must have been a complete masochist!” he retorted, then swiftly moved to one side to dodge the second incoming pinch. “Ah-ah! Watch it, Blondie! All that hard work getting my license back will be ruined if you leave me with permanent nerve damage.”
“Then stop being such a jerk and eat your cupcake,” she answered unsympathetically. “Don’t make me sorry I came here to see you.”
“Hey!” a voice called from behind them. “You never bring cupcakes for me any more….”
Reid had been Katie’s somewhat reluctant friend for long enough to know the full story of Chris Hughes’ life, but really, it hadn’t taken more than a few minutes at his first hospital staff meeting to understand that the blonde’s latest husband was a prize idiot even among Oakdale’s finest examples. The eye roll at the man’s approach was almost instinctive. “Guess the honeymoon is over, eh, Frankenstein?” he smirked at the newcomer.
“You’re on a restricted diet, Chris, remember?” Katie added, with a melodious tone that couldn’t quite disguise the note of irritation beneath it. “John says your blood sugar’s too high.”
“John says, John says,” Chris repeated, in a mockingly high-pitched voice. “You know, John’s not the only doctor in this hospital, Katie. Why don’t you try listening to me, for a change?”
“You ought to take better care of that heart,” Reid observed, taking another big bite of the cupcake and speaking again as he chewed. “Believe me, it’s a better grade of merchandise than anything you were born with.”
“Reid, you’re not helping,” Katie warned.
Chris’s round face grew red with temper. “Since we all know what an expert you are in every field of medicine, Dr. Oliver,” he snapped, “I’ll be sure to take your advice.”
“Chris!” Katie snapped. “Don’t forget who-“
“I know,” Chris interrupted, “this is the great Reid Oliver, magically restored to us from beyond the fabric of time. Doesn’t make him any less of an asshole.”
“True enough,” Reid put in cheerfully, still munching on his cupcake.
“And it hasn’t made you any less of an asshole either,” Katie shot back. “Reid died saving your life, and now we’ve been given this amazing second chance with him. You think you can stop thinking of your petty grudges for two seconds and show a little bit of gratitude?”
Chris looked a bit chastised for a moment, but then he folded his arms across his chest and made a pout worthy of a two-year-old. “I don’t owe this guy anything,” he muttered.
Katie gave a growl of impatience. “Alright, that’s it!” she exclaimed. “Chris, we’ll talk about this when you get home. Reid, welcome back. Call me when you have a free evening and we can do dinner?”
As Katie flounced off in a display of marvelously dramatic temper, Reid finished the cupcake in his hand and gave a somewhat crumbly smile at Chris. “That could have gone better, don’t you think?” he observed.
In a blink of an eye, Chris Hughes’s face went from petulant to menacing. “Listen here, Oliver,” he snarled, fists curling at his sides. “I was even more anxious than you were to get your license back, because I thought it meant you’d be on the first plane out of this town. But now you’ve got your license and you’re still here, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you stick around and try to take over everything good again my life-once again.”
Reid let out a hearty shout of laughter. “So now it’s your life I’m trying to take over?” he said amusedly. “You people need to get your stories straight.”
“You’re damn right it’s my life,” Chris hissed. “You come here to my hospital, in my hometown, where suddenly everyone’s treating you like the second coming of Jonas Salk-and meanwhile you’ve got my father checking in on you like a doting dad and my wife bringing you cupcakes and taking you out on coffee and dinner dates.”
“Jonas Salk was a virologist, not a surgeon,” Reid said contemptuously, “which you’d know if your degree was worth anything more than the paper it’s written on.”
“You-“
“No, now you listen, Frankie,” Reid cut in, steely blue eyes boring into the pediatrician’s face. “The last thing I want in this universe is to be stuck here in this one-horse town forever-and the sooner I can forget this town and all the freak shows who live in it, the happier I’ll be. But I will leave this place when I’m good and ready to leave, and no amount of vague threats from a half-witted, pill-popping grave robber like you are going to speed me on my way.”
“We’ll see about that, Oliver,” Chris spat. With a sweep of his arm, he knocked the box of cupcakes from the counter to the floor, and then stepped forward, crushing the box and its contents beneath him as he stormed off.
=====
Reid was still mourning the loss of the cupcakes some five hours later, when his rumbling stomach and the clock in his office informed Reid that it was well past his lunchtime. Deciding to forego the hospital’s usual slop for something a bit more palatable, Reid gathered up his coat and headed out the door. He turned down the corridor toward one of the hospital’s lesser-used side entrances, hoping to minimize the chance of meeting anyone that might want to talk to him-only to be brought up short by the sight of Luke Snyder stepping into the hospital through that very side entrance, a large clutch of balloons held in one hand.
“Oh!” Luke seemed every bit as startled by the unexpected encounter as Reid was. “Uh… Hello… Dr. Oliver.”
“Mr. Snyder,” Reid greeted him awkwardly, taking a step to the side to create the widest possible berth for the young man to pass by.
But instead Luke chose to hang back. “Uh…” he said hesitantly, as if reluctant to move on without some form of explanation for his presence, “I was… uh, I was just… coming to check on Eliza.”
Reid’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Who?” he asked.
“Eliza Ryan, the… the little girl with the head injury.” Luke studied Reid for a moment, then clearly realized that he hadn’t provided enough information for the surgeon. “The one you operated on?”
“The-Oh! The hematoma,” Reid nodded. “She’s fine… good!” he supplied helpfully. “She’s good.”
Luke nodded gratefully. “Oh, that’s… that’s good.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“Sure. Uh, okay. You’re welcome.”
An uncomfortable silence stretched between them for a moment, and once again Reid expected that Luke would move on, but the young man seemed lost in thought, almost as if unaware of the genius neurosurgeon shifting restlessly an arm’s length away from him. Reid found himself seeking, rather uncharacteristically, for the right touch of meaningless small talk to fill the silence in the air.
“The, uh, the patient, she’s a… she’s a relative of yours?” he asked finally.
“Huh?” Luke asked. “Oh, uh… yes, my cousin.”
“Oh. You have a big family.”
“Uh… yes, I guess so.”
There was another lull in the conversation, but this time Luke was the first to speak up. “So, you’re... going out?” he asked.
“Huh?”
Luke gestured at Reid’s clothing. “The coat. You’re going outside?”
“Oh.” Reid looked down at himself as if only just realizing he was dressed for the winter weather. “Right! Yes,” he shrugged, “lunchtime.”
“Oh,” Luke shook his head as if deriding himself for a foolish question. “Of course.”
“It’s nice,” Reid added softly.
“Nice?”
“The coat. Nice and warm.” Reid ran his hands over his arms, relishing the feel of the thick woolen fabric in the drafty hallway.
“Oh. Good. Good!” A smile flashed briefly across Luke’s face. “It looks good on you.”
“Oh?” Reid asked, eyes that had been wandering everywhere from floor to ceiling finally meeting Luke’s gaze squarely in surprise.
Luke flushed. “Er, I-I mean, I mean…” he sputtered, “it fits well. Right size.”
“Oh.” The explanation left Reid feeling oddly deflated. “Yes. Er… I mean, thanks.”
This time the silence was even longer still. Reid rocked restlessly on his feet, his left hand beating a nervous rhythm on the side of his leg as he struggled to find the right combination of words and action to break the tension between them. “Well, I… if you want me to…”
“Oh!” Luke cut in embarrassedly. “You probably want to get going, right? Well, I won’t keep you. Er, have a good lunch!” With a nod of his head, Luke stepped past him and moved swiftly down the corridor.
“You too!” Reid called after him, “… uh, a good visit.”
But Luke Snyder had already disappeared from Reid’s sight.
===
Christ, Reid cursed himself moments later, as he sat dolefully at the lunch counter of Al’s Diner, could I possibly have sounded any more like some maladjusted, pimply-faced teenager? Reid was appalled that a simple conversation with Luke Snyder could have turned Reid into such a babbling fool, and he resolved to try that much harder to stay away from the rich brat until he made his escape permanently from Oakdale. He took a deep breath and released it, trying to expel all the day’s frustrations in one heavy sigh.
“Rough day, Dr. Oliver?” a voice sneered, jolting Reid from his thoughts.
The voice belonged to a dark-haired man sitting a few seats down from Reid, his strong build and his casual T-shirt and jeans hinting at an age somewhere in his early twenties. Clean cut and tan, with a somewhat prominent nose, the man was good looking enough, Reid supposed, in a hulking sort of way-or at least, he might have been, had it not been for the narrow glare and the dark scowl twisting his face.
“Am I supposed to know you?” Reid asked, making no effort to disguise his annoyance at the unwelcome interruption.
The man sniffed. “From what I’ve heard,” he replied, “I guess not-but I knew the last Dr. Oliver pretty well.”
Reid rolled his eyes in open contempt at the explanation. “Does everyone know everyone else’s business in this town,” he bemoaned, “or is it just that rare to meet someone without six generations of inbreeding in the family tree?”
"You have to admit,” the dark-haired man said, “it’s a pretty amazing story, the brain surgeon from another universe. I mean, I heard about it all the way in L.A., and I had to come back just to see for myself.”
Reid gave a bark of laughter. “You made it out of this town for good and you’re back just to check out a rumor?” he boggled. “You must be even dumber than you look!”
The young man’s scowl deepened at the insult. “I have connections here, Dr. Oliver-even family, in a way. Makes it kinda hard for me to stay away for good. But you? You don’t have anything keeping you in Oakdale. So why haven’t you left?”
Reid’s response was delayed by the approach of the diner’s rather obnoxiously buxom waitress, Reid’s order carried before her on a large tray. For a moment, Reid’s thoughts were on nothing more than inhaling the scent of a steaming hot bowl of ten-alarm chili with fried potatoes and cornbread, but when the waitress unloaded her burden and moved away again, he directed his unsmiling attention back to his interrogator.
“Look, whoever you are,” Reid said testily, “you and the last Reid Oliver may have swapped secrets while braiding hair and painting each other’s toenails, but this Reid Oliver has no interest in spilling his guts to some pain-in-the-ass local.” He gestured at the food cooling before him. “Now if you’re done wasting my time, I’d like to get back to one of the few truly enjoyable experiences this town has to offer.”
The dark haired man rose to his feet and threw a few bills on the counter for his own meal, then stepped closer to Reid. “You haven’t been here for long, doctor,” he said pointedly, “so you haven’t seen just how bad Oakdale can get. Half the people in this town are addicts or criminals or just plain crazy, and Luke Snyder in particular has a knack for causing trouble for the people around him. As soon as Reid Oliver got caught up in Luke’s orbit, it was only a matter of time before something bad was going to happen to him.” The man leaned closer to Reid, his voice growing deeper, more ominous. “If you’re half as smart as you say you are, you’ll leave this town right now, today, before the same thing happens to you.”
=====
John Dixon met Reid in the hallway on his return to the hospital, the older man’s moustache twitching with good humor.
“Dr. Oliver!” he greeted. “Glad I caught you.”
Reid had no choice but to roll his eyes at this. “You seem to be the only one,” he remarked wryly.
“I have good news for you,” Dixon remarked, seeming uninterested in the neurosurgeon’s ill humor. “I know you don’t plan to stay here forever, but I’m sure it’s in everyone’s best interest if we make your time here as productive as possible. I called up a few other hospitals in the county to see if they had any challenging cases for you, and I left a bunch of new case files in your office. Of course,” he continued, “I’m no expert in neurology myself, but it looked like there might be a few good ones in the batch. Read through them and let me know what you think.”
Some time later, as Reid finished reviewing the first of two stacks of files Dixon had left on Reid’s desk, Reid felt safe in concluding that Dixon was right about one thing-he was certainly no expert in neurology. The first batch had turned up little more than a small cyst, an obvious case of Parkinson’s, and a misdiagnosed spinal injury the likes of which he’d have fired any first year intern. It was all Reid could do not to cry at the lack of genuinely interesting medical puzzles for him to solve.
But the second stack made for a much more interesting read. Before long, Reid had identified an extremely advanced case of dystonia, a spinal tumor in an especially difficult location, and an apparent case of Cushing’s where scans had failed to detect the glandular tumor causing the condition. Reid took his usual scrupulous notes on each case file, mapping out a course of treatment, and moved the “interesting” cases to a special pile for the admin staff to work on scheduling.
As Reid opened up a file on a patient with damage to the optic nerve, he was hit by a sudden inkling as to why the dark-haired man at the diner had seemed familiar to him. He slid out from behind his desk and turned to open the filing cabinet in the far corner, looking for his predecessor’s patient files.
A loud metallic creak and a faint whoosh of air were Reid’s only warning before a thunderous crash resounded behind him. Reid spun around to find his desk and seat buried beneath the massive metal light fixture that had once stretched across the ceiling of his tiny office. Chunks of ceiling had been brought down with the fixture as the heavy fixture had pulled from the bolts holding it in place, and tiny bits of plaster were still raining down all around him. Reid jumped back as an electric spark flashed in one of the damaged lights in the fixture, still tenuously connected to a frayed wire extending down from the roof.
Reid’s eyes fixed on the spot where he had been sitting only seconds before, its surface nearly invisible beneath the metal fixture and the piles of plaster and broken glass. Falling from a height of ten or more feet, it was easy to see that the fixture would have injured anyone sitting in Reid’s seat. Injured-or worse.
Reid took a deep, hitching breath, his lungs burning with a combination of the plaster dust and the sudden thought that he had been only seconds away from having his first day of official life in this universe also being his last.