Richard Mabry - Code Blue

"Are you sure?"

"No. I'm not sure of anything. And why are we talking about my parents, anyway?"

Josh's expression told her to figure it out for herself. But nothing made sense to her right now. The last several months had been a downward spiral. Unable to sleep. Hard to concentrate. Now someone had tried to kill her. Or at least, she thought they had. Was someone out to get her? Or was she following her mother into-? No, she wouldn't think about that. Couldn't Josh help her? He had to.

As though reading her thoughts, Josh said, "Cathy, we'll get you through this. It will take some time and some effort on your part. It won't be easy. But we'll get there. For right now, believe me when I say that you're not the first person to experience these emotions. They're not pleasant, but I don't think they're pathologic."

Cathy started to speak but he stopped her with an upraised hand. She had decided after a couple of sessions that Josh must have an internal clock in his head. He wore no watch, and there were no clocks in the room, but he'd never been wrong when he said it before, and a glance at her wrist confirmed that he was correct now.

"Our time is up. I'll see you next week."

Cathy left Josh's office and navigated through Fort Worth's downtown traffic. By the time she reached the highway, she was more than ready to trade the relative hustle and bustle of the city for the slower pace of life in Dainger. That is, if only someone there weren't out to drive her out of town or kill her. Or were they?

She'd barely cleared the city limits when a sudden, driving rain hit her windshield like bullets. Texas rain. Cathy had seen it every spring and fall since she was a child. It was the kind of rain that had killed her parents. She eased her foot offthe accelerator.

On the drive back from Josh's office, Cathy finally let down her guard long enough to think about what she'd dismissed during her session. She was sure she wasn't imagining her problems. The rumors circulating around town. Her request for hospital privileges that encountered a roadblock at every turn. The black SUV intent on her destruction.

But did they represent some kind of plot? Or could they be unconnected, random events? Was what she felt a simple case of paranoia? Was she sliding into the same mental illness that had consumed her mother and threatened to tear her parents' marriage apart? Paranoid schizophrenia. She remembered a line that had made her laugh during medical school. It didn't seem so funny now. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

If this wasn't paranoia, was there a single driving force behind everything that was happening? If so, who or what was it? Could it be Robert? Was it all some sort of sick joke? Cathy figured that calling offthe engagement had caused more damage to Robert's pride than his heart. But would he go this far to get even? And how would he do it? Maybe he hired someone. That would be his style, all right. Pay to have his dirty work done.

Might it be one of the local doctors? Sure, they weren't anxious to share their patients with a newcomer-certainly not with a woman doctor. And especially not with a female family practice specialist who had the nerve to ask for privileges far beyond what these men had always doled out to the general practitioners in town. But would one of them go this far? Maybe she'd get a clue at the credentials committee meeting tonight. Meanwhile, it did no good to worry about it. That's the advice she always gave her patients.

Cathy squinted past the flashing wipers and gripped the wheel a bit tighter. Josh said she'd be okay, and she had to trust him. Meanwhile, she determined to put her mental state out of her mind. She chuckled at the irony of that statement. Snap out of it. Think productively; don't worry aimlessly. There was certainly enough to occupy her thoughts. Her practice. Hospital privileges. Finances.

She squared her shoulders and sat up straighter in the cramped driver's seat of the little rental car. She'd handle these problems. She'd handle them the way she'd been taught to approach any diagnostic problem: examine the possible causes, make the right diagnosis, call up the proper treatment from her memory bank, implement it, and move on to the next. It had always worked in her medical practice. Unfortunately, it wasn't so simple when it was her life she struggled to put back together.

Cathy decided to start with finances. Her floundering practice barely made enough to pay her monthly bills. If she expected to remedy that, her patient base had to grow, and this required hospital privileges. She'd asked for extended privileges, but so far the credentials committee hadn't even granted her the standard ones given to family practitioners. For years the doctors who controlled the hospital had made it an article of faith that general practice meant taking care of sniffles and bellyaches. But Cathy's training in family practice was excellent. She proudly displayed her certification by the American Board of Family Physicians on her office wall. She could do so much more if only they'd let her.

Why did her request for privileges keep hitting snags? Was this part of the plot against her? Was a doctor behind all this? It would be easy enough for a member of the credentials committee to arrange for repeated delays in considering her request. For that matter, any physician on the hospital staffcould put in a word here and there, encouraging the committee to drag out the process.

Then Cathy had another thought. Were the two bankers who turned down her loan request under pressure from one of the doctors in town-maybe their own physician? Or could one of those bankers have something against her and be taking his dislike of Cathy a step further than simply cutting offher access to finances?

The driver behind her tapped his horn. She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a string of five or six cars behind her. The double yellow line stretched ahead of her down the two-lane highway and out of sight. She waved her apology and clicked her right blinker, then carefully steered the car onto the shoulder and rolled along until the caravan behind her had passed. Texas friendly. Sometimes it was good to be back home in a smaller town. Sometimes. Not always.

The rain had stopped and the sun peeked out of a cloudbank in the east. She lowered her window and took a deep breath of the rain-washed air. Let your mind go blank, she thought. Try to relax. She'd be at the office in another five minutes. There would be plenty of time to worry then.

Jane dropped a message slip on the desk in front of Cathy. "Your insurance agent called. He said it was important."

Cathy pulled the phone toward her and dialed. She felt certain this was more bad news. It took only a few moments to determine that she was right.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Sewell. I'm not getting anywhere with the company about paying for the damage to your car. I got all the way up to a senior manager in claims adjustment, but I can't get him to budge. It's that NSF check. They ran it through twice and by the time it bounced the second time, the grace period had expired. There's a letter somewhere in the system informing you that the policy has lapsed."

"I can't believe this," Cathy said.

"I know how you must feel. I'll call a friend of mine in the business and see if there are any stones I've left unturned."

She took a deep breath, but it didn't change the sinking feeling in her stomach. "I've had that policy since I left home for college over ten years ago. Never missed a quarterly payment."

"That's what I told them. But there's no doubt that the company refused the last check you sent because of insuf- ficient funds."

"After I got the loan for my practice I transferred my account to Mr. Nix's bank. I don't know how they managed to bounce the check. I'm sure there were funds in my account to cover it. There must have been a mix-up at the bank."