Deadshifted

“Remember, I’m Kevin tonight,” Asher reminded me.

“Got it. Kevin … Private Eye, Kevin,” I agreed, trying to lighten the mood. He smiled and his hand squeezed mine.

Liz was watching for us at the door of the restaurant and flagged us down as soon as we arrived. The décor in here seemed tasteful, at least as far as I could tell from watching HGTV shows. Subdued lighting, muted colors, staff in crisp suits. Lovely exposed beams across the ceiling that any Realtor would have commented on. I was glad I’d tried so hard to dress up nicely; otherwise it would have been more than just my bruised elbow making me feel out of place.

Liz sat by the shark-faced man we’d met the prior night. His suit was impeccable, and she was wearing a yellow designer dress with a pearl necklace. Even Thomas was adorable in a little three-piece suit, although he looked uncomfortable inside it.

“Nathaniel, this is Edie and Kevin. You remember them from yesterday, don’t you?” Liz prompted her husband.

He stood at our arrival with formal manners and looked over at me. “Of course I do. I hear you rescued our little boy this afternoon,” he said, without a change in tone. Nathaniel had a flat affect, with fish-dead eyes. It’d been a long time since I worked with vampires; I wasn’t used to being stared through anymore.

“Oh, well, you know, he ran into me,” I said with a shrug.

“No, you saved him, I saw. He gets into trouble like you wouldn’t believe,” Liz said, gesturing to the empty chair beside her, which I took, and we all sat down.

She was too sweet for him by a factor of ten—and I realized that despite the money she was flashing casually here, she hadn’t discovered she could buy friends yet. She still thought she had to be nice to get them.

That, or Nathaniel creeped out anyone who tried to get too close.

“So what do you two do?” Asher-Kevin said, with the same tone anyone trying to get to know anyone else casually would use, as the waiter came up and pressed menus into our hands.

“Investments,” Nathaniel answered flatly, then turned the question around. “You?”

“I’m a doctor,” Asher said.

Nathaniel’s chin jerked up subtly at this. “What kind of doctor?”

“What kind of investments?” Asher asked back, with the right teasing tone and a self-satisfied aren’t-I-funny laugh. “No, really, I do hospice care. But I used to do oncology.”

Well, I had no doubt that there was probably at least one oncologist inside of Asher that he could draw on.

“Oh, isn’t that sad?” Liz asked, voice full of genuine concern.

Asher changed to faux suave for her sake; being a doctor got him a lot of play. “It is, but someone has to do it.”

I could see Nathaniel writing “Kevin” off as a showboat. Maybe that was Asher’s plan.

“And, you know,” Asher went on, “that’s where I met Edie. She’s a nurse.”

Liz turned to me, delighted by this less grim turn. “You two met at work? Just like on TV?”

I had the sudden urge to pick a spoon up off the table and stab myself with it. It sounded so trite when he put it like that. I felt like by dating Asher, who could occasionally be a doctor, I was letting down all nursing-kind, most of whom wouldn’t touch doctors with someone else’s used Foley catheter. But I realized I wasn’t going to have to role-play as a PI tonight; I just needed to pretend to be nice-Edie. “Yeah. Something like that,” I said, through slightly gritted teeth. “What do you do?”

“Oh, I stay at home,” Liz said. “Watching Thomas is a full-time job. He’s a little hyperactive.”

You could say that. Thomas was the process of untucking his dress shirt. Poor kid. I gave her a comforting grin. “We’re having one too. We just found out this morning.”

“Really? That’s marvelous! Congratulations!” Liz said, clapping her hands.

“Thank you,” I said, grinning a little at her cheer.

“I’d order us champagne,” she went on. “But you know that’s off limits now.”

“Yeah.” I grinned at her infectious excitement and looked over at Asher—and I could see from his face that he was displeased. We were supposed to be getting information from them, not sharing it. Whatever. I gave him a shrug.

For his part, Nathaniel was still watching all of us with disdain. I wasn’t sure which he was more disappointed in, Liz’s cheerful interest in me, or that Asher and I were breeding in an age without eugenics.

“So when are you due? Is it a boy or a girl?” Liz latched on to this safe conversational thread. “Have you thought of any names?”

I’d inadvertently opened us up an encyclopedia’s worth of safe small talk, and I gave Asher a look that made it clear I was abandoning him to his own devices at the manly side of the table. “Oh, we just-just found out. Like this morning. No ultrasounds or anything yet. I’m not even a month along.”

“I’ll cross my fingers then for you that it’s a girl. Because boys are just too much,” she said, leaning over Thomas to tuck his shirt back in.

Dinner arrived, and I found myself liking Liz more and more. She and Nathaniel lived a few hours away from us, in the next biggest city over, a fact I pretended to be surprised about. It gave us even more safe topics of conversation to have. I couldn’t tell how Asher was faring, which was fine. He could make it on his own.

Thomas was good for his part, if messy. Liz was wiping spaghetti sauce off his face when he shook his head violently. An experienced mother, she followed with her napkin—only he didn’t stop shaking, and his arms and hands followed.

“What’s happening?”

“Seizure,” I said just as he threw his head back stiffly.

Liz gasped, and Asher rushed in, pulling Thomas gently to the floor. “He’s burning up.”

“What’s happening?” Liz repeated. She looked from Asher to me. I kept hold of Thomas’s side so he wouldn’t flop around like a dying fish.

“He’s just having a seizure is all,” I said, trying to sound calm.

“What a shame,” Nathaniel said, his voice actually calm, no pretending. He squatted beside us, taking in the situation clinically. Asher gave me a worried look.

Liz’s mouth dropped in horror. She looked from Thomas to Nathaniel and then back again, and then reached over and shoved Nathaniel, hard. He fell back off his heels, onto his ass.

“You!” she exclaimed, stood abruptly—and then ran off.

I looked over to Asher for explanation, but he looked as bewildered as I was. He didn’t need me here—he was, after all, a doctor. I stood and chased after her.

“Liz? Liz!” Luckily, I’d worn flats. I dodged around the same people she had, the crowd that seemed to spring fully formed around any medical emergency. She drew up short outside an opening elevator door and rushed inside. I waved my hand to hold it just in time and followed her in.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, panting. We weren’t the only ones inside the elevator, just the only ones out of breath.

“I’ve got to get his pills,” she said, but her face was completely panicked. She looked flushed, beyond what the run should have done; sweat was showing through her dress’s armpits as she repeatedly hit the button for her floor.

“Pills for what?” You didn’t give seizing people pills.

She opened her mouth to tell me, then closed it resolutely again.

“I’m a nurse, remember?”

“You don’t understand.” She hit her floor button a few more times, like it would speed the elevator up.

I decided to try a calming tack. “Look, seizures happen all the time. Kids just get them. Sometimes no one even knows what causes them—and they go away on their own.”

Her head began shaking halfway through my explanation, as she held down the button for her floor. “It’s not that. You don’t understand!” she said, in a pleading voice.

“Then tell me—what’s going on?” I got the feeling it was something bigger than just Thomas’s illness, but whatever it was, it was no excuse for this. “Your son is back there. You need to go be with him. He needs you.”

The elevator rose, stopping on floor after floor, people shoving inside with us, our loud conversation and her radiating crazy making them regret their choice. “This isn’t right, Liz—” I put a hand out to stop her from holding the button down. “If you’re scared, don’t be—”

The elevator settled onto her floor and I tried to block the door bodily. “Let me go! You can’t help us!” she protested.

“I can if you’ll tell me!” I wanted to spill it all then—what I knew about Nathaniel’s past from Asher—but I didn’t dare. “Liz—”

She gave me another torn look, but she didn’t respond—and there was nothing else I could do without restraining her physically. I moved out of her way before she could elbow me aside, and she began running down the hall.

“You’ll regret this!” I shouted after her. Because how could she not? What mother in her right mind would leave her sick child behind? I shook my head in disbelief and dismay. “What the—” I began, ready to curse. Then I saw another woman looking traumatized at the back of the elevator, with her child smashed protectively in the corner behind her. That was more like it. And then I realized between the two of us, Liz and I must have been a frightening scene.

“Sorry about all that,” I apologized, and hit the button for my own floor.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There was no point in going back to the restaurant, so I walked down the hall to our room. Just what the hell had happened back there? With Liz, with Nathaniel, and most especially with Thomas? Was he okay? I assumed by now he was in the medical center, getting treatment. I thought about things that would cause a sudden seizure in a child—most of them were not good, and some of them were contagious. Meningitis was the worst, and fever and seizure were its typical presentation in children. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">