Sophie punched WMI’s address into her phone. She had just
gotten off the phone with Madeline, who hadn’t received the
video that Sophie sent. Sophie checked to see that Adam had
received it. He had, and he’d downloaded it onto their home
computer.
“Sophie, you could be right,” Madeline had said. “I’m begin
ning to get a picture of Dr. Wagner and his numbers in triage. His
number of admissions to the NICU are out of balance compared
to the other OB docs. The NICU has so many admissions and
discharges in one week, even in just one day sometimes, you’d
have to really be paying attention to pick up on it. Rita Gon
salves must be involved. She’s the one who keeps track of these
statistics, and she never said a word to me. As the utilization
reviewer for the NICU, she should know exactly what’s going on.
I’m afraid that I really dropped the ball. Someone should have
been overseeing her more closely, and that someone was me.”
“Maybe Rita just didn’t realize,” Sophie replied. “Anyhow,
I wish the numbers weren’t true, Ms. Cross, but I am glad that
someone is finally paying attention.”
When Sophie hung up from Madeline, she looked at her sent
files and saw the video hadn’t gone through. She tapped Send
again.
With WMI’s Manhattan address pinned on her phone,
Sophie began walking. The twenty-plus blocks she had to go
would give her plenty of time to think. She put her earbuds in,
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clicked on Pandora, and cranked up the Foo Fighters. Twenty
minutes later she stood at the busy intersection of Forty-Second
and Fifth, waiting to cross. As soon as she stepped off the curb,
she felt someone grab her jacket from behind, yanking her back
up onto the curb. She stumbled, then caught her balance. Her
earbuds fell out and landed in a pile of snow. She reeled around
to see who had grabbed her like that. As she turned, a car veered
toward her. She barely noticed the cold slush that sprayed her
legs seconds before she fell to the ground in excruciating pain.
The car had bumped her ankle, hard, then blown on by.
Sophie heard a loud thump in front of her. She looked up to
see the woman who had been walking just ahead of her catapult
into the air and land on her back in the middle of the street. The
car sped off as people rushed to help the woman. A crowd swarmed
around her, which blocked both car and pedestrian traffic.
“Someone call 911!”
“Give her room!”
“Did anyone get the license plate?”
A cop showed up and was trying to make room for the injured
woman while clearing the intersection.
Sophie pulled herself up. “I’m sorry,” she heard a man’s voice
behind her say. He was holding out his hand in assistance. “I
didn’t mean to grab you so hard. But that car nearly killed you. I
was just trying to pull you back to safety.” He handed her one of
her gloves, which had landed in the snow.
“Thank you” was all that Sophie could muster at the moment.
She was in a bit of shock. She could stand on one leg, but the
other one throbbed when she put any weight on it. She struggled
to push her way through the crowd to get a look at the woman
who had taken the hit. She lay on her side with her legs pulled
up in a fetal position. She moaned in pain.
“Can I do something to help?” Sophie asked the man stand
ing over the woman.
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JULIE HATCH
The man shook his head. He held up his phone. “I’m on with
911 right now. An ambulance is two minutes away.”
The crowd started to disperse.
Sophie found her dropped phone lying at the bottom of a
puddle. People stepped on it as they trudged through the wet
slush. In between legs and feet bumping into her, she leaned
down and grabbed her phone, then stood up to hail a cab. Sitting
in the back of the cab, she couldn’t stop shaking.
That car had been meant for her.
Sophie limped into the hospital, suspicious of anybody who
looked at her the wrong way. She went to triage, who sent her
to the main hospital emergency room. The doctor there ordered
X-rays and Percocet.
When the results were back, she called Sophie into her office.
“The good news is the X-rays showed nothing is broken. The
bad news is that soft tissue injuries, like your ankle, are more
painful and take longer to heal.”
“Great,” Sophie groaned.
“Stay off of it as much as possible,” the ER doctor told her.
She gave her crutches and a boot to support her ankle. “Keep it
up, and ice it for the next twenty-four hours. Follow up with an
orthopedic doc in a few days.”
On her way out of the ER, Sophie allowed herself a slight
smile. At least they still had the video, safely stored at home on
their computer.
Sophie went straight to the chapel. She was alone. As the
tension about what had just happened began to ease, she was
left feeling jumpy. She knew in her gut that she had been the
intended target and that the poor woman in front of her was an
innocent victim. If she went to the police, they’d think she was
just another paranoid New York City nut.
Sitting with her wet, trampled phone in her hands, she
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replayed the incident over in her head, trying to recall any
details. She hadn’t seen the driver through the tinted window,
and it all happened too fast for her to get a license plate number.
She sighed. How had she gotten mixed up in all this anyway? She
just wanted to pretend nothing was wrong with Metro Hospital.
Maybe she and Adam should mind their own business and just
wait for Danny’s discharge. But she couldn’t just ignore every
thing. She wasn’t going to simply watch and wait. She had to
find out more. She had to find a way to end the madness
