Chapter 9 - She Waited By My Car Without the Stethoscope
The air outside hit colder than I'd expected. After the heat of that dining room, with all the candles and bodies and voices talking over each other, the parking lot felt empty and too quiet. My shoes scraped on the asphalt. The two security guys hadn't followed me out, which told me plenty. They were still inside with her, keeping the room calm.
My car was parked under one of those tall lot lights near the back, a black sedan I'd left there four hours earlier when none of this had started. I had my keys out when I saw her.
She was standing a few feet from my driver door, hands in the pockets of her scrub pants. No stethoscope around her neck now. She must have left it inside or tucked it away. Without it she didn't look like she'd crashed a dinner. She just looked tired, like someone at the end of a long shift who hadn't planned to stay late.
I stopped walking. "You're waiting for me."
"Yeah," she said. "I didn't want to do this in there."
I glanced back toward the doors of the venue. Warm light spilled out through the glass. I could see movement inside, people still at the table. "You could get fired for tonight."
"I know," she said. "I clocked out before I came. I'm not here as staff."
That didn't make it any less risky and we both knew it. I leaned my weight against the fender and didn't unlock the car yet. The metal was cold through my suit jacket. My left wrist throbbed under the watch where she'd been handling it.
She took a breath. "I'm going to say this plain, because you need to hear it that way. Under that strap, that redness isn't just from it being tight. I saw two, maybe three little marks. Like punctures. Fresh enough that the skin was still raised around them."
I stared at her. "You mean like needles."
"I mean like something broke the skin more than once in the same spot," she said. Her voice stayed level. "I'm not going to tell you what it is, because I don't know. I didn't get a long enough look. But that's not a rash. That's not how a watch normally sits."
My stomach turned. I looked down at my wrist without lifting the strap. The leather felt heavier than it should have. "You think someone put something in me."
"I think you should have someone look at it tonight," she said. "An ER would document it. They'd clean it right and they'd ask when it happened."
"No," I said, too fast. "I'm not walking into an ER at midnight and telling that story. You know what that starts."
She didn't argue. She nodded once, like she'd expected that answer. The light above us buzzed. A car pulled out two rows over and its headlights swept across us and then were gone.
"Okay," she said. "Then let me at least make a record. So it's not just my word later, and not just your memory."
"What kind of record?"
"Pictures. With your permission. Just your wrist, with the watch on, then with it lifted enough to see the marks. No face. I'll send them to you, and I'll keep a copy with the date. If nothing comes of it, you delete them."
I laughed a short breath that wasn't really a laugh. "My sister would lose it if she knew you were out here asking that."
"Your sister isn't the one with the marks," she said quietly.
I didn't answer right away. I could hear my own breathing. I thought about the way the strap had felt wrong all night, how the buckle sat one hole tighter than I ever wore it. I thought about my sister saying she'd noticed the tightness and hadn't said anything. That still sat in my chest like a weight.
"I'm not consenting to treatment," I said. "Just pictures. That's it."
"Just pictures," she agreed. She pulled her phone from her pocket. "Tell me if you want me to stop."
I held out my left arm. My hand was shaking a little and I hated that she could see it. She didn't comment on it. She held her phone steady and took the first photo with the watch face down, the lot light catching the leather.
"Now can I lift the edge?" she asked.
I nodded. She used two fingers, careful not to drag the strap across the skin. The cool air hit the damp spot underneath and I winced. She took two more photos, close, then lowered the strap back without buckling it tighter.
"Done," she said, and turned the screen toward me so I could see. Even in the small image I could see what she meant. The red dots were there, plain in a row.
I lowered my arm. "Send those to me."
"I will," she said. "And if it gets worse — swelling, heat, fever, your hand going numb — don't wait. Go in."
I unlocked my car. The headlights blinked. For a second neither of us moved. "Why risk your job for this?" I asked.
May you like
She slipped her phone back into her pocket. "Because nobody else at that table was going to say anything."
I got in and shut the door. She stepped back onto the sidewalk and watched me pull out, still standing under that light without her stethoscope, just a woman in scrubs alone in a parking lot at night.
