Dr. Mendelsohn smiled at her. “Now here is somebody I’m really glad to see. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She walked over and reached for his hand. “How are you though?”

  “I’m okay, but it’s been a hell of a few days.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize coming back would be quite so tumultuous or that they would try to get rid of me.”

  “And it shouldn’t have been,” Mendelsohn replied. “Everybody acknowledges the work that you do is very unique, and your success rate is phenomenal. But, once that board moved in, the trouble began.”

  “Speaking of board members”—Gray stepped forward—“Mrs. Arundale. How long has she been on the board?”

  “A couple years now. … Why?”

  “Was she instrumental in her nephew being at the center?”

  He nodded. “He was moved to another facility, with higher security, and they had absolutely no problem with him. So after three months, she had him moved back.” He looked over at Cressy apologetically. “I’m sorry that nobody told you about that.”

  “I didn’t even find out until this morning,” she told him. “It certainly would have been a shock if I had found out on my own.”

  “And with good reason. It was quite an ordeal for you. Believe me. Not very many of us are comfortable working with him, but he’s been a completely different case now. He’s on heavy medications, and he’s been no trouble.”

  She winced.

  “I know,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I was really happy you were coming back. I thought maybe you would be somebody to join forces with, so we could help our patients and not just drug them out. And, of course, everybody has a different methodology,” he noted quickly, looking over at Gray, “so I’m not accusing anybody of anything illegal or inappropriate.”

  He nodded. “Believe me. I’ve already heard from her that she’s all about patient care, and apparently the people running the place are all about profits.”

  “There was always a certain degree of that, but now it’s become paramount, it seems.”

  “Any particular reason?” Gray asked him.

  “I don’t know. They would say that we’re not making ends meet, but I don’t understand why that would be, since we’re way down on staffing numbers now, so they should be making a good profit just from that alone.”

  “Something’s got to be going on,” Cressy stated. “I mean, what other reason is there for cutting the budget so severely?”

  “Money,” Gray said. “It’s almost always about money.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she muttered. “It’s still not something I want to think about.”

  “No, because you’re all about the patients, but that doesn’t mean anybody else is.”

  Dr. Mendelsohn nodded. “She’s not alone there. A lot of us are all about the patients, but the center also has to be solvent. You can’t have a facility like that running in the red. Both Cressy and I have put in our own personal money at various times, but typically to help bring in new programs and or specific things that we know will help the patients,” he explained. “Most of the staff there are not into that. For many people, it’s just a job. They come. They do their hours, they leave, and aren’t at all prepared to put any of their hard-earned dollars back into it.”

  At that, Gray looked over at her, and she nodded. “We both have,” she confirmed. “Sometimes it’s necessary for radical therapies, extra group sessions, enrichment programs for a particular patient, or that sort of thing.”

  “It should never be necessary,” Gray declared, staring at her. “I did see some of the financial statements that they published as part of their year-end reporting, and, to me, it didn’t appear that they are in any kind of financial difficulty. There was an issue over some of the drugs though.”

  “Costing too much, which is pretty funny, considering they’re the ones who have increased the drug use so much,” Dr. Mendelsohn shared bitterly. “So they only have themselves to blame for that one.”

  “Don’t they get subsidized?” Gray asked.

  “Some things get subsidized,” she confirmed. “Some of the drug companies give incentives to use their drugs at the exclusion of others,” she added. “And that may sound horrible, but it happens all the time in the medical world.”

  He shook his head. “That shouldn’t be allowed at all.”

  “Sure, it shouldn’t be. But, hey, there are always incentives to push one drug over another, and believe me. Those incentives can be quite lucrative.”

  “Damn.” Gray crossed his arms and leaned against a wall. He looked over at Dr. Mendelsohn. “So, was this heart attack a result of the stress at your job?”

  “I think so,” he replied. “Like Cressy, I’m wondering if it’s time for a change. I’ve been there for fifteen years and loved every minute of it. Yet there comes a point in time when you just can’t get along anymore.”

  “Has anything weird happened in the last few months, when Dr. Cresswell wasn’t there?” Gray asked.

  Mendelsohn shook his head. “Nothing weirder than what’s already been going on,” he said. “Budget cuts, people talking behind each other’s backs, conversations that stop when you walk down a hallway. It’s been very sad.”

  “What do you mean by conversations stopping?”

  “The entire place has been split and divided by all this.”

  “When you say all this …”

  “The budgets. They’ve been taking votes on various things, and I’ve wondered if some of the doctors haven’t been getting incentives to vote a specific way.”

  “Great, I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” Cressy replied in disgust.

  “And again it shouldn’t be allowed,” Gray declared, staring at her.

  “In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be, and you would have a board and doctors who cared about patients above all,” Cressy stated, “but that’s just not the way it is. That reminds me of what a minister once told me, when I was surprised because he was growing marijuana in his greenhouse and having an affair with a church elder. He told me, Everybody has this perception about how I’m supposed to act, but it’s not fair because I should get to live my life the way I want to. When I tried to explain to him that the perception was one that we all wanted to keep because it maintained our faith in the church and in religion, he told me that I was the one with the problem and that I should work on it.”

  At that, Dr. Mendelsohn laughed. “I hear you there, and, to a certain extent, that’s true. Doctors are supposed to be there for patients, but many doctors are there for the paycheck, and it’s just a job. They go home at the end of the day, as tired and as exhausted as the rest of us, and they just don’t want to keep doing it at the same level that we do. Dr. Cresswell and I are very passionate about patient care, and it has worked well for us, up until now, but at present? Well, I don’t … I’m not sure my time there is of any value anymore.”

  “That’s what I was thinking too,” she added softly. “What we do and say doesn’t have the same value as it did before.”

  “No, and the respect that you and I may have had in the past has waned. That flame has burned out for us.”

  “So, it’s definitely time for a change in career,” Gray noted.

  “I don’t know about career but definitely a change in venue,” Dr. Mendelsohn clarified.

  “Have you handed in your notice?” Gray asked.

  Mendelsohn shook his head. “No, I’ll take some time off after this and consider my options.”

  “Did you ever work with Rodney?” Gray asked suddenly.

  “I’ve seen him a couple times, but he hasn’t responded to any treatments, and he certainly hasn’t responded to any of the doctors, not like he did with you, Cressy.”

  She nodded. “I may have to go see him.”

  Mendelsohn winced at that. “It probably would be a good idea if you did, but I have to tell you. He’s not the same person.”

  “That’s good,” she said. “I’m not sure I can handle the same person.”

  “I know what you mean, but he is much easier now.”

  “Glad to hear that,” she noted, and then she got up to leave. “I don’t want to keep you, and you need to get some rest and think about what you want to do from here on out.”

  “Oh, I’ve been doing lots of thinking,” he agreed, with a knowing smile. “I’m just not sure what the options are. I was thinking about another center my brother back east has been talking about. He’s always wanted me to join him there.”

  She understood, but it was hard to see him leave. “Go then. You get to decide what you need to do for you,” she stated firmly. “I hoped you would stay, but, if it’s not something that we can make happen at this center, believe me. I understand.”

  “Will you stay?” Doc Mendelsohn asked her.

  “I don’t know. Again, like you, I’ve had other offers, but I’m just not sure that this is where I want to be anymore, not if I can’t make the same kind of impact. If they’ll hamstring me with a short budget, then …” She just shrugged.

  He nodded in understanding. “Let’s be sure to stay in touch.”

  With that, she leaned over, kissed him gently on the cheek, and, within minutes, she and Gray were back outside.

  *

  Gray’s phone rang as they walked out to the vehicle. “Hey, Grant. What’s up?”

  “Just checking on a few things. Where are you guys?”

  “We’re just coming out of the hospital. One of the doctors that Cressy works with had a heart attack, so I brought her to visit him.”

  “Ah. And it’s not related to the mess going on at the center?”

  “Not that we can tell, no. Stress-related perhaps, unless you have any kind of intel that suggests something else.”

  “Not at the moment, but there’s not much I like about any of this.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because one of the newer members of the board was actually under investigation five years ago for money laundering.”

  “Money laundering?” he repeated, turning to look at her. “What happened with the investigation?”

  “It basically came to a stop, as they couldn’t get anywhere with it. No charges were ever filed, but he’s been flagged on a kind of watch list.”

  “Interesting. When did he come onto the board?”

  “About six months ago,” Grant noted. “Just after Cressy left.”

  “She probably would have had a lot to say, if somebody like that came on the board.”

  “She probably didn’t have much say on things like that,” Grant reminded him.

  He turned and asked her, “Did you ever have any say on board members?”

  She shook her head. “No, not really. Once in a while, as a courtesy, they would pretend they were interested in our opinions, but nothing of substance, like choosing board members. Why?”

  “Apparently one of the guys brought in just after you left has been under investigation in the past for money laundering.”

  She stared at him. “Huh. Considering the shenanigans going on right now, I don’t even know if money laundering would be part of that. I mean, the budget cuts are hardly money laundering.”

  “No, but that sort of thing tends to go along with companies that take over places like this. They make acquisitions, then slim it right down to a lean machine, and then start running money through it.”

  “Great,” she muttered. “I don’t know how that works, but it sounds terrible. At this point, who knows what’s going on.”

  Grant added, “Look. Take care of her because I don’t really know what’s coming here, but we’ll start tightening the squeeze on the money laundering angle and see if we can make somebody uncomfortable.”

  “Great,” Gray replied. “You guys get all the fun, and I’m stuck in woo-woo land.”

  Grant laughed. “Hey, woo-woo land is pretty freaking interesting. Just ensure the both of you stay alive.”

  “Yeah, that’s just great,” he muttered. Then he hung up, smiled at her, and said, “You know, if they’ll do an investigation like that, it will blow the lid off everything there.”

  “Honestly that’s what should happen,” she said, drifting, “But …” She shook her head. “I don’t really know anything about that side of it.”

  “Why would you?” he muttered. “I think it’s an interesting idea that all the changes potentially could have had this kind of a push behind them.”

  “Maybe,” she muttered. “Personally I think budgets and health care shouldn’t even be in the same sentence.”

  “Maybe not, but somebody has to pay the bills,” he reminded her.

  “I know, and it’s never the people who have it. It always seems to be this constant squeeze on people without insurance, trying to find some way to make them pay.”

  “But reforms take a while, as you know.”

  “Yeah, you’re not kidding,” she agreed, as she yawned.

  He looked at her and asked, “Ready to go home?”

  “I don’t know about home, but, yeah, I guess. We were supposed to pick up food, weren’t we?”

  “We talked about it. Are you hungry?”

  “No, not really. Maybe in the morning I’ll have more appetite.”

  “Will you get through the night without food?”

  She pondered that, and then she sighed. “Probably not. Is there a health food bar around here anywhere, so I could get a green shake?” When he winced at that, she laughed. “Hey, it’s just a pick-me-up, particularly when I don’t have much appetite and am not getting good nutrition for one reason or another, that’s all. Don’t worry. I don’t really consider it food either, but it has a place.”

  “Fine. Is there a place close to the center? Isn’t that where you got them?”

  “Yeah, there is,” she confirmed. “Not that the center is anywhere I want to be right now.”

  “Nope, and it doesn’t mean that we have to go there either. I was just thinking there must be a place to get them nearby, if you had them all the time.”

  She smiled. “You’re right. There is.”

  With that, he followed her instructions and pulled up to the place. He walked inside with her, and she ordered a shake with as many greens as he thought he could stomach in a week. And then she really topped it, by ordering two of them. He looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

  She nodded. “They’re not that bad,” she said. “And they’re good for you, and right now we could both use the pick-me-up.”

  “Oh, I thought going home and getting some sleep would be a good idea,” he pointed out in a joking manner.

  “That too,” she muttered.

  She paid for them, and, by the time they received their shakes and stepped outside, he was eyeing the frothy green thing with distrust. She chuckled. “I’m a doctor. Remember? Take your medicine and be smart about it.”

  “Great,” he muttered, “but I can’t say this is exactly a substitute for a steak.”

  “No, and, if I had the energy need for a steak, I would join you for one,” she declared, “but I don’t.” And, with that, she sipped her shake several times and smiled. “It’s actually very refreshing.”

  Her phone rang just then. She pulled it out and looked down at the screen, a bit surprised.

  With a tone that held a hint of revulsion, Gray asked, “Who did you give that number to?”

  “Keith,” she replied, looking up at him. “Hey, Keith. What’s up?”

  “Hey,” he replied, his tone worried. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, sure I am. Why?”

  “Because things are really crazy here.”

  “I know. I heard Dr. Mendelsohn had a heart attack.”

  “He did, but he had it after his session with a patient, and then Dr. Roybiss went down. Now Dr. Ann’s not been feeling good either. She just left.”

  “That’s not normal.”

  “We’ve got a skeleton crew on tonight,” he shared. “I wanted to keep everybody locked up in Crazyville and put the whole place on lockdown, but management has said that’s a no.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, staring up at Gray. “What’s going on?”

  “A couple of the patients got out earlier today and had quite a brawl in the hallway. One of them got badly hurt and was taken to the hospital, and the other one has just been in a … I don’t know. Maybe they drugged him or something, but he’s just lying in the bed.”

  “Who is that?”

  “The one who’s injured is Sadie. She’s only been here for a couple days, and I’m not exactly sure what happened. I did hear her saying something about she was just in the playground.”

  “Good God, is she back from the hospital?”

  “Yeah, she came back about an hour ago, and Dr. Mendelsohn left about an hour before that.”

  “Was he involved in the altercation?”

  “It was happening in the hallway, and he was one of the ones who happened to be there and helped separate them.”

  “Who was the other patient?”

  “John. I don’t know if you know him.”

  “No, I’m not sure I do,” she said. “Do I need to come in?”

  He snorted. “I don’t even know if your keys work.”

  “Hey, I’m on that side of town anyway. Maybe I’ll come take a look, especially if no doctor is on staff right now. I’m worried about Sadie.”

  “They did fix her up, but she’s pretty upset, and she’s just keening in her room.”

  “I’ll come talk to her,” she replied, making a sudden decision. “Be there in a little bit.” She looked over at Gray, as she put her phone away.

  *

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Gray stated, for the umpteenth time, as they pulled into the parking lot of the clinic.

  “And I heard you loud and clear each time you said that,” she replied. “Just a quick trip, in and out.”

  “You don’t even know if your security card works. What if they don’t let you in?”

  “That will make it even faster then, won’t it?” she said, with a bright smile. She led the way to the front door and using her key card, managed to get right in. “That answers that,” she stated, as she held the door open for him. “I still have access.”