Blind Spot by Nancy Bush

someone from your family?” She let her hand move toward the phone. “No!”
    “Are you sure?”
    “They want me to die. I embarrass them.”
    “They don’t want you to die, Heyward.”
    “Shhh!” A harsh whisper. “They’re coming!”
    Melody leaned into him, singing a little tune, her eyes closing. A lullaby, Claire realized much later.
    Claire’s fingers touched the receiver. “Heyward, it’s late. I was just on my way home. I’m calling a good friend of mine.”
    “You’re calling the police!”
    “No.”
    Melody’s lashes fluttered and she opened her eyes. She fixed her gaze on Heyward, looking at his profile.
    Heyward trembled violently. A look of intense fear crossed his face. “You!” he shrieked. “You!” He was looking at Melody in horror.
    “Don’t,” Claire said, holding out a hand, sensing true danger.
    “Do it,” Melody whispered into his ear.
    And Heyward Marsdon III ripped a knife from his pocket, slit Melody Stone’s throat, and came for Claire.
    Tragedy. Disaster. Horror.
    The news hit the airwaves and the hospital scrambled to cover its ass. All the right words were uttered. All the careful platitudes of sorrow and regret mouthed over and over again. Heyward was a killer, but a victim of his disease, too. The Marsdons didn’t like that angle, but that’s how Pauline Kirby and her news crew played it, along with a healthy dose of all the personal tragedy that had plagued the Marsdon family for generations. It made good television. It placed the hospital in the background and the unlucky Marsdons in front. It worked.
    And Melody Stone?
    Apart from Langdon Stone, Melody’s hotheaded brother, no one seemed to care too much about Melody herself. She was just the woman Heyward Marsdon III killed. Almost nameless.
    Do it.
    In the first few moments after her rescue, in a stream of nearly incoherent words, Claire related to Wade from security what had transpired in her office. She told him what Melody said. She told him everything. But much later, when she was asked for her account of the incident, she couldn’t make herself reveal Melody’s last words to Freeson and Avanti. It seemed…unfair and unnecessary at the time. Still, that reckoning was yet to come, because Melody’s illness was part of the whole unfortunate series of events that led to her death.
    “Claire?” a voice called from the hallway, breaking into her thoughts. She glanced up to see Alison duck her head inside the room. “Jane Doe is in the middle of a fracas in the morning room. Gibby’s mad at Maribel for taking his chair, and Jane’s chair got pushed out of the way with her in it.”
    “What’s she doing in the morning room?” Claire jumped to her feet. “Is she all right?”
    “Dr. Freeson told Darlene to take her there. She didn’t fall out of the chair. She just hung on to the sides, so she’s okay. Just thought you should know.”
    “Thank you.” Claire was already on her way out the door. She glanced at her watch. Another appointment in thirty minutes.
    She hung on to the sides.
    Even though Freeson had put the patient in a situation she might not have been ready for, Jane Doe had sensed danger and had recognized what to do to save herself. A great sign that maybe she was coming out of her catatonia. Encouraging, even if it galled Claire to admit that Freeson might not have been completely wrong.
    The morning room looked deceptively serene when she reached it. Lester, an octogenarian with dementia, was rocking on his feet in the corner and looking out the window toward Side B, mumbling softly. Maribel, an Alzheimer’s patient who was wily and intuitive, was sitting at a table, clutching a doll, but her eyes were sliding back and forth, as if she were looking for some kind of opening to make mischief. Two older women were seated in wheelchairs and talking quietly. They were Mrs. Merle and Mrs. Tanaway, and they enjoyed taking imaginary tea together. Thomas McAvoy, a borderline personality,