Lifeblood by Penny Rudolph Page B

can’t imagine working anywhere else.”
    Rachel eyed the woman across the table. “It’s really a good hospital?”
    “The best. Why do you ask? Have you had a problem there?”
    “I guess you could call it a problem. A few days ago, I found a couple of boys, Mexican kids, I think, locked in a van in my garage. Unconscious.”
    Emma frowned and pursed her lips. “Dear God, how awful.”
    “Sure was,” Rachel said. “I rushed them to the hospital. Turned out one was dead, but they said the other was just very dehydrated. They were admitting him when I left.”
    “That’s sad about the one. But it was hardly the hospital’s fault.”
    “Oh, that isn’t what bothered me. It’s that the next day I went back to the hospital to see how the boy who survived was doing.”
    “How nice of you.”
    “Well, the people on the desk didn’t think I was very nice. In fact they had a security guy escort me out, like a barroom bouncer.”
    Emma drew her head back. “Good heavens. Why would they do that?”
    “Because I made a bit of a ruckus.”
    “About what?”
    “Because they claimed there was no record of the boy. So either they lied when they told me they were admitting him, or they lied when they said he wasn’t there.”
    Emma had shifted her gaze to a little wooden carving that stood in a niche in the wall across the room. She looked back at Rachel. “Actually, there are many possible explanations. I seriously doubt they were lying.”
    Rachel looked down at her plate, then up at Emma. “You may be right. I’ve been given an assortment of explanations, from the kid maybe dying before he was admitted, to a parent picking him up. But what parent would leave a kid locked in a car to die, then pick him up before he could be admitted to the hospital?”
    “I don’t know.” Emma cleared her throat. “It is odd. I’m sorry it happened. Hospitals do screw up. We like to think they don’t, but they do. And Jefferson is awfully big. Seven hundred beds. It’s hard to keep track of everything.”
    “You mean patients get lost?”
    “No, not patients. But records, maybe.” Emma picked up her purse from where she had placed it under the table. “Are you ready to go?”
    As they left the cantina, Emma handed something to Pedro. It certainly covered the cost of their meal and a tip. It was a hundred-dollar bill.
    Chapter Eleven
    The phone was ringing when Rachel got back to the garage. She had to run to the cubicle and hunt for the receiver under a mass of papers. When she finally pushed the talk button she was frustrated and breathless. “Yes?”
    “It’s me, doll.” Hank.
    They had a date for dinner. Rachel was going to cook it herself. Her interest in cooking had been gaining ground lately and she was planning on picking up some fresh fish that afternoon. The two of them needed to get back on track as a couple.
    Hank’s voice sounded a little strained. She had apologized, but men can be weird about things like marriage. They always think you’re just waiting for any chance to walk down that aisle and into washing diapers and baking chocolate chip cookies. Not that she had anything against babies and cookies. Did she?
    “I’m at LAX,” he said. “They’re sending me up to Sacramento for a couple weeks.”
    Rachel wasn’t sure what to make of his waiting until he was at the airport to tell her that. “Well, okay, thanks for letting me know.”
    “Sorry about the short notice. Hope you didn’t go to a lot of trouble for tonight.”
    “Of course not.”
    “Some kind of problem with the levees. A tiny little earthquake and they think it’s an emergency. Barely moved on the Richter…. They’re calling my flight. I’ll try to give you a call tonight.”
    Rachel slowly set the receiver down, thinking this might give her a little more time to figure out why the sudden approach of marriage had panicked her. All she seemed to be doing now was avoiding thinking about it.
    On the other hand, why was he