Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe Read online

"So, what's your diagnosis?" a woman asked as she entered his room. The Community General photo ID clipped to her lab coat identified her as Dr. Emily Noble, but the rest of the print was too small for him to make out with his blurred vision.

  Studying her slender nose, her sharp cheekbones, and the gentle curve of her chin, Mark could see exactly what Dr. Noble had looked like as a child, a teenager, and a young woman. Her face was like a painting that stayed the same while the lighting that illuminated it changed. In all phases of her life she must have been beautiful, as she was now.

  There was a certain elegance and authority in her eyes, and yet he saw that smiles came easily to her. The laugh lines gently etched at the edges of her mouth revealed her overall contentment and her age, which Mark estimated to be early fifties. She was wearing a black dress under her lab coat, which seemed a little formal for making rounds.

  When he tried to speak this time, he was relieved to discover that his voice came easily.

  "I've got a whopper of a headache. I'm disoriented, dizzy, and nauseous. I'm suffering from mild photophobia and I've got a nasty contusion on my head," Mark said. "I'd say I've suffered blunt force trauma and a concussion."

  He knew that a concussion was simply a catchall description of a blow to the head that causes a brain malfunction, which could be as simple as a headache or as serious as a prolonged coma, and anything in between. The concerns would be internal bleeding and swelling of the brain.

  "Judging by the flowers and the candy, I'd say I've been out a few days."

  "Three days, off and on. It's nice to know that your deductive skills remain intact."

  "What did my CTs and MRIs show?" Mark asked.

  "Some mild brain swelling. We've been keeping you on diuretics and Decadron, eight milligrams IV twice a day," she said, holding up the index finger of her right hand. "Follow my finger with your eyes."

  He did as he was told as she moved her finger this way and that.

  "You can save yourself the trouble of doing any more of those basic tests," Mark said. "I just gave myself a neurological examination and I passed."

  "Humor me. As I recall, hospital rules clearly state that the doctors are supposed to do the exams, not the patients."

  "I am a doctor," he said.

  "Glad you remember. That's a good start. Can you tell me your name?"

  "Dr. Mark Sloan. I'm chief of internal medicine at Community General Hospital, where I am now residing in the ICU."

  She asked him to move his arms and legs for her and to make fists. He reluctantly complied, a scowl on his face. "I've already done all this," he said.

  "Stop complaining, Mark. After three days of lying around, you can use the exercise."

  Her overly familiar manner surprised him, but he let it slide. He would have a serious talk with her about it when he wasn't a patient anymore and was back at work as a hospital administrator.

  She tested the strength in his legs by asking him to extend his legs while she pushed against his feet.

  "Can we please move on?" Mark said, unable to hide his impatience.

  "Not yet. Besides, in your current mood, you'll like this one," she said. "Stick your tongue out at me."

  He did.

  "I think you liked that so much, you want to grin. Go ahead, indulge yourself."

  He did what she asked, giving her an exaggerated grin, knowing she wasn't teasing him but rather testing his cranial nerves. This was a test he'd forgotten in his own quick self-exam. There was another one, too, that he'd overlooked, so before she could ask, he extended his left arm, touched his nose with his finger, and then repeated the exercise with his right arm. The actions tested the functioning of his cerebellum.

  "Very good," Dr. Noble said. "You must have smacked your head against concrete before."

  "Is that what happened to me?"

  She stiffened, as if she regretted the words immediately after she'd spoken them. "What do you remember about how you got hurt?"

  Mark searched his mind. "Nothing."

  He wasn't concerned by his lapse of memory. Not recalling how the injury occurred was an extremely common symptom among those who'd suffered concussions. The recollection of recent events is wiped away by the trauma, at least temporarily. He often compared it to writing something on your computer just as the system crashes. Whatever fresh information you're in the midst of inputting is lost.

  He'd treated more than a few car accident victims who couldn't even remember leaving home. Their last memory was reading the morning paper and enjoying a cup of coffee. In some cases, that was a blessing.

  Dr. Noble began to press on his legs, abdomen, and face, asking him repeatedly as she did so if he could feel her touch.

  "Yes, yes, and yes," he said irritably. "You can stop these tests now. I'm fine. You haven't answered my question yet."

  "There's just one more sensory test I need to perform first," Dr. Noble said, her hands still cupping his face. "Tell me if you can feel this."

  He thought she was going to pinch his cheeks. But that wasn't what she did. She leaned down and kissed him gently on the lips, lingering for a moment to look intimately into his eyes.

  "Is that always part of your neurological exam, Dr. Noble?" Mark asked.

  "Only with my sexiest patients, Dr. Sloan." She smiled coyly.

  He didn't know how to deal with this and wasn't in any shape to try. It was time to get rid of her.

  "I'd like to see Dr. Travis," Mark said.

  She leaned back and hesitated. "Jesse isn't here."

  Dr. Noble said Jesse's name as if they knew each other well. If that was the case, why had Mark never heard of her before?

  "Then get Amanda," Mark said. "Dr. Amanda Bentley, the staff pathologist."

  "I know who she is." Dr. Noble cocked her head at an angle, regarding Mark strangely, her expression bordering on fear.

  Was she only now realizing how far over the line she'd gone, how inappropriate her behavior had been? What if she wasn't even a doctor at all but some crazy person pretending to be one?

  "Amanda is on her way up. I called her right after I called Steve," Dr. Noble said. "They should both be here soon."

  Mark was relieved to hear that, though surprised again by the easy familiarity with which she used his son's first name.

  "Thank you," he said.

  "What's the last thing you remember, Mark?"

  He thought for a moment. "The wedding."

  "Whose wedding?"

  He wondered if he should say, since Jesse and Susan might not appreciate him spreading the word before they got a chance to announce the news themselves. All it would take was Dr. Noble telling one nurse or doctor and the whole hospital would know about the nuptials within the hour.

  "A fellow doctor's, out in Las Vegas. It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing."

  Jesse and Susan had been in Las Vegas, along with Steve and Amanda, helping Mark in an elaborate plot to trick a murrder suspect into confessing. The trick worked, and within moments of solving the case, Jesse asked Susan the big question.

  "You're talking about Jesse and Susan's wedding," Dr. Noble said.

  "You've heard about it?"

  She nodded. The color seemed to drain from her face. Mark wondered if maybe he should squeeze the call button and get a doctor for her.

  "An Elvis impersonator performed the service," Dr. Noble said. "Then Jesse serenaded Susan with his own version of ‘Love Me Tender.' You started to sing along until Steve nudged you to be quiet."

  Word had traveled even faster than he'd expected. Everyone at the hospital already knew. Jesse and Susan must have started calling people from their honeymoon suite at the Cote d'Azur resort casino. Either that, or Amanda had leaked the news after the ceremony. There weren't a lot of other suspects. Mark, Steve, and Amanda were the only guests at the couple's impromptu wedding, though it wasn't as rash a decision as it seemed. Jesse and Susan had been dating for years. The only surprise was the moment Jesse had chosen to ask Susan t
o marry him and his eagerness to do it right away.

  "Did I have an accident on the drive back to Los Angeles?" Mark asked.

  He would have been driving an unfamiliar car on the Pearblossom Highway, a notoriously dangerous two-lane stretch of road across the California desert that was lined with makeshift crosses and memorials honoring the scores of people who'd left their blood on the asphalt. If all he'd suffered in a collision was a concussion, he'd been very, very lucky—though trashing two cars—one on the way to Las Vegas and one on the way back—couldn't have made his insurance agent too happy.

  But what if he hadn't been in the car alone? Mark felt his heart start pounding and heard his cardiac monitor beeping to the same beat.

  "Was anyone else hurt? Was it my fault?"

  She shook her head. "That's not what happened."

  "Then why do you have that troubled look on your face?" Mark said. "There's obviously something important you're not telling me."

  She sighed. "Their wedding was almost two years ago, Mark."

  He stared at her, his vision blurring again. He blinked hard and tried to stay calm. Retrograde amnesia was common with head injuries. It could wipe away anything from hours to years, or in some very rare cases, an entire lifetime of memories. In most of the cases Mark had seen, the memories came back, albeit slowly and in maddeningly incomplete bits and pieces.

  But not always.

  Sometimes the memories never returned.

  He was missing two years.

  While a lot could happen in that amount of time, he figured it was just a small fraction of his sixty-three years. A mere blip on the time line of his life.

  How much could have changed?

  Mark hadn't lost his mental capabilities, so it wouldn't take long to adjust to whatever had occurred. He would simply devour the newspapers, magazines, and medical journals that had been published over the last twenty-four months, educating himself on what he'd missed. His life could go on as before—even if his memories of that brief period never returned.

  He was alive. His mental capabilities were unimpaired and he wasn't paralyzed.

  That was enough.

  "Do you know who I am?" she asked softly.

  "Dr. Emily Noble."

  "If I wasn't wearing this name tag, or if the nurse hadn't mentioned my name before, would you have recognized me?"

  Mark studied her. "Have we met?"

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and took his hand in hers, giving it a squeeze. This time it wasn't a neurological lest.

  "Mark," she said, looking into his eyes, "I'm your wife."

  CHAPTER THREE

  There was an old James Gamer movie that Mark liked a lot. Gamer played an American major captured and drugged by the Germans, who fooled him into thinking he'd awakened from a coma in an Allied hospital five years after the Nazis were defeated in World War II. The truth, of course, was that it was all a clever Nazi plot to get the major to reveal what he knew about the upcoming D-day invasion.

  The TV show Mission: Impossible used to pull variations of that same con all the time on dictators and mobsters to manipulate them into revealing their secrets or orchestrating their own doom.

  Mark had even mounted a similar con himself by enlisting the aid of a Hollywood producer and using the sets of a TV medical drama to trick a murderer into incriminating himself.

  In the movie, the TV series, and Mark's own experience, the key to pulling off the con was isolating the target, limiting his movements to one secure location, and controlling all the information and stimuli that he received.

  Like keeping him in bed in a windowless hospital room.

  That's the approach Mark took when he ran the con—and what he suspected was happening to him now that he was the target of one.

  He had to get on his feet as soon as possible. Once he got outside of this hospital, if that was really where he was, it would be impossible for anyone to sustain the con. If the con men lose their rigid control of the environment, the deception crumbles.

  But why were they doing it? What information or secrets did he have that would justify going to such extremes? He didn't know any military intelligence, security codes, bank vault combinations, or important formulas. He wasn't hiding his own guilt in some terrible crime. He didn't know the location of any hidden treasure.

  So what were they after?

  When he sent Dr. Noble away, asking for some privacy, she looked genuinely hurt. Her face reddened as if he'd struck her. He had to admit that she gave a convincing performance. It would take an accomplished actress to pull that off—but Los Angeles was full of them, out of work and desperate for cash.

  Mark, I'm your wife.

  While he was thinking about that, he noticed the gold wedding ring on his left hand. Curious, he wriggled the ring up towards his knuckle. There was a pale band of skin where the ring had been.

  A tan line. That's a nice touch, Mark thought. They'd considered everything. He took the ring off and set it on his bedside table.

  He wondered if he'd really been out for days or merely an hour or two, helped along by a steady flow of drugs in his IV to help muddle his memory—or loosen his tongue. Perhaps the flowers and candy were simply clever set decoration, like his wedding ring.

  Mark was about to test his theory by pulling out his IV tubes when Amanda Bentley walked in. She was dressed in black, her ID clipped to the belt of her slacks. Judging by her formal attire, he guessed she'd just come from testifying in court as part of her duties as an adjunct county medical examiner.

  "Tell me you weren't about to yank out your IV," Amanda said as if she were scolding her toddler son.

  "I wasn't about to yank out my IV."

  "Are you being a surly, difficult patient?" Amanda said.

  "I wouldn't dream of it," Mark said.

  "Then why did Emily come out of here looking like she'd taken a beating?"

  The woman in front of him looked and sounded like Amanda, but he had his doubts. The agents on Mission: Impossible wore incredible masks that they could peel right off, like a surface layer of skin. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain did it all the time. Even Tom Cruise did it in the movie version. He narrowed his eyes at her, trying to see if he could spot a seam along the edge of her face.

  "You know Dr. Noble?" Mark asked. He couldn't spot any seams. His vision must still be too blurry.

  "Of course I do," Amanda said, giving him the same stricken look that Dr. Noble had just a few minutes ago. "She's your wife. You know that, right?"

  "Not really."

  "Oh Mark, I'm so sorry," she said and sat down on the edge of the bed where Dr. Noble had been.

  How do they make those face masks, he wondered. After all, Mission: Impossible was a fanciful TV show, a very old one at that, that tested a viewer's incredulity every week. Did such technology even exist?

  It had to, because this lady in front of him was wearing an Amanda mask right now.

  "I don't believe any of this," Mark said. "I haven't forgotten my wife—I'm not married."

  Amanda studied him. "So what do you think is going on, Mark? Some kind of big con?"

  "As a matter of fact, yes."

  "Like that terrible movie with James Gamer."

  "It was a great movie," Mark said.

  "We have this argument every time the reruns come on," Amanda said.

  "Maybe if you'd watched it you'd know it's the playbook for what's happening to me now."

  Even as Mark said it, he knew how ridiculous he sounded. If she was part of the con, she knew it was a con. What was the point he was trying to make?

  Mark closed his eyes. His head was pounding like it was an egg and some enormous creature was anxious to break its way out.

  Amanda slid closer to him. "If this is all a big con, how do you explain me?"

  He opened his eyes and his vision blurred again. He blinked hard, trying to focus. "A mask."

  "Dizziness and disorientation are common side effects of a concussion," Aman
da said. "But paranoid delusions could be a sign of something far more serious."

  "Let me feel your face," Mark said.

  She leaned over him. "Be my guest."

  He pulled at her skin and felt around her hairline. Her face was definitely flesh and not a mask. This was Amanda, unless someone had undergone an extreme makeover to replicate her features. It was possible.

  No, it's not, he thought. Get a grip on yourself. What is the most likely possibility? That you had a concussion and forgot two years of your life or that someone has mounted a con of such massive proportions that people were willing to have plastic surgery to pull it off?

  "Feeling foolish yet?" Amanda asked, as if reading his thoughts.

  He dropped his hands and looked at her sheepishly. "Foolish doesn't come close to describing what I feel." What he felt was numbing shock. The real emotions, whatever they might be, would come later when the enormity of his situation sank in, though one sentence was worming its way into his psyche.

  Mark, I'm your wife.

  "I'm sorry, Amanda," Mark whispered.

  "It's okay. It's a lot of information to process for a guy whose brain is already pretty scrambled."

  "Thanks," Mark said. "I think."

  "I don't blame you for being skeptical. If you weren't, I'd think something was seriously wrong with you. I might wonder if you were really Mark Sloan."

  He smiled. She was definitely Amanda. No one else could make him smile at a time like this, except, perhaps, Jesse, who never let anything get him down.

  "It's all going to come back," she said. "You know that. Temporary amnesia is common in cases like this."

  "Like what, exactly?" Mark asked. "What happened to me? How did I get hurt?"

  "Maybe we ought to wait for Steve to get here. I'm sure he'd like to tell you himself."

  "I want to know now."

  She pursed her lips, thinking it over, then finally nodded, more to herself than to him. "It happened three days ago, in the parking structure here. You got out of your car and were walking into the hospital when someone tried to run you over. Jesse saw the car coming and tackled you out of the way. You hit your head on the pavement."

  "Remind me to thank Jesse for that," Mark said.