The Missing Year by Belinda Frisch

shoes?”
    “Blisters.” Ross knocked again. “Lila, open up.”
    “You had no business taking Lila out of here without permission.”
    “I tried to find you to ask first. You were nowhere to be found. You need to trust me.”
    “ Trust you? I have trusted you, Ross. You know things no one else does, but what do you think is going to happen to the center if someone gets hurt, or worse?”
    Ross didn’t need Guy to spell out what he was implying. “It won’t happen again. It was an accident. We were too close to the water and I slipped on rock.”
    “And Lila? Did she slip , too?”
    Lila opened the bathroom door stared Guy down. “No, she didn’t slip. She wanted to go swimming.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
     
    “Thanks for not throwing me under the bus,” Mark said, extending a pair of green scrubs to Ross who had holed himself up in his office.
    “For what?” Ross changed behind a supply cabinet door. “You told me to ask for permission and I didn’t get it.” He set his wet shoes next to the heater vent and hung his dripping clothes from the coat rack. Underwear would have been nice, but he’d settle for being dry. He sat in the chair behind his desk and examined the ruptured blisters on the backs of his water-logged heels. “I take full responsibility for what happened. There’s no point in bringing anyone down with me, especially when they’re not at fault.”
    “I feel like I should have stopped you. I didn’t know Lila would go into the lake, but I should’ve known something could happen. If Dr. Oliver knew you mentioned taking her outside to me, I’d have been fired.”
    “I wouldn’t do that to you, Mark. Besides, Lila’s okay. Guy’s upset, but I think he’s happier that she said something to him than he is angry that she went in the lake.”
    “What did she say?”
    “That she wanted to go swimming.”
    Mark laughed. “Who knew she had a sense of humor?”
    “Let’s hope it charms Guy enough that he doesn’t fire me.”
    “If that was his intention he’d have done it by now.”
    “Well, you were worried.”
    “With good reason,” Mark said. “This thing with Lila would have been my second strike. I already upset Ruth Wheeler.”
    Ross hadn’t heard. “What did you do?”
    “I made a few calls to Merrick Memorial after Lila transferred here. I wanted to see if there was anything in her medical history that might help Dr. Oliver. A clerical error had me in touch with the medical records supervisor who said Blake’s records were restricted. The receptionist confused the Wheelers’ accounts and had medical records looking into the wrong one. The supervisor’s reaction was enough to make me curious.”
    “How did that upset Ruth?”
    “I went to the hospital after getting nowhere by phone. I did some asking around. That’s when Ruth got mad. She called Dr. Oliver, irate, insisting he fire me. If I were less useful, he would have. He told me to stay away from anything to do with Blake.”
    “What did you find out?”
    “One of the OR techs told me Blake took a sabbatical a few months before the shooting. He had made a fatal surgical error that had his patient hemorrhaging to death.”
    Ross couldn’t believe his ears. The pressure of something like that would have affected Lila, especially if a malpractice case threatened Blake’s estate. “Did the patient’s family sue?”
    “I’m not sure,” Mark said. “A lawsuit hardly seems a reason for Lila to try to kill herself, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    “It’s a stretch, I agree, but there had to be a catalyst. Nothing about this case adds up. Lila attempted suicide the day of her husband’s funeral, a sort of knee-jerk reaction. I understand the grief. Honestly, I do. But why isn’t she getting better? She was on medication, in therapy, and nothing changed, right?”
    “Nothing,” Mark agreed.
    “And the minute Blake comes up, Ruth flies off the handles. What does this have to do with Lila? What