But I didn’t want to watch Calvano work on Martin. I’d had enough of Calvano for one day. When a man is dying of thirst, he doesn’t dream of muddy waters, he dreams of a pure mountain stream. I needed Maggie.

I knew I’d find her at the hospital, working on Fiona Harker’s murder. Once Maggie started an investigation, she didn’t stop until she had solved the case or someone like Gonzales pulled her from it and pointed her in another direction. That had rarely happened to her—Maggie almost always solved her cases, something my old partner and I had never been able to do.

The dead nurse had no personal life to speak of, so Maggie, I reasoned, would go to the place where she had spent most of her life: the hospital. There was only one in our small town, but it was large, well funded, and served the surrounding county. It was a sprawling, four-story building constructed five decades ago, when architects had designed one public building after another as huge, utilitarian boxes. It had kept up with the times, though. Inside its walls, county residents could be treated for everything from a splinter in a toe to terminal cancer.

I had not visited the hospital much since my death. For every three people surrounded by loved ones celebrating a successful procedure, there was someone in a bed nearby, alone in the dark, facing their own mortality. The trouble was that I could tell the difference. The dying had a glow about them that grew stronger as their bodies grew weaker, as if their life force was being leeched from their physical bodies and gathered for the transition. Many of them sensed this and met their deaths with so much courage and strength it made me ashamed I had squandered my life when I’d once had it. Others lay fearfully in bed, awaiting the worst. And a lucky few slept, blissfully unaware that they were never to wake.

They all died in the end.

It wasn’t the death that bothered me, though. It was my knowing in advance. It was the fact that each of them so far, at least the ones I had witnessed, had moved on to someplace unknown, leaving me behind. That alone made the hospital an infinitely painful place for me.

But Maggie would be there, at least. I could endure anything for Maggie.

I found her in a staff lounge on the first floor near the emergency room, talking to a tall man with brown hair. He was unremarkable looking except, perhaps, for his eyes, which were copper. He was thin in that way of doctors who, annoyingly enough, look like they run sixteen miles a day and perform in triathlons every weekend. He was at least ten years older than Maggie, though his voice sounded older than that. I could feel his fatigue as surely as if it were mine. He had been working for many hours in the emergency room, I suspected. Wisps of other people’s misfortune clung to him like cotton candy.

I didn’t like the way he was looking at Maggie. He looked like a man who’d watched his ship go down, only to spot a dinghy filled with enough food and water to last him until help arrived.

“Did you know her?” Maggie was asking him.

I sat down behind the doctor and made faces at him. It was childish, and no one could see me, but it made me feel better. That was good enough for me.

“Of course,” he told Maggie. “Fiona was, hands down, the best nurse we had. She never lost her cool, ever. I once saw her walk in behind a stretcher, cradling the bottom half of a leg like it was a baby, the whole time telling the guy on the stretcher that he was going to be okay. She didn’t blink an eye. Nothing fazed her. She did what had to be done and she wanted to save lives. No matter how tired the rest of us got, we knew Fiona would have our backs. Everyone is devastated about her death and I am, frankly, concerned about our quality of care without her.”

Well, that was quite the eulogy—I wondered just how well the good doctor had known Fiona Harker.

“You sound as if you two were close,” Maggie said. Personally, I’d have gone for a bigger bite—but Maggie had her ways. Though I didn’t like the way she was staring into his copper eyes. At all.

“I only knew her professionally. I’ve been going through some difficult personal times,” he explained. “I haven’t had time for anything but work and straightening out my personal life. I haven’t had time for friends for years, in fact.”

You hear that, Maggie? The man is a mess.

“That seems a bit sad,” Maggie said quietly.

The doctor shrugged. “I’m good at what I do. Sometimes, that has to be enough.”

Maggie blinked. He had struck a chord.

I did not trust the good doctor.

“Did she have a boyfriend, someone she was involved with?” Maggie asked.

The doctor shrugged again. “She might have. She was a lovely woman, not just on the outside, but inside as well. Kind. Caring. Infinitely patient, and when you’re talking about the emergency room and people anxious about their loved ones, well, her patience kept things from getting ugly on a weekly basis. But I never heard any talk about her personal life. You’d have to ask the other nurses that.”

“Was anyone here at the hospital particularly close to her?” Maggie persisted.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the other nurses that as well.” The doctor rose to his feet. “I would like to answer any other questions you have, but we’ve got a head trauma on the way in. Perhaps you would like to get a cup of coffee later?”

What the hell? He was hitting on her. What had happened to being “good at what you do” and that being enough?

Maggie’s smile was professional. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Right,” he said, ducking his head and looking defeated just long enough for her to feel sorry for him. “I should have known better than to ask.”

“Maybe if circumstances were different,” Maggie offered, which was going a little too far, in my opinion. He was a grown man. He could take rejection.

The doctor smiled at that and, this time, Maggie’s answering smile was way too close to her prime smile for my comfort. What the hell is it about doctors anyway?

“Well, time to go save lives,” he said reluctantly, still holding her gaze.

Oh, yeah, well, there is that. The whole saving lives thing and all.

“It was nice to meet you, Dr. Fletcher,” Maggie answered, holding out her hand.

“Call me Christian.” He held on to her hand just a beat too long. She didn’t seem to mind. “You can find most of the staff in the nurses’ lounge sooner or later,” he offered, stalling. “It’s at the end of the hall.”

“Thank you.”

Maggie’s thank you was enough to cause the doctor to bump into the door frame on the way out, but it was scant punishment for his audacity in daring to take my Maggie from me.

Dr. Christian Fletcher? What a jerk. Fletcher the Lecher, more likely.

I took a good look at what I was feeling, and I had to admit it: jealousy was alive and well in the dead.