Free A Man to Die for by Eileen Dreyer

finality.
    Black eyes glittered with venom. “How dare you?” he demanded. “I am the doctor. I will have your job.”
    “Trust me,” she retorted. “You wouldn’t want it. We’ve been running the code for forty minutes already and haven’t gotten squat.”
    “What about the dopamine?” he demanded, turning on Marva.
    “Running.” She shrugged, casting a glance up at the bag with a red tag on it. “Wide open.”
    “We’re covered,” Casey wheedled, hating the necessity, hating the game. Hating Ahmed for wasting everybody’s time. “We’ve got the positive Nebraska sign, Ahmed. That EKG’s as flat as Marva’s chest. Mrs. Tarlton’s not going to sue us for giving up now.”
    “We will call it when I say it is to be called,” he warned her.
    It took everything in her to keep from hitting him. The rage welled in her like a red fire, almost blocking out the sight of the crowded, littered, fetid room. “Then I guess you’ll have to do it without me.”
    She stalked out. She knew that once she was gone it would be safe for him to give in. After one more dose of epi and a stab at the pacemaker, he did just that. Four minutes and twenty seconds. Casey vented her rage on a plastic urinal that bounced with a satisfying clatter against the bathroom wall, and then washed her hands twice. She kept herself out of sight until she heard the dying whine of a discontinued monitor and knew she was calm enough to face Ahmed again.
    She walked back out into the hall to bump into Hunsacker.
    He was watching the desultory movements in the trauma room with interest, and didn’t notice Casey until she was almost at him.
    “Back again?” she couldn’t help but ask. She was all set to walk on when Hunsacker turned his gaze on her.
    Casey shuddered to a halt. Just for a second, as sudden as a death seizure, the light disappeared from Hunsacker’s eyes. Casey didn’t see recognition. She didn’t see charm or interest or avarice. What she saw was a flash of deadly cold hostility.
    She couldn’t move, couldn’t react. The weight of his animosity pinned her, upended her. She couldn’t comprehend such venom. She couldn’t imagine what could possibly ignite it or fuel it. But it was there, a hard glint so vicious that it paralyzed her.
    “You can be a real ballbuster,” he said, and that fast the light came back on. Steve was walking their way with the paperwork. Janice closed up equipment and Marva preserved tubes and lines for the coroner’s perusal later. Hunsacker turned to watch them. “Those camel jockeys can be real assholes, can’t they?”
    Casey didn’t know how to answer him. Was that what had frozen his expression? Had he watched the fight with Ahmed and sided with her? Could he possibly have that much hatred stored away to strike out so suddenly, so capriciously? Could he be that controlled that he could lock it back away so neatly?
    Casey had to admit that with all her chances to cultivate prejudices, the only one she’d succumbed to was against certain doctors of the third world persuasion. Unaccustomed to respecting women as equals because of societal traditions, those men usually were the most difficult to deal with. Theirs often seemed the most severe kind of medical chauvinism, which to Casey often seemed like male chauvinism at its worst. And Ahmed was among the high priests of that particular sect.
    But where she might have let off steam with Janice or Marva or Steve, she couldn’t admit that kind of selfweakness with Hunsacker. She didn’t want him to think she shared his bigotry.
    “Your lady still not doing anything upstairs?” she asked instead, shaken enough to stare after him. Still unsettled enough from the aftermath of the code to wonder if she’d just imagined it all.
    Hunsacker turned an appraising eye on her. Casey had the distinct feeling that he was disappointed that she hadn’t snapped up his bait. She couldn’t dismiss the feeling that he was watching her for something.