and a handful of others knew he’d been working. To have to sit along the sidelines now because of familial involvement pissed him off even more.
He trusted Callum and Evers. The two were damned good at what they did, too. “Keep me in the loop, will you?”
Callum nodded. “You know we will. We like Izzie. We’ll find out why this happened to her. And why it happened to this guy.”
Jake nodded. His mind went over everything that he knew about the Henedy family. Something was sour in that family; he’d bet a year’s pay on that. Real sour.
He didn’t know if it had trickled down to the next generation.
Someone entered the room; Jake tensed, seeing the physician there.
He fought back a snarl.
It would be Jacobson. Jake didn’t trust him one inch. The man’s name kept coming up too often. It had for the last eighteen months. Something was going on, and if it was tied to FCGH he had no doubt that this was the connection right there. For all of Jake’s digging, he hadn’t found anything to implicate the man in anything illegal. Or even immoral, for that matter.
Jake was hoping he didn’t find anything—considering what he owed Jacobson—but he was a firm believer in where there was smoke there was fire.
Callum nodded. “Jacobson. Saw that you are the surgeon on record. What is the prognosis?”
There was still a bit of hostility on Jacobson’s face when he looked at Callum. No love lost there, either, apparently. “Very good. He’ll most likely make a full recovery or close to it. It depends on how hard he wants to work at it. He’s young, healthy, physically fit. He should do well. He needs rest now. So if you would take your discussion someplace else, please? This isn’t the place for it.”
It wasn’t a suggestion, and Jake knew it. He tried not to bristle. Jacobson had always set his teeth on edge, with that commanding arrogance of his. The way he had of looking at a man. The distrust and slight hostility was right there for him to see.
No, Jacobson didn’t care for the TSP much at all. Jake wanted to know why. He found Jacobson far too much of a puzzle for his own liking. Especially considering how close the man kept ending up to Izzie.
“What do you know about what happened? What have you heard?” Jake asked. Even he heard the hostility in his words, but it was too late to take them back.
Jacobson stiffened. Jacobson sized him up; Jake returned the look levelly.
The man didn’t say anything. He kept his cool at least; Jake would give him that. Damn it, Jake owed him for what he had done for Izzie. Kind of hard to forget that. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be so abrupt.”
“Are you asking if this has something to do with what happened to your niece? Well, your guess is as good as mine. I didn’t even know who the patient was until after the surgery was complete. That’s the nature of emergency trauma, boys. I save the life that’s on my table. I don’t think of their names until well after. As for what I know about Reggie Henedy, personally, that doesn’t violate medical privacy law, not much. I met him twice when he came by to have lunch with his father. Seems like a nice, hard-working decent guy. Why don’t you go ask Wallace Henedy what he thinks about all of this? Maybe he could shed some light on what in the hell’s going on? A man I greatly respect lost his house the other night, and he almost lost the woman he loves. Shouldn’t you be trying to find out exactly what happened with Turner and Annie? Wouldn’t that be a better use of your time than hanging out in a hospital room over a man too sedated to even begin to answer your questions?”
No, Jacobson definitely wasn’t a pushover.
Jake still didn’t like the sonofabitch much though.
47
Jennifer was finally starting to get ahold of herself. Telling Wallace what had happened to their son had been one of the hardest things of her life. It ranked just shy of how she had felt burying her nephew.
Nothing had been as bad as burying their daughter all those years ago. Her arms still shook as she imagined holding Elizabeth. Jennifer had held her daughter almost the baby’s entire life—only Wallace had held her in the short moments Jennifer hadn’t.
They had grieved together then. In the years that had