Once she got her breath back, she said, “How could he have gotten so many pictures of me?” She pointed at a picture that showed her and Jordan getting in her Smart car.  “Did he hire someone to watch me?”

“From what I can ascertain these look like they were taken at work functions,” Edison said, pointing to a cake in the break room in one of the photos.  “And these are more I’m-a-creepy-stalker-following-you pictures.”

“He was following me this whole time?”

“Apparently.  And here he is taking pics of his handiwork.  The signs in the yard.  Irma stomping the flaming dog doody.  Here’re several of Jordan’s slashed bike tires.  And there’s a whole bunch of you two making out.”

Isabel put her arm around Amy’s shoulder.  “We’ll put a restraining order on him and send HR at the hospital an anonymous tip with accompanying video.  That should get him to leave you alone.”

“I don’t want him to just leave me alone.  I want him gone,” Amy said through gritted teeth.  She felt violated.  Somebody had been watching her in her most private intimate moments.  She felt vulnerable and scared.  She underscored what she felt with one word.  “Gone.”

“Understood,” Edison said.  “Do you think you’ll be safe at home tonight?”

Isabel said, “I texted Jeremy.  He said Chad is gone from the premises and he’s changing the locks on the doors right now.  We’ll take turns keeping watch.  We’ll be safe.”

Edison and Isabel talked in hushed tones as they walked to Isabel’s car.

Amy was so stunned by what she’d seen that her mind didn’t seem able to process everything.  She felt as if she were walking upstream against a strong current.

Edison opened Isabel’s door for her.  Isabel got behind the wheel, started the car and powered down her window.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Edison said.

“I can’t wait,” Isabel whispered breathlessly.

Amy got in the passenger seat and looked up at the house at Jordan’s dark window.  “This will all be over with by tomorrow,” she said out loud.  But even she could hear the doubt in her own voice.


Elvis Has Left the Building

Amy didn’t hear from Jordan the next day.  Or the day after that.  She had checked her phone for missed calls or texts approximately one hundred and seventy-eight times.  She had called Edison at least twenty times each day.  Edison reassured her that she was still trying to track Jordan and Irma down.  But like Edison said, “If Irma wants to go off the grid, there was no way she’d be found.”

Amy was exhausted.  Worrying burned up a lot of energy.  She barely slept.  She worked like she was sleepwalking and drank coffee like a fish.  She hadn’t seen Chad since he proposed.  He was off work until his hand healed.  That was the only good news.  However, Amy still couldn’t help but look over her shoulder all the time.  She felt like she was being watched everywhere she went.  She even checked the women’s restroom for peepholes before she allowed herself to sit on the toilet.

Veronica, twinless at the moment, rapped lightly on Amy’s door.  Amy looked up and smiled.  “Come on in.”

Veronica glanced down the hall then back at Amy.  “Oh, crap, I’m too late.”  She jumped inside the office and slammed the door behind her.  “Doesn’t this thing lock?” she said, fiddling with the door.

“No.  I put in a maintenance request but no one has showed up yet.”

“Oh, holy hell!”  Veronica grabbed a chair and wedged it against the door just under the knob.  She tested it.  “Hey, that really does work.”  She appeared surprised and excited that it did.

“What’s going on?  Why did you lock us in here?”

“I’m not locking us in.  I’m locking him out.”

“Him?  Him?” Amy asked excitedly.  “Him as in Chad him?”

“Yes. Chad is here.  He’s coming,” Veronica ran to the window.  “We need an exit strategy.”  She shoved up on the window.  It didn’t budge.

“Those windows don’t open,” Amy said.  “They’re sealed shut in a feeble attempt to lower the suicide rate among doctors.”

There was a pounding on the door.  Amy looked at the door and back to Veronica.  “Shit,” she mouthed.  “Shit, shit, shit.”

Veronica looked around frantically.  The doorknob rattled.  “Amy.  Are you in there?” Chad’s voice called.  “Let me in, I need to talk to you.”

“HR just got through telling him he has to leave you alone.  I guess it didn’t make an impression,” Veronica whispered.

“They got the anonymously sent disc?”

Veronica nodded.  “He’s been in there talking to them and the hospital administrator, Haroldson.  And when the Big H gets involved you know it’s serious.”

“I can hear you,” Chad called out in a singsong voice.  Then he pounded on the door with both fists.  The chair wobbled from the force of his blows.  Veronica steadied the chair, holding it firmly under the doorknob.

Amy wished she’d never seen The Shining.  This was way too much like the “Here’s Johnny” moment.  She felt like she was going to throw up.

Chad bellowed, “Damnit Amy, I just want to talk.  It’s not what you think.  It’s not what they think.  This is love.  True love!  No one understands how much I love you and they’re trying to take you away from me.” He pounded the door and it shook on its hinges.

Veronica looked up at the ceiling.  “I’ve got it.  Get up on the desk.”

“Why?”

Veronica snapped her fingers at Amy.  “Just do it.  Now!”

“Amy!  I fucking love you!” Chad screamed.

Amy quickly climbed up on her desk.  She could brush the ceiling with her fingertips, but that was all.  Veronica plucked several thick medical volumes from Amy’s bookshelves and stacked them on the desk.  “Climb up on these.”

“Am I going up there?” Amy said, pointing to the ceiling.

“That’s right.  Push the panel aside.  Hoist yourself up.  Put the panel back and lay flat on the joist.  He’ll never know you’re there.”

“AAAAAAmmmmmmyyyyyy!”

Chad’s out-of-control scream sent Amy upwards. She scrambled up and into the ceiling as Chad’s voice turned soft and pleading.  “Let me in.  Amy, please, I love you so much.  I understand the mercurial nature of your sexuality and we can work through it.  I want us to be together and have little Chaddites and Amyites and live in the suburbs and have barbeques.”  His fingernails scratched at the door.

Amy slid the panel back into place, disappearing from view.

“Elvis has left the building,” Veronica said loudly.

“Elvis?  Who’s Elvis?” Chad hollered.  “Is he vying for Amy’s affection?”

Veronica moved the chair.  She flattened herself against a wall and said, “Help me, Chad.  The door handle is jammed or something.”

“What?”

“This is Amy.  Use your brute strength to rescue me,” Veronica said.  “Throw your body against the door!  I’m locked in here and suffocating!  Help me!”

There was a moment of silence.  Then the door burst open and Chad flew into the room, headfirst.  He tripped over the chair and sprawled facedown across Amy’s desk.  Veronica quickly pulled a syringe out of her pocket, took the cap off with her teeth and poked Chad in the butt with the needle.

He went out like a light.

“Okay, Amy, you can come out now,” she said.

Amy slid back the panel and dropped down to the edge of the desk, then hopped to the floor.  She was covered in a white residue and felt like the Pillsbury Dough boy.  She hoped it was dust and not some chemical agent that would deform her children and give her cancer by the ripe old age of forty-five.

Veronica held the syringe like it was a smoking pistol.

Amy gazed at the snoring Chad.  “What did you give him?”

“A shot of Propofol with a little Midazolam thrown in.  He won’t remember a thing.”


Bug, Bug, Who’s Got the Bug?

Veronica pulled Chad’s cell phone out of his back pocket.  His butt muscles twitched reflexively.

“What’re you doing?” Amy asked.  “You’re not going to steal his wallet, are you?”

“I’m just looking at his phone.  Aha!” Veronica smiled triumphantly and showed Amy the screen on his phone.  “It’s a GPS tracking device, see?”

“What’s that pulsating red dot?”

“That’s you,” Veronica said.  “He has you bugged so he can follow you.”

“Oh my God,” Amy breathed.  “That’s how he always knew where I was.”

“We have to find out where he planted the bugs.  Then we can turn him loose back into the wild.”

Amy shuddered.  “Do you think he planted a bug on me, like inside one of my body cavities while I was unconscious from slipping on the, you know?”

Veronica raised an eyebrow.  “Eww, I hope not.  I’ll search a lot of places, but that’s not one of them.  Let’s see your purse, your jacket and anything else that you always carry with you.”

Exactly seven minutes later they had found a tiny silver bullet-shaped device in Amy’s purse, one in her kit bag and one neatly inserted behind the calendar in her DayTimer.  “What on earth is he thinking?  I didn’t know these things even existed and I’m covered in them,” Amy said.

“Come on, there’s certainly one in your car,” Veronica said.  “We need to go check it out.”

“What do we do with him?” Amy said, pointing at Chad’s twitching buttocks.

“Don’t worry about it.  He’ll be out a while.”

They slunk out of her office.  Amy didn’t know why they were the ones slinking around.  None of this was her fault.  Chad was the crazy person.  “What exactly do you think is wrong with him?” Amy asked, as they rode the elevator to the parking garage.

“I really don’t know.  He must have always been a little off his rocker and this thing with you has sent him over the edge.  Maybe no one has ever turned him down or maybe it’s this girl-on-girl thing you have going on.”

“You know about Jordan and me?”

“Honey, most of the hospital knows.  All the boys are jealous and all the girls think you have great taste in women.”

They exited the elevator and walked directly to Amy’s Smart car.  “Where do we look?” she asked.

“Usually, in the movies they’re hidden under the car because in most cases the perps can’t get in the car.”

“Perps?”

“The bad guys.  You don’t watch TV much, do you?”

“Nope.”  Amy leaned down and looked under her car.  It was so low to the ground that it was hard to get a good look at anything.  Its low clearance had been a beef with some of the car’s reviewers but since Amy was short she hadn’t much cared and she didn’t go in the mountain wilds so it didn’t seem an issue.  Unless of course, your crazy-ass-one-night-stand person put trackers everywhere.  “I can’t see anything.  Should I crawl underneath?”  She was wearing dark blue scrubs so perhaps parking lot dirt wouldn’t show, but then she’d be unsanitary and would have to change anyway.

“I think so,” Veronica said.  “I’d do it but I might get stuck.”  She pointed to her breasts.

“We wouldn’t want to have to call 911,” Amy agreed.  “They’d probably think I ran over a large-breasted woman.”

Amy laid down flat on her back and looked at the short space she was supposed to crawl under.  She’d heard once that mice could squeeze themselves flat in order to crawl under doors.  “Think like a mouse, think like a mouse,” she thought as she scooted under the bumper.  She managed to jimmy herself under the car, but once under she couldn’t see a damn thing.  It figured Chad wouldn’t just stick it under the doorframe or under the tail pipe, no, he’d go as far under as he could and then the fucker would put it by all the other mechanical stuff.  “Crap, I can’t tell what’s what.  I don’t want to mess up my car.”

“What’re you doing here?” she heard Veronica ask.

When Amy turned her head she saw a pair of shoes standing on the other side of the car next to Veronica’s shoes. Big shoes.  Big men’s shoes.  She bumped her head.  “Ouch!  Please, tell me that’s not Chad.”

“It’s not Chad.  It’s me,” Jeremy said.  He squatted and peered under the car at her.  “Why are you under your car?”

Veronica answered for her. “She’s looking for a GPS tracker.  Chad had her wired with three others.  We’re trying to find the one he put on her car.”

Amy shimmied back out from under her car.  Jeremy extended a hand and helped her to her feet.  “Where’s Chad now?” he asked

Amy tried to brush herself off, but managed only to smear the oil and dirt around.

“He’s in her office,” Veronica said.  “I had to tranq him.  Like how they do when a gorilla escapes from the zoo.”

“The dude is seriously going to get fired at this rate,” Jeremy said.  He walked a circle around the car, looking it over.  He kneeled down and peeked under the car.  He rose back up, stood perfectly still, closed his eyes and held his palms out toward the car.  He looked like he was meditating.