She sat me down in the same chair Fred had pressed me into the night before. “You gotta stop breathin’ so shallow and so quick,” she said. “You’ll hyperventilate.”

I nodded.

About that time, Felicia came in through the main door, carrying a brown-bag lunch in one hand and wearing a glare of indignation, along with pink-and-white striped scrubs that made her look like a neon zebra. “Somebody done left a dog locked in a car out there in the parking lot. That’s inhumane, and I’m callin’ the cops.”

It’s strange, the things people think and say when they’ve just lost a loved one. “Please,” I whispered, “don’t have Russell arrested.”

“Bring the dog inside,” Rotika said quietly to Felicia. Her big hand landed lightly on my shoulder. “You give Felicia the keys to your car now, honey. We’ll look after your pet until you pull yourself together.”

I managed to find the keys and hand them over to Felicia, whose eyes had gone big and round. “That ambu-lance—” She stretched the word out, into three distinct syllables. Am-bu-lance. “Don’t tell me it’s Mrs. Travers they’ve come to fetch. Not when she was doin’ so good.”

Rotika didn’t say a word, and neither did I. We watched as the realization that she’d been right dawned in Felicia’s face. She fumbled, took a firmer grip on the keys and rushed back out to collect Russell.

“I’m so sorry,” Rotika told me.

“What happened?” I asked miserably. One of the EMTs must have slipped out the side door; he returned shortly pushing a gurney. A body bag lay folded on top. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Felicia bring Russell through the front door and shut him up in a room.

He yowled in protest.

Rotika gave a heavy sigh as she dropped into the chair next to mine. “I don’t know what happened,” she said wearily. “The rotation nurse came in to make rounds, maybe an hour ago. Everything was all right then. He left, and the next thing I knew, Mrs. Travers’s heart monitor took to beeping like crazy. I called for an ambulance—that’s in the policy manual—and I tried to help her. I really tried.”

Even through the fog of grief, the word “he” struck me like a bus. Knocked the breath out of me.

My intuition screamed Geoff.

“What was his name? Is he still here?”

“I don’t know his name,” Rotika said, hoisting herself to her feet. By that time, the other nursing home employees had trailed out of Lillian’s room. “We get whoever the health department sends over, and he came and went, like they all do. Must have signed in and out, though. You gotta sign in and out. That’s the rule.”

I got to my feet. “I want to see the record—now.”