It felt like my heart stopped. I dropped the note and the envelope and they fell to the floor. Doc asked me what it said. I couldn’t say anything, I was frozen in place. He picked the note up and read it, then motioned the cop over. She read the note and ran off down the hall, presumably in pursuit of the woman. It wasn’t Jane. Jane was taller and thinner.

It seemed like I was frozen in place forever, but I’m told it was just a minute or two. When I was able to talk again, I said “Doc, we have to get out of here!”

“We can’t, hon. You are not ready to go home. Besides, she knows where we live. We’re safer here, with so many people around. It could be that she is just trying to scare us. There was no threat made in the note.”

“No, but she has made threats to me over the phone, remember? She threatened to harm you and Karen and now, with that note being addressed to both of us, I’m sure I’m included in the threats.”

“Meredith, we are safe here. Please try to calm down.”

“Doc, a woman just fell into my lap. I’m pretty sure the fall was deliberate. Had she wanted to hurt me, she easily could have before the officer at the door got to her.”

“I‘m going to take you back to your room now, hon. Nobody can get in there without my consent.”

“Please take me home, Doc.”

“No, I am not taking you home. That is not negotiable. Come on, let’s get you into the wheelchair. I’ll put the oxygen tank in the corner of the seat so that I don‘t have to call a nurse to come and help. You may have to sit forward a bit.”

When we got to my room, the undercover officer told us that they had caught the woman who dropped the note in my lap. “My partner is holding her in the staff lounge while we wait for Detective Fletcher to get here.”

Doc took me into the room and helped me get out of the wheelchair. I sat down on the bed. He sat down beside me and wrapped his arms around me. I laid my head on his chest and he held me for a while before I lay down and he hooked me back up to everything. I was on my good side and curled up in the fetal position, which is what I tend to do when I’m upset. I couldn’t stop trembling.

Doc pulled the blankets over me and sat down again. “Need anything, hon?” he asked.

“No, Doc, but thanks.”

“Everything is going to be okay”, he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” He looked at the cardiac monitor. “You need to calm down, hon. Your blood pressure and heart rate are up and that is not good.” He reached for his stethoscope. “Let me listen for a minute, ok?” He listened to my heart, paying particular attention to the mitral area under my left breast.

When he was done, he took his phone out of his pocket and made a call. “I’m calling Oliver Hampton to get some advice.” I heard him say something to Dr Hampton about “clicks” but had no idea what that was about. When he got off the phone, he said that Dr Hampton was going to prescribe medication for my mitral valve prolapse as the stress was making it worse. “You really need to calm down, hon. I think I will give you a sedative.”

“No!” I almost yelled as I bolted to a sitting position. “No sedative!”

“Hon, I’m not giving you the same one that you had the other day. I’m not taking a chance on you having bad dreams again. It’s a different one, a little more mild so you shouldn’t go to sleep.”

The door to the room opened and Detective Fletcher walked in. I guess the cop at the door felt he didn’t need to get Doc’s okay for his boss to come in. “I came to give you an update on what happened today.”

“Let’s go out there”, Doc said, indicating outside my room. “Meredith is pretty upset as it is.”

“I’d like to hear what Scott has to tell us, Doc.”

“Meredith, let me find out and I’ll decide whether to tell you now or wait until later.”

“Dr Richards, what I have to say isn’t upsetting. It’s quite mild.” Scott said.

“Ok, but if you upset her, you’ll have to deal with me.”

“I’m going to give you a pass on that because I know how worried you are about your wife, Julian.”

“We’re not married, Scott”, I interrupted.

“You’re living together, that makes you common-law. Besides, it’s a shorter word than ‘significant other’. Julian, what you just said could be construed as a threat against an officer of the law.”

“Oh, good grief”, I said. “You seriously would charge him over that?”

“Let it go, hon”, Doc told me.

“No, *I* will not charge you, but another law enforcement officer might. That is why I said that, I don’t want you saying it to someone who isn’t as understanding as I am.”

“Ok, go on”, Doc said.

“There aren’t any major developments. I just talked to the woman who dropped the note in Meredith’s lap. She’s still in the nurse’s lounge waiting to be taken to the station to give an official statement. She co-operated with me fully and said that a woman matching Jane’s description paid her $100 to give either of you the note. Jane found her at the unemployment office, I guess she figured someone out of work would jump at the chance for $100. She had no idea what the note said. She was wearing the dark glasses because she has corneal ulcers and the light hurts her eyes.”

“I’ve had that, Scott”, I told him. “It’s extremely painful and light makes it so much worse. I’m surprised she even went anywhere that wasn’t a medical appointment.”

“She was very upset when I showed the note to her and said that she’d have never done it if she’d known what it said. She feels foolish for not suspecting that it was something bad. She has agreed to testify against Jane when the time comes and we aren’t pressing any charges against her.”

“I guess this confirms that Jane is still in the city. How is she affording to be off work and having someone run up her credit cards?” I asked.

“She took a leave of absence from her job for six months. Apparently, that is the minimum they can take. She has a lot of money in bank accounts and numerous investments. We suspect she has fake ID as she had a car when she approached the woman about getting the note to you. There is only one car registered under her name, and that wasn’t it. So, she either borrowed one, or used another name to register and insure it.”

“With her knowledge of computers, she could probably easily make fake identification”, Doc said.

“Yes, and that makes it harder to catch her.”

“How did the woman know who we were?” I asked the detective.

“Jane gave her pictures of both of you. They look like they may have been downloaded and printed out. One of Julian looks like an identification picture and she had one of the two of you together.”

“My Facebook profile picture”, I said. “I have my profile locked down, but the profile pictures are public. Damn her.”

Doc pointed to his hospital ID hanging from a ribbon around his neck. “Is this the one of me?”

“Yes, that’s it”.

“She probably found the page about me at the hospital’s website.”

“She also had one of you with a horse, Meredith.”

“Crap. That means she trolled my website. Hey, what about the woman using her credit cards?”

“No news on that, she’s still heading east but not in a straight line. I am going to need fingerprints from both of you as you both handled the note and I’m also going to have an officer take statements from both of you.”

“Julian wants to give me a sedative”, I said, rolling my eyes. “So I don’t know how useful I can be to you with giving a statement.”

“Can you hold off on that until after we’re done?” Scott asked him.

“Yes, but her well-being comes first”, Doc replied. “I’m concerned about a heart condition she has and I want to be in the room so I can watch her cardiac monitor. If I say it has to stop for the day, the officer will be asked to leave."

“Absolutely. I don’t want anyone’s health to suffer from giving a statement.” Then he turned to me. “Meredith, I know this is stressful, but please try not to worry. Despite what happened today, you are still very safe here. Jane obviously plans on staying away from the hospital. That’s why she paid someone to get that note to you. However, I do think it might be an idea for you to stay here in your room until you are discharged, just to be on the safe side. There’s an undercover officer just outside the door and another one at the nurse’s station. When you go home, the officers there won’t be that close.”

“Gee, thanks, Scott. Now I’m afraid to go home!”

“Actually, I don’t think you should go home. We can put you in a safe house in Vancouver.”

“No way, Scott. First, I will not go to that city, it’s way too big for me. Second, I have already been away from the farm longer than I care to be.”

“Meredith, we will talk it over and come to a decision together”, Doc said to me.

“I only have your best interest in mind”, Scott said. “So does Julian. Now, I’m going to go call for some officers to come and do the fingerprinting and take your statements. Julian, you will have to be in another room to give yours. We’ll do yours first. In the meantime, I’m going to ask the officer at the door to come into the room. That is to make sure you two do not discuss what happened. If you did, a defense lawyer would rip the prosecution to shreds. Normally, I’d separate you now, but that wouldn’t be in Meredith’s best interest medically. When Meredith is giving her statement, you will have to be quiet and not say a word unless it‘s about her health - for example if the monitor shows something concerning.”

“That’s fine”, Doc said.

“I think I will have a couple officers in the room while her statement is being taken. That way there are witnesses to testify that you did not influence her in any way.”

By the time our fingerprints and statements had been taken, it was supper time. Once again, Doc took one look at my tray and asked if I wanted something from downstairs. I wasn’t hungry, so I just asked for a sandwich and coffee. “No decaf - regular coffee, please.”

“No, hon. This time of day, it’s decaf.”

“Come on, Doc. I don’t smoke, I need something to settle my nerves.”

“I can give you that sedative, Meredith.”

“No, it’s okay”, I sighed. “I’ll have the decaf.”

While we were having our supper, we discussed the options for when I was discharged. “Doc, I really do not want to go to their safe house.”

“I know, hon, but we may have no choice. If Detective Fletcher feels the farm is not safe for us, then we have to go.”

“Doc, what about renting a cabin somewhere? Jane wouldn’t know where we are. I doubt she knows about the one we rented in January, but we could go somewhere else just to be sure.”

“We could ask Scott about it, but if he says no, I will defer to him. Now, do you want to go to sleep or read a bit?”

“I think I’m too wound up to sleep. I’m going to check my email.”

“Do you want your phone or notebook?”

“My notebook. It’s so much easier to use.”

Doc picked up one of his magazines to read while I logged on and downloaded my email. I hadn’t checked it since before Jane had attacked me at the apartment. The first one was from Doc, the date and time stamp showed it was sent shortly before Jane showed up:

“I have a couple minutes in between patients and I just wanted to send a quick note to say hi and I love you. If you need me to pick anything up on the way home, let me know. I love you.

Doc”

“You are so sweet, Doc”, I said with a smile.

He looked up from his magazine. “What did I do?”

“I just read the email you sent me the day Jane showed up at the apartment.”

“Well, it’s true hon. I do love you.” Doc has a memory like an elephant. I had no doubt he remembered every word he typed, even though it was almost a week ago.

There were a few more emails and some spam, then I got to the last one. The “From” field said “Guess Who?” My heart stopped. I read the body of the email:

“Hello, Meredith,

I heard what happened this afternoon at the hospital. Pity that my messenger got caught, but she did her job and got the note to you. The note is true, I know where you are. You are in Room 552 on the gynecology floor. You have an undercover cop at the door of your room and there’s another one at the nurse’s station, pretending to be a clerk.

Since you have not heeded my warning, I need to step it up. It’s too risky coming to the hospital, so here’s the deal. You break it off with Julian and send him home by tomorrow night or I will take out every one of your horses. Don’t think I can’t get by the cops that are there, or your friends. They are amateurs. If any of them are in or near the barn, I will neutralize them before going in. Don’t think I can’t or wouldn‘t.

Signed,

You Know Who”

My mind was going a million miles a minute. She’s going after my horses! I can’t let her do that! “Doc”, I finally said. “I know I’ve said this before and you say you won’t let me, but I *have* to get home. My horses’ lives are at stake.” I was starting to tremble again.

Doc heard the fear in my voice. “What is it? What happened?” I showed him the email and he read it. I saw the blood drain from his face. “Oh God, hon. This is a very specific threat, not a veiled one. I’m calling Scott.” He reached for his phone and called the Detective’s number. When he got off the phone, he said Scott was on his way over. We were not to delete the email. Well geez, I knew that.

Scott read the message when he got there and said that it was imperative that we go to the safe house on Monday or whenever I was discharged.

“Scott, she’s not threatening us anymore, she’s threatening my horses.”

“That’s only because you are here in the hospital and she’s afraid to come here.”

“And if we go to the safe house, she won’t know where we are and will go after the horses.”

“It may come down to your horses’ lives or yours, Meredith.”

Doc saw the look on my face. “Scott, don’t go there with her. You will not like the results. I made the mistake of suggesting she sell her horses way back before we became a couple and it was not pleasant. Trust me, Meredith would die to protect her animals.”

Fortunately for him, the detective heeded Doc’s advice. “Do you know someone that would take your horses for a while?” he asked me.

“I could call the rescue co-ordinator and see if she can find placements for the fosters. A couple of them are mine and one is permanently placed with me because he did not adjust well to the homes we tried him in.

“Doc, what am I going to do with Jack? I’m afraid that sending him somewhere else, even temporarily, will be too much stress for him. He won’t know it’s just for a while and that he will be coming back to me.”

“We’ll figure something out, Meredith.” We? He’d considered the horses and Jessie to be my responsibility, though he did help out at times - more so with Jessie. Was he now considering them to be both of ours now? My only concern about that was if he got any ideas about trying to tell me how to run my farm, like most of the men I’d dated had done. I needn’t have worried, though. He’s never tried to do that in all the years we’ve been together. Well, except for the time he suggested I sell the horses, but we weren’t a couple at that time. It seems he learned his lesson.

“We don’t have a whole lot of time, Doc. Can you give me my phone? I’ll call Alana.”

“I’m going to head out”, Scott said. “I have to take your notebook to the station so they can trace the email. They may need to keep it for evidence.”

“She can use my laptop in the meantime”, Doc said.

“Do you have it here? I want her to keep checking her email.”

“No, but I can have it brought in. She has her phone and can get email on it.”

“Good. Don’t reply to any messages from her”, Scott said to me. “Just call me if she contacts you again.”

After he left, I called home and updated Karen on what was happening. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with Jack”, I told her. “He won’t deal well in a strange place.”

“I’ll bring him to our place”, Karen said. “He knows me and he also knows Chey. I’m sure that will help.”

“Karen, I think you and your family should go somewhere. If Jane goes to my place and finds no horses there, she’s going to try to find them. She knows you are my bestie and I’m sure she knows where you live. She’s not stupid, she’ll wonder if you took any of the horses to your farm. Plus, she’s already threatened you.”

“Meredith, you might be right. I’m going to call Detective Fletcher and talk to him about it. I have his number, I’ll call you back after I talk to him.”

Next, I called Alana Winters, the co-ordinator of the horse rescue organization and explained the situation to her. “Alana, I know it’s really short notice, but could you try and see if there are any other fosters to take the ones I have?”

“Oh gosh, I had no idea what you were going through, Meredith. Julian called me last week and said you were laid up and couldn’t take any more fosters for a while, but he didn’t say what had happened. Of course I will try to find other foster homes for them. How many do you have?”

“I have 7 fosters at the moment, including one mare that is in foal.”

“And you have some of your own, too, right?”

“Yes, 3, including Jack. I’m worried about him, he doesn’t take well to new homes.”

“I will try to place them, too. Of course, those ones would be temporary placements.”

“Get the fosters placed first, Alana. Karen and I are trying to come up with something for Jack, Buddy and Nell.”

“I better get going and start making calls. I’ll call you back as soon as I have some placements. If it‘s late, I‘ll call in the morning.”

“Or text me. If I’m awake, I’ll call you back.”

I had no sooner ended my call to Alana when my phone buzzed. It was Karen. “We’re going to go stay with a friend of mine, Meredith. The same one that boarded Buddy for Julian back in January. She said we can bring him, Jack and Nell with us as well as Jessie. Some friends down the road are taking our animals. It’s doubtful Jane would recognize them as ours if she saw them in their corral.”

“Oh, that’s a big relief, Karen. Alana is going to try to place the fosters.”

“Kevin and I will stay here until the horses are gone, then we’ll go to Joanna’s.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Karen.”

Doc had slipped out of the room when I was talking to my bestie. He came back after I got off the phone. He had two syringes in his hand. “It’s time for bed, hon. You’ve been very stressed today and you need a good night’s sleep. No more phone calls. We’ll deal with things in the morning.”

“What are those, Doc?” I asked, gesturing toward the needles.

“One is your pain medication and the other is something to help you relax so you can sleep.”

“Doc, the pain meds put me to sleep.”

“I know but you are very stressed tonight and I don’t think the pain meds alone will do it. Don’t worry, it’s not the same sedative I gave you on Wednesday. You will be fine.” He injected both medications into my IV line and disposed of the needles. Then he lay down on the bed and I snuggled up to him. After the first couple nights, a nurse had got me a bariatric bed which is bigger than the regular hospital beds. It gave us more room so we weren’t so cramped up.

“Doc, are you still planning on releasing me on Monday?”

“I don’t know, hon. You’re still in a lot of pain, I don’t want to discharge you until you are off the heavy meds.”

“You’ve given me those at home.”

“Yes, but you hadn’t had two major surgeries in 48 hours. Let’s see what Monday brings. I was going to take your catheter out today, but with everything that happened, I forgot. I’ll take it out in the morning. Now, let’s get some sleep.”

The next morning, I was on edge waiting for a call from Alana. I knew it would take a bit of time for her to call around to try to place the horses, but it was torture waiting to hear. Doc and I had breakfast, then he took my catheter out. It felt sooooo good to have it out! He gave me a shower, then went and had one himself. He seemed to take forever, a lot longer than he had the day before.

While he was gone, Alana called and said that she had found 4 foster homes to take the 7 horses. “When do you want me to tell them to go get them?” she asked me.

“Let me call Karen and see what works best for her.” I called Karen and we discussed it. I was afraid that if Jane or a minion of hers was watching the farm, that she’d follow one of the trailers and make trouble for the new foster person(s).

“I have an idea, Meredith”, Karen said. “She can only follow one, and there will be 4. Chances are, she’ll follow the first one. I have a friend who has a big horse trailer, it holds quite a few animals. Let me see if I can get him to come to the farm and make it look like we’re loading all the horses onto the trailer, then have him leave before any of the new fosters arrive. We’ll make it so that he leaves about a half hour before they come. If Jane is watching, she’ll follow him. I’ll have him lead her around long enough for the fosters to come, load the horses and be gone.”

“That’s a GREAT idea, Karen! Do you think he’ll do it?”

“Yes, Jim is a great guy and he loves messing with people like Jane. Let me call him, I’ll call you back.”

I texted Alana to let her know that Karen and I had a plan and said I’d call her after she (Karen) called me back.

I had to pee. Where was Doc? He was taking so long! I decided to go to the bathroom by myself. My crutches were out of reach, though, so I used the call bell to get a nurse. A PCA (personal care attendant) came in and got them for me and told me to ring the call bell beside the toilet if I had any trouble.

The only trouble I had was that I couldn’t go. Try as I might, nothing would come out. I must have sat there for 10 or 15 minutes before I gave up and went back to my bed.

Karen called back and said Jim had agreed to do it. She said to have Alana call her to figure out a time for the fosters to arrive.

Alana called shortly after that and I told her about my conversation with Karen and the plan we had hatched. “Please tell the fosters what’s happening. If any of them want to back out because of the possibility of Jane being there and following one of them instead of Jim, I will understand. I want them to have full disclosure.”

“I’m sure there will be no problem.”

Doc came back from the showers while I was talking to Alana. When I got off the phone, I told him what was going to go down. Then I told him about not being able to pee.

“Try again in a little bit, hon”, he said. “Your bladder might just be asleep.”

“How do I wake it up?”

“Be patient. It will happen. You could drink some water to see if that will encourage it to work.”

“I’ll do anything, Doc!”

He got me a big jug of water and a glass. While I was drinking it, I asked if the showers were busy.

“No, they weren’t. Why do you ask?”

“You took a lot longer than yesterday. I thought maybe you had to wait.”

“No, Karen called me while I was getting dressed, so I talked to her for a bit.”

“What did she want?”

He hesitated a moment. “She thought it would be a good idea for you to go out to the farm and see the horses leave for their new foster homes. She felt it would be hard for you to watch, but not going might be harder on you emotionally. I agreed to give you a day pass and take you out there.”

“Doc! Thank you! Yes, it will be hard but you are right, it would be worse to not be there.”

“Hon, you not being able to pee is a problem. I can’t release you, even for a day pass, in that state.”

“Let me try again, Doc.” I got out of bed and made my way to the bathroom. I had no better luck than the last time.

“Please let me go, Julian”, I said when I got back to my bed. “Maybe I’ll be able to go at home on my own toilet.”

“I don’t think that will make a difference, Meredith. You never have a problem peeing away from home.”

“What will you do here if I can’t go?”

“I will have to put the catheter back in, hon.”

“I can go home with a catheter in, you took me down to the parking lot with one.”

“Yes, I suppose you could. Let’s wait and see what time Karen sets it up for and maybe you will be able to go before then.”

Alana and Karen settled on Jim coming at 3pm and leaving at 3:30. He told Karen he would take a few of his horses in his trailer and have it closed up so nobody would know it wasn’t empty going in. Then he’d open a couple of the windows before leaving so that someone watching him pull out of the laneway would see horses in it. He didn’t want to open too many, as it was only March and still quite cool out. The new fosters would arrive at 4pm and leave as soon as the horses were loaded.

I didn’t have anything to wear, so Doc went down to the surgery area and got me a pair of scrubs to put on. He said he’d wrap a blanket around me since I didn’t have a jacket.

“I’ll get a set of clothes to wear when I’m released and bring them back”, I said.

“I’ll bring back a couple changes of clothes.”

“You don’t like wearing scrubs?”

“They are comfortable but are not proper clothing to be wearing unless I’m in the OR or on call. Oh, I think will call Detective Fletcher and tell him what we are planning to do.”

“You mean if I can pee by afternoon”, I said sullenly.

“Keep drinking that water, hon.”

Drinking the water did not help. It only made my bladder feel like it was about to burst. Finally, Doc said “Hon, you need to have the catheter back in. I’m sorry, but if you don’t empty your bladder, you could get a UTI.”

“Okay, Doc”, I sighed.

“I’ll tape a small bag to your leg and take you to the farm.”

“You will, Doc? Oh, thank you.”

“Let me go get the supplies and I’ll do it now.” He was back in a few minutes with catheter tubing and such, which he set on the overbed table. He pulled the covers back and told me to bend my knees and put my feet flat on the bed. It was a little awkward with having a cast on one foot, but I was able to do it.

After washing his hands, Doc put sterile gloves on, then opened the catheter packaging. “Hon, I’m going to wipe you with a swab. It is going to be cold.” Holy crap, he wasn’t kidding about that. “Once more, Meredith, just to be sure it’s as clean as it can be. You don’t want a UTI.”

“Darn right I don’t, Doc. I’ve had enough of those.” After he swabbed me a second time, he inserted the tube. I’d had catheters a few times before, but they were inserted in the OR after I was under anesthesia. I’d only had them removed when awake, not put in. I felt it going in but it didn’t hurt.

“You okay, hon?” Doc asked.

“Yes, Doc. My foot hurts but it’s okay.”

“I’m almost done.” Once he had the tube inserted, he inflated the balloon, which kept it in place. Then he attached the drainage bag and taped it to my leg. “All done”, he proclaimed. “Let me clean up, then I‘ll help get you dressed.”

“Are you sure you are up to going?” he asked as he helped me get the scrubs on.

“Yes, Doc. I’m in a lot of pain but I have to do this.”

“I will get you some pain pills to take before we go. They will help take the edge off.”

Soon, we were on our way to the farm. Much as I wanted to go, I was also apprehensive and hoped things would go off as planned.