A Man to Die for by Eileen Dreyer

see him, you tell him to get his butt up here. He scheduled this damn thing two hours ago, and he hasn’t said shit to his lady, and I’m damn well not going to get permits signed until he does. Of course, this gal’11 probably pop the kid on her own before he gets here anyway.”
    Casey’s attention was caught all over again. “I thought she was a failure to progress.”
    There was a small silence, and then an “Mmmm.”
    Casey knew a lot about those Mmmms. She used them often enough when she didn’t need a doctor’s wrath dropped on her head for an honest answer.
    “He also said he has a lady over at Izzy’s,” she offered.
    “I heard it was a date with a hot nurse for a late movie.”
    “Oh.”
    Casey’s curiosity was piqued, now. She wanted to know more. Hunsacker certainly wasn’t the first obstetrician to schedule a cesarean for his own convenience, but something about the extent of his stories intrigued her. Most OBs would have just given the failure-to-progress line and left it at that. He’d knitted an afghan out of it.
    Casey wondered for the first time whether there really was a patient at Izzy’s waiting for him, or whether it had just been another part of a good story. She wanted to know, suddenly, what the rest of the truth was.
    When Casey hung up, she dialed Izzy’s.
    “Hey, Casey,” Evelyn greeted her. “I was going to call you. I got some great scuttlebutt.”
    “First things first. Do you have a patient of Hunsacker’s up there?”
    Another one of those silences. “Why?”
    “I’m just curious about something. He was just down here and said he was headed your way.”
    A longer silence, a gathering of calm. “When pigs fly.” Evelyn knew she could trust Casey. “I just got threatened with my job for calling him the third time on a lady who’s spiking a temp.”
    “He’s not coming out?”
    “Not until he damn well feels like it. Which, he says, will undoubtedly be rounds in the morning. Until then, and I quote, I can just keep my knees together. He says he has back-to-back sections at M and M.”
    It was Casey’s turn for an Mmmm.
    “Yeah,” Evelyn retorted. “That’s what I thought. Well, I’ll tell you, I’m getting real close to shoving a piece of my mind straight up that man’s alimentary canal.”
    “What’s the scuttlebutt?”
    That switched the tone of the conversation very neatly. “Oh, yeah. You haven’t talked to Wanda Trigel over here lately, have you?”
    “Wild Woman Wanda from labor and delivery? No, not since the last time I was up at Izzy’s for a transfer, why?”
    “She didn’t show up for work yesterday. They called her husband, and it seems Wanda drove off and hasn’t come back.”
    “Yeah, but that’s Wanda. You know how bullheaded she is. She and Buddy probably had a fight. Give her twenty-four hours like always and she’ll show up.”
    “She disappeared three days ago. Buddy’s really scared.”
    “What do the police say?”
    “That’s the bunch out in Jefferson County. They think she ran off with somebody she probably met down at the Ramblin’ Rose. They told Buddy he’ll probably hear from her when the divorce papers come through.”
    Wild Woman hadn’t been named that for nothing. Blessed with the foulest mouth this side of Eddie Murphy and a taste in cheap hair bleach, Wanda was a crack operating tech and a world-class hell-raiser. Casey couldn’t say she really disagreed with the police. “Well, Wanda’s never been known to take my counsel, but if she does, I’ll let you know.”
    “Yeah, well, while you’re in a counseling mood, tell Hunsacker to stop being such a jerk. I’ve come really close tonight to using vocabulary only Wanda would be comfortable with.”
    Casey grinned. “Too bad she ran off. You could sic her on him. It’d be a great show.”
    That seemed to improve Evelyn’s mood. “Too late. She laid into him last week about something he did in a cesarean over here. I heard it was the best white