"What the hell?"

I stare at the pink slip the desk clerk's just handed me. While You Were Out: Mark Warner -- called. "Have to cancel this afternoon. Sorry."

I stuff the message into my jacket pocket and flee for the elevator -- if Cuddy catches me down here she'll find some way to rope me into the clinic, which means I'll have to come up with something lewd to try to throw her off, and I'm really not in the mood, which is in itself annoying. Damn Stacey and damn her no-show husband.

I jab the elevator button with my cane and bounce the cane impatiently until the doors open. I step in, push the button for 4, and stare at the ceiling.

Maybe Stacey isn't really married. Maybe once she decides she wants to leap into my arms again, she'll confess that there is no Martin, that she made it all up. But she would have had to forge all those medical records and the films, and that's a lot of trouble. Wilson seemed to know she was married, too. So that rules out the imaginary-friend hypothesis.

Maybe he's just jerking me around, which both pisses me off and pleases me, in a petty way. Because if he's going to all that trouble, then I still matter.

I see Mike didn't leave a call-back number or say anything in his message about rescheduling. Maybe he's not sick, in which case all those other doctors are right and Stacey's delusional. That's not it either.

Maybe he's sick and doesn't realize it, or he's listening to some idiot doctor who can't diagnose anything that's not on the short ICD-9 check-off form. In which case I really do need to see him.

The doors open and I trudge out. Stacey will be calling me soon to find out how the exam went. We're going to have to come up with something better than this.