When Cameron was finally was able to speak after hearing Gina's confession, she angrily berated the woman, "Husband?! Does Chase know about this? What am I saying, of course he doesn't. How could you betray him like that? You are such a..."
"Believe me, I understand how you feel," interrupted Gina. "I feel terrible for misleading Robert but please give me a chance to explain."
"Why should I believe anything you have to say?" Cameron demanded.
"Because I'm only telling you this to help you," Gina pointed out. "I truly believe Danny's the one who's trying to set you up. You have no idea what he's capable of. I promise to tell you everything when you get here. Will you still come?"
Cameron bit her lip as she tried to determine her best course of action. Knowing that she had no choice but to listen to what Gina had to say, she agreed to the meeting and hung up the phone.
As Cameron rushed out of her apartment she ran into her neighbor, Annie, who observed, "You're in an awful hurry. Is there an emergency at the hospital?"
"No, believe it or not I'm going to meet up with Dr. Chase's girlfriend," Cameron disclosed.
"Oh, you mean THAT Dr. Chase?" Annie inquired with an appreciative smile.
Cameron sheepishly rolled her eyes and nodded. One evening the two women had gone out for drinks and both had imbibed a little too much. When Annie started talking about how she would like to get to know the gorgeous doctor that Cameron worked with, a tipsy Cameron confessed her one night stand with Chase in order to keep Annie away. Fortunately she hadn't gone so far as to admit the circumstances behind it but now she was wishing that she had never shared that bit of information.
"Sorry, I don't have time to talk," called out Cameron as she rushed down the hall leaving a bewildered Annie wondering if she was about to miss a major cat fight.
**********************************************
Arriving at the art gallery, Cameron parked behind the building and knocked on the back door. Gina opened the door immediately and pulled her inside, closing the door as quickly as possible.
"Thank you for coming so quickly," she said. "Can I get you some coffee or tea?"
"No, I'm not here to socialize," announced Cameron sternly. "I'm only here to get answers so I would appreciate it if you would get to the point."
Gina took a deep breath and began, "Fine, but you might want to sit down. This is going to take awhile. First of all, let me just explain that even though Danny and I are still married, we have been separated for almost a year. We started dating in high school and got married right after college. I finally got the courage to leave him after years of verbal and physical abuse."
"If that's true, why would you have stayed with him for so long or even marry him in the first place?" Cameron inquired.
"Obviously you've never been in an abusive relationship," stated Gina, who was sadly looking at her hands which were clasped in her lap. "Danny controlled every aspect of my life. He refused to let me have a job or even see my friends or family. Still, I loved him so much and wanted to believe him when he swore that he would never hit me again but he always did. Even making me believe that it was my own fault. Your lucky that you don't know what it's like to live in constant fear. Finally I made a decision to stop being afraid and I left him. That's when it only got worse. He has fought the divorce at every turn and in an effort to make me come back to him, he has started to threaten the people I care about which up until now has only been my family who are too far away for him to get to."
Pausing to look pleadingly at Cameron, Gina continued, "But then I met Robert. I know it was stupid of me but I thought I could hide our relationship from Danny until I felt the time was right to tell Robert everything. The last thing I wanted was a confrontation between them. I'm too afraid of what Danny would do to him. Setting you up is only a drop in the bucket of what he's capable of."
"Which begs the question, what does any of this have to do with me?" asked Cameron. "What would he possibly have to gain by setting me up and maybe even killing a patient if the errors hadn't been discovered."
Gina laughed, "Believe me, he could care less about you or your patient. This was all part of his plan to make sure I knew he was coming after Robert. "
Seeing the look of confusion on Cameron's face, Gina further explained, "Danny is a pharmaceutical salesman. He's knows a lot about medications and dosages so he knew that when I heard what your mistakes were I would immediately realize that it he was warning me that he was coming after Robert. In his own twisted mind, I'm sure he thought I would come running back to him in fear of what he would do next. If not, he would be prepared to do whatever it takes."
Cameron sat in stunned silence after hearing Gina's disclosure. Was it possible that she had misjudged this woman? Gina had never been anything but polite and considerate to everyone since Cameron had met her. Cameron hated to admit to herself that there had been a certain level of jealousy which had made her want to dislike Gina. It made her sick to think of everything Gina had gone through in the past several years with this man. But when she remembered that now Chase was the one in danger, she once again became angry.
"I don't know how you expect me to be any help," Cameron remarked. "Why haven't you gone to the police?"
"The police are useless," Gina explained. "Don't you think I've tried over the years? Unless they have concrete evidence that Danny has done something wrong, they won't touch him. And believe me, he's way too smart to leave any evidence."
**********************************************
Walking into his apartment, Chase threw his mail on the coffee table and hung up his jacket. Grabbing a beer out of the fridge, he sat down on the sofa and put his feet up on the table. Taking a long drink, he laid his head on the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling trying his best to relax.
Not being able to take his mind off of today's events, he looked at his watch restlessly. A feeling of dread came over him as he realized that he most likely had a long wait before he would be able to question Gina.
Looking for something to occupy his time, he picked up his mail and started looking through it. At the bottom of the pile, Chase found a plain white envelope with just his name on it. The fact that it had no stamp or address written on it made him suspicious as to who would have taken the trouble to drive by his apartment to drop it in his box.
Opening the envelope, he pulled out a three-page letter and leaned back to read it. As he got halfway down the first page, Chase leaned forward on the sofa in consternation as he read on. Once he was finished, he continued holding the pages as he ran his fingers through his hair in confusion. House was right, Chase thought, he was an idiot. How could he have been so blind?
Rushing to his phone he quickly dialed Cameron's number. Getting her answering machine, Chase exclaimed worriedly, "Cameron, I know you're there! Please pick up!"
