“It’s too late,” Will said. “You’ll never get those X-rays.”
“I don’t care whether we get them or not,” Gold said. “I care whether anyone else does.”
“How did you get me here?”
Will began to pull his sweatshirt over his head but quickly gave up, exhausted and aching from the effort.
“You mean after you passed out on me, or after the kids spotted us in the cemetery and ran away? Those jerks took my favorite weapon, but not my cell phone.”
“And not the other gun,” Will said as a few more pieces of the hideous night just past fell into place.
“Not the other gun,” Gold said, moving the ominous chair a foot closer. “Potentially a lethal move. There were only six of them, so I could have just taken them out and walked away with the films. Now it appears that perhaps I should have done it that way.”
“Pity.”
Gold’s expression darkened.
“You
will
tell us what we want to know.”
“Fuck you.”
“So, pardon me for saying it, Doctor, but you’re really not in very good cardiovascular shape.”
“Take that up with my personal trainer.”
“The point is, you really didn’t get very far before I caught up with you. Still, by that time the films were gone.”
“Gone,” Will echoed, holding his hands up in mock dismay.
He glanced at the chair, then at Krause, and decided that from then on he had best keep his flip retorts in check. He had won round one, but at a severe price. Round two was certain to be even more horrible. And if he lost that round, if he gave in and told them about Lionel, it was going to be over for him—no more twins, no Patty, no more anything.
“But where?” Gold went on. “That is the question that has been troubling me for most of this night. Where? After we removed you from Roxbury, several of us retraced the steps of your flight, inspecting every can, Dumpster, and doorway along the way. Nothing. I don’t believe we would have missed a postage stamp let alone an envelope the size of the one you were carrying. You could have had someone waiting for you, but we were watching you from the moment you left the parking lot at the cancer center, to the hospital, then to your condo, to the bank, and finally all the way into Roxbury. There was no one. I’m certain of that. You could have given it to a passing driver, but none of them even slowed to help you—nor would they in that part of the city.” He moved the chair to the center of the room. “So, how did you do it? There were a few seconds in the beginning when you were out of my sight, then a few more just as you were crossing the street. That’s when something happened, isn’t it? You gave the films to someone right there, but who?”
“You’re way off. I shoved them in a mail slot.”
“We actually checked that. There were none on the route that were large enough. No, sir, you had to have handed it to someone, and the only person I can think of is that old man you stopped just before you parked your car—the one with the umbrella. You stopped him to ask directions, then ran into him again at that corner. He told you his name, didn’t he? He told you how to find him.”
“You’re way off base.”
“You will tell us who that man is and how you were going to meet up with him again. If you don’t, then you will have suffered through a mountain of pain for nothing, because sooner or later we’re going to find him. We’re just going to go back there and work the neighborhood with enough money until we find someone who will send us to the right door.”
“Then do it.”
“I don’t think we’re going to have to. Do you, Dr. Krause?”
Krause pulled the table over near the chair and set his briefcase on it.
“I don’t believe so at all,” he said. “We have a bet, you and I, Mr. G., and I never lose a bet.”
Will felt a wave of nausea wash over him. Slick sweat materialized beneath his arms. He had passed out during Krause’s last go at him and had awakened with a merciful amount of amnesia. How far would his stubbornness take him this time?
“So, Dr. Grant,” Gold said, “you have just two choices at this moment. Tell us the name of the man you gave the films to, or take off your clothes for an encore of last night’s festivities.”
“Fuck you,” Will managed.
“Your choice.” Gold turned to the doorway. “Mr. Watkins?”
A black man the size of a pickup truck stepped into the room.
“At your service.”
“Mr. Watkins, our guest is complaining about feeling hot and also about a sudden desire to be up in that chair. Do you think you could help him out?”
“I would love to help him out,” Watkins said.
He reached behind him, brought in a metal bucket and a mop, and lumbered across the room toward Will.
“You only threw up once last night before you passed out,” Gold said. “Dr. Krause has promised me he won’t cut things so close today.”
Lying in their darkened bedroom, Donna Lee felt her husband’s fingertips slip under her T and begin gently kneading the muscles in the hollow of her back and down over her buttocks. She had never been a very deep sleeper, especially over the year since little Davy was born, and she was awake in seconds.
“Honey, can’t you sleep?” she asked dreamily.
“I don’t want to.”
She stopped herself at the last possible moment from asking what would happen if one of the kids walked in on them and was it worth locking the door. When was the last time they had made love in the early morning? Maybe a couple of years. She rolled from her side to her belly and he responded by massaging her behind in slow, patient loops, one side to the other, the way she loved it—the way that never failed to turn her on.
“Oh, baby,” she moaned softly. “That feels so good . . . so good.”
His hand slid between her thighs and helped her become even wetter than she already was.
She could feel his hardness against her. Responding, she raised her arms over her head, pointed her toes, and stretched her body out as taut and straight as an arrow. The trade-off for fewer surprises in their lovemaking was that each of them knew so well what pleased the other. Not predictable, really, just . . . comfortable.
She pulled her shirt off and he turned her toward him, kissing her in the way no other man ever had or ever would—pressure just right on her mouth, lips apart, but not too much, tongue exploring, caressing, even as hers explored him.
“Oh, I love this, Jeff,” she said. “And I love you so much.”
She took him in her hand and stroked him rhythmically until he had grown so large she could barely get her fingers around him, and so hard it seemed he might break. Fifteen years of marriage, and rubbing him this way still excited her so.
“Don’t stop, Donna. Don’t stop . . .”
“Donna?”
“Huh?”
“Donna . . .”
Donna pushed away from her desk and rubbed her eyes. Anne Hajjar, arms folded, was looking down at her mischievously. Like Donna, she was dressed in a set of aqua scrubs and a flower-print hair cover. Beyond her, Donna could see the ICU pulsating the way it always did when the census was near capacity. Today, though, they were again short a nurse, so everything was, if possible, moving even faster.
“What’s up?” she asked, trying for a business-as-usual look.
“You were actually out, weren’t you,” her longtime friend said, teasing. “Asleep at the switch.”
“It was my break.”
“Come on, you looked like you were smiling there.”
“So?”
Anne peered down at her, then suddenly grinned knowingly.
“You had sex this morning, didn’t you?”
Donna raised herself up regally.
“I refuse to say.”
“You bimbo!”
“Jesus, Hajjar. You’re not a bimbo when you make love to your
husband
.”
“I wouldn’t know. I divorced mine before I could find out what it was like. Listen, go back to your daydreaming. It’s good that at least someone around here is smiling today. I’m jealous as hell and I hate you for Jeff, but I’ll still handle the new admission the ER just called about.”
“Nonsense. I’m up for the next one, and I’ll do it. I can put Jeff on pause. What do they have?”
“Sixty-eight-year-old man with chest pain. Looks like it may be an evolving MI. There’s still a chance they may want to take him to the cath lab to open up a couple of his arteries with stents.”
“So, this guy’ll fill us up. Do you want to ship someone out to keep a bed open?”
“If we can do it, sure.”
“Who do we have? Mr. Turnbull?”
“He had runs of extra beats all night, remember? Or were you busy reliving you-know-what during report?”
“Hey, cut me some slack. With three kids, this is not an everyday occurrence. What about Lila?”
“It’s either her or Patty Moriarity. All the others are too unstable.”
“I vote Lila. Her cardiac enzymes are down and her pacemaker’s working fine, and she’s even more of a demanding pain in the neck than she was the last time she was here. Besides, Patty’s still in a coma and hasn’t even been here for two days yet. Even though she’s medically stable and off the vent, Dr. Ng would go ballistic if we tried to ship her out to the step-down unit in this condition.”
“So would Dr. Grant. He was in there with her for a good long time yesterday.”
“Hmmm. Should we be crossing him off the hospital’s most-eligible list?”
“I think he crossed himself off the list with the fentanyl.”
“But he may be back on. I just heard he’s getting his license back. Something about somebody soaking the insides of his OR shoes with fentanyl.”
“I heard that rumor, too.”
“Who would do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know, but I am really relieved there’s an explanation for what happened. Will is a very good guy.”
“So, you think Will and Patty?”
“The doc and the cop. How romantic.”
“Were you in with her just now?”
“I was. She’s breathing easily and handling her secretions okay. Between the surgery and whatever she went through saving that guy’s life, she is really battered. Still, it’s probably just me, but I think she seems a little lighter than she did yesterday.”
“Epidurals tend to do better than subdurals.”
“I hope so, because I’m going to be very upset if she doesn’t wake up. She’s a hero. I want to get to know her.”
“Come on. Let’s check her and Lila and make a final decision about who goes.”
“Lila.”
The two friends made their way through the ICU, looking in on each of the glass-enclosed rooms as they passed. They were both seasoned veterans of their profession and were blessed with a sixth sense that often told them a patient was about to go sour, or even sometimes that the ICU was about to be inundated. Today, short a nurse, they were both a bit edgy but comfortable knowing there wasn’t a situation that could arise where they wouldn’t know how to react.
Patty Moriarity lay serenely still, breathing easily. Patches of gauze were taped over her eyes to protect them against dryness. The right side of her face was gentian with bruising, and in places, streaks of black and blue had made their way across the midline.
“Patty,” Donna said, bending over the bed rail and straightening the oxygen prongs. “Patty, it’s your nurses Donna and Anne. Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”
“Anything?”
“Nope.”
“She doesn’t look as light as I thought she did.”
“My experience with epidurals is that the coma seesaws lighter and deeper, and then most of them just wake up.”
“Okay, that cinches it. Lila is history. She’ll do fine in the step-down unit or even on one of the floors. Listen, our resident hero here is due for a neuro check. You want to stay and do that, and I’ll get the paperwork started on Lila?”
“Sure.”
“But no reliving your you-know-what with you-know-who.”
“I’m all business.”
With pleasant thoughts of her husband hovering just below the surface, Donna removed Patty’s eye patches. Her pupils, which were initially quite dilated from having been covered, gradually became smaller and reacted to direct light by constricting even further.
Good signs.
“Patty, it’s Donna. Squeeze my hand. Please squeeze my hand.”
Nothing.
Donna pressed her thumbnail into Patty’s forcefully enough to cause discomfort. Ever so slightly, Patty’s thumb twitched. At least Donna thought it did. She repeated the maneuver. Nothing. And again. Same result. Shrugging, she worked each of Patty’s limbs and digits through a full range of motion. No resistance. Finally, the nurse ran her thumbnail in an arc heel-to-toe along the bottom of each of Patty’s feet. Minutely, Patty’s great toes responded with the slightest downward movement, toward the irritant sensation. The Babinski sign, a reflex
upward
movement of the toe, often signifying a disconnection between the brain and the extremities, was absent. It was another positive finding—or at least not a negative one. Patty’s neurologic status was no worse than it had been, and if the slight movement to a painful stimulus was real, it might even be better. Carefully, Donna pulled down Patty’s lower lids and squirted in a small amount of lubricant. Then she took new patches and taped them in place.
Come on, baby. Time to wake up and smell the coffee.
At the thought, Donna reflexively inhaled deeply through her nose. Then again. She looked about, quickly going to red alert. Seeing nothing, she hurried to the doorway.
“Hey, Annie,” she called out.
Anne Hajjar poked her head out of Lila Terry’s room.
“Patty awake?”
“I wish. Come down here, will you? I smell smoke or something.”
Anne was halfway down the corridor when she smelled it—a faint, chemical odor, more acrid than simple smoke. She stopped short as Donna hurried past her to the nurses’ station and grabbed the fire extinguisher. They were moving together, trying to locate the source of the odor when, with two loud gunshotlike snaps, acrid black smoke began billowing from someplace beneath the beds in rooms 2 and 6.
“Call a Dr. Red, Annie!” Donna shouted as she dashed into the first of the rooms, extinguisher at the ready. “Jeannie, Lesley, get ready for an evac, respirator patients first as soon as we have Ambu Bags to ventilate them and a minimum of three people per patient. Each of the other patients needs at least two with them. Put signs on their beds. Send one through four to the ER, all the rest out to Two East.”