Nothing Personal (29 page)

“…a suspect is in custody. Police won’t comment, but a source close to the case states that it is another nurse from Saint Simon’s, not, as previously thought, Kate Manion….”

That was all it took to kick-start the pressure right back into high gear. “Well, at least my name’s off the front page,” Kate mused blackly as she
turned to the TV. “Maybe now I can get to the door without being force-fed a mike.”

The screen showed the stock shot of the hospital’s west facade, St. Simon statue and all, where the reporter stood looking appropriately studious. “…In a surprise development, hospital officials now admit there might have been some turmoil under Leo Gunn’s direction.”

That got not only Kate’s attention but B.J.’s. And there on the screen was one of the Administration guys who’d harassed Kate, Brooks Brothers suit and all. “As anyone who has been a patient here throughout this time knows, our staff has maintained the highest standards of care. No patient has ever been, or will ever be, at risk. We feel we owe it to our staff to institute new policies that we hope will help reaffirm our commitment not only to our patients but to our employees.”

“Who is that?” B.J. demanded.

“I don’t know. They all look alike to me. Either Mr. Fellows or the lawyer. Curly, Burly, something like that.”

“Mighty strong words.”

Kate could only nod. “Mighty. I wonder if he means it…. Oh, why’d they bother Polyester?”

Sister Ann Francis appeared, smiling and nodding as if she were handing out rosaries. Spokeswoman for the order that had left her behind like the last whale in a mighty lonely ocean.

“It is so very difficult to fulfill the tenets of Sister Maria Goretti in this day and age,” she admitted, hands fidgeting, eyes decorously down.
“We struggle against apathy and avarice and disdain. It is a good thing to have help in doing this.”

“At least they didn’t interview Edna,” B.J. retorted evenly. “They would have heard about conditions in the Crimea.”

Kate was losing interest. She had to get her stuff together to get home.

“Other reactions from staff range from caution to fear. And, on occasion, empathy.”

“I understand the frustration.” A female voice spoke up. “Sometimes I think the sense of commitment to others is gone from medicine, and if that’s what you’ve dedicated your life to, as most of us have, well…”

Kate’s head came up. Her stomach plummeted.

B.J. wasn’t paying attention. He’d already gone back to getting ready for the day, stuffing Clannad tapes in with his Hendrix. Kate looked at him, looked at the screen where Mary Polyester’s vaguely passive face had been replaced by the somber features of Lisa Beller. Then Lisa, just as quickly, was replaced by the reporter, who discussed the economic impact of a serial killer in a hospital and the concerns of the community.

And all Kate could hear were Lisa’s words.

It was just like before, one little stimulus setting off a cascade of reactions. This time, memories: “…we have dedicated ourselves…dedicated…”

Suddenly Kate knew. She remembered. As simple as that. As stunning.

Not all of it. Not the full picture of what had gone on that night. Not what she’d given away,
but what she’d been given: the support, the understanding, the promise.

“…when we’ve dedicated ourselves…”

Suddenly, Kate knew what she should have been able to see in the heartfelt words of those notes. She knew what it was she was being told. And by whom.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. She didn’t want to think. Not like that. It didn’t make any sense. Jules would make more sense. At least Jules was a decisive person. Jules could go out there and get things done.

But Jules had never once said anything that reminded Kate of the pleas in those notes. And listening to Lisa Beller, she realized why.

All she’d wanted had been resolution. A name to indict, a face to challenge. An answer.

This wasn’t the answer she wanted. Because her first reaction had been right. She did recognize herself in the murderer’s eyes, and that made less sense than anything that had gone before.

B.J. went in to shave. Kate stood at the window and stared out at the street where neat little lawns sported rows of tulips and daffodils, and the trees were coming to life. Tidy little brick and stone homes on tidy green lawns with tidy middle-class cars. Such a calm well-ordered world should have made her feel better. All she could think of was that there were suddenly more questions than ever before, and she was not going to like the answers.

She had to get back to the apartment and get her bag. Then she had to get to the telephone.

She thought she’d felt guilty before. God, that was just a warm-up for what she was about to do.

“B.J.?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you tell me the truth about Tim? Or were you sparing me?”

There was a small pause, and then he appeared at the door, shaving cream smeared across his chin. “What are you talking about?”

She had to ask. She didn’t want to. Every time she thought about it, she thought about Tim. She saw that terrible shadow again and wanted to vomit.

Even so, nothing else would make sense unless she asked. “Did he struggle? Was he bound or gagged?”

B.J. seemed to need to consider that for a moment. Finally, though, he shook his head. “No, pogue, he wasn’t. There weren’t any contusions but that one in the occipital area, no defense injuries of any kind. No ligature marks anywhere…anywhere else.”

“Then it really doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

“What doesn’t?”

“How could a woman weighing only a hundred fifty pounds or so get him to hang himself without a struggle?”

“It’s one of the first questions on John’s list, okay?”

She nodded, not feeling any more settled. “Okay.”

She had her answer. She still didn’t think it made any sense.

Or maybe she hoped it didn’t. So she turned back to the window and let B.J. return to his shaving.

“I don’t suppose I could sit in on Gunn’s autopsy,” she asked, as she watched one of the neighbors kissing his wife good-bye in the driveway.

“Conflict of interest,” B.J. said from the bathroom. “I’ll call you if I find anything, though.”

Kate tried to generate enthusiasm for what she was about to do. She was going to get her answers. Closure. Understanding.

She didn’t want it anymore. She’d been right. The answer this time was going to be worse than the question, and Kate would end up cast as the Judas for coming up with it.

She should tell B.J. At least warn him what she was going to do. She couldn’t. Not until she was sure. Not until she had the chance to face Florence alone and ask why.

Florence. Kate couldn’t stop thinking of her that way. It didn’t matter. The name wasn’t so terribly inappropriate after all.

B.J. was wiping his face with a towel when he walked out, his hair brushed and tied back, his jeans and T-shirt spotless, his features still tight with discomfort.

“Did you take anything for it?” Kate asked, knowing better.

“Dr Pepper.”

He bent over to pick up his bag and stumbled. Righted himself even before Kate could reach him. It was then she noticed that his face had lost some color.

“Beej?”

He waved her off, closed his eyes for a minute. “I told you. I can’t keep up with you.”

“You’ve had Jameson before.”

“Not as much as I had yesterday. You scared the hell out of me.”

There had never been a problem of space with them before. Suddenly there was. Kate wanted to hold on to him, and he was keeping her away. They’d changed everything after all.

“Are you sure?” she demanded.

For that she got a patented O’Brien glare. “I know what hung over feels like, Kate. Now, shut up and stop looking at me like a mother.”

Kate hauled in a deep breath. “I’ve already lost Tim. I can’t lose you too, you idiot.”

That got his attention. He stopped, scowled, gave in to the kind of sheepish smile no one at the hospital had ever been witness to. Then he opened his arms to her. She took him up on it and hid there as long as she could. She didn’t know whether to feel better or worse that his heart rate was fast. She did know she liked the proprietary feel of his arms around her.

“Are you tied up all day?” she asked.

“Gunn and a homeboy with bad timing. Other than that it’s paperwork.”

She nodded against him. “Good. I may need you to come over.”

That quickly, he was B.J. again. “Why?”

Kate backed away and gave him her best buck-up smile. “Because I think I may have something, and I don’t want to force anything without backup. All right?”

“You may have something? What? Why aren’t you calling John?”

It was Kate’s turn to scowl. “Shut up, pogue. I’m not going to do anything stupid, I promise.”

Just how stupid was walking back into work? she wondered as she did just that about an hour later.

“Anybody heard from Jules yet?” she asked, as she walked down the hall, scrubs and lab coat back on, nursing bag in hand.

Three people ignored her and a fourth asked who she had in mind to frame next.

“I thought you were going to come in at eleven,” Phyl said without preamble, when she came upon Kate by the soda machines ten minutes later.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

Shoving change into a slot, Phyl just shrugged.

Kate noticed her friend the cop sitting in his usual chair beneath the television and wondered whether the police thought she was stupid. If they really thought Jules was their man, why leave a tail on her? What was there to protect her from? Nothing anymore, she thought, and turned to follow her supervisor back toward the nurses’ lounge.

“Phyl,” she said, juggling her bag and the soda for the door. “Can I ask you about the Rashad boy?”

Phyl went very still. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to talk to you about that,” she said. “Since it’s in litigation.”

“It’s not about the suit,” Kate said. God, she hated this. She hated trying to dance around the situation without giving herself away. Because once she did, she would never be forgiven. So she opened the door and hoped Phyl would join her inside. “It’s about the murders. I think I’m not getting the message because there’s something about that night I can’t remember.”

At least she had Phyl’s attention. The supervisor followed Kate in and closed the door behind her. “Have you talked to a lawyer yet?”

“Yes, I did. We both decided I should only handle one disaster at a time, and right now the answer to this question is it. Can you tell me about that night?”

Phyl shook her head. “Not much. It was a zoo, and you didn’t help.”

“Anything stand out?”

“Yeah. You disappearing for twenty minutes. That stood out just fine.”

Another surprise. Another little tidbit nobody’d thought to share with her.

“I disappeared?” she demanded. “Where?”

Phyl scowled at her. “You don’t know?”

“I still don’t remember anything. As far as I’m concerned, I went directly from lunch to ICU.” Not totally true, but true enough.

“I don’t know where you took off to. You were in with the family for a minute; then you weren’t anyplace. I looked, Sticks looked, Jules looked. Even Mrs. Warner looked. Finally you just came strolling back with Edna.”

“Edna?”

“She was acting nursing supervisor that night. She came down to help and spent most of the time trying to keep Weiss from climbing down your throat. She went in with you to talk to the family a couple of times.”

“You didn’t think Billy was bad either?”

For a second Phyl just stood there. Then she sighed. “I think you’d been getting burned out for a while, Kate. That night was just the straw that broke everybody’s back.”

So it was time for honesty. Finally. Kate leaned against the conference table and faced her boss. “The hospital doesn’t plan to keep me around, does it?”

“Do you want to stay?”

Kate took a few minutes to sample the soda she’d taken such pains to get, considering it rather than her panic. Where else would she go? she wondered. What else would she do? What friends would have her?

“You’d have to fight for it,” Phyl said.

And that was where it would ultimately rest, because Kate finally admitted to herself that she just wasn’t sure she
could
fight for it anymore.

“Somebody heard you say you never wanted me to go over your head again,” she said instead, her attention on the can in her hand. “What did they mean?”

“They meant you tried to talk past everybody from Edna to Fleischer to change our minds. I even had Sister Ann Francis whining at me.”

Kate did look up then. “Would it have been so awful?”

“This hospital does its share of charity,” Phyl defended instinctively. Rotely. The automatic reaction of a woman caught in the middle, more afraid of the layer above than the one beneath. “We simply can’t help everyone. We’d be broke in a month.”

“Oh? Is that how we managed to snag Central Medical?”

Phyl actually paled. “How’d you know about that?”

“The grapevine. It’s true then? We’ve bought out Central’s two hospitals?”

“No one can know that,” Phyl insisted. “Especially right now with the negative press from the murders.”

Kate offered what might have been the last challenge of her career. “Why? They afraid the staff won’t be as excited as Administration is? I’m sure they’ll gladly exchange frozen wages for a real conglomerate.”

“There you go again,” Phyl accused. “What makes you so self-righteous? This is the nineties, Kate. A hospital has to survive in the business world, or we can’t do any good for anyone.”

“Makes sense. Too bad Mr. Gunn didn’t live to enjoy the fruits of his labors. He would have been the most powerful hospital CEO in town.”

“That’s not what he wanted.”

“No,” Kate agreed. “He wanted to be the most powerful hospital CEO in the Midwest.”

Kate knew it was time to leave before she got more than she’d bargained for. She’d almost made it through the door when Phyl stopped her.

“Tell me something,” she said in a tone of
authority she rarely used. “Who do you think is doing it?”

Kate looked up to see Phyl watching her. She was standing so still, Kate wasn’t sure she was breathing. Kate shrugged. “You were pretty upset that night,” she said. “Weren’t you?”