Blindsighted (15 page)

She took her time walking back up the hallway toward the nurses' station, feeling an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. The clock on the wall showed she had been here an hour, and Sara realized with a start that she was back on hospital time, where eight hours went by like eight seconds.

"He asleep?" Ellen asked.

Sara leaned her elbows on the counter of the admitting desk. "Yeah," she answered. "He'll be okay."

Ellen smiled. "Sure he will."

"There you are," Hare said, rubbing Sara's shoulders. "Hows it feel to be in a real hospital with the big doctors?"

Sara exchanged a look with Ellen. "You'll have to excuse my cousin, Ellen. What he lacks in hair and height he makes up for by being an asshole."

"Ow." Hare winced, pressing his thumbs into Sara's shoulders. "Want to fill in for me while I run out for a bite to eat?"

"What've we got?" Sara asked, thinking that going home right now probably was not the best thing for her.

Ellen gave a small smile. "We've got a frequent flier getting fluorescent light therapy in two."

Sara laughed out loud. In the obscure language of hospital lingo, Ellen had just informed her that the patient in room two was a hypochondriac who had been left to stare at the overhead lights until he felt better.

"Microdeckia," Hare concluded. The patient was not playing with a full deck.

"What else?"

"Some kid from the college sleeping off a long one," Ellen said.

Sara turned to Hare. "I don't know if I can take these complicated cases."

He chucked her under her chin. "There's a girl."

"I guess I should go move my car," Sara said, remembering she had parked in the handicap spot. As every cop in town knew the car she drove, Sara doubted she was likely to get a ticket. Still, she wanted to walk outside for some fresh air, take some time to collect her thoughts, before she went back in to check on Jeffrey.

"How is he?" Lena asked as soon as Sara walked into the waiting room. Sara looked around, surprised to see the room was empty but for Lena.

"We kept it off the radio," Lena provided. "This kind of thing…" She let her voice trail off.

"This kind of thing what?" Sara prompted. "Am I missing something here, Lena?"

Lena looked away nervously.

"You know who did it, huh?" Sara asked.

Lena shook her head. "I'm not sure."

"That's where Frank is? Taking care of business?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. He dropped me off here."

"Pretty easy not to know what's going on when you don't bother to ask," Sara snapped. "I guess the fact that Jeffrey could've died tonight is lost on you."

"I know that."

"Yeah?" Sara demanded. "Who was watching his back, Lena?"

Lena started to answer, but she turned away before saying anything.

Sara slammed the emergency room doors open with her hands, feeling anger well up. She knew exactly what was going on here. Frank knew who was responsible for shooting Jeffrey, but he was keeping his mouth closed out of some obscure sense of loyalty, probably to Matt Hogan. What was going through Lena's mind, Sara could not begin to guess. After everything Jeffrey had done for her, to have Lena turn her back on him like this was inexcusable.

Sara took a deep breath, trying to calm herself as she walked around to the side of the hospital. Jeffrey could have been killed. The glass could have sliced through his femoral artery and he could have bled to death. For that matter, the original shot could have gone into his chest instead of through the window. Sara wondered what Frank and Lena would be doing now if Jeffrey had died. Probably drawing straws to see who got his desk.

"Oh, God." Sara stopped short at the sight of her car. Lying on the hood of Sara's car was a nude young woman with her arms spread out.

She was on her back, her feet crossed at the ankle in an almost casual pose. Sara's first instinct was to look up to see if the woman had jumped from one of the windows. There were no windows on this side of the two-story building, though, and the hood of the car showed no signs of impact.

Sara took three quick steps to the car, checking the woman's pulse. A fast, hard beat came under Sara's fingers, and she muttered a small prayer before running back into the hospital.

"Lena!"

Lena jumped up, fists clenched, as if she expected Sara to come over and start a fight.

"Get a stretcher," Sara ordered. When Lena did not move, Sara yelled, "Now!"

Sara jogged back to the woman, half expecting her to be gone. Everything was moving in slow time for Sara, even the wind in her hair.

"Ma'am?" Sara called to the woman, raising her voice loud enough to be heard across town. The woman did not respond. "Ma'am?" Sara tried again. Still nothing.

Sara assessed the body, seeing no immediate signs of trauma. The skin was pink and ruddy, very hot to the touch despite the night cold. With her arms out and feet crossed as they were, the woman could've been sleeping. In the bright light, Sara could make out crusted blood around the palms of the woman's hands. Sara lifted one of the hands to examine it, and the arm moved awkwardly to the side. There was an obvious dislocation at the shoulder.

Sara looked back at the woman's face and was startled to notice that a silver piece of duct tape had been wrapped around her mouth. Sara couldn't remember if the tape had been there before she had gone back into the hospital. Surely she would've noticed it before. Something like a taped mouth wasn't easily overlooked, especially when the tape was at least two inches across by four inches long and dark silver. For just a brief second, Sara felt paralyzed, but Lena Adams's voice brought her back to reality.

"It's Julia Matthews," Lena said, but her voice sounded far away to Sara. "Sara?" Hare asked, walking quickly over to the car. His mouth dropped open at the sight of the nude woman.

"Okay, okay," Sara mumbled, trying to get herself calm. She shot Hare a look of sheer panic, which he returned in kind. Hare was used to an occasional overdose or heart attack, nothing like this.

As if to remind them both of where they were, the woman's body began to convulse.

"She's going to be sick," Sara said, picking at the edge of the tape. Without pausing, she ripped off the tape. In one swift motion, she rolled the woman onto her side and held her head down as she vomited in fits and starts. A sour smell came, almost like bad cider or beer, and Sara had to turn away to take a breath.

"It's okay," Sara whispered. She stroked the woman's dirty brown hair back behind her ear, remembering that she had done the same thing for Sibyl just two days ago. The vomiting stopped abruptly, and Sara gently rolled her back over, keeping her head steady.

Hare's tone was urgent. "She's not breathing."

Sara cleared the woman's mouth with her finger, surprised to feel some resistance. After a few seconds of digging, she pulled out a folded driver's license, which she handed to a surprised Lena Adams.

"Breathing's back," Hare said, relief flooding his voice.

Sara rubbed her fingers clean on her skirt, wishing she'd had on a pair of gloves before she had stuck her fingers into the woman's mouth.

Ellen jogged to the car, her jaw set as she angled a long stretcher in front of her. Without words, she stepped to the woman's feet, waiting for Sara's signal.

Sara counted to three, then they both moved the woman onto the bed. Sara felt a sick taste in her mouth as they did this, and for a few seconds she saw herself on the bed instead of the woman. Sara's mouth went dry and she felt a numbness overcome her.

"Ready," Hare said, strapping the woman to the bed.

Sara trotted beside the gurney, holding on to the young woman's hand. The time it took them to get back into the hospital was interminable. The bed seemed to be rolling through glue as they entered the first trauma room. The woman made small murmurs of pain with each jolt of the bed. Briefly, Sara latched on to the woman's fear.

Twelve years had passed since Sara had practiced emergency medicine and she needed to concentrate on the tasks at hand. In her head, Sara went over what she'd learned her first day in the ER. As if to prompt Sara, the woman started wheezing, then gasping for air. The first priority was to establish an airway.

"Jesus," Sara hissed as she opened the woman's mouth. Under the bright lights of the exam room, Sara could see that her top front teeth had been knocked out, obviously within the last few days. Again, Sara felt herself freezing up. She tried to shake this off. Sara had to think of this woman as a patient or they would both be in trouble.

In seconds Sara had intubated the woman, careful with the tape so as not to do further damage to the skin around the mouth. Sara fought the urge to cringe as the ventilator kicked in. The sound almost sickened her.

"She's got good sounds," Hare reported, handing Sara a stethoscope.

"Sara?" Ellen said. "I can't get a peripheral."

"She's dehydrated," Sara reported as she tried to find a vein on the woman's other arm. "We should drop a central anyway." Sara held her hand out for the needle, but one was not immediately placed in her hand.

"I'll get it from two," Ellen said, then left the room.

Sara turned back to the young woman on the bed. There did not seem to be any bruises or cuts on her body other than the marks on her hands and feet. Her skin was warm to the touch, which could point to any number of things. Sara did not want to jump to conclusions, but already the similarities between Sibyl Adams and the woman in front of her were going through her mind. They were both petite women. They both had dark brown hair.

Sara checked the woman's pupils. "Dilated," she said, because the last time she'd done something like this, the rule had been to call out your findings. She exhaled slowly, noticing for the first time that Hare and Lena were in the room.

"What's her name?" Sara asked.

"Julia Matthews," Lena provided. "We were looking for her at the school. She's been missing for a couple of days."

Hare glanced at the monitor. "Pulse ox is falling."

Sara checked the ventilator. "FiO2 is thirty percent. Bump it up a little."

"What's that smell?" Lena interrupted.

Sara sniffed the woman's body. "Clorox?" she asked.

Lena caught another whiff. "Bleach," she confirmed.

Hare nodded as well.

Sara examined the woman's skin carefully. There were lines of superficial scrapes all along the body. Sara noticed for the first time that the woman's pubic hair had been shaved off. From the lack of growth, Sara guessed she had been shaved in the last day or so.

Sara said, "She's been scrubbed clean."

She smelled the woman's mouth but did not pick up the strong scent that usually comes from ingesting bleach. Sara had seen some rawness in the back of the throat when she'd tubed the woman, but nothing out of the ordinary. Obviously the woman had been given a drug similar to if not actually belladonna. Her skin was so hot to the touch that Sara could feel it through her gloves.

Ellen entered the room. Sara watched the nurse as she opened the central line kit on one of the trays. Ellens hands didn't seem as steady as they usually did. This scared Sara more than anything else.

Sara held her breath as she jabbed the three-inch needle into the woman's jugular. The needle, called an introducer, would act as a funnel for three separate IV ports. When they found out what kind of drug the woman had been given, Sara would use one of the extra ports to help counteract the effects.

Ellen stood back from the patient, waiting for Sara's orders.

Sara rattled off the tests as she flushed the ports with heparin solution to keep them from clotting. "Blood gases, tox screen, LFT, CBC, chem twenty-seven. Go ahead and pull for a coag panel while you're at it." Sara paused. "Dip her urine stat. I want to know what's going on before I do anything else. Something's keeping her knocked out. I think I know what it is, but I need to be sure before we start treatment."

"All right," Ellen answered.

Sara checked for positive blood return, then flushed the lines again. "Normal saline, wide open."

Ellen did as she was told, adjusting the IV.

"Do you have a portable X ray? I'll need to make sure I did this right," Sara said, indicating the internal jugular line. "Plus I need a chest, a flat of the abdomen, and a look at her shoulder."

Ellen said, "I'll get it from down the hall after I draw the blood work."

"Also, check for GHB, roofies." Sara spoke as she secured the dressing around the needle. "We'll need to do a rape kit."

"Rape?" Lena questioned, stepping forward.

"Yes," Sara answered, her tone sharp. "Why else would someone do this to her?"

Lena's mouth worked, but no answer came. She had obviously kept this case separate from her sisters up until that point. Lena's eyes locked on to the young woman, and she stood at the foot of the bed, her body ramrod straight. Sara was reminded of the night Lena had come to the morgue to see Sibyl Adams. The young detective's mouth was set in that same angry line.

"She seems stable," Ellen offered, more to herself than anyone else.

Sara watched as the nurse used a small syringe to draw blood from the radial artery. Sara rubbed her own wrist, knowing how painful the procedure could be. She leaned against the bed, her hands on Julia Matthews's arm, trying to somehow convey that she was safe now.

Hare brought her back with a gentle "Sara?"

"Hm?" Sara was startled. They were all looking at her. She turned to Lena. "Can you help Ellen with the portable?" she asked, trying to use a firm voice.

"Yeah," Lena returned, giving Sara an odd look.

Ellen filled the last syringe. "It's down the hall," she told Lena.

Sara heard them leave, but she kept her eyes on Julia Matthews. Sara's vision tunneled, and for the second time she felt herself on the gurney, saw a doctor leaning over her, taking her pulse, checking her vitals.

"Sara?" Hare was looking at the woman's hands, and Sara was reminded of the marks she had first seen in the parking lot.

Both palms were punctured through the center. Sara glanced down at the woman's feet, noting that they, too, had been punctured in the same way. She bent to examine the wounds, which were clotting rapidly. Specks of rust added color to the dried black blood.