Disaster Status (23 page)

“No. I won’t.” The boy slid his arm through the handrail, then sat down on the landing. His face was tearstained, his expression a mix of confusion, fear, and defiance. “I’m staying right here.”

“You’re coming. Now.” He reached out again.

Cody threw his head back and yelled, “Help, help! I’m—”

“Stop it!” Sarge clapped a hand over the boy’s mouth, hard, his heart pounding. He stared up at the door, then down the last flight of stairs.
Were those sirens?
Cody’s lips quivered under his palm, and his small shoulders shook. Sarge softened his voice. “Don’t scream. Okay?”

Cody nodded. He let go.

“You’re . . . kidnapping me, aren’t you?” He stared at Sarge, his eyes filled with terror.

Sarge’s gut twisted. “No, I’m keeping you safe. You know that.”

“I used to. But you hurt Iris. You hit her with that bat. I saw you.”

Had he done that? hit someone? He couldn’t remember. “Collateral damage. Happens on a mission. I can’t let them kill you.”

“Who?”

“The enemy.” Sarge grimaced. They had to go. If he could make the boy understand, he’d cooperate. “The people who poisoned the water . . . the ones who want to take you away today. It’s all a lie. They kill children. I’ve seen it.”

Cody shook his head. “I’m only going to the oxygen treatment place. They want to fix my leg, and—”

Sarge grasped the front of Cody’s hospital gown, causing his head to thump back against the wall. “Don’t be stupid! You want to see what they’ll do to you? Look. Look at this—” He yanked up his pant leg, exposing the prosthesis, then rapped it hard with his fist. Cody gasped, and he hated himself instantly. But he had to make the boy understand, make him cooperate. “They’ll cut it off. Is that what you want? Is that—?” He stopped short at sounds coming from up the stairs. Someone banging on the door. He let his pant leg fall and reached for the boy. “Let’s go.”

“No,” Cody whimpered.

Sarge shook him. He didn’t want to hurt the boy, but the images were swirling back. The flattened tent, the dead camels . . . the children. And the smell of sulfurous burning oil . . . Sarge retched, tasted bile, and pulled at Cody’s arm. “Don’t make me fight with you.” He stared at Cody. Saw him splay his pale palms, cowering, begging. Eyes so big.

“Don’t,” he pleaded. “Please don’t take me. . . . Don’t take me.”

Sarge winced against the high-pitched squeal of a Scud missile . . . No, sirens.
Were those sirens?
His body began to shake; he pressed his hands to his ears to block the sounds.

“Don’t do this, Rich . . . please.”

He stared at Cody Sorenson and saw the children’s faces again
.
Innocent children camping in his strike zone. His squad, his orders to fire, and—

No. No . . . Father God . . . I’ve killed the children!
His body went slack and he closed his eyes, a mournful groan escaping his lips.

The door opened at the top of the stairs, and a deep voice shouted Cody’s name. Footfalls pounded down the steps, coming closer.

Sarge struggled to stand, grabbed for the rail, and missed. His prosthesis twisted under him, and he pitched forward onto the steps.

+++

“Get that backboard down here quickly—and toss me a cervical collar!” Leigh dropped to her knees on the hospital floor, her mind still reeling in disbelief.
Erin’s grandmother?
Beyond her at the doorway, security officers talked rapid fire into their radios over distant shouts from the hallway.
Keep that maniac away, please.
“Iris? Don’t move your head. But can you hear me?”

“Mmph . . . yes. Oh . . . it hurts. My head.”

“Don’t move,” Leigh advised, relieved to hear her respond. The peds nurses reported she’d been unconscious initially. Her gaze swept over Iris’s face, noting the eye nearly swollen shut, a gash on her forehead that had filled her ear with blood. Blunt impact from what? She pushed the horror aside, trying not to think of Erin and only of the treatment plan.
Airway okay, reasonably alert . . . immobilize her neck and get
her down to the ER.
“Stay still now. We’re sliding a foam collar under your neck—don’t try to help me. Nice and still.”

She steadied her patient’s head, holding light spinal traction, as one of the nurses slid the collar into place and fastened the Velcro. Then Leigh stepped aside so the aides could align the backboard alongside Iris and logroll her onto it, very carefully to protect her spine.

“Okay, then,” she said, as they lowered a transport gurney to the floor beside Iris. “Let’s get that portable oxygen in place and hustle down to ER.”

In less than two minutes they were rolling out the doorway and past Scott McKenna. Who was . . . kicking in the stairway door?

+++

Erin hurried through the lobby doors and toward the PBX office, the sense of foreboding worsening with every step. The parking lot was full of police and fire vehicles, and a helicopter hovered overhead. Another disaster? She’d stop by the ER after she located her grandmother. She’d have the operator page her.

“Hi,” Erin said, stepping through the door and catching the eye of the snowy-haired hospital operator. “My grandmother said she was working today. Could you page her for me, please? Iris Quinn.”

“Um . . .” The operator paused, and several of her coworkers raised their heads to glance at Erin and then at each other. “Dr. Stathos has been trying to reach you.”

“I had my cell phone turned off,” Erin explained with stab of guilt. She’d done it to avoid her sister’s calls. Her stomach sank at the growing concern in the woman’s eyes. “Why? Is something wrong?”

The operator winced. “I’m afraid your grandmother’s in the trauma room.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Leigh signaled across the trauma room. “How long till she goes for the brain CT?”

“Ten minutes or less.” Judy affixed a label to a blood tube. “I want the clerk to run these to the lab. And I’d like to give that med a few minutes to work so she won’t vomit in the scanner. Her stomach’s been pretty touchy. Plus, I’m hanging on, hoping that Erin will . . .”

“Is my Erin here?” Iris Quinn asked the question she’d voiced at least twenty times in the short span since her arrival in the ER. Repetitive phrases, short-term memory loss—all evidence she’d suffered a significant brain concussion. And likely far worse. “It’s . . . Friday?” Iris queried once again. She reached up to touch the stiff foam cervical collar fastened under her chin.

“Yes, Friday morning, Iris. And she’ll be here soon. Don’t worry.” Leigh adjusted the oxygen cannula in her patient’s nostrils, then gently palpated the head injury site with gloved fingers. A linear wound above the left ear, the surrounding scalp swollen and as mushy as a ripe melon. Hair matted with congealed blood. Did the underlying skull seem a bit depressed, right there? She moved her fingertips, and—

“Oh . . . it hurts.” Iris blinked up at Leigh, and her right pupil—dark against the brilliant blue—widened with pain. The left eye was swollen shut, a mere slit in a purple expanse of bruising. An injury to the temporoparietal skull, top of the ear, and the fragile bony ridge of the brow. Brutal blunt trauma. A blow from an aluminum baseball bat, swung with considerable force.

Leigh’s stomach shuddered as the incomprehensible horror struck anew.
Sarge?
She glanced toward the closed door of the holding room beyond. At the police officer stationed outside. How could this have happened? And how on earth was she going to explain it to—

“Is my Erin here?” Iris asked, confusion making the question sound urgent, raw, and new. Like the first panicked gasp of a mother missing her child in a department store. “It’s Friday?”

“Friday morning, dear,” Leigh said, brushing a strand of hair away from her patient’s face. Copper colored like her granddaughter’s, only softened by gray and stiff with dried blood. She checked the trauma room clock. How long since they’d put the first call out to Erin? Maybe thirty minutes. It wasn’t like her to be out of reach. But Leigh had utilized every second of that time. She’d done an initial exam, a detailed neuro assessment; ordered IVs, labs, meds, X-rays. And seen Sarge too.

The shudder in her stomach returned. Arrangements were under way to transport Sarge to the locked unit at the psychiatric hospital in San Jose. The Haldol injection had settled him down somewhat, but he still ranted incoherently about the enemy, chemical warfare, and dead children. They’d handcuffed him to the gurney and asked Judy to remove his prosthetic leg so it couldn’t be used a weapon. Leigh’s chest constricted. They were treating Sarge like . . .
the
dangerous assailant he
is.
A man who’d always been here, quiet, powerful, and so willing to help, was now a prisoner in this ER only yards away from his victim. Had Sarge Gunther been this disturbed all along? Were there signs?
Did I miss them?

“I’m sorry to be such a problem,” Iris whispered. Her sparse brows drew together, as if she was struggling to remember. “But I was needed here today, and . . . it’s Friday, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s—” Leigh heard the monitor alarm sound. Was it a rhythm disturbance, low oxygen saturation, or a change in vital signs? Her gaze moved across the digital displays. Yes, blood pressure.

“Her pressure’s reading higher,” Judy acknowledged, stepping to the bedside. “It’s 187 over 94. That’s not what she’s been running. Let me recheck it with the manual cuff.”

“Thank you.” Leigh watched the cardiac monitor; the rhythm still looked good, but the rate had dropped from the steady eighties to the low sixties. Not dangerous in itself, but combined with the rising BP it could be a sign of increasing pressure on the brain. Bleeding beneath the skull. Cerebral hemorrhage. She didn’t like it. They needed to get Iris to the CT scanner.

“Is Erin here?” Iris asked, wincing as she rubbed her swollen brow.

Leigh opened her mouth to answer and then caught sight of Erin in the doorway. Relief flooded through her. “Yes,” she said, her voice choking as she met her friend’s frightened gaze, “it’s Friday, and your Erin’s here now.”

+++

Scott shifted on the hospital bed, holding Cody in his arms. Thirty minutes since he’d scooped him up from the stairwell, and he could still feel his nephew’s heart pounding. Or maybe it was Scott’s. He wouldn’t doubt it. He swallowed and shut his eyes for a moment, feeling the soft brush of Cody’s curls against his face. He’d never been so scared, even on the roof of a burning building. The thought of losing Cody . . . Scott exhaled slowly. Taking him home to Mom and Gary tonight was a good idea. They’d get him to the oxygen treatment center first thing tomorrow. It would all work out.

He whispered against Cody’s hair, “How’re you doing, champ? Think we can let Teresa fix your bandage now?”

He heard him sniffle, felt him nod, the little body mercifully relaxed at last. The pain medicine was kicking in.

Scott looked up at the young staff nurse. “I think we’re good now.”

“Thank you,” she said, her expression filled with sympathy. “I’ve brought the dressing cart from—” she lowered her voice—“his other room. Most of his personal belongings too. I had to get permission. The officers are working in there now.”

Scott nodded, knowing she meant they’d strung up yellow crime tape, were taking photographs and collecting evidence. He pressed his lips to Cody’s forehead, then slowly slid his arm from under his nephew and adjusted the pillow. He’d fallen asleep. Scott stood and checked his watch. “We’re still on schedule for his discharge home?”

“Yes. I’ll get the paperwork together as soon as I finish his bandage. Praise God you were here, Captain. That you found Cody in time. I still can’t believe what happened. Sarge, Erin’s grandmother, and . . . I can’t seem to take it in, you know?”

It was impossibly surreal to him too. He’d had a glimpse of Sarge—Rich, as Cody knew him—when the SWAT team stormed the stairwell. And of Iris Quinn when they’d wheeled her toward the elevator. She’d been barely conscious, bleeding from the head. Battered with that stained baseball bat he’d found when he kicked open the door to the stairs. It made him sick to think of it. And of what could have happened to Cody. He pushed the thought away.
He’s safe now.
Leigh had been there with Iris, directing the staff for her transport, but what about Erin? She hadn’t even known her grandmother was coming here today. Or that she’d ever visited Cody. Was she down in ER now? How was she handling it?

“Scotty?” His grandfather beckoned from the doorway. “Can you help me for a minute?”

“Sure.” Scott glanced at Cody, still asleep, and then joined his grandfather outside the door. He studied the plastic trash bag he held away from his body and just inches from Jonah’s nose. It was dripping. “What is that?”

“Heavy, for one thing. Take it for me, would you? Careful, it’s full of water.”

“Sure, but . . .” Scott reached for the bag. “What is this?”

His grandfather sighed, sadness flickering across his face. “It’s Elmer Fudd. The goldfish. He’s quite traumatized; I’m not sure he’ll make it. But I’ll take him home and do all I can. Jonah spotted him flopping on the floor under Cody’s bed.” Tears filled his eyes. “That poor, dear woman . . .”

Scott squeezed his grandfather’s shoulder. “I’m going to get down there to find out how she’s doing,” he said, Erin’s image coming to mind again. “If I can, before Cody’s discharged. Did you get ahold of Mom and Gary?”

“Yes. Thankfully they hadn’t seen it on the news yet. I told them about the change in plans, that you’d drive Cody home before you go to the fire station. They’re relieved. And tomorrow we’ll get him to Rohnert Park. I can help get him settled over the weekend; I know you need to catch that flight to Portland on Sunday.”

“Right. Sounds good,” he said, ignoring a vague uneasiness. “The nurse got Cody’s belongings from the other room. And I grabbed his backpack from the stairwell—I gave it to you, right?”

“Yes,” his grandfather said, concern deepening the lines around his eyes, “but it’s not Cody’s backpack.”

“It was beside him.” His eyes widened. “You think it belongs to that guy?”

“I’m sure of it. I looked inside.” He glanced toward the police officers across the hallway. “They’ll want it for evidence.”

Scott’s jaw tensed and he felt a wave of queasiness, remembering the blood-smeared baseball bat. “What’s in it?”

“Not much. Some bottled water, beef jerky, cigarettes, an old Zippo lighter, and . . .”

“And what?”

“A journal, it looks like. But more of a military plan. Detailing his ‘mission.’ I didn’t look at more than a few pages, but it really seemed as if he believed he was rescuing Cody. As strange as it sounds after all that’s happened, I think it’s possible that this man really cared for our boy.”

Cody’s words about Rich came back to Scott:
“Mostly he listens. I talk.”

“Should I take the backpack to the officer over there?”

Scott hesitated. “No,” he finally said. “I’ll drop it off on my way to the car. You should get Elmer home. Iris will be asking about him.”

His grandfather rested his palm very gently on the plastic bag, and suddenly Scott remembered him doing that same thing before—on his grandmother’s waist as they danced, on his father’s casket while the bagpipes played, on Colleen’s abdomen, blossoming with Cody. And these days, on her pink granite headstone every Sunday after church. He looked at Scott. “I’ll be praying she will.”

+++

Erin grasped her grandmother’s hand as the gurney rolled to a stop at the door to the CT room. Her fingers were warm as she returned Erin’s squeeze. A little weak but definitely there. Her confusion had cleared, a very good sign. So, though her blood pressure was still too high—and even if Leigh was right about a skull fracture—there was plenty of room for hope. Her grandmother was the strongest person she knew. Erin shivered, suppressing a moan.
Lord, why? Why did this happen?

She pressed her lips to her grandmother’s fingers, then leaned over the gurney. “I’m right here. We’re going to get that CT done. Judy’s letting them know you’re here. Won’t take long.” She saw her grandmother try to nod—impossible while immobilized in the stiff collar—and then settle for blinking the eye that hadn’t swollen shut. It almost looked as if she were winking at some silly joke they were sharing over breakfast. A breakfast they should be having right now, if only . . . Erin’s throat constricted. “I won’t leave you, Nana.”
And please don’t leave me.

“I know,” Iris whispered. She closed her eye for a moment and swallowed, then gazed up at Erin again. “I want you to bring my Bible. I’ll need it in the morning.”

Erin’s throat tightened. Her grandmother was planning to begin tomorrow like all of her days, with her quiet time with God. But there would be no garden bench, ocean breeze, hollyhocks . . .

“It’s in my top dresser drawer.” Her grandmother brought her palm to her chest. “And one other thing. It’s about what happened with Cody.”

Erin winced. “Everything’s okay, remember? Cody’s safe. The police have Sarge in custody.” Her brain struggled to grasp the reality. “He can’t hurt anyone now. You don’t need to worry.”

“It’s funny.” Iris shook her head very slightly, the translucent green oxygen tubing shifting in her nostrils. “I’d begun to think of him as a kind of . . . guardian angel.”

“Angel?” Erin gritted her teeth, anger rising. “Hardly. He could have—” She stopped herself.
He could have killed
you.
“He’s right where he belongs. All that matters now is you.”

“I hope . . . he’ll get help. I don’t think he meant to hurt anyone. I think he really cares for Cody, darling. The authorities must consider that. Please tell them that I—”

“Shh.” Erin touched her grandmother’s lips, stopping her.
Forgive him? Is
that what she’s trying to say?
She wasn’t listening to that. “You need to rest. Everything’s being taken care of.”

Her grandmother pulled her hand away. “But there’s another thing. Cody told me something. Right before the fire alarm went off. That poor boy was so upset. He’s afraid that—”

“Nana,” Erin said, interrupting, “there’s nothing to worry about. I told you. Cody’s safe. And it’s not good to get yourself all worked up. I can’t let you do that.”

“You don’t understand. This is important. You need to tell Scott.” She struggled to sit up. “Erin, please . . . listen.”

“Don’t move.” Erin caught a glimpse of Judy and called, “Help me, would you? She’s getting restless.” She pressed her hand against her grandmother’s shoulder, trying to ease her backward as one of the monitor alarms sounded.

“I’m okay,” Iris insisted as Judy joined Erin. “I just—” The color drained from her face, and she grimaced. “My head . . . oh, it hurts.” She sank back against the pillow.