The Pain Nurse (5 page)
Dodds clapped his large hands on the tops of his thighs and stood, leaving the nurse sitting, staring at his back as he did his heavy stomp away. Then she put her head in her hands, just for a few seconds, before sweeping back her light-brown hair, adjusting her white coat, and at a brisk pace joining the flow of people headed into the main part of the hospital. She had large, attractive eyes and moved with an intuitive grace. Will watched from his wheelchair and turned to follow Dodds.
Two tough-looking, muscular black men stood outside one of the rooms, arguing with a uniformed officer. Leaving, they nearly ran into Dodds. They wore hoodies and very baggy pants, the mainstream gang attire that Will’s own son favored. The shorter of the two chewed on a toothpick. They wore blue do-rags, signs that they were Mount Auburn Boyz, friends of the kid shot the night the doctor was murdered. Now he lay in that hospital room, three doors down from Will, unable to move his arms or legs. Dodds knew they were “representing” with hand signals and slang, but merely gave a look of bored contempt. They gave him the typical dead-eyes expression, before sidling down the hall in an oscillating pimp roll, sweeping past Will. “Monkey five-oh,” one of the bangers said to the other.
“What’s the deal?” Will asked the uniform, a petite young woman who recognized him. “I thought he tried to shoot a cop. Why isn’t he in the jail unit?”
“They haven’t charged him. He was just in the crossfire, and now maybe he’ll tell us who the real bad guys were. I’m just here to make sure some of his buddies don’t try to keep that from happening.”
Will nodded and wheeled to watch Dodds. He knew that Dodds liked to walk a crime scene, sometimes repeatedly, always slowly. Now the big man moved leisurely down the neuro-rehab unit. It might make no sense to an outsider, even to many cops. But Dodds always had his way of things. They had made a good team once, Dodds seeming plodding and distracted, Will garrulous and focused. That was part of Dodds’ camouflage and also how his mind worked. He would have done his slow move with the nurse, with everyone he interviewed for this case. The long pauses between questions, only to pause an even longer time after the subject had answered. What could his silence mean, they wondered? Dodds was a master. So, too, with his “homicide stroll,” as Will called it. Dodds would walk a scene, keeping his opinions to himself until later. It was interesting he was working alone on this case.
Will could still see Dodds walking that day in Mount Adams. Theresa Chambers had been discovered murdered in her house. Borders and Dodds, the primaries. She had been splayed on the floor, totally nude, with vicious slash marks on her arms, legs, face, breasts. It didn’t take the medical examiner to know she had died from a deep cut to the throat, but that had only come after the other wounds had been delivered. Her ring finger had been cut off, probably as she had been dying. Her clothes had been neatly folded and there was no sign of a break-in. Will had watched from the porch as Dodds had ambled down the street, into the little sidewalk between the houses, back to the alley. Theresa Chambers, who had been separated from her husband, Bud Chambers, a Cincinnati cop, who had no alibi for that night. Theresa Chambers, who was the first. But they couldn’t know that then. All Will knew on that first spring morning was that Dodds’ homicide stroll had been especially unhurried.
Now Will watched as he followed the wall with his hand, seemingly absent-minded. Dodds hadn’t seen him. There were enough people, enough wheelchairs and food carts and pieces of obscure medical equipment to give Will some concealment. Dodds opened an exit door and looked inside. He walked more quickly to where the ward connected with the main part of the hospital and did the same thing. This time, he didn’t emerge from the exit and the door closed behind him.
Will realized he was now one floor above the old basement, where Dr. Christine Lustig had been killed.
***
The elevator emptied out on the first floor and Will rolled himself in alone. When the car settled at the basement level and the big doors opened, he was uncomfortably aware of its heavy sound, the light spilling out into the dim corridor. He quickly crossed into a shadow behind a large, unused linen cart. He waited for the doors to close and the elevator to resume its return journey up into the tower. Once again he was in the darkened basement corridor, its silence still profound. His hands felt for the rim of the wheels and he cautiously moved out on the old tile floor.
Dodds was coming toward him, suddenly illuminated in one of the few light fixtures that was working. Will felt his heart rate explode and he quickly backed up behind the cart. He spun around, feeling a sharp eruption in his back, and pushed the chair into a side hallway. The pain consumed him, wrapped around his back and ribs, penetrating up into his chest. A phosphorescent glow came to the edge of his vision. He bit the fleshy part of his hand to keep from crying out, as the pain seared out from his middle back down to his hips. He was in complete darkness. This corridor might end suddenly or it might have held the entire membership of the Mount Auburn Boyz. The only sound was a distant mechanical throb. He felt ahead of him into black, empty air, then crept forward again. The cold, smooth wall gave way and he cautiously backed into yet another space. There was nothing to do but wait. Dodds’ distinctive tread passed in the main hallway. The small beam of his flashlight played in front of Will’s feet. Will hoped he couldn’t find a way to turn on more lights. Another minute passed and he heard Dodds walking in the other direction.
Will slowly emerged into the main corridor and followed Dodds at a distance, making sure to stay short of the overhead light. The big man paused, suddenly hunching his back. He hummed an incomprehensible tune. It was amazing how little he had changed since they had worked together. Then Dodds walked more purposefully. At the door of Lustig’s office, he produced a small knife and slit the evidence seal on the door. The door unlocked loudly and then light fell out onto the hallway tiles. Will rolled quickly through the brief lighted zone and returned to darkness. Just a few feet from the door, he pulled in behind another large cart, concealing himself in its shadow. The oppressive absence of sound settled over the hallway. He imagined Dodds standing in the doorway, then in a far corner, finally behind the desk, imagining what the killer and victim saw. Take your time, Will thought. He struggled to make his body relax enough that the hurting might ease.
Maybe ten minutes went by before Dodds’ footsteps resumed. Will looked around his barricade and saw Dodds’ massive back walking farther down the hall. It was the same direction Will had been wheeled that night, to his MRI. He made a quick, reckless calculus and wheeled himself into the office. The wide doorway opened in and easily accommodated the wheelchair. But inside, the office was just a confined box. This was a doctor’s office? Who had she pissed off? Hearing Dodds returning, he tried to back himself behind the open door. The wheelchair pivoted awkwardly, too slowly. The noise of rubber wheels against the polished floor barked out too loudly. Then he was against the wall, trying to slow his breathing. He was sure those panicky breaths could be heard as far as downtown. Leaning forward, he saw that Dodds’ notebook sat invitingly on the doctor’s desk.
Will took a baby’s breath when Dodds returned to the threshold, then stepped inside. Will sat up straighter, as if he could somehow reduce the profile of the wheelchair. Only the bulk of the open office door separated the two men. The sound of a chair. Dodds was sitting, probably making some notes. Will felt his bladder starting to grow full. How could Dodds not see him there, barely six feet away? The distinctive high-pitched wheeze of Dodds came from the desk. Will made himself look around. The office was square-shaped, with another door that probably held a closet. A metal desk cubicle faced the far wall. Was Christine Lustig facing away from the door when the attacker entered? Did the murderer even take her by surprise or somehow win her confidence?
Then the chair creaked and Dodds crossed the room, turned out the lights and closed the door. Will was in darkness again, realizing that he didn’t even know if the door might have a dead-bolt that could keep him from getting out again. Will had never been fearful or superstitious on murder scenes, but something about this was different. The darkness seemed almost to have mass and substance and to be narrowing in on him. He felt along the wall, and when it seemed safe, turned on the lights. Yet the sinister presence still weighed against him. He shook his head, adding to his pain, but somehow snapping the spell.
The room wasn’t much. It looked as if it might have been an exam room once, and it still had a wall of white cabinets and shelves, a sink, and a red box on the wall labeled “biohazard,” presumably for disposing of used needles. Otherwise, a desk, chair, and filing cabinet had been added. He looked more closely. The phone cord had been pulled from the wall. It now sat wound up on the top of the doctor’s desk. The Slasher always disabled the phones. A Tiffany lamp sat unmolested on the desk. It would have seemed a natural casualty of a fight to the death, even by a woman who was paralyzed by fear. Indeed, the main evidence of trouble was dried blood on the Persian rug before the desk, the tile floor, the drawers of the desk, the wall.
That had been the case with every Slasher scene: the most violent crime, accompanied by little or no damage to the physical environment aside from the blood. The exception was Theresa Chambers, who was clutching a framed photograph of her daughter, the glass shattered into a spider’s web. Had the Slasher taken his victims by such surprise, or had he somehow put them at ease? The arrest and conviction of Craig Factor had never really provided an answer. Aside from the semen evidence, they had found nothing linking him to the crime scenes, especially any of the missing ring fingers.
The walls told him that Christine Lustig was a graduate of Tufts Medical School and a fellow in the American College of Surgeons. The desk had a computer and beside it, thick notebooks labeled Med-Interface and SoftChartZ. What was her job? Did she see patients? Will used a tissue to shield his hand as he opened desk drawers. Pens, pencils, more files with obscure names. There were no family photographs. He rolled around, seeing the office from the desk’s perspective. How could you sit with your back to that empty hallway late at night? The newspaper story said a nurse had discovered the doctor’s body, so the door might have been open. There was no sign of a broken lock. The Slasher never broke a lock, a door, or a window. Will pushed the drawer back in and by habit reached under it, sweeping the metal with his hand.
He felt duct tape and then the unmistakable outlines of a knife.
“Damn.”
The doorknob shook. Will started and drew back from his discovery. He backed the wheelchair against the wall, hoping it would be in the safe place when the door opened. But no key was inserted into the lock. The knob rattled again and the door snapped against the frame from sudden pressure. Slap! The door was again pushed hard and the lock was rattled impatiently. Even when the sounds stopped, it was a long time before Will turned off the lights and ventured into the corridor.
Cheryl Beth answered the phone and could hear screaming in the background. It was the sound of the newest consult. It was going to be a bad day.
She had hurried to recovery, to a patient with pancreatic cancer who had undergone a Whipple Procedure. It basically involves lopping off part of the pancreas and rebuilding the digestive tract. It’s difficult surgery, almost, but not quite, being made obsolete. The aftermath can be pain incarnate: evil, damnation, omnipotent. It reminded Cheryl Beth of the hell-fire Baptist sermons she had heard as a girl growing up in the little Kentucky railroad town of Corbin. This was pain as the Lake of Fire, and it was almost as hard to knock down as bargaining on judgment day.
It was engulfing a woman so small and eaten up that it seemed barely possible she had the organs remaining to destroy or the breath to scream so loudly.
“I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to violate the orders.” A young nurse in purple scrubs spoke with a voice on the edge of panic.
“You’re not violating anything, Megan,” Cheryl Beth said, getting the woman’s name off her name badge. Barely under her breath, she said, “I don’t know why people want to cover their ass when a patient is suffering. And does the damned anesthesiologist care?” Megan stared at the floor.
Tamping down her fury, Cheryl Beth did a quick workup. The paperwork was a mess, as usual. It appeared that she had been undermedicated by one of the surgical residents. She touched the old woman, her skin like that covering a chicken wing after a week in the refrigerator. “I’m going to help you.”
“I just want to die,” she wailed.
Cheryl Beth’s brain and hands were on automatic now, a coordination born from years of training and experience.
“What are you doing?” the young nurse asked.
“Rescue dose,” Cheryl Beth said. She injected morphine and Ativan through a cap in the IV line. They rushed into the vein that would bear them like a liquid savior. She stroked the woman’s hand and the screaming subsided. Her pager vibrated again, even as she wrote out extensive orders for the pain meds to follow. She looked at it and decided it could wait. Around her, the general surgery recovery room looked like much of Cincinnati Memorial, a surreal combination of modern medical technology haphazardly fitted into rooms that had been built during the Great Depression and left to slowly rot ever since. She noticed more than usual the attendant fleeting odors of disinfectant, feces, vomit, and various medicines. They seemed colored with a brooding, claustrophobic tint in the aftermath of Christine’s murder.
She felt herself silently mouthing the word: Murder. She stopped when she was aware that Megan was hovering nearby. Cheryl Beth instructed her on monitoring and administering the morphine and the Ativan, an antianxiety drug, and regulating the PCA pump that would prevent an overdose.
“Thank you so much.” She seemed so young. Was I ever that young? Cheryl Beth asked herself. She also knew how difficult it was to recruit nurses, especially at Memorial. She wrote out the new orders—she always covered her backside—and would get Dr. Ames to sign them.
“No worries,” Cheryl Beth responded, smiling at her and handing back the chart.
“I just didn’t know how her doc would react to changing her dose.”
Well, thought Cheryl Beth, at least she was young enough to be honest. It was the usual chickenshit thing that left patients to suffer. Docs could be inattentive or stubborn, and nurses were afraid to challenge them. Cheryl Beth had never been that way. In this case, she had an added measure of protection because the patient’s main surgeon was one of her fans.
“Do your thing and sign my name,” the surgeon, Dr. Brice, had said years ago. “You know more about this than most docs.”
Cheryl Beth was in the hallway outside recovery, slathering hand sanitizer into her palms, when the page repeated.
***
In five minutes she was in the spacious, wood-paneled administrative offices. The outer hallways were lined with oil paintings of eighty years of hospital presidents. Not surprisingly, Stephanie Ott made her wait twenty minutes in her outer office. She made conversation with Ott’s secretary, Bridget, a compact, formidable woman with slate gray hair. She intimidated most of the staff, but Cheryl Beth got along fine with her. Halfway into a discussion about artificial Christmas trees, the door to Stephanie Ott’s office swooshed open and a compact young man strode out. He couldn’t have been more than thirty, with fashionably punked-up blond hair and a movie star tan on a face most women would have found cute. He wore black jeans and a French blue dress shirt, open at the collar. His fists were clenched and he stared straight ahead, his mouth set at an angry angle.
“Oh, joy,” Cheryl Beth said. “I’m next.”
“He’s a prima donna,” Bridget said after he had gone. “He’s from California.”
“He didn’t look like he was from Cincinnati. I thought he might be Stephanie’s son, he looks like such a kid.”
Bridget looked over her reading glasses. “That kid is a multi-millionaire and the chief executive of a company in Silicon Valley.” The sarcasm in her voice was barely concealed. “He’s twenty-six.”
Cheryl Beth cocked her head in disbelief.
“Oh, yes. Mister Josh Barnett, the chief executive officer of SoftChartZ. He started the company when he was a graduate student at Stanford. Promises to take the entire health-care industry and ‘digitalize it.’” She made mocking quotation marks in the air with her fingers. Bridget could be fun if you got to know her. She added, “We’re paying him $10 million, you know. I haven’t had a raise in three years.”
Cheryl Beth thought about what Lisa had said, but couldn’t believe Christine Lustig could have slept with the man. She said, “So he was working with Christine.”
Bridget let the statement hang just long enough for Stephanie Ott to open her office door and beckon Cheryl Beth inside.
