The Pain Nurse (7 page)

He felt a paw grip his insides. He said quietly, “I know.”

“Your doctors say you’ll need a lot of physical therapy.”

“I’ll get it. I’ll do a lot better on the outside. God, I can’t even sleep. Can’t you talk to them? Please, Cindy, get me out of this place.” He knew he was pleading. He couldn’t stop the urgent cadence of his voice.

“I brought your stuff.”

He could tell she was managing him.

He was too tired to fight her. Too scared. After a moment, he looked through the bag she had brought. Another two pairs of sweatpants and some T-shirts, a CD player and CDs, small packets of Kleenex, his wallet with cash inside.

“Thanks. I haven’t even been able to buy a Coke.” He paused. “I feel bad that I wasn’t able to get you a Christmas present. Remember, the doctors wouldn’t let me drive once they found the tumor.”

“It’s okay.” Her voice was barely audible. She was carrying the Coach handbag he had gotten her for Christmas two years before, meant as a peace offering as their marriage was coming apart, piece by piece. The room had emptied out completely. They were alone with the hospital smell and the Christmas garlands.

“Will, I can’t…”

He suddenly felt such heaviness. She could have just stood and walked away, simple movements that were both miracles in his new life. But she sat there and spoke.

“I’m not like you,” she said quietly. The harshness fell from her eyes, replaced by tears. “I’m not noble. I have a job. You have a…calling.” She didn’t speak the words like a compliment. He gripped her hand but she pulled it away. “I can’t put my whole life on a shelf to, to…put it right for the dead. I’m not a damsel in distress anymore, so what am I to you? I’m not a murder victim.”

“Cindy…”

“I can’t…” She waved him away, pulled into herself. Her face became red and tears streaked her cheeks.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not!” Her eyes were red and fierce. “You’re always so goddamned reasonable! It’s not okay. None of it is. And you know it! You’ve never even forgiven me…”

“That’s not true.” He felt a sucking hole in his middle. He reached for her again, but she pushed away.

“Wait, Will. Please. I’m not…I can’t. You and I, we’re just too different. I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?”

“I thought I could. I had thought it all through. I wanted to wait for all this to be over. I prayed you would be all right, and I’m so glad you came through the surgery. But this is never going to be over. Don’t you get it? Will, I can’t do this. I can’t take care of you, be your nurse.”

“I don’t need a nurse!”

“I can’t give up the rest of my life. I’ve given up so much already, for you, for Sam, and he won’t even talk to us. I have a career. I’m still young. I’m entitled to a life, you know.”

He had met her at a bank robbery. She was a teller and he was a young patrolman. Somehow he had found the courage to come back and ask for her phone number. She had been a young woman with a shy smile and a two-year-old baby. They had married six months later. It had all happened too fast. Eighteen years had happened too fast. He now recalled how, two days after his surgery, a nurse was helping him from the bathroom back to the bed. He had been constipated for a week, and suddenly he shit on the floor. Just shit on the floor. He couldn’t move fast enough to get back to the toilet, or even take a step. He could just move enough to see, in the mirror, the horrible brown cord snake out of him onto the floor, and to see Cindy’s expression of disgust. He knew she was thinking:
I had married this?

Now he said nothing. The speakers called trauma team one to the emergency room, and then trauma team two. His mouth was too dry to speak, his lungs too tired to force out any words.

“I’ll help you with money, Will. You won’t have to worry.”

“Just go.”

“I’ve talked to your brother,” she said.

He waved it away. “I asked you to bring me something else. Did you?”

“Damn you, Will.” She reached into her purse and handed him the black leather case. Inside was his badge and identification card. “I shouldn’t have done this. Julius will be…”

“Thanks.” He spoke in a rough monotone. Then he violently wheeled around to face the city, provoking his back to spasm with pain, the one reliable in his new life. Night poured down on the city and lights pierced the puffy blackness. She spoke to his back. She had made plans for him. She was always good at planning. But Will wasn’t really listening. For a long time after she left he just sat there, watching the city lights, knowing he was past due for his pain meds, not moving. He slid his wedding band off for the last time—Cindy had kept it during his surgery—and dropped it into his fanny pack. He thought about pawning it, or just walking out on the Roebling Bridge and letting the river take it away.

Chapter Ten

Cheryl Beth stood in the wide doorway into the solarium, watching the man. His back to her, he was framed by the darkness of the lonely broad windows, his posture rigid with pain. His shoulders heaved slightly. She knew he was crying and thought about checking on him. This was in character for her, checking on strangers, with or without a referral. She had the run of the hospital, something she thrived on. She loved to help people. Andy had said it was actually a character flaw, a selfish compulsion to be needed—those had been his words—not so much to help anyone as to feel secure herself. But he had only said that toward the end, as they were spiraling into the place where every sentence was an accusation, every phrase the quicksand of further estrangement. It was odd that the words still stung her, so many years later.

She watched the man in the wheelchair and almost went to him. He seemed too young and vital to be here, to be in that chair. But something in her hesitated. She hated that it was getting dark so early, that her home seemed almost violated by the footprints she had seen. She felt off her stride, Christine’s bloody face and mutilated hand still hovering in her thoughts, deep footprints in her flower beds—she looked down at her own shoes as if to reassure herself that she wasn’t standing in Christine’s blood…
Ah!

“I’m sorry. Everybody’s jumpy right now, and you have the most right to be.” The hand on her shoulder and the voice in her ear belonged to Dr. Jay Carpenter, the chief of general surgery. He was tall and rumpled, as usual the only neat thing on his body seemed to be the expertly knotted bowtie he wore. It was amazing how many docs still didn’t realize their conventional ties could fall on a patient or a surface, picking up bacteria to be deposited elsewhere. Dr. Carpenter always wore a bowtie. Above it was a goatee of gray and brown, setting off a creased, craggy face, all topped by thinning white hair. His voice was always ready to assume its distinctive thundering tone. He was a notorious and highly successful ladies’ man.

“Any Christmas plans?”

“I guess I’ll go see my brothers in Kentucky.”

“Walk with me, Cheryl Beth.”

Visiting hours were coming to an end, so the halls were emptying out.

“Were you in the ER for the shooting du jour?”

She had been called in. The aftermath of gunshot wounds could be especially painful. The patient was a fifteen-year-old with a stomach wound. As usual, poor and black. As usual, from the violent ghettoes that separated downtown from the hospital district on Pill Hill.

“It’s going to be a pain grenade,” she said. “You know he’s probably not opiate naïve.”

“Not with all the addicts in that neighborhood.” They knew the drill: a patient with a history of addiction didn’t respond to doses of painkillers that would work in a normal, or “naïve,” patient.

“So there’s a good chance he won’t be adequately medicated,” she said. “I’m going to go back and check on him, post-surgery.”

“That’s good,” he said, pausing to lean against a wall, his voice assuming its full freight-train tone. “If his doc isn’t doing the right thing, you do what you need, and you have my verbal orders.” He looked around and spoke more quietly. “The last thing we want is to have another African American kid screaming in pain in this hospital. Lord, this city is so tense. They won’t admit it, of course. Everybody is so nice in Cincinnati.” He paused. “They could have used you in peds today.”

“I can’t do peds.” She spoke quickly.

“I know.” He gave a gentle smile. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“Me? I’m all right.”

“I know, you’re the tough one. But your job can get pretty lonely. Why don’t you come up with me to the stroke floor? They’re having their Christmas party tonight.”

“Maybe I will, if I’m not persona non grata. Stephanie Ott is out to get me.” Cheryl Beth said it lightly but the words still sounded dark. She sighed. “Things aren’t right.”

“With Stephanie?” He gave his trademark rumbling laugh. “Nothing is ever right with Stephanie. Don’t worry about her. I’ve got your back.”

“It’s not just that. Someone was digging through my desk. The whole vibe here seems different. And I found footprints in my flower bed, right by my window.”

“Maybe it was the meter reader?”

“No, the meter is in back. And they only appeared in the last couple of days.”

“It wasn’t me.” He winked. “It’s probably nothing, Cheryl Beth. Still, you ought to talk to the police.”

“It was the first thing I did!” She heard her voice rising and slowed herself down. “They blew me off. They wouldn’t even come out, just said call if I see a prowler. Damn it, they think I killed Christine.”

“No.”

“Pretty damned close.” She slumped against the wall, suddenly exhausted. “They say I could be ‘a person of interest.’ Isn’t that what it means? I always hear that on TV and those are the people who end up being the killers.”

He patted her shoulder and spoke quietly. “Nobody thinks you would hurt Christine.” He paused. “I do have to say, jeez, baby, Gary Nagle? If you were going to do that, I should have been hitting on you harder all these years.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hell, does everybody in the hospital know about this?”

“Of course not.” He waited a beat. “Of course.”

She laughed with him but felt the rough stone of exposure pulling her down. What an insane thing, getting together with Gary, going for a drink with him that windy spring night, letting him kiss her underneath the streetlight. She tried to push the memory away.

“Maybe you need a vacation,” he said. “I can’t afford you to burn out.”

Her immediate reaction was defensive, but she knew he meant her well. “Oh, Dr. Carpenter, you know how it is. Sometimes it’s so sad. Sometimes something wonderful happens. A patient gets good news or makes you laugh. I always think, no matter how bad the news, at least I can control their pain.”

They walked again, in the direction of the cafeteria, moving to the edge of the hallway as five people walked past, closely bunched together. It was obviously a family, three generations of women, the oldest looking a little older than Cheryl Beth. Eyes red with tears and faces stretched with fatigue, they bunched together in their thick winter coats as if any straggler would be pulled irretrievably into the deep space.

“Dr. Carpenter, who would want to hurt Christine?”

“Want me to make a list?”

“I’m serious.”

He said nothing until they were in an empty hallway again. “Christine was a big personality, as you know. People loved her or hated her. Well, no, that’s not true. People tolerated her or hated her. She didn’t have many friends. You tangled with her, remember? When you were trying to get us away from using so much Demerol, using all your charm and all your data, she went ballistic. That was classic Christine.”

“I’d actually forgotten that. There was another time, too. She told me her patient was being a problem, and I said, ‘Dr. Lustig, the problem is how you’re writing the orders.’ She was way under-prescribing for this particular patient, who was just moaning, really hurting. The nurses were afraid to cross her. I wanted to say, ‘You’re killing people with these PCAs,’ but I didn’t. Great. These will be more reasons for the cops to suspect me.”

He chuckled. “If arguing with Christine Lustig was a crime, I’d be under the jail. I knew her for fifteen years, and I can’t think of one day when she wasn’t after somebody. The truth is, she was brisk…well, beyond brisk, because usually she was right. I saw her stand toe-to-toe with the big guys many times, and that wasn’t easy for a female doc of her generation. On top of all that, she was gorgeous and knew it. My God, those cheekbones…”

He stared wistfully. “She felt entitled and she was incredibly competitive. She and Gary were both that way. It’s amazing they didn’t kill each other. Guess I shouldn’t say that. I thought she was a gifted surgeon, especially on gall bladders and GI stuff. But she was kind of a technician, if you know what I mean. Her people skills with patients sometimes left a lot to be desired. Let’s just say she didn’t have your emotional IQ. Not to speak ill of the dead.”

“Is that why she was put on the computer project?”

“You mean to get away from patients for awhile? Maybe. She actually asked for the assignment, and she became a real advocate. I called her Tech Head, she became such a geek. She traveled to other hospitals and studied their systems. SoftChartZ is pioneering electronic patient records. Digital medicine. Christine was a believer. Don’t kid yourself. This is what’s got Stephanie’s panties twisted, that the project might be delayed now. Not that she gives a damn about how much paperwork you do. But the docs in the neurosurgery practice are screaming for computerized records, and they’re the ones who still bring real money into this benighted place.”

“So who in this long list of enemies was capable of killing Christine?”

“Oh, Cheryl Beth. How would I know that?”

“Because you know everything, Dr. Carpenter.”

“What, you’re a detective now?”

“Someone has to be. This cop, Dodds—I have a really bad feeling about him. He just looks at me like he thinks I did it, like I’m hiding something.”

“Are you?”

A shot of defensiveness stiffened her before he laughed.

“I’m serious, doctor. I feel like I need to do something, get him some information. And Stephanie, too. You should have seen how she went off on me.”

“The detective talked to me. I told him you couldn’t have done it.”

“See! He has it in his head that I killed her!”

“Cheryl Beth, this is a big old urban hospital. And we have all the problems of an urban hospital. Yesterday, I saw a guy in a stairwell, dressed in rags, just walking up and down the stairs. He said his dead mother was chasing him, and didn’t I see her? He was shaking and bawling. Scared the hell out of me. I called security, and it turned out he was just another street person who wandered in here for warmth. He was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, off his meds, hearing voices. Good Lord.”

He stopped. Then, “Do you know how much of this hospital has been closed down the past decade? There are old, abandoned parts of this place that I’ve never even been to, that the security guards don’t even know about.”

“They’re probably all my old shortcuts,” she said.

“You know I studied here when I was a medical student? This was back in the Stone Age, when they had real wards, just long rows of beds separated by curtains. But it was great training. Young docs today, most of them don’t really know how to listen to heart sounds. They don’t get a chance. Hearts get fixed. People don’t get rheumatic fever. Back then, we’d get lots of public health cases, lots of people with heart murmurs. It was great to be a student. The old basement, that’s where the morgue was. It’s so isolated. Why they would put offices down there, much less even put a woman alone in an office there…?” He shook his head. “It was just a horrible, random act.”

That didn’t make her feel better. She said, “So what about the footprints in my flower bed?”

He smiled, half to himself, staring at the floor. At first Cheryl Beth thought he was patronizing her and she grew angry. Then he spoke in a different voice. “The irony of the whole thing is that Christine was quite the sexual predator. She had cheated on Gary for years, and not with just one person. She was hardly the victim, however much I am baffled by your taste in men. I’ll just leave it at that.”

For a moment, Cheryl Beth was conscious of her every swallow and breath. She made herself smile and gently punch Dr. Carpenter in the arm. She said, “Don’t tell me you and Christine…?”

“Not my taste,” he said. “And my conquests are vastly over-imagined by some of my coworkers, not that I’m complaining… Cheryl Beth?”

She realized she had just been standing there silently staring at the wall.

“I was just thinking,” she said. “The way Christine was cut. It was done with such rage. I’ve never seen anything…not in the ER…not anywhere. It could have been…”

He spoke quickly. “I probably said too much.”

“It could have been a spurned lover.”

“Cheryl Beth…”

“It could. My God, it could have been a lover’s angry wife. A woman could be strong enough to do that…”

She stopped instinctively when his name came over the paging system.

“You.” He put his arm around her. She didn’t feel intimidated. It felt good, just to be touched. “You, my intense friend, need to go home and get some rest. But first, come with me to the party, get something in your stomach.”

“Doctor’s orders?”

“Absolutely.” He took her arm and they walked.