The Children's Ward (13 page)

Fifty-three

Lunchtime.

Anne locked the department door and went back to the desk to check the schedule. No one due until 1:30. She had all the time in the world.

The employee lounge was a small room lined on one wall with metal lockers and furnished with a couch and two recliners. A bar-size refrigerator was crammed between the couch and the wall. A two-cup coffee maker sat atop the refrigerator. The coffee, filters and cups were located on a foot-long, six-inch wide shelf above the coffee maker.

She took the coffee decanter and went through the department to the bathroom where she filled it with water from the sink, careful not to crack the glass against the porcelain. The last time someone had broken the decanter it had taken two weeks to get a replacement and she’d had to bring coffee in a thermos from home.

Waiting for it to fill, she looked at her reflection in the mirror.

“Smile,” she told herself. The result was painful to look at.

Back in the lounge she began making the coffee, measuring precisely one and a half of the tiny scoop that came with the maker. She poured the water into the reservoir, switched it on and put the decanter underneath.

Her lunch from yesterday was still in the refrigerator and she took it out and went to the couch. She hadn’t much of an appetite but she’d been tested as a borderline hypoglycemic and knew it was foolish not to eat something.

An egg salad sandwich, two small tangerines and some of the Christmas cookies that her mother had sent her from Boston.

Boston, where Christmas looked like Christmas. Snow and fireplaces and hot apple cider…

And slippery sidewalks, ice-crusted windshields, frostbite, power outages, and dirty melting snow…

She was not homesick for Boston; it had never really been her home, just the last six months before she’d turned eighteen. What she wanted was to get away from the last twenty-eight hours.

She remembered hearing nurses talk about how they handled stress and what they called burn-out. Talking about it seemed to help, keeping busy…and time.

There was no one she felt she could talk to.

The coffee was finished dripping and she put aside her untouched lunch to get up and pour a cup.

She filled her mug and wrapped her hands around it, warming her fingers. It had still been raining when she’d last looked, not hard but steady, and the temperature inside was cooler than usual. Maybe the air conditioning was still on.

She went back to the couch, placing the coffee mug on the floor by her feet, and picked up the sandwich. The bread was a little soggy but she ate, methodically, not tasting much of anything.

When she had finished eating she crumpled up the paper bag and tossed it at the wastebasket which she hit easily.

Should she go over to the ward and check on Russell Delano?

Or should she just try and forget the whole incident?

Leaning back on the couch, she rubbed her forehead as if that would help her think clearer, and closed her eyes.

Someone was rattling the department door.

She glanced at her watch; it wasn’t even one yet.

“Great,” she said, getting to her feet.

By the time she got to the door, the rattling had stopped. She contemplated opening the door and looking down the hallway but she didn’t really want to deal with anything at this particular moment, so instead she double-checked the lock and turned away.

She noticed with some surprise that the whirlpool was clouded with steam.

She must have turned the temperature up too high.

But the temperature indicator showed that it was within the normal range. She tapped the face of the dial.

It must be steaming so much because of the cooler air temperature in the department.

She looked over the edge of the tank. The water was…bubbling.

None of the air jets were on.

It almost looked like it was boiling. She looked for a second time at the temperature gauge.

Maybe air bubbles, formed by the air jets, had remained along the side of the tank and were only now coming to the surface.

But all the steam…what would cause that? She had to admit that the air temperature was not really cold enough to account for all of the steam.

Cautiously, she held her hand above the water.

There was very little heat emanating from the surface.

She took a breath and dipped her fingers slowly into the water.

It was lukewarm, exactly as it was supposed to be.

She submerged her hand and moved it toward the side of the tank where the bubbles continued to rise.

Something grasped her hand. Something very much like fingers closed around her wrist and pulled forcefully.

She opened her mouth to scream.

With a force that dislocated her shoulder, something pulled her into the tank, and the scream was lost in the water which bubbled furiously.

Gradually, the water stilled and the steam dissipated.

Fifty-four

“The poor thing’s dead to the world,” Mary Aguilar informed Joshua as he neared Abigail’s bed. The child lay on her side, head cradled on her right arm.

“Has she been like this for very long?” Joshua picked up the girl’s left arm, then let it fall limp to the bed.

“Actually, until fifteen minutes ago, I thought she was going to stare a hole right through the wall. Her pupils were contracted and I swear she didn’t blink the entire time I was taking her vitals.”

“How long was that?”

“I don’t know…maybe only five minutes, but I’ve never seen anyone look so…intense.”

“What were her vitals?”

“Blood pressure was one-fifty over ninety…”

“That’s high for her.”

“Respirations twenty-four, pulse one hundred and temperature 98.6°.”

Joshua nodded. “Take her blood pressure again.”

Mary wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Abigail’s left arm, placing the stethoscope at the antecubital area, and inflating the cuff.

“What is it?” he asked as Mary took the stethoscope out of her ears.

“One hundred over seventy.”

“Well.” He looked at the sleeping face. “Whatever was going on with her is obviously over for now.” He drew the covers up around her shoulders.

Back at the nurse’s station Joshua became aware of Mary watching him expectantly.

“What? Is there something else?”

“Did you hear about the accident in the scan room?”

“Yes
I
did; I’m a little surprised you heard about it all the way out here.”

“I hear all kinds of things,” she said cryptically. “Not all of it accurate, but,” she shrugged, “most of it interesting.”

“I’m amazed at the speed that these things get around.”

“So…tell me.”

“I gather there was some type of equipment malfunction and the magnet was turned on…and unfortunately, the engineer was caught between an electric saw and the magnet. It was a freak accident.”

“I heard Dr. Logan was there when it happened…”

“She’s still over there with the coroner.”

“How terrible for her.”

“She’s handling it.” He noticed Mary smile. “Now what?”

“Nothing…just pleased that Dr. Logan is working out so well. You’ve made an excellent choice…” The smile widened and she turned away.

Fifty-five

The engineer, Quinn learned, had been forty-one, married, with two children. His name was Lloyd Marshall and he was, by all accounts, a good man.

She watched them roll the good man away on the gurney.

Tucker Smith was giving his statement to a fresh-faced deputy coroner who looked badly out of place in a room with so much blood on the floor. The chief coroner was supervising the removal of the saw from where it had been placed on the floor. Bits of bone fragments adhered to the blade.

She arched her back, stretching muscles that had tightened from standing too long in the same place. She had given her statement, what there was of it, but the coroner had asked her to stay.

There was very little she could do to help unless it was to give Tucker Smith something to calm him down. His leg was jiggling, his complexion was ashen, and every few minutes he looked at the scanner as if he expected it to leap at his throat.

She wondered if he would ever again be able to push the power button.

“Dr. Logan.” The chief coroner had come up beside her. He was still wearing his raincoat which had been dripping wet when he’d first arrived. It was bone dry now.

“Yes?”

“We’re just about finished here.” He indicated the saw which, bagged and sealed, was being carried past them. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, off the record.”

“Off the record?”

“If you don’t mind. Did you notice any…animosity between Marshall and Smith?”

Quinn looked at Tucker Smith. “I don’t think he was capable…either physically or emotionally…of doing this. Look at him.”

The coroner nodded. “Actually, I’d come to the same conclusion, but it was a very violent death for Mr. Marshall and I feel obligated to consider every possibility.” He hesitated. “It’s hard for me to imagine that a magnet could do this either.”

“It’s a very powerful magnet,” she commented, and pointed to the warning signs posted at both doors which cautioned against bringing large metal objects into the room.

“Modern science.” He regarded the scanner, then looked back at Quinn. “Thank you, that’ll be all.”

Quinn wondered if it would.

Fifty-six

“David, are you listening to me?” Tiffany looked sideways at her husband, unwilling to take her eyes off the road. He was driving but on more than one occasion she had alerted him to dangers he was seemingly unaware of.

“Hmm.”

“I don’t want you to upset Courtney by telling her about the house.”

“She’ll have to know sometime,” he said dryly.

“Sometime but not now.” She tensed as he pulled into the opposite lane to pass a slow-moving truck. She hated two-lane roads.

“Whatever you say. Although I think it might be a shock to her when she comes home and sees the black walls…” he laughed suddenly. “Of course, she might think it’s just one of your more avant-garde attempts at decorating.”

She chose to ignore the remark. “I’ll tell her before she is discharged. She was so sick yesterday, I don’t want her to have a relapse or something.”

“I doubt if she’ll care.”

“What do you mean? Of course she’ll care, it’s her home.”

He turned to look at her and instinctively she reached for the steering wheel.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

“What do you mean, she won’t care?”

“She’s not like you, Tiffany. The house is just that to her…a house.”

“And what makes you such an expert on what Courtney is like? You weren’t even around when I brought her home from the hospital—”

“—after she was born. I know.” He smiled grimly. “I had things to do.”

Tiffany was silent, staring at the road.

David was apparently content to let things rest. It bothered her that he never seemed to be wounded when she gave him the silent treatment. She was torn between the desire to make him as miserable as she felt and the exhaustion of keeping alive an old hurt.

As they pulled into the hospital parking lot she decided to put it out of her mind. It was going to take a lot of time and energy to get the house back in shape and there was Courtney to worry about.

“I know,” she said. “I’ll ask one of the doctors when I should tell Courtney…”

David was already out of the car.

Tiffany’s face began to ache from smiling.

Courtney was looking better, she thought, although her hair was a little tangled. She would suggest to the nurse that a shower and shampoo would undoubtedly help Courtney’s frame of mind.

If anything, Courtney was more withdrawn than usual.

It was not a thought that Tiffany found comfortable; she seldom acknowledged that her child was politely distant.

“Is there anything you’d like me to bring you?”

“No.”

“Something to read?”

Courtney shook her head.

Tiffany looked around for David. He had left some time before to get a cup of coffee in the hospital cafeteria. He’d been gone long enough, she thought bitterly, to fly to Colombia, pick the beans himself, and grind his own.

It was nearing three o’clock and the end of visiting hours.

She had insisted that they stay the full two hours today in view of Courtney’s medical crisis yesterday. David, complaining of being chilled from the rain (it had not been raining when they arrived) had taken off after about ten minutes. He would probably return in time to be told they had to leave.

Even when she got her way, she didn’t.

It had been a very long two hours.

Courtney had closed her eyes.

When the nurse said it was time to leave, Tiffany rose gratefully from her chair. David was not back and she supposed that she would have to look for him. She’d ask the doctor tomorrow.

Fifty-seven

“How come nobody called me earlier?” The security guard walked down the hall five feet behind the orderly who was, he felt, trying to rush him. If there was a rush, why wasn’t it two hours ago when it was first determined that the door to physical therapy was locked when it shouldn’t have been?

“I just figured she was late coming back from lunch, and the patient had another appointment in the G.I. lab two doors down, so I took him there first.
That
took a couple of hours…”

“Well, it’s three-thirty, maybe she left early after her patient didn’t show up.”

“I checked her time card…she didn’t punch out.”

“A lot of people forget to punch out; I forget myself once in a while.”

They were at the door.

The security guard rapped on the door.

“I did that,” the orderly said.

“So I’m doing it again.” He had no patience with civilians who felt they knew security procedures better than he did. He’d been a guard for thirteen years. He rapped harder.

“I’m telling you, I pounded on the door for five solid minutes. If she’s in there, she would have answered.”

“Maybe she was in the bathroom.” He glared at the orderly, noting several stains on the guy’s uniform. His own uniform was dark blue and didn’t show stains but even if he was wearing white, he’d never present such a sloppy appearance.

“For five minutes?”

“How the hell do I know? It’s not something you can rush.”

“She’s not answering now,” the orderly said pointedly.

His smile was not meant to be friendly. “Thank you for telling me…I’d never have figured that out on my own.” He took his ring of keys off the belt hitch. “By the way, where is your patient?”

“They had to give him so much Valium to relax him for the endoscopy, he couldn’t hold his head up straight.”

“Endoscopy? Is that where they…?”

“Yeah…anyway, he wasn’t in any kind of shape to have therapy, physical or otherwise.”

The security guard located the master key, inserting it into the lock. Then he pushed the door open.

The lights were still on; it did not have the look of a department closed for the night.

The orderly passed him going in, heading straight for the employee lounge. The guard followed.

“Look,” the orderly said when he came into the small room. He pulled a glass decanter out of a small coffee machine. He swirled the coffee around; it was darker and thicker than fresh coffee, like it had been kept warm and some of the water evaporated off.

“I see it.” The guard looked around the room which was cramped with the two of them in there.

“She left it on. She wouldn’t have left it on if she’d gone home.”

The guard shrugged, unimpressed. “She could have simply forgotten. This close to Christmas, people get a little absent-minded. It’s well documented.”

The orderly pushed by him to get out of the door.

He was getting more and more annoyed.

He looked at the row of lockers, none of which were locked. That’s how much good civilians were at security measures: give them a safe place to lock up their valuables and they’d leave them hanging like so much fruit, ripe for picking.

Sighing, he stepped closer to the lockers and opened the first one. He could hear the orderly, apparently going through desk drawers. Did he expect to find her in there?

In the second locker he found a purse.

Surprised, he pulled it out, letting the strap hang over two fingers.

“This what you’re looking for?” he called out.

The orderly came back into the lounge. “See?”

“Yes, I see…I found it.” He reached into the purse and dug around for a wallet. Extracting the wallet, he slipped the purse strap over his shoulder, out of the reach of the orderly.

“Let’s see.” He opened the wallet, noticing that there was a fairly thick wad of bills. He flipped to the credit card compartment, searching for a driver’s license. “Anne Beverly Rossi.”

“That’s her. Are her car keys in the purse?”

Without commenting, the guard returned the wallet to the purse and peered inside. He stuck his hand in and brought out a key ring.

“Okay,” he said then. “She left her purse with money and car keys in the department. She’s somewhere on the hospital grounds. Did you think to page her?”

For once the orderly did not seem to have an answer.

“Why don’t you ask the operator to page her?” He spoke slowly, as if to an idiot.

“Yeah, but…” he reached and took the keys out of the guard’s hand. “Her key to the department is here on this ring. Why would she lock herself out?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe that’s what happened. She locked herself out and…” Everyone on staff at the hospital knew that the guards had keys and so did most of the supervisors. All she had to do was go to a phone and call for someone…even housekeeping…to let her in.

The orderly obviously realized the same thing and was smiling at him nastily.

He grabbed the keys back and put them into the purse.

“Then I guess I’ll notify administration that we have a missing employee.” He went to use the phone at the desk, looking around at the department. Nothing seemed to be disturbed…not like there’d been a struggle or anything. The only thing not in perfect order was a small puddle of water near the hydrotherapy pool.

Waiting for the operator to answer, he frowned.

Water on the floor was a hazard. All of the safety films that were shown to the employees during orientation stressed the danger of slick floors. Especially in patient areas.

A stack of thick white towels were folded on a shelf only two feet away from the therapy pool.

He narrowed his eyes. At this angle and without his glasses, it was hard to tell. But it looked like something was floating in the pool.

Swallowing hard, he hung up the phone, and walked slowly toward the pool. When he was halfway there, he stopped.

He had found Anne Beverly Rossi.