Arsenic for the Soul (3 page)

After much hesitation, she greedily
obliged. Blinded by the anger she felt for feeling like a failure,
an object, and a disappointment in her father’s eyes, she almost
murdered her client.

Before she could inflict the killing
blow, Detective Nikolai Koslov detained her. Faced with the threat
of prison, Vivian promised to serve as his informant in the search
for the serial killer. If she proved a valuable asset, her criminal
record would be expunged.

Adding another layer to his growing
list of temptations, Nikolai promised to help her re-enroll in
school and rise above her failures.

She also met Camilla
Vesely, the crime reporter for
Blaze.
Camilla was sniffing out the
trail out of the Prague killer when she found Vivian. Ever since,
they became steadfast companions who helped each other elude death
more than a few times.

At the end of their journey, Nikolai
proved to be a traitor concealing his own dark secrets sprinkled
throughout the investigation. He turned on Vivian and triggered a
spree of violence that ended with innocent blood on his hands,
including Vivian’s father, Keung Xu.

Keung was still recovering in the
University Hospital from another surgery.

He owed his near death experience to
Nikolai, who shot him as he tried to interfere with Vivian’s
arrest. Her arrest had no legal grounds to execute. Nikolai pinned
a murder he brazenly committed on Vivian to tie up the loose ends.
Apparently, Vivian knew enough about Syllax to jeopardize Nikolai’s
career—only because he was addicted to Syllax.

The bullet Nikolai fired paralyzed
Keung from the waist down, confining him to a wheelchair or a bed.
After several months of resting at home, he returned to the
hospital for chronic pain in his spine. He was scheduled to undergo
another operation within weeks. Perhaps Vivian would stop by his
room today after clinicals.

Those memories scattered like
windblown frost and she found herself back in the University
Hospital. She felt Milo’s cold touch on her arm as the needle
pressed against her skin.

She winced as it slid into her vein
like a sliver of ice.

“
All done,” Milo said. “It
wasn’t too bad, I hope?”

“
I’d be lying if I said
yes, but don’t feel too heartbroken.” Vivian stroked her arm. “I
have a phobia of needles.”

“
I think you picked the
wrong career if you want to stay away from needles. Give it a few
months and drawing blood will become second nature to
you.”

“
I don’t mind giving
someone else a vaccine. I’d just rather not be on the receiving
end.”

Milo stripped off his gloves and
tossed them in the biohazard bin.

“
So tell me, Vivian, what
made you go into nursing?”

“
My aunt played a key role
in my decision. I used to visit her all the time at her nursing
room. I did my best to take care of her even when the nurses were
trying to shoo me out of the room. She seemed so vulnerable and
disconnected from the nurses and I thought that was wrong. I wanted
to do anything I could to make the pain go away. Sometimes I’d
visit her every weekend and chat about how things were turning
around in my life. She’s had such an impact on me.”

“
She sounds like a
wonderful woman to have inspired you. You’re lucky to have such a
special bond. Does she know?”

Vivian’s eyes glossed over.

“
I hope so.” Vivian’s aunt
had passed away two years ago. Her death came only a month before
Vivian ran away. Milo seemed to catch her meaning and he quickly
occupied himself with his chart.

“
I’m sure she
knows.”

Their eyes locked and Vivian’s heart
leaped into her throat.

“
Any advice for a newbie
like me?”

Milo leaned in close and lowered his
voice to a whisper.

“
Stay clear of Dr.
Crenshaw. He has a habit of wiping the floors with students
here.”

Vivian grinned.

“
Thanks.”

She hopped down from the examination
table, feeling recharged and keen to begin the next chapter in her
life as a nursing student.

“
It was a pleasure to meet
you, Vivian,” Milo said, clasping her hand. “Maybe we’ll see each
other again.” His touch conveyed a depth of two close friends
reuniting after years of separation, not the touch of two crossing
strangers. It filled Vivian’s body with a warm glow and she blushed
again, much to her irritation.

“
You too, Milo.”

She smiled sheepishly and left before
her face could match the color of her scrubs.

She was anxious enough about her first
day at the hospital without adding heart throbs to the mix. Still,
the young man lingered in her thoughts as she started her first day
of clinicals in the emergency wing.

TWO

“
Code blue!” The doors
burst open to the emergency department as a gurney plowed
through.

A woman in critical condition was
rushed into the emergency room with the cardiac arrest team in tow.
Vivian steered clear of the nurses as they checked for a pulse and
prepared an oxygen mask for ventilation. Everyone seemed to have a
role to fulfill except her. She was delegated to a passive
bystander with little direction.

A nurse applied leads to the patient’s
chest and hooked them up to a monitor while Vivian watched. Perhaps
it was the voyeur in her but she scanned for any sign of injury on
the patient. Instead of bruises and broken bones, strange lesions
marked the woman’s body. The raw skin encircled her neck and cheeks
like a pustulous growth.

“
What’s the story on her?”
a reedy voice snapped. The voice belonged to a
balding man with tuffs of receding hair cropping up behind his
ears. Horn-rimmed glasses rested on his beaked nose and his eyes
were locked in a perpetual grimace.
This
short-tempered surgeon was unmistakably Crenshaw.

“
We don’t know her name.
She’s been having fits since the ER brought her in. She collapsed
of cardiac arrest in the lobby.”

Vivian quickly put two and two
together after a quick study of the woman’s clothes and hygiene.
She was homeless and endured too many nights in the cold alleys of
Prague. Her clothes were soiled and the smell she exuded turned
Vivian’s stomach.

What didn’t add up were the markings
on the woman’s skin. The angry blister encircled her neck and
crawled up to her left eye. Similar abrasions erupted across her
arms.

Her skin was tinged blue, especially
her fingertips and lips.

“
She’s
deteriorating—quickly, let’s get her prepped for an
endotracheal!”

Without warning, the woman convulsed
and spewed bloody phlegm from her lips. She flailed and attending
nurses were forced to pin her down.

In the midst of the chaos, Vivian felt
helpless. As voices shrieked around her about fluid aspiration,
blood pressure, and adrenaline injections, she froze.

Crenshaw inserted a laryngeal blade in
the unconscious patient’s mouth and swept the tongue to the left.
Once the vocal cords and glottis were in sight, he slowly advanced
the endotracheal tube inside. The device would suction and clear
the airway to prevent any further obstruction.

Vivian couldn’t understand why her
brain felt detached from the rest of her body. Why couldn’t she
move when someone’s life hung in the balance? She’d faced a killer
before without breaking a sweat, for God’s sake.

“
Is her blood pressure
hanging in there?”

“
No, we’ve lost heart
activity!”

Suddenly, Vivian was shoved aside as a
nurse stormed forward to apply CPR compressions. AED pads were
promptly slapped onto the patient’s bare torso while the device
charged.

“
Everyone
clear!”

The team receded as a shock was
delivered to her faltering heart.

“
Do another round of
compressions before we shock her again.” The routine repeated for
the next two minutes in a battle of suspense before divine judgment
was handed down. The defibrillator monitor revealed no signs of
heart activity.

Another shock wouldn’t change the
outcome.

“
We lost her.”

The stillness that fell over the room
was palpable. Vivian stared at the woman’s body lying under the
blue drapes. Blood and medical supplies littered the floor in
testament to the team’s valiant but ultimately fruitless attempts.
Crenshaw was the first to break the silence.

“
Take note of the scarring
here.” Other students present in the team drew closer to ogle their
morbid specimen. “See the sores on her nose and lips? And notice
the damaged veins. What conclusions can you draw based on this? Any
pre-existing conditions?”

The few students assembled didn’t dare
answer wrong and invite his mockery.

“
Heroin abuse,” the doctor
said, poking the marks on her arms with an instrument. His disgust
shined through with a wicked scowl.

Vivian’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t
believe how apathetic he was to the tragic loss, as if she was
beneath his saving talents. Vivian immediately took a disliking to
Crenshaw. She had seen her share of heroin victims in the alleys of
Prague when she lived as the Red Widow. That being said, this woman
didn’t fit the traditional cast of drug users.

“
That doesn’t look like a
heroin overdose to me.”

Crenshaw’s fiery eyes looked like they
might roll out of their sockets.

“
And would you be so kind
as to enlighten us with your drug expertise?”

“
These lesions look
characteristic of a disease. Don’t you see the scabbing?” Vivian
blushed as chuckles ignited around her. She tried to recall the
diseases she read about last week to back up her theory. Of course,
that knowledge escaped her when she was on the spot. “It could be
impetigo, which forms scaly lesions on the face and neck. It can
also lead to ulcers or sores—”

“
Impetigo doesn’t strike
adults. It’s a children’s disease so your theory falls short. Maybe
it would be smart to have a firmer grasp of disease before you
start diagnosing adults with diaper rash.”

A few students smirked at Vivian and
cast admiring glances at the hideous Crenshaw.

“
And you’d have to be blind
or stupid to overlook the needle tracks on her arms,” Crenshaw
added. “As for the lesions, heroin users will often pick at their
skin because of uncontrollable itching. This can lead to all manner
of ugly scabs and scars. There is nothing remotely extraordinary
about this woman’s condition except how she managed to stay alive
as long as she did. It looks to me like she spent one too many
nights shooting up dope.”

“
As opposed to catching a
disease without proper shelter or food? Did medical school also
teach you to stereotype your patients?”

“
I have over thirty years
of experience in the medical field over you. Count yourself lucky
if you survive a few days without becoming an embarrassment to your
program.”

“
Is that what thirty years
in the ER does to your conscience? Turn you into an
insect?”

Her jab was too weak to penetrate
Crenshaw’s hide.

“
Impetigo,” he chuckled. He
may as well have spat in her face.

Incensed, Vivian shouldered her way
out of the emergency room. She had only gone ten paces before a
rough hand seized her.

Vivian spun around to look into the
porous, hateful face of the surgeon.

“
I don’t like being
humiliated in front of my team,” he breathed. “Least of all by a
smart ass who barely knows one end of a stethoscope from the
other.”

“
Let go of me
now
.”

Vivian’s muscles bunched. It required
all of her strength not to break his nose.

“
I don’t tolerate
disrespect from anyone, student or not. You’d do well to let that
lesson sink into your brain now. Trust me, it will make your life
much easier here or it could shorten your stay in the program. I
can have you booted from here in the short time it took for the
heroin to stop that woman’s heart. Maybe if you took the time to
learn from your betters instead of pretending to be smart, you’d
have a better idea of that. Is that easy enough for you to
understand?”

“
You have five seconds to
let me go.”

It would only take a small spark to
set off the lethal pair.

Vivian reeled back from the waxy smell
of Crenshaw.

“
Now go back to the
emergency room and scrub down the equipment. If I have to, I’ll
drag you back in there—”

Crenshaw suddenly noticed dozens of
eyes focused on him. Nurses and technicians stopped in the middle
of their tasks to watch the showdown between the surgeon and the
equally feisty Vivian.

“
Clean up the room.
Now.”