Do No Harm (13 page)

She did not seem to notice when he rose from the bed. He opened the footlocker and removed a container of DrainEze and a Pyrex beaker. Alkali filled the beaker quickly when he poured, the white gradation numerals outlined clearly against the blue liquid.

He put the DrainEze container back in the footlocker and closed it. The full beaker sat alone on the table. He stood beside it like a stern patriarch in a family portrait, knuckles pressed to the scarred wood. She did not look up from the wing. "It's eautiful," she said.

Clyde picked up the beaker and set it back down with a small thump. Still, she did not look up. She was playing with the wing and smiling.

The mattress bounced her up a bit when he sat beside her. "You need to go," he said.

Fingers working through the soft feathers. "Huh?"

"You need to go. If you go now, I won't tell anyone about your dog."

Her eyes narrowed--she had forgotten about the dog. She set the wing gently back in the shoebox and rose, her long jumpsuit top dangling over her thighs like a dress. She pulled up her panties, then yanked on her pants, forcing her legs through without pointing her toes.

Clyde held his sweating head in his hands. "Go," he said. "Go."

She paused beside the table, rising up on her tiptoes to peer into the Pyrex beaker, though it was clear. "Uht is this?" she asked. "It's pretty. Pretty blue."

He rubbed his temples, rubbed them hard. "Taste it," he said.

Tentatively, she dipped a fingertip into the liquid. It colored the tip of her print like a blue condom. She stared at it for a moment. "Ow," she said, shaking her hand. "Ow." When she twirled her finger in the fabric of her top, it left a blue stain on the bunny's cheek. "Ow," she said. She stuck her finger in her mouth, made a face, and spit onto the floor. She gagged and drooled a little.

"Go," he said. His fingers dug through his tufts of hair, gathering them.

"I on't like that," she said. She spit again.

He did not look up at the sound of the closing door, though his fists tightened around handfuls of hair.

"Go," he said.

THE scream reverberated through the ER. Adrenaline pumping, images of flying alkali and blistering faces racing through his mind, David sprinted through the CWA to Hallway Two.

A disheveled man was shaking Pat against the wall, banging her head while two nurses and a lab tech looked on, stunned. "You stole my fucking tote bag," he yelled. "Where is it?" He wore a baseball cap, though the back of his head was sticky with blood.

Ralph was running down the hall, his full set of security keys jingling against his thigh, but David reached the attacker first and dug a thumb into the spinal accessory nerve at the base of his neck. The man yelped and dropped away from the pressure, as David hoped he would. As he fell, he swung his elbow and caught David in the temple. David reeled back, his free hand striking a stray crash cart, but he didn't release his grip. He caught the man's loose hand and found a pressure point, digging his nail into the fat part of his thumb. The man cried out and his body went slack again, this time long enough for David to get him on the ground. Ralph dove on top of him, then another security officer slid into the mix. The man spread himself flat and stopped resisting. He reeked of booze.

David emerged from the pile, a hand pressed to his temple. A flap of skin had lifted on the back of his knuckle where it had struck the cabinet. The white of his UCLA security shirt stained with blood from the back of the guy's head, Ralph hauled him to his feet.

"I didn't mean no trouble, man," the guy whined. "I just wanted my tote bag back."

Pat was bent over, hands on her knees, gasping. "He came in with a head lac. I was trying to get him into an exam room."

"Someone call LAPD, West LA station," David said. "Ask for Detective Yale."

As Ralph and another guard moved the man briskly toward the lobby, David turned to the staff who'd gathered around. "All right. Everyone who's not with a critical patient, into the CWA. Where's Dr. Lambert?"

A radiology resident breezed by. "MIA as usual."

David headed back first and waited patiently for the others to congregate, pressing some gauze to the back of his knuckle. "A few new considerations," he said. "Until the assailant is apprehended, we're going to have to be on heightened alert. The easiest way for the assailant to escalate his ER attacks would be to come in here posing as a patient. So grab a partner before going into a room alone with a male patient. And if you find yourself with someone who appears to be aggressive, get out of the room and find security. These are shitty conditions to work under, I understand, but for now they're a necessity."

An intern piped up from the back. "That guy they just hauled off. You think he's the guy?"

David raised the gauze from his hand and saw it was spotted with blood. "We can always hope."

David sat on the examination table, suturing his own knuckle. His first quiet five minutes of the day. Diane stood near enough that her thigh brushed his knee. She kept it there.

Yale had informed David within a few hours that they'd been unable to establish a connection between the man who'd attacked Pat and the alkali thrower. David had been surprised at the sharpness of his disappointment. The cops had found the tote bag that the man had been so desperate to protect in the waiting room under a chair. It hadn't contained lye after all. The cops were holding the man for assault, but Yale said he didn't fit the profile they'd been working up for the alkali thrower; he was too socially integrated.

David pulled the suture high, using his teeth to keep one side taut, and guided the needle through the loop with his thumb. "One-handed sutures. Reminds me of internship." He yanked the top of the string so the knot slid down and nestled near his flesh. "You should see Peter tie these. He's like a magician with his hands."

Diane rolled her eyes. "Maybe you should have been a surgeon."

"Cut this." She leaned over with the scissors, and he felt the softness of her hair on his forehead. He hoped his triceps didn't look too soft beneath the cut sleeves of his scrub top, and he laughed silently at himself for having such juvenile thoughts.

He rose briskly and opened the door. A group had gathered outside. Carson stood in the front. "Uh, Dr. Spier, we decided in light of your courageous escapades today, and your fighting spirit, we should present you with this prize." Pat handed him a box with a ribbon on it, and several lab techs giggled.

David opened it to reveal a pair of bright red boxing gloves. The group exploded in laughter. At Carson's prompting, David slid the gloves on, careful not to lift the suture, and raised his fists as Pat snapped a Polaroid.

They laughed and joked for a few minutes, and then David headed to the doctors' lounge to put away the gloves. When he opened the door, he recognized Sandra's mother sitting on one of the chairs, facing an open locker. A diminutive Asian woman with a sad, thoughtful countenance, she'd evidently come to retrieve her daughter's things. She held Sandra's white coat in her hands, her shoulders trembling. David realized she was crying.

Feeling foolish, he lowered his hands, red puffy globes in the boxing gloves. Lost in grief, Sandra's mother did not take note of his presence. He wanted to move forward to comfort her, to rest an arm across her shoulders, but found he was paralyzed.

After a moment, he pulled off his gloves, walked back to the CWA, and located Diane. "Sandra's mother is in the lounge," he said. "I think you might want to . . . "

Diane nodded and handed off the chart she'd been scribbling on. He watched her head back to the doctors' lounge without hesitation.

He felt suddenly ineffective.

DALTON slouched down in the backseat of the LA Express Airport Shuttle van, and Yale looked over at him with a grin. "The windows are full tint," he said. "We're covered."

Dalton pulled himself up in his seat with a groan. "That's just how I sit," he said. Like Yale, Dalton wore a surveillance piece, the clear plastic tube hooking around his ear, the spring coils hidden beneath his hair. The tube connected to a wire that disappeared beneath his back collar, and hooked into a Motorola Saber radio strapped over one of his love handles.

"Our boys have been bedded down since five this morning," Yale said. He leaned forward and tapped the driver. "Jerry, bring it around through the parking kiosks and into the ER lot. We're gonna do a drive-through and see how it looks."

Because of the high-profile nature of the case, it had taken less lobbying to get approved for the overtime necessary to do a stakeout. In the end, the Captain had personally called the Mayor; he'd managed to pull six undercovers, whom Yale had briefed at the West LA station. Yale had asked Dalton not to attend the briefing, so he could assess the stakeout with fresh eyes.

Dalton leaned forward, focusing as they turned left off Le Conte and approached the parking kiosks. Blake, the older UCPD cop from whom they'd acquired the case, leaned out the window. He wore a baseball cap and a University of California Parking T-shirt. "That'll be five dollars please." He did not so much as glance at the two officers in the back of the van, maintaining their cover.

"Actually, sir," Jerry said, "we're just pulling down to the ER. I believe there's no charge for ER short-term parking."

"All right." Blake waved them forward.

"What the fuck?" Dalton muttered as they pulled away.

Yale shrugged. "UCPD wanted in, and, to be fair, they have a better idea how parking works here."

"Why not someone younger? For parking, you should've pulled a twenty-two-year-old out of the academy or something."

"Politics," Yale said. "They're still chafing we yanked him and Gaines from the case, so we cut Blake in on the loop. Besides, given the second attack, we don't mind sharing juris as much. It's more than a glam case now. It's a fucking plague."

"If our guy's familiar with this area of the hospital, new faces might throw him."

"The parking workers switch all the time, from complexes all over campus. There are new faces every week."

Dalton made a noise of resignation and turned in the seat, taking in the surroundings as the van veered right and headed toward the ambulance bay. An old man sat on the bus stop bench, a girl with pigtails sitting on his lap and trying to untangle a yo-yo from her legs. An overweight woman assisted her elderly mother up the walkway from the ambulance bay into the PCHS lot. A homeless man padded by on Reeboks, pushing a shopping cart filled with cardboard boxes and plastic bags, and two Mexican gardeners worked on their hands and knees on the stretch of ground ivy to the right of the ambulance bay. A trench they'd dug left some piping exposed, and one leaned over with a wrench, pushing his fanny pack to the side. A scattering of tall trees, mostly pines, framed the edges of the buildings and the parking structure.

The van drove down the ramp into the subterranean ambulance bay and idled alongside an ambulance double-parked at the left curb. UCLA CRITICAL CARE TRANSPORT was block-lettered on the side; the back windows were blacked out. Yale slid the van door open and stepped out and immediately through the back doors of the ambulance. Dalton followed suit, slamming the ambulance door behind him. The two officers sat on small stools, peering out the one-way rear windows. The shuttle van U-turned in the narrow space and passed them, heading up out of the ambulance bay. Concrete pillars, painted blue at the bases, set off the parking strip to their left. Beyond that, near the entrance, a chain-link fence enclosed a utilities storage area. Plenty of natural light spilled down the ramp, and the rows of fluorescent lights overhead colored the far reaches of the ambulance bay a tired yellow.

From their seats, Dalton and Yale had a clear view up the ramp; any incoming traffic or pedestrians would have to pass right by them. Beyond the ramp, a patch of grass was visible, as well as the parking turnaround and the edge of a kiosk.

"Well?" Yale asked.

"Nice touch, finding Mexicans for the gardeners. You pull them from Southeast or 77th?"

"From 77th. How'd you make 'em?"

"For starters, there's an LA sun overhead and no sweat stains on their shirts. The fanny pack couldn't be more obvious--what the fuck, are they European gardeners? Plus, their hair's a bit high and tight, but not much we can do about that."

"What else?"

Dalton tilted his head back and closed his eyes. "Oh yeah," he said. "I went through the academy with Garcia."

Yale pressed his lips together to keep from smiling. "And here I thought it was your keen detective skills." His fingers found the microphone beneath his shirt and pushed the button. Since they were on TAC12, there was no need to speak in code. "Garcia, Garcia, Yale."

Outside, Garcia faked scratching an itch beneath his shirt and activated his mike. "Yale, Yale, Garcia. Go ahead." Since he barely moved his lips, his vowels were better enunciated than his consonants.

"You got a friend who wants to say hello."

Dalton smiled as he spoke. "Garcia, you lazy spic, if you're not gonna work out there, at least fake it well. Splash some water on your shirt in the front, and a bit beneath your arms. Tell your buddy too."