Urgent Care (12 page)

Gina glanced once more in Nora’s direction and made an executive decision, deciding on a detour to Antonio’s. Nothing like a little pampering to purge your mind of a bad day. And it sounded like Nora had had a hell of a bad day already.

Her decision was reaffirmed as she drove. Nora jumped every time they stopped, looking around her as if expecting the killer to spring out from every alley they passed. When Gina finally arrived at Antonio’s, Nora didn’t get out of the car until after Gina handed the keys to the valet and came around to open her door.

Even then Nora hesitated, craning her head to look over her shoulder, down Walnut Street. “I think that black SUV followed us here.”

Gina restrained herself from rolling her eyes. “It’s Walnut Street, the week before Christmas. Everyone and their mother is down here. Relax, Nora. It’s not like this guy is after you.”

 

 

A
MANDA RETURNED TO THE PICU IN TIME TO help the respiratory therapist suction Zachary’s lungs. It was a tricky procedure, threading the catheter down his tiny endotracheal tube, taking care not to dislodge it, instilling a small amount of hypertonic saline to irrigate his damaged bronchi, and then suctioning the resulting sloughed-off debris back out. Zachary needed the procedure done every few hours so that the dead tissue wouldn’t accumulate and cause further damage. As more and more of the lining of his lungs was removed, Amanda could only hope that new, healthy lung tissue was left behind.

Afterward, she went and told his family how the procedure had gone, leaving the gory details out, and escorted his parents back to his bedside to continue their vigil.

“Do you need anything?” she asked them, wishing there were something she could do to give them the answers they desired. Mr. Miller didn’t appear to hear her. His wife answered with a weary shake of her head.

“Hey.
I
need something. Hey!”

Amanda whipped around to spot a teenage boy pushing an IV pole as he left the glass-walled isolation room.

“Get back inside,” she ordered, keeping her voice low. He looked very healthy for a PICU patient. The other patients’ parents noticed, looking up at the unruly intruder.

“Where are your parents?” She escorted him back inside the room and closed the door. According to the sign, he was under respiratory precautions. She grabbed a mask.

“Dad’s out of town; Mom went to track down that other doctor. The foxy black chick who came with the ambulance.”

Gina. So this was the patient who had stolen Narolie’s ICU bed. “Dr. Freeman.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He plopped down on the bed. “I’m a prisoner. But even a prisoner has rights.”

“You need to stay inside here. You’re contagious and the other patients have compromised immune systems; you don’t want to risk getting them sick.”

“What do I care?” he said sullenly. “They all look like they’re going to kick anyway.”

His words had to be born of fear and frustration—no one could be that callous, not at such a young age and not here, surrounded by all these critically ill children sustained by medical miracles and hope.

“Stop that,” she snapped. “Every one of those patients and their families and their doctors and nurses are fighting for their lives. You do not get to sit here, able to walk and talk, and say things like that.”

“So my life’s not worth fighting for?” He slumped back, challenging her with his insolent gaze.

“You wouldn’t be here if that were true and you know it.” She sat on his bed and paid him her full attention. “What’s your name?”

“Tank.” He glared at her in defiance.

“Tank. I’m Amanda. So what are you in for?”

“Don’t know. No one tells me anything. They keep asking me about some rash”—he rolled his eyes—“like having a few spots was the end of the world or something.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure, I guess.” He held out his arm and pulled up the sleeve of the too-large patient gown to show her a scattering of dark red and purple dots. Amanda pressed on them; they were slightly raised and didn’t blanch, but a few looked like they had a fine scale, as if irritated.

“When did they start?” she asked, getting up to wash her hands.

“How am I supposed to know? Jeezit, you’re just like them. Look, all I want is my freaking Game Boy. The Nazi nurses out there took it away. Are you going to help me or not?”

“You can’t use it here. It interferes with the equipment, and someone could get hurt.”

He flounced back on the bed as if she’d given him a death sentence. “C’mon. One little Game Boy isn’t gonna hurt anyone.”

“I’m sorry. But the child life department has some video game consoles that are safe to use. Want me to see if I can get you one of those?”

He closed his eyes, but his fists were clenching the sheet tight. “Whatever.”

From his tone, it was clear that the audience was over. Amanda left, the isolation doors swishing closed behind her. She stopped at the desk and put in a request for child life to come by and see Tank.

“Don’t know if they can,” the clerk said with an exasperated tone. “His mother left strict orders that no one other than medical personnel is allowed to see him. Not sure if that includes child life or not; I’ll have to check with Dr. Frantz.” She didn’t look too happy at the prospect. “You’d think that boy was some Hollywood star hiding out from the paparazzi or something, the way he acts.”

Amanda glanced across the ICU to Tank’s glassed-in cubicle. “No. He’s just a lonely teenager. Needs someone to talk to.”

“Well, according to his mother, he’s not supposed to talk to anyone. Got the feeling it wasn’t about protecting him, though—more about protecting her reputation or something. She seems embarrassed he’s here, like it’s some kind of secret.”

Amanda sighed, glancing at the clock. Narolie should be back from CT. This running to and from pediatrics to take care of her was going to get old real fast. But if she didn’t do it, who would? Certainly not Dr. Frantz. “Just see what you can do, please?”

“Sure thing, Amanda. But you owe me one,” the clerk said with a smile as she grabbed the phone.

“Thanks.”

 

 

“LYDIA, CAN WE TALK?” SETH COCHRAN WAS WAITING for Lydia as she emerged from a patient’s room, looking more weary and distraught than she’d ever seen him before.

“Sure, let’s use Mark’s office.” She told Jason where she was going and led Seth down the hall to the emergency department chief’s office. Once inside, she closed the door for privacy and turned to Seth. “Does it have something to do with Nora?”

“How’d you know?”

“The only time you look that miserable is when it has something to do with Nora.”

“Oh.” He began twirling a pair of hemostats around his index finger, thinking hard. “How well do you know Tommy Z?”

“I don’t
know
him at all.” Lydia tried to keep her disdain from her voice.

“So you don’t trust him?”

No, but she didn’t say so out loud. Tommy Z and Glen Bakker were both on her radar—stooges for Tillman. And whatever the CEO had in mind, it had nothing to do with patient care or the welfare of her staff. “Why?”

“Tillman sent him up to the OR to talk to me, pulled me out of a case. ‘Stress debriefing,’ he called it, said it was mandatory. But I’m thinking Tillman wanted something else—knew something, something I’d told TommyZawhile ago.”

“You lost me.”

He stared at her, assessing her. Lydia met his gaze without difficulty—she knew him well enough to know he’d talk if she just kept her silence. Most people did, especially people with something weighing heavily on them.

“You need to keep this in confidence,” he started. “But I don’t know who else to trust and I don’t know what to do—”

Lydia said nothing, still waiting, then he blurted out, “Tillman was sleeping with Karen.”

She blinked. Just like the megalomaniac Tillman to chase after a nurse. “How do you know?”

“Karen told me herself. Wanted to make me jealous or something. But I think it’s worse; I think Tillman made Tommy Z tell him something—something I told him in confidence, something that might be bad for Nora.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“Nora won’t let me help her—hell, she won’t even let me talk to her. I was hoping that maybe you could.” He sank back against the desk, shoulders hunched. “Nora was attacked two years ago. Today she told me it was by the same man who killed Karen.”

Lydia froze, processing the information. It explained so much—Nora’s need to protect those close to her, her work with sexual assault patients, her rigid need for structure, control. Damn, she should have seen it.

If Tillman went public—he could ruin Nora’s career. Not just through the public humiliation, but also by jeopardizing all the cases she’d worked on as a sexual assault examiner. Knowing that the nurse collecting the evidence was once a victim herself was the kind of fodder defense attorneys salivated over, claiming bias.

“Nora told you this?” she asked.

He nodded. “In June she told me she was raped on New Year’s Eve, two years ago. That was the first she said anything. I kinda already knew maybe something was wrong. But it’s not something you really can talk about, you know? Anyway, she said she was over it. Acted like it had been some kind of drunken mistake. She never told me any of the details, not until today.” His hands clamped onto the edge of the desk. “Not until after I saw what that butcher did to Karen.”

“Is that why you left Nora? Because she was raped?”

“God, no. Is that what she told you? What she thinks?” He scrubbed his palms over his face. “I wanted to marry her. I even went to a support group for families of rape victims, talked to Tommy Z. I couldn’t stand the thought that I might hurt her—that anyone could ever hurt her again. And I was so angry, frustrated, felt so powerless . . .” His expression grew sorrowful, and he blinked slowly. “God, I never wanted to hurt her. But somehow that’s all I seem able to do. Anyway, I screwed it all up.”

Lydia scrutinized him. She liked Seth—but that didn’t mean she was about to let him get near Nora again, maybe hurt her. “You screwed it up? Yeah, sleeping with Karen and letting the whole hospital see you might just do that.”

He was shaking his head before she finished. “No one understands. I didn’t sleep with Karen. I was so tied up in knots about asking Nora to marry me, about what I should do to protect her, make her happy, about doing all the right things so we could have a future together, that I started sleepwalking.”

“Sleepwalking? Right.”

“It’s true. I haven’t done it since I was a kid. Lucas can tell you—he even tested me in the sleep lab. Last month.”

She pursed her lips, still not quite believing him. After all, Nora had seen him with Karen. Could someone really sleep-walk his way into a sexual encounter?

“You told Tommy Z about Nora, about the rape?” she asked.

“I wanted to know how to help her—it was supposed to be confidential. I thought I was helping.”

“But you think Tommy Z told Tillman?”

“After what happened to Karen, Tillman is out for blood—he could fire Nora, ruin her career, or worse, tell the world about what happened to her.”

No one could fake the pain that filled his face.

“No matter what we do, that might still happen. Did she tell Jerry Boyle about all this?”

“I don’t think so. Not yet. Nora didn’t report the assault when it happened. She’s blaming herself for Karen.”

“More than two-thirds of rapes go unreported. Nora shouldn’t feel guilty—”

“Of course she shouldn’t.” He jerked his head up, ready to defend Nora. Lydia took that as a good sign. “I tried to tell her that, but, she won’t listen to me. Lydia, you have to help me help her. It’s not fair; she’s been through so much.”

“I think you already know what to do, Seth. Go to her, tell her the truth about you and Karen.”

“I tried. She won’t listen. And what if I make things worse? Screw up again?”

“Just be there for her.”

He sucked in his breath and nodded slowly. “You’re right.”

“Leave Tillman and Tommy Z to me. I’ll think of something.”

 

 

“I DIDN’T KNOW YOUR FATHER WAS A LAWYER,” Nora said, finally relaxing enough after a massage and facial to put her feet up on her chaise lounge as they waited for Gina’s hair to process. Antonio and his staff had fed them a light lunch, and they now both sipped pomegranate mimosas. Well, Gina sipped. Nora held hers, staring at the beads of water sliding down the glass as if they held the secrets of the universe. Maybe not so relaxed, after all.

Gina took another drink to hide her discomfort at the mention of her father. Her family was a well-kept secret from almost everyone at Angels. Even her roommate, Amanda, had met Gina’s parents, Moses and LaRose Freeman, only twice in passing. Gina had been mortified when LaRose had asked Amanda prying questions about her family in South Carolina. Amanda had lit up, describing the way her grand-parents had run shrimp boats, but her father, foreseeing the demise of the family-run fishing business, had converted the family docks to an engine shop and now offered “house calls” to rich boat owners from Hilton Head to Isle of Palms.

Gina’s mother had sniffed the air as if scenting diesel fuel, and when her father, the great and mighty Moses Freeman—one adjective was never enough to describe Moses—had shaken Amanda’s hand, he’d scrutinized it as if she still had grease under her fingernails. And the way they treated Jerry . . . Gina’s shoulders hunched in anger.

“My dad doesn’t take many local cases,” she said lamely, hoping Nora would drop it.

“Oh. Does he work for the government or something?”

Nora was only trying to distract herself from the events of the day, but Gina wished she’d picked another subject. She blew out her breath and set her glass down with a bang. The attendant checking her hair jumped, then scurried from the room.