Urgent Care (21 page)

Boyle quickly glanced through the rear rooms on the first floor, his flashlight dancing its way over the moldering piles of debris. “Nothing down here.” He turned to Nora, catching her face in his light like a deer on a dark highway. “You said he took you upstairs?”

Nora nodded. They rounded the corner and shone their lights on the staircase leading up to where Nora had said she’d been abandoned. The banister was missing, but the steps appeared intact. Graffiti overlapped graffiti, covering the steps, the wall, and the ceiling overhead, an effect that made the darkness more disorienting than ever. No sound except the occasional scurry of rodents and the hollow echo of the storm raging.

Boyle motioned for them to wait where they were as he climbed the steps and vanished into the black shadows beyond. Lightning arced outside the front window, blinding Lydia with its brilliance. Thunder followed, rattling the little glass remaining in the window.

When her eyes adjusted again, Lydia could see Nora standing at the foot of the stairs, her gaze focused on the darkness at the top. Anguish twisted her face, made even more ghostly in the flashlight’s sharp scrutiny. Lydia laid a hand on Nora’s arm. Goosebumps rippled across Nora’s flesh.

“Let’s get out of here,” Lydia said. “We can wait for Boyle outside, in the car.”

Nora took a step forward, shaking her head, her lips trembling.

“No. I need to see . . .” Her voice trailed away.

Boyle’s light returned to the top of the steps. “Which room, Nora? It’s like a maze up here.”

“Hold on,” Lydia hollered, covering for Nora as the other woman pressed her body against the wall and took several deep breaths. “We’re coming.”

The sound of Boyle’s cell phone made her jump. Someone—Gina, no doubt—had programmed it to play the “Bad Boys” theme from
COPS
. Even Nora managed a faint smile as she continued climbing up the steps.

Jerry called down from the landing. “Nora, have you seen your New Year’s date, Matt Zersky, since the night you were abducted?”

Nora shook her head, eyes creased in puzzlement. “No. But it was only our second date, we weren’t serious. And after what happened, I didn’t exactly seek him out. Why?”

“His parents reported him missing a week after you were abducted. No one has seen him since.”

Friday, 9:03 A.M.

GINA TRAILED AFTER DIANA DEFALCO AS SHE WENT to talk to Officer Jeremiah Boyle’s family; an ex-wife and a college-aged son surrounded by a crowd of black uniforms that filled the hallway.

“What happened, doc?” One of the police officers rushed forward when he saw them approaching. An advance guard.

Dr. DeFalco met his gaze and merely shook her head. The officer’s face blanked for a moment, and then he turned to face the others. Before Gina and DeFalco could say a word, the wife was crying, clinging to her son. The son was trying hard not to cry, to stand up straight and bear his mother’s weight.

“I’m sorry,” DeFalco began.

“The son of a bitch,” a cop muttered behind her, his words undercut by the sound of armed men adjusting their gun belts, preparing for war.

“We did everything we could,” DeFalco continued.

The wife nodded her head without ever looking up, her shoulders sagging. “I know,” she whispered. “I always knew it would be like this. Every night I went to bed dreading this moment.”

“Mom—” The son couldn’t say anything more, his face twisting in pain.

“We have a counselor—”

“No.” One of the officers stepped forward. “We can take it from here. Thanks, doc.”

“If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Anytime.” DeFalco backed off, but the ex grabbed at her sleeve. She missed, and caught Gina instead. Gina flinched, looking down at the woman with panic.

“Tell me,” Mrs. Boyle choked out the words. “Did he suffer?”

Gina opened her mouth, but a dry sputter was all that emerged. She couldn’t lie—she should, by all mercy, she should—but she couldn’t. But the son had already grasped his mother’s hand, releasing Gina.

“Not as much as we’re gonna make the bastard who did this suffer,” one of the men muttered as Gina backed away.

She pushed her way through the sea of uniforms, ignoring the sound of her name being called.

She found herself in the clean holding room. It was empty, and quiet except for the drip of a faucet. Gina sagged against the shelves, her vision blurred. Her legs trembled, then weakened, and she slid to the floor. She hugged her knees to her chest, burying her face.

The door opened and she glanced up. Ken Rosen stood there. Assessing her with the same unemotional scrutiny he brought to everything. “You look like you could use someone to talk to.”

“I look like a baby.” She swiped her fist across her eyes. “Go ahead and say it. It’s what Diana DeFalco thinks, it’s what everyone thinks, it’s what Jerry will think.”

“Jerry? What’s he got to do with this?”

“The cop who died? His name was Jeremiah Boyle—Jerry Boyle. I freaked. Still am. Can’t stop thinking—what if that had been my Jerry? What if I do marry him and someday he walks out the door and never comes back? What if I let him into my life, into my heart, and then lose him? Forever.”

Gina shook her head, her fingers massaging her throat, tangling in the chain where Jerry’s ring hung around her neck. “I don’t look good in black.”

The joke fell flat.

“You can’t think like that.” Ken finally broke the silence. “Bad things happen to all of us. And, as silly and awful and inconceivable as it sounds, life does go on. You will go on. Time has a way of healing things that even medicine can’t.”

“You sound like a freaking Hallmark commercial.”

He didn’t take the bait, but instead sat there beside her on the floor, holding her hand, saying nothing. As if their conversation yesterday—and the slap that accompanied it—had never happened. As if it didn’t matter. She blew out her breath, an unaccustomed feeling settling over her. Not quite serenity, not quite acceptance, not quite clarity . . . but almost.

“You know what the worst thing is?” Why couldn’t she stop talking? She didn’t want to say any of this, expose secrets she didn’t even allow herself to see. “When I imagine it—Jerry gone—I can’t even think of how it might happen or what he might suffer. All I see is me. Alone. All I can think is: Who would take care of me?”

She yanked Jerry’s ring free, holding it up to the light. It glistened like a star in the light of the single sixty-watt bulb. “Pretty selfish, huh? Selfish and stupid. But that’s me. That’s the kind of woman he’s getting.”

She tucked the ring away, stood, and brushed off the back of her scrubs.

Ken got to his feet as well. “You’re afraid he’ll regret his choice?”

“No,” Gina said, rearranging her stethoscope around her neck and adjusting her expression to her usual armor-plated banality. “I’m afraid
I
will.”

 

 

AMANDA AND LUCAS SCOURED THE CAFETERIA and gift shop looking for Tank and Narolie. “I thought the way he was complaining about the food, he’d come down here looking for something better.”

“Where else?”

“The kid in the teen lounge said something about they were watching the storm, but I don’t know where—” She stopped. “The research tower. It’s taller than the patient tower, has more windows, better views.”

“Okay, we can start at the top, work our way down.” They headed toward the elevators. Usually Lucas avoided elevators—microincubators, he called them—but Amanda had lost her postcall second wind and was starting to drag. No way was she about to climb up to the eighth floor where the pedestrian skyway connected the two buildings. Luckily they caught an empty elevator car.

“If we don’t find him, Dr. Frantz is going to kill me,” Amanda said as she pushed the button for the eighth floor. Until a few years ago it had housed all the call rooms and the helipad. After the research tower was built, the helipad was moved to a paved area beside the ER and now each floor had its own tiny call rooms.

“Stop worrying about Frantz,” Lucas said.

“What if I don’t match here at Angels?”

“Then we’ll go someplace else.”

“Are you crazy? How can you think of leaving? Except for medical school you’ve never lived anywhere else. Your dad’s here. Your research. Your career.”

“You go, I go. Besides, what medical center could resist hiring a double-boarded neurologist
and
a brilliant up-and-coming pediatrician?”

Even through her haze of fatigue, she realized what he was offering her. Change didn’t come easily to Lucas; he preferred his life predictable and well ordered. She turned to him, touching his arm. “When we first met, I thought you were the heartless logical one and I was the hopeless dreamer.”

“And now?”

“Now I think we’re both dreamers.”

“But not hopeless.”

“Not hopeless. Never hopeless.”

“I can live with that.” A whisper of a smile curved his lips.

Since when had she become the practical one in this relationship? But Amanda enjoyed seeing this whimsical side of Lucas. As if everything were meant to be—as if they were meant to be. No worries.

The elevator doors opened. Lucas turned left toward the skyway over to the research tower. Amanda stopped, noticing that the fire door leading out to the old helipad was loose, rattling in the wind. The large picture window beside it was smeared with sleet, but she saw movement outside that didn’t come from the storm. A crack of lightning illuminated two slim forms on the helipad, one lunging, the other grabbing.

“Lucas! They’re here!” Amanda wrenched the fire door open—a rock had been positioned to keep it from latching shut and locking. A gust of wind and sleet pummeled her, but over the noise of the storm she heard a boy’s voice.

“No! Stop it, stop it!” It was Tank, dressed in his school clothes, soaking wet, struggling against the wind as he ran after Narolie.

Narolie wore hospital scrubs with one foot bare, the other wearing a hospital slipper. Her hair was whipping in every direction, making her look like a force of nature, part of the storm. Then she looked back over her shoulder. Her face was twisted, eyes so big the whites shone all around, mouth open, screaming even though no sound came.

Amanda ran out onto the cracked concrete and gravel roof. The wind was stronger here, eight stories off the ground, and what was rain down below was frozen up here, biting, stinging as the wind hurled it at her. Twenty feet in front of her, Tank caught Narolie, hugging her from behind, trying to pull her away from the ledge.

“Narolie, you can’t fly home. Listen to me!”

A wordless screech came from Narolie, a sound that rippled its way down Amanda’s nerve endings, primal and terrifying. Narolie kicked and flailed, fighting Tank. Lucas caught up with Amanda, and together they herded the two teens back from the edge. Narolie’s hair was torn loose from her braids, matted around her face as she clawed at the air before her.

“What happened?” Amanda asked Tank as Lucas grabbed Narolie in a bear hug and hauled her inside.

Tank’s cheeks were flushed with cold, his eyes wide with fear. “It was just a little pot, that’s all. Just one little joint.”

She ushered him inside to the elevator bank and wrestled the door shut behind her. “How’d you get out there?”

Tank shrugged, his gaze fixed on Narolie, who was still fighting Lucas, lunging for the window. “All the door codes are the same. Wasn’t hard.”

“What do you think?” Amanda asked Lucas, who had resorted to sandwiching Narolie between the wall and his body to keep her from hurting herself. “Psychotic reaction to the marijuana?”

“Could be. How was she before?”

“Okay. She wanted to see snow,” Tank answered. “But then we got up here and she said her head hurt, she pulled at her hair, was hitting herself on the side of her head, crying for it to stop. So I gave her a joint and we went outside to smoke it. Thought it’d help. But she went nuts, ran away, wanted to fly.” Tank scuffed his foot against the floor, twisting it as if the linoleum were a worry stone. “She gonna be all right?”

“I don’t know yet,” Amanda answered, stabbing at the elevator call button again. “Where’d you get the joint, Tank?”

“Why?” he asked, suspicion edging his voice.

“Because it could have been dipped in PCP or LSD or combined with cocaine or anything.”

He shook his head. “No. It’s clean.”

Amanda wasn’t as sure as he was. Before she could ask more, Narolie slumped into Lucas’s arms, her body shuddering as a seizure overcame her.

Lucas supported the girl and did something Amanda had never heard him do before. He swore. “Damn.”

The elevator doors opened and Lucas scooped Narolie up into his arms, rushing inside. Amanda pulled Tank, who appeared frozen in shock, in with them.

“Where to? Should we take her back to peds?”

“No. The ER,” Lucas said, sitting on the floor and draping Narolie over his lap to protect her head and keep her airway open as her limbs flailed. “They’re better equipped.”

A few minutes later they were rushing through the hall to the ER, Lucas shouting orders as they reached the nearest exam room. Amanda worked beside him, helping to get oxygen onto Narolie, hooking up the IV, and pushing the anticonvulsant medication. Once the meds took effect, Narolie lay on the bed, unresponsive.

Amanda stroked Narolie’s hair back, untangling it from the oxygen mask. “She’s burning up.”

“Temp’s one-oh-four,” a nurse said.

“What’s wrong with her?” Tank said, clutching Narolie’s free hand. Amanda had to give him credit—despite the seizure and the frenzied activity, he’d stayed with Narolie.

“I wish I knew.”

 

 

NORA CLIMBED THE STEPS IN A HAZE. SHADOWS clung to her vision as Lydia’s and Jerry’s lights danced through the blackness.