Nothing Personal (12 page)

Kate didn’t mind. Steve didn’t mind. They ended up talking for another two hours, during which time Little Dick never took his eyes from Mary’s legs, Mary never took notice, and B.J. never showed up.

Kate lasted at the apartment for four entire days. For the first two she just slept with both the TV and stereo on and navigated her way to the bathroom, which seemed suddenly half a block away. Carver shadowed her every step, as if he were going to call 911 for her if she toppled over. Tim left the answering machine on so she never had to answer the phone, which was always reporters anyway, and the house was completely stocked, which meant she didn’t have to go outside, and that was all right because the story in the news had picked up steam.

The Angel of Death murders, everybody was
calling them. A killer stalking the halls of the hospital. Most of the newspeople were kind enough simply to refer to the prime suspect as a nurse employed by the hospital. But KSTL had blown the lid off the cookie jar with Kate’s name. Donations poured in to the defense fund and cranks called to ask if she knew a way to dispose of interfering mothers-in-law. Satellite trucks seemed to patrol the grounds of the hospital like sharks sniffing for blood, and the Administration had put a gag order on anyone but qualified sources talking to the media.

By the third day, Jules had found her way over. By the fourth, Parker and Sticks and Edna had followed, each more frustrated than the last, each brimming with news, gossip, and innuendo. Just what John would have wanted. What Little Dick would have fed on like chum. Nothing concrete, just whispers around the hospital about people who’d had the biggest axes to grind against any of the decedents: a nurse from recovery room who’d had a sexual harassment suit in the works against Fleischer at the time of his unfortunate demise; Hetty Everson from surgical ICU, overheard having one knock-down-drag-out fight with Attila and Mrs. Warner at the very same time about a patient transfer; Weiss getting sudden religion since Fleischer’s death, now claiming to be Kate’s personal champion.

At least Kate had finally learned the reason behind his sudden conversion. Between Kate and Tim, they’d kept Weiss away from Fleischer and his patient long enough to save Weiss’s tenuous
position on the house staff roster. Mr. Peabody, upon awakening in the unit, had spoken of a rather odd doctor storming into the room, but without Kate’s corroboration nothing had been done about it.

By the fifth day, against the advice of her doctor, her roommate, and her immediate supervisor, Kate spent her dinner hour in the nurses’ lounge of the ER. She felt a little stronger. Her hair was finally getting a little curl so she looked less like a cue-ball and more like Leslie Caron in an early Gene Kelly movie. And most important of all, she couldn’t stand another moment locked in a room with only Kate Manion to share her company.

Her little secret from the world. Her legacy from that circus she called childhood, which had left her with the nagging suspicion that no matter what she did it would be wrong, it would be insufficient, it would be stupid. Cleverly hidden all these years with bravado, tucked away beneath all the clatter and action of a career amid lights and sirens, damn near bricked in completely behind a solid wall of denial and sublimation. Set free again by a head injury and a madwoman with a grudge. By the sudden realization that if she really was as burned out as she feared, she would no longer have all the noise she needed to drown out the past. By the ruthless manipulation of people with more power than she so suddenly she felt again like that little girl cowering in a corner with nothing to protect her but inattention. Finally, by the need of people who depended on her to protect them when she knew she couldn’t.

And on top of it all, she still had to visit Aunt Mamie, who’d be more than happy to reacquaint her with it all personally.

Waiting only long enough to make sure that the latest camera truck was trolling the other end of the parking lot, Kate snuck out the door and hobbled over to the ER in search of noise and action and company to offset the quickly gestating anxiety that never seemed to ease from beneath her sternum anymore.

She got all three. She still didn’t get relief.

She watched as Sticks helped a little old man in a flapping patient gown from the bathroom and listened to O’Sullivan yelling at somebody who wasn’t holding a leg properly as he reduced a fracture. She saw the multitrauma patient being finished in room one and inhaled the peculiarly musky smell of human destruction. Not just blood but tissue, the kind of smell that made you wrinkle your nose and shy away unless you battled it for a living, a smell she hadn’t really recognized as such before. The signature of trauma.

Had she missed it? She’d sucked it in every day for ten years. Addicted to it, to the rush of exhilaration that dancing right on the edge provided, to the intense camaraderie of the people who played there, with their horrible humors, their sharp desperations, their heady triumphs.

But had she missed it? Did any tragedy move her anymore, or was she too dead to feel even that?

“Anybody know where Suzie is?” Parker asked, sticking his head out of a door. “Oh, hi, Kate. Back to work already?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I can do anything but walk, lift, and push. Where do you want me?”

“You seen Suzie?” he asked, his expression saying it all. “She was supposed to be back from lunch forty-five minutes ago.”

“That sounds about right. What’s the matter, you getting soft in your old age? You want as much of a break as she has?”

“I just want the job security she has. The only thing she’s done today is talk to her ex on the phone and yell at Sticks for throwing out her coffee. I don’t suppose she could be the murderer, could she?”

Kate shook her head. “Takes too much energy.”

Suzie was, of course, in the lounge. On the phone. Right in Jules’s way as she waited through the news for her visit with Vanna.

“Parker’s looking for you,” Kate told Suzie, to be met by a complete blank. Nothing new here.

Kate pulled up the couch and collapsed onto it.

“Couldn’t stay away?” Jules asked, scooting her chair over a little closer to Suzie’s at the table, not so much to see better as to invade Suzie’s space.

Kate propped her left leg on the rest of the couch so Suzie wouldn’t have a retreat and sighed. “I’m bored.”

“Read a book.”

“I read a book. I didn’t like it.”

Suzie scooted over a little farther and kept whining into the receiver. Not a particularly pretty woman, she left one with the impression of a small irritable dog. Kate felt sorry for her kids, who never seemed to get over their runny noses.

Jules never took her eyes off the set as she made another strategic move. Kate hadn’t noticed what the anchors were saying up there until she saw the distinctive oak paneling of the administration suite.

“Hey, I recognize that place,” she announced. “I was once personally reprimanded there.”

“I’ll call you back later,” Suzie snapped and slammed the receiver down with enough force to shake the table. Neither Jules nor Kate paid notice as she stomped out of the room.

“Has anyone ever figured out why she’s still working here?” Jules asked absently as the reporter questioned the hospital’s public relations director about the cause of the murders.

“Another one of those unsolved mysteries,” Kate acknowledged, by now just as attentive to the TV as her friend.

“…The entire staff is cooperating with the police,” the PR queen was saying in her most sincere manner. “Saint Simon’s has a long history of caring and commitment to this community. It would be tragic to let one single act of mindless violence overshadow that.”

“But there’s a possibility that up to three murders have already been committed,” the reporter retorted. “Is the public in any danger?”

“No, no, not at all. Whoever this disturbed individual is seems to be targeting only very select staff members, certainly not any of the patients, and I don’t believe the police think that will change. Besides, with every person in the hospital working overtime to help us apprehend the sus
pect, we’re certain the situation will be over very soon. After all, we’re family here. Everyone is pulling together to see that this nightmare is over soon.”

Timing is everything, Kate’s old drama teacher had once said. So Kate shouldn’t have been surprised that John chose this moment to storm into the lounge, fire in his eyes and a doctor’s order sheet fluttering from his hand.

“Yeah, I t’ought you’d be here,” he accused, waving his prize at Kate as if damning her with it. “I been lookin’ all over for you.”

“John?” she asked, straightening with surprise at the energy he was expending. “What’s wrong?”

“You wanna see what I foun’ on de bulletin board in the coronary care unit?” he demanded. “Right dere for anybody to see?”

Kate made a couple of stabs at the paper before catching hold. “Yes,” she admitted. “I’d like to.”

John let go and Kate finally saw what had him so flushed.

She couldn’t help it. It was like getting that perfectly inappropriate impulse to giggle at a funeral. She took one look at what was in her hands and broke out laughing. Then she handed the paper to Jules, who laughed too.

“What’s so funny ’bout dat?” John demanded.

What was so funny was the fact that he didn’t understand.

It was a note. A very modest note, neatly typed, probably on one of the myriad hospital typewriters on some of the endless supply of
paper forms for the hospital’s ubiquitous paperwork.

Simply stated, it read,
DEAR SERIAL KILLER. FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION:

And then, below the salutation, was a list of names. The first six or seven were typed. After that, another thirty or so had been added in every color and handwriting style imaginable. Several rated comments, and most ratings on a scale of one to ten.

One vote had been cast for Roseanne Arnold, one for Rush Limbaugh, and two for Madonna. Other than that, every name on the list was one Kate would have put there if she’d had enough to drink. Administrators, chiefs of service, a couple of those mindless paper pushers who interfered with every nursing decision made at the hospital, several workers who managed to avoid work at any expense. People more interested in protecting their position than their patients. Suzie had the honor of holding down position number eight, with a bonus of four exclamation points.

“It’s a pretty long list,” Kate acknowledged.

“Especially for a hospital family that’s working together to see the end of this nightmare,” Jules agreed. “I don’t guess you got anybody to admit to putting it up.”

“You’re not helpin’,” John accused, waving a hand at the thing as if it had come to life and bit him. “You’re not helpin’ a bit.”

Nobody saw Edna step into the room until she pulled the list from Kate’s hand. When she saw
that Gunn’s name was at the very top, she simply nodded and handed it back. Then she smiled over at John.

“One should always prioritize,” she said simply and walked out.

John damn near went ballistic. “What is it wid you people?” he demanded. “You got murder victims here, ya know?”

“We know,” Kate admitted. “But when the slaves get to revoltin’, John, they don’t always remember to leave the good massas alone.”

John was notoriously short of humor. “What de hell you talkin’ about, girl?”

“Control, John. Power. You at least have the illusion of it. You carry a gun, and whether or not you’re ever going to use it, you can at least pretend it gives you power over something. After all, how can you lose an argument with a nine millimeter on your side? We have squat. Shit, the way things are, most days we don’t even know who to go after if we’re mad.” She shrugged. “We’ve been mad a long time now.”

Kate wasn’t sure John really understood. Jules did.

“My,” she mused with a cat-in-the-cream smile. “That was quite a speech for you.”

Kate just nodded. “Thank you.”

“I still don’ see it helpin’ any, little girl,” John insisted. “I’m standin’ here wid maybe three murders and not one decent goddamn clue.”

“You have an idea of just what might have set this off,” Kate retorted evenly. “Take it to Mary Cherry and see what she thinks.”

“Mary
who?
” Jules retorted.

But by then John had walked out.

Kate held off as long as she could. Finally, though, it was go home or stay for night shift. She realized it would be a while before she could swing down those halls with impunity, since just sitting in the lounge totally wasted her. It didn’t really matter, though. She couldn’t go back to work yet anyway. Not till she felt something. Anything.

Hell, she thought, struggling across the driveway on her crutches, the halogen lights staining the faint green of the lawns and hedges a sick orange in the darkness and turning the soft white of the hospital into a fortress. I can’t even feel anything about dead co-workers. How can I feel something about work?

Time, she promised. Let all the traumas heal and it’ll come back. She’d wake up one day and cry for Fleischer and Warner and then positively yearn to walk back on the lane. Until then, she should be patient.

Until then, she had only herself to keep company.

Well, she thought, as she slowly maneuvered into the dim apartment, at least I have mail. It was stuffed in the mail slot, slid under the door. Kudos and complaints. Money and ministrations. Kate decided she’d pour herself a little of the old malt and sit down to go through it. First, she played the answering machine. Tim had called twice from his rotation down at Children’s. Four or five
reporters wanted her exclusive story, including one television magazine who would pay her big bucks to reenact her crimes on film. They kept calling, she’d have crimes to reenact.

And then, the sere, stern voice that still haunted her after all these years.

“You can’t escape your responsibilities, Mary Kathleen. I had to contact your workplace to get your number.” Kate would personally kill whoever had given it out. “I expect to see you this week, as planned. After all, young lady, you were the one who asked for this arrangement.”
Click
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