Nothing Personal (16 page)

Jules looked up from the chart she was working on. “Oh, now, Mr. Spring, we’ve talked about that,” she protested, getting to her feet. “Remember? You’re going to meet Persephone in the subterranean caves on the fifth floor.”

Fifth floor. St. Simon’s Land of Enchantment.

“See?” Kate smiled brightly. “I’ll bet if you go back to your room, your guide to the netherworld will be waiting for you already.”

“You’re sure?” he asked Jules. “That other man told me she was in the police car and she wasn’t.”

Jules was already there, slipping an arm around the young man’s shoulder. “Of course she wasn’t,” she agreed gently, her earlier frustration briefly vanishing as she dealt with her patient. “How can she possibly bring the world back to life staring down the muzzle of a shotgun?”

Kate actually found herself smiling right along with Mr. Spring.

He turned one last time for Kate. “I remember now. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“My pleasure.”

“I’m so sorry about your injury. What happened?”

She couldn’t help it. “Achilles heel.”

Her little friend trotted off, exposing more humanity than a season should, and Kate went back to her drugs thinking that maybe she could just deal with the Fantasy Brigade. She’d at least gotten a little giggle out of that one.

“My, look at you! I’m so glad to see you looking so well.”

Speak of the Fantasy Brigade. Kate hadn’t even noticed old Polyester floating down the hallway like a vague apparition. The little nun patted Kate on the arm as if she’d just caught her playing hooky and smiled.

Kate did her best to choke down the second aspirin and smile back. “Hi, Sister. Busy tonight, huh?”

Sister Ann Francis nodded emphatically. “I know I should be up visiting with the pre-op patients, but I feel I can do so much more here.”

“Get the fuck outa here!” some drunk screamed at the top of her lungs a couple of doors down. Kate was just sure she’d love a visit from the little nun.

That translucent skin seemed to compress a little at the sound, and then Sister Ann Francis smiled. “We who dedicate ourselves to serving others serve the Lord, Kate. We’ll find our reward in his glorious heaven.”

Kate nodded instinctively. “Of course we will.”

The last time she’d bought that line had been the first time she’d tried to run away from Aunt
Mamie. A short run, after all the effort she’d put into it, all the hope she’d invested in it. All the faith she’d wasted.

The world was what she saw here. Nothing more, nothing less. But there was something to be said for an institution that protected people like Sister Mary Polyester, kept them feeling useful long past when the rest of society would have let them go. Come to think of it, if it weren’t for that unfortunate obsession about past lives, Edna probably would have made a great nun. Kate should talk to her about it. Sometime before she had to work with her on the lanes.

Kate was watching as the psych-intake counselor ushered Mr. Spring past the two security guards who were hustling in from the other end to add their weight to the work of convincing the drunk overdose to hang around. She actually thought Mary Polyester had already gone.

“I worry so much for Juliette,” the little nun suddenly said.

It took Kate a minute to realize that the little nun was talking about Jules. “Why?”

The minute Kate said it she wanted to take it back.

“She’s been so upset lately that she’s been using the fax machine to send out threatening notes.”

“What?”

The nun gave a little shake of her head. “I thought one of her friends should know. I don’t want her to be hurt, you see?”

“Threatening? Who?”

And for just a moment, the fog lifted. “Oh,” Polyester said with a soft smile, “the usual culprits. Tell her to stop, Kate. Before she gets caught and fired. She has babies to take care of.”

Faxes. Oh, great. Not just the Fax Fairies, from which every unit benefited, those anonymous wags who sent notes through machines and tube systems preaching anarchy and satire. The sayings that ended up on bulletin boards everywhere for at least five minutes before the powers that be ripped them down, since they proclaimed such truths as
WORKING HERE IS LIKE WORKING IN A WHOREHOUSE. THE BETTER YOU DO YOUR JOB, THE MORE YOU GET SCREWED
. That was frowned upon but expected, something Mary Polyester would never consider out of the ordinary. She was talking serious shit.

And Kate hadn’t heard a word about it. Pulling open the drawer marked
ASA
, she pulled out a third aspirin to follow the others.

Suddenly she wanted to go listen to chamber music and talk to Tim about gender identification. She wanted to ask Mary Polyester more about Jules’s indiscretion. But before she had the chance to ask, the cry of “Get Security!” rose from beyond the double doors to the front. Aspirin halfway to her mouth, Kate turned to see the doors to triage slam open. Before anybody could react, a skinny brunette with melting mascara and matching tattoo burst onto the work lane.

“Where is that son of a bitch?” she screeched, brandishing, of all things, a fire poker. “I’ll kill him!”

The aspirin hit the floor as Kate struggled to reclaim her crutches. “Oh, Jesus!”

“Get outa my way!” the young woman warned, her hair color matching the mascara that ran down her face and the jeans she wore beneath her lovely Billy Ray Cyrus T-shirt. “I didn’t hit him hard enough before, that fornicatin’ sack of shit!”

Which was when Kate noticed there was blood on the poker. “Security!” she yelled, instinctively moving to block the woman from the rest of the patient rooms. Then she realized that the rest of her defensive line was a fifty-something year-old nun.

Kate heard a scrabble of feet from the room where Security had been camped. The woman raised the poker, fire in her bloodshot eyes and murder in her heart. She was no more than fifteen feet away.

“Move!” she screamed and lowered her head like a battering ram.

“Oh, my,” Mary Polyester muttered. “Move aside, dear.”

Kate had just been about to say the same thing. Since she was trying to balance on crutches, she was at a distinct disadvantage. She tried to pull the nun to safety. Instead, the nun pushed her out of the way just as the young woman reached warp speed.

“Oh, shit!” Sticks yelled, skidding into the hall and seeing what was about to happen. “She’s gonna kill a nun!”

And then Mary Polyester went down in history by bringing the woman down. Kate saw the nun
position herself and figured she was just going to make sure the assailant didn’t get to the rooms. Instead, she somehow caught hold of the woman’s upraised arm with one hand and simply swung her around in a circle. By the time the young woman figured out she was headed back the way she’d come, Sticks and the security forces intercepted her on the way by. Polyester not only hung on to her quarry, she held on so tightly that the poker ended up hitting the floor with a clang.

The language was blistering. The security guards, two ex-football jocks who spent an inordinate amount of time walking around just to hear the leather on their belts creak, slid to a halt as if the Archangel Michael himself had appeared to grab the woman. As for her, she was howling that the little nun had broken her arm.

Sister Ann Francis just smiled and let go. “It’s all in the balance, you see,” she said simply. “Our order has a very lovely institution for the insane in Texas. I spent a few years there.”

Kate couldn’t quite shut her mouth. “I guess so.”

Still screeching about the philandering husband cowering in room four, the young woman was strong-armed out the door. Sticks gave Polyester a high five. Polyester straightened her short white veil, as if this were the most normal thing in the world, and bustled on down the hall to the sound of scattered applause. And Kate just stood there trying to get her heart to slow into the countable range.

Just a few weeks ago, this little incident
wouldn’t have incited more than a couple of four-letter challenges. Now Kate felt as if she were going to faint. This was not good. Maybe she shouldn’t even play with the fairy-dusters.

Jules found her holding herself up against the sink of the med prep.

“Did you hear what they did to Edna?” the nurse demanded without greeting as she dumped a couple of amps of Haldol in the contaminated box. Her earlier gentleness was noticeably absent.

Kate stifled an urge to run before things got worse. Jules was redder than usual, and her posture demanded confrontation.

“Yeah, I saw her in Clayton.”

“Clayton?” she demanded, straightening so that she towered over Kate. “What the hell were you doing there?”

“Jules!” one of the other nurses yelled from the other end of the lane. “Your patient in six is escaping!”

“Hold the door open for him and wave goodbye!” she yelled back without turning to look. “Well?”

“I’ve been getting love notes from our killer,” Kate confronted away. “The last one threatened me.”

“Threatened you.”

“Threatened me, Jules. Said that something bad will happen to me if I help the hospital with the investigation.”

Jules gave her head a sharp nod. “Something bad will happen to you if you help this hospital do anything but set fire to Gunn’s office.”

Kate wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. She hadn’t expected this. She didn’t think she was going to make it if she didn’t at least have Jules to understand. And she sure as hell couldn’t discuss it in the middle of the work lane.

“You want this tension to go on?” she demanded.

“Go on? Don’t be stupid. If this stops, they’ll just find another excuse to screw us.”

“Jules!” the security guard called from the drunk’s room. “What do you want us to do with her?”

Kate saw Jules struggling to maintain control.

“What’s wrong?” Kate asked. “What’s got you so crazy?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just that Parker got called in this afternoon and was told it has come to somebody’s attention—although no names were given—that he’s been taking advantage of one of the doctors. Taking
advantage
, mind. And that that kind of behavior is disruptive to an effective working relationship in the ER, so if he wishes to continue, he may do so from his new job on rehab. It’s beginning, Kate. It’s just beginning.”

Kate couldn’t breathe. She found herself staring at her friend as if she’d just spun her head 360 degrees. It was impossible. A coincidence. A really bad cosmic joke. She’d only told B.J. about it that morning. He couldn’t have told anybody here. He wouldn’t have.

But they’d found out. And they’d acted. And Jules was right. It was only the beginning.

Kate didn’t bother talking to anybody else. She just turned around and headed out the door. She needed to call B.J. She needed to hurt B.J. But first she was going to sit in Tim’s quiet, soft rooms and slam down a couple of glasses of cognac and think. She was going to wake Tim up and share everything with him and let him help her decide what to do.

The halogen lights had come on. To the west, the sky glowed in pure hues of crimson and peacock, a perfect spring night. Kate didn’t often notice spring nights, because they didn’t make her feel any better. She didn’t now. She just walked back across the driveway, head down, hands clenched around crutches, sidestepping an ambulance and two cars as they swung into the emergency entrance, horns blaring, lights shuddering across the brick fronts of the apartments before her. She could smell the first barbecue smoke of the season and stepped over Big Wheels and baseball bats on the front lawn. She didn’t notice the man approach from the parking lot until it was too late.

“Ms. Mary Kathleen Manion?” he asked.

She stiffened like a terrier with a bad scent. “You ask me for an interview, and I’ll show you all the tricks I’ve learned with crutches.”

“No interview, ma’am. You are Mary Kathleen Manion?”

“Why?”

For a ferret-faced, bespectacled weasel, he had a much-too-bright smile. “Here.”

She accepted the paper from him before
thinking. The minute he spun away, she knew what it was. She’d been officially served. The son of a bitch had probably been waiting right here the whole time she’d been talking to her friends in the emergency room.

Kate knew she should at least look at the damn thing. After all, it would probably mean the last nail in her professional coffin. A multimillion-dollar lawsuit about which she couldn’t testify, because she couldn’t remember anything.

Instead, she shoved it in the waistband of her jeans and hobbled on up to the porch and let herself into the building.

She hoped nobody had the bad sense to stop and ask about her health.

The coffee from the station was burning its way back up her throat. Her head pounded and her chest ached. She thought she couldn’t feel more frantic, more caught. From a threat on her life to Mamie to Administration to the betrayal of her friends, and then the added treat of a lawsuit. A girl simply couldn’t have a better day.

The lights in the apartment were out and the stereo silent. Tim must have had a rough shift down at kiddyland. Carver met Kate at the door, pacing right in between her legs and the crutches, which meant the cat was really pissed. Kate wasn’t in the mood for that either.

“Knock it off,” she snapped, edging him away with a toe.

He veered back in and then swung off toward the hallway, whining. Kate just shook her head. Everybody had something to say tonight. She
ignored the cat and turned for the kitchen, where she intended to further deplete the stock of alcohol.

Carver found her there and resumed his attentions. Kate looked over to find a full food bowl and water dish. She balanced on a crutch as she sipped at the fiery liquid, which should settle some of the other brushfires in her. She glared at the cat, who glared back and meowed again.

“What is it, Lassie?” she asked dryly. “Has Timmy fallen down the mine shaft again?”

The cat didn’t think she was particularly funny. He made another run for her crutches and scooted away again, back to the hallway. Kate decided she might as well wake Tim now as later. It was his cat. He could deal with him.