Nothing Personal (2 page)

The nurse reached down with ring-ladened fingers and ripped the tape that held the tube in place from around Kate’s face. Kate screamed. No one heard. She fought the paralysis, the morphine, the dim voices that sounded a lot like machines at the back of her mind. She couldn’t do this again. She couldn’t let Attila touch her.

Attila ripped new tape and lifted Kate’s head to rewrap the tape all the way around her throat. Kate screamed again. She was sure Attila was just going to unscrew her at the neck and walk off with the pertinent parts. Attila never so much as blinked. She was looking pale, though. Maybe she did hear Kate. Maybe she was in hell too, having to take care of a vegetable for eternity. It’d serve her right.

Except the vegetable was Kate, and she had no intention of hanging around.

Attila bent to jiggle the chest tube where it entered the left side of Kate’s chest, just to make sure it was stable. It set off a firestorm all the way to Kate’s toes. Kate fed on air from the machine. She braced herself. She lunged.

She caught Attila right around the throat.

Attila squeaked.

Kate tried very hard to ask her to stop, to just take it a little easier. She just wanted Attila to listen. She didn’t. Attila dropped dead right across Kate’s chest, taking the chest tube with her.

WAKING UP THE
second time was something of a good news/bad news joke. The good news was that after the incident with Attila, the Bagel Man decided the only way to control Kate was not just to paralyze her but completely snow her. And digging back out from under that kind of avalanche was a slow and dreamy process.

By the time she was really coherent, the tube was back out, one of the chest tubes had followed permanently, and the ICP monitor had been removed. Kate knew her name, knew the name of everyone who took care of her, and could pronounce them all without so much as a stutter. She realized how badly she’d been trashed when just that feat alone brought tears to the eyes of Hetty Everson, who’d taken over her care. The last time Hetty had cried had been the day Administration instituted an open visitation policy in the units.

The bad news was that what Kate woke up to was John McWilliams. Sergeant John McWilliams, the tallest, broadest, blackest African American in the city of St. Louis and its surrounding communities.
Detective Sergeant John McWilliams of the St. Louis County Police Detectives division of Crimes Against Persons.

It wasn’t that Kate didn’t like John. She really did. He was one of the most accommodating police officers on the county force, happy to use his impressive height and even more impressive scowl to help keep the wealthier drunks and more violent crazies under control if needed.

But Kate suspected that John wasn’t here to keep her quiet.

“You got some trouble, little girl,” he said simply.

John was also a native of Jamaica, with the loveliest accent and deepest voice in Kate’s experience. Kate had often said that when she finally gave in to auditory hallucinations she’d demand John’s voice.

It still amazed her that the very clannish county police had accepted John. Not because he was black. Because he wasn’t from St. Louis. In St. Louis, a person was defined by what high school he or she attended, and John had attended none of them. Worse, John didn’t even know where any of them were.

Word was he had secured his position through a cousin on the force and the highest scores ever recorded in the sergeant’s exam. Kate could never understand why he’d taken all the trouble in the first place. After all, given the choice, who would choose winter in St. Louis over winter in Jamaica?

“Aren’t you gonna tell me how good I look?” Kate asked, her voice raspy and low from the tube.

John laughed in delight. “Girl, why would I tell you somet’in’ like dat? You look like bloody hell.”

Kate managed a grimace without moving too many sore body parts. “Thanks, John. I knew I could count on you.”

“Dey took your hair, you know dat?”

She hadn’t known dat. For the sixth or seventh time just since she’d tried to move in bed, Kate wanted to curse. Her beautiful hair, the only decent thing heredity had thought to bestow on her, thick and black and curly from her Irish daddy, and some yutz had buzzed it so the Bagel Man could get at her brain. Didn’t it just figure? On soap operas they could do complete lobotomies and not even bend a strand.

“Where’s the Little Dick?” she asked, stalling. Wanting another smile from John before they got down to business.

Little Dick Trainor, John’s penance for his audacity. His partner. Where John gained ground through persistence and knack, the Little Dick managed through political savvy. A short, surly redneck who was more bigoted than his partner was delightful, he had won his nickname the old-fashioned way.

“You know Dickie don’ like hospitals,” John said evenly.

Kate managed a grin of her own. Waiting for Dick to hit the floor in the ER had become quite a spectator sport.

“So other than complimenting me on my looks, what’s shakin’?”

“Not Frances Crawford.” When Kate didn’t answer fast enough, he leaned in a bit. “I t’ink you call her Attila. Not a very polite thing to do, little girl.”

“You never worked with her.”

“Won’ get a chance to, now.”

Which was when just what had happened the last time Kate had really had her eyes open well and truly sank in. Her heart sank.

“Oh, God…it wasn’t a hallucination.”

“Don’ I wish it were, chil’. Dat girl’s as dead as a big fish, and dey foun’ her wit’ your hands roun’ her t’roat.”

Kate wondered whether John would understand that she wanted to laugh. Not because it was all so absurd—although God knows it was—but because it was so damn pathetic. No matter how much Kate had hated Attila, she couldn’t ever imagine killing her. Attila had problems enough of her own without Kate’s adding to them. Husband problems, co-dependency problems, children problems. Problems the big, slow, infuriating woman would never have a chance to clear up now. And so Kate wanted to laugh to clear that hard knot of tears from her throat.

“They’re sure.”

“Sure she dead? Lord, I hope so. She been boxed in a wall since yesterday.”

Kate glared, not in the least amused. “That it was…you know, me.”

“You wanna see pictures? Security managed to get some real nice ones wit’ a Polaroid before you two got unglued.”

Wonderful. It would probably end up in the Pig Nurses from Hell newsletter Kate helped edit. Just what she needed. Nobody would believe she never really meant it, because Kate had threatened Attila with bodily harm the last time Attila left one of her transfers unattended.

“Actually,” John was saying as he rocked back on his feet, “I do ’preciate you posin’ for dat picture. If you hadn’t killed her for sure, I t’ink I have to suspect ev’ry one of de crazy people in dis hospital. Nobody real sad to see her go.”

Like Kate had said, Attila would never have walked away with Miss Congeniality.

“Is this where I call my lawyer, John?” she asked. “’Cause it might take a minute. Right now I can’t even remember my lawyer’s name.”

John let loose one of his rolling laughs that made the monitor tech look up and smile. “My, my, you do try an’ look at de wors’ side of life, don’ you?”

“I try.”

“Well, try dis. I am informin’ you of your Miranda rights, jus’ because I be askin’ you a few questions. You wan’ your lawyer, I’m jus’ as happy to wait. But de smart money says da mos’ we could get you on is reckless use of surprise.”

“What do you mean?”

“You scared her to deat’, girl.”

Should that have made her feel better? Kate wasn’t sure. She did know it was time to dial in her morphine again. Her head was pounding like a boom box on rap, her chest felt held together with barbed wire, and she was beginning to realize
that the big lump propped on those pillows was her left leg, which hurt even worse. Above and beyond that, she much preferred dosed unreality to this stuff.

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

John smiled, all teeth, like a big old alligator. “Well, I don’ know about me, but you have the right to remain silent….”

Kate was tired. She knew every procedure the staff performed on her. Blood samples and chest X rays and Swan readings and percussion and breathing treatments and catheter lavaging. Vital signs and turning and coughing and endless assessing. She’d done it long years ago in training, and once when she’d been bumped to ICU for an ignominious six months late in her career. She’d hated doing it to other people. Now she knew she hadn’t hated it nearly enough. No patient deserved this kind of abuse.

And then, to make it worse, the next person to wake her up was Martin Weiss. Chief surgical resident, by turns infuriating, difficult, and terrifying. As patronizing as they came, expecting people to excuse his behavior because of his talent. Darkly handsome enough to get laid, not kind enough to have friends. Getting more unpredictable by the minute until there were whispers that he was sampling some of the product himself.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” he announced, pulling his stethoscope from his pocket.

Kate didn’t bother exchanging platitudes with
him. She didn’t like Martin. She liked him less when he yanked back the sheet to reveal Kate’s unshaved legs and the catheter drainage tube taped to her thigh beneath the scant cover of the patient gown. When Weiss threw up the gown to examine her, she saw the livid scar that bisected her chest with obscene staples, and she was ashamed of her own body. She was ashamed that someone she didn’t like could expose it for anyone to see. She was ashamed that what she might have thought private and special was no more than the same meat she had turned and prodded and listened to each time she’d checked a patient.

So she didn’t answer. Instead she squeezed her eyes shut, her hands fluttering toward the sheet, toward a modesty she’d never realized she needed.

“Neat trick with Attila,” he said, slapping a cold stethoscope against her breast and making her flinch. Making her swear that she’d never let him get away with it on one of her patients again. “Wish I’d thought of it.”

“I’d be happy to trade places any time,” she offered.

He laughed. She wasn’t trying to be funny.

Then she gasped. He hadn’t even had the courtesy to lie and say it was going to be a little uncomfortable. He’d just leaned against the broken ribs so he could get a better listen to her lungs. Kate opened her eyes and grabbed his stethoscope to get his attention.

“Shit, Martin,” she snapped, with what breath she had left. “Your diet low in torture today or what?”

He straightened like a shot, pulling hard to retrieve his equipment. “What’s the matter with you?”

“At least beg my pardon. That hurt!”

Martin’s expression grew a little more dangerous than usual. He was fondling the damn thing as if she’d yanked something much more personal than a stethoscope. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“What,” Kate asked, “get hurt or let you touch me?”

He didn’t even answer. Making sure he checked her drains and chest tube one more time, he simply walked out without covering her back up. It was Edna Reabers, the unit head nurse, who saw Kate struggling to get the sheet up and came in to rectify things.

Kate didn’t say anything about Weiss’s behavior. Edna, a vague middle-aged woman whose talent was anal retention and whose only remarkable feature was her perfectly pristine white uniform, was from the old school that forbade such luxuries. But she took an extra few minutes to tuck Kate back in and give her a few conciliatory pats, and that was enough to get her on Kate’s Christmas cookie list for the rest of her life.

Then, as the light dimmed imperceptibly against the wall so that Kate thought maybe the sun was beginning to set, she opened her eyes to find yet another white coat staring at her monitors. Yet more pockets filled with penlights and clamps and tourniquets. Yet another name tag.

“Slut puppy,” Kate rasped in greeting.

Jules looked down from her great height. “Whore dog.”

And they both smiled, the kind of teary, longtime-friend smile that said what Kate didn’t have the strength to anyway.

“You’re a fuckin’ mess, girl.”

Kate sighed, shifted in bed a little, and waited for the protests from every limb and corner to die before answering. “That’s what I keep hearing.”

Juliette Pfeiffer was a big woman, red of face, red of hair, red of temper. She was the Jeff to Kate’s Mutt, and few people knew how gentle the heart was at the core of a woman who carried around a coffee mug that proclaimed,
EXCUSE ME. YOU’VE OBVIOUSLY MISTAKEN ME FOR SOMEBODY WHO GIVES A SHIT
.

“Tim finally went home.”

Kate was glad. “He was holding my hand, wasn’t he?”

“All the time. He was so cute. Actually got the powers that be to let him off call for three nights so he could harass the help. I think that’s a first for surgical residents here.”

Sweet Tim. Steady, reassuring Tim. Tim with his passions, his demons, his secret loyalties. Tim was everything Martin Weiss wasn’t, and just the thought of him waiting with her through that nightmare made Kate smile.

“Has he asked you to marry him yet?” Jules asked.

“I just moved in with him six months ago.”

Jules wasn’t in the least put off. “I figured a quick stint in the unit would convince any man you were too good to lose. I guess it must work better for some people than others.”

“Probably somebody who hasn’t had her head shaved and every orifice introduced to a plastic hose of some kind.”

“I’m sure that’s what made him cry.”

Sly Jules. Smiling Jules. Kate wished Jules knew the truth.

“Don’t feel compelled to comfort him,” she teased anyway.

Jules grinned. “He wants me, I can tell. He’s just achin’ to sneak in and see what I hide in my truck.”

Kate didn’t want to laugh. She almost did. The idea of the meticulous, elegant Dr. Timothy Ransom Peterson III mixing it up with Jules in her old pickup truck was enough to send Kate’s imagination straight into overload. Jules, one of the best trauma nurses Kate had ever met, who had her masters degree in social service, spent her leisure time handcrafting brightly beaded leather moccasins and collecting road kill for the pelts in a battered pickup that sported a bumper sticker reading
BECAUSE I’M THE MOTHER, THAT’S WHY
. She’d been one of the few people to get back at Weiss by leaving one of her trophies in his call bed after he’d questioned her judgment, sanity, and parentage in that order in front of a patient.

“Hard as it may be to believe,” Jules said, “you look better.”

Kate could deal with almost anything but this. “Oh, man, Jules,” she said, sighing. “This sucks.”

“Yeah, kid. I know.”

No, Kate thought, you don’t. Kate hadn’t. Not until now. Not until she’d been tied naked to a bed
and made to give strangers control of her body. Not until she’d lain in her own sweat and been unable to escape. There was nothing Kate hated worse than feeling helpless like this. Nothing.

“I guess my car’s totaled,” she said, wanting to talk about anything else but this.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the stiff silence that met her statement.

“What?” Kate demanded.

Jules looked up at the monitor again. She looked down. Something flickered and retreated in the bright blue eyes.

“A mess,” was all she said.