Nothing Personal (25 page)

As if in answer, the door opened.

“Have you seen Suzie?” Jules asked, her features tight with frustration.

It took Kate a second to answer. “No. She hasn’t been in here. Why?”

Jules was tapping a foot against the floor, her gaze flickering toward the door down the hall
where Phyl held court. “You wanna tell me again why she’s still working here? She just got here an hour ago, and already she’s taken off for parts unknown.”

“You know perfectly well I don’t know why,” Kate retorted, trying to see something in her friend she hadn’t before. “It’s one of the great medical mysteries of our age.”

Jules snorted like an overheated horse. “Well, when you find out, let me know.”

“Jules—”

“Did you talk to maintenance about changing your lock like John told you?”

Kate shook her head.

Jules glowered. “It’d probably be easier if you’d just go to B.J.’s like he suggested, you know.”

“Easier for everyone else,” Kate admitted. “Not easier for me.” Kate couldn’t do this any other way. She needed to at least have some clue. “Jules, I’ve been going over the Rashad chart.”

Jules’s face immediately clouded over. Kate felt her last hopes plummet. “What did I do, Jules?” she demanded. “Why won’t anybody talk to me about it?”

“You didn’t do anything,” her friend insisted. “Trust me. We’ll talk about it after I get this overdose up to the unit. That’s if I can ever find the elusive Ms. Walsh. Now, call maintenance.”

And before Kate could ask, Jules was gone.

She stood there a minute, impaled on indecision. Knowing she had to learn more. Knowing all her answers eventually would be picked out of the sterile wording of that chart.

She stood there, alone, in the only quiet room on the floor, listening to the world that clattered and pulsed outside the door. Separated, paralyzed, in the only place she’d ever felt comfortable. Struggling to hold back the certainty that she didn’t even belong here anymore, which meant she didn’t belong anywhere.

To avoid facing that possibility, Kate turned around and called maintenance—and was promptly told she had no authority to request a new lock on the apartment door, because as of the day before she’d been served notice that she was going to have to move out.

“Did you ever find Suzie?” she asked Jules fifteen minutes later, as they stormed the administrative suite.

“No. When I told Parker where I was going, he said fine.”

They were headed for the leasing offices that handled all the different properties on the campus, from house staff residence to doctors’ office buildings. In her hand, Kate held the slip she’d ignored the day before, the one that stated in the simplest of computer legalese that Kate had thirty days to vacate the apartment since she no longer had a right to be there and there were other house staff on a waiting list for the space.

Her face was a brighter red than Jules’s, and her language had been blistering. She’d talked to the clerk and then the computer programmer and then the secretary. Each one referred back to the
computer, which verified the action. Each was just doing her job. Each had been struck dumb when asked for suggestions in how to rectify the situation. Kate went straight from logic to rampage, and had been rewarded with the sound of slamming phones.

“I’m just going so you don’t hurt anybody,” Jules said.

“Is that why you have that IV pole in your hand?”

“I forgot to put it back down.”

The leasing offices were deep in the heart of carpet country. It seemed only fitting, since prospective clients would have to mingle with the staff. Why rent from someone who smells like disinfectant and old flowers?

Kate fought for sanity. She was losing.

“Phyl just told us that we’re redecorating the waiting room again,” Jules said, the IV pole bouncing up and down in front of her like a lance in a joust.

“God knows we need that more than staffing.”

They were just about even with Mr. Gunn’s office, when the hush of the elegant setting was shattered by a scream. Jules stopped on a dime, missing Kate with her IV pole by inches. Both of them took a look over at the oak door that bore Mr. Gunn’s name on a brass nameplate.

Nothing. The door stayed closed and silence returned.

Kate and Jules turned to check the reaction of the secretary who sat at the end of the hall to find out if this was something she was used to. She
didn’t blink. Jules checked with Kate and they both shrugged, at least a little appeased that they were going to have something worthwhile to take back with them to the nether regions.

Figuring they could only stall so long, they set off again. This time they only made it five more feet when a second, higher scream stopped them in their tracks.

Then another, and another: shrill, terrified screams that signaled only one thing. Kate reacted instinctively, whipping around to open the door.

It was locked.

“Kick it,” Kate insisted.

“You kick it.”

The screaming went on and on. The secretary scurried toward them. Jules eyed the door. She shook her head, then lowered it and dove for the door with her shoulder, pushing it right off the frame.

Which was how they came upon Mr. Gunn in full and terrifying seizure on his chrome-and-slate desk, his mouth open, his eyes bugging, his pants around his ankles, and his organ at full attention. And there, straddling it and wearing nothing but her nursing hose, garter belt, and a bright shiny new nursing cap no one had ever seen her wear in her entire career, was Suzie Walsh, screaming her lungs out.

Kate reacted in a perfectly professional manner. She turned to Jules and threw up her hands.

“Oh,” they said in unison, with a big nod of relief. “
That’s
why she’s still working here.”

IT IS A VERY
difficult thing to run a code when you’re laughing.

“He was—you know, jumping around.” Suzie was stammering, her cap hanging askew and blue mascara running down her face. “And—and making gurgling noises. But I just figured he was…he was…I don’t know.”

“Coming,” Parker supplied for her as he taped an IV in place on the still unclad CEO.

Her nod was as jerky as the patient’s limbs. “Yeah. That’s it. But I guess he was…”

“Going,” three separate people offered.

“Anybody got a rhythm?” Lisa asked at the other end of the body, her voice suspiciously high.

“Nothing but artifact,” Kate acknowledged from where she rode herd on the monitor. “That’s a hell of a seizure.”

“What the fuck did he take?” somebody demanded as they tried to pump a chest that bounced back up in perfect, terrible rictus. The anesthetist wasn’t having any better luck getting
an endotracheal tube in. He’d managed to pop at least three crowns with the wood pry without even getting purchase past those clamped teeth.

The room was in chaos, furniture pushed against the far wall to make room for equipment and personnel, the expensive Karastan carpet littered with spent packaging and body fluids, and the code being run on a ten-thousand-dollar desk. Three supervisors were taking notes, and four men in administrative attire were blocking the door from letting in more people.

By dint of the fact that she’d arrived first, Lisa Beller was code captain, which was a good thing, because just about as soon as the
Code Blue administrative suite first floor
announcement had gone up, almost as many chiefs of service had shown up as when Fleischer had dropped dead at their feet. Lisa held them off with bright smiles and determination.

“Just how long did he make these gurgling noises?”

“I don’t know,” Suzie answered with a sniffle over where the vice president of Human Resources was trying to shield her from the view of the audience with his very own Hart Shaffner & Marx jacket. “Forty minutes or so.”

Everybody stopped. “Forty minutes?” Lisa demanded before she really thought about it.

“Well, he only got really noisy toward the end. But it’s not that unusual….”

The sound of suppressed laughter rumbled through the room like an overhead train as the administrators glowered by the door.

“I tried to help him,” Suzie whined.

“We know,” Jules soothed, eyeing target zero for a catheter. “You should have hung around for a few more CPR classes, though, Suze. You would have found out you were blowing into the wrong thing.”

“You’re not even supposed to blow,” Parker said. “It’s only an expression anyway.”

“Did he take anything before this happened?”

By now only the patient’s head and heels were on the table. The rest arched in a perfect rainbow, pointing north with unerring accuracy.

“Just—uh, his regular gin and tonics,” Suzie insisted. “He always has three, like a ritual. I didn’t. I don’t—you know—drink.”

“Nobody touch the bottles on the counter,” Kate directed. “Anybody seen the police yet?”

“Are you kidding? Nobody can get through that crowd in the hallway. I think there are people from four other hospitals out there who just came to watch.”

Kate had to admit that for the purpose of revenge, it was a great show. She was surprised more people didn’t try and squeeze in the room just to punch Gunn in the chest a few times. On the other hand, she thought she’d heard the click of at least one camera.

“How long have we been at this, kids?” Lisa asked.

“Half an hour,” Kate obliged, rubbing at her own chest as she marked a strip that showed nothing but a few miserable blips.

“Any Valium left on the floor?”

“There isn’t any Valium left in the bistate area.”

“Oh, my! Oh, dear, no.”

Everybody stopped. Then they gaped. Then somebody threw a lab coat over Gunn’s body, but it kind of tented in an unfortunate way, which just made it all the funnier.

“Sister, I don’t think you should be…”

But Polyester wouldn’t be dissuaded. She approached the desk, her eyes almost as wide as Suzie’s, shaking her head. “Haven’t you given him succinylcholine yet?” she asked all the stunned, suddenly uncomfortable faces.

Lisa looked at the by-now-contorted purple face of her patient. “Succinylcholine?” she asked.

Mary Polyester pointed. Gunn pointed back. “My, yes. We have a lovely institution for the insane in Texas, you know. It’s where I saw this first.”

“Saw what, Sister?” Lisa asked.

Polyester gave her a bemused smile. “He’s been eating strychnine, dear,” she said, and walked back out, still shaking her head.

They tried succinylcholine. They weren’t terribly surprised when it didn’t work. After another fifteen minutes or so, the code team filtered from the room, to be replaced by the homicide team. Mr. Gunn remained where they’d left him, in a perfect arch over the black-and-chrome desk he’d fitted into his office by expanding two hospital doors in load-bearing walls. It only seemed appropriate.

Still not able to shake the giggles, Kate took advantage of the chaos in the office and headed
farther down the now-roped-off hallway to try and convince one of the underlings in the leasing office that she, Kate Manion, forgave the computer for fouling up, even at this time of personal grief and stress. That she hadn’t planned to stay in the apartment past the residents’ calendar year in June anyway, so the point was almost moot.

All she took away from the confrontation was another dose of frustration and double-talk. Policy was policy, and the people in the leasing office were just following it. Kate had originally headed for the office prepared to argue, to threaten if necessary. Suddenly the effort seemed too great.

Any lingering high effectively wiped out, Kate trudged back down the hall toward the new clot of people shaking their heads in awe at the door to the CEO’s office. She caught B.J. inside, sitting dead center in the room in one of the leather swivels from the conference suite, a lab coat and disposable gloves on, his chin in his hands, his consideration on the table display as the evidence techs combed through the debris on the floor. Kate poked her way through the crowd.

“Why do you make your investigator come all the way out here if you’re going to show up anyway?” she demanded without greeting, wiping at the perspiration on her face with shaky hands.

He didn’t bother to look over. “I’ve never seen one of these before.” His voice had the same note of awe she’d heard out in the hallway.

“I see they came and got the bottles.”

He nodded. “I heard you were the first one here.”

“The second one. The first one was a little too upset to perform proper CPR.”

He gave a distracted grin. “You didn’t do mouth-to-mouth on him, did you?”

“Are you kidding? Not after Suzie’d been in here. God only knows where her mouth had been.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious.”

“Can we move the body now, doc?” the investigator asked. Kate knew him from his time in county detectives, a nondescript white guy with brown hair and mustache and deceptively passive eyes.

“Yeah, Mike. I just wanted a look.”

The transport team parted the seas with the cart as B.J. got to his feet and peeled off the gloves.

“I think we’ve just run out of time,” he said conversationally.

John heard him from the doorway where he was briefing his team. “You can sing dat in harmony, my man. We got press on us like maggots on meat. And de county supervisor comin’ dis way, too.”

“Then it’s definitely my turn to decamp,” B.J. acknowledged. “Tell the high and mighty that Mr. Gunn here has my first appointment in the morning.”

“So,” John mused as the transporters struggled to maneuver the body the way they wanted it, “dat is what strychnine look like.”

“Probably. I can’t think of anything else that leaves a body in that condition.”

“Well, we have a real good time frame on dis
one. He brought a new load o’ party supplies wid him when he came in, and had appointments all mornin’ long. I don’t suppose you shot anyt’ing into dat boy’s drink, did you, Katie girl?”

Kate just let B.J. walk her by. “I still have my strychnine in my pocket.”

“Bingo!” one of the evidence techs sang out.

Kate turned to see him straightening from where he’d been going through a trash can. He was holding up a hand so John could see what was nestled in his palm.

A bead. A small brown bead.

John did his own maneuvering to get into the room. “What you know?” he all but hummed with satisfaction. “Look familiar, little girl?”

Kate looked at the oddly carved little bead and shook her head. Something about the bead was familiar, but she couldn’t say what. She tried hard to think of anybody from the code team who might have been sporting something like it. “Is that like the other one you found?”

John bent real close over the bead and nodded. “De very same. I owe you a drink, my man. A very, very big drink.”

Kate couldn’t help casting an acerbic look around the room, which still looked as if it had hosted a frat party. “How do you know it’s not from somebody else?” she demanded instinctively. “We did have one or two people in here this afternoon.”

“Not in the paper bag with the liquor receipts, we didn’t,” the tech informed her, holding up both in the other hand.

“Well,” Kate admitted wearily. “If you can find anybody who’s surprised that Gunn was on the hit list, sign ’em up for swampland.”

B.J. seemed much more surprised by the atmosphere in the hospital than Kate. While minicams captured concern from Mr. Fellows, the peasants danced in the streets. The same staff that had wept for Tim now gathered to create mythology with chortling glee.

Phyl met them in the hallway by her office, her posture stiff and threatened. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to share what you saw in that office,” she threatened sotto voce.

Kate wanted to laugh. She’d already heard far more interesting versions of what had happened in that office than what she’d seen, and she hadn’t denied any of them. Besides, now that the adrenaline was wearing off as fast as day-old antiperspirant, her legs were shaking. She was exhausted and she was afraid, and she needed to disappear fast before she embarrassed herself.

“I think it’s the end of my shift anyway,” Kate assured her boss. “Would it be okay if I start working later in the day? Say, eleven to seven? I might be able to give a hand to evenings, since they’re short-shifted.”

“You aren’t ready for that kind of stuff yet,” B.J. objected instinctively.

“Just computer and quiet room,” she demurred. “That kind of thing.”

She didn’t want to tell him she needed a lot
more time to sit with the evening crew to ask about the chart. She didn’t say to either of them that she needed her own answers even more than they needed theirs.

“Besides,” she added, figuring she had nothing else to lose. “I need the mornings to figure a way to keep my apartment till June. The leasing office is throwing me out.”

Phyl’s reaction was at least promising. B.J.’s was terrible and swift.

“What?” he demanded loudly enough for the entire first lower level to hear him.

Kate repeated herself, just for effect.

The effect got better when B.J. let loose with a string of invectives that damn near cleared out the waiting room fifty feet away. Kate wasn’t sure whether it made her feel better or worse.

“I’ll go talk to them,” he said, the sound making every person in sight flinch.

“I’ll take care of it,” Phyl promised, eyes wide and hands out as if fending off a wild horse from the mares. “And I promise to get someone over right away to change those locks. The shift change is fine, but I agree with B.J. You’re not to do anything physical around here until you get a release from every one of your doctors, you hear?”

Considering what she’d just done up in the administrative suite, the warning came too late. Kate didn’t bother to say anything. She just nodded acquiescence.

“Now, Doctor O’Brien,” Phyl suggested. “Why don’t you take Kate home so she can get some rest?”

He did, spinning Kate for the door so fast the room kept following. One down and all the rest to go. John and Mary and Florence were all going to have to wait until tomorrow. Kate was shot. She had a feeling that if she was lucky she’d make it all the way across the grounds before her knees gave way completely. Her brain was already gone, so pan-fried that even autonomic function seemed like a strain. And then she stepped out the doors and realized why Phyl had been stationed to intercept her in the first place.

Her brain must have been working at least a little, because all she could think of was that this must be what the Romans felt like when they were overrun by the Visigoths.

“Miss Manion! Are the police questioning you in this latest incident?”

“Doctor O’Brien, what do you think Mr. Gunn died of? Was he poisoned like the others?”

B.J. pushed one way and the swarm of reporters pushed another, leaving Kate feeling like a bad swimmer caught in an undertow. She tried pushing too, but this crowd was in better shape. They sucked the air away and replaced it with noise and the smell of expensive perfume and sweat. Lights blinded her. Faces bobbed and grimaced, leaving her with the afterimage of brilliant teeth and pancake makeup, Burberry raincoats and spray-painted hair. The adrenaline she thought she’d used up flooded in again, this time producing sheer terror. Her chest, which had been hurting before from the exertion of getting that code started, felt as if it were closing off completely.

“Miss Manion, what about the reports that you’re being sued in the death of a child under your care? Did he die of poisoning too?”

That took the forward momentum right out of her. B.J., pushing just behind her, slammed into her back, almost sending her right into one of the female reporters. Kate opened her mouth. She tried to get the breath to deny the charges, to even acknowledge them. B.J. never let her get the chance.

“Miss Manion is going home. You want to talk to me, do it through my office.”